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Title: Early Theories of Translation

Author: Flora Ross Amos

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=Columbia University=


STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE

EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION




EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

BY

FLORA ROSS AMOS

OCTAGON BOOKS

A Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York 1973


Copyright 1920 by Columbia University Press


_Reprinted 1973
by special arrangement with Columbia University Press_


OCTAGON BOOKS
A DIVISION OF FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX, INC.
19 Union Square West
New York, N.Y. 10003


Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data


Amos, Flora Ross, 1881-
   Early theories of translation.

   Original ed. issued in series: Columbia University studies in
     English and comparative literature.

   Originally presented as the author's thesis, Columbia.

   1. Translating and interpreting. I. Title.
   II. Series: Columbia University studies in English and comparative
       literature.

[PN241.A5 1973]                   418'.02                    73-397

ISBN 0-374-90176-7

_Printed in U.S.A. by_ NOBLE OFFSET PRINTERS, INC. New York, N.Y. 10003




TO

MY FATHER AND MY MOTHER




     _This Monograph has been approved by the Department of
     English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as
     a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication._

                                       A. H. THORNDIKE,
                                         _Executive Officer_




PREFACE


In the following pages I have attempted to trace certain developments in
the theory of translation as it has been formulated by English writers.
I have confined myself, of necessity, to such opinions as have been put
into words, and avoided making use of deductions from practice other
than a few obvious and generally accepted conclusions. The procedure
involves, of course, the omission of some important elements in the
history of the theory of translation, in that it ignores the
discrepancies between precept and practice, and the influence which
practice has exerted upon theory; on the other hand, however, it
confines a subject, otherwise impossibly large, within measurable
limits. The chief emphasis has been laid upon the sixteenth century, the
period of the most enthusiastic experimentation, when, though it was
still possible for the translator to rest in the comfortable medieval
conception of his art, the New Learning was offering new problems and
new ideals to every man who shared in the intellectual awakening of his
time. In the matter of theory, however, the age was one of beginnings,
of suggestions, rather than of finished, definitive results; even by the
end of the century there were still translators who had not yet
appreciated the immense difference between medieval and modern standards
of translation. To understand their position, then, it is necessary to
consider both the preceding period, with its incidental,
half-unconscious comment, and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
with their systematized, unified contribution. This last material, in
especial, is included chiefly because of the light which it throws in
retrospect on the views of earlier translators, and only the main
course of theory, by this time fairly easy to follow, is traced.

The aim has in no case been to give bibliographical information. A
number of translations, important in themselves, have received no
mention because they have evoked no comment on methods. The references
given are not necessarily to first editions. Generally speaking, it has
been the prefaces to translations that have yielded material, and such
prefaces, especially during the Elizabethan period, are likely to be
included or omitted in different editions for no very clear reasons.
Quotations have been modernized, except in the case of Middle English
verse, where the original form has been kept for the sake of the metre.

The history of the theory of translation is by no means a record of
easily distinguishable, orderly progression. It shows an odd lack of
continuity. Those who give rules for translation ignore, in the great
majority of cases, the contribution of their predecessors and
contemporaries. Towards the beginning of Elizabeth's reign a small group
of critics bring to the problems of the translator both technical
scholarship and alert, original minds, but apparently the new and
significant ideas which they offer have little or no effect on the
general course of theory. Again, Tytler, whose _Essay on the Principles
on Translation_, published towards the end of the eighteenth century,
may with some reason claim to be the first detailed discussion of the
questions involved, declares that, with a few exceptions, he has "met
with nothing that has been written professedly on the subject," a
statement showing a surprising disregard for the elaborate prefaces that
accompanied the translations of his own century.

This lack of consecutiveness in criticism is probably partially
accountable for the slowness with which translators attained the power
to put into words, clearly and unmistakably, their aims and methods.
Even if one were to leave aside the childishly vague comment of
medieval writers and the awkward attempts of Elizabethan translators to
describe their processes, there would still remain in the modern period
much that is careless or misleading. The very term "translation" is long
in defining itself; more difficult terms, like "faithfulness" and
"accuracy," have widely different meanings with different writers. The
various kinds of literature are often treated in the mass with little
attempt at discrimination between them, regardless of the fact that the
problems of the translator vary with the character of his original.
Tytler's book, full of interesting detail as it is, turns from prose to
verse, from lyric to epic, from ancient to modern, till the effect it
leaves on the reader is fragmentary and confusing.

Moreover, there has never been uniformity of opinion with regard to the
aims and methods of translation. Even in the age of Pope, when, if ever,
it was safe to be dogmatic and when the theory of translation seemed
safely on the way to become standardized, one still hears the voices of
a few recalcitrants, voices which become louder and more numerous as the
century advances; in the nineteenth century the most casual survey
discovers conflicting views on matters of fundamental importance to the
translator. Who are to be the readers, who the judges, of a translation
are obviously questions of primary significance to both translator and
critic, but they are questions which have never been authoritatively
settled. When, for example, Caxton in the fifteenth century uses the
"curious" terms which he thinks will appeal to a clerk or a noble
gentleman, his critics complain because the common people cannot
understand his words. A similar situation appears in modern times when
Arnold lays down the law that the judges of an English version of Homer
must be "scholars, because scholars alone have the means of really
judging him," and Newman replies that "scholars are the tribunal of
Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public must be the
only rightful judge."

Again, critics have been hesitant in defining the all-important term
"faithfulness." To one writer fidelity may imply a reproduction of his
original as nearly as possible word for word and line for line; to
another it may mean an attempt to carry over into English the spirit of
the original, at the sacrifice, where necessary, not only of the exact
words but of the exact substance of his source. The one extreme is
likely to result in an awkward, more or less unintelligible version; the
other, as illustrated, for example, by Pope's _Homer_, may give us a
work so modified by the personality of the translator or by the
prevailing taste of his time as to be almost a new creation. But while
it is easy to point out the defects of the two methods, few critics have
had the courage to give fair consideration to both possibilities; to
treat the two aims, not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary; to
realize that the spirit and the letter may be not two but one. In the
sixteenth century Sir Thomas North translated from the French Amyot's
wise observation: "The office of a fit translator consisteth not only in
the faithful expressing of his author's meaning, but also in a certain
resembling and shadowing forth of the form of his style and manner of
his speaking"; but few English critics, in the period under our
consideration, grasped thus firmly the essential connection between
thought and style and the consequent responsibility of the translator.

Yet it is those critics who have faced all the difficulties boldly, and
who have urged upon the translator both due regard for the original and
due regard for English literary standards who have made the most
valuable contributions to theory. It is much easier to set the standard
of translation low, to settle matters as does Mr. Chesterton in his
casual disposition of Fitzgerald's _Omar_: "It is quite clear that
Fitzgerald's work is much too good to be a good translation." We can, it
is true, point to few realizations of the ideal theory, but in
approaching a literature which possesses the English Bible, that
marvelous union of faithfulness to source with faithfulness to the
genius of the English language, we can scarcely view the problem of
translation thus hopelessly.

The most stimulating and suggestive criticism, indeed, has come from men
who have seen in the very difficulty of the situation opportunities for
achievement. While the more cautious grammarian has ever been doubtful
of the quality of the translator's English, fearful of the introduction
of foreign words, foreign idioms, to the men who have cared most about
the destinies of the vernacular,--men like Caxton, More, or
Dryden,--translation has appeared not an enemy to the mother tongue, but
a means of enlarging and clarifying it. In the time of Elizabeth the
translator often directed his appeal more especially to those who loved
their country's language and wished to see it become a more adequate
medium of expression. That he should, then, look upon translation as a
promising experiment, rather than a doubtful compromise, is an essential
characteristic of the good critic.

The necessity for open-mindedness, indeed, in some degree accounts for
the tentative quality in so much of the theory of translation.
Translation fills too large a place, is too closely connected with the
whole course of literary development, to be disposed of easily. As each
succeeding period has revealed new fashions in literature, new avenues
of approach to the reader, there have been new translations and the
theorist has had to reverse or revise the opinions bequeathed to him
from a previous period. The theory of translation cannot be reduced to a
rule of thumb; it must again and again be modified to include new facts.
Thus regarded it becomes a vital part of our literary history, and has
significance both for those who love the English language and for those
who love English literature.

In conclusion, it remains only to mention a few of my many obligations.
To the libraries of Princeton and Harvard as well as Columbia University
I owe access to much useful material. It is a pleasure to acknowledge my
indebtedness to Professors Ashley H. Thorndike and William W. Lawrence
and to Professor William H. Hulme of Western Reserve University for
helpful criticism and suggestions. In especial I am deeply grateful to
Professor George Philip Krapp, who first suggested this study and who
has given me constant encouragement and guidance throughout its course.

_April, 1919._




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                                 PAGE

  I. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD                                   3

 II. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE                         49

III. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY                                81

 IV. FROM COWLEY TO POPE                                 135

     INDEX                                               181




I. THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD




EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

I

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD


From the comment of Anglo-Saxon writers one may derive a not inadequate
idea of the attitude generally prevailing in the medieval period with
regard to the treatment of material from foreign sources. Suggestive
statements appear in the prefaces to the works associated with the name
of Alfred. One method of translation is employed in producing an English
version of Pope Gregory's _Pastoral Care_. "I began," runs the preface,
"among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate
into English the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_, and in
English _Shepherd's Book_, sometimes word by word, and sometimes
according to the sense."[1] A similar practice is described in the
_Proem_ to _The Consolation of Philosophy_ of Boethius. "King Alfred was
the interpreter of this book, and turned it from book Latin into
English, as it is now done. Now he set forth word by word, now sense
from sense, as clearly and intelligently as he was able."[2] The preface
to _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_, the beginning of which, unfortunately,
seems to be lacking, suggests another possible treatment of borrowed
material. "I gathered for myself," writes the author, "cudgels, and
stud-shafts, and horizontal shafts, and helves for each of the tools
that I could work with, and bow-timbers and bolt-timbers for every work
that I could perform, the comeliest trees, as many as I could carry.
Neither came I with a burden home, for it did not please me to bring all
the wood back, even if I could bear it. In each tree I saw something
that I needed at home; therefore I advise each one who can, and has many
wains, that he direct his steps to the same wood where I cut the
stud-shafts. Let him fetch more for himself, and load his wains with
fair beams, that he may wind many a neat wall, and erect many a rare
house, and build a fair town, and therein may dwell merrily and softly
both winter and summer, as I have not yet done."[3]

Aelfric, writing a century later, develops his theories in greater
detail. Except in the _Preface to Genesis_, they are expressed in Latin,
the language of the lettered, a fact which suggests that, unlike the
translations themselves, the prefaces were addressed to readers who
were, for the most part, opposed to translation into the vernacular and
who, in addition to this, were in all probability especially suspicious
of the methods employed by Aelfric. These methods were strongly in the
direction of popularization. Aelfric's general practice is like that of
Alfred. He declares repeatedly[4] that he translates sense for sense,
not always word for word. Furthermore, he desires rather to be clear and
simple than to adorn his style with rhetorical ornament.[5] Instead of
unfamiliar terms, he uses "the pure and open words of the language of
this people."[6] In connection with the translation of the Bible he lays
down the principle that Latin must give way to English idiom.[7] For all
these things Aelfric has definite reasons. Keeping always in mind a
clear conception of the nature of his audience, he does whatever seems
to him necessary to make his work attractive and, consequently,
profitable. Preparing his _Grammar_ for "tender youths," though he knows
that words may be interpreted in many ways, he follows a simple method
of interpretation in order that the book may not become tiresome.[8] The
_Homilies_, intended for simple people, are put into simple English,
that they may more easily reach the hearts of those who read or hear.[9]
This popularization is extended even farther. Aelfric explains[10] that
he has abbreviated both the _Homilies_[11] and the _Lives of the
Saints_,[12] again of deliberate purpose, as appears in his preface to
the latter: "Hoc sciendum etiam quod prolixiores passiones breuiamus
verbis non adeo sensu, ne fastidiosis ingeratur tedium si tanta
prolixitas erit in propria lingua quanta est in latina."

Incidentally, however, Aelfric makes it evident that his were not the
only theories of translation which the period afforded. In the preface
to the first collection of _Homilies_ he anticipates the disapproval of
those who demand greater closeness in following originals. He recognizes
the fact that his translation may displease some critics "quod non
semper verbum ex verbo, aut quod breviorem explicationem quam tractatus
auctorum habent, sive non quod per ordinem ecclesiastici ritus omnia
Evangelia percurrimus." The _Preface to Genesis_ suggests that the
writer was familiar with Jerome's insistence on the necessity for
unusual faithfulness in translating the Bible.[13] Such comment implies
a mind surprisingly awake to the problems of translation.

The translator who left the narrow path of word for word reproduction
might, in this early period, easily be led into greater deviations from
source, especially if his own creative ability came into play. The
preface to _St. Augustine's Soliloquies_ quoted above carries with it a
stimulus, not only to translation or compilation, but to work like that
of Caedmon or Cynewulf, essentially original in many respects, though
based, in the main, on material already given literary shape in other
languages. Both characteristics are recognized in Anglo-Saxon comment.
Caedmon, according to the famous passage in Bede, "all that he could
learn by hearing meditated with himself, and, as a clean animal
ruminating, turned into the sweetest verse."[14] Cynewulf in his
_Elene_, gives us a remarkable piece of author's comment[15] which
describes the action of his own mind upon material already committed to
writing by others. On the other hand, it may be noted that the
_Andreas_, based like the _Elene_ on a single written source, contains
no hint that the author owes anything to a version of the story in
another language.[16]

In the English literature which developed in course of time after the
Conquest the methods of handling borrowed material were similar in their
variety to those we have observed in Anglo-Saxon times. Translation,
faithful except for the omission or addition of certain passages,
compilation, epitome, all the gradations between the close rendering and
such an individual creation as Chaucer's _Troilus and Criseyde_, are
exemplified in the works appearing from the thirteenth century on. When
Lydgate, as late as the fifteenth century, describes one of the
processes by which literature is produced, we are reminded of
Anglo-Saxon comment. "Laurence,"[17] the poet's predecessor in
translating Boccaccio's _Falls of Princes_, is represented as

    In his Prologue affirming of reason,
    That artificers having exercise,
    May chaunge & turne by good discretion
    Shapes & formes, & newly them devise:
    As Potters whiche to that craft entende
    Breake & renue their vessels to amende.

    ...

    And semblably these clerkes in writing
    Thing that was made of auctours them beforn
    They may of newe finde & fantasye:
    Out of olde chaffe trye out full fayre corne,
    Make it more freshe & lusty to the eye,
    Their subtile witte their labour apply,
    With their colours agreable of hue,
    To make olde thinges for to seme newe.[18]

The great majority of these Middle English works contain within
themselves no clear statement as to which of the many possible methods
have been employed in their production. As in the case of the
Anglo-Saxon _Andreas_, a retelling in English of a story already
existing in another language often presents itself as if it were an
original composition. The author who puts into the vernacular of his
country a French romance may call it "my tale." At the end of _Launfal_,
a version of one of the lays of Marie de France, appears the
declaration, "Thomas Chestre made this tale."[19] The terms used to
characterize literary productions and literary processes often have not
their modern connotation. "Translate" and "translation" are applied
very loosely even as late as the sixteenth century. _The Legend of Good
Women_ names _Troilus and Criseyde_ beside _The Romance of the Rose_ as
"translated" work.[20] Osbern Bokenam, writing in the next century,
explains that he obtained the material for his legend of St. Margaret
"the last time I was in Italy, both by scripture and eke by mouth," but
he still calls the work a "translation."[21] Henry Bradshaw, purposing
in 1513 to "translate" into English the life of St. Werburge of Chester,
declares,

    Unto this rude werke myne auctours these shalbe:
    Fyrst the true legende and the venerable Bede,
    Mayster Alfrydus and Wyllyam Malusburye,
    Gyrarde, Polychronicon, and other mo in deed.[22]

Lydgate is requested to translate the legend of St. Giles "after the
tenor only"; he presents his work as a kind of "brief compilation," but
he takes no exception to the word "translate."[23] That he should
designate his _St. Margaret_, a fairly close following of one source, a
"compilation,"[24] merely strengthens the belief that the terms
"translate" and "translation" were used synonymously with various other
words. Osbern Bokenam speaks of the "translator" who "compiled" the
legend of St. Christiana in English;[25] Chaucer, one remembers,
"translated" Boethius and "made" the life of St. Cecilia.[26]

To select from this large body of literature, "made," "compiled,"
"translated," only such works as can claim to be called, in the modern
sense of the word, "translations" would be a difficult and unprofitable
task. Rather one must accept the situation as it stands and consider the
whole mass of such writings as appear, either from the claims of their
authors or on the authority of modern scholarship, to be of secondary
origin. "Translations" of this sort are numerous. Chaucer in his own
time was reckoned "grant translateur."[27] Of the books which Caxton a
century later issued from his printing press a large proportion were
English versions of Latin or French works. Our concern, indeed, is with
the larger and by no means the least valuable part of the literature
produced during the Middle English period.

The theory which accompanies this nondescript collection of translations
is scattered throughout various works, and is somewhat liable to
misinterpretation if taken out of its immediate context. Before
proceeding to consider it, however, it is necessary to notice certain
phases of the general literary situation which created peculiar
difficulties for the translator or which are likely to be confusing to
the present-day reader. As regards the translator, existing
circumstances were not encouraging. In the early part of the period he
occupied a very lowly place. As compared with Latin, or even with
French, the English language, undeveloped and unstandardized, could make
its appeal only to the unlearned. It had, in the words of a
thirteenth-century translator of Bishop Grosseteste's _Castle of Love_,
"no savor before a clerk."[28] Sometimes, it is true, the English writer
had the stimulus of patriotism. The translator of _Richard Coeur de
Lion_ feels that Englishmen ought to be able to read in their own
tongue the exploits of the English hero. The _Cursor Mundi_ is
translated

    In to Inglis tong to rede
    For the love of Inglis lede,
    Inglis lede of Ingland.[29]

But beyond this there was little to encourage the translator. His
audience, as compared with the learned and the refined, who read Latin
and French, was ignorant and undiscriminating; his crude medium was
entirely unequal to reproducing what had been written in more highly
developed languages. It is little wonder that in these early days his
English should be termed "dim and dark." Even after Chaucer had showed
that the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the writer of
less genius must often have felt that beside the more sophisticated
Latin or French, English could boast but scanty resources.

There were difficulties and limitations also in the choice of material
to be translated. Throughout most of the period literature existed only
in manuscript; there were few large collections in any one place; travel
was not easy. Priests, according to the prologue to Mirk's _Festial_,
written in the early fifteenth century, complained of "default of
books." To aspire, as did Chaucer's Clerk, to the possession of "twenty
books" was to aspire high. Translators occasionally give interesting
details regarding the circumstances under which they read and
translated. The author of the life of St. Etheldred of Ely refers twice,
with a certain pride, to a manuscript preserved in the abbey of Godstow
which he himself has seen and from which he has drawn some of the facts
which he presents. The translator of the alliterative romance of
_Alexander_ "borrowed" various books when he undertook his English
rendering.[30] Earl Rivers, returning from the Continent, brought back a
manuscript which had been lent him by a French gentleman, and set about
the translation of his _Dictes and Sayings of the Old Philosophers_.[31]
It is not improbable that there was a good deal of borrowing, with its
attendant inconveniences. Even in the sixteenth century Sir Thomas
Elyot, if we may believe his story, was hampered by the laws of
property. He became interested in the acts and wisdom of Alexander
Severus, "which book," he says, "was first written in the Greek tongue
by his secretary Eucolpius and by good chance was lent unto me by a
gentleman of Naples called Padericus. In reading whereof I was
marvelously ravished, and as it hath ever been mine appetite, I wished
that it had been published in such a tongue as more men might understand
it. Wherefore with all diligence I endeavored myself whiles I had
leisure to translate it into English: albeit I could not so exactly
perform mine enterprise as I might have done, if the owner had not
importunately called for his book, whereby I was constrained to leave
some part of the work untranslated."[32] William Paris--to return to the
earlier period--has left on record a situation which stirs the
imagination. He translated the legend of St. Cristine while a prisoner
in the Isle of Man, the only retainer of his unfortunate lord, the Earl
of Warwick, whose captivity he chose to share.

    He made this lyfe in ynglishe soo,
    As he satte in prison of stone,
    Ever as he myghte tent therto
    Whane he had his lordes service done.[33]

One is tempted to let the fancy play on the combination of circumstances
that provided him with the particular manuscript from which he worked.
It is easy, of course, to emphasize overmuch the scarcity and the
inaccessibility of texts, but it is obvious that the translator's
choice of subject was largely conditioned by opportunity. He did not
select from the whole range of literature the work which most appealed
to his genius. It is a far cry from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth
century, with its stress on individual choice. Roscommon's advice,

    Examine how your humour is inclined,
    And what the ruling passion of your mind;
    Then seek a poet who your way does bend,
    And choose an author as you choose a friend,

seems absurd in connection with the translator who had to choose what
was within his reach, and who, in many cases, could not sit down in
undisturbed possession of his source.

The element of individual choice was also diminished by the intervention
of friends and patrons. In the fifteenth century, when translators were
becoming communicative about their affairs, there is frequent reference
to suggestion from without. Allowing for interest in the new craft of
printing, there is still so much mention in Caxton's prefaces of
commissions for translation as to make one feel that "ordering" an
English version of some foreign book had become no uncommon thing for
those who owned manuscripts and could afford such commodities as
translations. Caxton's list ranges from _The Fayttes of Armes_,
translated at the request of Henry VII from a manuscript lent by the
king himself, to _The Mirrour of the World_, "translated ... at the
request, desire, cost, and dispense of the honorable and worshipful man,
Hugh Bryce, alderman and citizen of London."[34]

One wonders also how the source, thus chosen, presented itself to the
translator's conception. His references to it are generally vague or
confused, often positively misleading. Yet to designate with any
definiteness a French or Latin text was no easy matter. When one
considers the labor that, of later years, has gone to the classification
and identification of old manuscripts, the awkward elaboration of
nomenclature necessary to distinguish them, the complications resulting
from missing pages and from the undue liberties of copyists, one realizes
something of the position of the medieval translator. Even categories were
not forthcoming for his convenience. The religious legend of _St.
Katherine of Alexandria_ is derived from "chronicles";[35] the moral tale
of _The Incestuous Daughter_ has its source in "romance";[36]
Grosseteste's allegory, _The Castle of Love_, is presented as "a romance
of English ... out of a romance that Sir Robert, Bishop of Lincoln,
made."[37] The translator who explained "I found it written in old hand"
was probably giving as adequate an account of his source as truth would
permit.

Moreover, part of the confusion had often arisen before the manuscript
came into the hands of the English translator. Often he was engaged in
translating something that was already a translation. Most frequently it
was a French version of a Latin original, but sometimes its ancestry was
complicated by the existence or the tradition of Greek or Hebrew
sources. The medieval Troy story, with its list of authorities, Dictys,
Dares, Guido delle Colonne--to cite the favorite names--shows the
situation in an aggravated form. In such cases the earlier translator's
blunders and omissions in describing his source were likely to be
perpetuated in the new rendering.

Such, roughly speaking, were the circumstances under which the
translator did his work. Some of his peculiar difficulties are,
approached from another angle, the difficulties of the present-day
reader. The presence of one or more intermediary versions, a
complication especially noticeable in England as a result of the French
occupation after the Conquest, may easily mislead us. The originals of
many of our texts are either non-extant or not yet discovered, but in
cases where we do possess the actual source which the English writer
used, a disconcerting situation often becomes evident. What at first
seemed to be the English translator's comment on his own treatment of
source is frequently only a literal rendering of a comment already
present in his original. It is more convenient to discuss the details of
such cases in another context, but any general approach to the theory of
translation in Middle English literature must include this
consideration. If we are not in possession of the exact original of a
translation, our conclusions must nearly always be discounted by the
possibility that not only the subject matter but the comment on that
subject matter came from the French or Latin source. The pronoun of the
first person must be regarded with a slight suspicion. "I" may refer to
the Englishman, but it may also refer to his predecessor who made a
translation or a compilation in French or Latin. "Compilation" suggests
another difficulty. Sometimes an apparent reference to source is only an
appeal to authority for the confirmation of a single detail, an appeal
which, again, may be the work of the English translator, but may, on the
other hand, be the contribution of his predecessor. A fairly common
situation, for example, appears in John Capgrave's _Life of St.
Augustine_, produced, as its author says, in answer to the request of a
gentlewoman that he should "translate her truly out of Latin the life of
St. Augustine, great doctor of the church." Of the work, its editor, Mr.
Munro, says, "It looks at first sight as though Capgrave had merely
translated an older Latin text, as he did in the _Life of St. Gilbert_;
but no Latin life corresponding to our text has been discovered, and as
Capgrave never refers to 'myn auctour,' and always alludes to himself
as handling the material, I incline to conclude that he is himself the
original composer, and that his reference to translation signifies his
use of Augustine's books, from which he translates whole passages."[38]
In a case like this it is evidently impossible to draw dogmatic
conclusions. It may be that Capgrave is using the word "translate" with
medieval looseness, but it is also possible that some of the comment
expressed in the first person is translated comment, and the editor adds
that, though the balance of probability is against it, "it is still
possible that a Latin life may have been used." Occasionally, it is
true, comment is stamped unmistakably as belonging to the English
translator. The translator of a _Canticum de Creatione_ declares that
there were

    --fro the incarnacioun of Jhesu
    Til this rym y telle yow
    Were turned in to englisch,
    A thousand thre hondred & seventy
    And fyve yere witterly.
    Thus in bok founden it is.[39]

Such unquestionably _English_ additions are, unfortunately, rare and the
situation remains confused.

But this is not the only difficulty which confronts the reader. He
searches with disappointing results for such general and comprehensive
statements of the medieval translator's theory as may aid in the
interpretation of detail. Such statements are few, generally late in
date, and, even when not directly translated from a predecessor, are
obviously repetitions of the conventional rule associated with the name
of Jerome and adopted in Anglo-Saxon times by Alfred and Aelfric. An
early fifteenth-century translator of the _Secreta Secretorum_, for
example, carries over into English the preface of the Latin translator:
"I have translated with great travail into open understanding of Latin
out of the language of Araby ... sometimes expounding letter by letter,
and sometimes understanding of understanding, for other manner of
speaking is with Arabs and other with Latin."[40] Lydgate makes a
similar statement:

    I wyl translate hyt sothly as I kan,
    After the lettre, in ordre effectuelly.
    Thogh I not folwe the wordes by & by,
    I schal not faille teuching the substance.[41]

Osbern Bokenam declares that he has translated

    Not wurde for wurde--for that ne may be
    In no translation, aftyr Jeromys decree--
    But fro sentence to sentence.[42]

There is little attempt at the further analysis which would give this
principle fresh significance. The translator makes scarcely any effort
to define the extent to which he may diverge from the words of his
original or to explain why such divergence is necessary. John de
Trevisa, who translated so extensively in the later fourteenth century,
does give some account of his methods, elementary, it is true, but
honest and individual. His preface to his English prose version of
Higden's _Polychronicon_ explains: "In some place I shall set word for
word, and active for active, and passive for passive, a-row right as it
standeth, without changing of the order of words. But in some place I
must change the order of words, and set active for passive and
again-ward. And in some place I must set a reason for a word and tell
what it meaneth. But for all such changing the meaning shall stand and
not be changed."[43] An explanation like this, however, is unusual.

Possibly the fact that the translation was in prose affected Trevisa's
theorizing. A prose rendering could follow its original so closely that
it was possible to describe the comparatively few changes consequent on
English usage. In verse, on the other hand, the changes involved were so
great as to discourage definition. There are, however, a few comments on
the methods to be employed in poetical renderings. According to the
_Proem_ to the _Boethius_, Alfred, in the Anglo-Saxon period, first
translated the book "from Latin into English prose," and then "wrought
it up once more into verse, as it is now done."[44] At the very
beginning of the history of Middle English literature Orm attacked the
problem of the verse translation very directly. He writes of his
Ormulum:

    Icc hafe sett her o thiss boc
    Amang Godspelles wordess,
    All thurrh me sellfenn, manig word
    The rime swa to fillenn.[45]

Such additions, he says, are necessary if the readers are to understand
the text and if the metrical form is to be kept.

    Forr whase mot to laewedd follc
    Larspell off Goddspell tellenn,
    He mot wel ekenn manig word
    Amang Godspelless Wordess.
    & icc ne mihhte nohht min ferrs
    Ayy withth Godspelless wordess
    Wel fillenn all, & all forrthi
    Shollde icc wel offte nede
    Amang Godspelless wordess don
    Min word, min ferrs to fillenn.[46]

Later translators, however, seldom followed his lead. There are a few
comments connected with prose translations; the translator of _The Book
of the Knight of La Tour Landry_ quotes the explanation of his author
that he has chosen prose rather than verse "for to abridge it, and that
it might be better and more plainly to be understood";[47] the Lord in
Trevisa's _Dialogue_ prefixed to the _Polychronicon_ desires a
translation in prose, "for commonly prose is more clear than rhyme, more
easy and more plain to understand";[48] but apparently the only one of
Orm's successors to put into words his consciousness of the
complications which accompany a metrical rendering is the author of _The
Romance of Partenay_, whose epilogue runs:

    As ny as metre can conclude sentence,
    Cereatly by rew in it have I go.
    Nerehand stafe by staf, by gret diligence,
    Savyng that I most metre apply to;
    The wourdes meve, and sett here & ther so.[49]

What follows, however, shows that he is concerned not so much with the
peculiar difficulty of translation as with the general difficulty of
"forging" verse. Whether a man employs Latin, French, or the vernacular,
he continues,

    Be it in balede, vers, Rime, or prose,
    He most torn and wend, metrely to close.[50]

Of explicit comment on general principles, then, there is but a small
amount in connection with Middle English translations. Incidentally,
however, writers let fall a good deal of information regarding their
theories and methods. Such material must be interpreted with
considerable caution, for although the most casual survey makes it clear
that generally the translator felt bound to put into words something of
his debt and his responsibility to his predecessors, yet one does not
know how much significance should attach to this comment. He seldom
offers clear, unmistakable information as to his difficulties and his
methods of meeting them. It is peculiarly interesting to come upon such
explanation of processes as appears at one point in Capgrave's _Life of
St. Gilbert_. In telling the story of a miracle wrought upon a sick man,
Capgrave writes: "One of his brethren, which was his keeper, gave him
this counsel, that he should wind his head with a certain cloth of linen
which St. Gilbert wore. I suppose verily," continues the translator, "it
was his alb, for mine author here setteth a word 'subucula,' which is
both an alb and a shirt, and in the first part of this life the same
author saith that this holy man wore next his skin no hair as for the
hardest, nor linen as for the softest, but he went with wool, as with
the mean."[51] Such care for detail suggests the comparative methods
later employed by the translators of the Bible, but whether or not it
was common, it seldom found its way into words. The majority of writers
acquitted themselves of the translator's duty by introducing at
intervals somewhat conventional references to source, "in story as we
read," "in tale as it is told," "as saith the geste," "in rhyme I read,"
"the prose says," "as mine author doth write," "as it tells in the
book," "so saith the French tale," "as saith the Latin." Tags like these
are everywhere present, especially in verse, where they must often have
proved convenient in eking out the metre. Whether they are to be
interpreted literally is hard to determine. The reader of English
versions can seldom be certain whether variants on the more ordinary
forms are merely stylistic or result from actual differences in
situation; whether, for example, phrases like "as I have heard tell,"
"as the book says," "as I find in parchment spell" are rewordings of the
same fact or represent real distinctions.

One group of doubtful references apparently question the reliability of
the written source. In most cases the seeming doubt is probably the
result of awkward phrasing. Statements like "as the story doth us both
write and mean,"[52] "as the book says and true men tell us,"[53] "but
the book us lie,"[54] need have little more significance than the
slightly absurd declaration,

    The gospel nul I forsake nought
    _Thaugh_ it be written in parchemyn.[55]

Occasional more direct questionings incline one, however, to take the
matter a little more seriously. The translator of a _Canticum de
Creatione_, strangely fabulous in content, presents his material with
the words,

    --as we finden in lectrure,
    I not whether it be in holy scripture.[56]

The author of one of the legends of the Holy Cross says,

    This tale, quether hit be il or gode,
    I fande hit writen of the rode.
    Mani tellis diverseli,
    For thai finde diverse stori.[57]

Capgrave, in his legend of _St. Katherine_, takes issue unmistakably
with his source.

    In this reknyng myne auctour & I are too:
    ffor he accordeth not wytz cronicles that ben olde,
    But diversyth from hem, & that in many thyngis.
    There he accordeth, ther I him hold;
    And where he diversyth in ordre of theis kyngis,
    I leve hym, & to oder mennys rekenyngis
    I geve more credens whech be-fore hym and me
    Sette alle these men in ordre & degre.[58]

Except when this mistrust is made a justification for divergence from
the original, these comments contribute little to our knowledge of the
medieval translator's methods and need concern us little. More needful
of explanation is the reference which implies that the English writer is
not working from a manuscript, but is reproducing something which he has
heard read or recounted, or which he has read for himself at some time
in the past. How is one to interpret phrases like that which introduces
the story of _Golagros and Gawain_, "as true men me told," or that which
appears at the beginning of _Rauf Coilyear_, "heard I tell"? One
explanation, obviously true in some cases, is that such references are
only conventional. The concluding lines of _Ywain and Gawin_,

    Of them no more have I heard tell
    Neither in romance nor in spell,[59]

are simply a rough rendering of the French

    Ne ja plus n'en orroiz conter,
    S'an n'i vialt manconge ajoster.[60]

On the other hand, the author of the long romance of _Ipomadon_, which
follows its source with a closeness which precludes all possibility of
reproduction from memory, has tacked on two references to hearing,[61]
not only without a basis in the French but in direct contradiction to
Hue de Rotelande's account of the source of his material. In _Emare_,
"as I have heard minstrels sing in sawe" is apparently introduced as
the equivalent of the more ordinary phrases "in tale as it is told" and
"in romance as we read,"[62] the second of which is scarcely compatible
with the theory of an oral source.

One cannot always, however, dispose of the reference to hearing so
easily. Contemporary testimony shows that literature was often
transmitted by word of mouth. Thomas de Cabham mentions the
"ioculatores, qui cantant gesta principum et vitam sanctorum";[63]
Robert of Brunne complains that those who sing or say the geste of _Sir
Tristram_ do not repeat the story exactly as Thomas made it.[64] Even
though one must recognize the probability that sometimes the immediate
oral source of the minstrel's tale may have been English, one cannot
ignore the possibility that occasionally a "translated" saint's life or
romance may have been the result of hearing a French or Latin narrative
read or recited. A convincing example of reproduction from memory
appears in the legend of _St. Etheldred of Ely_, whose author recounts
certain facts,

    The whiche y founde in the abbey of Godstow y-wis,
    In hure legent as y dude there that tyme rede,

and later presents other material,

    The whiche y say at Hely y-write.[65]

Such evidence makes us regard with more attention the remark in
Capgrave's _St. Katherine_,

    --right soo dede I lere
    Of cronycles whiche (that) I saugh last,[66]

or the lines at the end of _Roberd of Cisyle_,

    Al this is write withoute lyghe
    At Rome, to ben in memorye,
    At seint Petres cherche, I knowe.[67]

It is possible also that sometimes a vague phrase like "as the story
says," or "in tale as it is told," may signify hearing instead of
reading. But in general one turns from consideration of the references
to hearing with little more than an increased respect for the superior
definiteness which belongs to the mention of the "black letters," the
"parchment," "the French book," or "the Latin book."

Leaving the general situation and examining individual types of
literature, one finds it possible to draw conclusions which are somewhat
more definite. The metrical romance--to choose one of the most popular
literary forms of the period--is nearly always garnished with references
to source scattered throughout its course in a manner that awakens
curiosity. Sometimes they do not appear at the beginning of the romance,
but are introduced in large numbers towards the end; sometimes, after a
long series of pages containing nothing of the sort, we begin to come
upon them frequently, perhaps in groups, one appearing every few lines,
so that their presence constitutes something like a quality of style.
For example, in _Bevis of Hamtoun_[68] and _The Earl of Toulouse_[69]
the first references to source come between ll. 800 and 900; in _Ywain
and Gawin_ the references appear at ll. 9, 3209, and 3669;[70] in _The
Wars of Alexander_[71] there is a perpetual harping on source, one
phrase seeming to produce another.

Occasionally one can find a reason for the insertion of the phrase in a
given place. Sometimes its presence suggests that the translator has
come upon an unfamiliar word. In _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, speaking of a
bird that has carried off a child, the author remarks, "a griffin, saith
the book, he hight";[72] in _Partenay_, in an attempt to give a vessel
its proper name, the writer says, "I found in scripture that it was a
barge."[73] This impression of accuracy is most common in connection
with geographical proper names. In _Torrent of Portyngale_ we have the
name of a forest, "of Brasill saith the book it was"; in _Partonope of
Blois_ we find "France was named those ilke days Galles, as mine author
says,"[74] or "Mine author telleth this church hight the church of
Albigis."[75] In this same romance the reference to source accompanies a
definite bit of detail, "The French book thus doth me tell, twenty
waters he passed full fell."[76] Bevis of Hamtoun kills "forty
Sarracens, the French saith."[77] As in the case of the last
illustration, the translator frequently needs to cite his authority
because the detail he gives is somewhat difficult of belief. In _The
Sege of Melayne_ the Christian warriors recover their horses
miraculously "through the prayer of St. Denys, thus will the chronicle
say";[78] in _The Romance of Partenay_ we read of a wondrous light
appearing about a tomb, "the French maker saith he saw it with eye."[79]
Sometimes these phrases suggest that metre and rhyme do not always flow
easily for the English writer, and that in such difficulties a stock
space-filler is convenient. Lines like those in Chaucer's _Sir Thopas_,

    And so bifel upon a day,
    Forsothe _as I you telle may_
    Sir Thopas wolde outride,

and

    The briddes synge, _it is no nay_,
      The sparhauke and the papejay

may easily be paralleled by passages containing references to source.

A good illustration from almost every point of view of the significance
and lack of significance of the appearance of these phrases in a given
context is the version of the Alexander story usually called _The Wars
of Alexander_. The frequent references to source in this romance occur
in sporadic groups. The author begins by putting them in with some
regularity at the beginnings of the _passus_ into which he divides his
narrative, but, as the story progresses, he ceases to do so, perhaps
forgets his first purpose. Sometimes the reference to source suggests
accuracy: "And five and thirty, as I find, were in the river
drowned."[80] "Rhinoceros, as I read, the book them calls."[81] The
strength of some authority is necessary to support the weight of the
incredible marvels which the story-teller recounts. He tells of a valley
full of serpents with crowns on their heads, who fed, "as the prose
tells," on pepper, cloves, and ginger;[82] of enormous crabs with backs,
"as the book says," bigger and harder than any common stone or
cockatrice scales;[83] of the golden image of Xerxes, which on the
approach of Alexander suddenly, "as tells the text," falls to
pieces.[84] He often has recourse to an authority for support when he
takes proper names from the Latin. "Luctus it hight, the lettre and the
line thus it calls."[85] The slayers of Darius are named Besan and
Anabras, "as the book tells."[86] On the other hand, the signification
of the reference in its context can be shown to be very slight. As was
said before, the writer soon forgets to insert it at the beginning of
the new _passus_; there are plenty of marvels without any citation of
authority to add to their credibility; and though the proper name
carries its reference to the Latin, it is usually strangely distorted
from its original form. So far as bearing on the immediate context is
concerned, most of the references to source have little more meaning
than the ordinary tags, "as I you say," "as you may hear," or "as I
understand."

Apart, however, from the matter of context, one may make a rough
classification of the romances on the ground of these references.
Leaving aside the few narratives (e.g. _Sir Percival of Galles_, _King
Horn_) which contain no suggestion that they are of secondary origin,
one may distinguish two groups. There is, in the first place, a large
body of romances which refer in general terms to their originals, but do
not profess any responsibility for faithful reproduction; in the second
place, there are some romances whose authors do recognize the claims of
the original, which is in such cases nearly always definitely described,
and frequently go so far as to discuss its style or the style to be
adopted in the English rendering. The first group, which includes
considerably more than half the romances at present accessible in print,
affords a confused mass of references. As regards the least definite of
these, one finds phrases so vague as to suggest that the author himself
might have had difficulty in identifying his source, phrases where the
omission of the article ("in rhyme," "in romance," "in story") or the
use of the plural ("as books say," "as clerks tell," "as men us told,"
"in stories thus as we read") deprives the words of most of their
significance. Other references are more definite; the writer mentions
"this book," "mine author," "the Latin book," "the French book." If
these phrases are to be trusted, we may conclude that the English
translator has his text before him; they aid little, however, in
identification of that text. The fifty-six references in Malory's _Morte
d'Arthur_ to "the French book" give no particular clue to discovery of
his sources. The common formula, "as the French book says," marks the
highest degree of definiteness to which most of these romances attain.

An interesting variant from the commoner forms is the reference to
_Rom_, generally in the phrase "the book of Rom," which appears in some
of the romances. The explanation that _Rom_ is a corruption of _romance_
and that _the book of Rom_ is simply the book of romance or the book
written in the romance language, French, can easily be supported. In the
same poem _Rom_ alternates with _romance_: "In Rome this geste is
chronicled," "as the romance telleth,"[87] "in the chronicles of Rome is
the date," "in romance as we read."[88] Two versions of _Octavian_ read,
the one "in books of Rome," the other "in books of ryme."[89] On the
other hand, there are peculiarities in the use of the word not so easy
of explanation. It appears in a certain group of romances, _Octavian_,
_Le Bone Florence of Rome_, _Sir Eglamour of Artois_, _Torrent of
Portyngale_, _The Earl of Toulouse_, all of which develop in some degree
the Constance story, familiar in _The Man of Law's Tale_. In all of them
there is reference to the city of Rome, sometimes very obvious,
sometimes slight, but perhaps equally significant in the latter case
because it is introduced in an unexpected, unnecessary way. In _Le Bone
Florence of Rome_ the heroine is daughter of the Emperor of Rome, and,
the tale of her wanderings done, the story ends happily with her
reinstatement in her own city. Octavian is Emperor of Rome, and here
again the happy conclusion finds place in that city. Sir Eglamour
belongs to Artois, but he does betake himself to Rome to kill a dragon,
an episode introduced in one manuscript of the story by the phrase "as
the book of Rome says."[90] Though the scenes of _Torrent of Portyngale_
are Portugal, Norway, and Calabria, the Emperor of Rome comes to the
wedding of the hero, and Torrent himself is finally chosen Emperor,
presumably of Rome. The Earl of Toulouse, in the romance of that name,
disguises himself as a monk, and to aid in the illusion some one says of
him during his disappearance, "Gone is he to his own land: he dwells
with the Pope of Rome."[91] The Emperor in this story is Emperor of
Almaigne, but his name, strangely enough, is Diocletian. Again, in
_Octavian_, one reads in the description of a feast, "there was many a
rich geste of Rome and of France,"[92] which suggests a distinction
between a geste of Rome and a geste of France. In _Le Bone Florence of
Rome_ appears the peculiar statement, "Pope Symonde this story wrote. In
the chronicles of Rome is the date."[93] In this case the word _Rome_
seems to have been taken literally enough to cause attribution of the
story to the Pope. It is evident, then, that whether or not _Rome_ is a
corruption of _romance_, at any rate one or more of the persons who had
a hand in producing these narratives must have interpreted the word
literally, and believed that the book of Rome was a record of
occurrences in the city of Rome.[94] It is interesting to note that in
_The Man of Law's Tale_, in speaking of Maurice, the son of Constance,
Chaucer introduces a reference to the _Gesta Romanorum_:

    In the old Romayn gestes may men fynde
    Maurice's lyf, I bere it not in mynde.

Such vagueness and uncertainty, if not positive misunderstanding with
regard to source, are characteristic of many romances. It is not
difficult to find explanations for this. The writer may, as was
suggested before, be reproducing a story which he has only heard or
which he has read at some earlier time. Even if he has the book before
him, it does not necessarily bear its author's name and it is not easy
to describe it so that it can be recognized by others. Generally
speaking, his references to source are honest, so far as they go, and
can be taken at their face value. Even in cases of apparent falsity
explanations suggest themselves. There is nearly always the possibility
that false or contradictory attributions, as, for example, the mention
of "book" and "books" or "the French book" and "the Latin book" as
sources of the same romance, are merely stupidly literal renderings of
the original. In _The Romance of Partenay_, one of the few cases where
we have unquestionably the French original of the English romance, more
than once an apparent reference to source in the English is only a close
following of the French. "I found in scripture that it was a barge"
corresponds with "Je treuve que c'estoit une barge"; "as saith the
scripture" with "Ainsi que dient ly escrips";

    For the Cronike doth treteth (sic) this brefly,
    More ferther wold go, mater finde might I

with

    Mais en brief je m'en passeray
    Car la cronique en brief passe.
    Plus deisse, se plus trouvasse.[95]

A similar situation has already been pointed out in _Ywain and Gawin_.
The most marked example of contradictory evidence is to be found in
_Octavian_, whose author alternates "as the French says" with "as saith
the Latin."[96] Here, however, the nearest analogue to the English
romance, which contains 1962 lines, is a French romance of 5371 lines,
which begins by mentioning the "grans merueilles qui sont faites, et de
latin en romanz traites."[97] It is not impossible that the English
writer used a shorter version which emphasized this reference to the
Latin, and that his too-faithful adherence to source had confusing
results. But even if such contradictions cannot be explained, in the
mass of undistinguished romances there is scarcely anything to suggest
that the writer is trying to give his work a factitious value by
misleading references to dignified sources. His faults, as in _Ywain and
Gawin_, where the name of Chretien is not carried over from the French,
are sins of omission, not commission.

No hard and fast line of division can be drawn between the romances just
discussed and those of the second group, with their frequent and fairly
definite references to their sources and to their methods of reproducing
them. A rough chronological division between the two groups can be made
about the year 1400. _William of Palerne_, assigned by its editor to the
year 1350, contains a slight indication of the coming change in the
claim which its author makes to have accomplished his task "as fully as
the French fully would ask."[98] Poems like Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_
and _Franklin's Tale_ have only the vague references to source of the
earlier period, though since they are presented as oral narratives, they
belong less obviously to the present discussion. The vexed question of
the signification of the references in _Troilus and Criseyde_ is outside
the scope of this discussion. Superficially considered, they are an odd
mingling of the new and the old. Phrases like "as to myn auctour listeth
to devise" (III, 1817), "as techen bokes olde" (III, 91), "as wryten
folk thorugh which it is in minde" (IV, 18) suggest the first group. The
puzzling references to Lollius have a certain definiteness, and
faithfulness to source is implied in lines like:

    And of his song nought only the sentence,
    As writ myn auctour called Lollius,
    But pleynly, save our tonges difference,
    I dar wel seyn, in al that Troilus
    Seyde in his song; lo! every word right thus
    As I shal seyn
    (I, 393-8)

and

    "For as myn auctour seyde, so seye I" (II, 18).

But from the beginning of the new century, in the work of men like
Lydgate and Caxton, a new habit of comment becomes noticeable.

Less distinguished translators show a similar development. The author of
_The Holy Grail_, Harry Lonelich, a London skinner, towards the end of
his work makes frequent, if perhaps mistaken, attribution of the French
romance to

    ... myn sire Robert of Borron
    Whiche that this storie Al & som
    Owt Of the latyn In to the frensh torned he
    Be holy chirches Comandment sekerle,[99]

and makes some apology for the defects of his own style:

    And I, As An unkonning Man trewly
    Into Englisch have drawen this Story;
    And thowgh that to yow not plesyng It be,
    Yit that ful Excused ye wolde haven Me
    Of my necligence and unkonning.[100]

_The Romance of Partenay_ is turned into English by a writer who
presents himself very modestly:

    I not acqueynted of birth naturall
    With frenshe his very trew parfightnesse,
    Nor enpreyntyd is in mind cordiall;
    O word For other myght take by lachesse,
    Or peradventure by unconnyngesse.[101]

He intends, however, to be a careful translator:

    As nighe as metre will conclude sentence,
    Folew I wil my president,
    Ryght as the frenshe wil yiff me evidence,
    Cereatly after myn entent,[102]

and he ends by declaring that in spite of the impossibility of giving an
exact rendering of the French in English metre, he has kept very closely
to the original. Sometimes, owing to the shortness of the French
"staffes," he has reproduced in one line two lines of the French, but,
except for this, comparison will show that the two versions are exactly
alike.[103]

The translator of _Partonope of Blois_ does not profess such slavish
faithfulness, though he does profess great admiration for his source,

    The olde booke full well I-wryted,
    In ffrensh also, and fayre endyted,[104]

and declares himself bound to follow it closely:

    Thus seith myn auctour after whome I write.
    Blame not me: I moste endite
    As nye after hym as ever I may,
    Be it sothe or less I can not say.[105]

However, in the midst of his protestations of faithfulness, he confesses
to divergence:

    There-fore y do alle my myghthhe
    To saue my autor ynne sucche wyse
    As he that mater luste devyse,
    Where he makyth grete compleynte
    In french so fayre thatt yt to paynte
    In Englysche tunngge y saye for me
    My wyttys alle to dullet bee.
    He telleth hys tale of sentament
    I vnderstonde noghth hys entent,
    Ne wolle ne besy me to lere.[106]

He owns to the abbreviation of descriptive passages, which so many
English translators had perpetrated in silence:

    Her bewte dyscry fayne wolde I
    Affter the sentence off myne auctowre,
    Butte I pray yowe of thys grette labowre
    I mote at thys tyme excused be;[107]

    Butte who so luste to here of hur a-raye,
    Lette him go to the ffrensshe bocke,
    That Idell mater I forsoke
    To telle hyt in prose or els in ryme,
    For me thoghte hyt taryed grette tyme.
    And ys a mater full nedless.[108]

One cannot but suspect that this odd mingling of respect and freedom as
regards the original describes the attitude of many other translators of
romances, less articulate in the expression of their theory.

To deal fairly with many of the romances of this second group, one must
consider the relationship between romance and history and the uncertain
division between the two. The early chronicles of England generally
devoted an appreciable space to matters of romance, the stories of Troy,
of Aeneas, of Arthur. As in the case of the romance proper, such
chronicles were, even in the modern sense, "translated," for though the
historian usually compiled his material from more than one source, his
method was to put together long, consecutive passages from various
authors, with little attempt at assimilating them into a whole. The
distinction between history and romance was slow in arising. The _Morte
Arthure_ offers within a few lines both "romances" and "chronicles" as
authorities for its statements.[109] In Caxton's preface to _Godfrey of
Bullogne_ the enumeration of the great names of history includes Arthur
and Charlemagne, and the story of Godfrey is designated as "this noble
history which is no fable nor feigned thing." Throughout the period the
stories of Troy and of Alexander are consistently treated as history,
and their redactors frequently state that their material has come from
various places. Nearly all the English Troy stories are translations of
Guido delle Colonne's _Historia Trojana_, and they take over from their
original Guido's long discussion of authorities. The Alexander romances
present the same effect of historical accuracy in passages like the
following:

    This passage destuted is
    In the French, well y-wis,
    Therefore I have, it to colour
    Borrowed of the Latin author;[110]

    Of what kin he came can I nought find
    In no book that I bed when I began here
    The Latin to this language lelliche to turn.[111]

The assumption of the historian's attitude was probably the largest
factor in the development of the habit of expressing responsibility for
following the source or for noting divergence from it. Less easy of
explanation is the fact that comment on style so frequently appears in
this connection. There is perhaps a touch of it even in Layamon's
account of his originals, when he approaches his French source: "Layamon
began to journey wide over this land, and procured the noble books which
he took for authority. He took the English book that Saint Bede made;
another he took in Latin that Saint Albin made, and the fair Austin, who
brought baptism hither; the third he took, (and) laid there in the
midst, that a French clerk made, who was named Wace, who well could
write.... Layamon laid before him these books, and turned the leaves ...
pen he took with fingers, and wrote on book skin, and the true words set
together, and the three books compressed into one."[112] Robert of
Brunne, in his _Chronicle of England_, dated as early as 1338, combines
a lengthy discussion of style with a clear statement of the extent to
which he has used his sources. Wace tells in French

    All that the Latyn spelles,
    ffro Eneas till Cadwaladre;
    this Mayster Wace ther leves he.
    And ryght as Mayster Wace says,
    I telle myn Inglis the same ways.[113]

Pers of Langtoft continues the history;

    & as he says, than say I,[114]

writes the translator. Robert admires his predecessors, Dares, whose
"Latyn is feyre to lere," Wace, who "rymed it in Frankis fyne," and
Pers, of whose style he says, "feyrer language non ne redis"; but he is
especially concerned with his own manner of expression. He does not
aspire to an elaborate literary style; rather, he says,

    I made it not forto be praysed,
    Bot at the lewed men were aysed.[115]

Consequently he eschews the difficult verse forms then coming into
fashion, "ryme cowee," "straungere," or "enterlace." He does not write
for the "disours," "seggers," and "harpours" of his own day, who tell
the old stories badly.

    Non tham says as thai tham wrought,
    & in ther sayng it semes noght.[116]

A confusion of pronouns makes it difficult to understand what he
considers the fault of contemporary renderings. Possibly it is that
affectation of an obsolete style to which Caxton refers in the preface
to the _Eneydos_. In any case, he himself rejects "straunge Inglis" for
"simple speche."

Unlike Robert of Brunne, Andrew of Wyntoun, writing at the beginning of
the next century, delights in the ornamental style which has added a
charm to ancient story.

    Quharfore of sic antiquiteis
    Thei that set haly thare delite
    Gestis or storyis for to write,
    Flurist fairly thare purpose
    With quaynt and curiouse circumstance,
    For to raise hertis in plesance,
    And the heraris till excite
    Be wit or will to do thare delite.[117]

The "antiquiteis" which he has in mind are obviously the tales of Troy.
Guido delle Colonne, Homer, and Virgil, he continues, all

    Fairly formyt there tretyss,
    And curiously dytit there storyis.[118]

Some writers, however, did not adopt the elevated style which such
subject matter deserves.

    Sum usit bot in plane maner
    Of air done dedis thar mater
    To writ, as did Dares of Frigy,
    That wrait of Troy all the story,
    Bot in till plane and opin style,
    But curiouse wordis or subtile.[119]

Andrew does not attempt to discuss the application of his theory to
English style, but he has perhaps suggested the reason why the question
of style counted for so much in connection with this pseudo-historical
material. In the introduction to Barbour's _Bruce_, though the point at
issue is not translation, there is a similar idea. According to Barbour,
a true story has a special claim to an attractive rendering.

    Storyss to rede ar delitabill,
    Supposs that thai be nocht bot fabill;
    Than suld storyss that suthfast wer,
    And thai war said in gud maner,
    Have doubill plesance in heryng.
    The fyrst plesance is the carpyng,
    And the tothir the suthfastness,
    That schawys the thing rycht as it wes.[120]

Lydgate, Wyntoun's contemporary, apparently shared his views. In
translating Boccaccio's _Falls of Princes_ he dispenses with stylistic
ornament.

    Of freshe colours I toke no maner hede.
    But my processe playnly for to lede:
    As me semed it was to me most mete
    To set apart Rethorykes swete.[121]

But when it came to the Troy story, his matter demanded a different
treatment. He calls upon Mars

    To do socour my stile to directe,
    And of my penne the tracys to correcte,
    Whyche bareyn is of aureate licour,
    But in thi grace I fynde som favour
    For to conveye it wyth thyn influence.[122]

He also asks aid of Calliope.

    Now of thy grace be helpyng unto me,
    And of thy golde dewe lat the lycour wete
    My dulled breast, that with thyn hony swete
    Sugrest tongis of rethoricyens,
    And maistresse art to musicyens.[123]

Like Wyntoun, Lydgate pays tribute to his predecessors, the clerks who
have kept in memory the great deeds of the past

    ... thorough diligent labour,
    And enlumyned with many corious flour
    Of rethorik, to make us comprehend
    The trouthe of al.[124]

Of Guido in particular he writes that he

    ... had in writyng passynge excellence.
    For he enlumyneth by craft & cadence
    This noble story with many fresch colour
    Of rethorik, & many riche flour
    Of eloquence to make it sownde bet
    He in the story hath ymped in and set,
    That in good feyth I trowe he hath no pere.[125]

None of these men point out the relationship between the style of the
original and the style to be employed in the English rendering. Caxton,
the last writer to be considered in this connection, remarks in his
preface to _The Recuyell of the Histories of Troy_ on the "fair language
of the French, which was in prose so well and compendiously set and
written," and in the prologue to the _Eneydos_ tells how he was
attracted by the "fair and honest terms and words in French," and how,
after writing a leaf or two, he noted that his English was characterized
by "fair and strange terms." While it may be that both Caxton and
Lydgate were trying to reproduce in English the peculiar quality of
their originals, it is more probable that they beautified their own
versions as best they could, without feeling it incumbent upon them to
make their rhetorical devices correspond with those of their
predecessors. Elsewhere Caxton expresses concern only for his own
language, as it is to be judged by English readers without regard for
the qualities of the French. In most cases he characterizes his
renderings of romance as "simple and rude"; in the preface to _Charles
the Great_ he says that he uses "no gay terms, nor subtle, nor new
eloquence"; and in the preface to _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_ he
declares that he does not know "the art of rhetoric nor of such gay
terms as now be said in these days and used," and that his only desire
is to be understood by his readers. The prologue to the _Eneydos_,
however, tells a different story. According to this he has been blamed
for expressing himself in "over curious terms which could not be
understood of the common people" and requested to use "old and homely
terms." But Caxton objects to the latter as being also unintelligible.
"In my judgment," he says, "the common terms that be daily used, are
lighter to be understood than the old and ancient English." He is
writing, not for the ignorant man, but "only for a clerk and a noble
gentleman that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in love, and
in noble chivalry." For this reason, he concludes, "in a mean have I
reduced and translated this said book into our English, not over rude
nor curious, but in such terms as shall be understood, by God's grace,
according to the copy." Though Caxton does not avail himself of
Wyntoun's theory that the Troy story must be told in "curious and
subtle" words, it is probable that, like other translators of his
century, he felt the attraction of the new aureate diction while he
professed the simplicity of language which existing standards demanded
of the translator.

Turning from the romance and the history and considering religious
writings, the second large group of medieval productions, one finds the
most significant translator's comment associated with the saint's
legend, though occasionally the short pious tale or the more abstract
theological treatise makes some contribution. These religious works
differ from the romances in that they are more frequently based on Latin
than on French originals, and in that they contain more deliberate and
more repeated references to the audiences to which they have been
adapted. The translator does not, like Caxton, write for "a clerk and a
noble gentleman"; instead he explains repeatedly that he has striven to
make his work understandable to the unlearned, for, as the author of
_The Child of Bristow_ pertinently remarks,

    The beste song that ever was made
    Is not worth a lekys blade
    But men wol tende ther-tille.[126]

Since Latin enditing is "cumbrous," the translator of _The Blood at
Hayles_ presents a version in English, "for plainly this the truth will
tell";[127] Osbern Bokenam will speak and write "plainly, after the
language of Southfolk speech";[128] John Capgrave, finding that the
earlier translator of the life of St. Katherine has made the work "full
hard ... right for the strangeness of his dark language," undertakes to
translate it "more openly" and "set it more plain."[129] This conception
of the audience, together with the writer's consciousness that even in
presenting narrative he is conveying spiritual truths of supreme
importance to his readers, probably increases the tendency of the
translator to incorporate into his English version such running
commentary as at intervals suggests itself to him. He may add a line or
two of explanation, of exhortation, or, if he recognizes a quotation
from the Scriptures or from the Fathers, he may supply the authority for
it. John Capgrave undertakes to translate the life of St. Gilbert "right
as I find before me, save some additions will I put thereto which men of
that order have told me, and eke other things that shall fall to my mind
in the writing which be pertinent to the matter."[130] Nicholas Love
puts into English _The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ_,
"with more put to in certain parts, and also with drawing out of divers
authorities and matters as it seemeth to the writer hereof most speedful
and edifying to them that be of simple understanding."[131] Such
incidental citation of authority is evident in _St. Paula_, published
by Dr. Horstmann side by side with its Latin original.[132] With more
simplicity and less display of learning, the translator of religious
works sometimes vaguely adduces authority, as did the translator of
romances, in connection with an unfamiliar name. One finds such
statements as: "Manna, so it is written";[133] "Such a fiend, as the
book tells us, is called Incubus";[134] "In the country of Champagne, as
the book tells";[135] "Cursates, saith the book, he hight";[136]

    Her body lyeth in strong castylle
    And Bulstene, seith the boke, it hight;[137]

    In the yer of ur lord of hevene
    Four hundred and eke ellevene
    Wandaly the province tok
    Of Aufrike--so seith the bok.[138]

Often, however, the reference to source is introduced apparently at
random. On the whole, indeed, the comment which accompanies religious
writings does not differ essentially in intelligibility or significance
from that associated with romances; its interest lies mainly in the fact
that it brings into greater relief tendencies more or less apparent in
the other form.

One of these is the large proportion of borrowed comment. The constant
citation of authority in a work such as, for example, _The Golden
Legend_ was likely to be reproduced in the English with varying degrees
of faithfulness. A _Life of St. Augustine_, to choose a few
illustrations from many, reproduces the Latin as in the following
examples: "as the book telleth us" replaces "dicitur enim"; "of him it
is said in Glosarie," "ut dicitur in Glossario"; "in the book of his
confessions the sooth is written for the nonce," "ut legitur in libro
iii. confessionum."[139] Robert of Brunne's _Handlyng Synne_, as printed
by the Early English Text Society with its French original, affords
numerous examples of translated references to authority.

    The tale ys wrytyn, al and sum,
    In a boke of Vitas Patrum

corresponds with

    Car en vn liure ai troue
    Qe Vitas Patrum est apele;

    Thus seyth seynt Anselme, that hit wrote
    To thys clerkys that weyl hit wote

with

    Ceo nus ad Seint Ancelme dit
    Qe en la fey fut clerk parfit.

Yet there are variations in the English much more marked than in the
last example. "Cum l'estorie nus ad cunte" has become "Yn the byble men
mow hyt se"; while for

    En ve liure qe est apelez
    La sume des vertuz & des pechiez

the translator has substituted

    Thys same tale tellyth seynt Bede
    Yn hys gestys that men rede.[140]

This attempt to give the origin of a tale or of a precept more
accurately than it is given in the French or the Latin leads sometimes
to strange confusion, more especially when a reference to the Scriptures
is involved. It was admitted that the Bible was unusually difficult of
comprehension and that, if the simple were to understand it, it must be
annotated in various ways. Nicholas Love says that there have been
written "for lewd men and women ... devout meditations of Christ's life
more plain in certain parts than is expressed in the gospels of the four
evangelists."[141] With so much addition of commentary and legend, it
was often hard to tell what was and what was not in Holy Scripture, and
consequently while a narrative like _The Birth of Jesus_ cites correctly
enough the gospels for certain days, of which it gives a free
rendering,[142] there are cases of amazing attributions, like that at
the end of the legend of _Ypotis_:

    Seynt Jon the Evangelist
    Ede on eorthe with Jhesu Crist,
    This tale he wrot in latin
    In holi bok in parchemin.[143]

After the fifteenth century is reached, the translator of religious
works, like the translator of romances, becomes more garrulous in his
comment and develops a good deal of interest in English style. As a fair
representative of the period we may take Osbern Bokenam, the translator
of various saint's legends, a man very much interested in the
contemporary development of literary expression. Two qualities,
according to Bokenam, characterize his own style; he writes
"compendiously" and he avoids "gay speech." He repeatedly disclaims both
prolixity and rhetorical ornament. His

    ... form of procedyng artificyal
    Is in no wyse ner poetical.[144]

He cannot emulate the "first rhetoricians," Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate;
he comes too late; they have already gathered "the most fresh flowers."
Moreover the ornamental style would not become him; he does not desire

    ... to have swych eloquence
    As sum curials han, ner swych asperence
    In utteryng of here subtyl conceytys
    In wych oft-tyme ful greth dysceyt is.[145]

To covet the craft of such language would be "great dotage" for an old
man like him. Yet like those of Lydgate and Caxton, Bokenam's
protestations are not entirely convincing, and in them one catches
glimpses of a lurking fondness for the wordiness of fine writing. Though
Pallas has always refused to lead him

    Of Thully Rethoryk in-to the motlyd mede,
    Flourys to gadryn of crafty eloquens,[146]

yet he has often prayed her to show him some favor. Elsewhere he finds
it necessary to apologize for the brevity of part of his work.

    Now have I shewed more compendiously
    Than it owt have ben this noble pedigree;
    But in that myn auctour I follow sothly,
    And also to eschew prolixite,
    And for my wyt is schort, as ye may se,
    To the second part I wyl me hye.[147]

The conventionality, indeed, of Bokenam's phraseology and of his
literary standards and the self-contradictory elements in his statements
leave one with the impression that he has brought little, if anything,
that is fresh and individual to add to the theory of translation.

Whether or not the medieval period made progress towards the development
of a more satisfactory theory is a doubtful question. While men like
Lydgate, Bokenam, and Caxton generally profess to have reproduced the
content of their sources and make some mention of the original writers,
their comment is confused and indefinite; they do not recognize any
compelling necessity for faithfulness; and one sometimes suspects that
they excelled their predecessors only in articulateness. As compared
with Layamon and Orm they show a development scarcely worthy of a lapse
of more than two centuries. There is perhaps, as time goes on, some
little advance towards the attainment of modern standards of scholarship
as regards confession of divergence from sources. In the early part of
the period variations from the original are only vaguely implied and
become evident only when the reader can place the English beside the
French or Latin. In _Floris and Blancheflor_, for example, a much
condensed version of a descriptive passage in the French is introduced
by the words, "I ne can tell you how richly the saddle was
wrought."[148] The romance of _Arthur_ ends with the statement,

    He that will more look,
    Read in the French book,
    And he shall find there
    Things that I leete here.[149]

_The Northern Passion_ turns from the legendary history of the Cross to
something more nearly resembling the gospel narrative with the
exhortation, "Forget not Jesus for this tale."[150] As compared with
this, writers like Nicholas Love or John Capgrave are noticeably
explicit. Love pauses at various points to explain that he is omitting
large sections of the original;[151] Capgrave calls attention to his
interpolations and refers them to their sources.[152] On the other hand,
there are constant implications that variation from source may be a
desirable thing and that explanation and apology are unnecessary.
Bokenam, for example, apologizes rather because _The Golden Legend_ does
not supply enough material and he must leave out certain things "for
ignorance."[153] Caxton says of his _Charles the Great_, "If I had been
more largely informed ... I had better made it."[154]

On the whole, the greatest merit of the later medieval translators
consists in the quantity of their comment. In spite of the vagueness and
the absence of originality in their utterances, there is an advantage in
their very garrulity. Translators needed to become more conscious and
more deliberate in their work; different methods needed to be defined;
and the habit of technical discussion had its value, even though the
quality of the commentary was not particularly good. Apart from a few
conventional formulas, this habit of comment constituted the bequest of
medieval translators to their sixteenth-century successors.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Trans. in _Gregory's Pastoral Care_, ed. Sweet, E.E.T.S., p. 7.

[2] Trans. in _King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius_,
trans. Sedgefield, 1900.

[3] Trans. in Hargrove, _King Alfred's Old English Version of St.
Augustine's Soliloquies_, 1902, pp. xliii-xliv.

[4] Latin Preface of the _Catholic Homilies I_, Latin Preface of the _Lives
of the Saints_, Preface of _Pastoral Letter for Archbishop Wulfstan_. All
of these are conveniently accessible in White, _Aelfric_, Chap. XIII.

[5] Latin Preface to _Homilies II_.

[6] _Ibid._

[7] _Preface to Genesis._

[8] Latin Preface of the _Grammar_.

[9] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_.

[10] In the selections from the Bible various passages, e.g., genealogies,
are omitted without comment.

[11] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_.

[12] Latin Preface.

[13] For further comment, see Chapter II.

[14] Trans. in Thorpe, _Caedmon's Metrical Pharaphrase_, London, 1832, p.
xxv.

[15] Ll. 1238 ff. For trans. see _The Christ of Cynewulf_, ed. Cook, pp.
xlvi-xlviii.

[16] Cf. comment on l. 1, in Introduction to _Andreas_, ed. Krapp, 1906, p.
lii: "The Poem opens with the conventional formula of the epic, citing
tradition as the source of the story, though it is all plainly of literary
origin."

[17] I.e. Laurent de Premierfait.

[18] _Bochas' Falls of Princes_, 1558.

[19] Ed. Ritson, ll. 1138-9.

[20] A version, ll. 341-4. Cf. Puttenham, "... many of his books be but
bare translations out of the Latin and French ... as his books of _Troilus
and Cresseid_, and the _Romant of the Rose_," Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan
Critical Essays_, ii, 64.

[21] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, ed. Horstmann, 1883, ll. 108-9, 124.

[22] _The Life of St. Werburge_, E.E.T.S., ll. 94. 127-130.

[23] _Minor Poems of Lydgate_, E.E.T.S., _Legend of St. Gyle_, ll. 9-10,
27-32.

[24] _Ibid._, _Legend of St. Margaret_, l. 74.

[25] _St. Christiana_, l. 1028.

[26] _Legend of Good Women_, ll. 425-6.

[27] See the ballade by Eustache Deschamps, quoted in Chaucer, _Works_, ed.
Morris, vol. 1, p. 82.

[28] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS_, Pt. 1, E.E.T.S., _The Castle of Love_,
l. 72.

[29] E.E.T.S., _Cotton Vesp. MS._ ll. 233-5.

[30] E.E.T.S., l. 457.

[31] See _Cambridge History of English Literature_, v. 2, p. 313.

[32] Preface to _The Image of Governance_, 1549.

[33] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, ed. Horstmann, _Christine_, ll.
517-20.

[34] Preface, E.E.T.S.

[35] Capgrave, _St. Katherine of Alexandria_, E.E.T.S., Bk. 3, l. 21.

[36] In _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, l. 45.

[37] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS._ Pt. 1, Appendix, p. 407.

[38] Introduction to Capgrave, _Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert of
Sempringham_, E.E.T.S.

[39] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, p. 138, ll. 1183-8.

[40] _Three Prose Versions of Secreta Secretorum_, E.E.T.S., Epistle
Dedicatory to second.

[41] _The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man_, E.E.T.S.

[42] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, _St. Agnes_, ll. 680-2.

[43] _Epistle of Sir John Trevisa_, in Pollard, _Fifteenth Century Prose
and Verse_, p. 208.

[44] In Sedgefield, _King Alfred's Version of Boethius_.

[45] Ed. White, 1852, ll. 41-4.

[46] Ll. 55-64.

[47] E.E.T.S., Preface.

[48] Pollard, _ibid._, p. 208.

[49] E.E.T.S., ll. 6553-7.

[50] Ll. 6565-6.

[51] E.E.T.S., p. 125.

[52] _Altenglische Sammlung, Neue Folge_, _St. Etheldred Eliensis_, l. 162.

[53] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Erasmus_, l. 4.

[54] _Ibid._, _Magdalena_, l. 48.

[55] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS._, Pt. 1, _St. Bernard's Lamentation_,
ll. 21-2.

[56] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Fragment of Canticum de
Creatione_, ll. 49-50.

[57] _Legends of the Holy Rood_, E.E.T.S., _How the Holy Cross was found by
St. Helena_, ll. 684-7.

[58] E.E.T.S., Bk. 1, ll. 684-91.

[59] Ed. Ritson, ll. 4027-8.

[60] _Chevalier au Lyon_, ed. W. L. Holland, 1886, ll. 6805-6.

[61] Ed. Koelbing, 1889, ll. 144, 4514.

[62] E.E.T.S., ll. 319, 405, 216.

[63] See Chambers, _The Medieval Stage_, Appendix G.

[64] _Chronicle of England_, ed. Furnivall, ll. 93-104.

[65] _Altenglische Legenden_, _Vita St. Etheldredae Eliensis_, ll. 978-9,
1112.

[66] Bk. 4, ll. 129-130.

[67] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, ll. 435-7.

[68] E.E.T.S.

[69] Ed. Ritson.

[70] _Ibid._

[71] E.E.T.S.

[72] _Thornton Romances_, l. 848. (Here the writer is probably confused by
the two words _grype_ and _griffin_.)

[73] E.E.T.S., l. 1284.

[74] E.E.T.S., l. 318.

[75] Ll. 6983-4.

[76] Ll. 688-9.

[77] L. 3643.

[78] E.E.T.S., ll. 523-4.

[79] L. 6105.

[80] E.E.T.S., l. 4734.

[81] L. 4133.

[82] L. 5425.

[83] L. 3894.

[84] L. 2997.

[85] L. 2170.

[86] L. 2428.

[87] _The Earl of Toulouse_, ed. Ritson, ll. 1213, 1197.

[88] _Le Bone Florence of Rome_, ed. Ritson, ll. 2174, 643.

[89] Ed. Sarrazin, 1885, note on l. 10 of the two versions in Northern
dialect.

[90] _Thornton Romances_, note on l. 718.

[91] L. 1150.

[92] Ll. 1275-6.

[93] Ll. 2173-4.

[94] See Miss Rickert's comment in E.E.T.S. edition of _Emare_, p. xlviii.

[95] English version, ll. 1284, 2115, 5718-9; French version, _Mellusine_,
ed. Michel, 1854, ll. 1446, 2302, 6150-2.

[96] Ll. 407, 1359.

[97] Ed. Vollmoeller, 1883, ll. 5-6.

[98] E.E.T.S., l. 5522.

[99] E.E.T.S., Chap XLVI, ll. 496-9.

[100] Chap. LVI, ll. 521-5.

[101] Ll. 8-12.

[102] Ll. 15-18.

[103] See ll. 6581 ff.

[104] Ed. E.E.T.S., ll. 500-501.

[105] Ll. 7742-6.

[106] Ll. 2340-8.

[107] Ll. 5144-8.

[108] Ll. 6170-6.

[109] Ed. E.E.T.S., ll. 3200, 3218.

[110] _King Alexander_, ed. Weber, 1810, ll. 2199-2202.

[111] Alliterative romance of _Alisaunder_, E.E.T.S., ll. 456-9.

[112] Ed. Madden, 1847.

[113] Ed. Furnivall, 1887, ll. 58-62.

[114] L. 70.

[115] Ll. 83-4.

[116] Ll. 95-6.

[117] Original Chronicle, ll. 6-13.

[118] Ll. 16-17.

[119] Ll. 18-23.

[120] Ed. E.E.T.S., ll. 1-7.

[121] Prologue.

[122] Ed. E.E.T.S., ll. 29-33.

[123] Ll. 54-8.

[124] Ll. 217-20.

[125] Ll. 361-7.

[126] In _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, ll. 7-9.

[127] _Ibid._, ll. 33, 35.

[128] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden_, _St. Agnes_, ll. 29-30.

[129] _St. Katherine of Alexandria_, _Prologue_, ll. 61-2, 232-3, 64.

[130] _Lives of St. Augustine and St. Gilbert_, _Prologue_.

[131] Oxford, Clarendon Press, _Prohemium_.

[132] In _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_.

[133] _Minor Poems of the Vernon MS._, _De Festo Corporis Christi_, l. 170.

[134] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _St. Bernard_, ll. 943-4.

[135] _Ibid._, _Erasmus_, l. 41.

[136] _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, _St. Katherine_, p. 243, l. 451.

[137] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _Christine_, ll. 489-90.

[138] _Ibid._, _St. Augustine_, ll. 1137-40.

[139] _Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden_, _St. Augustine_, ll. 43, 57-8,
128.

[140] Ll. 169-70, 785-6, 2475-6.

[141] _Op. cit._, _Prohemium_.

[142] _Altenglische Legenden_, _Geburt Jesu_, ll. 493, 527, 715, etc.

[143] _Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge_, _Ypotis_, ll. 613-16.

[144] _Osbern Bokenam's Legenden, St. Margaret_, ll. 84-5.

[145] _Mary Magdalen_, ll. 245-8.

[146] _St. Agnes_, ll. 13-14.

[147] _Op. cit._, _St. Anne_, ll. 209-14.

[148] E.E.T.S., l. 382.

[149] E.E.T.S., ll. 633-6.

[150] E.E.T.S., p. 146, l. 1.

[151] _Op. cit._, pp. 100, 115, 300.

[152] _Life of St. Gilbert_, pp. 103, 135. 141.

[153] _Op. cit._, _St. Katherine_, l. 49.

[154] Preface.




II. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE




II

THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE


The English Bible took its shape under unusual conditions, which had
their share in the excellence of the final result. Appealing, as it did,
to all classes, from the scholar, alert for controversial detail, to the
unlearned layman, concerned only for his soul's welfare, it had its
growth in the vital atmosphere of strong intellectual and spiritual
activity. It was not enough that it should bear the test of the
scholar's criticism; it must also reach the understanding of Tyndale's
"boy that driveth the plough," demands difficult of satisfaction, but
conducive theoretically to a fine development of the art of translation.
To attain scholarly accuracy combined with practical intelligibility
was, then, the task of the translator.

From both angles criticism reached him. Tyndale refers to "my
translation in which they affirm unto the lay people (as I have heard
say) to be I wot not how many thousand heresies," and continues, "For
they which in times past were wont to look on no more scripture than
they found in their duns or such like devilish doctrine, have yet now so
narrowly looked on my translation that there is not so much as one I
therein if it lack a tittle over his head, but they have noted it, and
number it unto the ignorant people for an heresy."[155] Tunstall's
famous reference in his sermon at Paul's Cross to the two thousand
errors in Tyndale's Testament suggests the undiscriminating criticism,
addressed to the popular ear and basing its appeal largely on
"numbering," of which Tyndale complains. The prohibition of "open
reasoning in your open Taverns and Alehouses"[156] concerning the
meaning of Scripture, included in the draft of the proclamation for the
reading of the Great Bible, also implies that there must have been
enough of popular oral discussion to count for something in the shaping
of the English Bible. Of the serious comment of more competent judges
many records remain, enough to make it clear that, although the real
technical problems involved were often obscured by controversy and by
the common view that the divine quality of the original made human
effort negligible, nevertheless the translator did not lack the stimulus
which comes from intelligent criticism and discussion.

The Bible also had an advantage over other translations in that the idea
of _progress_ towards an accurate version early arose. Unlike the
translators of secular works, who frequently boast of the speed with
which they have accomplished their tasks, the translators of the Bible
constantly mention the long, careful labor which has gone to their
undertaking. Tyndale feels in his own work the need for revision, and so
far as opportunity serves, corrects and polishes his version. Later
translators consciously based their renderings on those of their
predecessors. St. Augustine's approval of diversity of translations was
cited again and again. Tyndale urges "those that are better seen in the
tongues than I" to "put to their hands to amend" any faults they may
find in his work.[157] George Joye, his assistant, later his would-be
rival, declares that we must learn "to depend not whole on any man's
translation."[158] "Every one," says Coverdale, "doth his best to be
nighest to the mark. And though they cannot all attain thereto yet
shooteth one nigher than another";[159] and again, "Sure I am that there
cometh more knowledge and understanding of the scripture by their
sundry translations than by all our sophistical doctors. For that one
translateth something obscurely in one place, the same translateth
another, or else he himself, more manifestly by a more plain
vocable."[160] Occasionally the number of experimenters awakened some
doubts; Cromwell suggests that the bishops make a "perfect
correction";[161] the patent granted him for the printing of the Bible
advocates one translation since "the frailty of men is such that the
diversity thereof may breed and bring forth manyfold inconveniences as
when wilful and heady folks shall confer upon the diversity of the said
translations";[162] the translators of the version of 1611 have to
"answer a third cavil ... against us, for altering and amending our
translations so oft";[163] but the conception of progress was generally
accepted, and finds fit expression in the preface to the Authorized
Version: "Yet for all that, as nothing is begun and perfected at the
same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be wiser: so, if we
building on their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by
their labors, do endeavor to make that better which they left so good;
no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us."[164]

But the English translators had more far-reaching opportunities to
profit by the experiences of others. In other countries than England men
were engaged in similar labors. The sixteenth century was rich in new
Latin versions of the Scriptures. The translations of Erasmus, Beza,
Pagninus, Muenster, Etienne, Montanus, and Tremellius had in turn their
influence on the English renderings, and Castalio's translation into
Ciceronian Latin had at least its share of discussion. There was
constant intercourse between those interested in Bible translation in
England and on the Continent. English refugees during the persecutions
fled across the Channel, and towns such as Worms, Zurich, Antwerp, and
Geneva saw the first printing of most of the early English versions of
the Scriptures. The Great Bible was set up in Paris. Indeed foreign
printers had so large a share in the English Bible that it seemed
sometimes advisable to limit their influence. Richard Grafton writes
ironically to Cromwell regarding the text of the Bible: "Yea and to make
it yet truer than it is, therefore Dutchmen dwelling within this realm
go about the printing of it, which can neither speak good English, nor
yet write none, and they will be both the printers and correctors
thereof";[165] and Coverdale and Grafton imply a similar fear in the
case of Regnault, the Frenchman, who has been printing service books,
when they ask Cromwell that "henceforth he print no more in the English
tongue, unless he have an Englishman that is learned to be his
corrector."[166] Moreover, versions of the Scriptures in other languages
than English were not unknown in England. In 1530 Henry the Eighth was
led to prohibit "the having of holy scripture, translated into the
vulgar tongues of English, _French_, or _Dutch_."[167] Besides this
general familiarity with foreign translations and foreign printers, a
more specific indebtedness must be recognized. More's attack on the book
"which whoso calleth the New Testament calleth it by a wrong name,
except they will call it Tyndale's testament or Luther's testament"[168]
is in some degree justified in its reference to German influence.
Coverdale acknowledges the aid he has received from "the Dutch
interpreters: whom (because to their singular gifts and special
diligence in the Bible) I have been the more glad to follow."[169] The
preface to the version of 1611 says, "Neither did we think much to
consult the translators or commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek,
or Latin, no, nor the _Spanish_, _French_, _Italian_, or _Dutch_."[170]
Doubtless a great part of the debt lay in matters of exegesis, but in
his familiarity with so great a number of translations into other
languages and with the discussion centering around these translations,
it is impossible that the English translator should have failed to
obtain suggestions, both practical and theoretical, which applied to
translation rather than to interpretation. Comments on the general aims
and methods of translation, happy turns of expression in French or
German which had their equivalents in English idiom, must frequently
have illuminated his difficulties. The translators of the Geneva Bible
show a just realization of the truth when they speak of "the great
opportunity and occasions which God hath presented unto us in this
Church, by reason of so many godly and learned men; and such diversities
of translations in divers tongues."[171]

Of the general history of Biblical translations, already so frequently
and so adequately treated, only the barest outline is here necessary.
The various Anglo-Saxon translations and the Wycliffite versions are
largely detached from the main line of development. From Tyndale's
translations to the Authorized Version of 1611 the line is surprisingly
consecutive, though in the matter of theory an early translator
occasionally anticipates views which obtain general acceptance only
after a long period of experiment and discussion. Roughly speaking, the
theory of translation has as its two extremes, the Roman Catholic and
the Puritan positions, while the 1611 version, where its preface commits
itself, compromises on the points at issue.

As is to be expected, the most definite statements of the problems
involved and of their solution are usually found in the comment of those
practically engaged in the work of translation. The widely discussed
question whether or not the people should have the Scriptures in the
vulgar tongue scarcely ever comes down to the difficulties and
possibilities of the actual undertaking. More's lengthy attack on
Tyndale's New Testament is chiefly concerned with matters of doctrine.
Apart from the prefaces to the various issues of the Bible, the most
elaborate discussion of technical matters is Fulke's _Defence of the
Sincere and True Translation of the Holy Scriptures into the English
Tongue_, a Protestant reply to the claims of the Rhemish translators,
published in 1589. Even the more definite comments are bound up with a
great mass of controversial or hortatory material, so that it is hard to
disentangle the actual contribution which is being made to the theory of
translation. Sometimes the translator settled vexed questions by using
marginal glosses, a method which might make for accuracy but was liable
to become cumbrous and confusing. Like the prefaces, the glosses
sometimes contained theological rather than linguistic comment, thus
proving a special source of controversy. A proclamation of Henry the
Eighth forbids the printing or importation of "any books of divine
scripture in the English tongue, with any additions in the margin or any
prologue ... except the same be first viewed, examined, and allowed by
the king's highness, or such of his majesty's council, or others, as it
shall please his grace to assign thereto, but only the plain sentence
and text."[172] The version of 1611 admitted only linguistic comment.

Though the Anglo-Saxon renderings of the Scriptures are for the most
part isolated from the main body of translations, there are some points
of contact. Elizabethan translators frequently cited the example of the
earlier period as an argument in favor of having the Bible in the vulgar
tongue. Nor were they entirely unfamiliar with the work of these remote
predecessors. Foxe, the martyrologist, published in 1571 an edition of
the four gospels in Anglo-Saxon under the patronage of Archbishop
Parker. Parker's well-known interest in Old English centered
particularly around the early versions of the Scriptures. Secretary
Cecil sends the Archbishop "a very ancient Bible written in Latin and
old English or Saxon," and Parker in reply comments on "the fair
antique writing with the Saxon interpretation."[173] Moreover the slight
record which survives suggests that the problems which confronted the
Anglo-Saxon translator were not unlike those which met the translator of
a later period. Aelfric's theory of translation in general is expressed
in the Latin prefaces to the _Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church_ and
the _Lives of the Saints_. Above all things he desires that his work may
be clear and readable. Hence he has a peculiar regard for brevity. The
_Homilies_ are rendered "non garrula verbositate"; the _Lives of the
Saints_ are abbreviated on the principle that "non semper breuitas
sermonem deturpat sed multotiens honestiorem reddit." Clear, idiomatic
English is essential even when it demands the sacrifice of verbal
accuracy. He presents not word for word but sense for sense, and prefers
the "pure and open words of the language of this people," to a more
artificial style. His Anglo-Saxon _Preface to Genesis_ implies that he
felt the need of greater faithfulness in the case of the Bible: "We dare
write no more in English than the Latin has, nor change the orders
(endebirdnisse)"; but it goes on to say that it is necessary that Latin
idiom adapt itself to English idiom.[174]

Apart from Aelfric's prefaces Anglo-Saxon translators of the Scriptures
have left no comment on their methods. One of the versions of the
Gospels, however, links itself with later translations by employing as
preface three of St. Jerome's prologues, among them the _Preface to
Eusebius_. References to Jerome's and Augustine's theories of
translation are frequent throughout the course of Biblical translation
but are generally vague. The _Preface to Eusebius_ and the _Epistle to
Pammachius_ contain the most complete statements of the principles which
guided Jerome. Both emphasize the necessity of giving sense for sense
rather than word for word, "except," says the latter, "in the case of
the Holy Scriptures where even the order of the words is a mystery."
This corresponds closely with Aelfric's theory expressed in the preface
to the _Lives of the Saints_: "Nec potuimus in ista translatione semper
verbum ex verbo transferre, sed tamen sensum ex sensu," and his
insistence in the _Preface to Genesis_ on a faithfulness which extends
even to the _endebirdnisse_ or orders.

The principle "word for word if possible; if not, sense for sense" is
common in connection with medieval translations, but is susceptible of
very different interpretations, as appears sometimes from its context.
Richard Rolle's phrasing of the theory in the preface to his translation
of the Psalter is: "I follow the letter as much as I may. And where I
find no proper English I follow the wit of the words"; but he also makes
the contradictory statement, "In this work I seek no strange English,
but lightest and commonest, and _such that is most like to the
Latin_,"[175] a peculiar conception of the translator's obligation to
his own tongue! The Prologue to the second recension of the Wycliffite
version, commonly attributed to Purvey, emphasizes, under cover of the
same apparent theory, the claims of the vernacular. "The best
translating," it runs, "is out of Latin into English, to translate after
the sentence, and not only after the words, so that the sentence be as
open, either opener, in English as in Latin, ... and if the letter may
not be sued in the translating, let the sentence be ever whole and open,
for the words owe to serve to the intent and sentence."[176] The growing
distrust of the Vulgate in some quarters probably accounts in some
measure for the translator's attempt to make the meaning if necessary
"more true and more open than it is in the Latin." In any case these
contrasted theories represent roughly the position of the Roman
Catholic and, to some extent, the Anglican party as compared with the
more distinctly Protestant attitude throughout the period when the
English Bible was taking shape, the former stressing the difficulties of
translation and consequently discouraging it, or, when permitting it,
insisting on extreme faithfulness to the original; the latter profiting
by experiment and criticism and steadily working towards a version which
would give due heed not only to the claims of the original but to the
genius of the English language.

Regarded merely as theory, however, a statement like the one just quoted
obviously failed to give adequate recognition to what the original might
justly demand, and in that respect justified the fears of those who
opposed translation. The high standard of accuracy set by such critics
demanded of the translator an increasing consciousness of the
difficulties involved and an increasingly clear conception of what
things were and were not permissible. Purvey himself contributes to this
end by a definite statement of certain changes which may be allowed the
English writer.[177] Ablative absolute or participial constructions may
be replaced by clauses of various kinds, "and this will, in many places,
make the sentence open, where to English it after the word would be dark
and doubtful. Also," he continues, "a relative, _which_, may be resolved
into his antecedent with a conjunction copulative, as thus, _which
runneth_, and _he runneth_. Also when a word is once set in a reason, it
may be set forth as oft as it is understood, either as oft as reason and
need ask; and this word _autem_ either _vero_, may stand for _forsooth_
either for _but_, and thus I use commonly; and sometimes it may stand
for _and_, as old grammarians say. Also when rightful construction is
letted by relation, I resolve it openly, thus, where this reason,
_Dominum formidabunt adversarii ejus_, should be Englished thus by the
letter, _the Lord his adversaries shall dread_, I English it thus by
resolution, _the adversaries of the Lord shall dread him_; and so of
other reasons that be like." In the later period of Biblical
translation, when grammatical information was more accessible, such
elementary comment was not likely to be committed to print, but echoes
of similar technical difficulties are occasionally heard. Tyndale,
speaking of the Hebraisms in the Greek Testament, asks his critics to
"consider the Hebrew phrase ... whose preterperfect tense and present
tense is both one, and the future tense is the optative mood also, and
the future tense is oft the imperative mood in the active voice and in
the passive voice. Likewise person for person, number for number, and
interrogation for a conditional, and such like is with the Hebrews a
common usage."[178] The men concerned in the preparation of the Bishops'
Bible discuss the rendering of tenses in the Psalms. At the beginning of
the first Psalm the Bishop of Rochester turns "the preterperfect tense
into the present tense; because the sense is too harsh in the
preterperfect tense," and the Bishop of Ely advises "the translation of
the verbs in the Psalms to be used uniformly in one tense."[179]

Purvey's explanations, however, suggest that his mind is occupied, not
merely with details, but with a somewhat larger problem. Medieval
translators were frequently disturbed by the fact that it was almost
impossible to confine an English version to the same number of words as
the Latin. When they added to the number, they feared that they were
unfaithful to the original. The need for brevity, for avoiding
superfluous words, is especially emphasized in connection with the
Bible. Conciseness, necessary for accuracy, is also an admirable quality
in itself. Aelfric's approval of this characteristic has already been
noted. The metrical preface to Rolle's Psalter reads: "This holy man in
expounding, he followeth holy doctors, and in all his Englishing right
after the Latin taketh course, and makes it _compendious_, _short_,
good, and profitable." Purvey says, "Men might expound much openlier and
_shortlier_ the Bible than the old doctors have expounded it in Latin."
Besides approving the avoidance of verbose commentary and exposition,
critics and translators are always on their guard against the employment
of over many words in translation. Tyndale, in his revision, will "seek
to bring to compendiousness that which is now translated at the
length."[180] In certain cases, he says, English reproduces the Hebrew
original more easily than does the Latin, because in Latin the
translator must "seek a compass."[181] Coverdale finds a corresponding
difficulty in turning Latin into English: "The figure called Eclipsis
divers times used in the scriptures ... though she do garnish the
sentence in Latin will not so be admitted in other tongues."[182] The
translator of the Geneva New Testament refers to the "Hebrew and Greek
phrases, which are strange to render into other tongues, and also
_short_."[183] The preface to the Rhemish Testament accuses the
Protestant translators of having in one place put into the text "three
words more ... than the Greek word doth signify."[184] Strype says of
Cheke in a passage chiefly concerned with Cheke's attempt at translation
of the Bible, "He brought in a _short_ and expressive way of writing
without long and intricate periods,"[185] a comment which suggests that
possibly the appreciation of conciseness embraced sentence structure as
well as phrasing. As Tyndale suggests, careful revision made for
brevity. In Laurence's scheme for correcting his part of the Bishop's
Bible was the heading "words superfluous";[186] the preface to the
Authorized Version says, "If anything be halting, or _superfluous_, or
not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the
truth set in place."[187] As time went on, certain technical means were
employed to meet the situation. Coverdale incloses in brackets words not
in the Latin text; the Geneva translators put added words in italics;
Fulke criticizes the Rhemish translators for neglecting this
device;[188] and the matter is finally settled by its employment in the
Authorized Version. Fulke, however, irritated by what he considers a
superstitious regard for the number of words in the original on the part
of the Rhemish translators, puts the whole question on a common-sense
basis. He charges his opponents with making "many imperfect sentences
... because you will not seem to add that which in translation is no
addition, but a true translation."[189] "For to translate out of one
tongue into another," he says in another place, "is a matter of greater
difficulty than is commonly taken, I mean exactly to yield as much and
no more than the original containeth, when the words and phrases are so
different, that few are found which in all points signify the same
thing, neither more nor less, in divers tongues."[190] And again, "Must
not such particles in translation be always expressed to make the sense
plain, which in English without the particle hath no sense or
understanding. To translate precisely out of the Hebrew is not to
observe the number of words, but the perfect sense and meaning, as the
phrase of our tongue will serve to be understood."[191]

For the distinguishing characteristics of the Authorized Version, the
beauty of its rhythm, the vigor of its native Saxon vocabulary, there is
little to prepare one in the comment of its translators or their
predecessors. Apparently the faithful effort to render the original
truly resulted in a perfection of style of which the translator himself
was largely unconscious. The declaration in the preface to the version
of 1611 that "niceness in words was always counted the next step to
trifling,"[192] and the general condemnation of Castalio's "lewd
translation,"[193] point to a respect for the original which made the
translator merely a mouthpiece and the English language merely a medium
for a divine utterance. Possibly there is to be found in appreciation of
the style of the original Hebrew, Greek, or Latin some hint of what gave
the English version its peculiar beauty, though even here it is hard to
distinguish the tribute paid to style from that paid to content. The
characterization may be only a bit of vague comparison like that in the
preface to the Authorized Version, "Hebrew the ancientest, ... Greek the
most copious, ... Latin the finest,"[194] or the reference in the
preface to the Rhemish New Testament to the Vulgate as the translation
"of greatest majesty."[195] The prefaces to the Geneva New Testament and
the Geneva Bible combine fairly definite linguistic comment with less
obvious references to style: "And because the Hebrew and Greek phrases,
which are hard to render in other tongues, and also short, should not be
so hard, I have sometimes interpreted them without any whit diminishing
the _grace_ of the sense, as our language doth use them";[196] "Now as
we have chiefly observed the sense, and labored always to restore it to
all integrity, so have we most reverently kept the propriety of the
words, considering that the Apostles who spoke and wrote to the Gentiles
in the Greek tongue, rather constrained them to the lively phrase of the
Hebrew, than enterprised far by mollifying their language to speak as
the Gentiles did. And for this and other causes we have in many places
reserved the Hebrew phrases, notwithstanding that they may seem somewhat
hard in their ears that are not well practised and also _delight in the
sweet sounding phrases_ of the holy Scriptures."[197] On the other hand
the Rhemish translators defend the retention of these Hebrew phrases on
the ground of stylistic beauty: "There is a certain majesty and more
signification in these speeches, and therefore both Greek and Latin keep
them, although it is no more the Greek or Latin phrase, than it is the
English."[198] Of peculiar interest is Tyndale's estimate of the
relative possibilities of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. Of the
Bible he writes: "They will say it cannot be translated into our tongue,
it is so rude. It is not so rude as they are false liars. For the Greek
tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin. And the
properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the
English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one; so that
in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the
English word for word; when thou must seek a compass in the Latin, and
yet shalt have much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it have
the same grace and sweetness, sense and pure understanding with it in
the Latin, and as it hath in the Hebrew."[199] The implication that the
English version might possess the "grace and sweetness" of the Hebrew
original suggests that Tyndale was not entirely unconscious of the charm
which his own work possessed, and which it was to transmit to later
renderings.

The questions most definitely discussed by those concerned in the
translation of the Bible were questions of vocabulary. Primarily most of
these discussions centered around points of doctrine and were concerned
as largely with the meaning of the word in the original as with its
connotation in English. Yet though not in their first intention
linguistic, these discussions of necessity had their bearing on the
general problems debated by rhetoricians of the day and occasionally
resulted in definite comment on English usage, as when, for example,
More says: "And in our English tongue this word senior signifieth
nothing at all, but is a French word used in English more than half in
mockage, when one will call another my lord in scorn." With the
exception of Sir John Cheke few of the translators say anything which
can be construed as advocacy of the employment of native English words.
Of Cheke's attitude there can, of course, be no doubt. His theory is
thus described by Strype: "And moreover, in writing any discourse, he
would allow no words, but such as were pure English, or of Saxon
original; suffering no adoption of any foreign word into the English
speech, which he thought was copious enough of itself, without borrowing
words of other countries. Thus in his own translations into English, he
would not use any but pure English phrase and expression, which indeed
made his style here and there a little affected and hard: and forced him
to use sometimes odd and uncouth words."[200] His Biblical translation
was a conscious attempt at carrying out these ideas. "Upon this
account," writes Strype, "Cheke seemed to dislike the English
translation of the Bible, because in it there were so many foreign
words. Which made him once attempt a new translation of the New
Testament, and he completed the gospel of St. Matthew. And made an
entrance into St. Mark; wherein all along he labored to use only true
Anglo-Saxon words."[201] Since Cheke's translation remained in
manuscript till long after the Elizabethan period, its influence was
probably not far-reaching, but his uncompromising views must have had
their effect on his contemporaries. Taverner's Bible, a less extreme
example of the same tendency, seemingly had no influence on later
renderings.[202]

Regarding the value of synonyms there is considerable comment, the
prevailing tendency of which is not favorable to unnecessary
discrimination between pairs of words. This seems to be the attitude of
Coverdale in two somewhat confused passages in which he attempts to
consider at the same time the signification of the original word, the
practice of other translators, and the facts of English usage. Defending
diversities of translations, he says, "For that one interpreteth
something obscurely in one place, the same translateth another, or else
he himself, more manifestly by a more plain vocable of the same meaning
in another place."[203] As illustrations Coverdale mentions scribe and
lawyer; elders, and father and mother; repentance, penance, and
amendment; and continues: "And in this manner have I used in my
translation, calling it in one place penance that in another place I
call repentance; and that not only because the interpreters have done so
before me, but that the adversaries of the truth may see, how that we
abhor not this word penance as they untruly report of us, no more than
the interpreters of Latin abhor poenitare, when they read rescipiscere."
In the preface to the Latin-English Testament of 1535 he says: "And
though I seem to be all too scrupulous calling it in one place penance,
that in another I call repentance: and gelded that another calleth
chaste, this methinks ought not to offend the saying that the holy ghost
(I trust) is the author of both our doings ... and therefore I heartily
require thee think no more harm in me for calling it in one place
penance that in another I call repentance, than I think harm in him that
calleth it chaste, which by the nature of this word _Eunuchus_ I call
gelded ... And for my part I ensure thee I am indifferent to call it as
well with one term as with the other, so long as I know that it is no
prejudice nor injury to the meaning of the holy ghost."[204] Fulke in
his answer to Gregory Martin shows the same tendency to ignore
differences in meaning. Martin says: "Note also that they put the word
'just,' when faith is joined withal, as Rom. i, 'the just shall live by
faith,' to signify that justification is by faith. But if works be
joined withal and keeping the commandments, as in the place alleged,
Luke i, there they say 'righteous' to suppose justification by works."
Fulke replies: "This is a marvellous difference, never heard of (I
think) in the English tongue before, between 'just' and 'righteous,'
'justice' and 'righteousness.' I am sure there is none of our
translators, no, nor any professor of justification by faith only, that
esteemeth it the worth of one hair, whether you say in any place of
scripture 'just' or 'righteous,' 'justice' or 'righteousness'; and
therefore freely have they used sometimes the one word, sometimes the
other.... Certain it is that no Englishman knoweth the difference
between 'just' and 'righteous,' 'unjust' and 'unrighteous,' saving that
'righteousness' and 'righteous' are the more familiar English
words."[205] Martin and Fulke differ in the same way over the use of the
words "deeds" and "works." The question whether the same English word
should always be used to represent the same word in the original was
frequently a matter of discussion. It was probably in the mind of the
Archbishop of Ely when he wrote to Archbishop Parker, "And if ye
translate bonitas or misericordiam, to use it likewise in all places of
the Psalms."[206] The surprising amount of space devoted by the preface
to the version of 1611 to explaining the usage followed by the
translators gives some idea of the importance attaching to the matter.
"We have not tied ourselves," they say, "to an uniformity of phrasing,
or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had
done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere, have been
as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from the
sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the
same in both places (for there be some words that be not of the same
sense everywhere) we were especially careful, and made a conscience,
according to our duty. But that we should express the same notion in the
same particular word; as for example, if we translate the _Hebrew_ or
_Greek_ word once by _Purpose_, never to call it _Intent_; if one where
_Journeying_, never _Travelling_; if one where _Think_, never _Suppose_;
if one where _Pain_, never _Ache_; if one where _Joy_, never _Gladness_,
etc. Thus to mince the matter, we thought to savor more of curiosity
than wisdom.... For is the kingdom of God become words or syllables? why
should we be in bondage to them if we may be free, use one precisely
when we may use another no less fit, as commodiously?"[207]

It was seldom, however, that the translator felt free to interchange
words indiscriminately. Of his treatment of the original Purvey writes:
"But in translating of words equivocal, that is, that hath many
significations under one letter, may lightly be peril, for Austin saith
in the 2nd. book of Christian Teaching, that if equivocal words be not
translated into the sense, either understanding, of the author, it is
error; as in that place of the Psalm, _the feet of them be swift to shed
out blood_, the Greek word is equivocal to _sharp_ and _swift_, and he
that translated _sharp feet_ erred, and a book that hath _sharp feet_ is
false, and must be amended; as that sentence _unkind young trees shall
not give deep roots_ oweth to be thus, _the plantings of adultery shall
not give deep roots_.... Therefore a translator hath great need to
study well the sentence, both before and after, and look that such
equivocal words accord with the sentence."[208] Consideration of the
connotation of English words is required of the translators of the
Bishops' Bible. "Item that all such words as soundeth in the Old
Testament to any offence of lightness or obscenity be expressed with
more convenient terms and phrases."[209] Generally, however, it was the
theological connotation of words that was at issue, especially the
question whether words were to be taken in their ecclesiastical or their
profane sense, that is, whether certain words which through long
association with the church had come to have a peculiar technical
meaning should be represented in English by such words as the church
habitually employed, generally words similar in form to the Latin. The
question was a large one, and affected other languages than English.
Foxe, for example, has difficulty in turning into Latin the controversy
between Archbishop Cranmer and Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. "The
English style also stuck with him; which having so many ecclesiastical
phrases and manners of speech, no good Latin expressions could be found
to answer them."[210] In England trouble arose with the appearance of
Tyndale's New Testament. More accused him of mistranslating "three words
of great weight,"[211] priests, church, and charity, for which he had
substituted _seniors_, _congregation_, and _love_. Robert Ridley,
chaplain to the Bishop of London, wrote of Tyndale's version: "By this
translation we shall lose all these Christian words, penance, charity,
confession, grace, priest, church, which he always calleth a
congregation.--Idolatria calleth he worshipping of images."[212] Much
longer is the list of words presented to Convocation some years later by
the Bisho