12 EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION
THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD 13
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 IIirrour of the World, "translated . . . at the request, desire, cost, and dispense of the honorable and worshipful man, Hugh Bryce, alderman and citizen of London." 1
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
1 Preface, E. E. T. S.
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 ";
the moral tale of The Incestuous Daughter has its source in "romance "; 2 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." 3 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
1 Capgrave, St. Katherine of Alexandria, E. E. T. S., Bk. 3, 1. 21.
2 In Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, 1. 45.
Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. Pt. 1, Appendix, p. 407.
