28   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION   THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD   29

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." 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," 2 which suggests a distinction beween 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." 3 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.4 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

L. 1150.   2 Ll. 1275-6.   3 LI. 2173-4.

4 See Miss Rickert's comment in E. E. T. S. edition of Emare, p. xlviii.

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 dOisse, se plus trouvasse.

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." 2 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." 3 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

English version, 11. 1284, 2115, 5718-9; French version, Mellusine, ed. Michel, 1854, 11. 1446, 2302, 6150-2.

2 LI. 407, 1359.   3 Ed. Vollmoller, 1883, 11. 5-6.