30   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD   31

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."

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

1 E. E. T. S., 1.5522.

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).

men like Lydgate and Caxton, a new habit of comment becomes noticeable.

But from the beginning of the new century, in the work of

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 stork Al & som

Owt Of the latyn In to the frensh torned he Be holy chirches Comandment sekerle,1

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.2

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 Crew parfightnesse, Nor enpreyntyd is in mind cordiall;

O word For other myght take by lachesse, Or peradventure by unconnyngesse.3

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,4

E. E. T. S., Chap XLVI, 11.496-9.   2 Chap. LVI, 11.521-5.

a LI. 8-12.   4 LI. 15-18.