38   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION 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'

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.

1 Ll. 361-7.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD   39

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,