42   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

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 confessionum." 1 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 trouê

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 ye 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.2

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

1 Sammlung Altenglischer Legenden, St. Augustine, 11. 43, 57-8, 128.

2 Ll. 169-70, 785-6, 2475-6.

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD   43

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." 1 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,2 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.3

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.4

He cannot emulate the "first rhetoricians," Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; he comes too late; they have already gathered

Op. cit., Prohemium.

2 Altenglische Legenden, Geburt Jesu, 11. 493, 527, 715, etc. Altenglische Legenden, Neue Folge, Ypotis, 11. 613-16. 4 Osbern Bokenam's Legenden, St. Margaret, 11. 84-5.