II. THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

46   EARLY THEORIES OF TRANSLATION

are unnecessary. Bokenam, for example, apologizes rather because The Golden Legend does not supply enough material and he must leave out certain things "for ignorance." 1 Caxton says of his Charles the Great, "If I had been more largely informed .. . I had better made it." 2

On the whole, the greatest merit of the later medieval translators consists in the quantity of their comment. In spite of the vagueness and the absence of originality in their utterances, there is an advantage in their very garrulity. Translators needed to become more conscious and more deliberate in their work; different methods needed to be defined; and the habit of technical discussion had its value, even though the quality of the commentary was not particularly good. Apart from a few conventional formulas, this habit of comment constituted the bequest of medieval translators to their sixteenth-century successors.

Op. cit., St. Katherine, 1. 49.   2 Preface.