[283] Godwin, Life of Chaucer.
[284] How significant are the words famulus and famula, by which the household servants are designated in the unclassical Latin of the Middle Ages! The servus of the Romans was, we know, nothing more than a slave; but the famulus, whether bond or free, was a member of the family, and a servant only in that sense in which his master owned himself the servant of Christ—famulus Christi.
[285] Innumerable decrees of provincial councils are to be found directed against these wandering clerks. And Edward II. issued a proclamation setting forth, “that whereas many idle and evil men, under colour of minstrelsy, get received into the houses of the rich to meat and drink, henceforth no great lord shall receive more than three or four minstrels of honour; and that none shall thrust themselves in unless they be sent for.”
[286] Dibdin in his Typographical Antiquities (p. 142) examines the question whether Trevisa did or did not translate the Bible into English. To settle the question whether such a book was preserved at Berkeley Castle (where Trevisa was chaplain in 1387) Dibdin wrote to the Rev. J. Hughes, who filled the same office in 1807, and received the following reply:—
“I have the strongest reason for supposing that such a translation was made in the English language, and that it existed in the family so late as the time of James I. The book translated by Trevisa was given as a very precious gift by the Lord Berkeley of that time to the Prince of Wales, and I have read his letter thanking Lord Berkeley for the same. He does not positively say that the book was the Bible, but he says he hopes to make good use of so valuable a gift. This letter is still extant among the archives of the castle. Lord Berkeley has informed me that the book so given by his ancestor is at present in the Vatican Library. When he was at Rome several persons mentioned to him having seen there such a book, written by Trevisa; but as he had no opportunity of examining it, he cannot ascertain if it were the Bible.”
[287] Lamberde’s Perambulations in Kent, 1570.
[288] S. Anselmi Elucidarii, lib. ii. cap. 18.
[289] Chaucer’s expansion of some of the Latin of Boëthius, in his English version of the “Consolation of Philosophie,” has led some people to suppose that the poet translated from a French rendering of Boëthius, and not direct from the Latin. If he did so, the version he would have used was doubtless that of one of his known favourite authors, Jean de Méung, the continuator of Guillaume de Lorris’s “Romance of the Rose.” A magnificent copy of Jean de Méung’s Boëthius, printed in 1494, is in the British Museum. It is illuminated with miniatures, bound in velvet, and was presented to Henry VII. A chapter of this has lately been compared with Chaucer’s translation and the original Boëthius, by Mr. Edward Bell, for the Early English Text Society; and the result is, that Chaucer’s version was certainly not made from the French of Jean de Méung, but direct from Boëthius; though some phrases of the Latin are paraphrased rather than translated, in order to bring out their meaning more fully.
[290] Wilk. Con. iii, 242. Quoted by Lingard, v. ch. i.
[291] It appears that so far from being a friend to the classics, Wickliffe felt almost a superstitious intolerance for anything that savoured of ancient Rome. In one of his Prologues he condemns the ecclesiastics for their study of a pagan jurisprudence, meaning thereby the Roman law.