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.[144]
He cannot emulate the "first rhetoricians," Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate; he comes too late; they have already gathered "the most fresh flowers." Moreover the ornamental style would not become him; he does not desire
... to have swych eloquence
As sum curials han, ner swych asperence
In utteryng of here subtyl conceytys
In wych oft-tyme ful greth dysceyt is.[145]
To covet the craft of such language would be "great dotage" for an old man like him. Yet like those of Lydgate and Caxton, Bokenam's protestations are not entirely convincing, and in them one catches glimpses of a lurking fondness for the wordiness of fine writing. Though Pallas has always refused to lead him
Of Thully Rethoryk in-to the motlyd mede,
Flourys to gadryn of crafty eloquens,[146]
yet he has often prayed her to show him some favor. Elsewhere he finds it necessary to apologize for the brevity of part of his work.
Now have I shewed more compendiously
Than it owt have ben this noble pedigree;
But in that myn auctour I follow sothly,
And also to eschew prolixite,
And for my wyt is schort, as ye may se,
To the second part I wyl me hye.[147]
The conventionality, indeed, of Bokenam's phraseology and of his literary standards and the self-contradictory elements in his statements leave one with the impression that he has brought little, if anything, that is fresh and individual to add to the theory of translation.
Whether or not the medieval period made progress towards the development of a more satisfactory theory is a doubtful question. While men like Lydgate, Bokenam, and Caxton generally profess to have reproduced the content of their sources and make some mention of the original writers, their comment is confused and indefinite; they do not recognize any compelling necessity for faithfulness; and one sometimes suspects that they excelled their predecessors only in articulateness. As compared with Layamon and Orm they show a development scarcely worthy of a lapse of more than two centuries. There is perhaps, as time goes on, some little advance towards the attainment of modern standards of scholarship as regards confession of divergence from sources. In the early part of the period variations from the original are only vaguely implied and become evident only when the reader can place the English beside the French or Latin. In Floris and Blancheflor, for example, a much condensed version of a descriptive passage in the French is introduced by the words, "I ne can tell you how richly the saddle was wrought."[148] The romance of Arthur ends with the statement,