[1335] III, 10 and 16; V, 3.
[1336] IV, 11.
[1337] VII, 5.
[1338] III, 17.
[1339] VIII, 40.
[1340] V, 7.
[1341] Since I completed this chapter in manuscript form there has appeared in print G. C. Coulton’s Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation, Cambridge, 1918, in which he has selected almost exactly the same passages from Bartholomew as illustrations of his theme. This is welcome confirmation of their interest and importance, and I have decided to let the following paragraphs stand for two reasons, despite the fact that they are now available elsewhere in English. In the first place any description of the De proprietatibus rerum would seem rather incomplete without them. In the second place Mr. Coulton gives the passages in Trevisa’s English translation, while I have made a translation direct from the Latin text in more modern English. The exaggerated impression of quaintness and illiteracy which the old English version makes upon the modern reader finds in my opinion little or no justification in the original Latin. Men apparently could think more directly in Latin in the thirteenth century than they could express themselves in English in the fourteenth or fifteenth century.
[1342] VI, 11.
[1343] VI, 5.
[1344] VI, 6.