Where more is meant than meets the ear."[537:A]
Of the translations of the English Gesta, which, owing to the Latin original not being known upon the continent, are solely confined to the English language, three only have been noticed; and of these, the first is a manuscript in the Harleian collection, No. 7,333, of the age of Henry the Sixth, containing but seventy stories, and which Mr. Douce conjectures to have been produced either by Lydgate, Gower, or Occleve, as the English Gesta appears familiar to them, and this version possesses not only several pieces by Lydgate, but some tales from the Confessio Amantis of Gower.[537:B]
The first printed translation is said to have issued from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, though without a date, and this edition has been mentioned and referred to, both by Mr. Warton[537:C] and Dr. Farmer.[537:D] Neither Herbert, however, nor Mr. Dibdin, has been fortunate enough to detect its existence, and if it really had, or has, a being, it is probably either the manuscript version of the reign of Henry the Sixth, or the translation to which Robinson alludes as the work of Leland the antiquary.
We must, therefore, look to Robinson's Translation of 1577, as the only one which has met with a general and undisputed circulation; and this was so popular, that in 1601 it had been printed six times by Thomas Easte.[537:E] The most enlarged edition, however, of
Robinson's version, contains but forty-four stories, and it is, therefore, much to be regretted, that the Harleian manuscript is not committed to the press.
As this was then the only English translation accessible to the public, of a collection of tales which in the original Latin, and under the same name, had amused the learned and the curious for some centuries, both on the continent, and for nearly the same space of time on our own island, we shall not be surprised if we find, in a subsequent page, that Shakspeare has availed himself of a portion of its contents, especially as its subjects, and the mode of treating them, coincided with his track of reading.
The popularity of Robinson's work seems to have extended to the eighteenth century; for the last edition, which we can now recollect, is dated 1703, and there is reason to think it the fifteenth, while the edition immediately preceding was published in 1689, but fourteen years anteriorly.
If Ascham thought he had reason to complain of the popularity of Morte Arthur, and its associates, he found tenfold cause of complaint in the daily increasing circulation of Italian Romances and Tales; "ten La Morte d'Arthures," he exclaims, "doe not the tenth parte so much harme, as one of these bookes made in Italie, and translated in Englande."[538:A]
The frequent communication indeed with Italy, which took place about the middle of the sixteenth century, had not only induced an indiscriminate imitation of Italian manners, but had rendered the literature of the Italians so fashionable, that, together with their poetry, was imported into this island a multiplicity of their prose fictions and tales, a species of composition that had been cultivated in Italy with incredible ardour from the period of Sacchetti and Boccacio.
These tales, by blending with the romantic fiction of the Normans and Orientals the scenes of domestic life and manners; by introducing