applied himself instead to this translation "out of sundry
Italians."[307] Anthony Munday apologizes for his "simple translation"
of _Palmerin d'Oliva_ by remarking that "to translate allows little
occasion of fine pen work,"[308] a comment which goes far to account for
the doubtful quality of his productions in this field.

Even when the translator of pleasant tales ranked his work high, it was
generally on the ground that his readers would receive from it profit as
well as amusement; he laid no claim to academic correctness. He
mentioned or refrained from mentioning his sources at his own
discretion. Painter, in inaugurating the vogue of the novella, is
exceptionally careful in attributing each story to its author,[309] but
Whetstone's _Rock of Regard_ contains no hint that it is translated, and
_The Petit Palace of Pettie his Pleasure_ conveys the impression of
original work. "I dare not compare," runs the prefatory _Letter to
Gentlewomen Readers_ by R. B., "this work with the former Palaces of
Pleasure, because comparisons are odious, and because they contain
histories, translated out of grave authors and learned writers; and this
containeth discourses devised by a green youthful capacity, and
repeated in a manner extempore."[310] It was, again, the personal
preference of the individual or the extent of his linguistic knowledge
that determined whether the translator should employ the original
Italian or Spanish versions of some collections or should content
himself with an intermediary French rendering. Painter, accurate as he
is in describing his sources, confesses that he has often used the
French version of Boccaccio, though, or perhaps because, it is less
finely written than its original. Thomas Fortescue uses the French
version for his translation of _The Forest_, a collection of histories
"written in three sundry tongues, in the Spanish first by Petrus Mexia,
and thence done into the Italian, and last into the French by Claudius
Gringet, late citizen of Paris."[311] The most regrettable latitude of
all, judging by theoretic standards of translation, was the careless
freedom which writers of this group were inclined to appropriate.
Anthony Munday, to take an extreme case, translating _Palmerin of
England_ from the French, makes a perfunctory apology in his Epistle
Dedicatory for his inaccuracies: "If you find the translation altered,
or the true sense in some place of a matter impaired, let this excuse
answer