in default in that case. A work so large is sufficient to tire so
simple a workman in himself. Beside the printer may in some place let an
error escape."[312] Fortescue justifies, adequately enough, his omission
of various tales by the plea that "the lack of one annoyeth not or
maimeth not the other," but incidentally he throws light on the practice
of others, less conscientious, who "add or change at their pleasure."

There is perhaps danger of underrating the value of the theory which
accompanies translations of this sort. The translators have left
comparatively little comment on their methods, and it may be that now
and then more satisfactory principles were implicit. Yet even when the
translator took his task seriously, his prefatory remarks almost always
betrayed that there was something defective in his theory or careless in
his execution. Bartholomew Young translates Montemayor's _Diana_ from
the Spanish after a careful consideration of texts. "Having compared the
French copies with the Spanish original," he writes, "I judge the first
part to be exquisite, the other two corruptly done, with a confusion of
verse into prose, and leaving out in many places divers hard sentences,
and some leaves at the end of the third part, wherefore they are but
blind guides of any to be imitated."[313] After this, unhappily, in the
press of greater affairs he lets the work come from the printer
unsupervised and presumably full of errors, "the copy being very dark
and interlined, and I loath to write it out again." Robert Tofte
addresses his _Honor's Academy or the Famous Pastoral of the Fair
Shepherdess Julietta_ "to the courteous and judicious reader and to none
other"; he explains that he refuses to write for "the sottish
multitude," that monster "who knows not when aught well is or amiss";
and blames "such idle thieves as do purloin from others' mint what's
none of their own coin."[314] In spite of this, his preface makes no
mention of Nicholas de Montreux, the original author, and if it were not
for the phrase on the title page, "done into English," one would not
suspect that the book was a translation. The apology of the printer,
Thomas Creede, "Some faults no doubt there be, especially in the verses,
and to speak truth, how could it be otherwise, when he wrote all this
volume (as it were) cursorily and in haste, never having so much leisure
as to overlook one leaf after he had scribbled the same," stamps Tofte
as perhaps a fa