of Ingland.[29]

But beyond this there was little to encourage the translator. His
audience, as compared with the learned and the refined, who read Latin
and French, was ignorant and undiscriminating; his crude medium was
entirely unequal to reproducing what had been written in more highly
developed languages. It is little wonder that in these early days his
English should be termed "dim and dark." Even after Chaucer had showed
that the despised language was capable of grace and charm, the writer of
less genius must often have felt that beside the more sophisticated
Latin or French, English could boast but scanty resources.

There were difficulties and limitations also in the choice of material
to be translated. Throughout most of the period literature existed only
in manuscript; there were few large collections in any one place; travel
was not easy. Priests, according to the prologue to Mirk's _Festial_,
written in the early fifteenth century, complained of "default of
books." To aspire, as did Chaucer's Clerk, to the possession of "twenty
books" was to aspire high. Translators occasionally give interesting
details regarding the circumstances under which they read and
translated. The author of the life of St. Etheldred of Ely refers twice,
with a certain pride, to a manuscript preserved in the abbey of Godstow
which he himself has seen and from which he has drawn some of the facts
which he presents. The translator of the alliterative romance of
_Alexander_ "borrowed" various books when he undertook his English
rendering.[30] Earl Rivers, returning from the Continent, brought back a
manuscript which had been lent him by a French gentleman, and set about
the translation of his _Dictes and Sayings of the Old Philosophers_.[31]
It is not improbable that there was a good deal of borrowing, with its
attendant inconveniences. Even in the sixteenth century Sir Thomas
Elyot, if we may believe his story, was hampered by the laws of
property. He became interested in the acts and wisdom of Alexander
Severus, "which book," he says, "was first written in the Greek tongue
by his secretary Eucolpius and by good chance was lent unto me by a
gentleman of Naples called Padericus. In reading whereof I was
marvelously ravished, and as it hath ever been mine appetite, I wished
that it had been published in such a tongue as more men might understand
it. Wherefore with all diligence I endeavored myself whiles I had
leisure to translate it in