to English: albeit I could not so exactly
perform mine enterprise as I might have done, if the owner had not
importunately called for his book, whereby I was constrained to leave
some part of the work untranslated."[32] William Paris--to return to the
earlier period--has left on record a situation which stirs the
imagination. He translated the legend of St. Cristine while a prisoner
in the Isle of Man, the only retainer of his unfortunate lord, the Earl
of Warwick, whose captivity he chose to share.

He made this lyfe in ynglishe soo,
As he satte in prison of stone,
Ever as he myghte tent therto
Whane he had his lordes service done.[33]

One is tempted to let the fancy play on the combination of circumstances
that provided him with the particular manuscript from which he worked.
It is easy, of course, to emphasize overmuch the scarcity and the
inaccessibility of texts, but it is obvious that the translator's
choice of subject was largely conditioned by opportunity. He did not
select from the whole range of literature the work which most appealed
to his genius. It is a far cry from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth
century, with its stress on individual choice. Roscommon's advice,

Examine how your humour is inclined,
And what the ruling passion of your mind;
Then seek a poet who your way does bend,
And choose an author as you choose a friend,

seems absurd in connection with the translator who had to choose what
was within his reach, and who, in many cases, could not sit down in
undisturbed possession of his source.

The element of individual choice was also diminished by the intervention
of friends and patrons. In the fifteenth century, when translators were
becoming communicative about their affairs, there is frequent reference
to suggestion from without. Allowing for interest in the new craft of
printing, there is still so much mention in Caxton's prefaces of
commissions for translation as to make one feel that "ordering" an
English version of some foreign book had become no uncommon thing for
those who owned manuscripts and could afford such commodities as
translations. Caxton's list ranges from _The Fayttes of Armes_,
translated at the request of Henry VII from a manuscript lent by the
king himself, to _The Mirrour of the World_, "translated ... at the
request, desire, cost, and dispense of the honorable and worshipful man,
Hugh Bryce, alderman and citizen of London."[34]