lue by
misleading references to dignified sources. His faults, as in _Ywain and
Gawin_, where the name of Chretien is not carried over from the French,
are sins of omission, not commission.

No hard and fast line of division can be drawn between the romances just
discussed and those of the second group, with their frequent and fairly
definite references to their sources and to their methods of reproducing
them. A rough chronological division between the two groups can be made
about the year 1400. _William of Palerne_, assigned by its editor to the
year 1350, contains a slight indication of the coming change in the
claim which its author makes to have accomplished his task "as fully as
the French fully would ask."[98] Poems like Chaucer's _Knight's Tale_
and _Franklin's Tale_ have only the vague references to source of the
earlier period, though since they are presented as oral narratives, they
belong less obviously to the present discussion. The vexed question of
the signification of the references in _Troilus and Criseyde_ is outside
the scope of this discussion. Superficially considered, they are an odd
mingling of the new and the old. Phrases like "as to myn auctour listeth
to devise" (III, 1817), "as techen bokes olde" (III, 91), "as wryten
folk thorugh which it is in minde" (IV, 18) suggest the first group. The
puzzling references to Lollius have a certain definiteness, and
faithfulness to source is implied in lines like:

And of his song nought only the sentence,
As writ myn auctour called Lollius,
But pleynly, save our tonges difference,
I dar wel seyn, in al that Troilus
Seyde in his song; lo! every word right thus
As I shal seyn
(I, 393-8)

and

"For as myn auctour seyde, so seye I" (II, 18).

But from the beginning of the new century, in the work of men like
Lydgate and Caxton, a new habit of comment becomes noticeable.

Less distinguished translators show a similar development. The author of
_The Holy Grail_, Harry Lonelich, a London skinner, towards the end of
his work makes frequent, if perhaps mistaken, attribution of the French
romance to

... myn sire Robert of Borron
Whiche that this storie Al & som
Owt Of the latyn In to the frensh torned he
Be holy chirches Comandment sekerle,[99]

and makes some apology for the defects of his own style:

And I, As An unkonning Man trewly
Into Englisch have drawen this Story;
And thowgh that t