Qe Vitas Patrum est apele;

Thus seyth seynt Anselme, that hit wrote
To thys clerkys that weyl hit wote

with

Ceo nus ad Seint Ancelme dit
Qe en la fey fut clerk parfit.

Yet there are variations in the English much more marked than in the
last example. "Cum l'estorie nus ad cunte" has become "Yn the byble men
mow hyt se"; while for

En ve liure qe est apelez
La sume des vertuz & des pechiez

the translator has substituted

Thys same tale tellyth seynt Bede
Yn hys gestys that men rede.[140]

This attempt to give the origin of a tale or of a precept more
accurately than it is given in the French or the Latin leads sometimes
to strange confusion, more especially when a reference to the Scriptures
is involved. It was admitted that the Bible was unusually difficult of
comprehension and that, if the simple were to understand it, it must be
annotated in various ways. Nicholas Love says that there have been
written "for lewd men and women ... devout meditations of Christ's life
more plain in certain parts than is expressed in the gospels of the four
evangelists."[141] With so much addition of commentary and legend, it
was often hard to tell what was and what was not in Holy Scripture, and
consequently while a narrative like _The Birth of Jesus_ cites correctly
enough the gospels for certain days, of which it gives a free
rendering,[142] there are cases of amazing attributions, like that at
the end of the legend of _Ypotis_:

Seynt Jon the Evangelist
Ede on eorthe with Jhesu Crist,
This tale he wrot in latin
In holi bok in parchemin.[143]

After the fifteenth century is reached, the translator of religious
works, like the translator of romances, becomes more garrulous in his
comment and develops a good deal of interest in English style. As a fair
representative of the period we may take Osbern Bokenam, the translator
of various saint's legends, a man very much interested in the
contemporary development of literary expression. Two qualities,
according to Bokenam, characterize his own style; he writes
"compendiously" and he avoids "gay speech." He repeatedly disclaims both
prolixity and rhetorical ornament. His

... form of procedyng artificyal
Is in no wyse ner poetical.[144]

He cannot emulate the "first rhetoricians," Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate;
he comes too late; they have already gathered "the most fresh flowers."
Moreover the ornamental style