He that will more look,
Read in the French book,
And he shall find there
Things that I leete here.[149]

_The Northern Passion_ turns from the legendary history of the Cross to
something more nearly resembling the gospel narrative with the
exhortation, "Forget not Jesus for this tale."[150] As compared with
this, writers like Nicholas Love or John Capgrave are noticeably
explicit. Love pauses at various points to explain that he is omitting
large sections of the original;[151] Capgrave calls attention to his
interpolations and refers them to their sources.[152] On the other hand,
there are constant implications that variation from source may be a
desirable thing and that explanation and apology are unnecessary.
Bokenam, for example, apologizes rather because _The Golden Legend_ does
not supply enough material and he must leave out certain things "for
ignorance."[153] Caxton says of his _Charles the Great_, "If I had been
more largely informed ... I had better made it."[154]

On the whole, the greatest merit of the later medieval translators
consists in the quantity of their comment. In spite of the vagueness and
the absence of originality in their utterances, there is an advantage in
their very garrulity. Translators needed to become more conscious and
more deliberate in their work; different methods needed to be defined;
and the habit of technical discussion had its value, even though the
quality of the commentary was not particularly good. Apart from a few
conventional formulas, this habit of comment constituted the bequest of
medieval translators to their sixteenth-century successors.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Trans. in _Gregory's Pastoral Care_, ed. Sweet, E.E.T.S., p. 7.

[2] Trans. in _King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius_,
trans. Sedgefield, 1900.

[3] Trans. in Hargrove, _King Alfred's Old English Version of St.
Augustine's Soliloquies_, 1902, pp. xliii-xliv.

[4] Latin Preface of the _Catholic Homilies I_, Latin Preface of the _Lives
of the Saints_, Preface of _Pastoral Letter for Archbishop Wulfstan_. All
of these are conveniently accessible in White, _Aelfric_, Chap. XIII.

[5] Latin Preface to _Homilies II_.

[6] _Ibid._

[7] _Preface to Genesis._

[8] Latin Preface of the _Grammar_.

[9] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_.

[10] In the selections from the Bible various passages, e.g., genealogies,
are omitted without comment.

[11] Latin Preface to _Homilies I_.

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