Either of these passages might be taken as an indirect statement that the English writer drew his materials from Guido. He goes back a step further and mentions that Guido's sources were the contemporary historians Dares and Dictys. This is the pedigree which Guido himself assigns to his Historia. It has only of late years been proved, beyond a doubt, that he omitted the most important link in the chain, the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte More. The Historia is but a dull and prosaic rendering into Latin of Benoit's spirited poem.

Our author accepted Guido's own statements about the origins of his work, now proved to be false. Should we take warning and, in our turn, hesitate to accept his assertion that he told his tale after the manner of Master Guy?

The test of comparison proved fatal to Guido's pretensions to erudition: in this case the evidence it supplies is all in favour of our author's veracity.

The sequence of events in the English poem is almost identical with that of the Historia, as far as the fall of Troy, where it abruptly ends; in matters of detail the correspondence is also very close. The omissions, which offer some points of interest, may be briefly summarised,

They include:

1) All Guido's digressions into fable, unconnected with the main current of the story, and usually drawn from Ovid, such as his account of the origin of the Myrmidons.

2) His attempts at giving a rational explanation of the marvels of the tale, as befits him in his character of exact historian. Thus Guido adopts the interpretation, given by certain writers, that the golden fleece of Troy was only a great hoard of treasure. Again, he enlarges on the impossibility of interfering, as did Medea, by incantation and witchcraft, with the divinely appointed order of the universe.

The English writer does not profess to he more than a "gestour", consequently he is at less pains to give verisimilitude to his tale. He sees, for example, no reasons for giving, as do both Guido and Benoit, long descriptions of the geographical situation of places mentioned in the course of the story.

3) The omission of all Guido's moralising passages, especially the very numerous ones upon the frailty of women.

These Lydgate gives at great length, though, at the same time, he holds up to scorn an author so lacking in chivalry as to express himself in this way.

"This lyketh Guido of women to endite

Alas that he so cursedly would wryte."

4) The omission of much of the episode of Troilus and Cresseida to which attention has already been drawn.

5) Guido considerably shortens Benoit's account of the marvels of the Chamber of Beauty. The English M.S. gives all Guido's scanty details, but incorporates with them his account of the building of Ilion previously omitted, and adds some original matter, such as the description of a tree with gold and silver fruit.

"Before the dore was set a tre
That fair and semely was to se
The tre was al of riche gold
Fro the grounde unto the mold
And alle the bowes of that erberye
Were siluer & gold withouten lye
For euer was on of siluer bryzt
Another of gold that was so lyzt
Ther was neuer fruyt that euer grewe
That thei ne hongen ther in here hewe
But al that was siluer and gold withinne
This werk was mad with quaynte gynne."

f. 141.

By far the most noteworthy additions) to the tale in the English poem are those passages describing dress, armour, warfare, feasting, various customs of medieval life, giving a national colouring to the ancient Tale of Troy.

Besides the omissions and additions thus briefly summarised, there is nothing to detract from the closeness of the relations between the Troy Tales of Guido and of the English M.S.

But Guido's Historia underwent translation into several European languages, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and it is conceivable that the English author might have made use of one of these translations, without the relations between his poem and the Historia being thereby affected. M. Aristide Joly suggests that he employed a French translation in verse. Such translation may well have existed, though the best known work of the kind in French, the Recueil des Histoires de Troie, of Raoul le Fèvre, belongs to the end of the 15th century and is in prose.

As a rule, the existing versions of Guido in other tongues are not word-for-word translations, but rather free renderings or adaptations. Such renderings, leaving something to the original genius of the translator, were far more in the taste.

of the age.

The existence of a word-for-word translation of Guido into French, at the period at which the English poem was composed, is not, in fact, a likelihood. The correspondence between the Historia and the English Poem in minute detail renders it almost impossible that any intermediate rendering other than an exact translation, can have been employed by the English author.

We have some amount of direct evidence in the matter. In the passage already quoted the author of the English poem speaks of the Historia as having been turned by Guido "from grew into latyn" or again “translated wel and fine into Latyne”;

1) An interesting episode is the account of the knighthood of Pyrrhus, very briefly told in Guido and Benoit. Shaw (Dresses and Decorations vol. II) reproduces, from some Tapestry in the Bibliothèque Nationale three scenes from the War of Troy representing Pyrrhus receiving the order of knighthood. Possibly there may have been some attempt to expand the Pyrrhus episode as Boccacio expanded that of the loves of Troilus and Cresseida.

it is at least probable that he was speaking of the version with which he was himself acquainted.

The internal evidence of the M.S. offers even more reliable proof. Portions of the Latin original seem, here and there, to have become embedded in the poem.

The author may have been no great scholar. Occasionally he employs a Latin word still in an oblique case as it stood in Guido's text: thus for "templum veneris", the English has "in the temple of veneris"; "in honore veneris", becomes "in honour of veneris"; "a troiano rege", "the king of troyene"; "morte brunonis" is translated "by the death of brunes".

The attributes of the heroes are sometimes equivalents in sound as well as in sense of the Latin epithets. Jason is curtays (affabilis) and of contenaunce devoute (pius), but also sterne (strenuus) and large of giftes (largus).

One incident told in Guido of Helenus, the son of Priam (and so also in Benoit) is attributed in the English poem to the Queen Helen. Helenus intercedes that the body of Achilles may not be dragged through the streets. In gratitude the Greeks spare his life when Troy falls.

But the M.S. tells

because she had shewn pity for the dead Achilles. The Helenus and Helena of the Latin, both probably written with the usual abbreviation, might very easily be confused. But the French renderings of the names, as with Benoit Elenus and Heleine, being more distinct, could scarcely be thus misunderstood.

The question of nomenclature in the poem is a curious. one. M. Joly has remarked on the variety of names which Benoit bestows on his Greek and Trojan heroes. With each successive translator they seem to become more and more

bizarre. With regard to the question we are now considering, M. Joly quotes the name Medee from the Laud M.S., as one proof of a French source.

The name Oxonie corresponding to Guido's Eriona, and Andromede to his Andrometa might also be adduced. But in Benoit these names appear as Medea, Hésione and Andromacha, which enables us to say that Medee and Oxonie are not necessarily the French equivalents to Guido's forms.

The English author seems, in fact, frequently to adapt the Latin names by merely cutting off the termination. Examples are numerous, Troyle for Troilus; Schenele or Schelene for Stellenus; Pandale for Pandalus; Arastre for Arastrus; Humelyne for Humelinus; Qwyntelyne or Whyntelle beside Quintilienus; just as Chaucer in Troilus and Creseide has both Pandarus and Pandare.

Such forms are of no language and cannot be taken in proof of a French rather than an English original except in so far as the nomenclature of romance is to be attributed in the main to French invention. Any argument drawn from the forms of names can be of very little value: the orthography through. out is most inconsistent and in no case the same for the

whole poem.

One or two instances of transformation are so curious as to be worth quotation and comparison in the three versions.

Benoit

Sarpedon

Guido.

Laud M.S.

Sir Padon

Sir Pedoun

Sarpedon

The author of the English poem invented one name which is perhaps as strong a proof as any yet offered of his Latin original. Medea sends her handmaid to summon Jason to her chamber. She "het ane", says the English poem, but Guido merely tells us that the messenger was “anus", an old woman.

Another of M. Joly's arguments for a French original is the fact that the Greeks, throughout the poem, are called Grewes,