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] One wonders also how the source, thus chosen, presented itself to the translator's conception. His references to it are generally vague or confused, often positively misleading. Yet to designate with any definiteness a French or Latin text was no easy matter. When one considers the labor that, of later years, has gone to the classification and identification of old manuscripts, the awkward elaboration of nomenclature necessary to distinguish them, the complications resulting from missing pages and from the undue liberties of copyists, one realizes something of the position of the medieval translator. Even categories were not forthcoming for his convenience. The religious legend of _St. Katherine of Alexandria_ is derived from "chronicles";[35] the moral tale of _The Incestuous Daughter_ has its source in "romance";[36] Grosseteste's allegory, _The Castle of Love_, is presented as "a romance of English ... out of a romance that Sir Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, made."[37] The translator who explained "I found it written in old hand" was probably giving as adequate an account of his source as truth would permit.