This medieval quality, less excusable later in the century when the new learning had declared itself, appears with more justification in the comment of the early sixteenth century. Though the translator's field was widening and was becoming more broadly European, the works chosen for translation belonged largely to the types popular in the Middle Ages and the comment attached to them was a repetition of timeworn phrases. Alexander Barclay, who is best known as the author of _The Ship of Fools_, published in 1508, but who also has to his credit several other translations of contemporary moral and allegorical poems from Latin and French and even, in anticipation of the newer era, a version of Sallust's _Jugurthine War_, offers his translations of _The Ship of Fools_[301] and of Mancini's _Mirror of Good Manners_[302] not to the learned, who might judge of their correctness, but to "rude people," who may hope to be benefited morally by perusing them. He has written _The Ship of Fools_ in "common and rural terms"; he does not follow the author "word by word"; and though he professes to have reproduced for the most part the "sentence" of the original, he admits "sometimes adding, sometimes detracting and taking away such things as seemeth me unnecessary and superfluous."[303] His contemporary, Lord Berners, writes for a more courtly audience, but he professes much the same methods. He introduces his _Arthur of Little Britain_, "not presuming that I have reduced it into fresh, ornate, polished English, for I know myself insufficient in the facundious art of rhetoric, and also I am but a learner of the language of French: howbeit I trust my simple reason hath led me to the understanding of the true sentence of the matter."[304] Of his translation of Froissart he says, "And in that I have not followed mine author word by word, yet I trust I have ensued the true report of the sentence of the matter."[305] Sir Francis Bryan, under whose direction Berners' translation of _The Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius_ was issued in 1535, the year after its author's death, expresses his admiration of the "high and sweet styles"[306] of the versions in other languages which have preceded this English rendering, but similar phrases had been used so often in the characterization of undistinguished writings that this comment hardly suggests the new and peculiar quality of Guevara's style.