Front matter (continued 11)

6280. pensel, banner; cf. P. Plowm. C. xix. 189. Short for penoncel.

6290. stuffen, furnish the wall with defenders.

6305. my lemman, my sweetheart (Abstinence); see l. 6341.

6317-8. Kaluza supplies the words within square brackets: G. has only 'But so sligh is the aperceyuyng,' followed by a blank line, in place of which Th. has the spurious line—'That al to late cometh knowyng.' F. text; 'Mès tant est fort la decevance Que trop est grief l'apercevance.'

6332. 'I am a man of every trade.'

6337. Sir Robert was a knight's name; Robin, that of a common man, as Robin Hood.

6338. Menour. The Friars Minors were the Franciscan, or Grey Friars; the Jacobins were the Dominicans, or Black Friars.

6339. loteby, wench; see P. Plowman, B. iii. 150, and note.

6341. Elsewhere called 'Streyned-Abstinence,' as in ll. 7325, 7366; F. 'Astenance-Contrainte,' i. e. Compulsory-Abstinence.

6345. I. e. 'Sometimes I wear women's clothes.'

6352. 'Trying all the religious orders.'

6354. All the copies wrongly have bete or beate for lete, i. e. leave. Some fancy the text is wrong, because Méon's edition has 'G'en pren le grain et laiz la paille.' But (says Kaluza) three MSS. have—'Je les le grain et pren la paille'; which better suits the context.

6355. To blynde, to hoodwink; F. 'avugler.' For blynde, G. and Th. actually have Ioly! I supply ther, i. e. where; for sense and metre.

6359. bere me, behave; were me, defend myself. The F. text varies.

6365. lette, hinder. The friars had power of absolution, independently of the bishop; and it was a bitter grievance.

6374. tregetry, a piece of trickery; see l. 6267.

6379. 'Through their folly, whether man or woman.'

6385. I. e. at Easter; see Pers. Tale, I 1027. See l. 6435.

6390. Note that the penitent is here supposed to address his own parish-priest. Thus he in l. 6391 means the friar.

6398. This is like the argument in the Somn. Ta. D 2095.

6418. I, for me, would be better grammar. As it stands, me is governed by pleyne, and I is understood. The F. text has: 'Si que ge m'en aille complaindre.'

6423. That is, the penitent will again apply to the friar.

6424. 'Whose name is not.' This means; such is his right name, but he does not answer to it; see l. 6428.

6425. 'He will occupy himself for me,' i. e. will take my part; see Chevise in the New E. Dict., sect. 4b.

6434. 'Unless you admit me to communion.'

6449. may never have might, will never be able. If the priest is not confessed to, he will not understand the sins of his flock.

6452. this, i. e. this is; see notes to ll. 3548, 6057.

6454. See Prov. xxvii. 23; and cf. John, x. 14.

6464. 'I care not a bean for the harm they can do me.'

6469. 'Shall lose, by the force of the blow.' The rime is a bad one.

6491. Read the acqueyntance, as in Th.; F. 'l'acointance.'

6500. yeve me dyne, give me something to dine off.

6532. Read thrittethe, i. e. thirtieth. See Prov. xxx. 8, 9.

6541, 2. Unnethe that he nis, it is hard if he is not; i. e. he probably is. micher, a petty thief, a purloiner; F. 'lierres.' See the examples of mich in Halliwell. For goddis, read god is; F. 'ou Diex est mentieres.' See Prov. xxx. 9.

6556. 'The simple text, and neglect the commentary.'

6571. bilden is here used as a pt. tense; 'built.' In the next line, read leye, lay, lodged. There is an allusion to the splendid houses built by the friars.

6584. Not in the F. text.

6585. writ, writeth. Alluding to St. Augustine's work De Opere Monachorum, shewing how monks ought to exercise manual labour. His arguments are here made to suit the friars.

6615. 'De Mendicantibus validis; Codex Justin. xi. 25. Justinian, whose celebrated code (called the Pandects) forms the basis of the Civil and Canon Law, was emperor of the Eastern Empire in 527.'—Bell.

6636. 'The allusion seems to be to Matt. xxiii. 14.'—Bell.

6645-52. Not in the F. text, ed. Méon; but found in some MSS.

6653. See Matt. xix. 21.

6665. Alluding, probably, to Eph. iv. 28.

6682. Alluding to Acts xx. 33-35.

6691. Alluding to St. Augustine's treatise De Opere Monachorum ad Aurelium episc. Carthaginensem. Of course he does not mention the Templars, &c.; these are only noticed by way of example.

6693. templers; 'the Knights Templars were founded in 1119 by Hugh de Paganis. Their habit was a white garment with a red cross on the breast. See Fuller, Holy Warre, ii. 16, v. 2.'—Bell. The Knights Hospitallers are described in the same work, ii. 4. The Knights of Malta belonged to this order.

6694. chanouns regulers, Canons living under a certain rule; see the Chan. Yemannes Tale.

6695. 'The White Monks were Cistercians, a reformed order of Benedictines; the Black, the unreformed.'—Bell.

6713. I may abey, 'I may suffer for it'; see Cant. Ta. C 100. The F. text varies.

6749. 'In the rescue of our law (of faith)'; i. e. of Christianity.

6763. William of Saint-Amour, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and a canon of Beauvais, about A.D. 1260, wrote a book against the friars, entitled De Periculis nouissimorum Temporum. He was answered by St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas, his book was condemned by Pope Alexander IV, and he was banished from France (see l. 6777). See the note in Méon's edition of Le Roman.

6782. This noble, this brave man; F. 'Le vaillant homme.'

6787. ich reneyed, that I should renounce.

6796. papelardye, hypocrisy; see note to l. 415.

6810. garners; i. e. their garners contain things of value.

6811. Taylagiers (not in F. text), tax gatherers. Cf. taillage, tax, tribute; P. Plowm. C. xxii. 37.

6814. 'The poor people must bow down to them.'

6819. wryen himself, cover himself, clothe himself.

6820. pulle, strip them, skin them. A butcher scalds a hog to make the hair come off more easily (Bell).

6824. 'And beguile both deceived men and deceivers.'

6831. entremees. Cotgrave has: 'Entremets, certain choice dishes served in between the courses at a feast.'

6834. 'For, when the great bag (of treasure) is empty, it comes right again (i. e. is filled again) by my tricks.'

6838. Quoted in the Freres Tale, D 1451.

6861. Bigyns, Beguines; these were members of certain lay sisterhoods in the Low Countries, from the twelfth century onwards.

6862. palasyns (F. dames palasines), ladies connected with the court. Allied to F. palais, palace; cf. E. palatine.

6875. Ayens me, in comparison with me.

6887-6922. See Matt. xxiii. 1-8.

6911. burdens, repeated from ll. 6902, 6907, is clearly wrong. Perhaps read borders; F. 'philateres.'

6912. hemmes, borders of their garments, on which were phylacteries.

6948. our alder dede, the action of us all.

6952. parceners, partners; see Partner in my Etym. Dict.

6964. See 2 Cor. vi. 10.

6971. 'I intermeddle with match-makings.' See my note to P. Plowman, C. iii. 92 (B. ii. 87); and cf. Ch. Prol. A 212.

6976. I. e. 'yet it is no real business of mine.'

7000. The friars did not seek retirement, like the monks.

7016. ravisable (F. ravissables), ravenous, ravening; Matt. vii. 15.

7017. Imitated from Matt. xxiii. 15.

7018. werreyen, war; F. 'avons pris guerre.'

7022. bougerons, sodomites; see Godefroy; F. 'bogres.' This long sentence goes on to l. 7058; if (7021) is answered by He shal (7050).

7029. In G. and Th., thefe has become these, by confusion of f with long s; hence also or has become that. But the F. text has—'Ou lerres ou simoniaus.'

7038. But, unless; unless the sinners bribe the friars.

7043. caleweys, sweet pears of Cailloux in Burgundy. See my note to P. Plowman, B. xvi. 69. pullaille, poultry.

7044. coninges, conies, rabbits; F. 'connis.'

7049. groine, murmur; see note to Kn. Ta. A 2460.

7050. loigne, a length, long piece; see l. 3882.

7057. smerten, smart for; F. 'sera pugni.'

7063. vounde (so in G. and Th.), if a genuine word, can only be another form of founde, pp. of the strong verb finden, to find. I suppose 'found stone' to mean good building-stone, found in sufficient quantities in the neighbourhood of a site for a castle. The context shews that it here means stone of the first quality, such as could be wrought with the squire (mason's square) and to any required scantilone (scantling, pattern). The general sense clearly is, that the friars oppress the weak, but not the strong. If a man is master of a castle, they let him off easily, even if the castle be not built of freestone of the first quality, wrought by first-rate workmen. (Or read founded.)

7071. sleightes, missiles. The translator could think of no better word, because the context is jocular. If the lord of the castle pelted the friars, not exactly with stones, but with barrels of wine and other acceptable things, then the friars took his part.

7076. equipolences, equivocations. The next line suggests that he should refrain from coarse and downright lies (lete = let alone).

7089. 'And if it had not been for the good keeping (or watchfulness) of the University of Paris.' Alluding to William de St. Amour and his friends; see ll. 6554, 6766.

7092. See the footnote. We must either read They had been turmented (as I give it) or else We had turmented (as in Bell). I prefer They, because it is a closer translation, and suits better with Such in the next line.

7093. I insert fals, for the metre; it is countenanced by traitours in l. 7087. The reference is to the supporters of the book mentioned below.

7102. The book here spoken of really emanated from the friars, but was too audacious to succeed, and hence Fals-Semblant, for decency's sake, is made to denounce it. We may note how the keen satire of Jean de Meun contrives to bring in a mention of this work, under the guise of a violent yet half-hearted condemnation of it by a representative of the friars.

The book appeared in 1255 (as stated in the text), and was called Euangelium Eternum, siue Euangelium Spiritus Sancti. It was compiled by some Dominican and Franciscan friars, from notes made by an abbot named Joachim, and from the visions of one Cyril, a Carmelite. It is thus explained in Southey's Book of the Church, chap. xi. 'The opinion which they started was ... that there should be three Dispensations, one from each Person. That of the Father had terminated when the Law was abolished by the Gospel; ... the uses of the Gospel were obsolete; and in its place, they produced a book, in the name of the Holy Ghost, under the title of the Eternal Gospel.... In this, however, they went too far: the minds of men were not yet subdued to this. The Eternal Gospel was condemned by the church; and the Mendicants were fain to content themselves with disfiguring the religion which they were not allowed to set aside.'

7108. 'In the porch before the cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris.' A school was for some time held in this porch; and books could be bought there, or near it. Any one could there buy this book, 'to copy it, if the desire took him.'

7113. This is a quotation from the Eternal Gospel. L. 7118 means: 'I am not mocking you in saying this; the quotation is a true one.'

7116. troubler, dimmer; F. 'plus troble.'

7152. This shews that Fals-Semblaunt does not really condemn the book; he only says it is best to suppress it for the present, till Antichrist comes to strengthen the friars' cause. The satire is of the keenest. Note that, in l. 7164, Fals-Semblaunt shamelessly calls the Eternal Gospel 'our book.' See also ll. 7211-2.

7173. I am obliged to supply two lines by guess here, to make out the sense. The F. text has:—

I. e. By Peter I wish you to understand the pope, and to include also the secular clerks, &c. John represents the friars (l. 7185).

7178. I. e. 'against those friars who maintain all (this book), and falsely teach the people; and John betokens those (the friars) who preach, to the effect that there is no law so suitable as that Eternal Gospel, sent by the Holy Ghost to convert such as have gone astray.' The notion is, that the teaching of John (the type of the law of love, as expounded by the friars) is to supersede the teaching of Peter (the type of the pope and other obsolete secular teachers). Such was the 'Eternal Gospel'; no wonder that the Pope condemned it as being too advanced.

7197-7204. Obscure; and not fully in the F. text.

7217. The mother of Faux-Semblaunt was Hypocrisy (l. 6779).

7227. 'But he who dreads my brethren more than Christ subjects himself to Christ's wrath.'

7243. patren, to repeat Pater-nosters; see Plowm. Crede, 6.

7256. Beggers is here used as a proper name, answering to F. Beguins. The Beguins, members of certain lay brotherhoods which arose in the Low Countries in the beginning of the thirteenth century, were also called Beguards or Begards, which in E. became Beggars. There can be now no doubt that the mod. E. beggar is the same word, and the verb to beg was merely evolved from it. See the articles on Beg, Beggar, Beghard, and Beguine in the New E. Dict. All these names were derived from a certain Lambert Bègue. The Béguins were condemned at the council of Cologne in 1261, and at the general council of Vienne, in 1311. It seems probable that the term Beggars (Beguins) is here used derisively; the people really described seem to be the Franciscan friars, also called Gray friars; see l. 7258.

7259. fretted, ornamented, decked; from A. S. frætwian, to adorn; cf. l. 4705, and Leg. of Good Women, 1117; here ironical.

tatarwagges, ragged shreds, i. e. patches coarsely sewn on. See tatter in my Etym. Dict. The ending -wagges is allied to wag.

The F. text has: 'Toutes fretelées de crotes,' which means all bedaubed with dirt; see frestelé in Godefroy. The translation freely varies from the original, in a score of places. See next line.

7260. knopped, knobbed, dagges, clouts, patches. A more usual sense of dagge is a strip of cloth; see dagge in Stratmann.

7261. frouncen, shew wrinkles; cf. ll. 155, 3137. The comparison to a quail-pipe seems like a guess; in the F. text, we have Hosiaus froncis, wrinkled hose, and 'large boots like a borce à caillier,' said (in Méon) to mean a net for quails. Any way, the translation is sufficiently inaccurate.

7262. riveling, shewing wrinkles; gype, a frock or cassock; cf. gipoun in Prol. A 75.

7265. Take, betake, offer.

7282. Here again, Beggar answers to F. Beguin; see l. 7256.

7283. papelard, hypocrite; see l. 6796 and note to l. 415.

7288. casting, vomit; see 2 Pet. ii. 22.

7302. See note to l. 6068.

7316. 'Read flayn for slayn; F. Tant qu'il soit escorchiés.'—Kaluza.

7325. Streyned, constrained; F. 'Contrainte-Astenance.'

7348. batels, battalions, squadrons; see Gloss. to Barbour's Bruce.

7363. in tapinage, in secret. Cotgrave has: 'Tapinois, en tapinois, Crooching, lurking ... also, covertly, secretly.' Also: 'Tapineux, lurking, secret'; 'Tapi, hidden'; 'Tapir, to hide; se tapir, to lurk.'

7367. camelyne, a stuff made of camel's hair, or resembling it.

7372. peire of bedis, set of beads, rosary; see Prol. A 159.

7374. bede, might bid; pt. s. subjunctive.

7388. I. e. they often kissed each other.

7392. that salowe horse, that pale horse; Rev. vi. 8.

7403. burdoun, staff; F. 'bordon'; see ll. 3401, 4092.

7406. elengeness, cheerlessness; F. 'soussi,' i. e. souci, care, anxiety. See Wyf of B. Ta. D 1199.

7408. saynt, probably 'girt,' i. e. with a girdle on him like that of a Cordelier (Franciscan). The F. has 'qui bien se ratorne,' who attires himself well. (The epithet 'saint' is weak.) A better spelling would be ceint, but no other example of the word occurs. We find, however, the sb. ceint, a girdle, in the Prol. A 329, spelt seint in MS. Ln., and seynt in MSS. Cm. and Hl. ie vous dy, I tell you, occurs in the Somn. Ta. D 1832.

7422. Coupe-Gorge, Cut-throat; F. 'Cope-gorge.'

7455. Joly Robin, Jolly Robin, a character in a rustic dance; see Troil. v. 1174, and note.

7456. Jacobin, a Jacobin or Dominican friar. They were also called Black Friars and Friars Preachers (as in l. 7458). Their black robes gave them a melancholy appearance.

7459. 'They would but wickedly sustain (the fame of) their order, if they became jolly minstrels.'

7461. Augustins, Austin Friars; Cordileres, Cordeliers, Franciscan Friars; Carmes, Carmelites, or White Friars; Sakked Friars, Friars of the Sack. The orders of friars were generally counted as four; see note to Prol. A 210. These were the Dominican, Austin, Franciscan, and Carmelite Friars, all of whom had numerous houses in England. There were also Croutched Friars and Friars de Penitentia or de Sacco. The last had houses at Cambridge, Leicester, Lincoln, London, Lynne, Newcastle, Norwich, Oxford, and Worcester; see Godwin, Archæologist's Handbook, p. 178.

7467. 'But you will never, in any argument, see that a good result can be concluded from the mere outward appearance, when the inward substance has wholly failed.' Cf. Hous of Fame, 265-6.

7492. fisshen, fish for; see Somn. Ta. D 1820. Cf. Matt. iv. 19.

7520. We are here referred back to ll. 3815-3818, where Wicked-Tongue reports evil about the author (here called the 'young man') and Bialacoil (here called Fair-Welcoming).

7534. 'You have also caused the man to be chased.'

7538. The repetition of thought (in the rime) is correct; the F. text repeats pensee.

7562. 'Meditate there, you sluggard, all day.'

7573. 'Take it not amiss; it were a good deed.'

7578. F. text—'Vous en irez où puis [pit] d'enfer.' And, for puis, some MSS. have cul; a fact which at once sets aside the argument in Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, ii. 119.

7581. 'What? you are anything but welcome.'

7588. tregetours, deceivers; cf. treget above, l. 6267.

7605. bemes, trumpets; see Ho. Fame, 1240.

7628. come, coming; see cume in Stratmann.

7633. 'You would necessarily see him so often.'

7645. 'The blame (lit. the ill will) would be yours.' For the use of maugre as a sb., compare l. 4399.

7664. Iolyly, especially; a curious use; F. 'bien.'

7680. 1. 'To shrive folk that are of the highest dignity, as long as the world lasts.' So in the F. text.

7682. I. e. the Mendicant friars had license to shrive in any parish whatever.

7693. 'To read (i. e. give lectures) in divinity'; a privilege reserved for doctors of divinity.

7694. Here G. merely has a wrong half-line:—'And longe haue red'; with which it abruptly ends, the rest of the page being blank, except that explicit is written, lower down, on the same page.

The last four lines in the F. text are:—

The last of these lines is l. 12564 in Méon's edition. The last line in the whole poem is l. 22052; leaving 9488 lines untranslated, in addition to the gap of 5546 lines of the F. text at the end of Fragment B. Thus the three fragments of the translation make up less than a third of the original.

The fact that Thynne gives the last six lines correctly shews that his print was not made from the Glasgow MS. Indeed, it frequently preserves words which that MS. omits.

NOTES

TO

THE MINOR POEMS.

I. An A B C.

This poem is a rather free translation of a similar poem by Guillaume de Deguileville, as pointed out in the Preface, p. 60. The original is quoted beneath the English text.

Explanations of the harder words should, in general, be sought for in the Glossarial Index, though a few are discussed in the Notes.

The language of this translation is, for the most part, so simple, that but few passages call for remark. I notice, however, a few points.

Chaucer has not adhered to the complex metre of the original, but uses a stanza of eight lines of five accents in place of de Deguileville's stanza of twelve lines of four accents.

3. Dr. Koch calls attention to the insertion of a second of, in most of the MSS., before sorwe. Many little words are often thus wrongly inserted into the texts of nearly all the Minor Poems, simply because, when the final e ceased to be sounded, the scribes regarded some lines as imperfect. Here, for example, if sinne be regarded as monosyllabic, a word seems required after it; but when we know that Chaucer regarded it as a dissyllabic word, we at once see that MSS. Gg. and Jo. (which omit this second of) are quite correct. We know that sinne is properly a dissyllabic word in Chaucer, because he rimes it with the infinitives biginne (Cant. Ta. C 941) and winne (same, D 1421), and never with such monosyllables as kin or tin. This is easily tested by consulting Mr. Cromie's very useful Rime-index to the Canterbury Tales. The above remark is important, on account of its wide application. The needless insertions of little words in many of the 15th-century MSS. are easily detected.

4. Scan the line by reading—Glorióus virgín', of all-e flóur-es flóur. Cf. l. 49.

6. Debonaire, gracious lady; used as a sb. Compare the original, l. 11.

8. Answers to l. 6 of the original—'Vaincu m'a mon aversaire.' Perhaps Venquisht is here the right form; similarly, in the Squieres Tale, F 342, the word vanisshed is to be read as vanísh'd, with the accent on the second syllable, and elision of e. See Ten Brink, Chaucers Sprache, § 257. Otherwise, read Venquis-shed m'hath; cf. mexcuse, XVI. 37 (p. 397).

11. Warne, reject, refuse to hear. So in P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 12, 'whanne men hym werneth' means 'when men refuse to give him what he asks for.'

12. Free, liberal, bounteous. So in Shak. Troilus, iv. 5. 100—'His heart and hand both open and both free.' It may be remarked, once for all, that readers frequently entirely misunderstand passages in our older authors, merely because they forget what great changes may take place in the sense of words in the course of centuries.

13. Largesse, i. e. the personification of liberality; 'thou bestowest perfect happiness.'

14. Cf. original, l. 15—'Quer [for] tu es de salu porte.' Scan by reading—Háv'n of refút. But in l. 33, we have réfut.

15. Theves seven, seven robbers, viz. the seven deadly sins. We could easily guess that this is the meaning, but it is needless; for the original has—'Par sept larrons, pechies mortez,' l. 17; and a note in the Sion Coll. MS. has—'i. seven dedly synnes.' The theme of the Seven Deadly Sins is one of the commonest in our old authors; it is treated of at great length in Chaucer's Persones Tale, and in Piers Plowman.

16. 'Ere my ship go to pieces'; this graphic touch is not in the original.

17. Yow, you. In addressing a superior, it was customary to use the words ye and you, as a mark of respect; but, in prayer, the words thou and thee were usual. Hence, Chaucer has mixed the two usages in a very remarkable way, and alternates them suddenly. Thus, we have thee in l. 5, thou in l. 6, &c., but yow in l. 17, thy in l. 19, you in l. 24; and so on. We even find the plural verbs helpen, l. 104; Beth, l. 134; and ben, l. 176.

20. Accioun, action, is here used in the legal sense; 'my sin and confusion have brought an action (i. e. plead) against me.' It is too close a copy of the original, l. 25—'Contre moy font une accion.'

21. I. e. 'founded upon rigid justice and a sense of the desperate nature of my condition.' Cf. 'Rayson et desperacion Contre moy veulent maintenir'; orig. l. 29. Maintenir, to maintain an action, is a legal term. So, in l. 22, sustene means 'sustain the plea.'

24. 'If it were not for the mercy (to be obtained) from you.'

25. Literally—'There is no doubt that thou art not the cause'; meaning, 'Without doubt, thou art the cause.' Misericorde is adopted from the original. According to the usual rule, viz. that the syllable er is usually slurred over in Chaucer when a vowel follows, the word is to be read as mis'ricord-e. So also sov'reyn, l. 69.

27. Vouched sauf, vouchsafed. Tacorde, to accord; cf. talyghte, tamende, &c. in the Cant. Tales.

29. Cf. 'S'encore fust l'arc encordé'; orig, l. 47; and 'l'arc de justice,' l. 42. The French expression is probably borrowed (as suggested in Bell's Chaucer) from Ps. vii. 13—'arcum suum tetendit.' Hence the phrase of Iustice and of yre refers to the bowe.

30. First, at first, before the Incarnation.

36. For examples of the use of great assize, or last assize, to signify the Last Judgment, see the New E. Dict., s. v. Assize.

39. Most MSS. read here—'That but thou er [or or] that day correcte me'; this cannot be right, because it destroys the rime. However, the Bedford MS., instead of correcte me, has Me chastice; and in MS. C me chastyse is written over an erasure (doubtless of the words correcte me). Even thus, the line is imperfect, but is completed by help of the Sion MS., which reads me weel chastyce.

40. Of verrey right, in strict justice; not quite as in l. 21.

41. Rather close to the original—'Fuiant m'en viens a ta tente Moy mucier pour la tormente Qui ou monde me tempeste,' &c. Mucier means 'to hide,' and ou means 'in the,' F. au.

45. Al have I, although I have. So in l. 157.

49. MS. Gg. has Gracyouse; but the French has Glorieuse.

50. Bitter; Fr. text 'amere.' The allusion is to the name Maria, Gk. Μαρία, Μαριάμ, the same as Miriam, which is explained to mean 'bitterness,' as being connected with Marah, i. e. bitterness; see Exod. xv. 23 (Gesenius). Scan the line by reading: neíth'r in érth-ë nór.

55. But-if, except, unless (common).

56. Stink is oddly altered to sinke in some editions.

57, 58. Closely copied from the French, ll. 85-87. But the rest of the stanza is nearly all Chaucer's own. Cf. Col. ii. 14.

67. The French means, literally—'For, when any one goes out of his way, thou, out of pity, becomest his guide, in order that he may soon regain his way.'

70. The French means—'And thou bringest him back into the right road.' This Chaucer turns into—'bringest him out of the wrong road'; which is all that is meant by the crooked strete.

71. In the ending -eth of the third pers. sing. present, the e is commonly suppressed. Read lov'th. So also com'th in l. 99.

73. The French means—'Calendars are illumined, and other books are confirmed (or authenticated), when thy name illumines them.' Chaucer has 'illuminated calendars, in this world, are those that are brightened by thy name.' 'An allusion to the custom of writing the high festivals of the Church in the Calendar with red, or illuminated, letters'; note in Bell's Chaucer. The name of Mary appears several times in old calendars; thus the Purification of Mary is on Feb. 2; the Annunciation, on Mar. 25; the Visitation, on July 2; the Assumption, on Aug. 15; the Nativity, on Sept. 8; the Presentation, on Nov. 21; the Conception, on Dec. 8. Our books of Common Prayer retain all of these except the Assumption and the Presentation. Kalenderes probably has four syllables; and so has enlumined. Otherwise, read Kálendér's (Koch).

76. Him thar, i. e. it needs not for him to dread, he need not dread. It occurs again in the Cant. Tales, A 4320, D 329, 336, 1365, &c.

80. Resigne goes back to l. 112 of the original, where resiné (= resigne) occurs.

81. Here the French (l. 121) has douceur; Koch says it is clear that Chaucer's copy had douleur; which refers to the Mater dolorosa.

86. This line runs badly in the MSS., but is the same in nearly all. Read both' hav-e. I should prefer hav' both-e, where bothe is dissyllabic; see ll. 63, 122. This runs more evenly. The sense of ll. 84-6 seems to be—'Let not the foe of us all boast that he has, by his wiles (listes), unluckily convicted (of guilt) that (soul) which ye both,' &c.

88. Slur over the last syllable of Continue, and accent us.

89. The French text refers to Exod. iii. 2. Cf. The Prioresses Tale, C. T. Group B, l. 1658.

97. Koch points out that per-e is here dissyllabic; as in the Compleint to His Purse, l. 11. The French has per, l. 146. Read—Nóble princésse, &c.

100. Melodye or glee; here Koch remarks that Chaucer 'evidently mistook tirelire for turelure.' The Fr. tirelire means a money-box, and the sense of l. 150 of the original is—'We have no other place in which to secure what we possess.' See l. 107 of Chaucer's translation below. But Chaucer's mistake was easily made; he was thinking, not of the mod. Fr. turelure (which, after all, does not mean a 'melody,' but the refrain of a song, like the Eng. tooral looral) but of the O. F. tirelire. This word (as Cotgrave explains) not only meant 'a box having a cleft on the lid for mony to enter it,' but 'also the warble, or song of a lark.' Hence Shakespeare speaks of 'the lark, that tirra-lyra chants,' Wint. Tale, iv. 3. 9.

102. Read N'advócat noón. That the M. E. advocat was sometimes accented on the o, is proved by the fact that it was sometimes cut down to vócat; see P. Plowman, B. ii. 60; C. iii. 61.

109. Cf. Luke, i. 38—'Ecce ancilla Domini.'

110. Oure bille, &c., i. e. 'to bring forward (or offer) a petition on our behalf.' For the old expression 'to put up (or forth) a bill,' see my note to P. Plowman, C. v. 45. Compare also Compleynte unto Pite, l. 44 (p. 273).

113. Read tym-e. Tenquere, for to enquere; cf. note to l. 27. Cf. the French d'enquerre, l. 169.

116. To werre; F. 'pour guerre,' l. 173; i. e. 'by way of attack.' Us may be taken with wroughte, i. e. 'wrought for us such a wonder.' Werre is not a verb; the verb is werreyen, as in Squi. Ta. l. 10.

119. Ther, where, inasmuch as. 'We had no salvation, inasmuch as we did not repent; if we repent, we shall receive it.' But the sentence is awkward. Cf. Mark i. 4; Matt. vii. 7.

122. Pause after both-e; the e is not elided.

125. Mene, mediator; lit. mean (intermediate) person. So in P. Plowman, B. vii. 196—'And Marie his moder be owre mene bitwene.'

132. Koch thinks that the false reading it in some MSS. arose from a reading hit (= hitteth) as a translation of F. fiert, l. 196. Anyway, the reading is seems best. Surely, 'his reckoning hits so hideous' would be a most clumsy expression.

136. Of pitee, for pity; the usual idiom. Cf. of al, XIII. 19 (p. 391).

140. Vicaire, deputed ruler; not in the original. See note to Parliament of Foules, l. 379.

141. Governeresse; copied from the French text, l. 214. This rare word occurs, as the last word, in a poem beginning 'Mother of norture, printed in the Aldine Edition of Chaucer's Poems, vi. 275. Chaucer himself uses it again in the Complaint to Pity, l. 80 (p. 275).

144. Compare the expressions Regina Celi, Veni coronaberis, 'Heil crowned queene,' and the like; Polit., Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 147; Hymns to the Virgin, ed. Furnivall, pp. 1, 4. Suggested by Rev. xii. 1.

146. Koch notes that the reading depriued arose from its substitution for the less familiar form priued.

150. The reference is, obviously, to Gen. iii. 18; but thorns here mean sins. Cf. 'Des espines d'iniquite'; F. text, l. 224.

158. Copied from the French, l. 239—'Ou tu a la court m'ajournes.' It means 'fix a day for me to appear at thy court,' cite me to thy court.

159. Not in the original. Chaucer was thinking of the courts of the Common Bench and King's Bench, as mentioned, for example, in Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 215.

161. The word Xristus, i. e. Christus, is written Xpc (with a mark of contraction) in MSS. C., Gl., Gg., and Xpūs in F. Xpc is copied from the French; but it is very common, being the usual contracted form of the Gk. Χριστός, or, in capital letters, XPICTOC, obtained by taking the two first and the last letters. The old Greek sigma was written C; as above. De Deguileville could think of no French word beginning with X; so he substituted for it the Greek chi, which resembled it in form.

163, 164. These lines answer to ll. 243, 247 of the French; 'For me He had His side pierced; for me His blood was shed.' Observe that the word Christus has no verb following it; it is practically an objective case, governed by thanke in l. 168. 'I thank thee because of Christ and for what He has done for me.' In l. 163, the word suffre is understood from the line above, and need not be repeated. Unfortunately, all the scribes have repeated it, to the ruin of the metre; for the line then contains two syllables too many. However, it is better omitted. Longius is trisyllabic, and herte (as in the next line) is dissyllabic. The sense is—'to suffer His passion on the cross, and also (to suffer) that Longius should pierce His heart, and make,' &c. Pighte, made, are in the subjunctive. The difficulty really resides in the word that in l. 161. If Chaucer had written eek instead of it, the whole could be parsed.

Koch reads 'Dreygh eek' for 'And eek,' in l. 163, where 'Dreygh' means 'endured.' But I do not think Dreygh could be used in this connection, with the word that following it.

The story of Longius is very common; hence Chaucer readily introduced an allusion to it, though his original has no hint of it. The name is spelt Longeus in Piers Plowman, C. xxi. 82 (and is also spelt Longinus). My note on that passage says—'This story is from the Legenda Aurea, cap. xlvii. Longinus was a blind centurion, who pierced the side of Christ; when drops of the Sacred Blood cured his infirmity. The day of St. Longinus is Mar. 15; see Chambers, Book of Days. The name Longinus is most likely derived from λόγχη, a lance, the word used in John xix. 34; and the legend was easily developed from St. John's narrative. The name Longinus first appears in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.' See also the Chester Plays, ed. Wright; Cursor Mundi, p. 962; Coventry Mysteries, ed. Halliwell, p. 334; York Mystery Plays, p. 368; Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, st. 26; &c.

164. Herte is the true M. E. genitive, from the A. S. gen. heortan. Herte blood occurs again in the Pardoneres Tale, C 902.

169-171. Close to the French, ll. 253-5; and l. 174 is close to l. 264 of the same. Cf. Heb. xi. 19; Jo. i. 29; Isaiah, liii. 7.

176. This line can best be scanned by taking That as standing alone, in the first foot. See note to Compl. to Pite, l. 16. Koch suggests that our-e is dissyllabic; but this would make an unpleasing line; 'That yé | ben fróm | veng'áunce | ay oú | re targe ||.' I hope this was not intended; 'fróm | veng'áun | cë áy | our' would be better.

177. The words of Zechariah (xiii. 1) are usually applied to the blood of Christ, as in Rev. i. 5. Chaucer omits ll. 266-7 of the French.

180. 'That were it not (for) thy tender heart, we should be destroyed.'

181. Koch, following Gg, reads—'Now lady bright, siththe thou canst and wilt.' I prefer 'bright-e, sith'; brighte is a vocative.

184. To mercy able, fit to obtain mercy; cf. Cant. Ta. Prol. 167.

II. The Compleynte unto Pite.

Title. In MS. B., the poem is entitled, 'The Complaynte vnto Pyte,' which is right. In MS. Trin., there is a colophon—'Here endeth the exclamacioun of the Deth of Pyte'; see p. 276. In MS. Sh. (in Shirley's handwriting) the poem is introduced with the following words—'And nowe here filowing [following] begynnethe a complaint of Pitee, made by Geffray Chaucier the aureat Poete that euer was fonde in oure vulgare to-fore hees [for thees?] dayes.' The first stanza may be considered as forming a Proem; stanzas 2-8, the Story; and the rest, the Bill of Complaint. The title 'A complaint of Pitee' is not necessarily incorrect; for of may be taken in the sense of 'concerning,' precisely as in the case of 'The Vision of Piers the Plowman.' As to the connection of this poem with the Thebaid of Statius, see notes to ll. 57 and 92.

1. I do not follow Ten Brink in putting a comma after so. He says: 'That so refers to the verb [sought] and not to yore ago, is evident from l. 3. Compare the somewhat different l. 93.' I hope it shews no disrespect to a great critic if I say that I am not at all confident that the above criticism is correct; l. 93 rather tells against it. Observe the reading of l. 117 in MS. Sh. (in the footnotes, p. 276).

4. With-oute dethe, i. e. without actually dying.

Shal not, am not to.

7. Doth me dye, makes me die.

9. Ever in oon, continually, constantly, always in the same way; cf. Cant. Tales, E 602, 677, F 417.

11. Me awreke. 'The e of me is elided'; Ten Brink. He compares also Cant. Ta. Prol. 148; (the correct reading of which is, probably—

the e of sche being slurred over before i in if). He also refers to the Prioresses Tale (B 1660), where thalighte = thee alighte; and to the Second Nonnes Tale (G 32), where do me endyte is to be read as do mendyte. Cf. note to A B C, l. 8.

14. The notion of Pity being 'buried in a heart' is awkward, and introduces an element of confusion. If Pity could have been buried out of the heart, and thus separated from it, the whole would have been a great deal clearer. This caution is worth paying heed to; for it will really be found, further on, that the language becomes confused in consequence of this very thing. In the very next line, for example, the hearse of Pity appears, and in l. 19 the corpse of Pity; in fact, Pity is never fairly buried out of sight throughout the poem.

15. Herse, hearse; cf. l. 36 below. It should be remembered that the old herse was a very different thing from the modern hearse. What Chaucer refers to is what we should now call 'a lying in state'; with especial reference to the array of lighted torches which illuminated the bier. See the whole of Way's note in Prompt. Parvulorum, pp. 236, 237, part of which is quoted in my Etym. Dict., s. v. hearse. The word hearse (F. herce) originally denoted a harrow; next, a frame with spikes for holding lights in a church service; thirdly, a frame for lights at a funeral pageant or 'lying in state'; fourthly, the funeral pageant itself; fifthly, a frame on which a body was laid, and so on. 'Chaucer,' says Way, 'appears to use the term herse to denote the decorated bier, or funeral pageant, and not exclusively the illumination, which was a part thereof; and, towards the sixteenth century, it had such a general signification alone.' In ll. 36-42, Chaucer describes a company of persons who stood round about the hearse. Cf. Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 236-7; Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 176.

'The hearse was usually a four-square frame of timber, which was hung with black cloth, and garnished with flags and scutcheons and lights'; Strutt, Manners and Customs of the English, iii. 159. See the whole passage, which describes the funeral of Henry VII.

16. In most MSS., Deed stands alone in the first foot. In which case, scan—Deed | as stoon | whyl that | the swogh | me laste. Cf. A B C, l. 176, and the note. However, two MSS. insert a, as in the text.

27. Cf. Deth of Blaunche, l. 587—'This is my peyne withoute reed'; Ten Brink. See p. 297.

33. Ten Brink reads ay for ever, on the ground that ever and never, when followed by a consonant, are dissyllabic in Chaucer. But see Book of the Duchesse, l. 73 (p. 279).

34. Hadde, dissyllabic; it occasionally is so; mostly when it is used by itself, as here. Cf. Book of the Duch. l. 951 (p. 309).

37. 'Without displaying any sorrow.' He now practically identifies Pity with the fair one in whose heart it was said (in l. 14) to be buried. This fair one was attended by Bounty, Beauty, and all the rest; they are called a folk in l. 48.

41. Insert and after Estaat or Estat, for this word has no final -e in Chaucer; see Prol. A 522; Squi. Tale, F 26; &c.

44. 'To have offered to Pity, as a petition'; see note to A B C, 110.

47. 'I kept my complaint quiet,' i. e. withheld it; see l. 54.

50. MS. Sh. is right. The scribe of the original of MSS. Tn. Ff. T. left out I and these, and then put in only; then another scribe, seeing that a pronoun was wanted, put in we, as shewn by MSS. F. B. (Ten Brink). Here, and in l. 52, the e of alle is either very lightly sounded after the cæsural pause, or (more likely) is dropped altogether, as elsewhere.

53. And been assented, and (who) are all agreed.

54. Put up, put by. Cf. 'to put up that letter'; K. Lear, i. 2. 28: &c.

57. He here addresses his fair one's Pity, whom he personifies, and addresses as a mistress.

By comparison of this passage with l. 92, it becomes clear that Chaucer took his notion of personifying Pity from Statius, who personifies Pietas in his Thebaid, xi. 457-496. I explained this at length in a letter to The Academy, Jan. 7, 1888, p. 9. In the present line, we find a hint of the original; for Statius describes Pietas in the words 'pudibundaque longe Ora reducentem' (l. 493), which expresses her humility; whilst the reverence due to her is expressed by reuerentia (l. 467).

59. Sheweth ... Your servaunt, Your servant sheweth. Sheweth is the word used in petitions, and servant commonly means 'lover.'

63. Accented rénoun, as in the Ho. of Fame, 1406. Cf. l. 86.

64. Crueltee, Cruelty, here corresponds to the Fury Tisiphone, who is introduced by Statius (Theb. xi. 483) to suppress the peaceful feelings excited by Pietas, who had been created by Jupiter to control the passions even of the gods (l. 465). At the siege of Thebes, Pietas was for once overruled by Tisiphone; and Chaucer complains here that she is again being controlled; see ll. 80, 89-91. Very similar is the character of Daungere or Danger (F. Dangier) in the Romaunt of the Rose; in l. 3549 of the English Version (l. 3301 of the original), we find Pity saying—

We may also compare Machault's poem entitled Le Dit du Vergier, where we find such lines as—

66. Under colour, beneath the outward appearance.

67. 'In order that people should not observe her tyranny.'

70. Hight, is (rightly) named. The final -e, though required by grammar, is suppressed; the word being conformed to other examples of the third person singular of the present tense, whilst hight-e is commonly used as the past tense. Pity's right name is here said to be 'Beauty, such as belongs to Favour.' The poet is really thinking of his mistress rather than his personified Pity. It is very difficult to keep up the allegory.

71. 'Heritage, of course, stands in the gen. case'; Ten Brink.

76. Wanten, are lacking, are missing, are not found in, fall short. 'If you, Pity, are missing from Bounty and Beauty.' There are several similar examples of this use of want in Shakespeare; e.g. 'there wants no junkets at the feast'; Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 250.

78. This Bille, or Petition, may be divided into three sets of 'terns,' or groups of three stanzas. I mark this by inserting a paragraph-mark (¶ ) at the beginning of each tern. They are marked off by the rimes; the first tern ends with seyne, l. 77; the next with the riming word peyne, l. 98; and again with peyne, l. 119.

83. Perilous is here accented on the i.

87. Ten Brink omits wel, with most of the MSS.; but the e in wite seems to be suppressed, as in Book of the Duch. 112. It will hardly bear a strong accent. Mr. Sweet retains wel, as I do.

91. Pronounce the third word as despeir'd. 'Compare 1 Kings x. 24: And all the earth sought to Solomon'; Ten Brink.

92. Herenus has not hitherto been explained. It occurs in four MSS., Tn. F. B. Ff.; a fifth (T.) has 'heremus'; the Longleat MS. has 'heremus' or 'herenius'; Sh. substitutes 'vertuouse,' and MS. Harl. 7578 has 'Vertoues'; but it is highly improbable that vertuouse is original, for no one would ever have altered it so unintelligibly. Ten Brink and Mr. Sweet adopt this reading vertuousë, which they make four syllables, as being a vocative case; and of course this is an easy way of evading the difficulty. Dr. Furnivall once suggested hevenus, which I presume is meant for 'heaven's'; but this word could not possibly be accented as hevénus. The strange forms which proper names assume in Chaucer are notorious; and the fact is, that Herenus is a mere error for Herines or Herynes. Herynes (accented on y), occurs in St. 4 of Bk. iv of Troilus and Criscide, and is used as the plural of Erinnys, being applied to the three Furies:—'O ye Herynes, nightes doughtren thre.' Pity may be said to be the queen of the Furies, in the sense that pity (or mercy) can alone control the vindictiveness of vengeance. Shakespeare tells us that mercy 'is mightiest in the mightiest,' and is 'above this sceptred sway'; Merch. Ven. iv. 1. 188.

Chaucer probably found this name precisely where he found his personification of Pity, viz. in Statius, who has the sing. Erinnys (Theb. xi. 383), and the pl. Erinnyas (345). Cf. Æneid, ii. 337, 573.

In a poem called The Remedy of Love, in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 322, back, the twelfth stanza begins with—'Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all,' &c., where it is plain that 'thou Hermes' is a substitution for 'Herines.'

95. The sense is—'the longer I love and dread you, the more I do so.' If we read ever instead of ay, then the e in the must be suppressed. 'In ever lenger the moore, never the moore, never the lesse, Chaucer not unfrequently drops the e in the, pronouncing lengerth, neverth'; cf. Clerkes Tale, E 687; Man of Lawes Tale, B 982; Ten Brink.

96. Most MSS. read so sore, giving no sense. Ten Brink has—'For sooth to seyne, I bere the hevy soore'; following MS. Sh. It is simpler to correct so to the, as suggested by Harl. 7578, which has—'For soith [error for sothly] for to saye I bere the sore.'

101. Set, short for setteth, like bit for biddeth, Cant. Tales, Prol. 187, &c. Ten Brink quotes from the Sompnoures Tale (D 1982)—'With which the devel set your herte a-fyre,' where set = sets, present tense.

105. Ten Brink inserts ne, though it is not in the MSS. His note is: 'Ne is a necessary complement to but = "only," as but properly means "except"; and a collation of the best MSS. of the Cant. Tales shows that Chaucer never omitted the negative in this case. (The same observation was made already by Prof. Child in his excellent paper on the language of Chaucer and Gower; see Ellis, Early Eng. Pronunciation, p. 374.) Me ne forms but one syllable, pronounced meen [i. e. as mod. E. main]. In the same manner I ne = iin [pron. as mod. E. een] occurs, Cant. Tales, Prol. 764 (from MS. Harl. 7334)—

and in the Man of Lawes Tale (Group B, 1139)—

Compare Middle High German in (= ich ne), e.g. in kan dir nicht, Walter v. d. Vogelweide, ed. Lachmann, 101. 33. In early French and Provençal me, te, se, &c., when preceded by a vowel, often became m, t, s, &c.; in Italian we have cen for ce ne, &c.' Cf. They n' wer-e in The Former Age, l. 5; and Book of the Duch. 244 (note).

110. See Anelida, 182; and the note.

119. Observe that this last line is a repetition of l. 2.

III. The Book of the Duchesse.

I may remark here that the metre is sometimes difficult to follow; chiefly owing to the fact that the line sometimes begins with an accented syllable, just as, in Milton's L'Allegro, we meet with lines like 'Zéphyr, with Aurora playing.' The accented syllables are sometimes indistinctly marked, and hence arises a difficulty in immediately detecting the right flow of a line. A clear instance of a line beginning with an accented syllable is seen in l. 23—'Slép', and thús meláncolýë.'

1. The opening lines of this poem were subsequently copied (in 1384) by Froissart, in his Paradis d'Amour—

Chaucer frequently makes words like have (l. 1), live (l. 2), especially in the present indicative, mere monosyllables. As examples of the fully sounded final e, we may notice the dative light-e (l. 1), the dative (or adverbial) night-e (l. 2), the infinitive slep-e (3), the adverb ylich-e (9), the dative mind-e (15), &c. On the other hand, hav-e is dissyllabic in l. 24. The e is elided before a following vowel in defaute (5), trouthe (6), falle (13), wite (16), &c. We may also notice that com'th is a monosyllable (7), whereas trewely (33) has three syllables, though in l. 35 it makes but two. It is clear that Chaucer chose to make some words of variable length; and he does this to a much greater extent in the present poem and in the House of Fame than in more finished productions, such as the Canterbury Tales. But it must be observed, on the other hand, that the number of these variable words is limited; in a far larger number of words, the number of syllables never varies at all, except by regular elision before a vowel.

14. The reading For sorwful ymaginacioun (in F., Tn., Th.) cannot be right. Lange proposes to omit For, which hardly helps us. It is clearly sorwful that is wrong. I propose to replace it by sory. Koch remarks that sorwful has only two syllables (l. 85); but the line only admits of one, or of one and a very light syllable.

15. Observe how frequently, in this poem and in the House of Fame, Chaucer concludes a sentence with the former of two lines of a couplet. Other examples occur at ll. 29, 43, 51, 59, 67, 75, 79, 87, 89; i. e. at least ten times in the course of the first hundred lines. The same arrangement occasionally occurs in the existing translation of the Romaunt of the Rose, but with such less frequency as, in itself, to form a presumption against Chaucer's having written the whole of it.

Similar examples in Milton, though he was an admirer of Chaucer, are remarkably rare; compare, however, Comus, 97, 101, 127, 133, 137. The metrical effect of this pause is very good.

23. The texts read this. Ten Brink suggests thus (Ch. Sprache, § 320); which I adopt.

31. What me is, what is the matter with me. Me is here in the dative case. This throws some light on the common use of me in Shakespeare in such cases as 'Heat me these irons hot,' K. John, iv. 1. 1; &c.

31-96. These lines are omitted in the Tanner MS. 346; also in MS. Bodley 638 (which even omits ll. 24-30). In the Fairfax MS. they are added in a much later hand. Consequently, Thynne's edition is here our only satisfactory authority; though the late copy in the Fairfax MS. is worth consulting.

32. Aske, may ask; subjunctive mood.

33. Trewely is here three syllables, which is the normal form; cf. Prologue, 761; Kn. Ta. A 1267. In l. 35, the second e is hardly sounded.

36. We must here read 'hold-e,' without elision of final e, which is preserved by the cæsura.

37. 'The most obvious interpretation of these lines seems to be that they contain the confession of a hopeless passion, which has lasted for eight years—a confession which certainly seems to come more appropriately and more naturally from an unmarried than a married man. 'For eight years,'—he says—'I have loved, and loved in vain—and yet my cure is never the nearer. There is but one physician that can heal me—but all that is ended and done with. Let us pass on into fresh fields; what cannot be obtained must needs be left'; Ward, Life of Chaucer, p. 53. Dr. Furnivall supposes that the relentless fair one was the one to whom his Complaint unto Pite was addressed; and chronology would require that Chaucer fell in love with her in 1361. There is no proof that Chaucer was married before 1374, though he may have been married not long after his first passion was 'done.'

43. 'It is good to regard our first subject'; and therefore to return to it. This first subject was his sleeplessness.

45. Til now late follows I sat upryght, as regards construction. The reading Now of late, in some printed editions, is no better.

48. This 'Romaunce' turns out to have been a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a book of which Chaucer was so fond that he calls it his 'own book'; Ho. of Fame, 712. Probably he really had a copy of his own, as he constantly quotes it. Private libraries were very small indeed.

49. Dryve away, pass away; the usual phrase. Cf. 'And dryuen forth the longe day'; P. Plowman, B. prol. 224.

56. 'As long as men should love the law of nature,' i. e. should continue to be swayed by the natural promptings of passion; in other words, for ever. Certainly, Ovid's book has lasted well. In l. 57, such thinges means 'such love-stories.'

62. 'Alcyone, or Halcyone: A daughter of Æolus and Enarete or Ægiale. She was married to Ceyx, and lived so happy with him, that they were presumptuous enough to call each other Zeus and Hera, for which Zeus metamorphosed them into birds, alkuōn (a king-fisher) and kēūks (a greedy sea-bird, Liddell and Scott; a kind of sea-gull; Apollod. i. 7. § 3, &c.; Hygin. Fab. 65). Hyginus relates that Ceyx perished in a shipwreck, that Alcyone for grief threw herself into the sea, and that the gods, out of compassion, changed the two into birds. It was fabled that, during the seven days before, and as many after the shortest day of the year, while the bird alkuōn was breeding, there always prevailed calms at sea. An embellished form of the story is given by Ovid, Met. xi. 410, &c.; compare Virgil, Georg. i. 399.'—Smith's Dictionary. Hence the expression 'halcyon days'; see Holland's Pliny, b. x. c. 32, quoted in my Etym. Dict. s. v. Halcyon.

M. Sandras asserts that the history of Ceyx and Alcyone is borrowed from the Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse, by Machault, whereas it is evident that Chaucer took care to consult his favourite Ovid, though he also copied several expressions from Machault's poem. Consult Max Lange, as well as Furnivall's Trial Forewords to Chaucer's Minor Poems, p. 43. Surely, Chaucer himself may be permitted to know; his description of the book, viz. in ll. 57-59, applies to Ovid, rather than to Machault's Poems. But the fact is that we have further evidence; Chaucer himself, elsewhere, plainly names Ovid as his authority. See Cant. Tales, Group B, l. 53 (as printed in vol. v.), where he says—

It is true that Chaucer here mentions Ovid's Heroides rather than the Metamorphoses; but that is only because he goes on to speak of other stories, which he took from the Heroides; see the whole context. It is plain that he wishes us to know that he took the present story chiefly from Ovid; yet there are some expressions which he owes to Machault, as will be shown below. It is worth notice, that the whole story is also in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. iv. (ed. Pauli, ii. 100); where it is plainly copied from Ovid throughout.

Ten Brink (Studien, p. 10) points out one very clear indication of Chaucer's having consulted Ovid. In l. 68, he uses the expression to tellen shortly, and then proceeds to allude to the shipwreck of Ceyx, which is told in Ovid at great length (Met. xi. 472-572). Of this shipwreck Machault says never a word; he merely says that Ceyx died in the sea.

There is a chapter De Alcione in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, bk. xvi. c. 26; made up from Ambrosius, Aristotle, Pliny (bk. 10), and the Liber de Natura Rerum.

66. Instead of quoting Ovid, I shall quote from Golding's translation of his Metamorphoses, as being more interesting to the English reader. (The whole story is also told by Dryden, whose version is easily accessible.) As the tale is told at great length, I quote only a few of the lines that most closely correspond to Chaucer. Compare—

See further in the note to l. 136.

67. Koch would read wolde for wol; I adopt his suggestion.

76. Alcyone (in the MSS.) was introduced as a gloss.

78. Come (dissyllabic) is meant to be in the pt. t. subjunctive.

80. Of the restoration of this line, I should have had some reason to be proud; but I find that Ten Brink (who seems to miss nothing) has anticipated me; see his Chaucers Sprache, §§ 48, 329. We have here, as our guides, only the edition of Thynne (1532), and the late insertion in MS. Fairfax 16. Both of these read—'Anon her herte began to yerne'; whereas it of course ought to be—'Anon her herte gan to erme.' The substitution of began for gan arose from forgetting that herte (A.S. heorte) is dissyllabic in Chaucer, in countless places. The substitution of yerne for erme arose from the fact that the old word ermen, to grieve, was supplanted by earn, to desire, to grieve, in the sixteenth century, and afterwards by the form yearn. This I have already shewn at such length in my note to the Pardoner's Prologue (Cant. Ta. C. 312), in my edition of the Man of Lawes Tale, pp. 39, 142, and yet again in my Etym. Dict., s. v. Yearn (2), that it is needless to repeat it all over again. Chaucer was quite incapable of such a mere assonance as that of terme with yerne; in fact, it is precisely the word terme that is rimed with erme in his Pardoner's Prologue. Mr. Cromie's index shews that, in the Cant. Tales, the rime erme, terme, occurs only once, and there is no third word riming with either. There is, however, a rime of conferme with ferme, Troil. ii. 1525, and with afferme in the same, 1588. There is, in Chaucer, no sixth riming word in -erme at all, and none in either -irme or -yrme.

Both in the present passage and in the Pardoner's Prologue the verb to erme is used with the same sb., viz. herte; which clinches the matter. By way of example, compare 'The bysschop weop for 'ermyng'; King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1525.

86, 87. L. 86 is too short. In l. 87 I delete alas after him, which makes the line a whole foot too long, and is not required. Koch ingeniously suggests, for l. 86: 'That hadde, alas! this noble wyf.' This transference of alas mends both lines at once.

91. Wher, short for whether (very common).

93. Avowe is all one word, though its component parts were often written apart. Thus, in P. Plowman, B. v. 457, we find And made avowe, where the other texts have a-vou, a-vowe; see Avow in the New E. Dict. See my note to Cant. Tales, Group C, 695.

97. Here the gap in the MSS. ceases, and we again have their authority for the text. For Had we should, perhaps, read Hadde.

105. Doubtless, we ought to read:—'Ne coude she.'

106. This phrase is not uncommon. 'And on knes she sat adoun'; Lay le Freine, l. 159; in Weber's Met. Romances, i. 363. Cf. 'This Troilus ful sone on knees him sette'; Troilus, iii. 953.

107. Weep (not wepte) is Chaucer's word; see Cant. Tales, B 606, 1052, 3852, E 545, F 496, G 371.

120. For knowe (as in F. Tn. Th.) read knowen, to avoid hiatus.

126. 'And she, exhausted with weeping and watching.' Gower (Confes. Amantis, ed. Pauli, i. 160) speaks of a ship that is forstormed and forblowe, i. e. excessively driven about by storm and wind.

130. Or read: 'That madë her to slepe sone'; without elision of e in made (Koch).

136. Go bet, go quickly, hasten, lit. go better, i. e. faster. See note to Group C, 667. Cf. Go now faste, l. 152.

Morpheus is dissyllabic, i. e. Morph'ús; cf. Mórph'us in l. 167. I here add another illustration from Golding's Ovid, fol. 139:—

139. The first accent falls on Sey; the e in halfe seems to be suppressed.

154. His wey. Chaucer substitutes a male messenger for Iris; see ll. 134, 155, 180-2.

155. Imitated from Machault's Dit de la Fontaine:—

See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 200; Furnivall, Trial Forewords, p. 44.

It is worth notice that the visit of Iris to Somnus is also fully described by Statius, Theb. x. 81-136; but Chaucer does not seem to have copied him.

158, 159. Two bad lines in the MSS. Both can be mended by changing nought into nothing, as suggested by Ten Brink, Chaucers Sprache, § 299.

160. See a very similar passage in Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. And cf. Ho. of Fame, 70.

167. Eclympasteyre. 'I hold this to be a name of Chaucer's own invention. In Ovid occurs a son of Morpheus who has two different names: "Hunc Icelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus Nominat;" Met. xi. 640. Phobetora may have been altered into Pastora: Icelonpastora (the two names linked together) would give Eclympasteyre.'—Ten Brink, Studien, p. 11, as quoted in Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 116. At any rate, we may feel sure that Eclym- is precisely Ovid's Icelon. And perhaps Phobetora comes nearer to -pasteyre than does Phantasos, the name of another son of Morpheus, whom Ovid mentions immediately below. Gower (ed. Pauli, ii. 103) calls them Ithecus and Panthasas; and the fact that he here actually turns Icelon into Ithecus is a striking example of the strange corruption of proper names in medieval times. Prof. Hales suggests that Eclympasteyre represents Icelon plastora, where plastora is the acc. of Gk. πλαστώρ, i. e. moulder or modeller, a suitable epithet for a god of dreams; compare the expressions used by Ovid in ll. 626 and 634 of this passage. Icelon is the acc. of Gk. ἴκελος, or εἴκελος, like, resembling. For my own part, I would rather take the form plastera, acc. of πλαστήρ, a form actually given by Liddell and Scott, and also nearer to the form in Chaucer. Perhaps Chaucer had seen a MS. of Ovid in which Icelon was explained by plastora or plastera, written beside or over it as a gloss, or by way of explanation. This would explain the whole matter. Mr. Fleay thinks the original reading was Morpheus, Ecelon, Phantastere; but this is impossible, because Morpheus had but one heir (l. 168).

Froissart has the word Enclimpostair as the name of a son of the god of sleep, in his poem called Paradis d'Amour. But as he is merely copying this precise passage, it does not at all help us.

For the remarks by Prof. Hales, see the Athenæum, 1882, i. 444; for those by Mr. Fleay, see the same, p. 568. Other suggestions have been made, but are not worth recording.

173. To envye; to be read as Tenvý-e. The phrase is merely an adaptation of the F. à l'envi, or of the vb. envier. Cotgrave gives: 'à l'envy l'vn de l'autre, one to despight the other, or in emulation one of the other'; also 'envier (au ieu), to vie.' Hence E. vie; see Vie in my Etym. Dict. It is etymologically connected with Lat. inuitare, not with Lat. inuidia. See l. 406, below.

175. Read slepe, as in ll. 169, 177; A.S. slǽpon, pt. t. pl.

Upright, i. e. on their backs; see The Babees Book, p. 245.

181. Who is, i. e. who is it that.

183. Awaketh is here repeated in the plural form.

184. Oon ye, one eye. This is from Machault, who has: 'ouvri l'un de ses yeux.' Ovid has the pl. oculos.

185. Cast is the pp., as pointed out by Ten Brink, who corrects the line; Chaucers Sprache, § 320.

192. Abrayd, and not abrayde, is the right form; for it is a strong verb (A. S. ábregdan, pt. t. ábrægd). So also in the Ho. of Fame, 110 However, brayde (as if weak) also occurs; Ho. of Fame, 1678.

195. Dreynt-e is here used as an adj., with the weak declension in -e. So also in Cant. Tales, B 69. Cf. also Ho. of Fame, 1783.

199. Fet-e is dat. pl.; see l. 400, and Cant. Ta., B 1104.

206. The word look must be supplied. MS. B. even omits herte; which would give—'But good-e swet-e, [look] that ye'; where good-e and swet-e are vocatives.

213. I adopt Ten Brink's suggestion (Chaucers Sprache, § 300), viz. to change allas into A. Lange omits quod she; but see l. 215.

218. My first matere, my first subject; i. e. sleeplessness, as in l. 43.

219. Whérfor seems to be accented on the former syllable. MS. B. inserts you after told; perhaps it is not wanted. If it is, it had better come before told rather than after it.

222. I had be, I should have been. Deed and dolven, dead and buried; as in Cursor Mundi, 5494. Chaucer's dolven and deed is odd.

244. I ne roghte who, to be read In' roght-e who; i. e. I should not care who; see note to Compl. to Pite, 105. Roghte is subjunctive.

247. His lyve, during his life.

248. The readings are here onwarde, Th. F.; here onward, Tn.; here on warde, B. I do not think here onward can be meant, nor yet hereon-ward; I know of no examples of such meaningless expressions. I read here on warde, and explain it: 'I will give him the very best gift that he ever expected (to get) in his life; and (I will give it) here, in his custody, even now, as soon as possible,' &c. Ward = custody, occurs in the dat. warde in William of Palerne, 376—'How that child from here warde was went for evermore.'

250. Here Chaucer again takes a hint from Machault's Dit de la Fontaine, where we find the poet promising the god a hat and a soft bed of gerfalcon's feathers. See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 204.

See also Our English Home, p. 106.

255. Reynes, i. e. Rennes, in Brittany; spelt Raynes in the Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 358. Linen is still made there; and by 'clothe of Reynes' some kind of linen, rather than of woollen cloth, is meant. It is here to be used for pillow-cases. It was also used for sheets. 'Your shetes shall be of clothe of Rayne'; Squyr of Lowe Degre, l. 842 (in Ritson, Met. Rom. iii. 180). 'A peyre schetes of Reynes, with the heued shete [head-sheet] of the same'; Earliest Eng. Wills, ed. Furnivall, p. 4, l. 16. 'A towaile of Raynes'; Babees Book, p. 130, l. 213; and see note on p. 208 of the same. 'It [the head-sheet] was more frequently made of the fine white linen of Reynes'; Our Eng. Home, p. 109. 'Hede-shetes of Rennes' are noticed among the effects of Hen. V; see Rot. Parl. iv. p. 228; footnote on the same page. Skelton mentions rochets 'of fyne Raynes'; Colin Clout, 316. The mention of this feather-bed may have been suggested to Machault by Ovid's line about the couch of Morpheus (Metam. xi. 611)—'Plumeus, unicolor, pullo velamine tectus.'

264. We must delete quene; it is only an explanatory gloss.

279. 'To be well able to interpret my dream.'

282. The modern construction is—'The dream of King Pharaoh.' See this idiom explained in my note to the Prioresses Tale, Group F, l. 209. Cf. Gen. xli. 25.

284. As to Macrobius, see note to the Parl. of Foules, 31. And cf. Ho. of Fame, 513-7. We must never forget how frequent are Chaucer's imitations of Le Roman de la Rose. Here, for example, he is thinking of ll. 7-10 of that poem:—

After Macrobeus understand coude (from l. 283), which governs the infin. arede in l. 289.

286. Métt-e occupies the second foot in the line. Koch proposes him for he; but it is needless; see Cant. Tales, B 3930. In l. 288, read fortúned.

288. This line, found in Thynne only, is perhaps not genuine, but interpolated. Perhaps Whiche is better than Swiche.

292. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 45-47:—

And again, cf. ll. 295, &c. with the same, ll. 67-74. See pp. 95, 96.

301. Read songen, not songe, to avoid the hiatus.

304. Chaucer uses som as a singular in such cases as the present. A clear case occurs in 'Som in his bed'; Kn. Tale, 2173. (C. T. A 3031.) Hence song is the sing. verb.

309. Entunes, tunes. Cf. entuned, pp.; C. T. Prol. 123.

310. Tewnes, Tunis; vaguely put for some distant and wealthy town; see ll. 1061-4, below. Its name was probably suggested by the preceding word entunes, which required a rime. Gower mentions Kaire (Cairo) just as vaguely:—

The sense is—'that certainly, even to gain Tunis, I would not have (done other) than heard them sing.' Lange thinks these lines corrupt; but I believe the idiom is correct.

323. As stained glass windows were then rare and expensive, it is worth while observing that these gorgeous windows were not real ones, but only seen in a dream. This passage is imitated in the late poem called the Court of Love, st. 33, where we are told that 'The temple shone with windows al of glasse,' and that in the glass were portrayed the stories of Dido and Annelida. These windows, it may be observed, were equally imaginary.

328. The caesural pause comes after Ector, which might allow the intrusion of the word of before king. But Mr. Sweet omits of, and I follow him. The words of king are again inserted before Lamedon in l. 329, being caught from l. 328 above.

Lamedon is Laomedon, father of King Priam of Troy. Ector is Chaucer's spelling of Hector; Man of Lawes Tale, B 198. He here cites the usual examples of love-stories, such as those of Medea and Jason, and Paris and Helen. Lavyne is Lavinia, the second wife of Æneas; Vergil, Æn. bk. vii; Rom. Rose, 21087; cf. Ho. of Fame, 458. Observe his pronunciation of Médea, as in Ho. of Fame, 401; Cant. Ta., B 72.

332. 'There is reason to believe that Chaucer copied these imageries from the romance of Guigemar, one of the Lays of Marie de France; in which the walls of a chamber are painted with Venus and the Art of Love from Ovid. Perhaps Chaucer might not look further than the temples of Boccaccio's Theseid for these ornaments'; Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, 1871, iii. 63. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, ll. 139-146; see p. 99.

333. Bothe text and glose, i. e. both in the principal panels and in the margin. He likens the walls to the page of a book, in which the glose, or commentary, was often written in the margin. Mr. Sweet inserts with before text, and changes And into Of in the next line; I do not think the former change is necessary, but I adopt the latter.

334. It had all sorts of scenes from the Romance of the Rose on it. Chaucer again mentions this Romance by name in his Merchant's Tale; C. T., E 2032; and he tells us that he himself translated it; Prol. to Legend, 329. The celebrated Roman de la Rose was begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who wrote ll. 1-4070, and completed about forty years afterwards (in a very different and much more satirical style) by Jean de Meung (or Meun), surnamed (like his father) Clopinel, i. e. the Cripple, who wrote ll. 4071-22074; it was finished about the year 1305. The story is that of a young man who succeeded in plucking a rose in a walled garden, after overcoming extraordinary difficulties; allegorically, it means that he succeeded in obtaining the object of his love. See further above, pp. 16-19.

The E. version is invariably called the Romaunt of the Rose, and we find the title Rommant de la Rose in the original, l. 20082; cf. our romant-ic. But Burguy explains that romant is a false form, due to confusion with words rightly ending in -ant. The right O. F. form is romans, originally an adverb; from the phrase parler romans, i. e. loqui Romanice. In the Six-text edition of the Cant. Tales, E 2032, four MSS. have romance, one has romans, and one romauns.

For examples of walls or ceilings being painted with various subjects, see Warton's Hist. of E. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 131, 275; iii. 63.

340. The first accent is on Blew, not on bright. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 124, 125 (see p. 98, above):—

343. Ne in is to be read as Nin; we find it written nin in the Squieres Tale, F 35. See l. 694.

347. Whether is to be read as Wher; it is often so spelt.

348. The line, as it stands in the authorities, viz. 'And I herde goyng, bothe vp and doune'—cannot be right. Mr. Sweet omits bothe, which throws the accent upon I, and reduces herde to herd' (unaccented!). To remedy this, I also omit And. Perhaps speke (better speken) is an infinitive in l. 350, but it may also be the pt. t. plural (A. S. sprǽcon); and it is more convenient to take it so.

352. Upon lengthe, after a great length of course, after a long run.

M. Sandras points out some very slight resemblances between this passage and some lines in a French poem in the Collection Mouchet, vol. ii. fol. 106; see the passage cited in Furnivall's Trial Forewords to the Minor Poems, p. 51. Most likely Chaucer wrote independently of this French poem, as even M. Sandras seems inclined to admit.

353. Embosed, embossed. This is a technical term, used in various senses, for which see the New Eng. Dict. Here it means 'so far plunged into the thicket'; from O. F. bos (F. bois), a wood. In later authors, it came to mean 'driven to extremity, like a hunted animal'; then 'exhausted by running,' and lastly, 'foaming at the mouth,' as a result of exhaustion.

362. A relay was a fresh set of dogs; see Relay in my Etym. Dict.

A lymere was a dog held in a liam, lime, or leash, to be let loose when required; from O.F. liem (F. lien, Lat. ligamen), a leash. In the Book of St. Alban's, fol. e 4, we are told that the beasts which should be 'reride with the lymer,' i. e. roused and pursued by the dog so called, are 'the hert and the bucke and the boore.'

365. Oon, ladde, i. e. one who led. This omission of the relative is common.

368. 'The emperor Octovien' is the emperor seen by Chaucer in his dream. In l. 1314, he is called this king, by whom Edward III. is plainly intended. He was 'a favourite character of Carolingian legend, and pleasantly revived under this aspect by the modern romanticist Ludwig Tieck—probably [here] a flattering allegory for the King'; Ward's Life of Chaucer, p. 69. The English romance of Octouian Imperator is to be found in Weber's Metrical Romances, iii. 157; it extends to 1962 lines. He was an emperor of Rome, and married Floraunce, daughter of Dagabers [Dagobert], king of France. The adventures of Floraunce somewhat resemble those of Constance in the Man of Lawes Tale. 'The Romance of the Emperor Octavian' was also edited by Halliwell for the Percy Society, in 1844. The name originally referred to the emperor Augustus.

370. The exclamation 'A goddes halfe' was pronounced like 'A god's half'; see l. 758. See note to l. 544.

374. Fil to doon, fell to do, i. e. was fitting to do.

375. Fot-hoot, foot-hot, immediately; see my note to Man of Lawes Tale, B 438.

376. Moot, notes upon a horn, here used as a plural. See Glossary. 'How shall we blowe whan ye han sen the hert? I shal blowe after one mote, ij motes [i. e. 3 motes in all]; and if myn howndes come not hastily to me as I wolde, I shall blowe iiij. motes'; Venery de Twety, in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 152.

Cf. a passage in the Chace du Cerf, quoted from the Collection Mouchet, i. 166, in Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 51 (though Chaucer probably wrote his account quite independently of it):—

379. Rechased, headed back. Men were posted at certain places, to keep the hart within certain bounds. See next note.

386. A forloyn, a recall (as I suppose; for it was blown when the hounds were all a long way off their object of pursuit). It is thus explained in the Book of St. Alban's, fol. f I:—

The 'chace of the forloyne' is explained (very obscurely) in the Venery de Twety; see Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 152. But the following passage from the same gives some light upon rechased: 'Another chace ther is whan a man hath set up archerys and greyhoundes, and the best be founde, and passe out the boundys, and myne houndes after; then shall y blowe on this maner a mote, and aftirward the rechace upon my houndys that be past the boundys.'

387. Go, gone. The sense is—'I had gone (away having) walked from my tree.' The idiom is curious. My tree, the tree at which I had been posted. Chaucer dreamt that he was one of the men posted to watch which way the hart went, and to keep the bounds.

396. The final e in fled-de is not elided, owing to the pause after it. See note to l. 685.

398. Wente, path. Chaucer often rimes words that are pronounced alike, if their meanings be different. See ll. 439, 440; and cf. ll. 627-630. The very same pair of rimes occurs again in the Ho. of Fame, 181, 182; and in Troil. ii. 62, 813; iii. 785, v. 603, 1192.

402. Read—For both-e Flor-a, &c. The -a in Flora comes at the cæsural pause; cf. ll. 413, 414. Once more, this is from Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 8449-51:—

Cf. also ll. 5962-5:—

405. The first accent is on For; not happily.

408. 'To have more flowers than the heaven (has stars, so as even to rival) seven such planets as there are in the sky.' Rather involved, and probably all suggested by the necessity for a rime to heven. See l. 824. Moreover, it is copied from Le Roman de la Rose, 8465-8:—

410-412. From Le Roman de la Rose, 55-58 (see p. 95, above):—

419. Imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 1373-1391; in particular:—

Chaucer has treated a toise as if it were equal to two feet; it was really about six. In his own translation of the Romaunt, l. 1393, he translates toise by fadome. See p. 151 (above).

429. According to the Book of St. Albans, fol. e 4, the buck was called a fawne in his first year, a preket in the second, a sowrell in the third, a sowre in the fourth, a bucke of the fyrst hede in the fifth, and a bucke (simply) in the sixth year. Also a roo is the female of the roobucke.

435. Argus is put for Algus, the old French name for the inventor of the Arabic numerals; it occurs in l. 16373 of the Roman de la Rose, which mentions him in company with Euclid and Ptolemy—

This name was obviously confused with that of the hundred-eyed Argus.

This name Algus was evolved out of the O.F. algorisme, which, as Dr. Murray says, is a French adaptation 'from the Arab. al-Khowārazmī, the native of Khwārazm (Khiva), surname of the Arab mathematician Abu Ja'far Mohammed Ben Musa, who flourished early in the 9th century, and through the translation of whose work on Algebra, the Arabic numerals became generally known in Europe. Cf. Euclid = plane geometry.' He was truly 'a noble countour,' to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. That Algus was sometimes called Argus, also appears from the Roman de la Rose, ll. 12994, &c., which is clearly the very passage which Chaucer here copies:—

Here o means 'with'; so that Chaucer has copied the very phrase 'with his figures ten.' But still more curiously, Jean de Meun here rimes nombre, pres. sing. indic., with nombre, sb.; and Chaucer rimes noumbre, infin., with noumbre, sb. likewise. Countour in l. 435 means 'arithmetician'; in the next line it means an abacus or counting-board, for assisting arithmetical operations.

437. His figures ten; the ten Arabic numerals, i. e. from 1 to 9, and the cipher 0.

438. Al ken, all kin, i. e. mankind, all men. This substitution of ken for kin (A.S. cyn) seems to have been due to the exigencies of rime, as Chaucer uses kin elsewhere. However, Gower has the same form—'And of what ken that she was come'; Conf. Am. b. viii; ed. Pauli, iii. 332. So also in Will. of Palerne, 722—'Miself knowe ich nouȝt mi ken'; and five times at least in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, as it is a Kentish form. It was, doubtless, a permissible variant.

442. The strong accent on me is very forced.

445. A man in blak; John of Gaunt, in mourning for the loss of his wife Blaunche. Imitated by Lydgate, in his Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 130, and by Spenser, in his Daphnaida:—

452. Wel-faring-e; four syllables.

455. John of Gaunt, born in June, 1340, was 29 years old in 1369. I do not know why a poet is never to make a mistake; nor why critics should lay down such a singular law. But if we are to lay the error on the scribes, Mr. Brock's suggestion is excellent. He remarks that nine and twenty was usually written xxviiij.; and if the v were omitted, it would appear as .xxiiij., i. e. four and twenty. The existing MSS. write 'foure and twenty' at length; but such is not the usual practice of earlier scribes. It may also be added that .xxiiij. was at that time always read as four and twenty, never as twenty-four; so that no ambiguity could arise as to the mode of reading it. See Richard the Redeless, iii. 260.

There is a precisely similiar confusion in Cant. Ta. Group B, l. 5, where eightetethe is denoted by 'xviijthe' in the Hengwrt MS., whilst the Harl. MS. omits the v, and reads threttenthe, and again the Ellesmere MS. inserts an x, and gives us eighte and twentithe. The presumption is, that Chaucer knew his patron's age, and that we ought to read nine for four; but even if he inadvertently wrote four, there is no crime in it.

475. The knight's lay falls into two stanzas, one of five, and one of six lines, as marked. In order to make them more alike, Thynne inserted an additional line—And thus in sorowe lefte me alone—after l. 479. This additional line is numbered 480 in the editions; so I omit l. 480 in the numbering. The line is probably spurious. It is not grammatical; grammar would require that has (not is, as in l. 479) should be understood before the pp. left; or if we take left-e as a past tense, then the line will not scan. But it is also unmetrical, as the arrangement of lines should be the same as in ll. 481-6, if the two stanzas are to be made alike. Chaucer says the lay consisted of 'ten verses or twelve' in l. 463, which is a sufficiently close description of a lay of eleven lines. Had he said twelve without any mention of ten, the case would have been different.

479. Lange proposes: 'Is deed, and is fro me agoon.' F. Tn. Th. agree as to the reading given; I see nothing against it.

481. If we must needs complete the line, we must read 'Allas! o deth!' inserting o; or 'Allas! the deth,' inserting the. The latter is proposed by Ten Brink, Sprache, &c. § 346.

490. Pure, very; cf. 'pure fettres,' Kn. Tale, A 1279. And see l. 583, below.

491. Cf. 'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart?' Meas. for Meas. ii. 4. 20.

501. The MSS. have seet, sat, a false form for sat (A.S. sæt); due to the plural form seet-e or sēt-e (A.S. sǽt-on). We certainly find seet for sat in the Kn. Tale, A 2075. Read sete, as the pt. t. subj. (A.S. sǣte); and fete as dative pl. form, as in Cant. Ta. B 1104.

510. Made, i. e. they made; idiomatic.

521. Ne I, nor I; to be read N'I; cf. note to l. 343.

526. 'Yes; the amends is (are) easily made.'

532. Me acqueynte = m'acqueynt-e, acquaint myself.

544. By our Lord, to be read as by'r Lord. Cf. by'r lakin, Temp. iii. 3. 1. So again, in ll. 651, 690, 1042.

547. Me thinketh (= me think'th), it seems to me.

550. Wis, certainly: 'As certainly (as I hope that) God may help me.' So in Nonne Prestes Tale, 587 (B 4598); and cf. Kn. Tale, 1928 (B 2786); Squ. Ta. F 469, &c. And see l. 683, below.

556. Paraventure, pronounced as Paraunter; Thynne so has it.

Compare this passage with the long dialogue between Troilus and Pandarus, in the latter part of the first book of Troilus.

568. Alluding to Ovid's Remedia Amoris. Accent remédies on the second syllable.

569. The story of Orpheus is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. x. The allusion is to the harp of Orpheus, at the sound of which the tortured had rest. Cf. Ho. of Fame, 1202:—

570. Cf. Ho. of Fame, 919; Rom. Rose, 21633. Dædalus represents the mechanician. No mechanical contrivances can help the mourner.

572. Cf.