Front matter (continued 12)

Hippocrates and Galen are meant; see note to Cant. Tales, C 306.

579. Y-worthe, (who am) become; pp. of worthen.

582. 'For all good fortune and I are foes,' lit. angry (with each other). Hence wroth-e is a plural form.

589. S and C were so constantly interchanged before e that Sesiphus could be written Cesiphus; and C and T were so often mistaken that Cesiphus easily became Tesiphus, the form in the Tanner MS. Further, initial T was sometimes replaced by Th; and this would give the Thesiphus of MS. F.

Sesiphus, i. e. Sisyphus, is of course intended; it was in the author's mind in connection with the story of Orpheus just above; see note to l. 569. In the Roman de la Rose, we have the usual allusions to Yxion (l. 19479), Tentalus, i. e. Tantalus (l. 19482), Ticius, i. e. Tityus (l. 19506), and Sisifus (l. 19499).

But whilst I thus hold that Chaucer probably wrote Sesiphus, I have no doubt that he really meant Tityus, as is shewn by the expression lyth, i. e. lies extended. See Troil. i. 786, where Bell's edition has Siciphus, but the Campsall MS. has Ticyus; whilst in ed. 1532 we find Tesiphus.

599. With this string of contrarieties compare the Eng. version of the Roman de la Rose, 4706-4753. See p. 212, above.

614. Abaved, confounded, disconcerted. See Glossary.

618. Imitated from the Roman de la Rose, from l. 6644 onwards—

Jean de Meun goes on to say that Charles of Anjou killed Manfred, king of Sicily, in the first battle with him [A.D. 1266]—

He next speaks of Conradin, whose death was likewise caused by Charles in 1268, so that these two (Manfred and Conradin) lost all their pieces at chess—

And further, of the inventor of chess (l. 6715)—

He talks of the queen being taken (at chess), l. 6735—

He cannot recount all Fortune's tricks (l. 6879)—

629. Cf. 'whited sepulchres'; Matt. xxiii. 27; Rom. de la Rose, 8946.

630. The MSS. and Thynne have floures, flourys. This gives no sense; we must therefore read flour is. For a similar rime see that of nones, noon is, in the Prologue, 523, 524. Strictly, grammar requires ben rather than is; but when two nominatives express much the same sense, the singular verb may be used, as in Lenvoy to Bukton, 6. The sense is—'her chief glory and her prime vigour is (i. e. consists in) lying.'

634. The parallel passage is one in the Remède de Fortune, by G. de Machault:—

See Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 47; and compare the remarkable and elaborate description of Fortune in the Anticlaudian of Alanus de Insulis (Distinctio 8, cap. I), in Wright's Anglo-Latin Satirists, vol. ii. pp. 399, 400.

636. Chaucer seems to have rewritten the whole passage at a later period:—

Compare also Man of Lawes Tale, B 361, 404. 'The scorpiun is ones cunnes wurm thet haueth neb, ase me seith, sumdel iliche ase wummon, and is neddre bihinden; maketh feir semblaunt and fiketh mit te heaued, and stingeth mid te teile'; Ancren Riwle, p. 206. Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Naturale, bk. xx. c. 160, quotes from the Liber de Naturis Rerum—'Scorpio blandum et quasi virgineum dicitur vultum habere, sed habet in cauda nodosa venenatum aculeum, quo pungit et inficit proximantem.'

642. A translated line; see note to l. 634.

651. Read—Trow'st thou? by'r lord; see note to l. 544.

653. Draught is a move at chess; see ll. 682, 685. Thus in Caxton's Game of the Chesse—'the alphyn [bishop] goeth in vj. draughtes al the tablier [board] rounde about.' So in The Tale of Beryn, 1779, 1812. It translates the F. trait; see note to l. 618 (second quotation).

654. 'Fers, the piece at chess next to the king, which we and other European nations call the queen; though very improperly, as Hyde has observed. Pherz, or Pherzan, which is the Persian name for the same piece, signifies the King's Chief Counsellor, or General—Hist. Shahilud. [shahi-ludii, chess-play], pp. 88, 89.'—Tyrwhitt's Glossary. Chaucer follows Rom. Rose, where the word appears as fierge, l. 6688, and fierche, l. 6735; see note to l. 618 above. (For another use of fers, see note to l. 723 below.) Godefroy gives the O. F. spellings fierce, fierche, fierge, firge, and quotes two lines, which give the O. F. names of all the pieces at chess:—

Caxton calls them kyng, quene, alphyn, knyght, rook, pawn. Richardson's Pers. Dict. p. 1080, gives the Pers. name of the queen as farzī or farzīn, and explains farsīn by 'the queen at chess, a learned man'; compare Tyrwhitt's remark above. In fact, the orig. Skt. name for this piece was mantrí, i. e. the adviser or counsellor. He also gives the Pers. farz, learned; farz or firz, the queen at chess. I suppose it is a mere chance that the somewhat similar Arab. faras means 'a horse, and the knight at chess'; Richardson (as above). Oddly enough, the latter word has also some connection with Chaucer, as it is the Arabic name of the 'wedge' of an astrolabe; see Chaucer's Astrolabe, Part i. § 14 (footnote), in vol. iii.

655. When a chess-player, by an oversight, loses his queen for nothing, he may, in general, as well as give up the game. Beryn was 'in hevy plyghte,' when he only lost a rook for nothing; Tale of Beryn, 1812.

660. The word the before mid must of course be omitted. The lines are to be scanned thus:—

The rime is a feminine one. Lines 660 and 661 are copied from the Rom. Rose; see note to l. 618, above. To be checkmated by an 'errant' pawn in the very middle of the board is a most ignominious way of losing the game. Cf. check-mate in Troil. ii. 754.

663. Athalus; see note to l. 618, above. Jean de Meun follows John of Salisbury (bishop of Chartres, died 1180) in attributing the invention of chess to Attalus. 'Attalus Asiaticus, si Gentilium creditur historiis, hanc ludendi lasciuiam dicitur inuenisse ab exercitio numerorum, paululum deflexa materia;' Joan. Saresburiensis Policraticus, lib. i. c. 5. Warton (Hist. E. Poet. 1871, iii. 91) says the person meant is Attalus Philometor, king of Pergamus; who is mentioned by Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 3, xxviii. 2. It is needless to explain here how chess was developed out of the old Indian game for four persons called chaturanga, i. e. consisting of four members or parts (Benfey's Skt. Dict. p. 6). I must refer the reader to Forbes's History of Chess, or the article on Chess in the English Cyclopædia. See also the E. version of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. Herrtage, p. 70; A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, ed. Wright, p. 324; and Sir F. Madden's article in the Archæologia, xxiv. 203.

666. Ieupardyes, hazards, critical positions, problems; see note on Cant. Tales, Group G, 743.

667. Pithagores, put for Pythagoras; for the rime. Pythagoras of Samos, born about B.C. 570, considered that all things were founded upon numerical relations; various discoveries in mathematics, music, and astronomy, were attributed to him.

682. 'I would have made the same move'; i. e. had I had the power, I would have taken her fers from her, just as she took mine.

684. She, i. e. Fortune; so in Thynne. The MSS. have He, i. e. God, which can hardly be meant.

685. The cæsural pause preserves e in draughte from elision. It rimes with caughte (l. 682). Similar examples of 'hiatus' are not common: Ten Brink (Sprache, § 270) instances Cant. Tales, Group C, 599, 772 (Pard. Tale).

694. Ne in is to be read as nin (twice); see note to l. 343.

700. 'There lies in reckoning (i. e. is debited to me in the account), as regards sorrow, for no amount at all.' In his account with Sorrow he is owed nothing, having received payment in full. There is no real difficulty here.

705. 'I have nothing'; for (1) Sorrow has paid in full, and so owes me nothing; (2) I have no gladness left; (3) I have lost my true wealth; (4) and I have no pleasure.

708. 'What is past is not yet to come.'

709. Tantale, Tantalus. He has already referred to Sisyphus; see note to l. 589. In the Roman de la Rose, we find Yxion, l. 19479; Tentalus, l. 19482; and Sisifus, l. 19499; as I have already remarked.

717. Again from the Rom. de la Rose, l. 5869—

Chaucer's three strees (i. e. straws) is Jean de Meun's prune.

723. By the ferses twelve I understand all the pieces except the king, which could not be taken. The guess in Bell's Chaucer says 'all the pieces except the pawns'; but as a player only has seven pieces beside the pawns and king, we must then say that the knight exaggerates. My own reckoning is thus: pawns, eight; queen, bishop, rook, knight, four; total, twelve. The fact that each player has two of three of these, viz. of the bishop, rook, and knight, arose from the conversion of chaturaṅga, in which each of four persons had a king, bishop, knight, rook [to keep to modern names] and four pawns, into chess, in which each of two persons had two kings (afterwards king and queen), two bishops, knights, and rooks, and eight pawns. The bishop, knight, and rook, were thus duplicated, and so count but one apiece, which makes three (sorts of) pieces; and the queen is a fourth, for the king cannot be taken. The case of the pawns was different, for each pawn had an individuality of its own, no two being made alike (except in inferior sets). Caxton's Game of the Chesse shews this clearly; he describes each of the eight pawns separately, and gives a different figure to each. According to him, the pawns were (beginning from the King's Rook's Pawn) the Labourer, Smyth, Clerke (or Notary), Marchaunt, Physicien, Tauerner, Garde, and Ribauld. They denoted 'all sorts and conditions of men'; and this is why our common saying of 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief' enumerates eight conditions^[288].

As the word fers originally meant counsellor or monitor of the king, it could be applied to any of the pieces. There was a special reason for its application to each of the pawns; for a pawn, on arriving at its last square, could not be exchanged (as now) for any piece at pleasure, but only for a queen, i. e. the fers par excellence. For, as Caxton says again, 'he [the pawn] may not goo on neyther side till he hath been in the fardest ligne of theschequer, & that he hath taken the nature of the draughtes of the quene, & than he is a fiers, and than may he goo on al sides cornerwyse fro poynt to poynt onely as the quene'; &c.

726. These stock examples all come together in the Rom. de la Rose; viz. Jason and Medee, at l. 13433; Philis and Demophon, at l. 13415; 'Dido, roine de Cartage,' at l. 13379. The story of Echo and Narcissus is told fully, in an earlier passage (see ll. 1469-1545 of the English version, at p. 154); also that of 'Dalida' and 'Sanson' in a later passage, at l. 16879. See also the Legends of Dido, Medea, and Phillis in the Legend of Good Women; and the story of Sampson in the Monkes Tale, B 3205:—

779. M. Sandras points out the resemblance to a passage in G. de Machault's Remède de Fortune:—

The rime of table and able settles the point. Mr. Brock points out a parallel passage in Boethius, which Chaucer thus translates:—'the soule hadde ben naked of it-self, as a mirour or a clene parchemin.... Right as we ben wont som tyme by a swifte pointel to ficchen lettres emprented in the smothenesse or in the pleinnesse of the table of wex, or in parchemin that ne hath no figure ne note in it'; bk. v. met. 4. But I doubt if Chaucer knew much of Boethius in 1369; and in the present passage he clearly refers to a prepared white surface, not to a tablet of wax. 'Youth and white paper take any impression'; Ray's Proverbs.

791. An allusion to the old proverb which is given in Hending in the form—'Whose yong lerneth, olt [old] he ne leseth'; Hending's Prov. l. 45. Kemble gives the medieval Latin—'Quod puer adsuescit, leviter dimittere nescit'; Gartner, Dicteria, p. 24 b. Cf. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 69; also Rom. de la Rose, 13094.

799. John of Gaunt married Blaunche at the age of nineteen.

805. Imitated from Machault's Dit du Vergier and Fontaine Amoureuse.

These are, no doubt, the lines to which Tyrwhitt refers in his remarks on the present passage in a note to the last paragraph of the Persones Tale. Observe also how closely the fifth line of the latter passage answers to l. 812.

823. Is, which is; as usual. I propose this reading. That of the MSS. is very bad, viz. 'Than any other planete in heven.'

824. 'The seven stars' generally mean the planets; but, as the sun and moon and planets have just been mentioned, the reference may be to the well-known seven stars in Ursa Major commonly called Charles's Wain. In later English, the seven stars sometimes mean the Pleiades; see Pleiade in Cotgrave's French Dictionary, and G. Douglas, ed. Small, i. 69. 23, iii. 147. 15. The phrase is, in fact, ambiguous; see note to P. Plowman, C. xviii. 98.

831. Referring to Christ and His twelve apostles.

835-7. Resembles Le Roman de la Rose, 1689-91 (see p. 164)—

840. Koch proposes to omit maner, and read—'No counseyl, but at hir loke.' It is more likely that counseyl has slipped in, as a gloss upon reed, and was afterwards substituted for it.

849. Carole, dance round, accompanying the dance with a song. The word occurs in the Rom. de la Rose several times; thus at l. 747, we have:—

Cf. Chaucer's version, ll. 759, 810; also 744. Dante uses the pl. carole (Parad. xxiv. 16) to express swift circular movements; and Cary quotes a comment upon it to the effect that 'carolæ dicuntur tripudium quoddam quod fit saliendo, ut Napolitani faciunt et dicunt.' He also quotes the expression 'grans danses et grans karolles' from Froissart, ed. 1559, vol. i. cap. 219. That it meant singing as well as dancing appears from the Rom. de la Rose, l. 731.

858. Chaucer gives Virginia golden hair; Doct. Tale, C 38. Compare the whole description of the maiden in the E. version of the Rom. of the Rose, ll. 539-561 (p. 116, above).

861. Of good mochel, of an excellent size; mochel = size, occurs in P. Plowman, B. xvi. 182. Scan the line—

894. 'In reasonable cases, that involve responsibility.'

908. Somewhat similar are ll. 9-18 of the Doctoures Tale.

916. Scan by reading—They n' shóld' hav' foúnd-e, &c.

917. A wikked signe, a sign, or mark, of wickedness.

919. Imitated from Machault's Remède de Fortune (see Trial Forewords, p. 48):—

Line 922 is taken from this word for word.

927-8. 'Nor that scorned less, nor that could better heal,' &c.

943. Canel-boon, collar-bone; lit. channel-bone, i. e. bone with a channel behind it. See Three Metrical Romances (Camden Soc.), p. 19; Gloss. to Babees Book, ed. Furnivall; and the Percy Folio MS., i. 387. I put and for or; the sense requires a conjunction.

948. Here Whyte, representing the lady's name, is plainly a translation of Blaunche. The insertion of whyte in l. 905, in the existing authorities, is surely a blunder, and I therefore have omitted it. It anticipates the climax of the description, besides ruining the scansion of the line.

950. There is here some resemblance to some lines in G. Machault's Remède de Fortune (see Trial Forewords, p. 49):—

957. For hippes, Bell prints lippes; a comic reading.

958. This reading means—'I knew in her no other defect'; which, as no defect has been mentioned, seems inconsistent. Perhaps we should read no maner lak, i. e. no 'sort of defect in her (to cause) that all her limbs should not be proportionate.'

964. A common illustration. See Rom. de la Rose, 7448; Alexander and Dindimus, ll. 233-5. Duke Francesco Maria had, for one of his badges, a lighted candle by which others are lighted; with the motto Non degener addam, i. e. I will give without loss; see Mrs. Palliser's Historic Devices, p. 263. And cf. Cant. Ta. D 333-5.

973. The accents seem to fall on She and have, the e in wold-e being elided. Otherwise, read: She wóld-e háv' be.

982. Liddell and Scott explain Gk. φοίνιξ as 'the fabulous Egyptian bird phœnix, first in Hesiod, Fragment 50. 4; then in Herodotus, ii. 73.' Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, bk. 16. c. 74, refers us to Isidore, Ambrosius (lib. 5), Solinus, Pliny (lib. 10), and Liber de Naturis Rerum; see Solinus, Polyhistor. c. 33. 11; A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, c. 34. Philip de Thaun describes it in his Bestiaire, l. 1089; see Popular Treatises on Science, ed. Wright, p. 113. 'The Phœnix of Arabia passes all others. Howbeit, I cannot tell what to make of him; and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that there is neuer but one of them in all the world, and the same not commonly seen'; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. 10. c. 2.

Scan: Th' soléyn | feníx | of A | rabye ||. Cf. 'Com la fenix souleine est au sejour En Arabie': Gower, Balade 35.

987. Chaucer refers to Esther again; e.g. in his Merchant's Tale (E 1371, 1744); Leg. of G. Women, prol. 250; and in the Tale of Melibee (B 2291).

997. Cf. Vergil, Æn. i. 630: 'Haud ignara mali.'

1021. In balaunce, i. e. in a state of suspense. F. en balance; Rom. de la Rose, 13871, 16770.

1024. This sending of lovers on expeditions, by way of proving them, was in accordance with the manners of the time. Gower explains the whole matter, in his Conf. Amant, lib. 4 (ed. Pauli, ii. 56):—

Chaucer's Knight (in the Prologue) sought for renown in Pruce, Alisaundre, and Turkye.

There is a similar passage in Le Rom. de la Rose, 18499-18526. The first part of Machault's Dit du Lion (doubtless the Book of the Lion of which Chaucer's translation is now lost) is likewise taken up with the account of lovers who undertook feats, in order that the news of their deeds might reach their ladies. Among the places to which they used to go are mentioned Alexandres, Alemaigne, Osteriche, Behaigne, Honguerie, Danemarche, Prusse, Poulaine, Cracoe, Tartarie, &c. Some even went 'jusqu'à l'Arbre sec, Ou li oisel pendent au bec.' This alludes to the famous Arbre sec or Dry Tree, to reach which was a feat indeed; see Yule's edition of Marco Polo, i. 119; Maundeville, ed. Halliwell, p. 68; Mätzner, Sprachproben, ii. 185.

As a specimen of the modes of expression then prevalent, Warton draws attention to a passage in Froissart, c. 81, where Sir Walter Manny prefaces a gallant charge upon the enemy with the words—'May I never be embraced by my mistress and dear friend, if I enter castle or fortress before I have unhorsed one of these gallopers.'

1028. Go hoodles, travel without even the protection of a hood; by way of bravado. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. § 18 (ed. Hazlitt, iii. 4), says of a society called the Fraternity of the Penitents of Love—'Their object was to prove the excess of their love, by shewing with an invincible fortitude and consistency of conduct ... that they could bear extremes of heat and cold.... It was a crime to wear fur on a day of the most piercing cold; or to appear with a hood, cloak, gloves or muff.' See the long account of this in the Knight de la Tour Landry, ed. Wright, p. 169; and cf. The Squyer of Low Degree, 171-200.

What is meant by the drye se (dry sea) is disputed; but it matters little, for the general idea is clear. Mr. Brae, in the Appendix to his edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe (p. 101), has a long note on the present passage. Relying on the above quotation from Warton, he supposes hoodless to have reference to a practice of going unprotected in winter, and says that 'dry sea' may refer to any frozen sea. But it may equally refer to going unprotected in summer, in which case he offers us an alternative suggestion, that 'any arid sandy desert might be metaphorically called a dry sea.' The latter is almost a sufficient explanation; but if we must be particular, Mr. Brae has yet more to tell us. He says that, at p. 1044 (Basle edition) of Sebastian Munster's Cosmographie, there is a description of a large lake which was dry in summer. 'It is said that there is a lake near the city of Labac, adjoining the plain of Zircknitz [Czirknitz], which in winter-time becomes of great extent.... But in summer the water drains away, the fish expire, the bed of the lake is ploughed up, corn grows to maturity, and, after the harvest is over, the waters return, &c. The Augspourg merchants have assured me of this, and it has been since confirmed to me by Vergier, the bishop of Cappodistria' [Capo d'Istria]. The lake still exists, and is no fable. It is the variable lake of Czirknitz, which sometimes covers sixty-three square miles, and is sometimes dry. It is situate in the province of Krain, or Carniola; Labac is the modern Laybach or Laibach, N.E. of Trieste. See the articles Krain, Czirknitz in the Engl. Cyclopædia, and the account of the lake in The Student, Sept. 1869.

That Chaucer really referred to this very lake becomes almost certain, if we are to accept Mr. Brae's explanation of the next line. See the next note.

1029. Carrenare. Mr. Brae suggests that the reference is to the 'gulf of the Carnaro or Quarnaro in the Adriatic,' to which Dante alludes in the Inferno, ix. 113, as being noted for its perils. Cary's translation runs thus:—

It is called in Black's Atlas the Channel of Quarnerolo, and is the gulf which separates Istria from Croatia. The head of the gulf runs up towards the province of Carniola, and approaches within forty miles (at the outside) of the lake of Czirknitz (see note above). I suppose that Quarnaro may be connected with Carn-iola and the Carn-ic Alps, but popular etymology interpreted it to mean 'charnel-house,' from its evil reputation. This appears from the quotations cited by Mr. Brae; he says that the Abbé Fortis quotes a Paduan writer, Palladio Negro, as saying—'E regione Istriæ, sinu Palatico, quem nautæ carnarium vocitant'; and again, Sebastian Munster, in his Cosmographie, p. 1044 (Basle edition) quotes a description by Vergier, Bishop of Capo d'Istria—'par deça le gouffre enragé lequel on appelle vulgairement Carnarie, d'autantque le plus souvent on le voit agité de tempestes horribles; et là s'engloutissent beaucoup de navires et se perdent plusieurs hommes.' In other words, the true name Quarnaro or Carnaro was turned by the sailors into Carnario, which means in Italian 'the shambles'; see Florio's Dict., ed. 1598. This Carnario might become Careynaire or Carenare in Chaucer's English, by association with the M.E. careyne or caroigne, carrion. This word is used by Chaucer in the Kn. Tale, 1155 (Six-text, A 2013), where the Ellesmere MS. has careyne, and the Cambridge and Petworth MSS. have careyn.

For myself, I am well satisfied with the above explanation. It is probable, and it suffices; and stories about this dry sea may easily have been spread by Venetian sailors. I may add that Maundeville mentions 'a gravely see' in the land of Prestre John, 'that is alle gravele and sonde, with-outen any drope of watre; and it ebbethe and flowethe in grete wawes, as other sees don': ed. Halliwell, p. 272. This curious passage was pointed out by Prof. Hales, in a letter in the Academy, Jan. 28, 1882, p. 65.

We certainly ought to reject the explanation given with great assurance in the Saturday Review, July, 1870, p. 143, col. 1, that the allusion is to the chain of mountains called the Carena or Charenal, a continuation of the Atlas Mountains in Africa. The writer says—'Leonardo Dati (A.D. 1470), speaking of Africa, mentions a chain of mountains in continuation of the Atlas, 300 miles long, "commonly called Charenal." In the fine chart of Africa by Juan de la Coxa (1500), this chain is made to stretch as far as Egypt, and bears the name of Carena. La Salle, who was born in 1398, lays down the same chain, which corresponds, says Santarem (Histoire de la Cosmographie, iii. 456), to the Καρήνη of Ptolemy. These allusions place it beyond doubt [?] that the drie see of Chaucer was the Great Sahara, the return from whence [sic] homewards would be by the chain of the Atlas or [sic] Carena.' On the writer's own shewing, the Carena was not the Atlas, but a chain stretching thence towards Egypt; not an obvious way of returning home! Whereas, if the 'dry sea' were the lake of Czirknitz, the obvious way of getting away from it would be to take ship in the neighbouring gulf of Quarnaro. And how could Chaucer come to hear of this remote chain of mountains?

1034. 'But why do I tell you my story?' I. e. let me go on with it, and tell you the result.

1037. Again imitated from Machault's Remède de Fortune:—

Line 1039 is closely translated. See Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 48.

1040. I here substitute lisse for goddesse, as in the authorities. The blunder is obvious; goddesse clogs the line with an extra syllable, and gives a false rime such as Chaucer never makes^[289]. He rimes blisse with kisse, lisse, misse, and wisse. Thus in the Frankelein's Tale, F 1237—

Lisse is alleviation, solace, comfort; and l. 1040 as emended, fairly corresponds to Machault's 'C'est ce qui me soustient en vie,' i. e. it is she who sustains my life. The word goddesse was probably substituted for lisse, because the latter was obsolescent.

1041. I change hoolly hirs into hirs hoolly, and omit the following and. In the next line we have—By'r lord; as before (ll. 544, 651, 690).

1047. Leve (i. e. believe) is here much stronger than trowe, which merely expresses general assent.

1050. Read—'And to | behold | e th'alder | fayrest | e.' After beholde comes the cæsural pause, so that the final e in beholde does not count. Koch proposes to omit alder-. But how came it there?

1057. The spelling Alcipiades occurs in the Roman de la Rose, 8981, where he is mentioned as a type of beauty—'qui de biauté avoit adès'—on the authority of 'Boece.' The ultimate reference is to Boethius, Cons. Phil. b. iii. pr. 8. l. 32—'the body of Alcibiades that was ful fayr.'

1058. Hercules is also mentioned in Le Rom. de la Rose, 9223, 9240. See also Ho. Fame, 1413.

1060. Koch proposes to omit al; I would rather omit the. But we may read al th.'

1061. See note to l. 310.

1067. He, i. e. Achilles himself; see next note.

1069. Antilegius, a corruption of Antilochus; and again, Antilochus is a mistake for Archilochus, owing to the usual medieval confusion in the forms of proper names. For the story, see next note.

1070. Dares Frigius, i. e. Dares Phrygius, or Dares of Phrygia. Chaucer again refers to him near the end of Troilus, and in Ho. Fame, 1467 (on which see the note). The works of Dares and Dictys are probably spurious. The reference is really to the very singular, yet popular, medieval version of the story of the Trojan war which was written by Guido of Colonna, and is entitled 'Historia destructionis Troie, per iudicem Guidonem de Columpna Messaniensem.' Guido's work was derived from the Roman de Troie, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure; of which romance there is a late edition by M. Joly. In Mr. Panton's introduction to his edition of the Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy (Early Eng. Text Society), p. ix., we read—'From the exhaustive reasonings and proofs of Mons. Joly as to the person and age and country of his author, it is sufficiently manifest that the Roman du Troie appeared between the years 1175 and 1185. The translation, or version, of the Roman by Guido de Colonna was finished, as he tells us at the end of his Historia Trioana, in 1287. From one or other, or both, of these works, the various Histories, Chronicles, Romances, Gestes, and Plays of The Destruction of Troy, The Prowess and Death of Hector, The Treason of the Greeks, &c., were translated, adapted, or amplified, in almost every language of Europe.'

The fact is, that the western nations of Europe claimed connexion, through Æneas and his followers, with the Trojans, and repudiated Homer as favouring the Greeks. They therefore rewrote the story of the Trojan war after a manner of their own; and, in order to give it authority, pretended that it was derived from two authors named Dares Phrygius (or Dares of Phrygia) and Dictys Cretensis (or Dictys of Crete). Dares and Dictys were real names, as they were cited in the time of Ælian (A.D. 230); and it was said that Dares was a Trojan who was killed by Ulysses. See further in Mr. Panton's introduction, as above; Morley's English Writers, vi. 118; and Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 127 (sect. 3). But Warton does not seem to have known that Guido mainly followed Benoit de Sainte-Maure.

The story about the death of Achilles is taken, accordingly, not from Homer but from Guido de Colonna and his predecessor Benoit. It may be found in the alliterative Geste Hystoriale, above referred to (ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 342); or in Lydgate's Siege of Troye, bk. iv. c. 32. Hecuba invites Achilles and Archilochus to meet her in the temple of Apollo. When they arrive, they are attacked by Paris and a band of men and soon killed, though Achilles first slays seven of his foes with his own hand.

Here 'the kyng' is Achilles, and 'the knyght' is Archilochus. It may be added that Achilles was lured to the temple by the expectation that he would there meet Polyxena, and be wedded to her; as Chaucer says in the next line. Polyxena was a daughter of Priam and Hecuba; she is alluded to in Shakespeare's Troilus, iii. 3. 208. According to Ovid, Metam. xiii. 448, she was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles.

Lydgate employs the forms Archylogus and Anthylogus.

1071. I supply hir; Koch would supply queen. I do not find that she was a queen.

1075. Trewely is properly (though not always) trisyllabic. It was inserted after nay, because nede and gabbe were thought to be monosyllables. Even so, the 'amended' line is bad. It is all right if trewly be omitted; and I omit it accordingly.

1081. Penelope is accented on the first e and on o, as in French. Chaucer copies this form from the Roman de la Rose, l. 8694, as appears from his coupling it with Lucrece, whilst at the same time he borrows a pair of rimes. The French has:—

In the same passage, the story of Lucretia is told in full, on the authority of Livy, as here. The French has: 'ce dit Titus Livius'; l. 8654. In the prologue to the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer alludes again to Penelope (l. 252), Lucrece of Rome (l. 257), and Polixene (l. 258); and he gives the Legend of Lucrece in full. He again alludes to Lucrece and Penelope in the lines preceding the Man of Lawes Prologue (B 63, 75); and in the Frankelein's Tale (F 1405, 1443).

1085. This seems to mean—'she (Blaunche) was as good (as they), and (there was) nothing like (her), though their stories are authentic (enough).' But the expression 'nothing lyke' is extremely awkward, and seems wrong. Nothing also means 'not at all'; but this does not help us. In l. 1086, stories should perhaps be storie; then her storie would be the story of Lucrece; cf. l. 1087.

1087. 'Any way, she (Blaunche) was as true as she (Lucrece).'

1089, 1090. Read seyë, subjunctive, and seyë, gerund. Cf. knewë, subj., 1133.

Yong is properly monosyllabic. Read—'I was right yong, the sooth to sey.' In. l. 1095, yong-e is the definite form.

1096. Accent besette (= besett') on the prefix. Else, we must read Without' and besettë. We should expect Without-e, as in 1100. Without is rare; but see IV. 17.

1108. Yit, still. Sit, sittteth; pres, tense.

1113. I. e. you are like one who confesses, but does not repent.

1118. Achitofel, Ahitophel; see 2 Sam. xvii.

1119. According to the Historia Troiana of Guido (see note to l. 1070) it was Antenor (also written Anthenor) who took away the Palladium and sent it to Ulysses, thus betraying Troy. See the Geste Hystoriale, p. 379; or see the extract from Caxton in my Specimens of English from 1394 to 1579, p. 89. Or see Chaucer's Troilus, bk. iv. l. 204.

1121. Genelon; also Genilon, as in the Monkes Tale, B 3579. He is mentioned again in the Nonne Preestes Tale, B 4417 (C. T. 15233), and in the Shipmannes Tale, B 1384 (C. T. 13124), where he is called 'Geniloun of France.' Tyrwhitt's note on Genelon in his Glossary is as follows: 'One of Charlemaigne's officers, who, by his treachery, was the cause of the defeat at Roncevaux, the death of Roland, &c., for which he was torn to pieces by horses. This at least is the account of the author who calls himself Archbishop Turpin, and of the Romancers who followed him; upon whose credit the name of Genelon or Ganelon was for several centuries a synonymous expression for the worst of traitors.' See the Chanson de Roland, ed. Gautier; Dante, Inf. xxxii. 122, where he is called Ganellone; and Wheeler's Noted Names of Fiction. Cf. also the Roman de la Rose, l. 7902-4:—

1123. Rowland and Olivere, the two most celebrated of Charlemagne's Twelve Peers of France; see Roland in Wheeler's Noted Names of Fiction, and Ellis's Specimens of Early Eng. Metrical Romances, especially the account of the Romance of Sir Otuel.

1126. I supply right. We find right tho in C. T. 6398, 8420 (D 816, E 544).

1133. Knew-e, might know; subjunctive mood. See note to l. 1089.

1137. Accent thou. This and the next line are repeated, nearly, from ll. 743, 744. See also ll. 1305-6.

1139. I here insert the word sir, as in most of the other places where the poet addresses the stranger.

1152-3. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 2006-7:—

1159. For this, B. has thus. Neither this nor thus seems wanted; I therefore pay no regard to them.

The squire Dorigen, in the Frankelein's Tale, consoled himself in the same way (F 947):—

1162. Tubal; an error for Jubal; see Gen. iv. 21. But the error is Chaucer's own, and is common. See Higden's Polychronicon, lib. iii. c. 11, ed. Lumby, iii. 202; Higden cites the following from Isidorus, lib. ii. c. 24:—'Quamvis Tubal de stirpe Cayn ante diluvium legatur fuisse musicæ inventor, ... tamen apud Græcos Pythagoras legitur ex malleorum sonitu et chordarum extensione musicam reperisse.' In Genesis, it is Jubal who 'was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ'; and Tubal-cain who was 'an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.' The notion of the discovery of music by the former from the observation of the sounds struck upon the anvil of the latter is borrowed from the usual fable about Pythagoras. This fable is also given by Higden, who copies it from Macrobius. It will be found in the Commentary by Macrobius on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. ii. c. 1; and is to the effect that Pythagoras, observing some smiths at work, found that the tones struck upon their anvils varied according to the weights of the hammers used by them; and, by weighing these hammers, he discovered the relations to each other of the various notes in the gamut. The story is open to the objection that the facts are not so; the sound varies according to variations in the anvil or the thing struck, not according to the variation in the striking implement. However, Pythagoras is further said to have made experiments with stretched strings of varying length; which would have given him right results. See Mrs. Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, sect. 16 and 17.

1169. Aurora. The note in Tyrwhitt's Glossary, s. v. Aurora, runs thus:—'The title of a Latin metrical version of several parts of the Bible by Petrus de Riga, Canon of Rheims, in the twelfth century. Leyser, in his Hist. Poet. Med. Ævi, pp. 692-736, has given large extracts from this work, and among others the passage which Chaucer seems to have had in his eye (p. 728):—

Warton speaks of 'Petrus de Riga, canon of Rheims, whose Aurora, or the History of the Bible allegorised, in Latin verses ... was never printed entire.'—Hist. E. Poet. 1871, iii. 136.

1175. A song in six lines; compare the eleven-line song above, at l. 475. Lines 1175-6 rime with lines 1179-80.

1198. Koch scans: Ánd | bounté | withoút' | mercý ||. This is no better than the reading in the text.

1200. 'With (tones of) sorrow and by compulsion, yet as though I never ought to have done so.' Perhaps read wolde, wished (to do).

1206. Dismal. In this particular passage the phrase in the dismal means 'on an unlucky day,' with reference to an etymology which connected dismal with the Latin dies malus. Though we cannot derive dismal immediately from the Lat. dies malus, it is now known that there was an Anglo-French phrase dis mal (= Lat. dies mali, plural); whence the M. E. phrase in the dismal, 'in the evil days,' or (more loosely), 'on an evil day.' When the exact sense was lost, the suffix -al seemed to be adjectival, and the word dismal became at last an adjective. The A.F. form dismal, explained as les mal jours (evil days), was discovered by M. Paul Meyer in a Glasgow MS. (marked Q. 9. 13, fol. 100, back), in a poem dated 1256; which settles the question. Dr. Chance notes that Chaucer probably took dis-mal to be derived from O.F. dis mal, i. e. 'ten evils'; see l. 1207.

We can now see the connexion with the next line. The whole sentence means: 'I think it must have been in the evil days (i. e. on an unlucky day), such as were the days of the ten plagues of Egypt'; and the allusion is clearly to the so-called dies Ægyptiaci, or unlucky days; and woundes is merely a rather too literal translation of Lat. plaga, which we generally translate by plague. In Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 83, we find:—'In quolibet mense sunt duo dies, qui dicuntur Ægyptiaci, quorum unus est a principio mensis, alter a fine.' He goes on to shew how they are calculated, and says that, in January, the Egyptian days are the 1st, and the 7th from the end, i. e. the 25th; and he expressly refers the name Ægyptiaci to the plagues of Egypt, which (as some said) took place on Egyptian days; for it was asserted that there were minor plagues besides the ten. See also Brand's Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, from which I extract the following. Barnabe Googe thus translates the remarks of Naogeorgus on this subject [of days]:—

'The Christian faith is violated when, so like a pagan and apostate, any man doth observe those days which are called Ægyptiaci,' &c.—Melton's Astrologaster, p. 56; in Brand, ii. 47. 'If his Journey began unawares on the dismal day, he feares a mischiefe'; Bp. Hall, Characters of Virtues and Vices; in Brand, ii. 48. 'Alle that take hede to dysmal dayes, or use nyce observaunces in the newe moone,' &c.; Dialogue of Dives and Pauper (1493); in Brand, i. 9. 'A dismol day'; Tale of Beryn, 650. Compare also the following:—

In the Pistil of Swete Susan (Laing's Anc. Pop. Poetry of Scotland), l. 305, Daniel reproves one of the elders in these terms:—

In Langtoft's Chronicle, l. 477 (in Wright's Polit. Songs, p. 303), John Baliol is attacked in some derisive verses, which conclude with:—'Rede him at ride in the dismale'; i. e. advise him to ride on an unlucky day. Cf. The Academy, Nov. 28, 1891, p. 482; &c.

The consequence of 'proposing' on an unlucky day was a refusal; see l. 1243.

1208. A priest who missed words in chanting a service was called an overskipper; see my note to P. Plowman, C. xiv. 123.

1219. Similarly, Troilus was reduced to saying—

1234. 'Unless I am dreaming,' i. e. unintentionally.

1246. Cassandra. The prophetic lamentation of Cassandra over the impending fate of Troy is given in the alliterative Geste Hystoriale (E. E. T. S.), p. 88, and in Lydgate's Siege of Troye, bk. ii. c. 12, from Guido de Colonna; cf. Vergil, Æn. ii. 246.

1248. Chaucer treats Ilion as if it were different from Troye; cf. Nonne Prestes Tale, B 4546 (C. T. 15362). He merely follows Guido de Colonna and others, who made Ilion the name of the citadel of Troy; see further in note to Ho. of Fame, l. 158.

1288. M. Sandras (Étude sur Chaucer, p. 95) says this is from Machault's Jugement du Bon Roi de Behaigne—

1305-6. Repeated from ll. 743, 744. Cf. ll. 1137-8.

1309. Imitated in Spenser's Daphnaida, 184. The Duchess Blaunche died Sept. 12, 1369. The third great pestilence lasted from July to September in that year.

1314. King, i. e. Edward III; see note to l. 368.

1318. Possibly the long castel here meant is Windsor Castle; this seems likely when we remember that it was in Windsor Castle that Edward III. instituted the order of the Garter, April 23, 1349; and that he often resided there. A riche hil in the next line appears to have no special significance. The suggestion, in Bell's Chaucer, that it refers to Richmond (which, after all, is not Windsor) is quite out of the question, because that town was then called Sheen, and did not receive the name of Richmond till the reign of Henry VII., who renamed it after Richmond in Yorkshire, whence his own title of Earl of Richmond had been derived.

1322. Belle, i. e. bell of a clock, which rang out the hour. This bell, half heard in the dream, seems to be meant to be real. If so, it struck midnight; and Chaucer's chamber must have been within reach of its sound.

IV. The Complaint of Mars.

For general remarks on this poem, see p. 64, above.

By consulting ll. 13 and 14, we see that the whole of this poem is supposed to be uttered by a bird on the 14th of February, before sunrise. Lines 1-28 form the proem; the rest give the story of Mars and Venus, followed by the Complaint of Mars at l. 155. The first 22 stanzas are in the ordinary 7-line stanza. The Complaint is very artificial, consisting of an Introductory Stanza, and five Terns, or sets of three stanzas, making sixteen stanzas of nine lines each, or 144 lines. Thus the whole poem has 298 lines.

Each tern is occupied with a distinct subject, which I indicate by headings, viz. Devotion to his Love; Description of a Lady in an anxiety of fear and woe; the Instability of Happiness; the story of the Brooch of Thebes; and An Appeal for Sympathy. A correct appreciation of these various 'movements' of the Complaint makes the poem much more intelligible.

1. Foules. The false reading lovers was caught from l. 5 below. But the poem opens with a call from a bird to all other birds, bidding them rejoice at the return of Saint Valentine's day. There is an obvious allusion in this line to the common proverb—'As fain as fowl of a fair morrow,' which is quoted in the Kn. Tale, 1579 (A 2437), in P. Plowman, B. x. 153, and is again alluded to in the Can. Yeom. Tale, G 1342. In l. 3, the bird addresses the flowers, and finally, in l. 5, the lovers.

2. Venus, the planet, supposed to appear as a morning-star, as it sometimes does. See note to Boethius, bk. i. met. 5. l. 9.

Rowes, streaks or rays of light, lit. rows. In the Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 596, Lydgate uses the word of the streaks of light at eventide—'And while the twilight and the rowes rede Of Phebus light,' &c. Also in Lydgate's Troy-Book, bk. i. c. 6, ed. 1555, fol. E 1, quoted by Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, 1871, iii. 84:—'Whan that the rowes and the rayes rede Estward to us full early gonnen sprede.' Hence the verb rowen, to dawn; P. Plowm. C. ii. 114, xxi. 28; see my Notes to P. Plowman. Tyrwhitt's Glossary ignores the word.

3. For day, Bell's edition has May! The month is February.

4. Uprist, upriseth. But in Kn. Tale, 193 (A 1051), uprist-e (with final e) is the dat. case of a sb.

7. The final e in sonn-e occurs at the cæsural pause; candle is pronounced nearly as candl'. The sun is here called the candle of Ielosye, i.e torch or light that discloses cause for jealousy, in allusion to the famous tale which is the foundation of the whole poem, viz. how Phœbus (the Sun) discovered the amour between Mars and Venus, and informed Vulcan of it, rousing him to jealousy; which Chaucer doubtless obtained from his favourite author Ovid (Metam. bk. iv). See the description of 'Phebus,' with his 'torche in honde,' in ll. 27, 81-84 below. Gower also, who quotes Ovid expressly, has the whole story; Conf. Amant. ed. Pauli, ii. 149. The story first occurs in Homer, Odys. viii. 266-358. And cf. Statius, Theb. iii. 263-316; Chaucer's Kn. Tale, 1525 (A 2383), &c. Cf. also Troilus, iii. 1457.

8. Blewe; 'there seems no propriety in this epithet; it is probably a corruption'; Bell. But it is quite right; in M. E., the word is often applied to the colour of a wale or stripe caused by a blow, as in the phrase 'beat black and blue'; also to the gray colour of burnt-out ashes, as in P. Plowman, B. iii. 97; also to the colour of lead; 'as blo as led,' Miracle-Plays, ed. Marriott, p. 148. 'Ashen-gray' or 'lead-coloured' is not a very bad epithet for tears:—

9. Taketh, take ye. With seynt Iohn, with St. John for a surety; borwe being in the dat. case; see note to Squi. Tale, F 596. It occurs also in the Kingis Quair, st. 23; Blind Harry's Wallace, bk. ix. l. 46; &c.

13. Seynt Valentyne; Feb. 14. See note to Sect. V. l. 309.

21. Cf. 'And everich of us take his aventure'; Kn. Tale, 328 (A 1186).

25. See note to line 7 above; and cf. Troilus, iii. 1450-70:—'O cruel day,' &c.

29. In the Proem to Troilus, bk. iii. st. 1, Chaucer places Venus in the third heaven; that is, he begins to reckon from the earth outwards, the spheres being, successively, those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; see the description of the planets in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. vii. So also, in Troilus, v. 1809, by the seventh sphere he means the outermost sphere of Saturn. But in other poems he adopts the more common ancient mode, of reckoning the spheres in the reverse order, taking Saturn first; in which case Mars comes third. In this he follows Macrobius, who, in his Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. c. 19, has:—'A sphæra Saturni, quæ est prima de septem,' &c.; see further on this borrowing from Macrobius in the note to l. 69. The same mode of reckoning places Venus in the fifth sphere, as in Lenvoy to Scogan, l. 9. In the curious manual of astronomy called The Shepheards Kalendar (pr. in 1604) we find, in the account of Mars, the following: 'The planet of Mars is called the God of battel and of war, and he is the third planet, for he raigneth next vnder the gentle planet of Jupiter.... And Mars goeth about the twelue signes in two yeare.' The account of Venus has:—'Next after the Sun raigneth the gentle planet Venus, ... and she is lady ouer all louers: ... and her two signes is Taurus and Libra.... This planet Venus runneth in twelue months ouer the xii. signes.' Also:—'Next under Venus is the faire planet Mercury ... and his principall signes be these: Gemini is the first ... and the other signe is Virgo,' &c. See Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 121.

Hence the 'third heaven's lord' is Mars; and Chaucer tells us, that by virtue of his motion in his orbit (as well as by desert) he had won Venus. That is, Venus and Mars were seen in the sky very near each other. We may explain wonne by 'approached.'

36. At alle, in any and every case. There is a parallel passage to this stanza in Troilus, bk. iii. st. 4 of the Proem.

38. Talle, obedient, docile, obsequious. See the account of this difficult word in my Etym. Dictionary, s.v. tall.

42. Scourging, correction. Compare the phr. under your yerde; Parl. Foules, 640, and the note. I see no reason for suspecting the reading.

49. 'Unless it should be that his fault should sever their love.'

51. Loking, aspect; a translation of the Latin astrological term aspectus. They regard each other with a favourable aspect.

54. Hir nexte paleys, the next palace (or mansion), which belonged to Venus. In astrology, each planet was said to have two mansions, except the sun and moon, which had but one apiece. A mansion, or house, or palace, is that Zodiacal sign in which, for some imaginary reason, a planet was supposed to be peculiarly at home. (The whole system is fanciful and arbitrary.) The mansions of Venus were said to be Taurus and Libra; those of Mars, Aries and Scorpio; and those of Mercury, Gemini and Virgo. See the whole scheme in the introduction to Chaucer's Astrolabe. The sign here meant is Taurus (cf. l. 86); and the arrangement was that Mars should 'glide' or pass out of the sign of Aries into that of Taurus, which came next, and belonged specially to Venus.

55. A-take, overtaken; because the apparent motion of Venus is swifter than that of Mars. This shews that Mars was, at first, further advanced than Venus along the Zodiac.

61. Actually repeated in the Nonne Prestes Tale, l. 340 (B 4350):—'For whan I see the beautee of your face.' Compare also l. 62 with the same, l. 342; and l. 63 with the same, l. 350.

65. come, may come; pres. subj. (Lounsbury says 'preterite').

69. That is, the apparent motion of Venus was twice as great as that of Mars. Chaucer here follows Macrobius, Comment. in Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. ch. 19, who says:—'Rursus tantum a Iove sphæra Martis recedit, ut eundum cursum biennio peragat. Venus autem tanto est regione Martis inferior, ut ei annus satis sit ad zodiacum peragrandum'; that is, Mars performs his orbit in two years, but Venus in one; accordingly, she moves as much in one day as Mars does in two days. Mars really performs his orbit in rather less than two years (about 687 days), and Venus in less than one (about 225 days), but Chaucer's statement is sufficiently near to facts, the apparent motion of the planets being variable.

71. This line resembles one in the Man of Lawes Tale, B 1075:—'And swich a blisse is ther bitwix hem two'; and ll. 71, 72 also resemble the same, ll. 1114, 1115:—

81. Phebus here passes the palace-gates; in other words, the sun enters the sign of Taurus, and so comes into Venus' chamber, within her palace. Cf. note to l. 54.

In Chaucer's time, the sun entered Taurus on the twelfth of April. This is actually mentioned below, in l. 139.

84. Knokkeden, knocked at the door, i. e. demanded admission.

86. That is, both Mars and Venus are now in Taurus. The entry of Venus is noticed in l. 72.

89. The latter syllable of Venus comes at the cæsural pause; but the scansion is best mended by omitting nygh; see footnote.

96. In the Shepheards Kalendar, Mars is said to be 'hot and dry'; and Venus to be 'moist and colde.' Thus Mars was supposed to cause heat, and Venus to bring rain. The power of Venus in causing rain is fully alluded to in Lenvoy to Scogan, st. 2.

100. Girt, short for girdeth; not gerte, pt. t.

104. Nearly repeated in Kn. Tale, 1091 (A 1949):—'Ne may with Venus holde champartye.'

105. Bad her fleen, bade her flee; because her motion in her orbit was faster than his. Cf. l. 112.

107. 'In the palace (Taurus) in which thou wast disturbed.'

111. Stremes, beams, rays; for the eyes of Mars emitted streams of fire (l. 95). Venus is already half past the distance to which Mars's beams extend. Obscure and fanciful.

113. Cylenius, Cyllenius, i. e. Mercury, who was born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia; Vergil, Æn. viii. 139. Tour, tower; another word for mansion. The tower of Cyllenius, or mansion of Mercury, is the sign Gemini; see note to l. 29. Venus passes out of Taurus into the next sign Gemini. 'The sign Gemini is also domus Murcurii, so that when Venus fled into "the tour" of Cyllenius, she simply slipped into the next door to her own house of Taurus, leaving poor Mars behind to halt after her as he best might'; A.E. Brae, in Notes and Queries, 1st Series, iii. 235.

114. Voide, solitary; Mars is left behind in Taurus. Besides (according to l. 116) there was no other planet in Gemini at that time.

117. But litil myght. A planet was supposed to exercise its greatest influence in the sign which was called its exaltation; and its least influence in that which was called its depression. The exaltation of Venus was in Pisces; her depression, in Virgo. She was now in Gemini, and therefore halfway from her exaltation to her depression. So her influence was slight, and waning.

119. A cave. In l. 122 we are told that it stood only two paces within the gate, viz. of Gemini. The gate or entrance into Gemini is the point where the sign begins. By paces we must understand degrees; for the F. word pas evidently represents the Lat. gradus. Venus had therefore advanced to a point which stood only two degrees within (or from the beginning of) the sign. In plain words, she was now in the second degree of Gemini, and there fell into a cave, in which she remained for a natural day, that is (taking her year to be of nearly the same length as the earth's year) for the term during which she remained within that second degree. Venus remained in the cave as long as she was in that second degree of the sign; from the moment of entering it to the moment of leaving it.

A natural day means a period of twenty-four hours, as distinguished from the artificial day, which was the old technical name for the time from sunrise to sunset. This Chaucer says plainly, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 7, l. 12—'the day natural, that is to seyn 24 houris.'

We thus see that the cave here mentioned is a name for the second degree of the sign Gemini.

This being so, I have no doubt at all, that cave is here merely a translation of the Latin technical astrological term puteus. In Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 42, I find:—'Et in signis sunt quidam gradus, qui dicuntur putei; cum fuerit planeta in aliquo istorum, dicitur esse in puteo, vt 6 gradus Arietis, et 11, etc.' There are certain degrees in the signs called putei; and when a planet is in one of these, it is said to be in puteo; such degrees, in Aries, are the 6th, 11th, &c. Here, unfortunately, Vincent's information ceases; he refers us, however, to Alcabitius.

Alcabitius (usually Alchabitius), who should rather be called Abdel-Aziz, was an Arabian astrologer who lived towards the middle of the tenth century. His treatise on judicial astrology was translated into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis in the thirteenth century. This translation was printed at Venice, in quarto, in 1481, 1482, and 1502; see Didot, Nouv. Biograph. Universelle.

I found a copy of the edition of 1482 in the Cambridge University Library, entitled Libellus ysagogicus abdilazi .i. serui gloriosi dei. qui dicitur alchabitius ad magisterium iudiciorum astrorum; interpretatus a ioanne hispalensi. At sign. a 7, back, I found the passage quoted above from Vincent, and a full list of the putei. The putei in the sign of Gemini are the degrees numbered 2, 12, 17, 26, 30. After this striking confirmation of my conjecture, I think no more need be said.

But I may add, that Chaucer expressly mentions 'Alkabucius' by name, and refers to him; Treat. on Astrolabe, i. 8. 9. The passage which he there quotes occurs in the same treatise, sign. a 1, back.

120. Derk, dark. I think it is sufficient to suppose that this word is used, in a purely astrological sense, to mean inauspicious; and the same is true of l. 122, where Venus remains under this sinister influence as long as she remained in the ill-omened second degree of Gemini. There is no need to suppose that the planet's light was really obscured.

129. The Fairfax MS. and some editions have the false reading sterre. As Mars was supposed to complete his orbit (360 degrees) in two years (see note to l. 69), he would pass over one degree of it in about two days. Hence Mr. Brae's note upon this line, as printed in Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 121:—'The mention of dayes two is so specific that it cannot but have a special meaning. Wherefore, either sterre is a metonym for degree; or which is more probable, Chaucer's word was originally steppe (gradus), and was miscopied sterre by early scribes.' Here Mr. Brae was exceedingly near the right solution; we now see that sterre was miswritten (not for steppe, but) for steyre, by the mere alteration of one letter. If the scribe was writing from dictation, the mistake was still more easily made, since steyre and sterre would sound very nearly alike, with the old pronunciation. As to steyre, it is the exact literal translation of Lat. gradus, which meant a degree or stair. Thus Minsheu's Dict. has:—'a Staire, Lat. gradus.' This difficulty, in fact, is entirely cleared up by accepting the reading of the majority of the MSS.

131. He foloweth her, i. e. the motions of Mars and Venus were in the same direction; neither of them had a 'retrograde' motion, but advanced along the signs in the direction of the sun's apparent motion.

133. Brenning, burning in the fire of the sun's heat.

137. 'Alas; that my orbit has so wide a compass'; because the orbit of Mars is so very much larger than that of Venus. Still larger was the orbit of Saturn; Kn. Tale, 1596 (A 2454). Spere is sphere, orbit.

139. Twelfte, twelfth. The false reading twelve arose from misreading the symbol '.xij.,' which was used as an abbreviation both for twelfte and for twelve. See Furnivall, Trial Forewords, p. 88. As a fact, it was on the 12th day of April that the sun entered Taurus; see note to l. 81.

144. Cylenius, Mercury; as in l. 113. Chevauche, equestrian journey, ride. Used ludicrously to mean a feat of horsemanship in l. 50 of the Manciple's Prologue. The closely related word chivachye, in Prologue to C. T. 85, means a military (equestrian) expedition. In the present case it simply means 'swift course,' with reference to the rapid movement of Mercury, which completes its orbit in about 88 days. Thus the line means—'Mercury, advancing in his swift course.'

145. Fro Venus valance. This is the most difficult expression in the poem, but I explain it by reading fallance, which of course is only a guess. I must now give my reasons, as every preceding commentator has given up the passage as hopeless.

The readings of the MSS. all point back to a form valance (as in Ar.) or valauns (as in Tn.); whence the other readings, such as Valaunses, valanus (for valauns), balance, balaunce, are all deduced, by easy corruptions. But, as no assignable sense has been found for valance, I can only suppose that it is an error for falance or fallance. I know of no instance of its use in English, but Godefroy gives examples of fallance and falence in O. French, though the usual spelling is faillance. The change from faillance or fallance to vallance or valance would easily be made by scribes, from the alliterative influence of the initial letter of the preceding word Venus. Moreover, we have v for f in E. vixen (for fixen), and in Southern English generally. Even in a Chaucer MS., the curious spelling vigour or vigur for figure occurs over and over again; viz. in the Cambridge MS. (Dd. 3. 53) of Chaucer's 'Astrolabe.'

The sense of fallance or faillance is failure, defection. Cotgrave gives us: 'Faillance, f. a defection, failing, decaying.' The numerous examples in Godefroy shew that it was once a common word. It represents a Lat. fem. *fallentia.

I hold it to be the exact literal translation into French of the Lat. technical (astrological) term detrimentum. In my edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe (E. E. T. S.), p. lxvii., I explained that every planet had either one or two mansions, and one or two detrimenta. The detrimentum is the sign of the Zodiac opposite to the planet's mansion. The mansions of Venus were Taurus and Libra (see note to l. 54); and her detrimenta were Scorpio and Aries. The latter is here intended; so that, after all, this apparently mysterious term 'Venus valance' is nothing but another name for the sign Aries, which, from other considerations, must necessarily be here intended.

If the correction of valance to fallance be disallowed, I should plead that valance might be short for avalance (mod. E. avalanche, literally descent), just as every reader of our old literature knows that vale is a common form instead of avale, to descend or lower, being the verb from which avalance is derived. This valance (= avalance) is a fair translation of the Lat. occasus, which was an alternative name for the sign called detrimentum; see my edition of the Astrolabe, as above. The result would then be just the same as before, and would bring us back to the sign of Aries again.

But we know that Aries is meant, from purely astronomical considerations. For the planet Mercury is always so near the sun that it can never have a greater elongation, or angular distance, from it than 29°, which is just a little less than the length of a sign, which was 30°. But, the sun being (as said) in the 1st degree of Taurus on the 12th of April, it is quite certain that Mercury was either in Taurus or in Aries. Again, as there was no mention of Mercury being in Taurus when Mars and Venus were there and were undisturbed (see note to l. 114), we can only infer that Mercury was then in Aries.

Moreover, he continued his swift course, always approaching and tending to overtake the slower bodies that preceded him, viz. the Sun, Mars, and Venus. At last, he got so near that he was able to 'see' or get a glimpse of his mansion Gemini, which was not so very far ahead of him. This I take to mean that he was swiftly approaching the end of Aries.

We can now tell the exact position of all the bodies on the 14th of April, two days after the sun had burst into Taurus, where he had found Mars and Venus at no great distance apart. By that time, Venus was in the second degree of Gemini, Mars was left behind in Taurus, the sun was in the third degree of Taurus, and Mercury near the end of Aries, sufficiently near to Venus to salute and cheer her with a kindly and favourable aspect.

I will add that whilst the whole of the sign of Aries was called the occasus or detrimentum of Venus, it is somewhat curious that the last ten degrees of Aries (degrees 20 to 30) were called the face of Venus. Chaucer uses this astrological term face elsewhere with reference to the first ten degrees of Aries, which was 'the face of Mars' (see my note to Squieres Tale, F 47). Hence another possible reading is Fro Venus facë mighte, &c.

In any case, I think we are quite sufficiently near to Chaucer's meaning; especially as he is, after all, only speaking in allegory, and there is no need to strain his words to suit rigid astronomical calculations.

I only give this as a guess, for what it is worth; I should not care to defend it.

150. Remembreth me, comes to my memory; the nom. case being the preceding part of the sentence. Me, by the way, refers to the extraordinary bird who is made responsible for the whole poem, with the sole exception of lines 13 and 14, and half of l. 15. The bird tells us he will say and sing the Complaint of Mars, and afterwards take his leave.

155. We now come to the part of the poem which exhibits great metrical skill. In order to shew the riming more clearly, I have 'set back' the 3rd, 6th, and 7th lines of each stanza. Each stanza exhibits the order of rimes a a b a a b b c c; i. e. the first rime belongs to lines 1, 2, 4, 5; the second rime to lines 3, 6, 7; and the last rime to lines 8 and 9. The first stanza forms an Introduction or Proem. The rest form five Terns, or sets of three stanzas, as has been already said. Each Tern has its own subject, quite separate from the rest.

The first line can only be scanned by reading The ordre as Th'ordr' (monosyllable).

164. The first Tern expresses his Devotion to his love's service. I gave my love, he says, to her for ever; She is the very source of all beauty; and now I will never leave her, but will die in her service.

170. That is—who ever approaches her, but obtains from her no favour, loses all joy in love, and only feels its bitterness.

176. Men, people; men hit selle = it is sold. This parenthetical ejaculation is an echo to that in l. 168.

185. Hette, promised (incorrectly). The M.E. haten, to promise, is a complicated verb; see the excellent examples in Mätzner's Dictionary, and in Grein's A. S. Dict., s. v. hátan. It had two past tenses; the first heet, a strong form, meaning 'promised, commanded,' answering to A.S. héht and Goth. haihait; and the second hette, hatte, a weak form, meaning 'I was named,' answering to A. S. hátte (used both as a present and a past tense without change of form) and to the Goth. present passive haitada. Chaucer has here used the intransitive weak past tense with the sense of the transitive strong one; just as he uses lernen with the sense of 'teach.' The confusion was easy and common.

190. But grace be, unless favour be shewn me. See, shall see; present as future.

191. Tern 2. Shall I complain to my lady? Not so; for she is in distress herself. Lovers may be as true as new metal, and yet suffer. To return: my lady is in distress, and I ought to mourn for her, even though I knew no other sorrow.

197. 'But if she were safe, it would not matter about me.'

205. 'They might readily leave their head as a pledge,' i. e. might devote themselves to death.

206. Horowe, foul, unclean, filthy, scandalous; pl. of horow, an adj. formed from the A.S. sb. horu (gen. horwes). filth; cf. A.S. horweht, filthy, from the same stem horw-. The M.E. adj. also takes the form hori, hory, from A.S. horig, an adj. formed from the closely related A.S. sb. horh, horg, filth. As the M.E. adj. is not common, I give some examples (from Mätzner). 'Hit nis bote a hori felle,' it is only a dirty skin; Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 19, l. 13. 'Thy saule ... thorugh fulthe of synne Sone is mad wel hory wythinne,' thy soul, by filth of sin, is soon made very foul within; Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ii. 243. 'Eny uncleene, whos touchynge is hoory,' any unclean person, whose touch is defiling; Wyclif, Levit. xxii. 5. 'Still used in Devon, pronounced horry'; Halliwell.

218. Tern 3. Why did the Creator institute love? The bliss of lovers is so unstable, that in every case lovers have more woes than the moon has changes. Many a fish is mad after the bait; but when he is hooked, he finds his penance, even though the line should break.

219. Love other companye, love or companionship.

229. Read putt'th; as a monosyllable.

245. Tern 4. The brooch of Thebes had this property, that every one who saw it desired to possess it; when he possessed it, he was haunted with constant dread; and when he lost it, he had a double sorrow in thinking that it was gone. This was due, however, not to the brooch itself, but to the cunning of the maker, who had contrived that all who possessed it should suffer. In the same way, my lady was as the brooch; yet it was not she who caused me wo, but it was He who endowed her with beauty.

The story referred to occurs in the account of the war between Eteocles and Polynices for the possession of Thebes, as related in the Thebaïd of Statius.

In the second book of that poem, the story relates the marriage of Polynices and Tydeus to the two daughters of Adrastus, king of Argos. The marriage ceremony was marred by inauspicious omens, which was attributed to the fact that Argia, who was wedded to Polynices, wore at the wedding a magic bracelet (here called a brooch) which had belonged to Harmonia, a daughter of Mars and Venus, and wife of Cadmus. This ornament had been made by Vulcan, in order to bring an evil fate upon Harmonia, to whom it was first given, and upon all women who coveted it or wore it. See the whole story in Statius, Thebais, ii. 265; or in Lewis's translation of Statius, ii. 313.

246. It must be remembered that great and magical virtues were attributed to precious stones and gems. See further in the note to Ho. of Fame, l. 1352.

259. Enfortuned hit so, endued it with such virtues. 'He that wrought it' was Vulcan; see note to l. 245.

262. Covetour, the one who coveted it. Nyce, foolish.

270. 'For my death I blame Him, and my own folly for being so ambitious.'

272. Tern 5. I appeal for sympathy, first to the knights who say that I, Mars, am their patron; secondly, to the ladies who should compassionate Venus their empress; lastly, to all lovers who should sympathise with Venus, who was always so ready to aid them.

273. Of my divisioun, born under my influence. The same word is used in the same way in Kn. Tale, 1166 (A 2024). Of course Mars was the special patron of martial knights.

280. 'That ye lament for my sorrow.'

293. Compleyneth hir, lament for her.

298. 'Therefore display, on her behalf, some kindly feeling.'

The Complaint of Venus which formerly used to be printed as a part of this poem, is really a distinct piece. See Sect. XVIII.

V. The Parlement of Foules.

Title. Gg. has Here begynyth the parlement of Foulys; Harl. has The Parlament of Foules; Tn. has The Parlement of Briddis; Trin. has Here foloweth the parlement of Byrdes reducyd to loue, &c. We also find, at the end of the poem, such notes as these: Gg. Explicit parliamentum Auium in die sancti Valentini tentum secundum Galfridum Chaucer; Ff. Explicit parliamentum Auium; Tn. Explicit tractatus de Congregacione volucrum die Sancti Valentini; and in MS. Arch. Seld. B. 24—Here endis the parliament of foulis Quod Galfride Chaucere.

1. Part of the first aphorism of Hippocrates is—Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή. This is often quoted in the Latin form—Ars longa, uita brevis. Longfellow, in his Psalm of Life, well renders it by—'Art is long, but life is fleeting.'

2. Several MSS. transpose hard and sharp; it is of small consequence.

3. Slit, the contracted form of slideth, i. e. passes away; cf. 'it slit awey so faste,' Can. Yeom. Tale; C. T., Group G, l. 682. The false reading flit arose from mistaking a long s for f.

4. By, with respect to. In l. 7, wher = whether.

8. Evidently this disclaimer is a pretended one; the preceding stanza and ll. 13, 14 contradict it. So does l. 160. In this stanza we have an early example of Chaucer's humour, of which there are several instances below, as e. g. in ll. 567-570, 589, 599, 610, &c. Cf. Troilus, i. 15, where Chaucer again says he is no lover himself, but only serves Love's servants.

15. Cf. Prol. to Legend of Good Women, 29-39.

22. Men is here a weakened form of man, and is used as a singular sb., with the same force as the F. on or the G. man. Hence the vb. seith is in the singular. This construction is extremely common in Middle English. In ll. 23 and 25 com'th is monosyllabic.

31. Tullius, i. e. M. Tullius Cicero, who wrote a piece entitled Somnium Scipionis, which originally formed part of the sixth book of the De Republica. Warton (Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt. iii. 65) remarks:—'Had this composition descended to posterity among Tully's six books De Republica, to the last of which it originally belonged, perhaps it would have been overlooked and neglected. But being preserved and illustrated with a prolix commentary by Macrobius, it quickly attracted the attention of readers who were fond of the marvellous, and with whom Macrobius was a more admired classic than Tully. It was printed [at Venice] subjoined to Tully's Offices, in [1470]. It was translated into Greek by Maximus Planudes, and is frequently [i. e. four times] quoted by Chaucer.... Nor is it improbable that not only the form, but the first idea, of Dante's Inferno was suggested by this apologue.' The other allusions to it in Chaucer are in the Nonnes Prestes Tale, B 4314; Book of the Duchesse, 284; Ho. of Fame, 514. See also l. 111 below, where Macrobie is expressly mentioned. In the E. version of the Romance of the Rose, l. 7, he is called Macrobes.

Aurelius Theodosius Macrobius, about A.D. 400, not only preserved for us Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, but wrote a long commentary on it in two books, and a work called Saturnalia in seven books. The commentary is not very helpful, and discusses collateral questions rather than the dream itself.

32. Chaucer's MS. copy was, it appears, divided into seven chapters. A printed copy now before me is divided into nine chapters. As given in an edition of Macrobius printed in 1670, it is undivided. The treatise speaks, as Chaucer says, of heaven, hell, and earth, and men's souls. It recalls the tale of Er, in Plato's Republic, bk. x.

35. The grete, the substance. Accordingly, in the next seven stanzas, we have a fair summary of the general contents of the Somnium Scipionis. I quote below such passages as approach most closely to Chaucer's text.

36. Scipioun, i. e. P. Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus Africanus Minor, the hero of the third Punic War. He went to Africa in B.C. 150 to meet Masinissa, King of Numidia, who had received many favours from Scipio Africanus Major in return for his fidelity to the Romans. Hence Masinissa received the younger Africanus joyfully, and so much was said about the elder Africanus that the younger one dreamt about him after the protracted conversation was over, and all had retired to rest. The younger Africanus was the grandson, by adoption, of the elder.

'Cum in Africam venissem, ... nihil mihi potius fuit, quam ut Masinissam convenirem ... Ad quem ut veni, complexus me senex collacrymavit ... multisque verbis ... habitis, ille nobis consumptus est dies ... me ... somnus complexus est ... mihi ... Africanus se ostendit'; &c.

43. 'Ostendebat autem Carthaginem de excelso, et pleno stellarum ... loco ... tu eris unus, in quo nitatur civitatis salus, &c.... Omnibus qui patriam conservârint, adiuverint, auxerint, certum esse in cælo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur.'

50. 'Quæsivi tamen, viveretne ipse et Paullus pater et alii, quos nos exstinctos arbitraremur. Immo vero, inquit, ii vivunt ... vestra vero, quæ dicitur vita, mors est ... corpore laxati ilium incolunt locum, quem vides. Erat autem is splendissimo candore inter flammas circus elucens, quem vos, ut a Graiis accepistis, orbem lacteum nuncupatis.'

56. Galaxye, milky way; see note to Ho. Fame, 936.

57. 'Stellarum autem globi terræ magnitudinem facile vincebant. Iam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est, &c.... Novem tibi orbibus, vel potius globis, connexa sunt omnia ... Hic, inquam, quis est, qui complet aures meas, tantus et tam dulcis sonus? ... impulsu et motu ipsorum orbium conficitur.'

59. The 'nine spheres' are the spheres of the seven planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), that of the fixed stars, and the primum mobile; see notes to the Treatise on the Astrolabe, part 1, § 17, in vol. iii.

61. This is an allusion to the so-called 'harmony of the spheres.' Chaucer makes a mistake in attributing this harmony to all of the nine spheres. Cicero plainly excludes the primum mobile, and says that, of the remaining eight spheres, two sound alike, so that there are but seven tones made by their revolution. 'Ille autem octo cursus, in quibus eadem vis est duorum, septem efficiunt distinctos intervallis sonos.' He proceeds to notice the peculiar excellence of the number seven. By the two that sounded alike, the spheres of Saturn and the fixed stars must be meant; in fact, it is usual to ignore the sphere of fixed stars, and consider only those of the seven planets. Macrobius, in his Commentary, lib. ii. c. 4, quite misses this point, and clumsily gives the same note to Venus and Mercury. Each planetary sphere, in its revolution, gives out a different note of the gamut, so that all the notes of the gamut are sounded; and the result is, that the 'music of the spheres' cannot be heard at all, just as the dwellers by the cataract on the Nile fail to hear the sound of its fall. 'Hoc sonitu oppletæ aures hominum obsurduerunt; nec est ullus hebetior sonus in vobis; sicut ubi Nilus ad illa, quæ Catadupa κατάδουποι nominantur, præcipitat ex altissimis montibus, ea gens, quæ illum locum accolit, propter magnitudinem sonitus, sensu audiendi caret.' Macrobius tries to explain it all in his Commentary, lib. ii. c. 1-4. The fable arose from a supposed necessary connection between the number of the planets and the number of musical notes in the scale. It breaks down when we know that the number of the planets is more than seven. Moreover, modern astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres, to the surface of which each planet was immoveably nailed. These 'spheres' have disappeared, and their music with them, except in poetry.

Shakespeare so extends the old fable as to give a voice to every star. See Merch. of Venice, v. 60:—

The notion of the music of the spheres was attributed to Pythagoras. It is denied by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 32—Falsa opinio de concentu cæli. Vincent puts the old idea clearly—'Feruntur septem planetæ, et hi septem orbes (vt dicitur) cum dulcissima harmonia mouentur, ac suauissimi concentus eorum circumitione efficiuntur. Qui sonus ad aures nostras ideo non peruenit, quia vltra ærem fit':—a sufficient reason. He attributes the notion to the Pythagoreans and the Jews, and notes the use of the phrase 'concentum cæli' in Job xxxviii. 37, where our version has 'the bottles of heaven,' which the Revised Version retains. Cf. also—'Cum me laudarent simul astra matutina'; Job xxxviii. 7.

Near the end of Chaucer's Troilus, v. 1811, we have the singular passage:—

This passage, by the way, is a translation from Boccaccio, Teseide, xi. 1. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 17151-5.

See also Longfellow's poem on the Occultation of Orion, where the poet (heretically but sensibly) gives the lowest note to Saturn, and the highest to the Moon; whereas Macrobius says the contrary; lib. ii. c. 4.

A. Neckam (De Naturis Rerum, lib. i. c. 15) seems to say that the sound of an eighth sphere is required to make up the octave.

64. 'Sentio, inquit, te sedem etiam nunc hominum ac domum contemplari: quæ si tibi parva, ut est, ita videtur, hæc cælestia semper spectato; illa humana contemnito.... Cum autem ad idem, unde semel profecta sunt, cuncta astra redierint, eandemque totius anni descriptionem longis intervallis retulerint, tum ille vere vertens annus appellari potest.... Sermo autem omnis ille ... obruitur hominum interitu, et oblivione posteritatis exstinguitur.'

The great or mundane year, according to Macrobius, Comment, lib. 2. c. 11, contained 15,000 common years. In the Roman de la Rose, l. 17,018, Jeun de Meun makes it 36,000 years long; and in the Complaint of Scotland, ed. Murray, p. 33, it is said, on the authority of Socrates, to extend to 37,000 years. It is not worth discussion.

71. 'Ego vero, inquam, o Africane, siquidem bene mentis de patria quasi limes ad cæli aditum patet,' &c. 'Et ille, Tu vero enitere, et sic habeto, non esse te mortalem, sed corpus hoc.... Hanc [naturam] tu exerce in optimis rebus; sunt autem optimæ curæ de salute patriæ: quibus agitatus et exercitatus animus velocius in hanc sedem et domum suam pervolabit.'

78. 'Nam eorum animi, qui se corporis voluptatibus dediderunt,... corporibus elapsi circum terram ipsam volutantur; nec hunc in locum, nisi multis exagitati sæculis, revertuntur.' We have here the idea of purgatory; compare Vergil, Æn. vi.

80. Whirle aboute, copied from volutantur in Cicero; see last note. It is remarkable that Dante has copied the same passage, and has the word voltando; Inf. v. 31-8. Cf. 'blown with restless violence round about The pendent world'; Meas. for Meas. iii. 1. 125; and 'The sport of winds'; Milton, P.L. iii. 493.

85. Imitated from Dante, Inf. ii. 1-3 (with which cf. Æneid, ix. 224). Cary's translation has—

90. 'I had what I did not want,' i. e. care and heaviness. 'And I had not what I wanted,' i. e. my desires. Not a personal reference, but borrowed from Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 3; see vol. ii. p. 57, l. 24. Moreover, the same idea is repeated, but in clearer language, in the Complaint to his Lady, ll. 47-49 (p. 361); and again, in the Complaint to Pity, ll. 99-104 (p. 276).

99. Chaucer discusses dreams elsewhere; see Ho. of Fame, 1-52; Nonne Prestes Tale, 76-336; Troil. v. 358. Macrobius, Comment. in Somn. Scipionis, lib. i. c. 3, distinguishes five kinds of dreams, giving the name ἐνύπνιον to the kind of which Chaucer here speaks. 'Est enim ἐνύπνιον quotiens oppressi animi corporisve sive fortunæ, qualis vigilantem fatigaverat, talem se ingerit dormienti: animi, si amator deliciis suis aut fruentem se videat aut carentem: ... corporis, si ... esuriens cibum aut potum sitiens desiderare, quærere, vel etiam invenisse videatur,' &c. But the real original of this stanza (as shewn by Prof. Lounsbury) is to be found in Claudian, In Sextum Consulatum Honorii Augusti Præfatio, ll. 3-10.

Cf. Vincent of Beauvais, lib. xxvi. c. 62 and c. 63; Batman upon Bartholome, lib. vi. c. 27, ed. 1582, fol. 84. And see the famous passage in Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 53; especially ll. 70-88. The Roman de la Rose begins with remarks concerning dreams; and again, at l. 18564, there is a second passage on the same subject, with a reference to Scipio, and a remark about dreaming of things that occupy the mind (l. 18601).

109. Compare Dante, Inf. i. 83; which Gary translates—

111. 'Of which Macrobius recked (thought) not a little.' In fact, Macrobius concludes his commentary with the words—'Vere igitur pronunciandum est nihil hoc opere perfectius, quo universa philosophiæ continetur integritas.'

113. Cithérea, Cytherea, i. e. Venus; see Kn. Tale, 1357 (A 2215).

114. In the Roman de la Rose, 15980, Venus speaks of her bow (F. arc) and her firebrand or torch (brandon). Cf. Merch. Tale, E 1777.

117. 'As surely as I saw thee in the north-north-west.' He here refers to the planet Venus. As this planet is never more than 47° from the sun, the sun must have been visible to the north of the west point at sunset; i. e. the poem must have been written in the summer-time. The same seems to be indicated by l. 21 (the longe day), and still more clearly by ll. 85-88; Chaucer would hardly have gone to bed at sunset in the winter-time. It is true that he dreams about Saint Valentine's day, but that is quite another matter. Curiously enough, the landscape seen in his dream is quite a summer landscape; see ll. 172, 184-210.

120. African, Africanus; as above.

122. Grene stone, mossy or moss-covered stone; an expression copied by Lydgate, Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 42.

Prof. Hales, in the Gent. Magazine, April, 1882, has an interesting article on 'Chaucer at Woodstock.' He shews that there was a park there, surrounded by a stone wall; and that Edward III. often resided at Woodstock, where the Black Prince was born. It is possible that Chaucer was thinking of Woodstock when writing the present passage. See the account of Woodstock Palace in Abbeys, Castles, &c. by J. Timbs; vol. ii. But Dr. Köppel has shewn (Anglia, xiv. 234) that Chaucer here partly follows Boccaccio's poem, Amorosa Visione, ii. 1-35, where we find 'un muro antico.' So also the Roman de la Rose has an allusion to Scipio's dream, and the following lines (129-131, p. 99, above):—

123. Y-wroght-e; the final -e here denotes the plural form.

125. On eyther halfe, on either side; to right and left.

127. Imitated from Dante, Inf. iii. 1; Cary's translation has—

See also l. 134. The gate is the entrance into Love, which is to some a blessing, and to some a curse; see ll. 158, 159. Thus men gon is, practically, equivalent to 'some men go'; and so in l. 134. The idea is utterly different from that of the two gates in Vergil, Æn. vi. 893. The successful lover finds 'the well of Favour,' l. 129. The unsuccessful one encounters the deadly wounds caused by the spear (or dart) guided to his heart by Disdain and Power-to-harm (Daunger); for him, the opened garden bears no fruit, and the alluring stream leads him only to a fatal weir, wherein imprisoned fish are left lying dry.

140. 'Avoiding it is the only remedy.' This is only another form of a proverb which also occurs as 'Well fights he who well flies.' See Proverbs of Hending (in Spec. of English), l. 77; Owl and Nightingale, l. 176. Sir T. Wiat has—'The first eschue is remedy alone'; Spec. of Eng. Part III. p. 235. Probably from the Roman de la Rose, l. 16818—'Sol foïr en est medicine.' (O.F. foir = Lat. fugere.)

141. The alluring message (ll. 127-133) was written in gold; the forbidding one (ll. 134-140) in black; see Anglia, xiv. 235.

142. A stounde, for a while (rightly); the reading astonied is to be rejected. The attitude is one of deliberation.

143. That oon, the one, the latter. In l. 145, it means the former.

148. An adamant was, originally, a diamond; then the name was transferred to the loadstone; lastly, the diamond was credited with the properties of the loadstone. Hence we find, at the end of ch. 14 of Mandeville's Travels, this remarkable experiment:—'Men taken the Ademand, that is the Schipmannes Ston, that drawethe the Nedle to him, and men leyn the Dyamand upon the Ademand, and leyn the Nedle before the Ademand; and yif the Dyamand be good and vertuous, the Ademand drawethe not the Nedle to him, whils the Dyamand is there present.' Cf. A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, lib. ii. c. 98, where the story is told of an iron statue of Mahomet, which, being surrounded by adamants (lapides adamantini), hangs suspended in the air. The modern simile is that of a donkey between two bundles of hay. For adamaunt, see Rom. of the Rose, 1182 (p. 142).