Front matter (continued 2)

Wherefór : now pláynly : I wól : my stýlë : dréssë. Similarly, we find lícour in l. 13, pítè (18), líving (24), bémës (25), gínning (31), mércy (33), gárden (36), &c., all occupying places where a monosyllable would have been more acceptable.

The poem is strongly marked by alliteration, shewing that the poet (usually in a hurry) took more than usual pains with it. In the seventh stanza (43-49) this tendency is unmistakably apparent.

It is hardly possible to assign a date to a poem of this character. I can only guess it to belong to the middle period of his career; say, the reign of Henry V. We have not yet obtained sufficient data for the arrangement of Lydgate's poems.

§ 38. Lines 121-127 are here printed for the first time. In the old editions, l. 120 is succeeded by l. 128, with the result that Sion (120) would not rime with set afere (129); but the scribe of the Ashmole MS. was equal to the emergency, for he altered l. 129 so as to make it end with fuyrless thou sette vppon, which is mere nonsense. Thynne has fyrelesse fyre set on, which is just a little better.

This addition of seven lines was due to my fortunate discovery of a new MS.; for which I was indebted to the excellent MS. 'Index of First Lines' in the British Museum. This told me that a poem (hitherto unrecognised) existed in MS. Sloane 1212, of which the first line is 'A thousand stories,' &c. On examining the MS., it turned out to be a copy, on paper, of Hoccleve's De Regimine Principum, with four leaves of vellum at the beginning, and two more at the end, covered with writing of an older character. The two vellum leaves at the end were then transposed, but have since been set right, at my suggestion. They contain a few lines of the conclusion of some other piece, followed by the unique complete copy of the present Balade. This copy turned out to be much the best, and restored several of the readings. Indeed, the Ashmole MS. is very imperfect, having in it a lacuna of eight stanzas (ll. 64-119). I am thus able to give quite a presentable text.

The correction that most interested me was one in l. 134, where the Ashmole MS. and Thynne have probatyf piscyne. On June 5, 1896, I read a paper at the Philological Society, in which (among other things) I pointed out that the right reading must certainly be probatik. The very next day I found the Sloane MS.; and behold, its reading was probatyk! It is not often that a 'conjectural emendation' is confirmed, on unimpeachable authority, within twenty-four hours.

Another remarkable correction is that of dyamaunt for dyametre in l. 87. It was all very well to compare Our Lady to a diamond; but to call her a diameter (as in all the editions) is a little too bad. Again, in l. 121 (now first printed) we have the remarkable expression punical pome for a pomegranate, which is worthy of notice; and in l. 123 we find a new word, agnelet, which is not to be found in the New English Dictionary.

All the printed editions print the next piece as if it formed a part of the present one; but they have absolutely no point in common beyond the fact of having a common authorship.

§ 39. XI. To my Soverain Lady.

In all the old editions, this piece forms part of the preceding, though it is obviously distinct from it, when attention is once drawn to the fact. Instead of being addressed, like no. X, to the Virgin, it is addressed to a lady whose name the poet wishes to commend (l. 7); and from whom he is parted (51); whereas two lovers ought to be together, if they wish to live 'well merry' (64). Her goodly fresh face is a merry mirror (73); and he has chosen her as his Valentine (111).

It is evidently a conventional complimentary poem, written to please some lady of rank or of high renown (93), one, in fact, who is 'of women chief princesse' (70). It is prettily expressed, and does Lydgate some credit, being a favourable specimen of his more playful style; I wish we had more of the same kind. L. 68—'Let him go love, and see wher [whether] it be game'—is excellent.

I shall here submit to the reader a pure guess, for what it is worth. My impression is that this piece, being a complimentary Valentine, was suggested by queen Katherine's visit to England; the lover whose passion is here described being no other than king Henry V, who was parted from his queen for a week. The pair arrived at Dover on Feb. 2, 1421, and Henry went on to London, arriving on Feb. 14; the queen did not arrive till Feb. 21, just in time for her coronation on Feb. 23.

This hypothesis satisfies several conditions. It explains why the lover's English is not good enough to praise the lady; why so many French lines are quoted; the significant allusion to the lily, i.e. the lily of France, in l. 16; the lover's consolation found in English roundels (40); the expression 'cheef princesse' in l. 70; and the very remarkable exclamation of Salve, regina, in l. 83, which doubtless made Thynne imagine that the poem was addressed to the Virgin Mary. The expression 'for your departing' in l. 105 does not necessarily mean 'on account of your departure from me'; it is equally in accordance with Middle-English usage to suppose that it means 'on account of your separation from me'; see Depart and Departing in the New English Dictionary.

It is well known that Lydgate provided the necessary poetry for the entry of Henry VI into London in Feb. 1432.

Some resemblances to Chaucer are pointed out in the Notes. The most interesting circumstance about this poem is that the author quotes, at the end of his third stanza, the first line of 'Merciles Beautè'; this is a strong point in favour of the attribution of that poem to his master.

This piece is distinguished from the preceding by the difference of its subject; by the difference in the character of the metre (there is here no alliteration); and, most significant of all, by its absence from MS. Ashmole 59 and MS. Sloane 1212, both of which contain the preceding piece. The two poems may have been brought together, in the MS. which Thynne followed, by the accident of being written about the same time.

§ 40. XII. Ballad of Good Counsel.

The title of this piece in Stowe's edition stands as follows: 'A balade of good counseile, translated out of Latin verses into Englishe, by dan Iohn lidgat cleped the monke of Buri.' What were the Latin verses here referred to, I have no means of ascertaining.

This Ballad is eminently characteristic of Lydgate's style, and by no means the worst of its kind. When he once gets hold of a refrain that pleases him, he canters merrily along till he has absolutely no more to say. I think he must have enjoyed writing it, and that he wrote it to please himself.

He transgresses one of Chaucer's canons in ll. 79-82; where he rimes hardy with foly and flatery. The two latter words are, in Chaucer, foly-ë and flatery-ë, and never rime with a word like hardy, which has no final -e.

Lydgate is very fond of what may be called catalogues; he begins by enumerating every kind of possibility. You may be rich, or strong, or prudent, &c.; or fair (22) or ugly (24); you may have a wife (29), or you may not (36); you may be fat (43), or you may be lean (46); or staid (57), or holy (64); your dress may be presentable (71), or poor (72), or middling (73); you may speak much (78) or little (80); and so on; for it is hard to come to an end. At l. 106, he begins all over again with womankind; and the conclusion is, that you should govern your tongue, and never listen to slander.

Thynne's text is not very good; the MSS. are somewhat better. He makes the odd mistake of printing Holynesse beautie for Eleynes beaute (115); but Helen had not much to do with holiness. Two of the stanzas (71-7 and 106-112) are now printed for the first time, as they occur in the MSS. only. Indeed, MS. H. (Harl. 2251) is the sole authority for the former of these two stanzas.

§ 41. XIII. Beware of Doubleness.

This is a favourable example of Lydgate's better style; and is written with unusual smoothness, owing to the shortness of the lines. It was first printed in 1561. There is a better copy in the Fairfax MS., which has been taken as the basis of the text. The copy in MS. Ashmole 59 is very poor. The title—'Balade made by Lydgate'—occurs in MS. Addit. 16165. Stowe, being unacquainted with the phrase ambes as (l. 78), though it occurs in Chaucer, turned ambes into lombes, after which he wrongly inserted a comma; and lombes appears, accordingly, in all former editions, with a comma after it. What sense readers have hitherto made of this line, I am at a loss to conjecture.

§ 42. XIV. A Balade: Warning Men, etc.

First printed by Stowe in 1561, from the MS. in Trinity College Library, marked R. 3. 19, which I have used in preference to the printed edition.

There is another, and more complete copy in the same library, marked O. 9. 38, which has contributed some excellent corrections. Moreover, it gives a better arrangement of stanzas three and four, which the old editions transpose. More than this, it contains a unique stanza (36-42), which has not been printed before.

The poem also occurs in Shirley's MS. Harl. 2251, which contains a large number of poems by Lydgate; and is there followed by another poem of seven stanzas, attributed to Lydgate. That the present poem is Lydgate's, cannot well be doubted; it belongs to the same class of his poems as no. XII above. I find it attributed to him in the reprint of 'Chaucer's Poems' by Chalmers, in 1810.

The substitution of the contracted and idiomatic form et for the later form eteth is a great improvement. It is due to MS. O. 9. 38, where the scribe first wrote ette, but was afterwards so weak as to 'correct' it to etyth. But this 'correction' just ruins the refrain. Et was no doubt becoming archaic towards the middle of the fifteenth century.

Two variations upon the last stanza occur in the Bannatyne MS., fol. 258, back; see the print by the Hunterian Club, 1879, pp. 754, 755.

§ 43. XV. Three Sayings.

First printed by Stowe; I know of no MS. copy. The first two Sayings are attributed to Lydgate; so we may as well credit him with the third. The second expresses the same statements as the first, but varies somewhat in form; both are founded upon a Latin line which occurs in MS. Fairfax 16 (fol. 196) and in MS. Harl. 7578 (fol. 20), and runs as follows:—'Quatuor infatuant, honor, etas, femina, uinum.'

Note that these Three Sayings constitute the only addition made by Stowe to Thynne in 'Part I' of Stowe's edition. See nos. 28, 29, 30 in vol. i. p. 32. Stowe introduced them in order to fill a blank half-column between nos. 27 and 31.

§ 44. XVI. La Belle Dame sans Mercy.

First printed in Thynne's Chaucer (1532). Tyrwhitt first pointed out that it could not possibly be his, seeing that Alan Chartier's poem with the same name, whence the English version was made, could not have been written in Chaucer's lifetime. Chartier was born in 1386, and was only fourteen years old at the time of Chaucer's death. Tyrwhitt further stated that the author's name, Sir Richard Ros, was plainly given in MS. Harl. 372, fol. 61, where the poem has this title:—'La Belle Dame Sanz Mercy. Translatid out of Frenche by Sir Richard Ros.' I have not been able to find the date of the French original, as there is no modern edition of Chartier's poems; but it can hardly have been written before 1410, when the poet was only twenty-four years old; and the date of the translation must be later still. But we are not wholly left to conjecture in this matter. A short notice of Sir Richard Ros appeared in Englische Studien, X. 206, written by H. Gröhler, who refers us to his dissertation 'Ueber Richard Ros' mittelenglische übersetzung des gedichtes von Alain Chartier La Belle Dame sans Mercy,' published at Breslau in 1886; of which Dr. Gröhler has most obligingly sent me a copy, whence several of my Notes have been derived. He tells us, in this article, that his dissertation was founded on the copy of the poem in MS. Harl. 372, which (in 1886) he believed to be unique; whereas he had since been informed that there are three other MSS., viz. Camb. Ff. 1. 6, Trin. Coll. Camb. R. 3. 19, and Fairfax 16; and further, that the Trinity MS. agrees with the Harleian as to misarrangement of the subject-matter^[18]. He also proposed to give a new edition of the poem in Englische Studien, but I am unable to find it; and Dr. Kölbing courteously informs me that it never appeared.

Dr. Gröhler further tells us, that Mr. Joseph Hall, of Manchester, had sent him some account, extracted from the county history of Leicestershire by Nichols, of the family of Roos or Ros, who were lords of Hamlake and Belvoir in that county. According to Nichols, the Sir Richard Ros who was presumably the poet, was the second son of Sir Thomas Ros; and Sir Thomas was the second son of Sir W. Ros, who married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Arundel. If this be right, we gain the further information that Sir Richard was born in 1429^[19], and is known to have been alive in 1450, when he was twenty-one years old.

The dates suit very well, as they suggest that the English poem was written, probably, between 1450 and 1460, or at the beginning of the second half of the fifteenth century; which sufficiently agrees with the language employed and with the probable age of the MSS. The date assigned in the New English Dictionary, s.v. Currish, is 1460; which cannot be far wrong. It can hardly be much later.

§ 45. The above notice also suggests that, as Sir Richard Ros was of a Leicestershire family, the dialect of the piece may, originally at least, have been North Leicestershire. Belvoir is situate in the N.E. corner of Leicestershire, not far from Grantham in Lincolnshire, and at no great distance from the birthplace of Robert of Brunne. It is well known that Robert of Brunne wrote in a variety of the Midland dialect which coincides, to a remarkable extent, with the form of the language which has become the standard literary English. Now it is easily seen that La Belle Dame has the same peculiarity, and I venture to think that, on this account, it is worth special attention. If we want to see a specimen of what the Midland literary dialect was like in the middle of the fifteenth century, it is here that we may find it. Many of the stanzas are, in fact, remarkably modern, both in grammar and expression; we have only to alter the spelling, and there is nothing left to explain. Take for example the last stanza on p. 301 (ll. 77-84):—

A large number of stanzas readily lend themselves to similar treatment; and this is quite enough to dissociate the poem from Chaucer. The great difficulty about modernising Chaucer is, as every one knows, his use of the final -e as a distinct syllable; but we may search a whole page of La Belle Dame without finding anything of the kind. When Sir Richard's words have an extra syllable, it is due to the suffix -es or the suffix -ed; and even these are not remarkably numerous; we do not arrive at cloth-ës, a plural in -es, before l. 22; and, in the course of the first four stanzas, all the words in -ed are awak-ed, nak-ed, vex-ed, tourn-ed, and bold-ed, none of which would be surprising to a student of Elizabethan poetry. That there was something of a Northern element in Sir Richard's language appears from the rime of long-es with song-es, in ll. 53-55; where longes is the third person singular of the present tense; but modern English has belongs, with the same suffix! Again, he constantly uses the Northern possessive pronoun their; but modern English does the same!

§ 46. Another remarkable point about the poem is the perfect smoothness and regularity of the metre in a large number of lines, even as judged by a modern standard. The first line—'Half in a dream, not fully well awaked'—might, from a metrical point of view, have been written yesterday. It is a pity that the poem is somewhat dull, owing to its needless prolixity; but this is not a little due to Alan Chartier. Sir Richard has only eight stanzas of his own, four at the beginning, and four at the end; and it is remarkable that these are in the seven-line stanza, while the rest of the stanzas have eight lines, like their French original, of which I here give the first stanza, from the Paris edition of 1617, p. 502. (See l. 29 of the English version.)

I have cited in the Notes a few passages of the original text which help to explain the translation.

§ 47. The text in Thynne is a good one, and it seemed convenient to make it the basis of the edition; but it has been carefully controlled by collation with MS. Ff. 1. 6, which is, in some respects, the best MS. I am not sure that Thynne always followed his MS.; he may have collated some other one, as he professes in some cases to have done. MS. Ff. 1. 6, the Trinity MS., and Thynne's principal MS. form one group, which we may call A; whilst the Fairfax and Harleian MSS. form a second group, which we may call B: and of these, group A is the better. The MSS. in group B sadly transpose the subject-matter, and give the poem in the following order; viz. lines 1-428, 669-716, 525-572, 477-524, 621-668, 573-620, 429-476, 717-856. The cause of this dislocation is simple enough. It means that the B-group MSS. were copied from one in which three leaves, each containing six stanzas, were misarranged. The three leaves were placed one within the other, to form a sheet, and were written upon. Then the outer pair of these leaves was turned inside out, whilst the second and third pair changed places. This can easily be verified by making a little book of six leaves and numbering each page with the numbers 429-452, 453-476, 477-500, 501-524, &c. (i.e. with 24 lines on a page, ending with 716), and then misarranging the leaves in the manner indicated.

The copy in MS. Harl. 372 was printed, just as it stands, by Dr. Furnivall, in his volume entitled Political, Religious, and Love Poems, published for the E. E. T. S. in 1866; at p. 52. The text is there, accordingly, misarranged as above stated.

There is another MS. copy, as has been said above, in MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. R. 3. 19; but I have not collated it. It seems to be closely related to MS. Ff., and to present no additional information. Not only do the MSS. of the A-group contain the text in the right order, but they frequently give the better readings. Thus, in l. 47, we have the odd line—'My pen coud never have knowlege what it ment'; as given in MS. Ff., the Trinity MS., and Thynne. The word pen is altered to eyen in MSS. H. and F.; nevertheless, it is perfectly right, for the French original has plume; see the Note on the line. Other examples are given in the Notes.

In l. 174, MS. Ff. alone has the right reading, apert. I had made up my mind that this was the right reading even before consulting that MS., because the old reading—'One wyse nor other, prevy nor perte'—is so extremely harsh. There is no sense in using the clipped form of the word when the true and usual form will scan so much better. See C. T., F 531, Ho. Fame, 717. The Trinity MS. gets out of the difficulty by a material alteration of the line, so that it there becomes—'In any wyse, nether preuy nor perte.'

§ 48. XVII. The Testament of Cresseid.

I do not suppose this was ever supposed to be Chaucer's even by Thynne. Line 64—'Quha wait gif all that Chaucer wrait was trew?'—must have settled the question from the first. No doubt Thynne added it simply as a pendant to Troilus, and he must have had a copy before him in the Northern dialect, which he modified as well as he could. Nevertheless, he gives us can for the Southern gan in l. 6, wrate for wrote in l. 64, and has many similar Northern forms.

The poem was printed at Edinburgh in 1593 with the author's name. The title is as follows—¶ The Testament of CRESSEID, Compylit be M. Robert Henrysone, Sculemai-ster in Dunfermeling. Imprentit at Edin = burgh be Henrie Charteris. MD. XCIII. The text is in 4to, ten leaves, black-letter. Only one copy has been preserved, which is now in the British Museum; but it was reprinted page for page in the volume presented by Mr. Chalmers to the Bannatyne Club in 1824. The present edition is from this reprint, with very few modifications, such as sh for sch, and final -y for final -ie in immaterial cases. All other modifications are accounted for in the footnotes below. No early MS. copy is known; there was once a copy in the Asloan MS., but the leaves containing it are lost.

Thynne's print must have been a good deal altered from the original, to make it more intelligible. It is odd to find him altering quhisling (20) to whiskyng, and ringand (144) to tynkyng. I note all Thynne's variations that are of any interest. He must have been much puzzled by aneuch in (which he seems to have regarded as one word and as a past participle) before he turned it into enewed (110). But in some cases Thynne gives us real help, as I will now point out.

In l. 48, E. (the Edinburgh edition) has—'Quhill Esperus reioisit him agane'; where Esperus gives no good sense. But Thynne prints esperous, which at once suggests esperans (hope), as opposed to wanhope in the preceding line.

In l. 155, E. has frosnit, which Laing interprets 'frozen,' as if the pp. of freeze could have both a strong and weak pp. suffix at the same moment! But Thynne has frounsed, evidently put for fronsit, as used elsewhere by Henryson in The Fable of the Paddock and the Mous, l. 43:—'The Mous beheld unto her fronsit face.' A printer's error of sn for ns is not surprising.

In ll. 164, 178, 260, E. has gyis or gyse; but Thynne has preserved the true Chaucerian word gyte, which the printer evidently did not understand. It is true that in l. 164 he turned it into gate; but when he found it recur, he let it alone.

In l. 205, E. has upricht (!); which Thynne corrects.

In l. 290, Th. has iniure for iniurie, and I think he is right, though I have let injurie stand; iniure is Chaucer's form (Troil. iii. 1018), and it suits the scansion better.

In l. 382, Thynne corrects Unto to To; and in l. 386, has Beuer for bawar. In l. 441, he has syder for ceder. In l. 501, he has plyte for plye, where a letter may have dropped out in E.; but see the note (p. 525). In l. 590, his reading tokenyng suggests that takning (as in E.) should be takining or takinning; the line will then scan. The contracted form taikning occurs, however, in l. 232, where the word is less emphatic.

Note further, that in l. 216 the original must have had Philogoney (see the Note). This appears in the astonishing forms Philologie (E.), and Philologee (Th.). Laing prints Phlegonie, which will neither scan nor rime, without any hint that he is departing from his exemplar. All his corrections are made silently, so that one cannot tell where they occur without reference to the original.

For further information concerning Robert Henryson, schoolmaster of Dunfermline, see the preface to David Laing's edition of The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, Edinburgh, 1865; and Morley's English Writers, 1890, vol. vi. p. 250. He is supposed to have been born about 1425, and to have died about 1500. On Sept. 10, 1462, the Venerable Master Robert Henrysone, Licentiate in Arts and Bachelor in Decrees, was incorporated or admitted a member of the newly founded university of Glasgow; and he is known to have been a notary public. Perhaps The Testament of Cresseid was written about 1460. It is a rather mature performance, and is his best piece. Perhaps it is the best piece in the present volume.

§ 49. XVIII. The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.

Of this piece there are several MSS., which fall into two main classes: (A)—Ff. (Ff. 1. 6, in the Camb. Univ. Library); T. (Tanner 346); Th. (MS. used by Thynne, closely allied to T.); and (B)—F. (Fairfax 16), and B. (Bodley 638), which are closely allied. There is also S. (Selden, B. 24) imperfect, which has readings of its own^[20]. Of these groups, A is the better, and MS. Ff. is, in some respects, the most important. Nevertheless, MS. Ff. has never been collated hitherto, so that I am able to give a somewhat improved text. For example, in all former editions lines 12 and 13 are transposed. In l. 180, the reading haire (as in Bell and Morris) is somewhat comic (see the Note). In l. 203, MS. Ff. restores the true reading hit, i.e. hitteth. Bell, by some accident, omits the stanza in which this word occurs. In vol. i. p. 39, I took occasion to complain of the riming of now with rescow-e in ll. 228-9, according to Bell. The right reading, however, is not now, but avow-e, which rimes well enough. MS. Selden has allowe, which Morris follows, though it is clearly inferior and is unsupported. On the other hand, MS. Selden correctly, and alone, has leve in l. 237; but the confusion between e and o is endless, so that the false reading loue creates no surprise.

This poem is very interesting, and has deservedly been a favourite one. It is therefore a great pleasure to me to have found the author's name. This is given at the end of the poem in MS. Ff. (the best MS., but hitherto neglected), where we find, in firm distinct letters, in the same handwriting as the poem itself, the remark—Explicit Clanvowe. Remembering that the true title of the poem is 'The Book of Cupid, God of Love^[21],' I applied to Dr. Furnivall, asking him if he had met with the name. He at once referred me to his preface to Hoccleve's Works, p. x, where Sir John Clanvowe and Thomas Hoccleve are both mentioned in the same document (about A.D. 1385). But Sir John Clanvowe died in 1391, and therefore could not have imitated the title of Hoccleve's poem, which was not written till 1402. Our poet was probably Sir Thomas Clanvowe, concerning whom several particulars are known, and who must have been a well-known personage at the courts of Richard II and Henry IV. We learn from Wylie's Hist. of Henry IV, vol. iii. p. 261, that he was one of twenty-five knights who accompanied John Beaufort (son of John of Gaunt) to Barbary in 1390. This Sir Thomas favoured the opinions of the Lollards, but was nevertheless a friend of 'Prince Hal,' at the time when the prince was still friendly to freethinkers. He seems to have accompanied the prince in the mountains of Wales; see Wylie, as above, iii. 333. In 1401, he is mentioned as being one of 'vi Chivalers' in the list of esquires who were summoned to a council by king Henry IV; see the Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Nicolas, temp. Henry IV, p. 162. (It may be noted that Sir John Clanvowe was a witness, in 1385, to the will of the widow of the Black Prince; see Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Nicolas.)

§ 50. It now becomes easy to explain the reference to the queen at Woodstock, which has never yet been accounted for. The poem begins with the words—'The God of Love! Ah benedicite,' quoted from Chaucer, the title of the poem being 'The Book of Cupid, God of Love,' as has been said; and this title was imitated from Hoccleve's poem of 1402. But there was no queen of England after Henry's accession till Feb. 7, 1403, when the king married Joan of Navarre; and it was she who held as a part of her dower the manor and park of Woodstock; see Wylie, as above, ii. 284. Hence the following hypothesis will suit the facts—namely, that the poem, imitating Chaucer's manner, and having a title imitated from Hoccleve's poem of 1402, was written by Sir Thomas Clanvowe, who held Lollard opinions^[22] and was a friend (at one time) of Henry of Monmouth. And it was addressed to Joan of Navarre, Henry's stepmother, queen of England from 1403 to 1413, who held as a part of her dower the manor of Woodstock. If so, we should expect it to have been written before April, 1410, when Thomas Badby, the Lollard, was executed in the presence of the prince of Wales. Further, as it was probably written early rather than late in this period, I should be inclined to date it in 1403; possibly in May, as it relates so much to the time of spring.

I may add that the Clanvowes were a Herefordshire family, from the neighbourhood of Wigmore. The only remarkable non-Chaucerian word in the poem is the verb greden, to cry out (A.S. grǣdan); a word found in many dialects, and used by Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Langland, and Hoccleve.

The poem is written in a light and pleasing style, which Wordsworth has fairly reproduced. The final -e is suppressed in assay-e (l. 52). The non-Chaucerian rimes are few, viz. gren-e and sen-e as riming with been (61-5), shewing that Clanvowe cut down those dissyllables to green and seen. And further, the forms ron and mon are employed, in order to rime with upon (81-5); whereas Chaucer only has the form man; whilst of ran I remember no example at the end of a line^[23].

§ 51. But there is one point about Clanvowe's verse which renders it, for the fifteenth century, quite unique. In imitating Chaucer's use of the final -e, he employs this suffix with unprecedented freedom, and rather avoids than seeks elision. This gives quite a distinctive character to his versification, and is very noticeable when attention has once been drawn to it. If, for example, we compare it with the Parliament of Foules, which it most resembles in general character, we find the following results. If, in the Cuckoo and Nightingale, we observe the first 21 lines, we shall find (even if we omit the example of hy-e in l. 4, and all the examples of final -e at the end of a line) the following clear examples of its use:—low-e, lyk-e, hard-e, sek-e, hol-e (twice), mak-e, hav-e, wys-e, proud-e, grev-e, trew-e, hert-e, i.e. 13 examples, besides the 5 examples of final -en in mak-en, bind-en, unbind-en, bound-en, destroy-en. But in the first 21 lines of the Parliament of Foules there are only 2 examples of the final -e in the middle of a line, viz. lust-e (15) and long-e (21), whilst of the final -en there is none. The difference between 18 and 2 must strike even the most inexperienced reader, when it is once brought under his notice. However, it is an extreme case.

Yet again, if the last 21 lines in the Cuckoo be compared with ll. 659-679 of the Parliament (being the last 21 lines, if we dismiss the roundel and the stanza that follows it), we find in the former 7 examples of final -e and 2 of -en, or 9 in all, whilst in Chaucer there are 7 of final -e, and 1 of -en, or 8 in all; and this also happens to be an extreme case in the other direction, owing to the occurrence in the former poem of the words egle, maple, and chambre, which I have not taken into account.

This suggests that, to make sure, we must compare much longer passages. In the whole of the Cuckoo, I make about 120 such cases of final -e, and 23 such cases of final -en, or 143 in all. In 290 lines of the Parliament of Foules, I make about 68 and 19 such cases respectively; or about 87 in all. Now the difference between 143 and 87 is surely very marked.

The cause of this result is obvious, viz. that Chaucer makes a more frequent use of elision. In the first 21 lines of the Parl. of Foules, we find elisions of men', sor', wak', oft' (twice), red' (twice), spek', fast', radd'; i.e. 10 examples; added to which, Chaucer has joy(e), love, knowe, usage, boke, at the cæsura, and suppresses the e in write (written). But in ll. 1-21, Clanvowe has (in addition to love, make, lowe, make (twice), gladde at the cæsura) only 3 examples of true elision, viz. fressh', tell', and mak' (15).

And further, we seldom find two examples of the use of the final -e in the same line in Chaucer. I do not observe any instance, in the Parl. of Foules, till we arrive at l. 94:—'Took rest that mad-e me to slep-e faste.' But in Clanvowe they are fairly common. Examples are: Of sek-e folk ful hol-e (7); For every trew-e gentil hert-e free (21); That any hert-e shuld-e slepy be (44); I went-e forth alon-e bold-e-ly (59); They coud-e that servyc-e al by rote (71); and the like. In l. 73, we have even three examples in one line; Some song-e loud-e, as they hadd-e playned. From all of which it appears that the critics who have assigned the Cuckoo to Chaucer have taken no pains whatever to check their opinion by any sort of analysis. They have trusted to their own mere opinion, without looking the facts in the face.

§ 52. I will point out yet one more very striking difference. We know that Chaucer sometimes employs headless lines, such as: Twénty bókes át his béddes héed. But he does so sparingly, especially in his Minor Poems. But in the Cuckoo, they are not uncommon; see, e.g. lines 16, 50, 72, 100, 116, 118, 146, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 166, 205, 232, 242, 252, 261, 265, 268. It is true that, in Morris's edition, lines 72, 146, 153, 161, and 205 are slightly altered; but in no case can I find that the alteration is authorised. And even then, this does not get rid of the five consecutive examples in ll. 154-158, which cannot be explained away. Once more, I repeat, the critics have failed to use their powers of observation.

I think the poem may still be admired, even if it be allowed that Clanvowe wrote it some three years after Chaucer's death.

§ 53. At any rate, it was admired by so good a judge of poetry as John Milton, who of course possessed a copy of it in the volume which was so pleasantly called 'The Works of Chaucer.' That his famous sonnet 'To the Nightingale' owed something to Clanvowe, I cannot doubt. 'Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart dost fill' is, in part, the older poet's theme; see ll. 1-30, 149-155, 191-192. Even his first line reminds one of ll. 77, 288. If Milton writes of May, so does Clanvowe; see ll. 20, 23, 34, 55, 70, 230, 235, 242; note especially l. 230. But the real point of contact is in the lines—

With which compare:—

§ 54. XIX. Envoy to Alison.

This piece has always hitherto been printed without any title, and is made to follow The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, as if there were some sort of connection between them. This is probably because it happens to follow that poem in the Fairfax and Tanner MSS., and probably did so in the MS. used by Thynne, which has a striking resemblance to the Tanner MS. However, the poem is entirely absent from the Cambridge, Selden, and Bodley MSS., proving that there is no connection with the preceding poem, from which it differs very widely in style, in language, and in metre.

I call it an Envoy to Alison. For first, it is an Envoy^[24], as it refers to the author's 'lewd book,' which it recommends to a lady. What the book is, no one can say; but it may safely be conjectured that it was of no great value. And secondly, the lady's name was Alison, as shewn by the acrostic in lines 22-27; and the author has recourse to almost ludicrous efforts, in order to secure the first four letters of the name.

Briefly, it is a very poor piece; and my chief object in reprinting it is to shew how unworthy it is of Clanvowe, not to mention Chaucer. We have no right even to assign it to Lydgate. And its date may be later than 1450.

§ 55. XX. The Flower and the Leaf.

This piece many 'critics' would assign to Chaucer, merely because they like it. This may be sentiment, but it is not criticism; and, after all, a desire to arrive at the truth should be of more weight with us than indulgence in ignorant credulity.

It is of some consequence to learn, first of all, that it is hardly possible to separate this piece from the next. The authoress of one was the authoress of the other. That The Assembly of Ladies is longer and duller, and has not held its own in popular estimation, is no sound argument to the contrary; for it is only partially true. Between the first eleven stanzas of the Assembly and the first eleven stanzas of the present poem, there is a strong general resemblance, and not much to choose. Other stanzas of the Assembly that are well up to the standard of the Flower will be found in lines 456-490, 511-539. The reason of the general inferiority of the Assembly lies chiefly in the choice of the subject; it was meant to interest some medieval household, but it gave small scope for retaining the reader's attention, and must be held to be a failure.

The links connecting these poems are so numerous that I must begin by asking the reader to let me denote The Flower and the Leaf by the letter F (= Flower), and The Assembly of Ladies by the letter A (= Assembly).

The first point is that (with the sole exception of the Nutbrown Maid) no English poems exist, as far as I remember, written previously to 1500, and purporting to be written by a woman. In the case of F. and A., this is assumed throughout. When the author of F. salutes a certain fair lady, the lady replies—'My doughter, gramercy'; 462. And again she says, 'My fair doughter'; 467, 500, 547. The author of A. says she was one of five ladies; 5-7, 407. Again, she was a woman; 18. The author of A. and some other ladies salute Lady Countenance, who in reply says 'fair sisters'; 370. Again, she and others salute a lady-chamberlain, who replies by calling them 'sisters'; 450; &c.

The poem A. is supposed to be an account of a dream, told by the authoress to a gentleman; with the exception of this gentleman, all the characters of the poem are ladies; and hence its title. The poem F. is not quite so exclusive, but it comes very near it; all the principal characters are ladies, and the chief personages are queens, viz. the queen of the Leaf and the queen of the Flower. The 'world of ladies' in l. 137 take precedence of the Nine Worthies, who were merely men. A recognition of this fact makes the whole poem much clearer.

But the most characteristic thing is the continual reference to colours, dresses, ornaments, and decorations. In F., we have descriptions of, or references to, white surcoats, velvet, seams, emeralds, purfils, colours, sleeves, trains, pearls, diamonds, a fret of gold, chaplets of leaves, chaplets of woodbine, chaplets of agnus-castus, a crown of gold, thundering trumpets, the treasury of Prester John, white cloaks, chaplets of oak, banners of Tartary-silk, more pearls, collars, escutcheons, kings-of-arms, cloaks of white cloth, crowns set with pearls, rubies, sapphires, and diamonds. Then there is a company all clad in one suit (or livery); heralds and poursuivants, more chaplets and escutcheons, men in armour with cloth of gold and horse-trappings, with bosses on their bridles and peitrels—it is surely needless to go on, though we have only arrived at l. 246.

In A., we have much the same sort of thing all over again, though it does not set in before l. 83. Then we meet with blue colours, an embroidered gown, and a purfil with a device. After a respite, we begin again at l. 206—'Her gown was blue'; and the lady wore a French motto. Diligence tells the authoress that she looks well in her new blue gown (259). At l. 305, there is another blue gown, furred with gray, with a motto on the sleeve; and there are plenty more mottoes to follow. At l. 451 we come to a paved floor, and walls made of beryl and crystal, engraved with stories; next, a well-apparelled chair or throne, on five stages, wrought of 'cassidony,' with four pommels of gold, and set with sapphires; a cloth of estate, wrought with the needle (486); cloth of gold (521); a blue gown, with sleeves wrought tabard-wise, of which the collar and the vent (slit in front of the neck) are described as being like ermine; it was couched with great pearls, powdered with diamonds, and had sleeves and purfils; then we come to rubies, enamel, a great balas-ruby, and more of the same kind. Again, it is useless to go further. Surely these descriptions of seams, and collars, and sleeves, are due to a woman.

The likeness comes out remarkably in two parallel stanzas. One of them is from F. 148, and the other from A. 526.

I wonder which the reader prefers; for myself, I have really no choice.

For I do not see how to choose between such lines as these following:—

Besides these striking coincidences in whole lines, there are a large number of phrases and endings of lines that are common to the two poems; such as—the springing of the day, F. 25, A. 218; Which, as me thought, F. 36, A. 50; wel y-wrought, F. 49, A. 165; by mesure, F. 58, A. 81; I you ensure, F. 60, 287, A. 52, 199; in this wyse, F. 98, A. 589; I sat me doun, F. 118, A. 77; oon and oon, F. 144, A. 368, 543, 710; by and by, F. 59, 146, A. 87; withouten fail, F. 369, A. 567, 646; herself aloon, F. 458, A. 84; ful demure, F. 459, A. 82; to put in wryting, F. 589, A. 664; and others that are printed out in the Notes.

Very characteristic of female authorship is the remark that the ladies vied with each other as to which looked the best; a remark which occurs in both poems; see F. 188, A. 384.

A construction common to both poems is the use of very with an adjective, a construction used by Lydgate, but not by Chaucer; examples are very rede, F. 35; very good, F. 10, 315; very round, A. 479.

It is tedious to enumerate how much these poems have in common. They open in a similar way, F. with the description of a grove, A. with the description of a garden with a maze. In the eighth stanza of F., we come to 'a herber that benched was'; and in the seventh stanza of A. we come to a similar 'herber, mad with benches'; both from The Legend of Good Women.

In F., the authoress has a waking vision of 'a world of ladies' (137); in A. she sees in a dream the 'assembly of ladies.' In both, she sees an abundance of dresses, and gems, and bright colours. Both introduce several scraps of French. In both, the authoress has interviews with allegorical or visionary personages, who address her either as daughter or sister. I have little doubt that the careful reader will discover more points of resemblance for himself.

§ 56. The chief appreciable difference between the two poems is that F. was probably written considerably earlier than A. This appears from the more frequent use of the final -e, which the authoress occasionally uses as an archaic embellishment, though she frequently forgets all about it for many stanzas together. In the former poem (F.) there seem to be about 50 examples, whilst in the latter (A.) there are hardly 10^[25]. In almost every case, it is correctly used, owing, no doubt, to tradition or to a perusal of older poetry. The most important cases are the abundant ones in which a final e is omitted where Chaucer would inevitably have inserted it. For example, such a line as F. 195—From the same grove, where the ladyes come out—would become, in Chaucer—From the sam-ë grov-ë wher the ladyes come out—giving at least twelve syllables in the line. The examples of the omission of final -e, where such omission makes a difference to the scansion, are not very numerous, because many such come before a vowel (where they might be elided) or at the cæsura (where they might be tolerated). Still we may note such a case as green in l. 109 where Chaucer would have written gren-e, giving a fresh gren-ë laurer-tree, to the ruin of the scansion. Similar offences against Chaucer's usage are herd for herd-e, 128 (cf. 191); spek' for spek-e, 140; al for all-e, plural, 165; sight for sight-e, 174; lyf for lyv-e, 182; sam' for sam-e, 195; the tenth for the tenth-e, 203; gret for gret-e, plural, 214, 225; red for red-e, 242; the worst for the worst-e, 255; yed' for yed-e, 295, 301; fast for fast-e, 304; rejoice for rejoy-se, 313; noise for nois-e, 353; sonn' for son-ne, 355, 408; hir fresh for hir fres-she, 357; laft for laft-e, pt. t., 364; their greet for hir gret-e, 377; sick for sek-e, 410; about for about-e, 411; to soup for to soup-e, 417; without for without-e, 423, 549; the hool for the hol-e, 437; to know for to know-e, 453; past for pass-ede or past-e, 465; My fair for My fair-e, vocative, 467, 500; to tel for to tell-e, 495; nin(e) for nyn-e, 502; imagin(e) for imagin-en, 525; they last for they last-e, 562; thy rud(e) for thy rud-e, 595. Those who believe that The Flower and the Leaf was written by Chaucer will have to explain away every one of these cases; and when they have done so, there is more to be said.

§ 57. For it is well known that such a word as sweetly (96) was trisyllabic, as swet-e-ly, in Chaucer; C. T., A 221. Similarly, our authoress has trewly for trew-e-ly^[26], 130; richly for rich-e-ly, 169; woodbind for wod-e-bind-e, 485. Similar is ointments for oin-e-ments, 409. And, moreover, our authoress differs from Chaucer as to other points of grammar. Thus she has Forshronk as a strong pp., 358, which ought to be forshronk-en or forshronk-e. Still more marked is her use of rood as the plural of the past tense, 449, 454, where Chaucer has rid-en; and her use of began as a plural, 385, where Chaucer has bigonn-e. Can these things be explained away also? If so, there is more to be said.

§ 58. All the above examples have been made out, without so much as looking at the rimes. But the rimes are much harder to explain away, where they differ from Chaucer's. Here are a few specimens.

Pas-se rimes with was, 27; so it must have been cut down to pas! Similarly, hew-e has become hew; for it rimes with grew, sing., 32. Sight-e has become sight, to rime with wight, 37. Brought should rather be brought-e, but it rimes with wrought, 48. Similar difficulties occur in peyn (for peyn-e), r. w. seyn (62); syd' for syd-e, r. w. espy'd for espy-ed, 72; eet, r. w. sweet for swet-e, 90; not' for not-e, r. w. sot, 99; busily, r. w. aspy' for aspy-e, 106; trewly, r. w. armony' for armony-e, 130; orient (oriant?), r. w. want for want-e, 148; person for person-e, r. w. everichon, 167. It is tedious to go on; let the critic finish the list, if he knows how to do it. If not, let him be humble. For there is more to come.

§ 59. Besides the grammar, there is yet the pronunciation to be considered; and here comes in the greatest difficulty of all. For, in ll. 86-89, we have the unusual rime of tree and be with pretily. This so staggered Dr. Morris, that he was induced to print the last word as pretile; which raises the difficulty without explaining it. For the explanation, the reader should consult the excellent dissertation by Dr. Curtis on The Romance of Clariodus (Halle, 1894), p. 56, § 187. He remarks that a rime of this character gives evidence of the transition of M.E. long close e to (Italian) long i [as in the change from A.S. mē to mod. E. me], and adds: 'this change became general in the fifteenth century, but had begun in some dialects at an earlier date.' Its occurrence in the present poem is a strong indication that it is later than the year 1400, and effectually disposes of any supposed connection with Midland poems of the fourteenth century.

Both poems are remarkably free from classical allusions and from references to such medieval authors as are freely quoted by Chaucer. There is nothing to shew that the authoress was acquainted with Latin, though she knew French, especially the French of songs and mottoes.

The Flower and the Leaf is chiefly famous for having been versified by Dryden. The version is a free one, in a manner all his own, and is finer than the original, which can hardly be said of his 'versions' of Palamon and Arcite and The Cock and the Fox. It is doubtless from this version that many critics have formed exaggerated ideas of the poem's value; otherwise, it is difficult to understand for what reasons it was considered worthy of so great a master as Geoffrey Chaucer.

§ 60. It will be seen, from the Notes, that the authoress was well acquainted with the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women; and it can hardly be questioned that she took the main idea of the poem from that source, especially ll. 188-194 of the later text. At the same time she was well acquainted with Gower's lines on the same subject, in the Conf. Amantis, iii. 357, 358; see vol. iii. pp. xlii, 297. Gower has:—

§ 61. XXI. The Assembly of Ladies.

This has already been discussed, in some measure, in considering the preceding poem. Both pieces were written by the same authoress; but the former is the more sprightly and probably the earlier. With the exception of the unusual rime of tree with pretily (discussed above), nearly all the peculiarities of the preceding poem occur here also. The Chaucerian final -e appears now and then, as in commaund-e (probably plural), 203; red-e, 215; countenanc-e, 295; pen-ne [or else seyd-e], 307; chayr-e, 476; tak-e, 565; trouth-e, 647; liv-e, 672; sem-e (pr. s. subj.), 696. But it is usually dropped, as in The fresh for The fres-she, 2; &c. In l. 11, Thynne prints fantasyse for fantasyes; for it obviously rimes with gyse (monosyllabic); cf. 533-535. Hew-e and new-e are cut down to hew and new, to rime with knew, 67. Bold rimes with told, clipped form of told-e, 94; and so on. So, again, trewly appears in place of Chaucer's trew-e-ly, 488. It is needless to pursue the subject.

The description of the maze and the arbour, in ll. 29-70, is good. Another pleasing passage is that contained in ll. 449-497; and the description of a lady's dress in ll. 519-539. As for the lady herself—

There is a most characteristic touch of a female writer in lines 253-254:—

To attribute such a question as 'how will my dress do' to a male writer is a little too dramatic for a mere narrative poem.

The two MSS. have now been collated for the first time and afford some important corrections, of which l. 61 presents remarkable instances. MS. Addit. 34360 is of some value.

§ 62. A considerable part of The Assembly of Ladies that is now of little interest may have been much appreciated at the time, as having reference to the ordering of a large medieval household, with its chambers, parlours, bay-windows, and galleries, carefully kept in good order by the various officers and servants; such as Perseverance the usher, Countenance the porter, Discretion the chief purveyor, Acquaintance the harbinger, Largesse the steward, Bel-cheer the marshal of the hall, Remembrance the chamberlain, and the rest. The authoress must have been perfectly familiar with spectacles and pageants and all the amusements of the court; but she was too humble to aspire to wear a motto.

We must not forget that the period of the Wars of the Roses, especially from 1455 to 1471, was one during which the composition of these poems was hardly possible. It is obviously very difficult to assign a date to them; perhaps they may be referred to the last quarter of the fifteenth century. We must not put them too late, because The Assembly exists in MSS. that seem to be as old as that period.

§ 63. XXII. A Goodly Balade.

For this poem there is but one authority, viz. Thynne's edition of 1532. He calls it 'A goodly balade of Chaucer'; but it is manifestly Lydgate's. Moreover, it is really a triple Balade, with an Envoy, on the model of Chaucer's Fortune and Compleynt of Venus; only it has seven-line stanzas instead of stanzas of eight lines. An inspection of Thynne's volume shews that it was inserted to fill a gap, viz. a blank page at the back of the concluding lines of The Legend of Good Women, so that the translation of Boethius might commence on a new leaf.

It is obvious that the third stanza of the second Balade was missing in Thynne's MS. He did not leave it out for lack of space; for there is plenty of room on his page.

That it is not Chaucer's appears from the first Balade, where the use of the monosyllables shal and smal in ll. 8 and 10 necessitates the use of the clipped forms al for al-le, cal for cal-le, apal for apal-le, and befal for befal-le. Moreover, the whole style of it suggests Lydgate, and does not suggest Chaucer.

The sixth stanza probably began with the letter D; in which case, the initial letters of the stanzas give us M, M, M; D, D, D; J, C, Q. And, as it was evidently addressed to a lady named Margaret (see the Notes), we seem to see here Margaret, Dame Jacques. The name of Robert Jacques occurs in the Writs of Parliament; Bardsley's English Surnames, 2nd ed., p. 565. Of course this is a guess which it is easy to deride; but it is very difficult to account otherwise for the introduction of the letters J, C, Q in the third Balade; yet it was evidently intentional, for much force was employed to achieve the result. To make the first stanza begin with J, recourse is had to French; and the other two stanzas both begin with inverted clauses.

§ 64. XXIII. Go forth, King.

I give this from Thynne's first edition; but add the Latin lines from the copy printed in Schick's edition of The Temple of Glas, at p. 68. His text is from that printed by Wynken de Worde about 1498, collated with the second and third prints from the same press at somewhat later dates, and a still later copy printed by Berthelet.

The only difference between Thynne's text and that given by Schick is that Wynken de Worde printed ar in the last line where Thynne has printed be. Schick also notes that 'the Chaucer-Prints of 1561 and 1598 omit thou' in l. 9; and I find that it is also omitted in the third edition (undated, about 1550). But it occurs in the edition of 1532, all the same; shewing that the later reprints cannot always be relied upon.

I have already said (vol. i. p. 40)—'Surely it must be Lydgate's.' For it exhibits his love for 'catalogues,' and presents his peculiarities of metre. Dr. Schick agrees with this ascription, and points out that its appearance in the four prints above-mentioned, in all of which it is annexed to Lydgate's Temple of Glas, tends to strengthen my supposition. I think this may be taken as removing all doubt on the subject.

§ 65. I beg leave to quote here Schick's excellent remarks upon the poem itself.

'There are similar pieces to these Duodecim Abusiones in earlier English literature (see ten Brink, Geschichte der englischen Literatur, i. 268, and note).^[32] The "twelf unþēawas" existed also in Old-English; a homily on them is printed in Morris, Old Eng. Homilies, pp. 101-119^[33]. It is based on the Latin Homily "De octo viciis et de duodecim abusivis huius saeculi," attributed to St. Cyprian or St. Patrick; see Dietrich in Niedner's Zeitschrift für historische Theologie, 1855, p. 518; Wanley's Catalogus, passim (cf. the Index sub voce Patrick). In the Middle-English period we meet again with more or less of these "Abusions"; see Morris, Old Eng. Miscellany, p. 185 (11 Abusions); Furnivall, Early Eng. Poems, Berlin, 1862 (Phil. Soc.), p. 161; "Five Evil Things," Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 316, and ii. 14.'

§ 66. XXIV. The Court of Love.

This piece was first printed by Stowe in 1561. Stowe happened to have access to a MS. which was really a miscellaneous collection of Middle-English pieces of various dates; and he proceeded to print them as being 'certaine workes of Geffray Chauser,' without paying any regard to their contents or style. In vol. i. pp. 33, 34, I give a list of his additions, numbered 42-60^[34]. By good fortune, the very MS. in question is now in Trinity College Library, marked R. 3. 19. We can thus tell that he was indebted to it for the pieces numbered 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, and 59. These eleven pieces are all alike remarkable for being non-Chaucerian; indeed, no. 56 is certainly Lydgate's. But it has so happened that no. 59, or The Court of Love, being the best of these pieces, was on that account 'attributed' to Chaucer, whilst the others were unhesitatingly rejected. And it happened on this wise.

§ 67. After Tyrwhitt had edited the Canterbury Tales afresh, it occurred to him to compile a Glossary. He rightly reasoned that the Glossary would be strengthened and made more correct if he included in it all the harder words found in the whole of Chaucer's Works, instead of limiting the vocabulary to words which occur in the Canterbury Tales only. For this purpose, he proceeded to draw up a List of what he conceived to be Chaucer's genuine works; and we must remember that the only process open to him was to consider all the old editions, and reject such as he conceived to be spurious. Hence his List is not really a list of genuine works, but one made by striking out from all previous lists the works which he knew to be spurious. A moment's reflection will show that this is a very different thing.

Considering that he had only his own acumen to guide him, and had no access to linguistic or grammatical tests, still less to tests derived from an examination of rimes or phonology, it is wonderful how well he did his work. In the matter of rejection, he did not make a single mistake. His first revision was made by considering only the pieces numbered 1-41, in the first part of Stowe's print (see vol. i. pp. 31-33); and he struck out the following, on the express ground that they were known to have been written by other authors; viz. nos. 4, 11, 13, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 33, and 40^[35].

Then he went over the list again, and struck out, on internal evidence, nos. 15, 18, 21, 22, and 32^[36].

Truly, here was a noble beginning! The only non-Chaucerian pieces which he failed to reject explicitly, among nos. 1-41, were the following, viz. 6 (A Goodly Balade of Chaucer), 17 (The Complaint of the Black Knight), 20 (The Testament of Love), 31 (The Cuckoo and the Nightingale), 38 (Go forth, King), and 41 (A Balade in Praise of Chaucer). Of course he rejected the last of these, but it was not worth his while to say so; and, in the same way, he tacitly rejected or ignored nos. 6, 30, and 38. Hence it was that nos. 6, 30, 38, and 41 did not appear in Moxon's Chaucer, and even no. 32 was carefully excluded. In his final list, out of nos. 1-41, Tyrwhitt actually got rid of all but nos. 17, 20, and 31 (The Black Knight, The Testament of Love, and The Cuckoo).

As to the remaining articles, he accepted, among the longer pieces, nos. 59, 62, and 63, i.e. The Court of Love, Chaucer's Dream, and The Flower and the Leaf; to which he added nos. 42, 43, and 60 (as to which there is no doubt), and also the Virelai (no. 50), on the slippery ground that it is a virelai (which, strictly speaking, it is not).

§ 68. One result of his investigations was that an edition of Chaucer was published by Moxon (my copy is dated 1855), in which all the poems were included which Tyrwhitt accepted, followed by Tyrwhitt's Account of the Works of Chaucer.

Owing to the popularity of this edition, many scholars accepted the poems contained in it as being certainly genuine; but it is obvious that this was a very risky thing to do, in the absence of external evidence; especially when it is remembered that Tyrwhitt merely wanted to illustrate his glossary to the Canterbury Tales by adding words from other texts. The idea of drawing up a canon by the process of striking out from luxuriant lists the names of pieces that are obviously spurious, is one that should never have found acceptance.

§ 69. There is only one correct method of drawing up a canon of genuine works, viz. that adopted by Mr. Henry Bradshaw, formerly our Cambridge University Librarian. It is simple enough, viz. to take a clean sheet of paper, and enter upon it, first of all, the names of all the pieces that are admittedly genuine; and then to see if it can fairly be augmented by adding such pieces as have reasonable evidence in their favour. In making a list of this character, The Court of Love has no claim to be considered at all, as I fully proved about twenty years ago^[37]; and there is an end of the matter. The MS. copy is in a hand of the sixteenth century^[38], and there is no internal evidence to suggest an earlier date.

§ 70. Our task is to determine what it really is, and what can be made of it as it stands. We learn from the author that he was 'a clerk of Cambridge' (913), which we may readily accept. Beyond this, there is nothing but internal evidence; but of this there is much. That our 'clerk' had read Ovid and Maximian appears from the Notes; he even seems to have imbibed something of 'the new learning,' as he makes up the names Philo-genet and Philo-bone by help of a Greek adjective^[39]. Dr. Schick has made it clear that he was well acquainted with Lydgate's Temple of Glas, which he imitates freely; see Schick's edition of that poem, p. cxxix. Mr. J. T. T. Brown, in his criticism on 'The Authorship of the Kingis Quair,' Glasgow, 1896, draws many parallels between The Court of Love and The Kingis Quair, and concludes that The Kingis Quair was indebted to The Court of Love; but it is tolerably certain that the indebtedness was in the other direction. For, in The Kingis Quair, some knowledge of the true use of Chaucer's final -e is still exhibited, even in a Northern poem, whilst in The Court of Love, it is almost altogether dead, though the poem is in the Midland dialect. I shall presently shew that our clerk, whilst very nearly ignoring the final -e, occasionally employs the final -en; but this he does in a way which clearly shews that he did not understand when to use it aright, a fact which is highly significant.

I am much indebted to my friend Professor Hales for pointing out another very cogent argument. He draws attention to the numerous instances in which the author of The Court of Love fails to end a stanza with a stop. There is no stop, for example, at the end of ll. 14, 567, 672, 693, 700, 763, 826, 1064, 1288; and only a slight pause at the end of ll. 28, 49, 70, 84, 189, 231, 259, 280, 371, 406, 427, &c. In Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, on the other hand, there is but one stanza without a stop at the end, viz. at l. 280; and but one with a slight pause, viz. at l. 154. The difference between these results is very marked, and would convince any mathematician. I should like to add that the same test disposes of the claims of The Flower and the Leaf to be considered as Chaucer's; it has no stop at the end of ll. 7, 70, 154, 161, 196, 231, 280, 308, 392, 476, and has mere commas at the end of ll. 28, 49, 56, 98, 119, 224, 259, 329, 336, &c. In the Assembly of Ladies this departure from Chaucer's usage has been nearly abandoned, which is one reason why that piece is in a less lively style.

§ 71. The sole MS. copy of The Court of Love belongs to the sixteenth century, and there is nothing to shew that the poem itself was of earlier date. Indeed, the language of it is remarkably like that of the former half of that century. If it be compared with Sackville's famous 'Induction,' the metrical form of the stanzas is much the same; there is the same smoothness of rhythm and frequent modernness of form, quite different from the halting lines of Lydgate and Hawes. This raises a suggestion that the author may have learnt his metre from Scottish authors, such as Henryson and Dunbar; and it is surprising to find him employing such words as celsitude and pulcritude, and even riming them together, precisely as Dunbar did (ll. 611-613, and the note). One wonders where he learnt to use such words, if not from Scottish authors. Curiously enough, a single instance of the use of a Northern inflexion occurs in the phrase me thynkes, 874. And I admit the certainty that he consulted The Kingis Quair.

I have no space to discuss the matter at length; so shall content myself with saying that the impression produced upon me is that we have here the work of one of the heralds of the Elizabethan poetry, of the class to which belonged Nicholas Grimoald, Thomas Sackville, Lord Surrey, Lord Vaux, and Sir Francis Bryan. There must have been much fairly good poetry in the time of Henry VIII that is lost to us. Tottell's Miscellany clearly shews this, as it is a mere selection of short pieces, which very nearly perished; but for this fortunate relic, we should not have known much about Wyat and Surrey. Sackville, when at Cambridge, acquired some distinction for Latin and English verse, but we possess none of it. However, Sackville was not the author of The Court of Love, seeing that it was published in a 'Chaucer' collection in 1561, long before his death.

The fact that our clerk was well acquainted with so many pieces by Chaucer, such as The Knight's Tale, the Complaint of Pity, The Legend of Good Women, Troilus, and Anelida, besides giving us reminiscences of The Letter of Cupid, and (perhaps) of The Cuckoo and Nightingale, raises the suspicion that he had access to Thynne's edition of 1532; and it is quite possible that this very book inspired him for his effort. This suspicion becomes almost a certainty if it be true that ll. 495-496 are borrowed from Rom. Rose, 2819-20; see note at p. 545. I can find no reason for dating the poem earlier than that year.

§ 72. However this may be, the chief point to notice is that his archaisms are affectations and not natural. He frequently dispenses with them altogether for whole stanzas at a time. When they occur, they are such as he found in Chaucer abundantly; I refer to such phrases as I-wis or y-wis; as blyve; the use of ich for I (661); besy cure (36); gan me dresse (113; cf. C. T., G 1271); by the feith I shall to god (131; cf. Troil. iii. 1649); and many more. He rarely uses the prefix i- or y- with the pp.; we find y-born (976), y-formed (1176), y-heried (592), y-sped (977), all in Chaucer; besides these, I only note y-fed (975), y-ravisshed (153), y-stope (281), the last being used in the sense of Chaucer's stope. The most remarkable point is the almost total absence of the final -e; I only observe His len-ë body (1257); to serv-e (909); to dred-e (603); and in thilk-ë place (642); the last of which is a phrase (cf. R. R. 660). On the other hand, whilst thus abstaining from the use of the final -e, he makes large use of the longer and less usual suffix -en, which he employs with much skill to heighten the archaic effect. Thus we find the past participles holden, 62; growen, 182; yoven or yeven, 742; shapen, 816, 1354; blowen, 1240; the gerunds writen, 35; dressen, 179; byden, 321; semen, 607; seken, 838; worshippen, 1165, and a few others; the infinitives maken, 81; byden, 189; quyten, 327, &c., this being the commonest use; the present plurals wailen, 256; foten, 586; speden, 945, &c.; with the same form for the first person, as in wailen, 1113; bleden, 1153; and for the second person, as in waxen, 958; slepen, 999. Occasionally, this suffix is varied to -yn or -in, as in exilyn, v., 336; serchyn, v., 950; spakyn, pt. pl., 624; approchyn, pr. pl., 1212. This may be the scribe's doing, and is consistent with East Anglian spelling.

But the artificial character of these endings is startlingly revealed when we find -en added in an impossible position, shewing that its true grammatical use was quite dead. Yet we find such examples. A serious error (hardly the scribe's) occurs in l. 347: 'Wheder that she me helden lefe or loth.' Hold being a strong verb, the pt. t. is held; we could however justify the use of held-e, by supposing it to be the subjunctive mood, which suits the sense; but held-en (with -en) is the plural form, while she is singular; and really this use of -e in the subjunctive must have been long dead. In l. 684, we have a case that is even worse, viz. I kepen in no wyse; here the use of -en saves a hiatus, but the concord is false, like the Latin ego seruamus. In l. 928, the same thing recurs, though the scribe has altered greven into growen^[40]; for this present tense is supposed to agree with I! A very clear case occurs in l. 725: For if by me this mater springen out; where the use of -en, again meant to save a hiatus, is excruciatingly wrong; for mater is singular! This cannot be the fault of the scribe. Other examples of false grammar are: thou serven, 290; thou sene, 499. But the climax is attained in l. 526, where we meet with thay kepten ben, where the -en is required for the metre. Kepten, as a past participle, is quite unique; let us drop a veil over this sad lapse, and say no more about it^[41].

We may, however, fairly notice the constant use of the Northern forms their and thaim or theim, where Chaucer has hir and hem. The use of their and them (not thaim) was well established by the year 1500 in literary English, as, e.g., in Hawes and Skelton. Caxton uses all four forms, hem and them, her and their.

§ 73. I add a few notes, suggested by an examination of the rimes employed.

The final -e is not used at the end of a line. This is easily seen, if carefully looked into. Thus lette (1284) stands for let, for it rimes with y-set; grace and trespace rime with was, 163; kene rimes with bene, misspelling of been, 252; redde, put for red, rimes with spred, 302; yerde, put for yerd, rimes with aferd, 363; ende rimes with frend and fend, 530; and so on throughout^[42]. The following assonances occur: here, grene, 253; kepe, flete, 309; and the following rimes are imperfect: plaint, talent, consent, 716; frend, mynd, 1056; nonne (for non), boun, 1149; like (i long), stike (i short), 673; and perhaps hold, shuld^[43], 408; hard, ferd, 151. Hard is repeated, 149, 151; 1275, 1277. A curious rime is that of length with thynketh, 1059; read thenk'th, and it is good enough. Noteworthy are these: thryse (for Chaucer's thry-ës), wyse, 537; hens (for Chaucer's henn-ës), eloquence, 935; desire, here, 961, 1301; eke, like, 561; tretesse (for Chaucer's tretys), worthinesse, 28; write, aright, 13; sey (I saw), way, 692. In one place, he has discryve, 778, to rime with lyve; and in another discry (miswritten discryve, 97), to rime with high. As in Chaucer, he sometimes has dy, to die, riming with remedy, 340, and elsewhere dey, to rime with pray, 582; and again fire, fyr, riming with hyre, 883, or with desire, 1285, and at another time the Kentish form fere (borrowed from Chaucer), with the same sense, r. w. y-fere, 622. The most curious forms are those for 'eye.' When it rimes with degree, 132, see, 768, we seem to have the Northern form ee or e; but elsewhere it rimes with besily, 299, pretily, 419, wounderly, 695, dispitously, 1139, or with I, 282; and the plural yen (= y'n) rimes with lyne, 135. The sounds represented by ē and y obviously afford permissible rimes; that the sounds were not identical appears from ll. 1051-1055, which end with me, remedy, be, dy, company consecutively.

§ 74. Perhaps an easier way for enabling a learner to recognise the peculiarities of The Court of Love, and the difference of its language from Chaucer, is to translate some lines of it into Chaucerian English. The effect upon the metre is startling.

Very many more such examples may be given. Or take the following; Chaucer has (L. G. W. 476):—

And this is how it reappears in C. L. 429:—

Here the melody of the line is completely spoilt.

In the present state of our knowledge of the history of the English language, any notion of attributing The Court of Love to Chaucer is worse than untenable; for it is wholly disgraceful. Everything points to a very late date, and tends to exclude it, not only from the fourteenth, but even from the fifteenth century.

At the same time, it will readily be granted that the poem abounds with Chaucerian words and phrases to an extent that almost surpasses even the poems of Lydgate. The versification is smooth, and the poem, as a whole, is pleasing. I have nothing to say against it, when considered on its own merits.

§ 75. Space fails me to discuss the somewhat vexed question of the Courts of Love, of which some have denied the existence. However, there seems to be good evidence to shew that they arose in Provence, and were due to the extravagances of the troubadours. They were travesties of the courts of law, with a lady of rank for a judge, and minstrels for advocates; and they discussed subtle questions relating to affairs of love, usually between troubadours and ladies. The discussions were conducted with much seriousness, and doubtless often served to give much amusement to many idle people. Not unfrequently they led to tragedies, as is easily understood when we notice that the first of one set of thirty-one Laws of Love runs as follows:—'Marriage cannot be pleaded as an excuse for refusing to love.' The reader who requires further information is referred to 'The Troubadours and Courts of Love,' by J. F. Rowbotham, M.A., London, Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1895.

It is perhaps necessary to observe that the said Courts have very little to do with the present poem, which treats of a Court of Cupid in the Chaucerian sense (Leg. Good Women, 352). Even the statutes of the Court are largely imitated from Lydgate.

§ 76. Pieces numbered XXV-XXIX.

XXV. Virelay. This piece, from the Trinity MS., belongs to the end of the fifteenth century, and contains no example of the final -e as constituting a syllable. Chaucer would have used sore (l. 2), more (l. 12), trouth (l. 13), as dissyllables; and he would not have rimed pleyn and disdayn with compleyn and absteyn, as the two latter require a final -e. The rime of finde with ende is extraordinary.

The title 'Virelai' is given to this piece in Moxon's Chaucer, and is, strictly speaking, incorrect; in the MS. and in Stowe's edition, it has no title at all! Tyrwhitt cautiously spoke of it as being 'perhaps by Chaucer'; and says that 'it comes nearer to the description of a Virelay, than anything else of his that has been preserved.' This is not the case; see note to Anelida, 256; vol. i. p. 536. Tyrwhitt quotes from Cotgrave—'Virelay, a round, freemen's song,' and adds—'There is a particular description of a Virlai, in the Jardin de plaisance, fol. xii, where it makes the decima sexta species Rhetorice Gallicane.' For further remarks, see p. 554.

XXVI. Prosperity: by John Walton. 'To Mr. [Mark] Liddell belongs the honour of the discovery of John Walton as the author of the little poem on fol. 119 [of MS. Arch. Seld. B. 24]. The lines occur as part of the Prologue (ll. 83-90) to Walton's translation of Boethius' De Consolatione.'—J. T. T. Brown, The Authorship of the Kingis Quair, Glasgow, 1896; p. 71. See the account of Walton in Warton's Hist. E. Poetry, sect. xx. The original date of the stanza was, accordingly, 1410; but we here find it in a late Scottish dress. The ascription of it to 'Chaucer,' in the MS., is an obvious error; it was written ten years after his death.

XXVII. Leaulte vault Richesse. This piece, like the former, has no title in the MS.; but the words Leaulte vault Richesse (Loyalty deserves riches) occur at the end of it. If the original was in a Midland dialect, it must belong to the latter part of the fifteenth century. Even in these eight lines we find a contradiction to Chaucer's usage; for he always uses lent, pp., as a monosyllable, and rent-e as a dissyllable. It is further remarkable that he never uses content as an adjective; it first appears in Rom. Rose, 5628.

XXVIII. Sayings. I give these sayings as printed by Caxton; see vol. i. p. 46, where I note that Caxton did not ascribe them to Chaucer. They are not at all in his style.

In MS. Ashmole 59, fol. 78, I find a similar prophecy:—

It is extremely interesting to observe the ascription of these lines to Merlin; see King Lear, iii. 2. 95.

XXIX. Balade. This poor stanza, with its long-drawn lines, appears in Stowe at the end of 'Chaucer's Works.' In the Trinity MS., it occurs at the end of a copy of The Parlement of Foules.

§ 77. An examination of the pieces contained in the present volume leads us to a somewhat remarkable result, viz. that we readily distinguish in them the handiwork of at least twelve different authors, of whom no two are much alike, whilst every one of them can be distinguished from Chaucer.

These are: (1) the author of The Testament of Love, who writes in a prose style all his own; (2) the author of The Plowmans Tale and Plowmans Crede, with his strong powers of invective and love of alliteration, whose style could never have been mistaken for Chaucer's in any age^[45]; (3) the author of Jack Upland, with his direct and searching questions; (4) John Gower, with his scrupulous regularity of grammatical usages; (5) Thomas Hoccleve, who too often accents a dissyllable on the latter syllable when it should be accented on the former; (6) Henry Scogan, whose lines are lacking in interest and originality; (7) John Lydgate^[46], who allows his verse too many licences, so that it cannot always be scanned at the first trial; (8) Sir Richard Ros, who writes in English of a quite modern cast, using their and them as in modern English, and wholly discarding the use of final -e as an inflexion; (9) Robert Henryson, who writes smoothly enough and with a fine vein of invention, but employs the Northern dialect; (10) Sir Thomas Clanvowe, who employs the final -e much more frequently than Chaucer or even Gower; (11) the authoress of The Flower and the Leaf and The Assembly of Ladies, to whom the final -e was an archaism, very convenient for metrical embellishment; and (12) the author of The Court of Love, who, while discarding the use of the final -e, was glad to use the final -en to save a hiatus or to gain a syllable, and did not hesitate to employ it where it was grammatically wrong to do so.

§ 78. If the reader were to suppose that this exhausts the list, he would be mistaken; for it is quite easy to add at least one known name, and to suggest three others. For the piece numbered XXVI, on p. 449, has been identified as the work of John Walton, who wrote a verse translation of Boethius in the year 1410; whilst it is extremely unlikely that no. XXVII, written in Lowland Scottish, was due to Henryson, the only writer in that dialect who has been mentioned above. This gives a total of fourteen authors already; and I believe that we require yet two more before the Virelai and the Sayings printed by Caxton (nos. XXV and XXVIII) can be satisfactorily accounted for. As for no. XIX—the Envoy to Alison—it may be Lydgate's, but, on the other hand, it may not. And as for no. XXIX, it is of no consequence.

Moreover, it must be remembered that I here only refer to the selected pieces printed in the present volume. If we go further afield, we soon find several more authors, all distinct from those above-mentioned, from each other, and from Chaucer. I will just instance the author of the Isle of Ladies, the authoress (presumably) of The Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, the author of The Craft of Lovers, the 'man unknown' who wrote The Ten Commandments of Love, and the author of the clumsy lines dignified by the title of The Nine Ladies Worthy. It is quite certain that not less than twenty authors are represented in the mass of heterogeneous material which appears under Chaucer's name in a compilation such as that which is printed in the first volume of Chalmers' British Poets; which, precisely on that very account, is useful enough in its own peculiar way.

§ 79. I believe it may be said of nearly every piece in the volume, that it now appears in an improved form. In several cases, I have collated MSS. that have not previously been examined, and have found them to be the best. The Notes are nearly all new; very few have been taken from Bell's Chaucer. Several are due to Schick's useful notes to The Temple of Glas; and some to Krausser's edition of The Black Knight, and to Gröhler's edition of La Belle Dame, both of which reached me after my own notes were all in type. I have added a Glossary of the harder words; for others, see the Glossary already printed in vol. vi.

In extenuation of faults, I may plead that I have found it much more difficult to deal with such heterogenous material as is comprised in the present volume than with pieces all written by the same author. The style, the grammar, the mode of scansion, the dialect, and even the pronunciation are constantly shifting, instead of being reasonably consistent, as in the genuine works of Chaucer. Any one who will take the pains to observe these points, to compile a sufficient number of notes upon difficult passages, and to prepare a somewhat full glossary, may thus practically convince himself, as I have done, that not a single piece in the present volume ought ever to have been 'attributed' to Chaucer. That any of them should have been so attributed—and some of them never were—has been the result of negligence, superficiality, and incapacity, such as (it may be hoped) we have seen the last of.

I wish once more to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. E. B. Nicholson, for the loan of his transcript of The Praise of Peace; to Mr. Bradley, for his discovery of the authorship of The Testament of Love and for other assistance as regards the same; to Dr. E. Krausser, for his edition of The Complaint of the Black Knight; to Dr. Gröhler, for his dissertation on La Belle Dame sans Mercy; and to Professor Hales for his kind help as to some difficult points, and particularly with regard to The Court of Love.

THE TESTAMENT OF LOVE.