Note 289 — Chapter XVIII

Chaucer’s expansion of some of the Latin of Boëthius, in his English version of the “Consolation of Philosophie,” has led some people to suppose that the poet translated from a French rendering of Boëthius, and not direct from the Latin. If he did so, the version he would have used was doubtless that of one of his known favourite authors, Jean de Méung, the continuator of Guillaume de Lorris’s “Romance of the Rose.” A magnificent copy of Jean de Méung’s Boëthius, printed in 1494, is in the British Museum. It is illuminated with miniatures, bound in velvet, and was presented to Henry VII. A chapter of this has lately been compared with Chaucer’s translation and the original Boëthius, by Mr. Edward Bell, for the Early English Text Society; and the result is, that Chaucer’s version was certainly not made from the French of Jean de Méung, but direct from Boëthius; though some phrases of the Latin are paraphrased rather than translated, in order to bring out their meaning more fully.