Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 — Romaunt of the Rose (part 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II. The Compleynte unto Pite.

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

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

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

Shal not, am not to.

7. Doth me dye, makes me die.

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

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

'But sorë weep sche if oon of hem were deed';

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Wherefore I pray you, Sir Daungere,

For to mayntene no lenger here

Such cruel werre agayn your man.'

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

'Einssi encontre Cruauté

Deffent l'amant douce Pité.'

66. Under colour, beneath the outward appearance.

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

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

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

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

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

83. Perilous is here accented on the i.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I ne saugh this yeer so mery a companye";

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

"I ne seye but for this ende this sentence."

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

110. See Anelida, 182; and the note.

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

III. The Book of the Duchesse.

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

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

'Je sui de moi en grant merveille

Comment je vifs, quant tant je veille,

Et on ne porrait en veillant

Trouver de moi plus travaillant:

Car bien sacies que pour veiller

Me viennent souvent travailler

Pensees et melancolies,' etc.

Furnivall; Trial Forewords, p. 51.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

32. Aske, may ask; subjunctive mood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'For he [Chaucer] hath told of loveres up and doun

Mo than Ovyde made of mencioun

In his Epistelles, that been ful olde.

What sholde I tellen hem, sin they ben tolde?

In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcion;' &c.

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

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

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

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

'But fully bent

He [Ceyx] seemed neither for to leaue the iourney which he ment

To take by sea, nor yet to giue Alcyone leaue as tho

Companion of his perlous course by water for to go....

When toward night the wallowing waues began to waxen white,

And eke the heady eastern wind did blow with greater might....

And all the heauen with clouds as blacke as pitch was ouercast,

That neuer night was halfe so darke. There came a flaw [gust] at last,

That with his violence brake the Maste, and strake the Sterne away....

Behold, euen full vpon the waue a flake of water blacke

Did breake, and vnderneathe the sea the head of Ceyx stracke.'

fol. 137-9.

See further in the note to l. 136.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Alcyone of so great mischaunce not knowing ought as yit,

Did keepe a reckoning of the nights that in the while did flit,

And hasted garments both for him and for her selfe likewise

To weare at his homecomming which she vainely did surmize.

To all the Gods deuoutly she did offer frankincense:

But most aboue them all the Church of Iuno she did sence.

And for her husband (who as then was none) she kneeld before

The Altar, wishing health and soone arriuall at the shore.

And that none other woman might before her be preferd,

Of all her prayers this one peece effectually was herd.

For Iuno could not finde in heart entreated for to bee

For him that was already dead. But to th'intent that shee

From Dame Alcyons deadly hands might keepe her Altars free

She sayd: most faithfull messenger of my commandements, O

Thou Rainebow to the sluggish house of slumber swiftly go,

And bid him send a dreame in shape of Ceyx to his wife

Alcyone, for to shew her plaine the loosing of his life.

Dame Iris takes her pall wherein a thousand colours were,

And bowing like a stringed bow vpon the cloudie sphere,

Immediately descended to the drowzye house of Sleepe,

Whose court the cloudes continually do closely ouerdreepe.

Among the darke Cimmerians is a holow mountaine found

And in the hill a Caue that farre doth run within the ground,

The C[h]amber and the dwelling place where slouthfull sleepe doth couch.

The light of Phœbus golden beames this place can never touch....

No boughs are stird with blasts of winde, no noise of tatling toong

Of man or woman euer yet within that bower roong.

Dumbe quiet dwelleth there. Yet from the rockes foote doth go

The riuer of forgetfulnesse, which runneth trickling so

Upon the litle peeble stones which in the channell ly,

That vnto sleepe a great deale more it doth prouoke thereby....

Amid the Caue of Ebonye a bedsted standeth hie,

And on the same a bed of downe with couering blacke doth lie:

In which the drowzie God of sleepe his lither limbes doth rest.

About him forging sundry shapes as many dreams lie prest

As eares of corne do stand in fields in haruest time, or leaues

Doe grow on trees, or sea to shoore of sandie cinder heaues.

Assoone as Iris came within this house, and with her hand

Had put aside the dazeling dreames that in her way did stand,

The brightnesse of her robe through all the sacret house did shine.

The God of sleepe scarce able for to raise his heauie eine,

A three or foure times at the least did fall againe to rest,

And with his nodding head did knock his chinne against his brest.

At length he waking of himselfe, vpon his elbowe leande.

And though he knew for what she came: he askt her what she meand': &c.

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

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

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

'Que venue est en une grant valee,

De deus grans mons entour environnee,

Et d'un russel qui par my la contree,' &c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

183. Awaketh is here repeated in the plural form.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

247. His lyve, during his life.

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

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

'Et por ce au dieu qui moult sout (?) et moult vault

Por mielx dormir un chapeau de pavaut

Et un mol lit de plume de gerfaut

Promes et doing.'

See also Our English Home, p. 106.

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

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

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

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

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

'Ung acteur qui ot non Macrobes....

Ancois escrist la vision

Qui avint au roi Cipion.'

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

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

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

292. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 45-47:—

'Avis m'iere qu'il estoit mains....

En Mai estoie, ce songoie.'

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

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

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

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

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

'That me were lever her love winne

Than Kaire and al that is therinne'; Conf. Amant, ed. Pauli, ii. 57.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Clere et serie et bele estoit

La matinee, et atrempee.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'When the howndys are set an hert for to mete,

And other hym chasen and folowyn to take,

Then all the Relais thow may vppon hem make.'

Book of St. Alban's, fol. e 8, back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Et puis si corneras apel

.iij. lons mots, pour les chiens avoir.'

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

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

'Yit mayster, wolde I fayn thus at yow leere,

What is a forloyng, for that is goode to here.

That shall I say the, quod he, the soth at lest.

When thy houndes in the wode sechyn any beest,

And the beest is stoll away owt of the fryth,

Or the houndes that thou hast meten therwith,

And any other houndes before than may with hem mete,

Thees oder houndes are then forloyned, I the hete.

For the beste and the houndes arn so fer before,

And the houndes behynde be weer[i]e and soore,

So that they may not at the best cum at ther will,

The houndes before forloyne [distance] hem, and that is the skyll.

They be ay so fere before, to me iff thou will trust;

And thys is the forloyne; lere hit, iff thou lust.'

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

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

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

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

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

'Zephirus et Flora, sa fame,

Qui des flors est déesse et dame,

Cil dui font les floretes nestre.'

Cf. also ll. 5962-5:—

'Les floretes i fait parair,

E cum estoiles flamboier,

Et les herbetes verdoier

Zephirus, quant sur mer chevauche.'

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

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

'Qu'il vous fust avis que la terre

Vosist emprendre estrif et guerre

Au ciel d'estre miex estelée,

Tant iert par ses flors revelée.'

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

'La terre ...

Et oblie la poverte

Ou ele a tot l'yver este.'

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

'Li ung [arbre] fu loing de l'autre assis

Plus de cinq toises, ou de sis,' &c.

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

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

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

'Algus, Euclides, Tholomees.'

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

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

'Se mestre Argus li bien contens

I vosist bien metre ses cures,

E venist o ses dix figures,

Par quoi tout certefie et nombre,

Si ne péust-il pas le nombre

Des grans contens certefier,

Tant seust bien monteplier.'

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

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

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

442. The strong accent on me is very forced.

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

'I did espie

Where towards me a sory wight did cost

Clad all in black, that mourning did bewray.'

452. Wel-faring-e; four syllables.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'To tyre on Titius growing hart the gredy Grype forbeares:

The shunning water Tantalus endeuereth not to drink;

And Danaus daughters ceast to fil their tubs that haue no brink.

Ixions wheel stood still: and downe sate Sisyphus vpon

His rolling stone.'—Golding's Ovid, fol. 120.

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

572. Cf.

'Par Hipocras, ne Galien,

Tant fussent bon phisicien.'

Roman de la Rose, 16161.

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. , above.

614. Abaved, confounded, disconcerted. See Glossary.

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

'Vez cum fortune le servi ...

N'est ce donc chose bien provable

Que sa roë n'est pas tenable?' ...

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]—

'En la premeraine bataille

L'assailli por li desconfire,

Eschec et mat li ala dire

Desus son destrier auferrant,

Du trait d'un paonnet errant

Ou milieu de son eschiquier.'

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—

'Cil dui, comme folz garçonnés,

Roz et fierges et paonnés,

Et chevaliers as gieus perdirent,

Et hors de l'eschiquier saillirent.'

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

'Car ainsinc le dist Athalus

Qui des eschez controva l'us,

Quant il traitoit d'arismetique.'

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

'Car la fierche avoit este prise

Au gieu de la premiere assise.'

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

'De fortune la semilleuse

Et de sa roë perilleuse

Tous les tors conter ne porroie.'

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:—

'D'un œil rit, de l'autre lerme;

C'est l'orgueilleuse humilité,

C'est l'envieuse charité [l. 642] ...

La peinture d'une vipère

Qu'est mortable;

En riens à li ne se compère.'

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:—

'O sodeyn hap, o thou fortune instable,

Lyk to the scorpioun so deceivable,

That flaterest with thyn heed when thou wolt stinge;

Thy tayl is deeth, thurgh thyn enveniminge.

O brotil Ioye, o swete venim queynte,

O monstre, that so subtilly canst peynte

Thy giftes under hewe of stedfastnesse,

That thou deceyvest bothe more and lesse,' &c.

Cant. Tales, 9931 (E 2057).

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:—

'Roy, roc, chevalier, et alphin,

Fierge, et peon.'—

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:—

'Therwith | fortun | e seid | e chek | here

And mate | in mid | pointe of | the chek | kere.'

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—

'Et ne priseras une prune

Toute la roë de fortune.

A Socrates seras semblables,

Qui tant fu fers et tant estables,

Qu'il n'ert liés en prospérités,

Ne tristes en aversités.'

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.

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:—

'Ne Narcissus, the faire,' &c.; Kn. Tale, 1083 (A 1941).

'And dye he moste, he seyde, as dide Ekko

For Narcisus'; C. T. 11263 (Frank. Tale, F 951).

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

'Car le droit estat d'innocence

Ressemblent (?) proprement la table

Blanche, polie, qui est able

A recevoir, sans nul contraire,

Ce qu'on y veut peindre ou portraire.'

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.

'Car il m'est vis que je veoie,

Au joli prael ou j'estoie,

La plus tres belle compaignie

Qu'oncques fust veue ne oïe:'

Dit du Vergier, ed. Tarbé, p. 14.

'Tant qu'il avint, qu'en une compagnie

Où il avait mainte dame jolie

Juene, gentil, joïeuse et envoisie

Vis, par Fortune,

(Qui de mentir à tous est trop commune),

Entre les autres l'une

Qui, tout aussi com li solaus la lune

Veint de clarté,

Avait-elle les autres sormonté

De pris, d'onneur, de grace, de biauté;' &c.

Fontaine Amoureuse (in Trial Forewords, p. 47).

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. )—

'Li Diex d'Amors, qui, l'arc tendu,

Avoit toute jor atendu

A moi porsivre et espier.'

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:—

'Lors veissies carole aler,

Et gens mignotement baler.' (See p. , above.)

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. , above).

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

'Simpl' of | good moch | el noght | to wyde.'

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):—

'Et sa gracieuse parole,

Qui n'estoit diverse ne folle,

Etrange, ne mal ordenée,

Hautaine, mès bien affrenèe,

Cueillie à point et de saison,

Fondée sur toute raison,

Tant plaisant et douce à oïr,

Que chascun faisoit resjoir'; &c.

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):—

—'ma Dame, qui est clamée

De tous, sur toutes belle et bonne,

Chascun por droit ce nom li donne.'

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.

'Tous jors est-il ung seul Fenis'; &c.

Rom. de la Rose, 16179.

'Una est, quæ reparet, seque ipsa reseminet, ales;

Assyrii phœnica uocant.'—Ovid, Met. xv. 392.

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):—

'Forthy who secheth loves grace,

Where that these worthy women are,

He may nought than him-selve spare

Upon his travail for to serve,

Wherof that he may thank deserve,...

So that by londe and ek by ship

He mot travaile for worship

And make many hastif rodes,

Somtime in Pruse, somtime in Rodes,

And somtime into Tartarie,

So that these heralds on him crie

"Vailant! vailant! lo, where he goth!"' &c.

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:—

'As where Rhone stagnates on the plains of Arles,

Or as at Pola, near Quarnaro's gulf,

That closes Italy and laves her bounds,

The place is all thick spread with sepulchres.'

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:—

'Car c'est mes cuers, c'est ma creance,

C'est mes desirs, c'est m'esperaunce,

C'est ma santé....

C'est toute ma bonne éürté,

C'est ce qui me soustient en vie,' &c.

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. He rimes blisse with kisse, lisse, misse, and wisse. Thus in the Frankelein's Tale, F 1237—

'What for his labour and his hope of blisse,

His woful herte of penaunce hadde a lisse.'

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.

'There kyld was the kyng, and the knight bothe,

And by treason in the temple tirnyt to dethe.'

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:—

'Si n'est-il mès nule Lucrece,

Ne Penelope nule en Grece.'

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:—

'Qu'onques Karles n'ot por Rolant,

Quant en Ronceval mort reçut

Par Guenelon qui les deçut.'

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:—

'Il est asses sires du cors

Qui a le cuer en sa commande.'

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):—

'Of swich matere made he manye layes,

Songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes.'

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):—

'Aure Jubal varios ferramenti notat ictus.

Pondera librat in his. Consona quæque facit.

Hoc inventa modo prius est ars musica, quamvis

Pythagoram dicant hanc docuisse prius.'

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]:—

'But some of them Egyptian are, and full of jeopardee,

And some again, beside the rest, both good and luckie bee.'

Brand (as above), ii. 45.

'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:—

'Her disemale daies, and her fatal houres';

Lydgate, Storie of Thebes, pt. iii. (ed. 1561, fol. 370).

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

'Thou hast i-be presedent, the people to steere,

Thou dotest now on thin olde tos, in the dismale.'

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—

'Mercy, mercy, swete herte!'—Troil. iii. 98.

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—

'De nos deux cuers estoit si juste paire

Qu'onques ne fu l'un à l'autre contraire.

Tuit d'un accord, une pensee avoient.

De volenté, de desir se sambloient.

Un bien, un mal, une joie sentoient.

Conjointement.

N'onques ne fu entre eux deux autrement.'

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. , 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:—

'And round about her tear-distained eye

Blue circles streamed.' Shak. Lucrece, 1586.

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:—

'Who can the pitous Ioye tellen al

Betwix hem three, sin they ben thus y-mette?'

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:—

'There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,

But in his motion like an angel sings,' &c.

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:—

'And ther he saugh with ful avysement

The erratik sterres, herkening armonye

With sounes fulle of hevenish melodye'; &c.

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—

'Now was the day departing, and the air,

Imbrowned with shadows, from their toils released

All animals on earth.'

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. ); and again, in the Complaint to Pity, ll. 99-104 (p. ).

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.

'Venator defessa toro cum membra reponit,

Mens tamen ad silvas et sua lustra redit.

Iudicibus lites, aurigæ somnia currus,

Vanaque nocturnis meta cavetur equis.

Furto gaudet amans; permutat navita merces;

Et vigil elapsas quærit avarus opes.

Blandaque largitur frustra sitientibus ægris

Irriguus gelido pocula fonte sopor.'

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—

'May it avail me, that I long with zeal

Have sought thy volume, and with love immense

Have conn'd it o'er. My master thou, and guide!'

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. , above):—

'Quant j'oi ung poi avant alé

Si vi ung vergier grant et lé,

Tot clos d'ung haut mur bataillié;' &c.

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—

'Through me you pass into the city of woe:...

Such characters in colour dim, I mark'd

Over a portal's lofty arch inscribed.'

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.

Cf. 'As why this fish, and nought that, comth to were';

Troil. iii. 35.

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. ).

156. Errour, doubt; see l. 146 above.

158. 'This writing is not at all meant to apply to thee.'

159. Servant was, so to speak, the old technical term for a lover; cf. serveth, Kn. Tale, 2220, 2228 (A 3078, 3086); and servant in the same, 956 (A 1814); and in Two Gent, of Verona, ii. 1. 106, 114, 140, &c.

163. I. e. 'at any rate you can come and look on.'

169. Imitated from Dante, Inf. iii. 19. Cary has—

'And when his hand he had stretch'd forth

To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer'd,

Into that secret place he led me on.'

171. Cf. 'So Iolyf, nor so wel bigo'; Rom. Rose, 693.

176. Imitated by Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 8, 9. Chaucer's list of trees was suggested by a passage in the Teseide, xi. 22-24; but he extended his list by help of one in the Roman de la Rose, 1338-1368; especially ll. 1363-8, as follows (see p. , above)—

'Et d'oliviers et de cipres,

Dont il n'a gaires ici pres;

Ormes y ot branchus et gros,

Et avec ce charmes et fos,

Codres droites, trembles et chesnes,

Erables haus, sapins et fresnes.'

Here ormes are elms; charmes, horn-beams; fos, beeches; codres, hasels; trembles, aspens; chesnes, oaks; erables, maples; sapins, firs; fresnes, ashes. Hence this list contains seven kinds of trees out of Chaucer's thirteen. See also the list of 21 trees in Kn. Tale, A 2921. Spenser has—

'The builder oake, sole king of forrests all.'

This tree-list is, in fact, a great curiosity. It was started by Ovid, Metam. x. 90; after whom, it appears in Seneca, Œdipus, 532; in Lucan, Phars. iii. 440; in Statius, Thebaid, vi. 98; and in Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, ii. 107. Statius was followed by Boccaccio, Tes. xi. 22-24; Rom. de la Rose, 1361; Chaucer (twice); Tasso, Gier. Lib. iii. 73; and Spenser. Cf. Vergil, Æn. vi. 179.

I here quote several notes from Bell's Chaucer, marked 'Bell.'

'The reader will observe the life and spirit which the personification of the several trees gives to this catalogue. It is common in French, even in prose; as, for instance, the weeping willow is le saule pleureur, the weeper willow. The oak is called builder, because no other wood was used in building in this country in the middle ages, as may be seen in our old churches and farm-houses, in which the stairs are often made of solid blocks of the finest oak.'—Bell.

177. 'The elm is called piler, perhaps because it is planted as a pillar of support to the vine [cf. Spenser's 'vine-prop elme']; and cofre unto careyne because coffins for carrion or corpses were [and are] usually made of elm.'—Bell. In fact, Ovid has 'amictae uitibus ulmi,' Met. x. 100; Claudian has 'pampinus induit ulmos'; and Boccaccio—'E l'olmo, che di viti s'innamora'; Tes. xi. 24.

178. Piper, suitable for pipes or horns. 'The box, being a hard, fine-grained wood, was used for making pipes or horns, as in the Nonne Prestes Tale, B 4588—"Of bras they broghten bemes [trumpets] and of box."'—Bell. Boxwood is still used for flutes and flageolets.

Holm to whippes lasshe; 'the holm used for making handles for whip-lashes.'—Bell. Spenser calls it 'The carver holm,' i. e. the holm suitable for carving. It is the holly (A. S. holegn), not the holm-oak.

179. The sayling firr; this 'alludes to the ship's masts and spars being made of fir.'—Bell. 'Apta fretis abies'; Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, ii. 107. Spenser substitutes for it 'The sailing pine.' The cipres; 'tumulos tectura cupressus,' in Claudian.

180. The sheter ew. 'The material of our [ancient] national weapon, the bow, was yew. It is said that the old yews which are found in country churchyards were planted in order to supply the yeomanry with bows.'—Bell. Spenser has—'The eugh, obedient to the benders will.'

'The asp is the aspen, or black poplar, of which shafts or arrows were made.'—Bell. Spenser has—'The aspine good for staves'; and 'The birch for shaftes.' See Ascham's Toxophilus, ed. Arber, p. 126.

181. The olive is the emblem of peace; and the palm, of victory. Boccaccio has—'e d'ogni vincitore Premio la palma'; Tes. xi. 24; from Ovid—'uictoris praemia palmae'; Met. x. 102.

182. 'The laurel (used) for divination,' or 'to divine with.' 'Venturi praescia laurus'; Claudian, de Raptu Proserpinae, ii. 109. It was 'sacred to Apollo; and its branches were the decoration of poets, and of the flamens. The leaves, when eaten, were said to impart the power of prophesying; Tibull. 2. 5. 63; Juvenal, 7. 19.'—Lewis and Short's Lat. Dict., s.v. laurus.

183. In a note to Cant. Tales, l. 1920, Tyrwhitt says—'Chaucer has [here] taken very little from Boccace, as he had already inserted a very close imitation of this part of the Teseide in his Assemblee of Foules, from verse 183 to verse 287.' In fact, eleven stanzas (183-259) correspond to Boccaccio's Teseide, Canto vii. st. 51-60; the next three stanzas (260-280) to the same, st. 63-66; and the next two (281-294) to the same, st. 61, 62. See the whole extract from Boccaccio, given and translated in the Introduction; see p. , above.

On the other hand, this passage in Chaucer is imitated in the Kingis Quair, st. 31-33, 152, 153; and ll. 680-9 are imitated in the same, st. 34.

The phrase 'blosmy bowes' occurs again in Troilus, ii. 821.

185. 'There where is always sufficient sweetness.'

214. According to Boccaccio, the name of Cupid's daughter was Voluttade (Pleasure). In the Roman de la Rose, ll. 913, 927 (Eng. version, 923, 939), Cupid has two bows and ten arrows.

216. Read: 'aft'r ás they shúld-e.' So Koch. Or read 'couch'd.'

217. See Ovid, Metam. i. 468-471.

218. This company answer to Boccaccio's Grace, Adornment, Affability, Courtesy, Arts (plural), Vain Delight, and Gentleness. Instead of Craft, Boccaccio speaks of 'the Arts that have power to make others perforce do folly, in their aspect much disfigured.' Hypocritical Cajolery seems to be intended. Cf. 'Charmes and Force'; Kn. Tale, 1069 (A 1927).

225. Ed. 1561 has with a nice atire, but wrongly; for compare Boccaccio. Cf. Kn. Tale, 1067-9 (A 1925-7).

226. Cf. 'Jest and youthful Jollity'; L'Allegro, 26.

228. Messagerye and Mede represents the sending of messages and giving of bribes. For this sense of Mede, see P. Plowman, C. iv. (or B. iii.). The other three are Audacity (too forward Boldness), Glozings (Flatteries), and Pimps; all of bad reputation, and therefore not named. Boccaccio's words are—'il folle Ardire Con Lusinghe e Ruffiani.'

231. Bras, brass. Boccaccio has rame, i. e. copper, the metal which symbolised Venus; see Can. Yeom. Tale, G 829. In fact, this temple is the very temple of Venus which Chaucer again describes in the Knightes Tale, ll. 1060-1108 (A 1918); which see.

234. Faire, beautiful by nature; gay, adorned by art.

236. Office, duty; viz. to dance round.

237. These are the dowves flikeringe in Kn. Tale, 1104 (A 1962).

243. Sonde, sand. 'Her [Patience's] chief virtue is quiet endurance in the most insecure and unhopeful circumstances'; Bell.

245. Answering to Boccaccio's 'Promesse ad arte,' i. e. 'artful Promises.'

246. Cf. Kn. Tale, 1062-1066, 1070 (A 1920-4, 1928).

255. 'The allusion is to the adventure of Priapus, related by Ovid in the Fasti, lib. i. 415'; Bell. The ass, by braying, put Priapus to confusion.

261. But in Kn. Tale, 1082 (A 1940), the porter of Venus is Idleness, as in the Rom. de la Rose, 636 (E. version, 643, at p. 120, above).

267. Gilte; cf. Leg. of Good Women, 230, 249, 1315.

272. Valence, explained by Urry as Valentia in Spain. But perhaps it may refer to Valence, near Lyons, in France; as Lyons is especially famous for the manufacture of silks, and there is a considerable trade in silks at Valence also. Probably 'thin silk' is here meant. Boccaccio merely speaks of 'texture so thin,' or, in the original 'Testa, tanto sottil,' which accounts for Chaucer's 'subtil.' Coles's Dict. (1684) gives: 'Valence,-tia, a town in Spain, France, and Milan.' In the Unton Inventories, for the years 1596 and 1620, ed. J. G. Nichols, I find: 'one covering for a fielde bedde of green and valens,' p. 4; 'one standinge bedsteed with black velvett testern, black vallance fringed and laced,' p. 21; 'one standinge bed with yellow damaske testern and vallence,' p. 21; 'vallance frindged and laced,' p. 22; 'one bedsteed and testern, and valance of black velvett,' p. 22; 'one bedsteed ... with vallance imbroydered with ash couler,' p. 23; 'one bedsteed, with ... vallance of silke,' p. 29. It is the mod. E. valance, and became a general term for part of the hangings of a bed; Shakespeare has 'Valance of Venice gold,' spelt Vallens in old editions, Tam. Shrew, ii. 1. 356. Spenser imitates this passage, F. Q. ii. 12.77.

275. Compare the well-known proverb—'sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus'; Terence, Eun. 2. 3. 4.

277. Read Cipryde, not Cupide; for in l. 279 we have hir twice, once in the sense of 'their,' but secondly in the sense of 'her.' Boccaccio also here speaks of Venus, and refers to the apple which she won from Paris. Cipride is regularly formed from the accus. of Cypris (gen. Cypridis), an epithet of Venus due to her worship in Cyprus. Chaucer found the genitive Cypridis in Alanus de Planctu Naturæ (ed. Wright, p. 438); see note to l. 298. Cf. 'He curseth Ceres, Bacus, and Cipryde'; Troilus, v. 208.

281. The best way of scansion is perhaps to read despyt-e with final e, preserved by cæsura, and to pronounce Diane as Dián'. So in Kn. Tale, 1193 (A 2051), which runs parallel with it.

282. 'Trophies of the conquest of Venus'; Bell.

283. Maydens; of these Callisto was one (so says Boccaccio); and this is Chaucer's Calixte (l. 286), and his Calístopee in the Kn. Tale, l. 1198 (A 2056). She was the daughter of the Arcadian king Lycaon, and mother of Arcas by Jupiter; changed by Juno, on account of jealousy, into a she-bear, and then raised to the heavens by Jupiter in the form of the constellation Helice or Ursa Major; see Ovid, Fasti, ii. 156; Metamorph. ii. 401; &c. (Lewis and Short).

286. Athalaunte, Atalanta. There were two of this name; the one here meant (see Boccaccio) was the one who was conquered in a foot-race by the lover who married her; see Ovid, Metam. x. 565. The other, who was beloved by Meleager, and hunted the Calydonian boar, is the one mentioned in the Kn. Tale, A 2070; see Ovid, Metam. viii. 318. It is clear that Chaucer thought, at the time, that they were one and the same.

287. I wante, I lack; i. e. I do not know. Boccaccio here mentions the mother of Parthenopæus, whose name Chaucer did not know. She was the other Atalanta, the wife of Meleager; and Boccaccio did not name her, because he says 'that other proud one,' meaning the other proud one of the same name. See the story in Dryden; tr. of Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. viii. Cf. Troilus, v. 1473.

288. Boccaccio only mentions 'the spouse of Ninus,' i. e. Semiramis, the great queen of Assyria, Thisbe and Pyramus, 'Hercules in the lap of Iole,' and Byblis. The rest Chaucer has added. Compare his lists in Prol. to Leg. of Good Women, 250, and in Cant. Tales, Group B, 63; see the note. See the Legend for the stories of Dido, Thisbe and Pyramus, and Cleopatra. Paris, Achilles, Troilus, and Helen are all mentioned in his Troilus; and Hercules in Cant. Ta., B 3285.

Candace is mentioned again at p. 410, above, l. 16. There was a Candace, queen of Meroë, mentioned by Pliny, vi. 29; and there is the Candace in the Acts of the Apostles, viii. 27. But the Candace of fiction was an Indian queen, who contrived to get into her power no less a person than the world's conqueror, Alexander the Great. See King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 7646, and the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat, l. 5314. It is probable that Candace was sometimes confused with the Canace of Ovid's Heroides, Epist. xi. (wholly translated by Dryden). In fact, we have sufficient proof of this confusion; for one MS. reads Candace in the Legend of Good Women, 265, where five other MSS. have Canace or Canacee. Biblis is Byblis, who fell in love with Caunus, and, being repulsed, was changed into a fountain; Ovid, Metam. ix. 452.

Tristram and Isoude are the Tristran (or Tristan) and Ysolde (or Ysolt) of French medieval romance; cf. Ho. Fame, 1796, and Balade to Rosemounde, l. 20. Gower, in his Conf. Amantis, bk. 8 (ed. Pauli, iii. 359) includes Tristram and Bele Isolde in his long list of lovers, and gives an outline of the story in the same, bk. 6 (iii. 17). Ysolde was the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, and the mistress of her nephew Sir Tristram, of whom she became passionately enamoured from having drunk a philter by mistake; see Wheeler, Noted Names of Fiction, s. v. Isolde. The Romance of Sir Tristram was edited by Sir W. Scott, and has been re-edited by Kölbing, and by G. P. McNeill (for the Scottish Text Society). The name Ysoude constantly misprinted Ysonde, even by the editors. Chaucer mentions her again; see Leg. G. Women, 254; Ho. of Fame, 1796.

292. Silla, Scylla; daughter of Nisus, of Megara, who, for love of Minos, cut off her father's hair, upon which his life depended, and was transformed in consequence into the bird Ciris; see Ovid, Metam. viii. 8. Another Scylla was changed by Circe into a sea-monster; Ovid, Metam. xiv. 52. Their stories shew that the former is meant; see Leg. of Good Women, 1910, and the note.

Moder of Romulus, Ilia (also called Rhæa Silvia), daughter of Numitor, dedicated to Vesta, and buried alive for breaking her vows; see Livy, bk. 1; Verg. Æn. i. 274.

The quotation from Boccaccio ends here.

296. Of spak, spake of; see l. 174.

298. This quene is the goddess Nature (l. 303). We now come to a part of the poem where Chaucer makes considerable use of the work which he mentions in l. 316, viz. the Planctus Naturæ (Complaint of Nature) by Alanus de Insulis, or Alein Delille, a poet and divine of the 12th century. This work is printed in vol. ii. of T. Wright's edition of the Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets (Record Series), which also contains the poem called Anticlaudianus, by the same author. The description of the goddess is given at great length (pp. 431-456), and at last she declares her name to be Natura (p. 456). This long description of Nature and of her vesture is a very singular one; indeed, all the fowls of the air are supposed to be depicted upon her wonderful garments (p. 437). Chaucer substitutes a brief description of his own, and represents the birds as real live ones, gathering around her; which is much more sensible. For the extracts from Alanus, see the Introduction, p. . As Prof. Morley says (Eng. Writers, v. 162)—'Alain describes Nature's changing robe as being in one of its forms so ethereal that it is like air, and the pictures on it seem to the eye a Council of Animals (Animalium Concilium). Upon which, beginning, as Chaucer does, with the Eagle and the Falcon, Alain proceeds with a long list of the birds painted on her transparent robe, that surround Nature as in a council, and attaches to each bird the most remarkable point in its character.' Professor Hales, in The Academy, Nov. 19, 1881, quoted the passages from Alanus which are here more or less imitated, and drew attention to the remarkable passage in Spenser's F. Q. bk. vii. c. 7. st. 5-10, where that poet quotes and copies Chaucer. Dunbar imitates Chaucer in his Thrissill and Rois, and describes Dame Nature as surrounded by beasts, birds, and flowers; see stanzas 10, 11, 18, 26, 27 of that poem.

The phrase 'Nature la déesse' occurs in Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16480.

309. Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's day (Feb. 14); and lovers thought they must follow their example, and then 'choose their loves.' Mr. Douce thinks the custom of choosing valentines was a survival from the Roman feast of the Lupercalia. See the articles in Brand, Pop. Antiq. i. 53; Chambers, Book of Days, i. 255; Alban Butler, Lives of Saints, Feb. 14; &c. The custom is alluded to by Lydgate, Shakespeare, Herrick, Pepys, and Gay; and in the Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 169, is a letter written in Feb. 1477, where we find: 'And, cosyn, uppon Fryday is Sent Volentynes Day, and every brydde chesyth hym a make.' See also the Cuckoo and Nyghtingale, l. 80.

316. Aleyn, Alanus de Insulis; Pleynt of Kynde, Complaint of Nature, Lat. Planctus Naturæ; see note to l. 298. Chaucer refers us to Aleyn's description on account of its unmerciful length; it was hopeless to attempt even an epitome of it. Lydgate copies this passage; see Political, Religious and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 45, l. 17; or his Minor Poems, ed. Halliwell, p. 47.

323. Foules of ravyne, birds of prey. Chaucer's division of birds into birds of prey, birds that eat worms and insects, water-fowl, and birds that eat seeds, can hardly be his own. In Vincent of Beauvais, lib. xvi. c. 14, Aristotle is cited as to the food of birds:—'quædam comedunt carnem, quædam grana, quædam utrumque; ... quædam vero comedunt vermes, vt passer.... Vivunt et ex fructu quædam aues, vt palumbi, et turtures. Quædam viuunt in ripis aquarum lacuum, et cibantur ex eis.'

330. Royal; because he is often called the king of birds, as in Dunbar's Thrissill and Rois, st. 18. Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Nat., lib. xvi. c. 32, quotes from Iorath (sic):—'Aquila est auis magna regalis.' And Philip de Thaun, Bestiary, 991 (in Wright's Pop. Treatises, p. 109) says:—'Egle est rei de oisel.... En Latine raisun clerveant le apellum, Ke le solail verat quant il plus cler serat.'

331. See the last note, where we learn that the eagle is called in Latin 'clear-seeing,' because 'he will look at the sun when it will be brightest.' This is explained at once by the remarkable etymology given by Isidore (cited by Vincent, as above), viz.:—'Aqu-ila ab acumine oculorum vocata est.'

332. Pliny, Nat. Hist. bk. x. c. 3, enumerates six kinds of eagles, which Chaucer leaves us to find out; viz. Melænaetos, Pygargus, Morphnos, which Homer (Il. xxiv. 316) calls perknos, Percnopterus, Gnesios (the true or royal eagle), and Haliæetos (osprey). This explains the allusion in l. 333.

334. Tyraunt. This epithet was probably suggested by the original text in Alanus, viz.—'Illic ancipiter [accipiter], civitatis præfectus aeriæ, violenta tyrannide a subditis redditus exposcebat.' Sir Thopas had a 'grey goshauk'; C. T., Group B, 1928.

337. See note on the faucon peregrin, Squi. Tale, 420 (F 428). 'Beautifully described as "distreining" the king's hand with its foot, because carried by persons of the highest rank'; Bell. Read, 'with 's feet.'

339. Merlion, merlin. 'The merlin is the smallest of the long-winged hawks, and was generally carried by ladies'; Bell.

342. From Alanus (see p. ):—'Illic olor, sui funeris præco, mellitæ citherizationis organo vitæ prophetabat apocopam.' The same idea is mentioned by Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Nat. lib. xvi. c. 50; Pliny says he believes the story to be false, Nat. Hist. lib. x. c. 23. See Compl. of Anelida, l. 346. 'The wild swan's death-hymn'; Tennyson, The Dying Swan. Cf. Ovid, Heroid. vii. 2.

343. From Alanus:—'Illic bubo, propheta miseriæ, psalmodias funereæ lamentationis præcinebat.' So in the Rom. de la Rose, 5999:—

'Li chahuan ...

Prophetes de male aventure,

Hideus messagier de dolor.'

Cf. Vergil, Æn. iv. 462; Ovid, Metam. v. 550, whence Chaucer's allusion in Troilus, v. 319; Shakespeare, Mid. Nt. D. v. 385.

344. Geaunt, giant. Alanus has:—'grus ... in giganteæ quantitatis evadebat excessum.' Vincent (lib. xvi. c. 91) quotes from Isidore:—'Grues nomen de propria voce sumpserunt, tali enim sono susurrant.'

345. 'The chough, who is a thief.' From Alanus, who has:—'Illic monedula, latrocinio laudabili reculas thesaurizans, innatæ avaritiæ argumenta monstrabat.' 'It was an old belief in Cornwall, according to Camden (Britannia, tr. by Holland, 1610, p. 189) that the chough was an incendiary, "and thievish besides; for oftentimes it secretly conveieth fire-sticks, setting their houses a-fire, and as closely filcheth and hideth little pieces of money."'—Prov. Names of Brit. Birds, by C. Swainson, p. 75. So also in Pliny, lib. x. c. 29, choughs are called thieves. Vincent of Beauvais quotes one of Isidore's delicious etymologies:—'Monedula dicitur quasi mone-tula, quæ cum aurum inuenit aufert et occultat'; i. e. from monetam tollere. 'The Jackdaw tribe is notoriously given to pilfering'; Stanley, Hist. of Birds, ed. 1880, p. 203.

Iangling, talkative; so Alanus:—'Illic pica... curam logices perennabat insomnem.' So in Vincent—'pica loquax'—'pica garrula,' &c.; and in Pliny, lib. x. c. 42.

346. Scorning, 'applied to the jay, probably, because it follows and seems to mock at the owl, whenever the latter is so unfortunate as to be caught abroad in the daylight; for this reason, a trap for jays is always baited with a live owl'; Bell.

'The heron will stand for hours in the shallow water watching for eels'; Bell. Vincent quotes from Isidore:—'Ciconeæ ... serpentium hostes.' So also A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, lib. i. c. 64:—'Ranarum et locustarum et serpentum hostis est.'

347. Trecherye, trickery, deceit. 'During the season of incubation, the cock-bird tries to draw pursuers from the nest by wheeling round them, crying and screaming, to divert their attention ... while the female sits close on the nest till disturbed, when she runs off, feigning lameness, or flaps about near the ground, as if she had a broken wing; cf. Com. Errors, iv. 2. 27; Much Ado, iii. 1. 24;' Prov. Names of Brit. Birds, by C. Swainson, p. 185. And cf. 'to seem the lapwing and to jest, Tongue far from heart'; Meas. for Meas. i. 4. 32.

348. Stare, starling. As the starling can speak, there is probably 'an allusion to some popular story like the Manciple's Tale, in which a talking starling betrays a secret'; Bell. The same story is in Ovid, Metam. bk. ii. 535; and in Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. iii. 'Germanicus and Drusus had one stare, and sundry nightingales, taught to parle Greeke and Latine'; Holland's Pliny, bk. x. c. 42. In the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, p. 86, the bird who 'bewrays counsel' is a magpie.

349. Coward kyte. See Squi. Tale, F 624; and note. 'Miluus ... fugatur a niso, quamuis in triplo sit maior illo'; Vincent of Beauvais, lib. xvi. c. 108. 'A kite is ... a coward, and fearefull among great birds'; Batman on Bartholomè, lib. xii. c. 26.

350. Alanus has:—'Illic gallus, tanquam vulgaris astrologus, suæ vocis horologio horarum loquebatur discrimina.' Cf. Nonne Prestes Tale, B 4044. We also see whence Chaucer derived his epithet of the cock—'common astrologer'—in Troilus, iii. 1415. Tusser, in his Husbandry, ed. Payne, § 74, says the cock crows—'At midnight, at three, and an hower ere day.' Hence the expressions 'first cock' in K. Lear, iii. 4. 121, and 'second cock' in Macbeth, ii. 3. 27.

351. The sparrow was sacred to Venus, from its amatory disposition (Meas. for Meas. iii. 2. 185). In the well-known song from Lyly's Alexander and Campaspe, Cupid 'stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows, His Mother's doves, and team of sparrows; 'Songs from the Dramatists, ed. R. Bell, p. 50.

352. Cf. Holland's Pliny, bk. x. c. 29—'The nightingale ... chaunteth continually, namely, at that time as the trees begin to put out their leaues thicke.'

353. 'Nocet autem apibus sola inter animalia carnem habentia et carnem comedentia'; Vincent of Beauvais, De hyrundine; Spec. Nat. lib. xvi. c. 17. 'Culicum et muscarum et apecularum infestatrix'; A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum (De Hirundine), lib. i. c. 52. 'Swallowes make foule worke among them,' &c.; Holland's Pliny, bk. xi. c. 18. Cf. Vergil, Georg. iv. 15; and Tennyson, The Poet's Song, l. 9.

Flyes, i. e. bees. This, the right reading (see footnote), occurs in two MSS. only; the scribes altered it to foules or briddes!

355. Alanus has:—'Illic turtur, suo viduata consorte, amorem epilogare dedignans, in altero bigamiæ refutabat solatia.' 'Etiam vulgo est notum turturem et amoris veri prærogativa nobilitari et castitatis titulis donari'; A. Neckam, i. 59. Cf. An Old Eng. Miscellany, ed. Morris, p. 22.

356. 'In many medieval paintings, the feathers of angels' wings are represented as those of peacocks'; Bell. Cf. Dunbar, ed. Small, 174. 14: 'Qhois angell fedderis as the pacok schone.'

357. Perhaps Chaucer mixed up the description of the pheasant in Alanus with that of the 'gallus silvestris, privatioris galli deridens desidiam,' which occurs almost immediately below. Vincent (lib. xvi. c. 72) says:—'Fasianus est gallus syluaticus.' Or he may allude to the fact, vouched for in Stanley's Hist. of Birds, ed. 1880, p. 279, that the Pheasant will breed with the common Hen.

358. 'The Goose likewise is very vigilant and watchfull: witnesse the Capitoll of Rome, which by the means of Geese was defended and saued'; Holland's Pliny, bk. x. c. 22.

'There is no noise at all

Of waking dog, nor gaggling goose more waker then the hound.'

Golding, tr. of Ovid's Metam. bk. xi. fol. 139, back.

Unkinde, unnatural; because of its behaviour to the hedge-sparrow; K. Lear, i. 4. 235.

359. Delicasye, wantonness. 'Auis est luxuriosa nimium, bibitque vinum'; Vincent (quoting from Liber de Naturis Rerum), lib. xvi. c. 135, De Psittaco; and again (quoting from Physiologus)—'cum vino inebriatur.' So in Holland's Pliny, bk. x. c. 42—'She loueth wine well, and when shee hath drunk freely, is very pleasant, plaifull, and wanton.'

360. 'The farmers' wives find the drake or mallard the greatest enemy of their young ducks, whole broods of which he will destroy unless removed.'—Bell. Chaucer perhaps follows the Liber de Naturis Rerum, as quoted in Vincent, lib. xvi. c. 27 (De Anate):—'Mares aliquando cum plures fuerint simul, tanta libidinis insania feruntur, vt fœminam solam ... occidant.'

361. From A. Neckam, Liber de Naturis Rerum (ed. Wright, lib. i. c. 64); cited in Vincent, lib. xvi. c. 48. The story is, that a male stork, having discovered that the female was unfaithful to him, went away; and presently returning with a great many other storks, the avengers tore the criminal to pieces. Another very different story may also be cited. 'The stork is the Embleme of a grateful Man. In which respect Ælian writeth of a storke, which bred on the house of one who had a very beautiful wife, which in her husband's absence used to commit adultry with one of her base servants: which the storke observing, in gratitude to him who freely gave him house-roome, flying in the villaines face, strucke out both his eyes.'—Guillim, Display of Heraldry, sect. iii. c. 19.

In Thynne's Animadversions on Speght's Chaucer, ed. Furnivall, p. 68 (Chau. Soc.), we find:—'for Aristotle sayethe, and Bartholomeus de proprietatibus rerum, li. 12. c. 8, with manye other auctors, that yf the storke by any meanes perceve that his female hath brooked spousehedde, he will no moore dwell with her, but strykethe and so cruelly beateth her, that he will not surcease vntill he hathe killed her yf he maye, to wreake and reuenge that adulterye.' Cf. Batman vppon Bartholome, ed. 1582, leaf 181, col. 2; Stanley, Hist, of Birds, 6th ed. p. 322; and story no. 82 in Swan's translation of the Gesta Romanorum. Many other references are given in Oesterley's notes to the Gesta; and see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane (Folklore Soc.), 1890, p. 230. Cf. Skelton's Phyllyp Sparowe, 469-477.

362. 'The voracity of the cormorant has become so proverbial, that a greedy and voracious eater is often compared to this bird'; Swainson, Prov. Names of British Birds, p. 143. See Rich. II, ii. 1. 38.

363. Wys; because it could predict; it was therefore consecrated to Apollo; see Lewis and Short, s. v. corvus. Care, anxiety; hence, ill luck. 'In folk-lore the crow always appears as a bird of the worst and most sinister character, representing either death, or night, or winter'; Prov. Names of British Birds, by C. Swainson, p. 84; which see.

Chaucer here mistranslates Vergil precisely as Batman does (l. xii. c. 9). 'Nunc plena cornix pluuiam uocat improba uoce'; Georg. i. 388. 'That is to vnderstande, Nowe the Crowe calleth rayne with an eleinge voyce'; Batman vppon Bartholome, as above.

364. Olde. I do not understand this epithet; it is usually the crow who is credited with a long life. Frosty; i. e. that is seen in England in the winter-time; called in Shropshire the snow-bird; Swainson's Prov. Names of Brit. Birds, p. 6. The explanation of the phrase 'farewell feldefare,' occurring in Troil. iii. 861 and in Rom. Rose, 5510, and marked by Tyrwhitt as not understood, is easy enough. It simply means—'good bye, and we are well rid of you'; when the fieldfare goes, the warm weather comes.

371. Formel, perhaps 'regular' or 'suitable' companion; as F. formel answers to Lat. formalis. Tyrwhitt's Gloss. says: 'formel is put for the female of any fowl, more especially for a female eagle (ll. 445, 535 below).' It has, however, no connection with female (as he seems to suppose), but answers rather, in sense, to make, i. e. match, fit companion. Godefroy cites the expression 'faucon formel' from L'Aviculaire des Oiseaux de proie (MS. Lyon 697, fol. 221 a). He explains it by 'qui a d'amples formes,' meaning (as I suppose) simply 'large'; which does not seem to be right; though the tercel or male hawk was so called because he was a third less than the female. Ducange gives formelus, and thinks it means 'well trained.'

379. Vicaire, deputy. This term is taken from Alanus, De Planctu Naturæ, as above, where it occurs at least thrice. Thus, at p. 469 of Wright's edition, Nature says:—'Me igitur tanquam sui [Dei] vicariam'; at p. 511—'Natura, Dei gratia mundanæ civitatis vicaria procuratrix'; and at p. 516, Nature is addressed as—'O supracælestis Principis fidelis vicaria!' M. Sandras supposes that Chaucer took the term from the Rom. de la Rose, but it is more likely that Chaucer and Jean de Meun alike took it from Alanus.

'Cis Diex meismes, par sa grace,...

Tant m'ennora, tant me tint chiere,

Qu'il m'establi sa chamberiere ...

Por chamberiere! certes vaire,

Por connestable, et por vicaire', &c.

Rom. de la Rose, 16970, &c.

Here Nature is supposed to be the speaker. Chaucer again uses vicaire of Nature, Phis. Tale, D 20, which see; and he applies it to the Virgin Mary in his A B C, l. 140. See also Lydgate, Compl. of Black Knight, l. 491.

380. That l. 379 is copied from Alanus is clear from the fact that ll. 380-1 are from the same source. At p. 451 of Wright's edition, we find Nature speaking of the concordant discord of the four elements—'quatuor elementorum concors discordia'—which unites the buildings of the palace of this world—'mundialis regiæ structuras conciliat.' Similarly, she says, the four humours are united in the human body: 'quæ qualitates inter elementa mediatrices conveniunt, hæ eædem inter quatuor humores pacis sanciunt firmitatem'; &c.

Compare also Boethius, bk. iii. met. 9. 13, in Chaucer's translation. 'Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporcionables, that the colde thinges mowen acorden with the hote thinges, and the drye thinges with the moiste thinges; that the fyr, that is purest, ne flee nat over hye, ne that the hevinesse ne drawe nat adoun over-lowe the erthes that ben plounged in the wateres. Thou knittest togider the mene sowle of treble kinde, moeving alle thinges'; &c.

'Et froit, et chaut, et sec, et moiste';

Rom. Rose, 17163.

'For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,

Strive here for mastery.' Milton, P. L. ii. 898.

386. Seynt, &c.; i. e. on St. Valentine's day; as in l. 322.

388. 'Ye come to choose your mates, and (then) to flee (on) your way.'

411. It appears that Chaucer and others frequently crush the two words this is into the time of one word only (something like the modern it's for it is). Hence I scan the line thus:—

This 's oúr | uság' | alwéy, | &c.

So again, in the Knight's Tale, 233 (A 1091):—

We mót | endúr' | it thís 's | the shórt | and pleýn.

And again, in the same, 885 (A 1743):—

And seíd | e thís 's | a shórt | conclú | sioun.

And frequently elsewhere. In the present case, both this and is are unaccented, which is much harsher than when this bears an accent.

I find that Ten Brink has also noted this peculiarity, in his Chaucers Sprache, § 271. He observes that, in C. T. Group E, 56, the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS. actually substitute this for this is; see footnote; and hence note that the correct reading is—'But this his tale, which,' &c. See This in Schmidt, Shak. Lexicon. Cf. l. 620.

413. Com, came. The o is long; A.S. cóm, Goth. kwam.

417. 'I choose the formel to be my sovereign lady, not my mate.'

421. 'Beseeching her for mercy,' &c.

435. Read lov'th; monosyllabic, as frequently.

464. 'Ye see what little leisure we have here.'

471. Read possíbl', just as in French.

476. Som; quite indefinite. 'Than another man.'

482. Hir-ës, hers; dissyllabic. Whether = whe'r. Cf. l. 7.

485. 'The dispute is here called a plee, or plea, or pleading; and in the next stanza the terms of law, adopted into the Courts of Love, are still more pointedly applied'; Bell.

499. Hye, loudly. Kek kek represents the goose's cackle; and quek is mod. E. quack.

504. For, on behalf of; see next line.

507. For comune spede, for the common benefit.

508. 'For it is a great charity to set us free.'

510. 'If it be your wish for any one to speak, it would be as good for him to be silent; it were better to be silent than to talk as you do.' That is, the cuckoo only wants to listen to those who will talk nonsense. A mild rebuke. The turtle explains (l. 514) that it is better to be silent than to meddle with things which one does not understand.

518. Lit. 'A duty assumed without direction often gives offence.' A proverb which appears in other forms. In the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, G 1066, it takes the form—'Profred servyse stinketh'; see note on the line. Uncommitted is not delegated, not entrusted to one. Cotgrave has: 'Commis, assigned, appointed, delegated.'

524. I Iuge, I decide. Folk, kind of birds; see note to l. 323.

545. Oure, ours; it is the business of us who are the chosen spokesmen. The Iuge is Nature.

556. Goler in the Fairfax MS. is doubtless merely miswritten for golee, as in Ff.; Caxton turns it into golye, to keep it dissyllabic; the reading gole (in O. and Gg.) also = golee. Godefroy has: 'Golee, goulee, goullee, gulee, geulee, s. f. cri, parole'; and gives several examples. Cotgrave has: 'Goulée, f. a throatfull, or mouthful of, &c.' One of Godefroy's examples gives the phrase—'Et si dirai ge ma goulee,' and so I shall say my say. Chaucer uses the word sarcastically: his large golee = his tedious gabble. Allied to E. gullett, gully.

564. Which a reson, what sort of a reason.

568. Cf. Cant. Tales, 5851, 5852 (D 269, 270). Lydgate copies this line in his Hors, Shepe, and Goos, l. 155.

572. 'To have held thy peace, than (to have) shewed.'

574. A common proverb. In the Rom. de la Rose, l. 4750 (E. version, l. 5265), it appears as: 'Nus fox ne scet sa langue taire,' i. e. No fool knows how to hold his tongue. In the Proverbs of Hendyng, it is: 'Sottes bolt is sone shote,' l. 85. In later English, 'A fool's bolt is soon shot'; cf. Henry V, iii. 7. 132, and As You Like It, v. 4. 67. Kemble quotes from MS. Harl. fol. 4—'Ut dicunt multi, cito transit lancea stulti.'

578. The sothe sadde, the sober truth.

595. Another proverb. We now say—'There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it'; or, 'as ever was caught.'

599. See Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. iv. pr. 4. l. 132.

603. 'Pushed himself forward in the crowd.'

610. Said sarcastically—'Yes! when the glutton has filled his paunch sufficiently, the rest of us are sure to be satisfied!'

Compare the following. 'Certain persones ... saiyng that Demades had now given over to bee sache an haine [niggardly wretch] as he had been in tymes past—"Yea, marie, quoth Demosthenes, for now ye see him full paunched, as lyons are." For Demades was covetous and gredie of money, and indeed the lyons are more gentle when their bealyes are well filled.'—Udall, tr. of Apothegmes of Erasmus; Anecdotes of Demosthenes. The merlin then addresses the cuckoo directly.

612. Heysugge, hedge-sparrow; see note to l. 358.

613. Read rewtheles (reufulles in Gg); cf. Cant. Ta., B 863; and see p. , l. 31. Rewtheles became reufulles, and then rewful.

614. 'Live thou unmated, thou destruction (destroyer) of worms.'

615. 'For it is no matter as to the lack of thy kind,' i. e. it would not matter, even if the result was the loss of your entire race.

616. 'Go! and remain ignorant for ever.'

620, 1. Cf. note to l. 411. Read th'eleccioun; i. e. the choice.

623. Cheest, chooseth; spelt chyest, Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 126; spelt chest (with long e) in Shoreham's Poems, ed. Wright, p. 109, where it rimes with lest = leseth, i. e. loseth; A. S. císt, Deut. xxviii. 9.

626. Accent favour on the second syllable; as in C. T., Group B, 3881 (Monkes Tale). So (perhaps) colóur-ed in l. 443.

630. 'I have no other (i. e. no wrongful) regard to any rank,' I am no respecter of persons.

633. 'I would counsel you to take'; two infinitives.

640. 'Under your rod,' subject to your correction. So in the Schipmannes Tale, C. T. 13027 (B 1287).

641. The first accent is on As.

653. Manér-e is trisyllabic; and of is understood after it.

657. For tarying, to prevent tarrying; see note to C. T. Group B, 2052.

664, 5. 'Whatever may happen afterwards, this intervening course is ready prepared for all of you.'

670. They embraced each other with their wings and by intertwining their necks.

675. Gower, Conf. Amant, bk. i. (ed. Pauli, i. 134) speaks of 'Roundel, balade, and virelay.' Johnson, following the Dict. de Trevoux, gives a fair definition of the roundel; but I prefer to translate that given by Littré, s. v. rondeau. '1. A short poem, also called triolet, in which the first line or lines recur in the middle and at the end of the piece. Such poems, by Froissart and Charles d'Orleans, are still extant. 2. Another short poem peculiar to French poetry, composed of thirteen lines broken by a pause after the fifth and eighth lines, eight having one rime and five another. The first word or words are repeated after the eighth line and after the last, without forming part of the verse; it will readily be seen that this rondeau is a modification of the foregoing; instead of repeating the whole line, only the first words are repeated, often with a different sense.' The word is here used in the former sense; and the remark in Morley's Eng. Writers (v. 271), that the Roundel consists of thirteen lines, eight having one rime, and five another, is not to the point here, as it relates to the later French rondeau only. An examination of Old French roundels shews us that Littré's definition of the triolet is quite correct, and is purposely left somewhat indefinite; but we can apply a somewhat more exact description to the form of the roundel as used by Machault, Deschamps, and Chaucer.

The form adopted by these authors is the following. First come three lines, rimed abb; next two more, rimed ab, and then the first refrain; then three more lines, rimed abb, followed by the second refrain. Now the first refrain consists of either one, or two, or three lines, being the first line of the poem, or the first two, or the first three; and the second refrain likewise consists of either one, or two, or three lines, being the same lines as before, but not necessarily the same number of them. Thus the whole poem consists of eight unlike lines, three on one rime, and five on another, with refrains of from two to six lines. Sometimes one of the refrains is actually omitted, but this may be the scribe's fault. However, the least possible number of lines is thus reduced to nine; and the greatest number is fourteen. For example, Deschamps (ed. Tarbé) has roundels of nine lines—second refrain omitted—(p. 125); of ten lines (p. 36); of eleven lines (p. 38); of twelve lines (p. 3); and of fourteen lines (pp. 39, 43). But the prettiest example is that by Machault (ed. Tarbé, p. 52), which has thirteen lines, the first refrain being of two, and the second of three lines. And, as thirteen lines came to be considered as the normal length, I here follow this as a model, both here and in 'Merciless Beaute'; merely warning the reader that he may make either of his refrains of a different length, if he pleases.

There is a slight art in writing a roundel, viz. in distributing the pauses. There must be a full stop at the end of the third and fifth lines; but the skilful poet takes care that complete sense can be made by the first line taken alone, and also by the first two lines taken alone. Chaucer has done this.

Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 372, gives a capital example of a roundel by Occleve; this is of full length, both refrains being of three lines, so that the whole poem is of fourteen lines. This is quite sufficient to shew that the definition of a roundel in Johnson's Dictionary (which is copied from the Dict. de Trevoux, and relates to the latter rondeau of thirteen lines) is quite useless as applied to roundels written in Middle English.

677. The note, i. e. the tune. Chaucer adapts his words to a known French tune. The words Qui bien aime, a tard oublie (he who loves well is slow to forget) probably refer to this tune; though it is not quite clear to me how lines of five accents (normally) go to a tune beginning with a line of four accents. In Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 55, we find:—'Of the rondeau of which the first line is cited in the Fairfax MS., &c., M. Sandras found the music and the words in a MS. of Machault in the National Library, no. 7612, leaf 187. The verses form the opening lines of one of two pieces entitled Le Lay de plour:—

'Qui bieu aime, a tart oublie,

Et cuers, qui oublie a tart,

Ressemble le feu qui art,' &c.

M. Sandras also says (Étude, p. 72) that Eustache Deschamps composed, on this burden slightly modified, a pretty ballad, inedited till M. Sandras printed it at p. 287 of his Étude; and that, a long time before Machault, Moniot de Paris began, by this same line, a hymn to the Virgin that one can read in the Arsenal Library at Paris, in the copy of a Vatican MS., B. L. no. 63, fol. 283:—

'Ki bien aime a tart oublie;

Mais ne le puis oublier

La douce vierge Marie.'

In MS. Gg. 4. 27 (Cambridge), there is a poem in 15 8-line stanzas. The latter half of st. 14 ends with:—'Qui bien ayme, tard oublye.'

In fact, the phrase seems to have been a common proverb; see Le Roux de Lincy, ii. 383, 496. It occurs again in Tristan, ed. Michel, ii. 123, l. 700; in Gower, Balade 25 (ed. Stengel, p. 10); in MS. Digby 53, fol. 15, back; MS. Corp. Chr. Camb. 450, p. 258, &c.

683. See note above, to l. 309.

693. This last stanza is imitated at the end of the Court of Love, and of Dunbar's Thrissill and Rois.

VI. A Compleint to his Lady.

In the two MSS., this poem is written as if it were a continuation of the Compleint unto Pity. The printed edition of 1651 has this heading—'These verses next folowing were compiled by Geffray Chauser, and in the writen copies foloweth at the ende of the complainte of petee.' This implies that Stowe had seen more than one MS. containing these lines.

However, the poem has nothing to do with the Complaint of Pity; for which reason the lines are here numbered separately, and the title 'A Compleint to his Lady' is supplied, for want of a better.

The poem is so badly spelt in Shirley's MS. (Harl. 78) as quite to obscure its diction, which is that of the fourteenth century. I have therefore re-spelt it throughout, so as to shew the right pronunciation. The Phillipps MS. is merely a copy of the other, but preserves the last stanza.

The printed copy resembles Shirley's MS. so closely, that both seem to have been derived from a common source. But there is a strange and unaccountable variation in l. 100. The MS. here has—'For I am sette on yowe in suche manere'; whilst ed. 1561 has—'For I am set so hy vpon your whele.' The latter reading does not suit the right order of the rimes; but it points to a lost MS.

The poem evidently consists of several fragments, all upon the same subject, of hopeless, but true love.

It should be compared with the Complaint of Pity, the first forty lines of the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Foules (ll. 416-441), and the Complaint of Anelida. Indeed, the last of these is more or less founded upon it, and some of the expressions (including one complete line) occur there again.

1. MSS. nightes. This will not scan, nor does it make good sense. Read night; cf. l. 8, and Book of the Duchess, l. 22.

3. Cf. Compl. Pite, 81—'Allas! what herte may hit longe endure?'

7. Desespaired, full of despair. This, and not dispaired (as in ed. 1561), is the right form. Cf. desespeir, in Troil. i. 605.

8, 9. Cf. Anelida, 333, 334.

14, 15. I repeat this line, because we require a rime to fulfille, l. 17; whilst at the same time l. 14 evidently ends a stanza.

16. I omit that, and insert eek, in order to make sense.

17. I supply he, meaning Love. Love is masculine in l. 42, precisely as in the Parl. of Foules, l. 5.

19. I alter and yit to and fro, to make sense; the verb to arace absolutely requires from or fro; see Clerkes Tale, E 1103, and particularly l. 18 of sect. XXI, where we find the very phrase 'fro your herte arace.' Cf. Troilus, v. 954.

24. I supply this line from Compl. Mars, 189, to rime with l. 22.

If Fragments II and III were ever joined together, we must suppose that at least five lines have been lost, as I have already shewn in the note to Dr. Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 96.

Thus, after l. 23, ending in asterte, we should require lines ending in -ye, -erse, -ye, -erse, and -ede respectively, to fill the gap. However, I have kept fragments II and III apart, and it is then sufficient to supply three lines. Lines 25 and 26 are from the Compl. of Pite, 22, 17, and from Anelida, 307.

32. I suspect some corruption; MS. Sh. has The wyse eknytte, Ph. has The wise I-knyt, and ed. 1561 has The Wise, eknit. As it stands, it means—'Her surname moreover is the Fair Ruthless one, (or) the Wise one, united with Good Fortune.' Fair Ruthless is a translation of the French phrase La Belle Dame sans Merci, which occurs as the title of a poem once attributed to Chaucer. The Wise one, &c., means that she is wise and fortunate, and will not impair her good fortune by bestowing any thought upon her lover. Shirley often writes e for initial y-.

35. Almost identical with Anelida, 222—'More then myself, an hundred thousand sythe.'

36. Obviously corrupt; neither sound nor sense is good. Read:—'Than al this worldes richest (or riche) creature.' Creature may mean 'created thing.' Or scan by reading world's richéss'.

39. Cf. Kn. Tale, l. 380 (A 1238)—'Wel hath Fortune y-turned thee the dys.'

41. My swete fo. So in Anelida, l. 272; and cf. l. 64 below.

42, 43. Cf. Parl. of Foules, ll. 439, 440.

44. Ed. 1561 also reads In. Perhaps the original reading was Inwith. Moreover, the copies omit eek in l. 45, which I supply.

47-49. This remarkable statement re-appears twice elsewhere; see Parl. Foules, 90, 91, and note; and Compl. of Pite, ll. 99-104.

50. Repeated in Anelida, 237.

51, 52. Cf. Anelida, 181, 182; Compl. Pite, 110; Parl. Foules, 7.

55. Cf. Anelida, 214—'That turned is to quaking al my daunce.'

56. Here a line is missing, as again at l. 59. This appears from the form of the stanza, in which the rimes are arranged in the order a a b a a b c d d c. I supply the lines from Anelida, 181, 182.

63. Cf. the use of y-whet in Anelida, 212.

64, 65. Cf. Anelida, 272—'My swete fo, why do ye so for shame?'

73. For leest, ed. 1561 has best!

79. The MSS. have—'What so I wist that were to youre hyenesse'; where youre hyenesse is absurdly repeated from l. 76. Ed. 1561 has the same error. It is obvious that the right final word is distresse, to be preceded by yow or your; of which I prefer yow.

83. Ch. uses both wille and wil; the latter is, e. g., in Cant. Ta. A 1104. We must here read wil.

86. shal, i. e. shall be. See also XXII. ll. 78, 87.

88. leveth wel, believe me wholly. MS. Ph. and ed. 1561 wrongly have loveth.

98. I read nil, as being simpler. The MSS. have ne wil, which would be read—'That I n'wil ay'; which comes to much the same thing.

100. set, fixed, bound. Ed. 1561 has—'For I am set so hy vpon your whele,' which disturbs the rimes.

102. MS. Sh. beon euer als trewe; ed. 1561 has—bene euer as trewe.

103. MS. Sh. 'As any man can er may on lyue'; ed. 1561 and MS. Ph. have—'As any man can or maye on liue.' It is clear that a final word has been dropped, because the scribe thought the line ought to rime with fyve (l. 98). The dropped word is clearly here, which rimes with manere in the Miller's Prologue, and elsewhere. After here was dropped, man was awkwardly inserted, to fill up the line. Ch. employs here at the end of a line more than thirty times; cf. Kn. Tale, A 1260, 1670, 1711, 1819, &c.

107, 108. Cf. Anelida, 247, 248.

123. Cf. Anelida, 216. MS. Ph. alone preserves ll. 124-133.

124. My lyf and deeth seems to be in the vocative case. Otherwise, my is an error for in.

125. For hoolly I perhaps we should read I hoolly.

126. The rime by me, tyme, is Chaucerian; see Cant. Ta. G 1204.

130. This resembles Cant. Tales, F 974 and A 2392.

133. trouble, troubled. A like use occurs in Boethius, bk. i. met. 7, l. 2. Drope, hope, rime in Troil. i. 939, and Gower, C. A., ii. 286.

VII. Anelida and Arcite.

This Poem consists of several distinct portions. It begins with a Proem, of three stanzas, followed by a part of the story, in twenty-seven stanzas, all in seven-line stanzas. Next follows the Complaint of Anelida, skilfully and artificially constructed; it consists of a Proem in a single stanza of nine lines; next, what may be called a Strophe, in six stanzas, of which the first four consist of nine lines, the fifth consists of sixteen lines (with only two rimes), and the sixth, of nine lines (with internal rimes). Next follows what may be called an Antistrophe, in six stanzas arranged precisely as before; wound up by a single concluding stanza corresponding to the Proem at the beginning of the Complaint. After this, the story begins again; but the poet had only written one stanza when he suddenly broke off, and left the poem unfinished; see note to l. 357.

The name of Arcite naturally reminds us of the Knightes Tale; but the 'false Arcite' of the present poem has nothing beyond the name in common with the 'true Arcite' of the Tale. However, there are other connecting links, to be pointed out in their due places, which tend to shew that this poem was written before the Knightes Tale, and was never finished; it is also probable that Chaucer actually wrote an earlier draught of the Knightes Tale, with the title of Palamon and Arcite, which he afterwards partially rejected; for he mentions 'The Love of Palamon and Arcite' in the prologue to the Legend of Good Women as if it were an independent work. However this may be, it is clear that, in constructing or rewriting the Knightes Tale, he did not lose sight of 'Anelida,' for he has used some of the lines over again; moreover, it is not a little remarkable that the very lines from Statius which are quoted at the beginning of the fourth stanza of Anelida are also quoted, in some of the MSS., at the beginning of the Knightes Tale.

But this is not all. For Dr. Koch has pointed out the close agreement between the opening stanzas of this poem, and those of Boccaccio's Teseide, which is the very work from which Palamon and Arcite was, of course, derived, as it is the chief source of the Knightes Tale also. Besides this, there are several stanzas from the Teseide in the Parliament of Foules; and even three near the end of Troilus, viz. the seventh, eighth, and ninth from the end of the last book. Hence we should be inclined to suppose that Chaucer originally translated the Teseide rather closely, substituting a seven-line stanza for the ottava rima of the original; this formed the original Palamon and Arcite, a poem which he probably never finished (as his manner was). Not wishing, however, to abandon it altogether, he probably used some of the lines in this present poem, and introduced others into his Parliament of Foules. At a later period, he rewrote, in a complete form, the whole story in his own fashion, which has come down to us as The Knightes Tale. Whatever the right explanation may be, we are at any rate certain that the Teseide is the source of (1) sixteen stanzas in the Parliament of Foules; (2) of part of the first ten stanzas in the present poem; (3) of the original Palamon and Arcite; (4) of the Knightes Tale; and (5) of three stanzas near the end of Troilus, bk. v. 1807-27 (Tes. xi. 1-3).

1. In comparing the first three stanzas with the Teseide, we must reverse the order of the stanzas in the latter poem. Stanza 1 of Anelida answers to st. 3 of the Italian; stanza 2, to st. 2; and stanza 3 to st. 1. The first two lines of lib. 1. st. 3 (of the Italian) are:—

'Siate presenti, O Marte rubicondo,

Nelle tue arme rigido e feroce.'

I. e. Be present, O Mars the red, strong and fierce in thy arms (battle-array). For the words Be present, see l. 6.

2. Trace, Thrace. Cf. Kn. Tale, 1114-6 (A 1972-4). Chaucer was here thinking of Statius, Theb. lib. vii. 40, who describes the temple of Mars on Mount Hæmus, in Thrace, which had a frosty climate. In bk. ii, l. 719, Pallas is invoked as being superior to Bellona. Chaucer seems to confuse them; so does Boccaccio, in his De Genealogia Deorum.

6, 7. Partly imitated from Tes. i. 3:—

'E sostenete la mano e la voce

Di me, che intendo i vostri effecti dire.'

8-10. Imitated from Tes. i. 2:—

'Chè m' è venuta voglia con pietosa

Rima di scriver una storia antica,

Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa,

Che latino autor non par ne dica,

Per quel ch' io senta, in libro alcuna cosa.'

Thus it appears that, when speaking of his finding an old story in Latin, he is actually translating from an Italian poem which treats of a story not found in Latin! That is, his words give no indication whatever of the source of his poem; but are merely used in a purely conventional manner. His 'old story' is really that of the siege of Thebes; and his Latin is the Thebais of Statius. And neither of them speaks of Anelida!

15. Read fávourábl'. Imitated from Tes. i. 1:—

'O sorelle Castalie, che nel monte

Elicona contente dimorate

D' intorno al sacro gorgoneo fonte,

Sottesso l' ombra delle frondi amate

Da Febo, delle quali ancor la fronte

I' spero ornarmi sol che 'l concediate

Gli santi orecchi a' miei prieghi porgete,

E quegli udite come voi volete.'

Polymnia, Polyhymnia, also spelt Polymnia, Gk. Πολυμνία one of the nine Muses. Chaucer invokes the muse Clio in Troil. bk. ii, and Calliope in bk. iii. Cf. Ho. of Fame, 520-2. Parnaso, Parnassus, a mountain in Phocis sacred to Apollo and the Muses, at whose foot was Delphi and the Castalian spring. Elicon, mount Helicon in Bœotia; Chaucer seems to have been thinking rather of the Castalian spring, as he uses the prep. by, and supposes Elicon to be near Parnaso. See the Italian, as quoted above; and note that, in the Ho. of Fame, 522, he says that Helicon is a well.

A similar confusion occurs in Troilus, iii. 1809:—

'Ye sustren nyne eek, that by Elicone

In hil Parnaso listen for tabyde.'

17. Cirrea, Cirra. Chaucer was thinking of the adj. Cirræus. Cirra was an ancient town near Delphi, under Parnassus. Dante mentions Cirra, Parad. i. 36; and Parnaso just above, l. 16. Perhaps Chaucer took it from him.

20. A common simile. So Spenser, F. Q. i. 12. 1, 42; and at the end of the Thebaid and the Teseide both.

21. Stace, Statius; i. e. the Thebaid; whence some of the next stanzas are more or less borrowed. Chaucer epitomises the general contents of the Thebaid in his Troilus; v. 1484, &c.

Corinne, not Corinna (as some have thought, for she has nothing to do with the matter), but Corinnus. Corinnus was a disciple of Palamedes, and is said to have written an account of the Trojan War, and of the war of the Trojan king Dardanus against the Paphlagonians, in the Dorian dialect. Suidas asserts that Homer made some use of his writings. See Zedler, Universal Lexicon; and Biog. Universelle. How Chaucer met with this name, is not known. Possibly, however, Chaucer was thinking of Colonna, i. e. Guido di Colonna, author of the medieval Bellum Trojanum. But this does not help us, and it is at least as likely that the name Corinne was merely introduced by way of flourish; for no source has been discovered for the latter part of the poem, which may have been entirely of his own invention. For Palamedes, see Lydgate's Troy-book, bk. v. c. 36.

22. The verses from Statius, preserved in the MSS., are the three lines following; from Thebais, xii. 519:—

'Jamque domos patrias Scythicæ post aspera gentis

Prælia laurigero subeuntem Thesea curru,

Lætifici plausus missusque ad sidera vulgi,' &c.

The first line and half the second appear also in the MSS. of the Canterbury Tales, at the head of the Knightes Tale, which commences, so to speak, at the same point (l. 765 in Lewis's translation of the Thebaid). Comparing these lines of Statius with the lines in Chaucer, we at once see how he came by the word aspre and the expression With laurer crouned. The whole of this stanza (ll. 22-28) is expanded from the three lines here quoted.

23. Cithe, Scythia; see last note. See Kn. Tale, 9 (A 867).

24. Cf. Kn. Tale, 169, 121 (A 1027, 979).

25. Contre-houses, houses of his country, homes (used of Theseus and his army). It exactly reproduces the Lat. domos patrias. See Kn. Tale, 11 (A 869).

29-35. Chaucer merely takes the general idea from Statius, and expands it in his own way. Lewis's translation of Statius has:—

'To swell the pomp, before the chief are borne

The spoils and trophies from the vanquish'd torn;'

but the Lat. text has—

'Ante ducem spolia et duri Mauortis imago,

Uirginei currus, cumulataque fercula cristis.'

And, just below, is a brief mention of Hippolyta, who had been wedded to Theseus.

30, 1. Cf. Kn. Tale, 117, 118 (A 975). See note above.

36, 7. Cf. Kn. Tale, 23, 24 (A 881, 2); observe the order of words.

38. Repeated in Kn. Tale, 114 (A 972); changing With to And.

Emelye is not mentioned in Statius. She is the Emilia of the Teseide; see lib. ii. st. 22 of that poem.

43-6. Cf. Kn. Tale, 14, 15, 169 (A 872-3, 1027).

47. Here we are told that the story is really to begin. Chaucer now returns from Statius (whom he has nearly done with) to the Teseide, and the next three stanzas, ll. 50-70, are more or less imitated from that poem, lib. ii. st. 10-12.

50-6. Boccaccio is giving a sort of summary of the result of the war described in the Thebaid. His words are:—

'Fra tanto Marte i popoli lernei

Con furioso corso avie commossi

Sopro i Tebani, e miseri trofei

Donati avea de' Principi percossi

Più volte già, e de' greci plebei

Ritenuti tal volta, e tal riscossi

Con asta sanguinosa fieramente,

Trista avea fatta l' una e l' altra gente.'

57-63. Imitated from Tes. ii. 11:—

'Perciò che dopo Anfiarao, Tideo

Stato era ucciso, e 'l buon Ippomedone,

E similmente il bel Partenopeo,

E più Teban, de' qua' non fo menzione,

Dinanzi e dopo al fiero Capaneo,

E dietro a tutti in doloroso agone,

Eteocle e Polinice, ed ispedito

Il solo Adrastro ad Argo era fuggito.'

See also Troilus, v. 1499-1510.

57. Amphiorax; so in Troilus, ii. 105, v. 1500; Cant. Tales, 6323 (D 741); and in Lydgate's Siege of Thebes. Amphiaraus is meant; he accompanied Polynices, and was swallowed up by the earth during the siege of Thebes; Statius, Thebais, lib. vii. (at the end); Dante, Inf. xx. 34. Tydeus and Polynices married the two daughters of Adrastus. The heroic acts of Tydeus are recorded in the Thebaid. See Lydgate, Siege of Thebes; or the extract from it in my Specimens of English.

58. Ipomedon, Hippomedon; one of the seven chiefs who engaged in the war against Thebes. Parthonopee, Parthenopæus, son of Meleager and Atalanta; another of the seven chiefs. For the account of their deaths, see the Thebaid, lib. ix.

59. Campaneus; spelt Cappaneus, Capaneus in Kn. Tale, 74 (A 932); Troil. v. 1504. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speght's Chaucer (ed. Furnivall, p. 43), defends the spelling Campaneus on the ground that it was the usual medieval spelling; and refers us to Gower and Lydgate. In Pauli's edition of Gower, i. 108, it is Capaneus. Lydgate has Campaneus; Siege of Thebes, pt. iii. near the beginning. Capaneus is the right Latin form; he was one of the seven chiefs, and was struck with lightning by Jupiter whilst scaling the walls of Thebes; Statius, Theb. lib. x (at the end). Cf. Dante, Inf. xiv. 63. As to the form Campaneus, cf. Ital. Campidoglio with Lat. Capitolium.

60. 'The Theban wretches, the two brothers;' i. e. Eteocles and Polynices, who caused the war. Cf. Troil. v. 1507.

61. Adrastus, king of Argos, who assisted his son-in-law Polynices, and survived the war; Theb. lib. xi. 441.

63. 'That no man knew of any remedy for his (own) misery.' Care, anxiety, misery. At this line Chaucer begins upon st. 12 of the second book of the Teseide, which runs thus:—

'Onde il misero gente era rimaso

Vôto di gente, e pien d'ogni dolore;

Ma a picciol tempo da Creonte invaso

Fu, che di quello si fe' re e signore,

Con tristo augurio, in doloroso caso

Recò insieme il regno suo e l'onore,

Per fiera crudeltà da lui usata,

Mai da null'altro davanti pensata.

Cf. Knightes Tale, 80-4 (A 938).

71. From this point onward, Chaucer's work is, as far as we know at present, original. He seems to be intending to draw a portrait of a queen of Armenia who is neglected by her lover, in distinct contrast to Emilia, sister of the queen of Scythia, who had a pair of lovers devoted to her service.

72. Ermony, Armenia; the usual M. E. form.

78. Of twenty yeer of elde, of twenty years of age; so in MSS. F., Tn., and Harl. 372. See note to l. 80.

80. Behelde; so in MSS. Harl., F.; and Harl. 372 has beheelde. I should hesitate to accept this form instead of the usual beholde, but for its occurrence in Gower, Conf. Amant., ed. Pauli, iii. 147:—

'The wine can make a creple sterte

And a deliver man unwelde;

It maketh a blind man to behelde.

So also in the Moral Ode, l. 288, the Trinity MS. has the infin. behealde, and the Lambeth MS. has bihelde. It appears to be a Southern form, adopted here for the rime, like ken for kin in Book of the Duch. 438.

There is further authority; for we actually find helde for holde in five MSS. out of seven, riming with welde (wolde); C. T., Group D, l. 272.

82. Penelope and Lucretia are favourite examples of constancy; see C. T., Group B, 63, 75; Book Duch. 1081-2; Leg. Good Women, 252, 257. Read Penélop', not Pénelóp', as in B. D. 1081.

84. Amended. Compare what is said of Zenobia; C. T., B 3444.

85. I have supplied Arcite, which the MSS. strangely omit. It is necessary to name him here, to introduce him; and the line is else too short. Chaucer frequently shifts the accent upon this name, so that there is nothing wrong about either Arcíte here, or Árcite in l. 92. See Kn. Tale, 173, 344, 361, &c. on the one hand; and lines 1297, 1885 on the other. And see l. 140 below.

91. Read trust, the contracted form of trusteth.

98. 'As, indeed, it is needless for men to learn such craftiness.'

105. A proverbial expression; see Squi. Tale, F 537. The character of Arcite is precisely that of the false tercelet in Part II. of the Squieres Tale; and Anelida is like the falcon in the same. Both here and in the Squieres Tale we find the allusions to Lamech, and to blue as the colour of constancy; see notes to ll. 146, 150, 161-9 below.

119. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 569.

128. 'That all his will, it seemed to her,' &c. A common idiom. Koch would omit hit, for the sake of the metre; but it makes no difference at all, the e in thoghte being elided.

141. New-fangelnesse; see p. , l. 1, and Squi. Tale, F 610.

145. In her hewe, in her colours: he wore the colours which she affected. This was a common method of shewing devotion to a lady.

146. Observe the satire in this line. Arcite is supposed to have worn white, red, or green; but he did not wear blue, for that was the colour of constancy. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 644, and the note; and see l. 330 below; also p. 409, l. 7.

150. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 550. I have elsewhere drawn attention to the resemblance between this poem and the Squieres Tale, in my note to l. 548 of that Tale. Cf. also Cant. Tales, 5636 (D 54). The reference is to Gen. iv. 19—'And Lamech took unto him two wives.' In l. 154, Chaucer curiously confounds him with Jabal, Lamech's son, who was 'the father of such as dwell in tents'; Gen. iv. 20.

155. Arcít-e; trisyllabic, as frequently in Kn. Tale.

157. 'Like a wicked horse, which generally shrieks when it bites'; Bell. This explanation is clearly wrong. The line is repeated, with the slight change of pleyne to whyne, in C. T. 5968 (D 386). To pleyne or to whyne means to utter a plaintive cry, or to whinny; and the sense is—'Like a horse, (of doubtful temper), which can either bite or whinny (as if wanting a caress).'

161. Theef, false wretch; cf. Squi. Tale, F 537.

162. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 462, 632.

166. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 448.

169. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 412, 417, 430, 631.

171. Al crampissheth, she draws all together, contracts convulsively; formed from cramp. I know of but four other examples of the use of this word.

In Lydgate's Flour of Curtesie, st. 7, printed in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 248, we have the lines:—

'I gan complayne min inwarde deedly smert

That aye so sore crampeshe at min herte.'

As this gives no sense, it is clear that crampeshe at is an error for crampisheth or crampished, which Lydgate probably adopted from the present passage.

Again, in Lydgate's Life of St. Edmund, in MS. Harl. 2278, fol. 101 (ed. Horstmann, p. 430, l. 930), are the lines:—

'By pouert spoiled, which made hem sore smerte,

Which, as they thouhte, craumpysshed at here herte.'

Skelton has encraumpysshed, Garland of Laurell, 16; and Dyce's note gives an example of craumpishing from Lydgate's Wars of Troy, bk. iv. c. 33, sig. Xv. col. 4, ed. 1555.

Once more, Lydgate, in his Fall of Princes, bk. i. c. 9 (pr. by Wayland, leaf 18, col. 2), has the line—

'Deth crampishing into their hert gan crepe.'

175. In Kn. Tale, 1950 (A 2808), it is Arcite who says 'mercy!'

176. Read endur'th. Mate, exhausted.

177. Read n'hath. Sustene, support herself; cf. C. T. 11173 (F 861).

178. Forth is here equivalent to 'continues'; is or dwelleth is understood. Read languísshing.

180. Grene, fresh; probably with a reference to green as being the colour of inconstancy.

182. Nearly repeated in Kn. Tale, 1539 (A 2397); cf. Comp. unto Pity, 110. Cf. Compl. to his Lady, 52.

183. If up is to be retained before so, change holdeth into halt. 'His new lady reins him in by the bridle so tightly (harnessed as he is) at the end of the shaft (of her car), that he fears every word like an arrow.' The image is that of a horse, tightly fastened to the ends of the shafts of a car, and then so hardly reined in that he fears every word of the driver; he expects a cut with the whip, and he cannot get away.

193. Fee or shipe, fee or reward. The scarce word shipe being misunderstood, many MSS. give corrupt readings. But it occurs in the Persones Tale, Group I, 568, where Chaucer explains it by 'hyre'; and in the Ayenbite of Inwit, p. 33. It is the A. S. scipe. 'Stipendium, scipe'; Wright's Vocabularies, 114. 34.

194. Sent, short for sendeth; cf. serveth above. Cf. Book of Duch. 1024.

202. Also, as; 'as may God save me.'

206. Hir ne gat no geyn, she obtained for herself no advantage.

211. The metre now becomes extremely artificial. The first stanza is introductory. Its nine lines are rimed a a b a a b b a b, with only two rimes. I set back lines 3, 6, 7, 9, to show the arrangement more clearly. The next four stanzas are in the same metre. The construction is obscure, but is cleared up by l. 350, which is its echo, and again by ll. 270-1. Swerd is the nom. case, and thirleth is its verb; 'the sword of sorrow, whetted with false complaisance, so pierces my heart, (now) bare of bliss and black in hue, with the (keen) point of (tender) recollection.' Chaucer's 'with ... remembrance' is precisely Dante's 'Per la puntura della rimembranza'; Purg. xii. 20.

214. Cf. The Compleint to his Lady, 1. 55.

215. Awhaped, amazed, stupified. To the examples in the New E. Dict. add—'Sole by himself, awhaped and amate'; Compl. of the Black Knight, 168.

216. Cf. the Compleint to his Lady, l. 123.

218. That, who: relative to hir above.

220. Observe how the stanza, which I here number as 1, is echoed by the stanza below, ll. 281-289; and so of the rest.

222. Nearly repeated in the Compl. to his Lady, l. 35.

237. Repeated from the Compl. to his Lady, l. 50.

241. Founde, seek after; A. S. fundian. For founde, all the MSS. have be founde, but the be is merely copied in from be more in l. 240. If we retain be, then befounde must be a compound verb, with the same sense as before; but there is no known example of this verb, though the related strong verb befinden is not uncommon. But see l. 47 above. With l. 242 cf. Rom. Rose, 966 (p. ).

247. Cf. Compl. to his Lady, ll. 107, 108.

256-71. This stanza is in the same metre as that marked 5 below, ll. 317-332. It is very complex, consisting of 16 lines of varying length. The lines which I have set back have but four accents; the rest have five. The rimes in the first eight lines are arranged in the order a a a b a a a b; in the last eight lines this order is precisely reversed, giving b b b a b b b a; so that the whole forms a virelay.

260. Namely, especially, in particular.

262. 'Offended you, as surely as (I hope that) He who knows everything may free my soul from woe.'

265. This refers to ll. 113-5 above.

267. Read sav-e, mek-e; or the line will be too short.

270. Refers to ll. 211-3 above.

272. This stanza answers to that marked 6 below, ll. 333-341. It is the most complex of all, as the lines contain internal rimes. The lines are of the normal length, and arranged with the end-rimes a a b a a b b a b, as in the stanzas marked 1 to 4 above. Every line has an internal rime, viz. at the second and fourth accents. In ll. 274, 280, this internal rime is a feminine one, which leaves but one syllable (viz. nay, may) to complete these lines.

The expression 'swete fo' occurs again in the Compleint to his Lady, l. 41 (cf. ll. 64, 65); also in Troil. v. 228.

279. 'And then shall this, which is now wrong, (turn) into a jest; and all (shall be) forgiven, whilst I may live.'

281. The stanza here marked 1 answers to the stanza so marked above; and so of the rest. The metre has already been explained.

286. 'There are no other fresh intermediate ways.'

299. 'And must I pray (to you), and so cast aside womanhood?' It is not for the woman to sue to the man. Compare l. 332.

301. Nēd-e, with long close e, rimes with bēde, mēde, hēde.

302. 'And if I lament as to what life I lead.'

306. 'Your demeanour may be said to flower, but it bears no seed.' There is much promise, but no performance.

309. Holde, keep back. The spelling Averyll (or Auerill) occurs in MS. Harl. 7333, MS. Addit. 16165, and MSS. T. and P. It is much better than the Aprill or Aprille in the rest. I would also read Averill or Aperil in Troil. i. 156.

313. Who that, whosoever. Fast, trustworthy.

315. Tame, properly tamed. From Rom. Rose, 9945:—

'N'est donc bien privée tel beste

Qui de foir est toute preste.'

320. Chaunte-pleure. Godefroy says that there was a celebrated poem of the 13th century named Chantepleure or Pleurechante; and that it was addressed to those who sing in this world and will weep in the next. Hence also the word was particularly used to signify any complaint or lament, or a chant at the burial-service. One of his quotations is:—'Heu brevis honor qui vix duravit per diem, sed longus dolor qui usque ad mortem, gallicè la chantepleure'; J. de Aluet, Serm., Richel. l. 14961, fol. 195, verso. And again:—

'Car le juge de vérité

Pugnira nostre iniquité

Par la balance d'équité

Qui où val de la chantepleure

Nous boute en grant adversité

Sanz fin à perpétuité,

Et y parsevere et demeure.'

J. de Meung, Le Tresor, l. 1350; ed. Méon.

Tyrwhitt says:—'A sort of proverbial expression for singing and weeping successively [rather, little singing followed by much weeping]. See Lydgate, Trag. [i. e. Fall of Princes] st. the last; where he says that his book is 'Lyke Chantepleure, now singing now weping.' In MS. Harl. 4333 is a Ballad which turns upon this expression. It begins: 'Moult vaut mieux pleure-chante que ne fait chante-pleure.' Clearly the last expression means, that short grief followed by long joy is better than brief joy followed by long grief. The fitness of the application in the present instance is obvious.

Another example occurs in Lydgate's Fall of Princes, bk. i. c. 7, lenvoy:—

'It is like to the chaunte-pleure,

Beginning with ioy, ending in wretchednes.'

So also in Lydgate's Siege of Troye, bk. ii. c. 11; ed. 1555, Fol. F 6, back, col. 2.

328. A furlong-wey meant the time during which one can walk a furlong, at three miles an hour. A mile-way is twenty minutes; a furlong-wey is two minutes and a half; and the double of it is five minutes. But the strict sense need not be insisted on here.

330. Asure, true blue; the colour of constancy; see l. 332.

'Her habyte was of manyfolde colours,

Watchet-blewe, of fayned stedfastnesse,

Her golde allayed like son in watry showres,

Meynt with grene, for chaunge and doublenesse.'

Lydgate's Fall of Princes, bk. vi. c. 1. st. 7.

So in Troil. iii. 885—'bereth him this blewe ring.' And see Sect. XXI. l. 7 (p. ), and the note.

332. 'And to pray to me for mercy.' Cf. ll. 299, 300.

338. They, i. e. your ruth and your truth.

341. 'My wit cannot reach, it is so weak.'

342. Here follows the concluding stanza of the Complaint.

344. Read—For I shal ne'er (or nev'r) eft pútten.

346. See note to Parl. of Foules, 342.

350. This line re-echoes l. 211.

357. The reason why the Poem ends here is sufficiently obvious. Here must have followed the description of the temple of Mars, written in seven-line stanzas. But it was all rewritten in a new metre, and is preserved to us, for all time, in the famous passage in the Knightes Tale; ll. 1109-1192 (A 1967).

VIII. Chaucers Wordes unto Adam.

Only extant in MS. T., written by Shirley, and in Stowe's edition of 1561. Dr. Koch says—'It seems that Stowe has taken his text from Shirley, with a few modifications in spelling, and altered Shirley's Scriveyn into scrivener, apparently because that word was out of use in his time. Scriveyn is O. Fr. escrivain, F. écrivain. Lines 3 and 4 are too long [in MS. T. and Stowe], but long and more are unnecessary for the sense, wherfore I have omitted them.' Dr. Sweet omits long, but retains more, though it sadly clogs the line. Again, in l. 2, we find for to, where for is superfluous.

2. Boece, Chaucer's translation of Boethius. Troilus, Chaucer's poem of Troilus and Creseyde; in 5 books, all in seven-line stanzas. See vol. II.

3. 'Thou oughtest to have an attack of the scab under thy locks, unless thou write exactly in accordance with my composition.'

IX. The Former Age.

'The former Age' is a title taken from l. 2 of the poem. In MS. Hh., at the end, are the words—'Finit Etas prima: Chaucers.'

Both MSS. are poor, and omit a whole line (l. 56), which has to be supplied by conjecture; as we have no other authority. The spelling requires more emendation than usual.

The poem is partly a verse translation of Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiæ, lib. ii. met. 5. We possess a prose translation by Chaucer of the entire work (see vol. II. p. 40). This therefore contains the same passage in prose; and the prose translation is, of course, a much closer rendering of the original. Indeed there is nothing in the original which corresponds to the last four stanzas of the present poem, excepting a hint for l. 62.

The work of Boethius, in Latin, consists of five books. Each book contains several sections, written in prose and verse alternately. Hence it is usual to refer to bk. ii. prose 5 (liber ii. prosa 5); bk. ii. metre 5 (liber ii. metrum 5); and the like. These divisions are very useful in finding one's place.

Chaucer was also indebted to Ovid, Metam. i. 89-112, for part of this description of the Golden Age; of which see Dryden's fine translation. See also Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 8395-8492: and compare the Complaint of Scotland, ed. Murray, p. 144; and Dante, Purg. xxii. 148. For further remarks, see the Introduction.

1. 'Decaearchus ... refert sub Saturno, id est, in aureo saeculo, cum omnia humus funderet, nullum comedisse carnes: sed uniuersos uixisse frugibus et pomis, quae sponte terra gignebat'; Hieron. c. Iouin. lib. ii.

2. The former age; Lat. prior etas.

3. Payed of, satisfied with; Lat. contenta.

4. By usage, ordinarily; i. e. without being tilled.

5. Forpampred, exceedingly pampered; Lat. perdita. With outrage, beyond all measure.

6. Quern, a hand-mill for grinding corn. Melle, mill.

7. Dr. Sweet reads hawes, mast instead of mast, hawes. This sounds better, but is not necessary. Haw-es is dissyllabic. Pounage, mod. E. pannage, mast, or food given to swine in the woods; see the Glossary. Better spelt pannage or paunage (Manwood has pawnage), as cited in Blount's Nomolexicon. Koch wrongly refers us to O.F. poün, poön, a sickle (Burguy), but mast and haws were never reaped. Cf. Dante, Purg. xxii. 149.

11. 'Which they rubbed in their hands, and ate of sparingly.' Gnodded is the pt. t. of gnodden or gnudden, to rub, examples of which are scarce. See Ancren Riwle, pp. 238, 260 (footnotes), and gnide in Halliwell's Dictionary. But the right reading is obviously gniden or gnide (with short i), the pt. t. pl. of the strong verb gniden, to rub. This restores the melody of the line. In the Ancren Riwle, p. 260, there is a reference to Luke vi. 1, saying that Jesus' disciples 'gniden the cornes ut bitweonen hore honden'; where another MS. has gnuddeden. The Northern form gnade (2 p. sing.) occurs in the O.E. Psalter, Ps. lxxxviii. 45. Dr. Sweet reads gnodde, but the pt. t. of gnodden was gnodded. Nat half, not half of the crop; some was wasted.

16. 'No one as yet ground spices in a mortar, to put into clarrè or galantine-sauce.' As to clarre, see Knightes Tale, 613 (A 1471); R. Rose, 6027; and the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 204, and Index.

In the Liber Cure Cocorum, ed. Morris, p. 30, is the following recipe for Galentyne:—

'Take crust of brede and grynde hit smalle,

Take powder of galingale, and temper with-alle;

Powder of gyngere and salt also;

Tempre hit with venegur er þou more do;

Drawȝe hit þurughe a streynour þenne,

And messe hit forth before good menne.'

'Galendyne is a sauce for any kind of roast Fowl, made of Grated Bread, beaten Cinnamon and Ginger, Sugar, Claret-wine, and Vinegar, made as thick as Grewell'; Randell Holme, bk. iii. ch. iii. p. 82, col. 2 (quoted in Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 216). Roquefort gives O.F. galatine, galantine, galentine, explained by 'gelée, daube, sauce, ragoût fort épicé; en bas Latin, galatina.' Beyond doubt, Chaucer found the word in the Roman de la Rose, l. 21823—'En friture et en galentine.' See Galantine in Littré, and see note to Sect. XII. l. 17. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 8418:—

'Et de l'iaue simple bevoient

Sans querre piment ne clare,' &c.

17. 'No dyer knew anything about madder, weld, or woad.' All three are plants used in dyeing. Madder is Rubia tinctoria, the roots of which yield a dye. I once fancied weld was an error for welled (i. e. flowed out); and Dr. Sweet explains welde by 'strong.' Both of these fancies are erroneous. Weld is the Reseda Luteola of Linnæus, and grows wild in waste places; I have seen it growing near Beachey Head. It is better known as Dyer's Rocket. In Johns' Flowers of the Field, we duly find—'Reseda Luteola, Dyer's Rocket, weed, or Weld.' Also called Ash of Jerusalem, Dyer's Weed, &c.; see Eng. Plant-names, by Britten and Holland. It appears in mod. G. as Wau (Du. wouw), older spelling Waude. Its antiquity as a Teut. word is vouched for by the derivatives in the Romance languages, such as Span. gualda, Port. gualde, F. gaude; see Gualda in Diez. Weld is a totally distinct word from woad, but most dictionaries confound them. Florio, most impartially, coins a new form by mixing the two words together (after the fashion adopted in Alice through the Looking-glass). He gives us Ital. gualdo, 'a weede to die yellow with, called woald.' The true woad is the Isatis tinctoria, used for dyeing blue before indigo was known; the name is sometimes given to Genista tinctoria, but the dye from this is of a yellow colour. Pliny mentions the dye from madder (Nat. Hist. xix. 3); and says the British women used glastum, i. e. woad (xxii. 1).

18. Flees, fleece; Lat. 'uellera.'

20. 'No one had yet learnt how to distinguish false coins from true ones.'

27-9. Cf. Ovid, Metam. i. 138-140.

30. Ri-ver-es; three syllables. Dr. Sweet suggests putting after in place of first.

33. 'These tyrants did not gladly venture into battle to win a wilderness or a few bushes where poverty (alone) dwells—as Diogenes says—or where victuals are so scarce and poor that only mast or apples are found there; but, wherever there are money-bags,' &c. This is taken either from Jerome, in his Epistle against Jovinian, lib. ii. (Epist. Basil. 1524, ii. 73), or from John of Salisbury's Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 6. Jerome has: 'Diogenes tyrannos et subuersiones urbium, bellaque uel hostilia, uel ciuilia, non pro simplici uictu holerum pomorumque, sed pro carnibus et epularum deliciis asserit excitari.' John of Salisbury copies this, with subuersores for subuersiones, which seems better. Gower relates how Diogenes reproved Alexander for his lust of conquest; Conf. Amantis, ed. Pauli, i. 322.

41. This stanza seems more or less imitated from Le Rom. de la Rose, 8437:—

'Et quant par nuit dormir voloient,

En leu de coites [quilts] aportoient

En lor casiaus monceaus de gerbes,

De foilles, ou de mousse, ou d'erbes;....

Sor tex couches cum ge devise,

Sans rapine et sans convoitise,

S'entr'acoloient et baisoient....

Les simples gens asséurées,

De toutes cures escurées.'

47. 'Their hearts were all united, without the gall (of envy).' Curiously enough, Chaucer has here made an oversight. He ends the line with galles, riming with halles and walles; whereas the line should end with a word riming to shete, as, e.g. 'Hir hertes knewen nat to counterfete.'

49. Here again cf. Rom. de la Rose, 8483:—

'N'encor n'avoit fet roi ne prince

Meffais qui l'autrui tolt et pince.

Trestuit pareil estre soloient,

Ne riens propre avoir ne voloient.

55, 6. 'Humility and peace, (and) good faith (who is) the empress (of all), filled the earth full of ancient courtesy.' Line 56 I have supplied; Dr. Koch supplies the line—'Yit hadden in this worlde the maistrie.' Either of these suggestions fills up the sense intended.

57. Jupiter is mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses immediately after the description of the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages. At l. 568 of the same book begins the story of the love of Jupiter for Io.

59. Nembrot, Nimrod; so that his toures hye refers to the tower of Babel. In Gen. x, xi, the sole connection of Nimrod with Babel is in ch. x. 10—'And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.' But the usual medieval account is that he built the tower. Thus, in the Cursor Mundi, l. 2223:—

'Nembrot than said on this wise, ...

"I rede we bigin a laboure,

And do we wel and make a toure,"' &c.

So also in Sir D. Lyndsay, Buke of the Monarché, bk. ii. l. 1625.

62-4. These last lines are partly imitated from Boethius; lines 33-61 are independent of him.

X. Fortune.

This poem consists of three Ballads and an Envoy. Each Ballad contains three stanzas of eight lines, with the rimes a b a b b c b c, and the rimes of the second and third stanzas are precisely the same as those of the first. Thus the rime a recurs six times, the rime b twelve times, and the rime c likewise six times. Moreover, each stanza ends with the same line, recurring as a refrain. Hence the metrical difficulties are very great, and afford a convincing proof of Chaucer's skill. The Envoy is of seven lines, rimed a b a b b a b.

The three ballads are called, collectively, Balades de visage sanz peinture, a title which is correctly given in MS. I., with the unlucky exception that visage has been turned into vilage. This curious blunder occurs in all the MSS. and old editions, and evidently arose from mistaking a long s (ſ) for an l. Vilage, of course, makes no sense; and we are enabled to correct it by help of Chaucer's translation of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 1; l. 39. 'Right swich was she [Fortune] whan she flatered thee, and deceived thee with unleveful lykinges of fals welefulnesse. Thou hast now knowen and ataynt the doutous or double visage of thilke blinde goddesse Fortune. She, that yit covereth hir and wimpleth hir to other folk, hath shewed hir everydel to thee.' Or the Ballads may refer to the unmasking of false friends: 'Fortune hath departed and uncovered to thee bothe the certein visages and eek the doutous visages of thy felawes'; id. bk. ii. pr. 8; l. 25. The whole poem is more or less founded on the descriptions of Fortune in Boethius; and we thus see that the visage meant is the face of Fortune, or else the face of a supposed friend, which is clearly revealed to the man of experience, in the day of adversity, without any covering or wimpling, and even without any painting or false colouring.

In MS. T. we are told that 'here filoweþe [followeth] a balade made by Chaucier of þe louer and of Dame Fortune.' In MS. A. we are told that 'here foloweþe nowe a compleynte of þe Pleintyff agenst fortune translated oute of Frenshe into Englisshe by þat famous Rethorissyen Geffrey Chaucier.' This hint, that it is translated out of French, can scarcely be right, unless Shirley (whose note this is) means that it partially resembles passages in Le Roman de la Rose; for Chaucer's work seems to contain some reminiscences of that poem as well as of the treatise of Boethius, though of course Le Roman is indebted to Boethius also.

Le Pleintif is the complainant, the man who brings a charge against Fortune, or rather, who exclaims against her as false, and defies her power. The first Ballad, then, consists of this complaint and defiance.

The close connection between this poem and Boethius is shewn by the fact that (like the preceding poem called The Former Age) it occurs in an excellent MS. of Chaucer's translation of Boethius, viz. MS. I. (Ii. 3. 21, in the Cambridge University Library). I may also remark here, that there is a somewhat similar dialogue between Nobilitas and Fortuna in the Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, lib. viii. c. 2; see Anglo-Latin Satirists, ed. T. Wright, ii. 401.

In Morley's English Writers, ii. 283, is the following description. 'The argument of the first part [or Ballad] is: I have learnt by adversity to know who are my true friends; and he can defy Fortune who is master of himself. The argument of the next part [second Ballad], that Fortune speaks, is: Man makes his own wretchedness. What may come you know not; you were born under my rule of change; your anchor holds. Of the third part of the poem [third Ballad], in which the Poet and Fortune each speak, the sum of the argument is, that what blind men call fortune is the righteous will of God. Heaven is firm, this world is mutable. The piece closes with Fortune's call upon the Princes to relieve this man of his pain, or pray his best friend "of his noblesse" that he may attain to some better estate.'

The real foundation of these three Ballads is (1) Boethius, bk. ii. proses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and met. 1; and (2) a long passage in Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 4853-4994 (Eng. version, 5403-5584). More particular references are given below.

1. The beginning somewhat resembles Boethius, bk. ii. met. 1, l, 5;—'She, cruel Fortune, casteth adoun kinges that whylom weren y-drad; and she, deceivable, enhaunseth up the humble chere of him that is discomfited.' Cf. Rom. Rose (E. version), ll. 5479-83.

2. The latter part of this line is badly given in the MSS. The readings are: F. now pouerte and now riche honour (much too long); I. now poeere and now honour; A. T. nowe poure and nowe honour; H. now poore and now honour. But the reading poure, poer, pore, i. e. poor, hardly serves, as a sb. is required. Pouerte seems to be the right word, but this requires us to omit the former now. Pouerte can be pronounced povért'; accented on the second syllable, and with the final e elided. For this pronunciation, see Prol. to Man of Lawes Tale, Group B, l. 99. Precisely because this pronunciation was not understood, the scribes did not know what to do. They inserted now before pouerte (which they thought was póverte); and then, as the line was too long, cut it down to poure, poore, to the detriment of the sense. I would therefore rather read—'As wele or wo, poverte and now honour,' with the pronunciation noted above.

7. In the Introduction to the Persones Tale (Group I, 248), we find: 'wel may that man, that no good werke ne dooth, singe thilke newe Frenshe song, Iay tout perdu mon temps et mon labour.' In like manner, in the present case, this line of 'a new French song' is governed by the verb singen in l. 6; cf. Sect. XXII. l. 24. The sense is—'the lack of Fortune's favour shall never (though I die) make me sing—"I have wholly lost my time and my labour."' In other words, 'I will not own myself defeated.'

9. With this stanza cf. Rom. de la Rose (E. version), 5551-2, 5671-78, 5579-81:—

'For Infortune makith anoon

To knowe thy freendis fro thy foon...

A wys man seide, as we may seen,

Is no man wrecched, but he it wene,...

For he suffrith in pacience...

Richesse riche ne makith nought

Him that on tresour set his thought;

For richesse stont in suffisaunce;' &c.

13. No force of, it does not matter for; i. e. 'thy rigour is of no consequence to him who has the mastery over himself.' From Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 4, l. 98, which Chaucer translates: 'Thanne, yif it so be that thou art mighty over thy-self, that is to seyn, by tranquillitee of thy sowle, than hast thou thing in thy power that thou noldest never lesen, ne Fortune ne may nat beneme it thee.'

17. Socrates is mentioned in Boeth. bk. i. pr. 3, l. 39, but ll. 17-20 are from Le Rom. de la Rose, ll. 5871-4:—

'A Socrates seras semblables,

Qui tant fu fers et tant estables,

Qu'il n'ert liés en prospérités,

Ne tristes en aversités.'

20. Chere, look. Savour, pleasantness, attraction; cf. Squi. Tale, F 404. All the MSS. have this reading; Caxton alters it to favour.

25. This Second Ballad gives us Fortune's response to the defiance of the complainant. In Arch. Seld. B. 10, it is headed—'Fortuna ad paupertatem.' See Boethius, bk. ii. prose 2, where Philosophy says—'Certes, I wolde pleten with thee a fewe thinges, usinge the wordes of Fortune.' Cf. 'nothing is wrecched but whan thou wenest it'; Boeth. ii. pr. 4, l. 79; and see Rom. Rose (E. version, 5467-5564).

28. 'Who possessest thy (true) self (as being quite) beyond my control.' A fine sentiment. Out of, beyond, independent of.

29. Cf. 'thou hast had grace as he that hath used of foreine goodes; thou hast no right to pleyne thee'; Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2, l. 17.

31. Cf. 'what eek yif my mutabilitee yiveth thee rightful cause of hope to han yit beter thinges?' id. l. 58.

32. Thy beste frend; possibly John of Gaunt, who died in 1399; but see note to l. 73 below. There is a curious resemblance here to Le Rom. de la Rose, 8056-60:—

'Et sachies, compains, que sitost

Comme Fortune m'ot ça mis,

Je perdi trestous mes amis,

Fors ung, ce croi ge vraiement,

Qui m'est remès tant solement.'

34. Cf. 'For-why this like Fortune hath departed and uncovered to thee bothe the certein visages and eek the doutous visages of thy felawes... thow hast founden the moste precious kinde of richesses, that is to seyn, thy verray freendes'; Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 8, l. 25.

Cf. Rom. Rose (E. version), l. 5486, and ll. 5547-50. The French version has (ll. 4967, &c.):—

'Si lor fait par son mescheoir

Tretout si clerement veoir,

Que lor fait lor amis trover,

Et par experiment prover

Qu'il valent miex que nul avoir

Qu'il poïssent où monde avoir.'

35. Vincent de Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, bk. 19, c. 62, headed De medicinis ex hyæna, cites the following from Hieronymus, Contra Iouinianum [lib. ii. Epist. Basileæ, 1524, ii. 74]:—'Hyænæ fel oculorum claritatem restituit,' the gall of a hyena restores the clearness of one's eyes. So also Pliny, Nat. Hist. bk. xxviii. c. 8. This exactly explains the allusion. Compare the extract from Boethius already quoted above, at the top of p. 543.

38. 'Still thine anchor holds.' From Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 4, l. 40:—whan that thyn ancres cleven faste, that neither wolen suffren the counfort of this tyme present, ne the hope of tyme cominge, to passen ne to faylen.'

39. 'Where Liberality carries the key of my riches.'

43. On, referring to, or, that is binding on.

46. Fortune says:—'I torne the whirlinge wheel with the torning cercle'; Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2, l. 37.

47. 'My teaching is better, in a higher degree, than your affliction is, in its degree, evil'; i. e. my teaching betters you more than your affliction makes you suffer.

49. In this third Ballad, the stanzas are distributed between the Complainant and Fortune, one being assigned to the former, and two to the latter. The former says:—'I condemn thy teaching; it is (mere) adversity.' M. S. Arch. Seld. B. 10 has the heading 'Paupertas ad Fortunam.'

50. My frend, i. e. my true friend. In l. 51, thy frendes means 'the friends I owed to thee,' my false friends. From Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 8, l. 23:—'this aspre and horrible Fortune hath discovered to thee the thoughtes of thy trewe freendes;... Whan she departed awey fro thee, she took awey hir freendes and lafte thee thyne freendes.'

51. I thanke hit thee, I owe thanks to thee for it. But very likely hit has been inserted to fill up, and the right reading is, probably, I thank-e thee; as Koch suggests.

52. On presse, in a throng, in company, all together.

53. 'Their niggardliness, in keeping their riches to themselves, foreshews that thou wilt attack their stronghold; just as an unnatural appetite precedes illness.'

56. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 19179:—

'Ceste ruile est si généraus,

Qu'el ne puet defaillir vers aus.'

57. Here Fortune replies. This stanza is nearly made up of extracts from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 2, transposed and rearranged. For the sake of comparison, I give the nearest equivalents, transposing them to suit the order here adopted.

'That maketh thee now inpacient ayeins me.... I norisshede thee with my richesses.... Now it lyketh me to with-drawen my hand ... shal I than only ben defended to usen my right?... The see hath eek his right to ben somtyme calme ... and somtyme to ben horrible with wawes.... Certes, it is leveful to the hevene to make clere dayes.... The yeer hath eek leve ... to confounden hem [the flowers] somtyme with reynes ... shal it [men's covetousness] binde me to ben stedefast?'

Compare also the defence of Fortune by Pandarus, in Troilus, bk. i. 841-854.

65. Above this stanza (ll. 65-72) all the MSS. insert a new heading, such as 'Le pleintif,' or 'Le pleintif encountre Fortune,' or 'The pleyntyff ageinst Fortune,' or 'Paupertas ad Fortunam.' But they are all wrong, for it is quite certain that this stanza belongs to Fortune. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Secondly, we know this by the original (in Boethius). And thirdly, Fortune cannot well have the 'envoy' unless she has the stanza preceding it. Dr. Morris, in his edition, rightly omits the heading; and so in Bell's edition.

66. Compare:—'For purviaunce is thilke divyne reson that is establisshed in the soverein prince of thinges; the whiche purviaunce disponeth alle thinges'; Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6, l. 42.

68. Ye blinde bestes, addressed to men; evidently by Fortune, not by the Pleintif. Compare the words forth, beste, in the Balade on Truth, Sect. XIII. l. 18.

71. Here we have formal proof that the speaker is Fortune; for this is copied from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 3, l. 60—'natheles the laste day of a mannes lyf is a manere deeth to Fortune.' Hence thy refers to man, and myn refers to Fortune; and the sense is—'Thy last day (O man) is the end of my interest (in thee)'; or 'dealings (with thee).' The word interesse, though scarce, is right. It occurs in Lydgate's Minor Poems, ed. Halliwell, p. 210; and in Spenser, F. Q. vii. 6. 33:—

'That not the worth of any living wight

May challenge ought in Heaven's interesse.'

And in Todd's Johnson:—'I thought, says his Majesty [K. Charles I.] I might happily have satisfied all interesses'; Lord Halifax's Miscell. p. 144. The sb. also occurs as Ital. interesse; thus Florio's Ital. Dict. (1598) has:—'Interesse, Interesso, the interest or profite of money for lone. Also, what toucheth or concerneth a mans state or reputation.' And Minsheu's Spanish Dict. (1623) has:—'Interes, or Interesse, interest, profite, auaile.' The E. vb. to interess was once common, and occurs in K. Lear, i. 1. 87 (unless Dr. Schmidt is right in condemning the reading of that line).

73. Princes. Who these princes were, it is hard to say; according to l. 76 (found in MS. I. only), there were three of them. If the reference is to the Dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, then the 'beste frend' must be the king himself. Cf. l. 33.

75, 76. 'And I (Fortune) will requite you for your trouble (undertaken) at my request, whether there be three of you, or two of you (that heed my words).' Line 76 occurs in MS. I. only, yet it is difficult to reject it, as it is not a likely sort of line to be thrust in, unless this were done, in revision, by the author himself. Moreover, we should expect the Envoy to form a stanza with the usual seven lines, so common in Chaucer, though the rime-arrangement differs.

77. 'And, unless it pleases you to relieve him of his pain (yourselves), pray his best friend, for the honour of his nobility, that he may attain to some better estate.'

The assigning of this petition to Fortune is a happy expedient. The poet thus escapes making a direct appeal in his own person.

XI. Merciless Beauty.

The title 'Mercilesse Beaute' is given in the Index to the Pepys MS. As it is a fitting title, and no other has been suggested, it is best to use it.

I think this Roundel was suggested by one written in French, in the thirteenth century, by Willamme d'Amiens, and printed in Bartsch, Chrestomathie de l'ancien Français. It begins—

'Jamais ne serai saous

D'esguarder les vairs ieus dous

Qui m'ont ocis';—

i. e. I shall never be sated with gazing on the gray soft eyes which have slain me.

1. The MS. has Yowre two yen; but the scribe lets us see that this ill-sounding arrangement of the words is not the author's own; for in writing the refrain he writes 'Your yen, &c.' But we have further evidence: for the whole line is quoted in Lydgate's Ballade of our Ladie, printed in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1550, fol. 347 b, in the form—'Your eyen two wol slee me sodainly.' The same Ballad contains other imitations of Chaucer's language. Cf. also Kn. Tale, 260 and 709 (A 1118, 1567).

3. So woundeth hit ... kene, so keenly it (your beauty) wounds (me). The MS. has wondeth, which is another M. E. spelling of woundeth. Percy miscopied it wendeth, which gives but poor sense; besides, Chaucer would probably have used the contracted form went as his manner is. In l. 5, the scribe writes wound (better wounde).

4. And but, and unless. For word Percy printed words, quite forgetting that the M.E. plural is dissyllabic (word-es). The final d has a sort of curl to it, but a comparison with other words shews that it means nothing; it occurs, for instance, at the end of wound (l. 5), and escaped (l. 27).

Wounde (MS. wound) is dissyllabic in Mid. English, like mod. G. Wunde. See wunde in Stratmann.

6. I give two lines to the first refrain, and three to the second. The reader may give three lines to both, if he pleases; see note to sect. V, l. 675. We cannot confine the first refrain to one line only, as there is no stop at the end of l. 14.

8. Trouth-e is dissyllabic; see treouthe in Stratmann.

15. Ne availeth; with elided e. MS. nauailleth; Percy prints n'availeth.

16. Halt, i. e. holdeth; see Book of Duch. 621.

17. MS. han ye me, correctly; Percy omits me, and so spoils both sense and metre.

27. Lovers should be lean; see Romaunt of the Rose (E. version), 2684. The F. version has (l. 2561):—

'Car bien saches qu'Amors ne lesse

Sor fins amans color ne gresse.'

28. MS neuere; Percy prints nere; but the syllables in his occupy the time of one syllable. I suspect that the correct reading is thenke ben; to is not wanted, and thenke is better with a final e, though it is sometimes dropped in the pres. indicative. Percy prints thinke, but the MS. has thenk; cf. AS. þencan. With l. 29 cf. Troil. v. 363.

31. I do no fors, I don't care; as in Cant. Ta. 6816 (D 1234).

XII. To Rosemounde.

This graceful Balade is a happy specimen of Chaucer's skill in riming. The metre is precisely that of 'Fortune,' resembling that of the Monkes Tale with the addition of a refrain; only the same rimes are used throughout. The formula is a b a b b c b c.

2. 'As far as the map of the world extends.' Mappemounde is the F. mappemonde, Lat. mappa mundi; it is used also by Gower, Conf. Amant. iii. 102.

9. tyne, a large tub; O. F. tine. The whole phrase occurs in the Chevalier au Cigne, as given in Bartsch, Chrest. Française, 350. 23:—'Le jour i ot plore de larmes plaine tine.' Cotgrave has:—'Tine, a Stand, open Tub, or Soe, most in use during the time of vintage, and holding about four or five pailfuls, and commonly borne, by a Stang, between two.' We picture to ourselves the brawny porters, staggering beneath the 'stang,' on which is slung the 'tine' containing the 'four or five pailfuls' of the poet's tears.

10. The poet, in all his despair, is sustained and refreshed by regarding the lady's beauty.

11. seemly, excellent, pleasing; this is evidently meant by the semy of the MS.

smal, fine in tone, delicate; perhaps treble. A good example occurs in the Flower and the Leaf, 180:—

'With voices sweet entuned, and so smalle,

That it me thoughte the swetest melodye,' &c.

Cf. 'his vois gentil and smal'; Cant. Tales, A 3360. The reading fynall (put for finall) is due to mistaking the long ſ (s) for f, and m for in.

out-twyne, twist out, force out; an unusual word.

17. 'Never was pike so involved in galantine-sauce as I am completely involved in love.' This is a humorous allusion to a manner of serving up pikes which is well illustrated in the Fifteenth-Century Cookery-books, ed. Austin, p. 101, where a recipe for 'pike in Galentyne' directs that the cook should 'cast the sauce under him and aboue him, that he be al y-hidde in the sauce.' At p. 108 of the same we are told that the way to make 'sauce galentyne' is to steep crusts of brown bread in vinegar, adding powdered cinnamon till it is brown; after which the vinegar is to be strained twice or thrice through a strainer, and some pepper and salt is to be added. Thus 'sauce galentine' was a seasoned pickle. See further in the note to 1. 16 of Sect. IX.

20. 'True Tristram the second.' For Tristram, see note to Sect. V. 1. 290. Tristram was a famous example of 'truth' or constancy, as his love was inspired by having drunk a magical love-potion, from the effects of which he never recovered. The MS. has Tristam.

21. refreyd, cooled down; lit. 'refrigerated.' This rare word occurs twice in Troilus; see bk. ii. 1343, v. 507; cf. Pers. Ta. I 341. Dr. Murray tells me that no writer but Chaucer is known to have used this form of the word, though Caxton has refroid, from continental French, whereas refreid is from Anglo-French.

afounde, sink, be submerged. See O. F. afonder, to plunge under water, also, to sink, in Godefroy; and affonder in Cotgrave. Chaucer found this rare word in Le Roman de la Rose, 19914. (I once thought it was the pp. of afinden, and meant 'nor be explored'; but it is better to take it as infin. after may not). See Afounder in the New E. Dict.

XIII. Truth.

The Titles are: Gg. Balade de bone conseyl; Lansd. 699, La bon Counseil de le Auttour; Caxton, The good counceyl of Chawcer; Harl. Moral balade of Chaucyre. Shirley calls it—Balade that Chaucier made on his deeth-bedde; a note that has been frequently repeated, and is probably no better than a bad guess.

1. Koch considers that the source of the poem is a passage in Boethius, lib. iii. met. II, at the beginning, but the resemblance is very slight. It contains no more than a mere hint for it. However, part of st. 3 is certainly from the same, bk. i. pr. 5, as will appear; see note to 1. 17.

The former passage in Boethius is thus translated by Chaucer: 'Who-so that seketh sooth by a deep thoght, and coveiteth nat to ben deceived by no mis-weyes, lat him rollen and trenden [revolve] withinne himself the light of his inward sighte; and lat him gadere ayein, enclyninge in-to a compas, the longe moevinges of his thoughtes; and lat him techen his corage that he hath enclosed and hid in his tresors, al that he compaseth or seketh fro with-oute.' See also bk. ii. pr. 5 of the same, which seems to me more like the present poem than is the above passage.

2. Koch reads thing for good, as in some MSS. He explains the line:—'Devote thyself entirely to one thing, even if it is not very important in itself (instead of hunting after a phantom).' This I cannot accept; it certainly means nothing of the kind. Dr. Sweet has the reading: Suffise thin owene thing, &c., which is the reading of one MS. only, but it gives the right idea. The line would then mean: 'let your own property, though small, suffice for your wants.' I think we are bound to follow the MSS. generally; of these, two have Suffice unto thi thing; seven have Suffice unto thy good; one has Suffice unto thi lyuynge (where lyuynge is a gloss upon good); and F. has the capital reading Suffice the (= thee) thy good. It seems best to follow the majority, especially as they allow suffice to be followed by a vowel, thus eliding the final e. The sense is simply: 'Be content with thy property, though it be small'; and the next line gives the reason why—'for hoarding only causes hatred, and ambition creates insecurity; the crowd is full of envy, and wealth blinds one in every respect.' Suffice unto thy good is much the same as the proverb—'cut your coat according to your cloth.' Chaucer elsewhere has worldly suffisaunce for 'wealth'; Cler. Tale, E 759. Of course this use of suffice unto (be content with) is peculiar; but I do not see why it is not legitimate. The use of Savour in l. 5 below is at least as extraordinary.

Cf. Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 5, l. 54:—'And if thou wolt fulfille thy nede after that it suffiseth to nature, than is it no nede that thou seke after the superfluitee of fortune.'

3. Cf. 'for avarice maketh alwey mokereres [hoarders] to ben hated'; Boeth. ii. pr. 5, l. 11.

5. Savour, taste with relish, have an appetite for. 'Have a relish for no more than it may behove you (to taste).'

6. Most MSS. read Werk or Do; only two have Reule, which Dr. Sweet adopts. Any one of these three readings makes sense. 'Thou who canst advise others, work well thyself,' or 'act well thyself,' or 'rule thyself.' To quote from Hamlet, i. 3. 47:—

'Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;

Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own rede.'

It is like the Jewish proverb—'Physician, heal thyself.'

7. Trouthe shal delivere, truth shall give deliverance. 'The truth shall make you free,' Lat. 'ueritas liberabit uos'; John viii. 32. This is a general truth, and there is no need for the insertion of thee after shal, as in the inferior MSS., in consequence of the gradual loss of the final e in trouthe, which in Chaucer is properly dissyllabic. The scribes who turned trouthe into trouthe thee forgot that this makes up trou-thè thee.

8. Tempest thee noght, do not violently trouble or harass thyself, do not be in a state of agitation. Agitation will not redress everything that is crooked. So also:—'Tempest thee nat thus with al thy fortune'; Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 4, l. 50. Chaucer (as Koch says) obtained this curious verb from the third line of section F (l. 63 of the whole poem) of the French poem from which he translated his A B C. This section begins (see p. above):—

'Fuiant m'en viens a ta tente

Moy mucier pour la tormente

Qui ou monde me tempeste';

i. e. I come fleeing to thy tent, to hide myself from the storm which harasses me in the world. Goldsmith speaks of a mind being 'tempested up'; Cit. of the World, let. 47.

9. 'Trusting to the vicissitudes of fortune.' There are several references to the wheel of Fortune in Boethius. Thus in bk. ii. pr. 2 of Chaucer's translation:—'I torne the whirlinge wheel with the torning cercle,' quoted above, in the note to X. 46.

10. 'Much repose consists in abstinence from fussiness.'

11. 'To spurn against an awl,' i. e. against a prick, is the English equivalent of the Gk. phrase which our bibles render by 'to kick against the pricks,' Acts ix. 5. Wyclif has 'to kike ayens the pricke.'

In MS. Cotton, Otho A. xviii, we find the reading a nall, the n being transferred from an to the sb. Tusser has nall for 'awl' in his Husbandry, § 17, st. 4, l. 3. This MS., by the way, has been burnt, but a copy of it (too much corrected) is given in Todd's Illustrations of Chaucer, p. 131.

12. An allusion to the fable in Æsop about the earthern and brazen pots being dashed together. An earthen pot would have still less chance of escape if dashed against a wall. In MS. T., the word crocke is glossed by 'water-potte.'

13. 'Thou that subduest the deeds of another, subdue thyself.'

15. Cf. 'it behoveth thee to suffren with evene wille in pacience al that is don ... in this world'; Boeth. bk. ii. pr. I, l. 66.

16. Axeth, requires; i. e. will surely cause.

17. When Boethius complains of being exiled, Philosophy directs him to a heavenly home. 'Yif thou remembre of what contree thou art born, it nis nat governed by emperours ... but oo lord and oo king, and that is god'; bk. i. pr. 5, l. II. This is copied (as being taken from 'Boece') in Le Roman de la Rose, l. 5049 (Eng. version, l. 5659).

18. The word beste probably refers to the passage in Boethius where wicked men are likened to various animals, as when the extortioner is a wolf, a noisy abusive man is a hound, a treacherous man is a fox, &c.; bk. iv. pr. 3. The story of Ulysses and Circe follows; bk. iv. met. 3.

19. 'Recognise heaven as thy true country.' Lok up, gaze upwards to heaven. Cf. the expression 'thy contree' at the end of bk. iv. pr. I of his translation of Boethius. There is also a special reference here to Boeth. bk. v. met. 5, where it is said that quadrupeds look down, but man is upright; 'this figure amonesteth thee, that axest the hevene with thy righte visage'; l. 14. See Ovid, Met. i. 85.

But, man, as thou wittlees were,

Thou lokist euere dounwarde as a beest.'

Polit, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 185, l. 273.

Thank god of al, thank God for all things. In like manner, in the Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, st. 53, we find: 'I thanke God of al, if I nowe dye.' Mätzner (Gram. ii. 2. 307) quotes from the Towneley Mysteries, p. 128:—'Mekyll thanke of youre good wille'; and again (Gram. ii. 1. 238) from King Alisaunder, l. 7576:—'And thankid him of his socour.' Henrysoun, in his Abbay Walk, l. 8, has:—'Obey, and thank thy God of al'; but he is probably copying this very passage. Cf. also—'of help I him praye'; Lydgate, London Lyckpeny, st. 6; 'beseech you of your pardon'; Oth. iii. 3. 212. In Lydgate's Minor Poems, ed. Halliwell, p. 225, is a poem in which every stanza ends with 'thonk God of alle.' Cf. Cant. Tales, B 1113.

'Lyft wp thyne Ene [not orne], and thank thi god of al.'

Ratis Raving, ed. Lumby, p. 10.

20. Hold the hye wey, keep to the high road. Instead of Hold the hye wey, some MSS. have Weyve thy lust, i. e. put aside thy desire, give up thine own will.

22. This last stanza forms an Envoy. It exists in one copy only (MS. Addit. 10340); but there is no reason at all for considering it spurious. Vache, cow; with reference to the 'beast in the stall' in l. 18. This animal was probably chosen as being less offensive than those mentioned by Boethius, viz. the wolf, hound, fox, lion, hart, ass, and sow. Possibly, also, there is a reference to the story of Nebuchadnezzar, as related by Chaucer in the Monkes Tale; Group B, 3361.

XIV. Gentilesse.

For remarks upon Scogan's quotation of this Ballad in full, see the Introduction.

The titles are: Harl. Moral balade of Chaucier; T. Balade by Chaucier.

Caxton's text is unusually good, and is often superior to that in the existing MSS.

The general idea of the poem is that Christ was the true pattern of 'gentleness' or gentility, i. e. of noble behaviour. Cf. Dekker's noble line, in which he speaks of Christ as 'The first true gentleman that ever breathed.'

But the finest poetical essay upon this subject is that by Chaucer himself, in the Wife of Bath's Tale; C. T. 6691-6758 (D 1109); which see. And cf. Tale of Melibeus, B 2831-2.

Another passage on this subject occurs in the Eng. version of the Romance of the Rose, ll. 2188-2202, which, curiously enough, is in neither Michel's nor Méon's edition of the French Poem (in which l. 2184 of the E. version is immediately succeeded by l. 2203 of the same). Again, in Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 6603-6616, there is a definition of Gentillesce; but this passage is not in the Eng. version.

The original passage, to which both Chaucer and Jean de Meun were indebted, is one in Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 6; which Chaucer thus translates:—'For yif the name of gentilesse be referred to renoun and cleernesse of linage, than is gentil name but a foreine thing, that is to seyn, to hem that glorifyen hem of hir linage. For it semeth that gentilesse be a maner preysinge that comth of deserte of ancestres ... yif thou ne have no gentilesse of thy-self—that is to seyn, preyse that comth of thy deserte—foreine gentilesse ne maketh thee nat gentil.' And again, just below, in metre 6:—'On allone is fader of thinges.... Thanne comen alle mortal folk of noble sede; why noisen ye or bosten of youre eldres?' But we must not overlook a long passage near the end of Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 18807-19096, which Chaucer certainly also consulted. I quote some of these lines below.

1. With this first stanza compare R. Rose, 18881:—

'Quiconques tent à gentillece

D'orguel se gart et de parece;

Aille as armes, ou à l'estuide,

Et de vilenie se vuide;

Humble cuer ait, cortois et gent

En tretous leus, vers toute gent.'

Two MSS., both written out by Shirley, and MS. Harl. 7333, all read:—'The first fader, and foundour (or fynder) of gentylesse.' This is wrong, and probably due to the dropping of the final e in the definite adjective firste. We must keep the phrase firste stok, because it is expressly repeated in l. 8.

The first line means—'With regard to, or As to the first stock (or source), who was the father of gentilesse.' The substantives stok and fader have no verb to them, but are mentioned as being the subject of the sentence.

3. The former his refers to fader, but the latter to man.

4. Sewe, follow. In a Ballad by King James the First of Scotland, printed at p. 54 of my edition of the Kingis Quair, the first five lines are a fairly close imitation of the opening lines of the present poem, and prove that King James followed a MS. which had the reading sewe.

'Sen throu vertew encressis dignite,

And vertew flour and rut [root] is of noblay,

Of ony weill or quhat estat thou be,

His steppis sew, and dreid thee non effray: