Part 3 of His Sege of Thebes.

1460. Stace (as in Troil. bk. v, near the end, and Kn. Tale, A 2294) is Publius Papinius Statius, who died A.D. 96, author of the Thebais and Achilleis (see l. 1463), the latter being left incomplete. Tholosan means Toulousan, or inhabitant of Toulouse; and he is here so called because by some (including Dante, whom Chaucer follows) he was incorrectly supposed to have been a native of Toulouse. He was born at Naples, A.D. 61. Dante calls him Tolosano in Purg. xxi. 89, on which Cary remarks:--'Dante, as many others have done, confounds Statius the poet, who was a Neapolitan, with a rhetorican of the same name, who was of Tolosa or Thoulouse. Thus Chaucer; and Boccaccio, as cited by Lombardi: "E Stazio di Tolosa ancora caro"; Amorosa Vis. cant. 5.'

Dr. Köppell quotes the last passage, from Boccaccio, Am. Vis. v. 34, in Anglia, xiv. 237, and shews that other passages in the same resemble other lines in the Hous of Fame. See notes to ll. 1311, 1342, 1360, 1483, 1487, and 1499.

1463. 'Cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille'; Dante, Purg. xxi. 92.

1466. Omeer, Homer; see ll. 1477-1480 below.

1467. In Chaucer's Troil. i. 146, is the line--'In Omer, or in Dares, or in Dyte.' Dares means Dares Phrygius; and Tytus is doubtless intended for the same person as Dyte, i.e. Dictys Cretensis. See the account in Warton, Hist. E. Poet., ed. Hazlitt, ii. 127, beginning:--'But the Trojan story was still kept alive in two Latin pieces, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis,' &c.; and further in vol. iii. p. 81. The chief source of the romantic histories of Troy in the middle ages is the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, which appeared between 1175 and 1185, and has lately been edited by M. Joly. This was copied by Guido delle Colonne (see note to l. 1469 below), who pretended, nevertheless, to follow Dares and Dictys. Chaucer cites Dares and Dictys at second-hand, from Guido.

1468. Lollius; evidently supposed by Chaucer to be a writer on the Trojan war. See Tyrwhitt's note on the words the boke of Troilus, as occurring at the end of the Persones Tale. Chaucer twice quotes Lollius in Troilus, viz. in bk. i. 394 and bk. v. 1653. At the beginning of sect. xiv of his Hist. of Eng. Poetry, Warton shews that there was a Lollius Urbicus among the Historici Latini profani of the third century; 'but this could not be Chaucer's Lollius; ... none of his works remain.' The difficulty has never been wholly cleared up; we know, however, that the Troilus is chiefly taken from Boccaccio's Filostrato, just as his Knight's Tale is chiefly taken from Boccaccio's Teseide. My idea of the matter is that, in the usual mode of appealing to old authorities, Chaucer refers us (not to Boccaccio, whom he does not mention, but) to the authorities whom he supposed Boccaccio must have followed. Accordingly, in his Troilus, he mentions Homer, Dares, Dictys, and Lollius, though he probably knew next to nothing of any one of these authors. On this account, the suggestion made by Dr. Latham (Athenæum, Oct. 3, 1868, p. 433) seems quite reasonable, viz. that he got the idea that Lollius wrote on the Trojan war by misunderstanding the lines of Horace, Epist. i. 2:--

'Troiani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, Dum tu declamas Romæ, Præneste relegi.'

See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 87. This supposition becomes almost a certainty when we observe how often medieval writers obtained their information from MSS. containing short extracts. Chaucer clearly never read Horace at all; he merely stumbled on a very few extracts from him in notebooks. In this way, he may easily have met with the first line above, apart from its context. Cf. vol. ii. pp. lii, liii.

1469. Guido delle Colonne, or Guido de Columnis (not da Colonna), finished his translation or version of Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie in the year 1287. His work is called Historia Troiana. The 'Geste Hystoriale' of the Destruction of Troy, edited by Panton and Donaldson for the Early English Text Society, is a translation of Guido's Historia into Middle English alliterative verse. See Warton, Hist. E. P., ed. Hazlitt, iii. 81; and Introd. to vol. ii. pp. liv-lxv.

1470. Gaufride, Geoffrey, viz. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died A.D. 1154, and wrote a History of the Britons in Latin, full of extravagant but lively fictions, which was completed in 1147; see Morley's Hist. E. Writers, i. 496. He is rightly mentioned among the writers who 'bore up Troy,' because he makes the Britons the descendants of Æneas. See note below.

1477. Oon seyde, one (of them) said. Guido was one of those who said this; this appears from the Gest Hystoriale above mentioned, which was translated from Guido; see ll. 41-47, and 10312-10329 of Panton and Donaldson's edition. Guido asserts, for example, that Achilles slew Hector by treachery, and not, as Homer says, in fair fight; and Chaucer asserts the same, Troil. v. 1560. The fact is, that the Latin races declined to accept an account which did not sufficiently praise the Trojans, whom they regarded as their ancestors. Geoffrey of Monmouth ingeniously followed up this notion, by making the Trojans also the ancestors of the ancient Britons. Hence English writers followed on the same side; Lydgate, as well as Chaucer, exclaims against Homer. See Warton, ed. Hazlitt, iii. 82. But Dante exalts Homer above Horace, Ovid, and Lucan: Inf. iv. 88.

1482. 'Homer's iron is admirably represented as having been by Virgil covered over with tin'; note in Bell's Chaucer.

1483. There is a similar mention of Vergil in Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 7. See note to l. 1460.

1487. Ovide, Ovid; from whom perhaps Chaucer borrows more than from any other Latin writer. He stands on a pillar of copper, the metal sacred to Venus. See note to l. 820 of Can. Yeom. Tale. And cf. Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 25: 'Eravi Ovidio, lo quale poetando Iscrisse tanti versi per amore.'

1494. High the (as in F.) is an error for highthe, height; Cx. Th. have heyght. Read highte, as in l. 744.

1499. Lucan; alluding to Lucan's Pharsalia, which narrates the war between Cæsar and Pompey. See Man of Lawes Tale, B 401; Monkes Tale, De Caesare, B 3909 (and note), and a fourth mention of him in Troilus, v. 1792. There is an English translation by Rowe. Cf. Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 19: 'A' quai Lucan seguitava, ne' cui Atti parea ch'ancora la battaglia Di Cesare narrasse, e di colui Magno Pompeo chiamato.'

1509. Claudius Claudianus, in the fourth century, wrote a poem De Raptu Proserpinæ, alluded to here and in the Merchant's Tale (C. T., E 2232), and several other pieces. See note to Parl. Foules, 99.

1512. Imitated from Dante, Inf. ix. 44: 'Della regina dell' eterno pianto.'

1519. Write, wrote; pt. t. pl. Highte, were named.

1521. Perhaps from Dante, Inf. xvi. 1, which Cary translates:--

'Now came I where the water's din was heard,... Resounding like the hum of swarming bees, When forth together issued from a troop,' &c.

1527. Cf. Ovid, Met. xii. 53: 'Atria turba tenent; ueniunt leue uulgus, euntque.'

1530. Alles-kinnes is in the gen. sing., and Of governs condiciouns; thus the line is equivalent to--'Of conditions of every kind'; whereas modern English uses--'Of every kind of condition.' This peculiar idiom was formerly common; and precisely similar to it is the phrase noskinnes, for which see note to l. 1794. Observe that the phrase is oddly written alle skynnes in MS. F., by a misdivision of the words. So in Piers Plowman, A. ii. 175, we have the phrase for eny kunnes yiftus, for gifts of any kind, where one MS. has any skynes. In my note to P. Plowman, C. xi. 128, I give numerous examples, with references, of phrases such as none kynnes riche, many kynnes maneres, summes kunnes wise, what kyns schape, &c.

1550. 'Those that did pray her for her favour.'

1564. 'Because it does not please me.'

1570. I here alter Vpon peyne to Vp peyne, as the former will not scan, and the latter is the usual idiom. See up peyne in Kn. Tale, A 1707, 2543; Man of Lawes Tale, B 795, 884. Cf. vp the toft, upon the toft, P. Plowman, B. i. 12; vp erthe, upon earth, id. B. ix. 99.

1571. Cf. Rom. Rose, 18206--'Car Eolus, li diex des vens.' From Vergil, Æn. i. 52; cf. Ovid, Met. xiv. 223, where Æolus is said to reign over the Tuscan sea. The connection of Æolus with Thrace is not obvious; cf. l. 1585. Ovid, however, has 'Threicio Borea'; Art. Am. ii. 431. And see Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 382.

1596. Took to, delivered to. Triton, Triton; imitated from Ovid, Met. i. 333, where Neptune calls Triton, and bids him sound his 'shell,' the sound of which resounded everywhere.

1598. We rarely find to used after leet; the usual formula is leet go. But cf. leet to glyde in Cant. Ta., F 1415. Or read to-go, to-glyde.

1618. Wite is badly spelt wete or wote in the MS. copies; but the very phrase wite ye what occurs in C. T., E 2431. However, Ch. certainly uses the phrase ye woot instead of ye wite, more than once.

1640. Overthrowe, be overthrown; as in the Tale of Gamelin, 512. Cf. Melibeus, B 2755.

1643. A pelet was a stone ball, such as used to be fired from the earliest kind of cannon, of which this is a very early mention. See my glossary to P. Plowman (Clar. Press).

1670. Lat goon, let go, lay aside.

1702. The word turned, which is dissyllabic, has evidently been substituted here in the printed editions and in MS. P. for the older and rare word clew, which does not occur elsewhere in Chaucer. The line means--'With that (therupon) I rubbed my head all round'; which is a rustic way of expressing perplexity. The verb clawen, to scratch, stroke, is not uncommon, but the usual pt. t. is clawed. We find, however, at least one other example of the strong form of the past tense in the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, l. 925--He clew the bor on the rigge,' he stroked the boar on the back, and made him go to sleep; cf. 'thi maister the clawes,' i.e. your master strokes you, to flatter you, in l. 937 of the same. Chaucer has, 'to clawen him on his hele' , Troil. iv. 728; 'he clawed him on the bak,' he stroked him on the back, to encourage him, Cook's Prol., A 4326 (where clew would suit the line better). See claw in Jamieson's Scot. Dict.

1708. 'They would not give a leek.' Cf. 'dere ynough a leek'; Can. Yeom. Tale, Group G, 795.

1740. 'Although no brooch or ring was ever sent us.'

1742-4. 'Nor was it once intended in their heart to make us even friendly cheer, but they might (i.e. were ready to) bring us to our bier'; i.e. so far from caring to please us, they would be satisfied to see us dead.

The M.E. temen, to produce, to bring, is the same word as mod. E. teem, to produce. To temen on bere is parallel to the old phrase to bringen on bere; cf. Gaw. Douglas, tr. of Æneid, bk. x. ch. 10, l. 138 (ed. Small, iii. 326), where brocht on beyr means 'brought to their grave.' See Bier in the New Eng. Dictionary.

1747. For wood, as (if) mad, 'like mad.' The same phrase recurs in Leg. Good Women, Phyllis, l. 27; cf. as it were wood, Kn. Tale, A 2950; and for pure wood, Rom. Rose, 276.

1759-62. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9887-90:--

'Si se sunt maint vanté de maintes; Par paroles fauces et faintes, Dont les cors avoir ne pooient, Lor non à grant tort diffamoient.'

1761. The name, the name of it, the credit of it.

1777. Masty (miswritten maisty in F., but masty in the rest) means fat, fattened up, and hence unwieldy, sluggish. Bell alters it to maisly, and Moxon's edition to nastie; both being wrong. Palsgrave has: 'Masty, fatte, as swyne be, gras.' The Promp. Parv. has: 'Mast-hog or swyne, mastid swyne, Maialis'; and 'Mastyn beestys, sagino, impinguo.' Way rightly explains masty as 'glutted with acorns or berries'; cf. 'Acorne, mast for swyne, gland,' in Palsgrave. See The Former Age, l. 37.

1779. Wher, whether, 'is it the case that?'

1782. As the word oughte is never followed by to with a following gerund, it is certain that to-hangen is all one word, the prefix to- being intensive. MSS. F. and B. omit to, but the rest have it, and the syllable is wanted. I know of no other example of to-hangen, to hang thoroughly, but this is of little moment. The prefix to- was freely added to all sorts of verbs expressing strong action; Stratmann gives more than a hundred examples. Cf. note to l. 1598.

1783. We must read sweynte, the form preserved in MS. B, where the final e is added to the pp. sweynt, as if it were an adjective used in the definite form. The reading swynt is false, being an error for sweynte. The reading slepy is a mere gloss upon this rare word, but fairly expresses the meaning. Bell's Chaucer has swynt, which the editor supposes to be put for swinkt = swinked, pp. of swinken, to toil, as in Milton's 'swinkd hedger'; Comus, 293. He is, however, entirely wrong, for Milton's swink'd is quite a late form; in Chaucer's time the verb swinken was strong, and the pp. was swunken! Chaucer has queynt as the pp. of quenchen, Kn. Tale, A 2321; and dreynt as the pp. of drenchen, Non. Prest. Tale, B 4272. Similarly sweynt is the pp. of swenchen, to cause to toil, to fatigue, tire out, the causal verb formed from the aforesaid strong intransitive verb swinken, to toil. For examples, see swenchen in Stratmann; I may instance, 'Euwer feond eou ne scal ... swenchen,' your enemies shall not harass you, Old Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, i. 13; and 'hi swencten swiðe heom-seolfe,' they sore afflicted themselves, id. 101. Hence, 'the sweynte cat' means the over-toiled or tired-out cat; or, secondarily, a cat that will take no trouble, a slothful or sleepy cat, as the gloss says. Compare Gower, Conf. Amant. ed. Pauli, ii. 39, where the same cat is brought forward as an example of the deadly sin of Sloth:--

'For he [a knight] ne wol no travail take To ride for his ladies sake, But liveth al upon his wisshes, And--as a cat wolde ete fisshes Withoute weting of his clees-- So wolde he do, but netheles He faileth ofte of that he wolde.'

The 'adage' is referred to in Macbeth, i. 7. 45. It occurs in MS. Harl. 2321, fol. 146, printed in Reliq. Antiquæ, i. 207, in the form: 'The cat doth love the fishe, she will not wett her foote.' In Heywood's Proverbs, 1562 (p. 28, ed. Spenser Soc.): 'The cat would eate fyshe, and would not wet her feete.' So also in Camden's Remains, 1614, p. 312. Hazlitt gives a rimed version:--

'Fain would the cat fish eat, But she's loth to wet her feet.'

In Piers the Plowman's Crede, 405, is the allusion:--

'Thou woldest not weten thy fote, and woldest fich cacchen.'

In a medieval Latin verse, it appears as: 'Catus amat piscem, sed non vult tingere plantam'; see Proverbialia Dicteria ... per A. Gartnerum, 1574, 8vo. Ray quotes the French: 'Le chat aime le poisson, mais il n'aime pas à mouiller la patte.' The German form is--'Die Katze hätt' der Fische gern; aber sie will die Füsse nit nass machen'; N. and Q. 4 S. ix. 266.

1794. Noskinnes; miswritten no skynnes in MSS. F. and B.; Th. and Cx. no kyns. Nos-kinnes is short for noneskinnes, of no kind; noskinnes labour is 'work of no kind'; in mod. E. 'no kind of work.' It also occurs without the former s; as in no kyne catel, property of no kind, P. Plowm. C. xi. 250; none kynnes riche, rich men of no kind, id. B. xi. 185. Cf. also of foure kunne thinges, of things of four kinds, of four kinds of things, where one MS. has of foure skynnes thinges; P. Plowm. A. x. 2. And see note to l. 1530 above.

1796. Bele Isaude, Isaude (or Isoude, or Isolde) the fair; here a type of a high form of female beauty. See Parl. Foules, 290; and the note.

1798. 'She that grinds at a hand-mill'; a poor slave.

1810. Hir (their) refers to the 'seventh company.' 'Such amusement they found in their hoods'; a phrase meaning 'so much did they laugh at them'; see Troil. ii. 1110. Cf. the phrase 'to put an ape in a man's hood,' i.e. to make him look like an ape, or look foolish; see note to C. T., Group B, 1630.

1823. 'Then a company came running in.'

1824. Choppen, strike downwards. They began hitting people on the head, regardless of consequences. The same expression occurs in Richard the Redeless, iii. 230--'And ich man i-charchid to schoppe at his croune'; where i-charchid = i-charged, i.e. was charged, was commanded, and schoppe = choppe.

1840. Pale, a perpendicular stripe; chiefly used as an heraldic term. The object of the conspicuous stripe upon the hose was to draw men's attention to him; for the same reason, he wore a bell on his tippet, and, in fact, his dress resembled that of the professional fool. Paled or striped hose were sometimes worn for display.

'Buskins he wore of costliest cordwayne, Pinckt upon gold, and paled part per part, As then the guize was for each gentle swayne.' Spenser, F. Q. vi. 2. 6.

I.e. his buskins were adorned with golden dots or eyelets, and regularly intersected with stripes arranged perpendicularly.

1844. Isidis, Isis; Isidis being a form of the genitive case. Chaucer doubtless refers to Herostratus, the wretch who set fire to the temple of Diana at Ephesus, in order to immortalise his name. Why Diana here appears as Isis, and Ephesus as Athens, I cannot explain. Perhaps it was due to a defect of memory; we are apt to forget how very largely medieval authors had to trust to their memories for names and facts. It is almost impossible for us moderns, with our facilities for reference, to imagine what were the difficulties of learned men in the olden time. Perhaps Chaucer was thinking of Ovid's line (ex Ponto, i. 1. 51)--'Uidi ego linigerae numen uiolasse fatentem Isidis.' The story is in Solinus, Polyhistor, cap. xl. § 3.

'See, Erostratus the second Fires again Diana's fane.' Rejected Addresses; Drury's Dirge, st. 5.

1853. Thynne prints--'(Though it be naught) for shreudness'; but this is very forced. MS. B. and Caxton both omit noght, rightly.

1857. 'And, in order to get (some) of the meed of fame.'

1880. An allusion to the old proverb--'As I brew, so must I needs drink'; in Camden's Remains. Gower has it, Conf. Amant. bk. iii, ed. Pauli, ii. 334:--

'And who so wicked ale breweth, Ful ofte he mot the werse drinke.'

1908. The form bringes, for bringest, though (strictly speaking) a Northern form, is not uncommon in East Midland. It occurs frequently, for example, in Havelok the Dane. But, as there is no other clear example in Chaucer, Koch thinks the passage is corrupt, and proposes to read:--

'Which than be, lo! thise tydinges, That bringe thee hider, and thise thinges That thou wilt here'; &c.

1920. Here that means 'that very.' The description of 'the house of Dædalus' is in Ovid, Met. viii. 159; and the word labyrinthus, used with reference to it, is in Vergil, Æn. v. 588. Chaucer again refers to it in the Leg. of Good Women (Ariadne), 2010; and it is mentioned in his translation of Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 12. 118 (vol. ii. p. 89). And see Gower, Conf. Amant. ed. Pauli, ii. 304.

1926. This somewhat resembles Dante, Inf. iii. 53, which Cary translates:--

'Which whirling ran about so rapidly That it no pause obtain'd.'

1928. Oise, a river which flows into the Seine, from the north, not far below Paris. Chaucer says the sound might have been heard from there to Rome. From this vague statement, Warton would wish us to infer that the whole poem was founded on some foreign production now (and probably always) unknown. There is no need to draw any such conclusion. The English were fairly familiar with the north of France in days when a good deal of French soil belonged more or less to the king of England. The Oise, being a northern affluent of the Seine, must have been a well-known river. I think the allusion proves just nothing at all.

1933. This is an excellent and picturesque allusion, but in these days can no longer be appreciated. Compare Barbour's Bruce, xvii. 681:--

'The engynour than deliuerly Gert bend the gyne in full gret hy, And the stane smertly swappit out. It flaw out, quhedirand, with a rout.'

1940. Though the authorities read hattes (Th. hutches), I alter this word to hottes without hesitation. We do not make hats with twigs or osiers. Chaucer says that some of the twigs were white, such as men use to make cages with, or panniers (i.e. baskets), or hottes, or dossers. Now Cotgrave explains F. Panier by 'a Pannier, or Dosser; also, a Pedlers Pack; also, a fashion of trunke made of wicker'; and he explains F. Hotte by 'a Scuttle, Dosser, Basket to carry on the back; the right hotte is wide at the top, and narrow at the bottom.' Dr. Murray kindly refers me to Cursor Mundi, l. 5524:--

'Apon þer neckes sal þai bere Hott wit stan and wit morter.'

He also tells me that in Caxton's Golden Legend (1483), fol. cix. col. 2, is the sentence--'And bare on hys sholdres vij. hottis or baskettis fulle of erthe.' In a Glossary of North of England Words, printed as Gloss. B. 1, by the Eng. Dial. Society, I find: 'Hots, s. pl. a sort of panniers to carry turf or slate in'; and Halliwell gives it as a Cumberland word. Dickenson's Cumberland Glossary has: 'Muck-hots, panniers for conveying manure on horseback.' Brockett's Gloss. of Northern Words has: 'Hot, a sort of square basket, formerly used for taking manure into fields of steep ascent; the bottom opened by two wooden pins to let out the contents.' Thus the existence of the word in English is fully proved; and the fitness of it is evident.

1943. 'Al ful of chirking was that sory place'; Kn. Tale, A 2004.

1946. Again from Ovid, Met. xii. 44-47.

1970. Read--'Of estáts and éek of regióuns.' The e in estat was very light; hence mod. E. state.

1975. Mis is here an adjective, meaning 'bad' or 'wrong'; cf. 'But to correcten that is mis I mente'; Can. Yeom. Tale, G 999.

1980. 'Although the timber,' &c.

1982. 'As long as it pleases Chance, who is the mother of news, just as the sea (is mother) of wells and springs.'

1997. Paráventure; also spelt paraunter, shewing how rapidly the third syllable could be slurred over.

2000. Peter! by St Peter; see note to l. 1034.

2004. Cunne ginne, know how to begin. (Gin, a contrivance, is monosyllabic).

2009. I substitute the dissyllabic swich-e for the monosyllabic these, to preserve the melody.

2011. 'To drive away thy heaviness with.'

2017. MS. F. has frot, which has no meaning, but may be a misspelling of froit, which is another form of fruit. As Koch says, we must read The fruit, remembering that Chaucer uses fruit in the peculiar sense of 'upshot' or 'result.'

'And for it is no fruit but los of tyme'; Squi. Ta., F 74.

'The fruyt of this matere is that I telle'; Man of Lawes Ta., B 411.

In the present case, it would be used in a double sense; (1) of result, (2) of a fruit that withers and is ready to burst open. As to the spelling froit, we find froyte in the Petworth MS. in the latter of the above quotations, where other MSS. have fruyt or fruite. The swote (Cx. Th.) means 'the sweetness.'

2019. That, in this line, goes back to Sith that in l. 2007.

2021. I suppress in after yaf, because it is not wanted for the sense, and spoils the metre.

2034-40. Suggested by Dante, Inf. iii. 55-57, just as ll. 1924-6 above are by the two preceding lines in Dante; see note to l. 1926. Cary has:--

'and following came Such a long train of spirits, I should ne'er Have thought that death so many had despoil'd.'

In l. 2038, left means 'left alive.'

2044. I substitute ech for euerych (in Caxton). The two MSS. (F. and B.) have merely Rouned in others ere, which is of course defective.

2048. I here follow B. (except that it wrongly omits lo).

2059. Wondermost; superl. of wonder, which is very common as an adjective.

2076. As the reading of the MSS. is obviously wrong (the word mouth being repeated three times), whilst the reading of the printed editions (Wente every tydyng) cannot be right on account of the scansion, I put word for the first of the three mouths. This gives the right sense, and probably Chaucer actually wrote it.

2089. Again from Ovid, Met. xii. 54, 55. A sad soth-sawe, a sober truth.

2099. With the nones, on the condition; see Leg. of Good Women, 1540; and the note. So also in the Tale of Gamelyn, 206.

2101. See Kn. Tale, 273, 274 (A 1131).

2105. Beside, without; without asking his leave.

2119. Cf. Cant. Tales, D 1695--'Twenty thousand freres on a route,' where Tyrwhitt prints A twenty. But the MSS. (at least the seven best ones) all omit the A. Just as the present line wants its first syllable, and is to be scanned--'Twénty thoúsand ín a roúte'; so the line in the Cant. Tales wants its first syllable, and is to be scanned--Twénty thoúsand fréres ón a roúte. For having called attention to this fact, my name (misspelt) obtained a mention in Lowell's My Study Windows, in his (otherwise excellent) article on Chaucer. 'His (Chaucer's) ear would never have tolerated the verses of nine syllables with a strong accent on the first, attributed to him by Mr. Skeate and Mr. Morris. Such verses seem to me simply impossible in the pentameter iambic as Chaucer wrote it.' Surely this is assumption, not proof. I have only to say that the examples are rather numerous, and nine-syllable lines are not impossible to a poet with a good ear; for there are twelve consecutive lines of this character in Tennyson's Vision of Sin. It may suffice to quote one of them:--

'Pánted hánd in hánd with fáces pále.'

I will merely add here, that similar lines abound in Lydgate's 'Sege of Thebes,' and that there are 25 clear examples of such lines in the Legend of Good Women, as I shew in my Introduction to that Poem.

2123. Cf. P. Plowman; B. prol. 46-52. Bretful, brim-ful, occurs in P. Pl. C. i. 42; also in Chaucer, Prol. 687; Kn. Tale, 1306 (A 2164).

2130. Lyes; F. lies, E. lees. 'Lie, f. the lees, dregs, grounds'; Cotgrave.

2140. Sooner or later, every sheaf in the barn has to come out to be thrashed.

2152. 'And cast up their noses on high.' I adopt this reading out of deference to Dr. Koch, who insists upon its correctness. Otherwise, I should prefer the graphic reading in MS. B.--'And up the nose and yën caste.' Each man is trying to peer beyond the rest.

2154. 'And stamp, as a man would stamp on a live eel, to try to secure it.' Already in Plautus, Pseudolus, 2. 4. 56, we have the proverb anguilla est, elabitur, he is an eel, he slips away from you; said of a sly or slippery fellow. In the Rom. de la Rose, 9941, we are told that it is as hard to be sure of a woman's constancy as it is to hold a live eel by the tail. 'To have an eel by the tail' was an old English proverb; see Eel in Nares' Glossary, ed. Halliwell and Wright.

2158. The poem ends here, in the middle of a sentence. It seems as if Chaucer did not quite know how to conclude, and put off finishing the poem till that more 'convenient season' which never comes. Practically, nothing is lost.

The copy printed by Caxton broke off still earlier, viz. at l. 2094. In order to make a sort of ending to it, Caxton added twelve lines of his own, with his name--Caxton--at the side of the first of them; and subjoined a note in prose, as follows:--

And wyth the noyse of them wo I Sodeynly awoke anon tho And remembryd what I had seen And how hye and ferre I had been In my ghoost / and had grete wonder Of that [that?] the god of thonder Had lete me knowen / and began to wryte Lyke as ye haue herd me endyte Wherfor to studye and rede alway I purpose to doo day by day Thus in dremyng and in game Endeth thys lytyl book of Fame.

I fynde nomore of this werke to-fore sayd. For as fer as I can vnderstonde / This noble man Gefferey Chaucer fynysshed at the sayd conclusion of the metyng of lesyng and sothsawe / where as yet they ben chekked and may nat departe / whyche werke as me semeth is craftyly made'; &c. (The rest is in praise of Chaucer). But, although Caxton's copy ended at l. 2094, lines 2095-2158 appear in the two MSS., and are obviously genuine. Thynne also printed them, and must have found them in the MS. which he followed. After l. 2158, Thynne subjoins Caxton's ending, with an alteration in the first three lines, as unsuitable to follow l. 2158. Hence Thynne prints them as follows:--

And therwithal I abrayde Out of my slepe halfe a frayde Remembrig wel what I had sene.

We thus see that it was never pretended that the lines following l. 2158 were Chaucer's. They are admittedly Caxton's and Thynne's. Even if we had not been told this, we could easily have detected it by the sudden inferiority in the style. Caxton's second line will not scan at all comfortably; neither will the third, nor the fourth. (The seventh can be improved by altering began to gan). And Thynne's lines are but little better.

NOTES TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN.

NOTES TO THE PROLOGUE.

*** N.B. The references are to the B-text, except where special mention of the A-text is made. The latter is denoted by the letter 'A', preceded by a short line.

2. Compare Chaucer's Troilus, book ii. ll. 894-6.

5. Nis noon = ne is noon, is not none, i.e. is no one. This use of the double negative, as in modern provincial English, is extremely common, and need not be again remarked upon. Cf. ll. 7, 15, &c.

9. 'For there may no man prove it by actual trial.'

10. Leve, believe. Notice the numerous senses of leve, viz. (1) believe; (2) leave, v.; (3) grant; (4) dear; (5) leave, sb.; (6) leaf (dat. case).

11. Wel more thing, many more things. The word thing was originally neuter, and long remained unchanged in the plural. In l. 23, we have thinges. The M.E. more usually means 'greater'; it is seldom used (as here) in the modern sense.

12. Men shal nat, people ought not to. The use of men in the general sense of 'people' is extremely common in Chaucer, and the student should notice that it usually takes a singular verb, when thus used. With ll. 12, 13 cf. Hamlet, i. 5. 166.

13. But-if, unless, except. Great attention should be paid to the exact sense of these apparently less important words. Frequently the whole sense of a sentence is missed, even by editors, owing to inattention to their use.

14. 'For, God knoweth, a thing is none the less true, although no one can see it.'

16. In the margins of MSS. C. and F. is written the Latin proverb here referred to, viz. 'Bernardus monachus non uidit omnia'; i.e. Bernard the monk (even) did not see everything. The reference is to the great learning and experience of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (born A.D. 1091, died Aug. 20, 1153). This we know from an entry in J. J. Hofmann's Lexicon Universale (Basileæ, 1677), s.v. Bernardus, where we find: 'Nullos habuit præceptores præter quercus et fagos. Hinc proverb: Neque enim Bernardus vidit omnia.' See an account of St. Bernard in Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, or in Chambers' Book of Days, under the date of Aug. 20.

18. Minde, remembrance; see l. 26. Cf. 'to bear in mind.'

25. Cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, ed. Méon, 9669-72:--

'Car par l'escript que nous avons, Les fais des anciens savons; Si les en devons mercier, Et loer et regracier.'

26. Rémembráunce; accented on the first and last syllables. The melody of innumerable lines in Chaucer is only apparent to those who perceive the difference between the present and the old accentuation, especially in the case of French words. Besides, such accent is frequently variable; Chaucer has hónour, rénoun, &c. at one time, and honóur, renóun, &c. at another. Thus in l. 27 we have honóuren; and in l. 31 credénce.

27. Wel oghte us, it is very necessary for us, it well behoves us. Us is here the dative case, and oghte is the impersonal verb; in accordance with Chaucer's usual method. But, in this case, there is a grammatical difficulty; for the past tense oghte is here used with the sense of the present; the right form would be expressed, in modern English, by oweth, and in M.E. by ah (also awe, oe). Such use of the right form of the present tense is exceedingly rare; and (possibly owing to a sense of uncertainty about its true form) the form of the past tense was used both for past and present, whether personal or impersonal, precisely as we now use must in place both of M.E. mot (present) and moste (past). Mätzner only gives three examples of the present tense of this verb, when used impersonally; viz. 'Hym awe to rise,' it behoves him to rise, Metrical Homilies, p. 77; 'Vus oe,' it behoves us, Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, i. 552; 'Him owith to mynystre,' Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ii. 48.

The only right way of thoroughly understanding Chaucer's grammar is by comparing one passage with another, observing how particular expressions occur. This is best done by the proper process of reading the text; but even the usual glossarial indexes will often furnish ready examples. Thus the glossary to the Prioresses Tale gives the following examples:--

'And ther she was honoured as hir oughte'; E 1120.

--'wel more us oughte Receyven al in gree that god us sent'; E 1150.

The glossary to the Man of Law's Tale gives:--

'Alla goth to his in, and, as him oughte,' &c.; B 1097.

'But that they weren as hem oughte be'; G 1340.

'Wel oughten we to doon al our entente'; G 6.

'Wel oughte us werche, and ydelnes withstonde'; G 14.

As to the spelling of the word, it may be remarked that oghte is the more correct form, because [=o] answers to A.S. [=a], and gh to A.S. h in the A.S. form [=a]hte. But a confusion between the symbols ogh, ugh, and ough soon arose, and all three were merged in the form ough; hence neither ogh nor ugh occurs in modern English. See Skeat, Eng. Etymology, § 333, p. 361.

The full explanation of this and similar phrases would extend these notes to an inordinate length. Only brief hints can here be given.

28. Ther, where. The sense 'where' is commoner than the sense 'there.'

29. Can but lyte, know but little. Cf. Prior. Tale, B 1726, 1898.

30. For to rede, to read. The use of for to with the gerundial infinitive is found in Layamon and the Ormulum, and may have been suggested by the like use of the French pour, O. Fr. por (and even por a). See Mätzner, Engl. Grammatik, ii. 2. 54. Compare Parl. Foules, 16, 695; Ho. Fame, 657.

36. This connection of 'the month of May' with song and poetry is common in Mid. Eng. poetry, from the natural association of spring with a time of joy and hope. We even find something of the kind in A.S. poetry. See The Phoenix, l. 250; Menologium, l. 75.

The earliest song in Middle English relates to the cuckoo; and, before Chaucer, we already find, in the Romance of Alexander, l. 2049, such lines as--

'In tyme of May hot is in boure; Divers, in medewe, spryngith floure; The ladies, knyghtis honourith; Treowe love in heorte durith'; &c.

See also the poem on Alisoun, in Morris and Skeat, Spec. of Eng., part ii. p. 43. Again, we have a like mention of the May-season and of the singing of birds in the introduction to the Roman de la Rose; see vol. i. p. 96.

Nevertheless, the whole of the present passage is highly characteristic of the author, and extremely interesting. Cf. ll. 108, 176.

40. Condicioun, temperament, character, disposition. Prof. Corson here refers us to Shakespeare, Merch. Ven. i. 2. 143; Cor. v. 4. 10; Oth. iv. 1. 204; Jul. Cæs. ii. 1. 254, &c.

41. On the scansion, see note to l. 67.

43. Daysyes, daisies; here dissyllabic. But in l. 182 we have the full form day-es-y-e, of four syllables, answering to the A.S. dæges éage (or ége), lit. day's eye, or eye of day, as Chaucer himself says in l. 184. And it is worth adding that his etymology is perfectly correct; for, in the few instances in which etymologies are suggested in Middle English, they are usually ludicrously wrong. In l. 184, the word is only trisyllabic (day-es-y'), the last syllable suffering elision. The A.S. dægesége occurs in a list of plants in A.S. Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne, iii. 292, l. 8; and we also find in Wright's A.S. Vocabularies, ed. Wülker, col. 135, l. 22, and col. 322, l. 11, the following entries:--'Consolda, dægesege,' and 'Consolda, dægeseage.'

The primary meaning of dæges éage is doubtless the sun; the daisy is named from its supposed likeness to the sun, the white petals being the rays, and the yellow centre the sun's sphere.

Compare Lydgate's Troy-book, ed. 1555, fol. K 6, back:--

'And next, Appollo, so clere, shene, and bright, The dayes eye, and voyder of the nyght.'

46. 'That, when in my bed, no day dawns upon me on which I am not (at once) up, and (am soon) walking in the meadow.' Nam = ne am, am not.

49. By the morwe, with the (dawn of the) morning.

50. Sight-e is dissyllabic, as the scansion shews. In l. 15, wight is monosyllabic. It is often difficult to ascertain Chaucer's usage of such forms, and we have to observe, where we can, any instances that are helpful. The Rime-Indexes to the Canterbury Tales and to the Minor Poems are often of great service. We learn from them that wight rimes with the monosyllables bright, knight, might, night, right, &c., whereas sighte rimes with the infin. moods light-e, fight-e, &c., as well as with monosyllables, and is therefore used somewhat capriciously. Another helpful list is that given in Ellis's Early Eng. Pronunciation, ch. iv. § 5, founded upon Prof. Child's articles on Chaucer and Gower. This at once refers us to C. T. 2118 (It were a lusty sight-e for to see); 2335 (But sodeinly she saugh a sight-e queynte); &c.

We should also consider the etymology. Now wight = A.S. wiht, is monosyllabic, and gives no difficulty. On the other hand, the A.S. for 'sight' is gesiht or gesihþ; but it is a fem. sb., and makes all its oblique cases with a final -e, viz. gesiht-e or gesihþ-e. In such instances, the nominative case often lost its distinctive form, and took the form of the other cases, so that already in the Ormulum (l. 12670) we find the nom. case sihhþ-e, dissyllabic. Such usages have received careful attention in the present edition, and in almost every case the addition of a final e in an unexpected place can be amply justified by instances of Chaucer's usage in other passages. If the student will endeavour to verify some of the examples here given, he will soon come to a clearer knowledge of the matter.

52. Hit, it, i.e. the daisy. But in l. 53 it is referred to as she. We shall see why this is hereafter. As a mere flower, it is neuter; but as being the type of Alcestis, it is feminine. Cf. ll. 62, 63.

53. We have come to the first instance in which Chaucer transposed the order of his material in the course of revision. Line 53 of the B-text corresponds to A. 55, whilst B. 61 corresponds to A. 51. All such instances are clearly shewn by printing the transposed passages twice over, once in their right place, and again in their changed place in a smaller type. By this arrangement all such transpositions can be understood at a glance.

The blank space which here appears in the A-text corresponds to ll. 50-52 in B, which are marked with an asterisk as being peculiar to the latter text. In order to save space, a small blank space (of one or two lines only) often corresponds to an insertion in the other text of some length.

56. 'And I love it, and ever (do so) equally anew,' i.e. unalterably.

57. The word herte is so common that it is worth while to remember that it is usually dissyllabic; the A.S. form being heorte.

58. Al, although (very common). Of this, in this matter.

61. Weste, is here a verb; 'to turn to the west.' See l. 197.

65. Probably to be scanned thus: Óf | the sónn' | for thér | hit wól | unclós-e. See note to l. 67, and cf. l. 111.

66. Ne had, pronounced as nad; and often so written.

67. The first syllable of a line is often wanting in Chaucer; so that the first foot consists of a single emphatic syllable. Such lines are now considered faulty, though examples may be found in Tennyson's 'Vision of Sin,' which cannot be called unmelodious; but they were once common, especially in Lydgate. Some examples from the present poem are the following:--

That | of alle the floures in the mede; 41.

Suf | fisant this flour to preyse aright; 67.

Of | this flour, whan that hit shulde unclose; 111.

Made | hir lyk a daysie for to sene; 224.

So also ll. 245, 303, 722, 783, 797, 859, 863, 901, 911, 1024, 1030, 1076, 1187, 1275, 1324, 1342, 1498, 1551, 1828, 1996, 2471, 2575.

68. Conning, knowledge. Many words now used with a changed signification are well explained in Trench's Select Glossary, which should be consulted for them. Thus, in the article upon cunning, Trench quotes the following from the examination of Wm. Thorpe, as preserved in Foxe's Book of Martyrs:--'I believe that all these three Persons [in the Godhead] are even in power and in cunning and in might'.

69. Make, compose poetry; of sentement, concerning your feelings. So in l. 74, making is 'poetry.' See Trench, s.v. make; where it is shewn that the use of the word arose quite independently of the Gk. use of [Greek: poiein] and [Greek: poiêtês]. 'One of the earliest instances of the use of makyere in the sense of "author" occurs in the Kentish Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 269; written A.D. 1340. The A.S. scóp and O.H.G. scóf mean "a shaper." The G. Dichter means an "arranger"; the Fr. trouvère, Provençal troubadour, and Ital. trovatore means a "finder."'--Skeat, note to P. Plowman, B. xii. 16 (where makynges means 'poems').

72. Cf. l. 193. There appears to be here some reference to a poem of the kind called in F. tenson (O.F. tençon) or in O. Provençal tenso, i.e. 'dispute,' in which the relative merits of two subjects are discussed. An early example in English is the poem called The Owl and the Nightingale, in which these birds contend for the superiority. In the present case, the suggestion is to discuss the value of the Leaf, representing no doubt constancy or any enduring virtue, as compared with that of the Flower, the representative of perishable beauty and the freshness of first love. Chaucer probably refers to some such poem in French, but I cannot point out the exact source.

On the other hand, the present passage doubtless suggested the poem called 'The Flower and the Leaf,' a pretty but somewhat tedious poem of the fifteenth century, in which Chaucer's style is imitated with no remarkable exactness or success. This poem was formerly rashly attributed to Chaucer himself without any evidence, though it was printed for the first time as late as 1598. See it discussed in vol. i. p. 44. Gower also refers to the present passage; C. A. iii. 358.

In scanning this line, remember to pronounce Whether as Whe'r, a monosyllable. This is common also in Shakespeare, as in his 59th Sonnet: 'Whe'r we are mended, or whe'r better they.'

74. Making, poetry; ropen, reaped. 'For I well know, that ye (poets) have long ere this reaped the field of poetry, and carried away the corn from it; and I come after you as a gleaner.' See note to l. 69. Compare Parl. Foules, 22-25.

The A.S. rípan, to reap, was a strong verb; pt. t. ráp, pp. ripen. The M.E. forms are various and corrupt, and not very common. In P. Plowman, B. xiii. 374, the pt. t. is rope, pl. ropen. The proper form of the pp. is r[)i]pen; the form ropen is due to that confusion between the past tense and past participle which is so extremely common in English. See Morris, Hist. Outlines of Eng. Accidence, p. 160.

80. Evel apayd, ill pleased, displeased; a common phrase. See Cler. Tale, E 1052; Can. Yem. Tale, G 921, 1049. Apayd, pleased, occurs in the Kn. Tale, 1010 (A 1868).

85. Wynt, windeth, turns (me) about, directs (me). These contracted forms of the third person singular of the present indicative are almost universal in Anglo-Saxon, and very common in M.E. Chaucer has fynt = findeth, rit = rideth, hit = hideth, et = eateth, l. 1389, &c. A much earlier example of wint for windeth is in the Ancren Riwle, p. 296.

86. In-with, within. This curious form is not very common in Chaucer. Still it occurs in l. 228 below; in the Prior. Tale, B 1794; Cler. Tale, E 870; March. Tale, E 1944; Troilus, ii. 508, iii. 1499, &c. See Mätzner.

88. Nothing I, I am not at all (the master of it).

90. This is a fine simile. His lady sovereign can evoke from him any tone at will. And maketh = and (the hand) makes. Bell puts That for And, without authority.

93. Yow list, it pleases you. List = listeth; cf. note to l. 85.

97. 'But why said I that we should give credence?' See ll. 10, 20.

In the A-text (l. 81) But wherfor is used differently, and means--'But the reason why,' &c.

100. Seen at eye, see evidently. So in the Can. Yem. Tale, G 1059. Cf. fair at yë, fair to the sight, id. G 964; Cler. Tale, E 1168. The promise made in l. 101 was not fulfilled.

103. Besy gost, active spirit. Thrusteth, thirsteth.

105. Gledy, glowing; an adj. formed from gleed, a glowing coal. I know of no other example of this word. The compound adj. gled-read, glede-red, i.e. red as a glowing coal, occurs in O. Eng. Homilies, ed. Morris, i. 249.

108. The first of May was a favourite time for joyful observances. See note to Kn. Tale, A 1500.

109. Dredful, timid, timorous; as in Kn. Tale, A 1479.

112. Agayn, against, towards, turned towards; as in l. 48.

113. The beste, i.e. the Bull, the sign Taurus. Agenores doghter is Europa, daughter of Agenor of Phoenicia, who, according to the fable, was carried off by Jupiter in the form of a bull. Hence Ovid uses the expression 'Agenoreus bos,' Fast. vi. 712; and calls Europa 'Agenore nata,' Met. ii. 858. For the story, see the latter reference.

Chaucer here tells us that the Sun, on the 1st of May, was 'in the breast' of Taurus, i.e. in the middle of it. It was, in fact, far advanced in the sign, near the 20th degree. See Fig. 1 in this volume, which shews the back of the Astrolabe.

118. Cf. Book of the Duchesse, 399.

125. Cf. Book of the Duchesse, ll. 410-2, which is a parallel passage. Both passages are borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, 55-58; see vol. i. p. 95.

126. Mat, dead; a term borrowed from the game of chess. See Anelida, 176; Book Duch., 660; and Kn. Tale, A 955.

128. Atempre, temperate, mild. See Book of the Duch., 341, and the note. This again is from the Rom. de la Rose, 125. Releved, raised up again, revived. Cotgrave gives: 'Relevé, raised, lift, or set up again; relieved, revived, fully restored.'

130. 'In the classical and middle ages small birds were a common article of food, as they are on the continent at the present time; and the season for catching them with a panter, or bag-net, was winter, when the scarcity of food made them tame. The poet here represents their songs in the spring, as the expression of their exultation at having baffled the stratagems, quaintly called sophistries, by which the fowler had endeavoured to lure them to their destruction.'--BELL.

The word panter is curiously preserved in the mod. E. painter, a rope for mooring a boat. I quote the following from my Etym. Dict.: '"Painter, a rope employed to fasten a boat"; Hawkesworth's Voyages, 1773, vol. i. p. xxix. Corrupted (by assimilation to the ordinary sb. painter) from M.E. panter, a noose, esp. for catching birds. See Chaucer, Leg. of Good Women, 131; Prompt. Parv., p. 381; spelt paunter, Polit. Songs, ed. Wright, p. 344.--O.F. pantiere, a kind of snare for birds, Roquefort; panthiere, "a great swoop-net"; Cotgrave. Cf. Ital. pantiera, "a kind of tramell or fowling net"; Florio; panthera, "a net or haie to catch conies with, also a kind of fowling-net"; id.--Lat. panther, a hunting-net for catching wild beasts. Cf. panthera, an entire capture.--Gk. [Greek: panthêros], catching all; cf. [Greek: panthêra], the whole booty (a very late word).--Gk. [Greek: pan], neut. of [Greek: pas], every; and [Greek: thêr], a wild beast.

'The Irish painteir, Gael. painntear, a gin, snare, are forms of the same word [but were borrowed from English or French]. It is remarkable that, in America, a panther is also called a painter. See Cooper, The Pioneers, cap. xxviii.'

132. Upon, against, in scorn of; cf. in his despyt, l. 134. A-whaped, scared.

--A. 127. The A-text is hereabouts very imperfect, and some lines are too short. I supply words within square brackets, in order to fill out the lines, and to make sense.

145. See Parl. of Foules, 309, 683, and the note to the former passage in vol. i. p. 516. Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's day (Feb. 14).

146. Chees, chose: the past tense; A.S. céas.

154. Tydif, the name of some small bird, guessed by Skinner to be the titmouse; more probably the tydy mentioned by Drayton, which is supposed to mean a wren. See Tydy in Nares. Cf. Squi. Tale, F 648; id. 610, 611.

158. 'Provided that their mates would pity them.'

160. Daunger usually means 'power to harm.' These allegorical personages were suggested by the Roman de la Rose. In the English version (l. 3018) Daunger is the name of the 'foul churl,' who is set beside the Rose, to prevent strangers from plucking it. In Chaucer's Complaint unto Pite, he introduces such personages as Crueltee (corresponding to Daunger), Pite, Bountee, Gentilesse, and Curtesye. So here, we are told that although Daunger (i.e. power to harm or to repel) seemed for a time to have the upper hand, yet at the last Pity induced relenting, and caused Mercy to surpass (or prevail over) Right (or Justice). Just as Pity is opposed to Danger or Cruelty, so we find, in the old theological allegories, that Mercy is opposed to Justice. The pleading of Mercy against Justice will be found at length in Grosteste's Chastel d'Amour, in the Cursor Mundi, p. 550, and in the Gesta Romanorum, Tale 55. See my note to P. Plowman, C. xxi. 120.

163. 'By means of innocence and well-mannered courtesy.'

164. 'But I do not call folly, or false pity, by the name of innocence'; i.e. the poet does not approve of immodesty or weakness, because in all things the chief virtue is moderation, or the 'golden mean.' Beauty should be neither too yielding nor too pitiless.

166. Etik, Lat. Ethica; alluding to the Ethics of Aristotle, in which happiness and virtue are discussed, and the nature of virtue is said to shew itself in its appearing as the medium or mean between two extremes. Similarly, Gower in his Conf. Amantis (ed. Pauli, iii. 153) refers us to Aristotle's advice to Alexander, to keep the mean between avarice and prodigality. See also Gower's remarks on ethique; id. iii. 140. Cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 387.

170. So in the Parl. of Foules, 680, the birds are described as joining in the roundel--'Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe.'

171. Here again is a reminiscence of the Roman de la Rose, ll. 8449-51:--

'Zephirus et Flora, sa fame, Qui des flors est deesse et dame, Cil dui font les floretes nestre,' &c.

i.e. Zephirus and his wife Flora, who is the goddess and lady of flowers, these two make the little flowers grow. See Book of the Duchesse, 402; and the note upon it.

184. 'The daisy, or, otherwise, the eye of day'; see note to l. 43.

186. 'I pray that she may fall fairly,' that she may light upon good fortune. All the MSS. have she; otherwise we might read her, as such is the more usual idiom, in which case it would mean--'that it may befall her fairly.' We have a similar case in the Manciple's Prologue, H 40, where six MSS. have the usual idiom 'foule mot thee falle,' whilst the Ellesmere MS. alone has 'foule mot thou falle.' For a similar variation, cf. l. 277 below with A. 180, i.e. with the corresponding line in the earlier text.

191. 'For, as regards me, neither of them is dearer or more hateful than the other; I am not yet retained on the side of either of them.' The sense with-holden is detained, kept back, hence reserved to one side, committed to a particular view.

195. Thing = werk (A. 79), i.e. poem. Of another tonne, out of quite a different cask. Cf. 'Nay, thou shalt drinken of another tonne Er that I go'; C. T., D 170. Cf. Rom. Rose (French Text), 6838.

196. Swich thing, such a thing as the strife between the Leaf and the Flower. The A-text (l. 80) helps us here, as it reads 'swich stryf.'

203. Herber, an arbour. This difficult word is fully explained in the New E. Dict., s.v. arbour. It is there shewn that the original sense of the M.E. herber or erber was 'a plot of ground covered with grass or turf; a garden-lawn or green.' In the Medulla Grammatices, ab. 1460, we find:--'Viretum, locus pascualis virens, a gres-yerd, or an herber.' Subsequently it meant a herb-garden or flower-garden; a fruit-garden or orchard; trees or shrubs trained on frame-work; and then a bower, or 'shady retreat, of which the sides and roof are formed by trees and shrubs closely planted or intertwined, or of lattice-work covered with climbing shrubs and plants, as ivy, vine, &c.' Dr. Murray remarks that 'the original characteristic of the arbour seems to have been the floor and benches of herbage [as here]; in the modern idea the leafy covering is the prominent feature.'

The present passage was imitated and amplified by the authoress of The Flower and the Leaf, beginning at l. 49:--

'a pleasaunt herber well ywrought, That benched was, and with turfes new, Freshly turved, wherof the grene gras, So small, so thicke, so short, so fresh of hew, That most like unto green woll wot I it was; The hegge also, that yede in compas And closed in all the grene herbere, With sicamour was set and eglatere'; &c.

So too, in the Assembly of Ladies, st. 7:--

'Which broght me to an herber fair and grene Made with benches ful crafty and clene.'

208. Hed, hidden. This rare form occurs again in Will. of Palerne, 688. The usual M.E. forms are hud and hid. Similarly Chaucer uses ken for 'kin' in Book Duch. 438, the usual M.E. forms being kun and kin; and we find ken also in Will. of Palerne, 722. These forms are Southern, and mostly Kentish.

213. The god of love, Cupid; cf. Parl. Foules, 212. Cf. the description in the E. version of the Rom. of the Rose, ll. 890, 1003.

In his hande, i.e. leading by the hand; see l. 241.

A quene, a queen, viz. Alcestis, as we afterwards learn. She is so clothed as to represent a daisy; hence her green dress, golden hair-ornament or caul, and white crown; see l. 218, and note to l. 227.

215. Fret here means a caul of gold wire. They were sometimes set with stones. Cf. Rom. Rose, 1108, and The Flower and the Leaf, 152:--'A riche fret of gold,' &c. See Fairholt, Costume in England.

217. The pause after smale saves the final e from elision. See examples in the Cant. Tales, B 2153, 3281, 3989; &c. We may translate the phrase and I shal nat lye by 'if I am not to lie'; see l. 357, and the note.

221. Oriental, eastern; here, of superior quality. 'The precious stones called by lapidaries oriental ruby, oriental topaz, oriental amethyst, and oriental emerald are red, yellow, violet, and green sapphires, distinguished from the other gems of the same name which have not the prefix oriental, by their greatly superior hardness, and greater specific gravity'; Engl. Cyclopædia, s.v. Adamantine Spar. Cf. P. Plowman, B. 2. 14.

223. For which, by means of which, whereby.

227. In the Rom. of the Rose the 'god of love' is said to be clothed 'not in silk, but all in flowers'; his garment was all covered with flowers, intermingled with rose-leaves; and he had a chaplet of red roses upon his head. See the E. version, l. 890. In l. 228, fret means merely 'ornament' or 'border' of embroidery, whereas in l. 215 it is used in the sense of a caul or net worn on the head. The A-text (160) has garlond, and adds that lilies were stuck about among the rose-leaves. Moreover, a 'rose-leaf' here means a petal, or it would not be described as red. Greves is properly 'groves or bushes,' but must here mean sprays or small boughs.

231. For hevinesse, to save him from the heaviness and weight of gold. The peculiar use of for in the sense of 'against,' or 'to prevent,' should be noticed. See the note to Sir Thopas, B 2052.

242. Corouned is pronounced as Coróun'd.

--A. 179. Notice this mention of Alcestis in the A-text. This is altered in the later version, so that the poet does not know who the queen is till l. 511, though she actually announces herself in l. 432. See note to l. 255 (B.) below.

249. Absolon, Absalom; remarkable for the beauty of his hair; see 2 Sam. xiv. 26. Cf. 'Absalom o ses treces soves'; Rom. de la Rose, 14074. I have little doubt that the general idea of this Ballade is taken from one quoted from MS. du Roi, à Paris (fonds de Saint-Victor, no. 275, fol. 45, recto, col. 2), by M. Michel, in his edition of Tristan, i. lxxxviii. It begins as follows:--

'Hester, Judith, Penelope, Helaine, Sarre, Tisbe, Rebeque, et Sairy, Lucresse, Yseult, Genèvre, chastelaine La très loial nommée de Vergy, Rachel, et la dame de Fayel Onc ne furent si precieulx jouel D'onneur, bonté, senz, beauté et valour Con est ma très doulce dame d'onnour.

Se d'Absalon la grant beauté humaine,' &c.

The refrain being, as before, 'Con est ma très doulce dame d'onnour.'

250. Ester, Esther; cited as an example of 'debonairte' in the Book of the Duch. 986; see also C. T., E 1371, 1744 (Merch. Tale); and the Tale of Melibeus, B 2291.

251. Ionathas, Jonathan; remarkable for his 'friendliness' towards David; 1 Sam. xix. 2.

252. Penalopee, Penelope, wife of Ulysses; see the note to Book of the Duch. 1081; and Ovid, Her. i. Marcia Catoun, formerly said to be Marcia, wife of M. Cato Uticensis [not Cato the Censor, as Bell says]. Bell notes that 'her complaisance, apparently, in consenting to be lent to Cato's friend, Hortensius, is the ground of her praise in this place.' Gilman refers us to Clough's tr. of Plutarch, iv. 394, where the story is given. This, however, is not the right solution. Prof. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, ii. 294) points out that the reference is clearly to Marcia, daughter of the same Cato, because Chaucer got the story from Hieronymus contra Iovinianum (i. 46), where we find:--'Marcia Catonis filia minor, quum quæreretur ab ea, cur post amissum maritum, denuo non nuberet, respondit, non se inuenire uirum, qui se magis vellet quam sua.' A much better example would have been her sister Porcia, the devoted wife of Marcus Brutus (Jul. Cæsar, ii. 1).

254. Isoude, the heroine of the romance of Sir Tristram; see Parl. of Foules, 288 (and the note on the line); also Ho. Fame, 1796. Eleyne, Helen, heroine of the Trojan war.

255. Note how the original refrain of this Balade, beginning 'Alceste is here,' is altered to 'My lady cometh'; in order to prevent the premature mention of Alcestis' name. See note to A. 179 above, following the note to l. 242. Disteyne, bedim; viz. by outshining them.

257. Lavyne, Lavinia, the heroine of the latter part of the Æneid; cf. Book of the Duch. 331; Ho. Fame, 458. Lucresse, Lucretia of Rome, whose 'Legend' is related at length below; l. 1680. Cf. Cant. Tales, F 1405.

258. Polixene, Polyxena, daughter of Priam, who, like Lucretia, bought love too dearly; for she was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, according to Ovid, Met. xiii. 448. But according to Guido delle Colonne, whom Chaucer probably regarded as a better authority, she was slain by Pyrrhus. Cf. Book of the Duch. 1071. Note also:--'Alas, your love, I bye hit al to dere'; Anelida, 255.

259. Cleopatre, Cleopatra; whose Legend is the first of the series below: l. 580.

261. Tisbe, Thisbe; whose Legend follows that of Cleopatra; l. 706.

263. Herro, Hero of Sestos, beloved by Leander; see Ovid, Her. xviii, xix. Spelt Erro, Pref. to Man of Law, B 69; whence we learn that the Legend of Hero was intended to be one of the set. Dido; whose Legend occurs below; l. 924. Laudomia, Laodamia, wife of Protesilaus; see Ovid, Her. xiii. Spelt Ladomea, and accented (as here) on the o; Pref. to Man of Law, B 71. And see Cant. Tales, F 1445.

264. Phyllis; whose Legend occurs at l. 2394.

265. Canace, daughter of Æolus, beloved by Macareus; see Ovid, Her. xi. See Pref. to Man of Law, B 78; whence we learn that Chaucer had no intention of including her Legend in the set, but expressly rejected it. Chere, sad countenance.

266. Ysiphile, Hypsipyle; whose Legend occurs at l. 1368.

268. Ypermistre, Hypermnestra; whose Legend occurs at l. 2562.

Adriane, Ariadne; whose Legend occurs at l. 1886.

For further remarks, see my long note to the Man of Law's Tale, B 61.

270. Bell remarks that the above beautiful Balade has been often imitated; and cites a poem by Surrey with the title 'A Praise of his Love, wherein he reproveth them that compare their ladies with his,' and beginning--'Geue place, ye louers, here before That spent your bostes and bragges in vaine.' See Tottell's Miscellany, ed. Arber, p. 20. Another such poem occurs in the same collection, at p. 163; beginning--'Geue place, you Ladies, and begon'; this, it appears, was written by John Heywood; Warton, Hist. E. Poet. (1840), iii. 56 (note). With respect to Surrey's verses, Warton (Hist. E. P. 1840, iii. 33) remarks that 'the leading compliment, which has been used by later writers, is in the spirit of Italian fiction.' But it is probable that we here see Surrey's original before us. Among the beautiful songs on this theme, we should not neglect 'You meaner beauties of the night,' by Sir Henry Wotton. Cf. ll. 274, 275 below.

271. By, with respect to. My lady is the queen Alcestis, whose name Chaucer is supposed not to know as yet. See l. 432.

277. See note to l. 186 above.

278. Nadde = ne hadde. 'For, had not the comfort of her presence existed.' We should now say, 'Had it not been for the comfort.' Cf. Spec. Eng. Literature, pt. iii. note to § xv (b). l. 96.

295. For the nones, for the once, for this special occasion. See the note to Chaucer's Prologue, l. 379. The phrase was first explained, carefully and fully, by Price, in a note to Warton's Hist. Eng. Poet. ed. 1840, ii. 74, 75.

298. 'That bears away the prize from us all in external beauty or figure.' Our alder, of us all; where our = A.S. úre, gen. pl. of the first personal pronoun, and alder is a more emphatic form of aller (A.S. ealra), gen. pl. of all. See Chaucer's Prol. 586, 710, 799, 823. Hence alderliefest, dearest of all, in 2 Hen. VI. i. 1. 28; probably borrowed from alderlevest in Chaucer's Troilus, v. 576 (in vol. ii.). Prof. Corson cites altherbeste, best of all, from Gower, C. A. ed. Pauli, i. 106; althermest, most of all, from the same, i. 147; althertrewest, id. i. 176; altherwerst, id. i. 53. In Chaucer's Minor Poems the reader will find our alder, of us all, ABC, 84; also alderbeste, Book Duch. 246; alderfaireste, id. 1050; and aldernext, Parl. Foules, 244.

300. A-compas enviroun, in a circle, all round about.

304. By and by, one after another, in order; see the New E. Dict.

307. Furlong-wey, lit. two minutes and a-half; or the time of walking a furlong, at 3 miles an hour. See Anelida, 328; Ho. Fame, 2064.

314. Hit am I, it is I; the usual M.E. idiom. See Kn. Tale, A 1736; Man of Law's Tale, B 1109, and note. Him neer, nearer to him: neer is the comparative of neh or nigh; cf. l. 316.

318. Dante has 'che noi siam vermi'; Purg. x. 124.

323. Servaunt in Chaucer frequently means 'lover'; such is necessarily the case here.

329. Chaucer here certainly seems to imply that he translated the whole of the Romance of the Rose, or at any rate that part of it which is especially directed against women. The existing English version consists of three fragments, apparently by different authors, and I see little reason for connecting more than fragment A (ll. 1-1705) with Chaucer. None of the fragments contain such passages as the God of Love would most have objected to; but we find some of them practically reproduced in the Prologue to the Wyf of Bathes Tale. We also find numerous imitations of passages from that poem scattered up and down throughout Chaucer's works; and it is remarkable that such passages usually lie outside the contents of the English fragments. Where they do not, Chaucer frequently varies from the English version of the Romance. Thus where Chaucer (Book Duch. 419) has:--

'And every tree stood by himselve Fro other wel ten foot or twelve. So grete trees, so huge of strengthe'--

the Eng. version of the Rom. of the Rose (1391) has:--

'These trees were set, that I devyse, Oon from another, in assyse, Five fadome or sixe, I trowe so, But they were hye and grete also.'

We may here note the variation between ten foot or twelve and five fadom or six; the original has cinq toises, ou de sis. Other passages in the Book of the Duchesse which resemble the existing E. version of the Rom. of the Rose are these. (1) Book Duch. 424; cf. R. R. 1396. (2) Book Duch. 291; cf. R. R. 49. (3) Book Duch. 410; cf. R. R. 59. (4) Book Duch. 283; R. R. 7. (5) Book Duch. 340; R. R. 130. (6) Book Duch. 1152; R. R. 2084.

For a fuller discussion of this question, see the Pref. to Ch. Minor Poems, in vol. i. p. 1.

--A. 260. Paramours seems to be an adverb here, meaning 'with a lover's affection.' So in the Kn. Tale, A 1155:--

'For par amour I loved hir first er thow.'

And again, in A 2112:--

'Ye knowen wel, that every lusty knight That loveth paramours, and hath his might.'

So also in Troilus, v. 158, 332, and in Barbour's Bruce, xiii. 485--'he lufit his [Ross's] sistir paramouris.' Tyrwhitt quotes from Froissart, bk. i. c. 196--'Il aima adonc par amours, et depuis espousa, Madame Ysabelle de Juiliers.'

The following phrase 'too hard and hot' merely intensifies the sense of paramours.

332. Criseyde. The allusion is to Chaucer's long poem entitled Troilus and Criseyde (or Creseyde). The A-text is more outspoken here, as it alludes to the inconstancy of the heroine in direct terms.

--A. 280. Valerie, Valerius; see note to A. 281 below.

Titus; Titus Livius; see l. 1683, and the note. Claudian; Claudius Claudianus, who wrote, amongst other things, a poem De Raptu Proserpinae, to which Chaucer refers; see Ho. Fame, 449, 1509. He flourished about A.D. 400.

--A. 281. Ierome; Hieronymus, usually known as St. Jerome, a celebrated father of the Latin Church; died Sept. 30, 420. In the Wyf of Bathes Prologue (C. T. 6251, Group D, l. 669) we find:--

'He hadde a book, that gladly, night and day, For his desport he wolde rede alway; He cleped it Valerie and Theofraste, At whiche book he lough alwey ful faste. And eek ther was somtyme a clerk at Rome, A cardinal, that highte Seint Ierome, That made a book agayn Iovinian'; &c.

In Tyrwhitt's Introductory discourse, he says of this Prologue--'The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own invention, though one may plainly see he had been reading the popular invectives against marriage and women in general; such as, the Roman de la Rose; Valerius ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore; and particularly Hieronymus contra Iovinianum.' He adds, in a note--'The holy Father, by way of recommending celibacy, has exerted all his learning and eloquence (and he certainly was not deficient in either) to collect together and aggravate whatever he could find to the prejudice of the female sex. Among other things he has inserted his own translation (probably) of a long extract from what he calls "Liber aureolus Theophrasti de nuptiis."

'Next to him in order of time was the treatise entitled Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore (MS. Reg. 12 D. iii.). It has been printed, for the similarity of its contents, I suppose, among the works of St. Jerome, though it is evidently of a much later date.... To these two books Jean de Meun has been obliged for some of the severest strokes in his [part of the] Roman de la Rose; and Chaucer has transfused the quintessence of all the three works, upon the subject of Matrimony, into his Wife of Bathes Prologue and Merchant's Tale.'

Tyrwhitt further observes that the Epistola Valerii was written, according to Tanner, by Walter Map; of this there appears to be no doubt. Lounsbury (Studies, ii. 276) takes Valerie to mean Valerius Maximus, which is here improbable.

It is, at first, not very clear why the God of Love is here represented as appealing to books against women; but we are bidden to observe that, even there, good women are incidentally mentioned; see A. 284. Even Valerius praises Lucretia and Penelope.

--A. 288. Cf. the long passage in the Franklein's Tale about chaste women; C. T. 11676-11766 (F 1364-1456). It is nearly all taken from Jerome.

--A. 305. Epistels rather than epistelle in the singular. The reference is to Ovid's Heroides, which contains twenty-one love-letters. Cf. Chaucer's Introd. to Man of Law, B 55, where he alludes to Ovid's mention of lovers 'in his Epistelles.'

--A. 307. Vincent is Vincent of Beauvais, who compiled an encyclopædia of universal knowledge in the 13th century. One portion of this great work, treating of universal history, is called Speculum Historiale, which Chaucer has here turned into Storial Mirour. See Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, ii. 375.

338. As Chaucer is pleased to call his poem by the name of 'seintes legende of Cupyde' in the Introd. to Man of Law, B 61, he here turns Venus into a saint, to keep up the analogy between his present undertaking and the Legenda Sanctorum. But John de Meun had previously said much the same thing. In Le Rom. de la Rose, 10863, Cupid is made to swear 'par sainte Venus ma mere.' See the Eng. version, l. 5953. (Perhaps read seynte in Text B.)

343. In accordance with the proverb--'Audi alteram partem.' See A. 325. Cf. Seneca, Medea, 195.

348. 'And even if you were not an omniscient god.'

352. From the Rom. of the Rose; the E. version has (ll. 1050, 1):--

'Hir court hath many a losengere, And many a traytour envious.'

Again repeated in Cant. Tales, B 4515-8.

353. Totelere (C. totulour), tattling; properly a sb., meaning 'tattler,' but here used in apposition, and, practically, as an adjective. Tyrwhitt explains it by 'whisperer.' Halliwell quotes 'Be no totiler' from MS. Bibl. Reg. 17 B. xvii. fol. 141. It clearly means a gossiping tattler, or tale-bearer.

The word is scarce, but we find a helpful passage in P. Plowman, B. xx. 297:--

'Of alle taletellers and tyterers in ydel.'

Here tyterers means gossipers, or retailers of tittle-tattle; and various readings give the forms titeleris (as printed by Wright) and tutelers (as printed by Crowley). The last form tuteler is clearly identical with Chaucer's totelere, spelt tutelere in MS. Arch. Selden B. 24.

357. 'These are the causes why, if I am not to lie'; &c. See note to l. 217.

358. Lavender, laundress, washerwoman; (Bell's interpretation of 'gutter' is utter nonsense). See Laundress in my Etym. Dict., where I refer to the present passage. Laundress is formed by adding -ess to launder or laundre, the contracted form of lavender as here used. In Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, xvi. 273, 292, the word for 'washerwoman' is spelt lauender, laynder, and landar. Palsgrave's Eng. and Fr. Dict. gives--'Laundre, that wassheth clothes; lauendiere'; and Cotgrave explains the Fr. lauandiere by the Eng. launderesse. Chaucer's presentation to us of Envy as the person who washes all the dirty linen in the court, is particularly happy. As a matter of fact, he is here quoting Dante, but he has substituted lavender (perhaps in an ill sense, though I do not feel sure of this) for the meretrice of the original. The passage referred to is in the Inferno, xiii. 64:--

'La meretrice, che mai dall' ospizio Di Cesare non torse gli occhi putti, Morte comune, e delle corti vizio, Infiammò contre me gli animi tutti.'

Cary's translation has:--

'The harlot, who ne'er turned her gloating eyes From Cæsar's household, common vice and pest Of courts, 'gainst me inflamed the minds of all.'

Gower (C. A. ed. Pauli, i. 263) says:--

'Senec witnesseth openly How that envie properly Is of the court the comun wenche.'

Note that parteth in l. 359 means 'departeth.'

361. 'Whoever goes away, at any rate she will not be wanting.' Men come and go, but Envy remains. This is the right sense; but Bell, whom Prof. Corson follows, gives it quite a false twist. He says, 'Whosoever goes, i.e. falls, she will not be in want'; a desperate and unmeaning solution, due to not appreciating the force of the verb to want, which here simply means 'to be absent,' and can be applied to persons as well as to things. 'There wanteth but a mean to fill your song'; Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2. 295; 'though bride and bridegroom wants,' i.e. are absent, Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 248: 'There wanteth now our brother of Gloucester here'; Rich. III. ii. 1. 43.

364. 'But only because he is accustomed to write poems.'

366. 'Or it was enjoined him by some patron to compose those two poems (the Romaunce of the Rose and Troilus; see A. 344); and he did not dare to refuse.'

371. As thogh that, as he would have done if.

372. And had, i.e. and had composed it all himself.

374. 'The allusion is to the several successful adventurers, like the Visconti, who in the 13th and 14th centuries succeeded in seizing upon the governments of Milan, and other free cities of Lombardy'; Bell. See the article Visconti in the Eng. Cyclopædia; we are there referred to Verri, Storia di Milano, and to Muratori, Annali d' Italia. Cf. Dante, Inf. xxviii. 74, 81; and see Chaucer's reference to 'Barnabo Viscounte' in the Monkes Tale, B 3589.

375. Reward at, regard to. Reward and regard are etymologically identical. Observe the accent on the former syllable. Cf. l. 399.

378. Fermour, a farmer of taxes; who is naturally exacting and oppressive.

380. Before is supply hit, which, as in l. 379, refers to a suppliant culprit. His own vassals are a lord's treasures, to be cherished, not oppressed.

381. Bech refers us to Seneca, De Clementia, lib. i. c. 3, § 3; c. 5, § 4. Or perhaps Aristotle is meant, whose supposed advice to Alexander is fully given in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. vii. See particularly the passage in Pauli's edition, iii. 176:--

'What is a king in his legeaunce, Wher that ther is no law in londe?'

There is a similar long and tedious passage in Lancelot of the Laik, ed. Skeat, ll. 1463-1998. Gower calls Aristotle 'the philosophre'; C. A. iii. 86. We may also compare Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, pp. 102-3, translated from Ægidius, De Reg. Princ., lib. i. pars 1, cap. xiv; where the reference to Aristotle is:--'Propter quod V. Ethicorum scribitur, quod principatus uirum ostendit.'

384. Al, although. 'Although he will preserve their rank for his lords.' Note that his lordes is in the dative case. It was probably from not observing this that Thynne's edition and the Pepys MS. have needlessly inserted the word in before hir. Cf. A. 370.

387. Half-goddes, demi-gods. Cf. 'the demi-god Authority'; Meas. for Meas. i. 2. 124.

391. So, in his Epitaph on Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson says:--'The Libyan lion hunts no butterflies'; which he took from Martial, Epig. xii. 61. 6. And see Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 16.

397. Areste. Bell seems to suggest the sense of 'restraint,' and Prof. Corson, following him, suggests 'self-command'; but such a sense does not exactly appear in Murray's Dictionary. Nevertheless, 'self-restraint' suits not only this passage, but also the passage cited from the Harleian MS. in the foot-note to the Somnour's Tale, D 2048, in vol. iv. p. 381.

399. Here, as in l. 375, reward means 'regard,' and is accented on the e.

400. Maystrie, masterly act; no maystrie, an easy matter.

405. This is not altogether a metaphorical expression. We remember something very like it at the siege of Calais in 1347, when, according to Froissart, Edward III. sent for the six inhabitants of Calais, who were to present themselves 'with bare heads and feet, with ropes round their necks'; see Froissart, tr. by Johnes, bk. i. c. 145.

415. In the earlier text (A 403), the word He stands alone in the first foot, which is less pleasing.

417. See Introd. to the Minor Poems (in vol. i.) for a discussion of some of the poems here mentioned. He here mentions, first of all, three of his lesser poems, in the order of their length; viz. the Hous of Fame, the Deeth of Blaunche, and the Parlement of Foules.

420. The 'Palamoun and Arcyte' here referred to was no doubt a translation of Boccaccio's Teseide, or of selections from it, in seven-line stanzas. Though not preserved to us in its entirety, several fragments of it remain. These are to be found (1) in sixteen stanzas of the Parl. of Foules (ll. 183-294), translated from the Teseide, bk. vii. st. 51-66; (2) in part of the first ten stanzas of Anelida, from the same, bk. i. st. 1-3, and bk. ii. st. 10-12; (3) in three stanzas near the end of Troilus (viz. st. 7, 8, and 9 from the end), from the same, xi. 1-3; and (4) in a re-written form, in what is now known as the Knightes Tale. See Notes to Anelida, in vol. i. pp. 529, 530.

421. 'Though the story is little known.' Tyrwhitt remarks that these words 'seem to imply that it [Chaucer's original version of Palamon and Arcite] had not made itself very popular.' Unfortunately, Tyrwhitt, who so very seldom goes astray, has here misled nearly all who have consulted him. Chaucer is not referring to his own version of the story, nor even to Boccaccio's version, but to the old story itself; and he is merely repeating Boccaccio's own remark, when (in the Teseide, i. 2) he speaks of it as

'--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.'

And, in truth, the story must have been known but to very few, till Boccaccio rescued it from oblivion. This is all that is meant; and there is no difficulty. Note further that Chaucer refers to the very same passage in another poem; see note to Anelida, l. 8.

423. A Balade is, properly, a poem in three stanzas, in which each stanza ends with the same line, called the refrain. There is also usually a fourth stanza, called Lenvoy, or the Envoy, which is sometimes shorter than the other three. Most of Chaucer's Balades have probably perished, as only a few are now known. These are: Fortune, consisting of 3 Balades, each in 8-line stanzas, followed by a single Envoy; Truth, a Balade with Envoy, in 7-line stanzas; Gentilesse, without Envoy; Lak of Stedfastnesse, with Envoy; (probably) A Balade against women unconstaunt, without Envoy; The Complaint of Venus, consisting of 3 Balades, with a general Envoy; The Compleint to his Purse, with Envoy of five lines only; To Rosemounde, without Envoy; and the Balade included in the present poem, at ll. 249-269 above.

A Roundel is a poem of from nine to fourteen lines, in which only eight lines are different from each other, the rest being repetitions of lines that have already occurred. See this fully explained in the note to l. 675 of the Parl. of Foules. The one certain example is the Roundel included in the Parl. of Foules, beginning at l. 680. There is also a beautiful example of a Triple Roundel, which I have included in the Minor Poems, with the title of Merciless Beauty. No doubt Chaucer wrote many more, but they are lost.

A Virelay is a poem in an unusual metre, of which examples are very rare. Only one entire poem of this character has been conjecturally assigned to Chaucer, but it is written in later English, and cannot possibly be his. It is not a true Virelay (in the French sense), and first appeared in the edition of 1561; see vol. i. p. 33. In this poem, lines 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 all rime together; and l. 4 rimes with l. 8. Then comes the 'veer' or 'turn,' which requires that, in the next stanza, lines 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 shall rime with lines 4 and 8, as, in fact, they do; but lines 12 and 16 introduce a new rime, as they should not do. We find, however, two fair examples of the Virelay in the poem of Anelida, viz. in lines 256-271 and 317-332. In the former of these, the rime in -ee (-e) appears in lines 256-8 and 260-2, and the rime in -yte ends lines 259 and 263; whereas, conversely, the rime in -yte ends lines 264-6 and 268-270, whilst lines 267 and 271 repeat the rime in -ee. Similarly, ll. 317-332 exhibit veering rimes in -eye and -ure.

In Hoccleve's Poems, ed. Furnivall (Early Eng. Text Soc., Extra Series, 1892), there are several clever and intricate examples of the Virelay. Thus, in Balade IV, at p. 39, there are five stanzas, but only three rimes, viz. in -al, -ee, and -ay. The formula of rimes, for the first and third stanzas, is a b a b b c b c; for the second and fourth stanzas, c b c b b a b a; and for the fifth stanza, a c a c c b c b. See also the same, pp. 41, 47, 49, 58, 59, 61, 62. Beyond all doubt, Hoccleve copied the forms of Chaucer's lost virelays.

424. Holynesse, holy employment, religious composition. This is, clearly, an intentional substitution for the besinesse, i.e. 'laborious employment,' in the A-text, l. 412.

425. Chaucer made an excellent prose translation of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophiæ, a Latin treatise much admired in the middle ages, and still worthy of admiration. For further remarks, see vol. iii.

--A. 414. This is the only notice we possess of a work by Chaucer which is no longer extant. We gather from it that he made a translation of the Latin prose treatise by Pope Innocent III., entitled De Miseria Conditionis Humanæ, a gloomy enumeration of human woes without a single alleviating touch of hope, fiercely and unrelentingly set forth. It is probable that it was written in 7-line stanzas; for portions of it appear to be preserved in the Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale, B 99-126, and in other stanzas of the same (B 421-7, 771-7, 925-931, 1135-8).

426. The Lyf of Seynt Cecyle is happily preserved. It was one of Chaucer's early productions; but he himself rescued it from possible disappearance by introducing it into the Canterbury Tales, with the title of the Second Nonnes Tale.

428. This is another of the lost works. We gather that he made a translation from a piece attributed to Origen, one of the most eminent of the early Christian writers, who was born at Alexandria in 186. Tyrwhitt says the piece meant is doubtless 'the Homily de Maria Magdalena, which has been commonly, though falsely, attributed to Origen; see Opp. Origenis, Tom. ii. p. 291, ed. Paris, 1604.' Tyrwhitt adds, very justly and incontrovertibly--'I cannot believe that the Poem entitled The Lamentation of Marie Magdaleine, which is in all the [older] editions of Chaucer, is really that work of his. It can hardly be considered as a translation, or even as an imitation, of the Homily; and the composition, in every respect, is infinitely meaner than the worst of his genuine pieces.'

432. Here, in the B-text, the name of Alcestis is first mentioned; yet strange to say, Chaucer does not realise who she is till later; see l. 518. She was the wife of Admetus, not king of Thrace (as here said) but of Pheræ in Thessaly. Apollo obtained from the Moiræ a promise to grant Admetus deliverance from death if, at the hour of his death, his father, mother, or wife, would consent to die for him. Alcestis consented to die in his stead, and is therefore here taken as the chief type of wifely devotion. The mention of Alcestis in the Court of Love, st. 15, is merely copied from Chaucer; so also Lydgate's use of Alceste to mean 'a daisy,' in his Legend of St. Edmund, l. 235 of the additional stanzas found in MS. Ashmole 46, as printed in Horstmann, Alteng. Legenden, Neue Folge (1881), p. 443. Gower has the story of Alcestis in his Confessio Amantis; ed. Pauli, iii. 149.

452. An allusion to the common proverb--'Bis dat, qui cito dat'; he who gives at once, gives twice. Publius Syrus has: 'Bis gratum est, quod dato opus est, ultro si offeras,' v. 44; and again: 'Inopi beneficium bis dat, qui dat celeriter'; v. 235.

465. 'Has no participation in the deed of a thief.' Similarly, in the Squi. Tale, F 537, Chaucer tells us that 'A trew wight and a theef thenken nat oon,' i.e. do not think alike. Trew means 'honest.'

466. The first foot contains Ne a trew-; e in Ne is elided.

475, 6. Closely imitated in the Court of Love, st. 61:--

'And argue not for reason ne for skill Againe thy ladies pleasure ne entent, For love will not be counterpleted indeede.'

The substitution of the dissyllabic indeede for Chaucer's monosyllabic be just ruins the scansion of the line; but we must not expect always to find melody in that grossly over-rated poem.

496, 7. Observe that these lines are not in the A-text. They must necessarily have been added after 1382, when Richard II. married Anne of Bohemia, and of course long before 1394, when 'the good queen Anne' died, and her husband at once forsook their favourite residence of Shene, now Richmond; see Annals of England, p. 201.

499. This is a strange question, seeing that Alcestis has already announced her name at l. 432; we must suppose that the poet did not realise that she was the very Alcestis whom he longed to see. But it looks like an oversight, due to his partially rewriting this Prologue.

503. Literally Chaucer's favorite line; for it reappears three times more, viz. in the Kn. Ta., A 1761; March. Ta., E 1986; and Squi. Ta., F 479. And, in the Man of Law's Tale, B 660, we have--'As gentil herte is fulfild of pitee.' It is admirable.

510. Here Chaucer seems to be imitating Froissart; see the Introduction. I cannot find any early account of Alcestis that turns her into a daisy. See notes to ll. 432, 515.

515. Alcestis 'was afterwards brought back from the lower world by Hercules, and restored to her husband'; Lewis and Short, Lat. Dict. s.v. Alcestis. And see the Introduction.

522. Bountee, goodness. See Clerk. Ta., E 157, 415; and Trench, Sel. Glossary.

526. Agaton, Agathon or Agatho; Dante's Agatone (Purg. xxii. 107). An Athenian poet (B.C. 447-400); who wrote a tragedy called 'the Flower.' See the Introduction.

531. Cibella, Cybela, or more commonly Cybele, a Phrygian goddess, later worshipped at Rome as Ops or Mater Magna. She was the goddess of the earth, and especially represented its fertility; hence she is naturally said to produce flowers. She here answers to the 'Ceres' of Froissart; see the Introduction.

533. The reference is to the red tips on the white petals of the daisy, the 'wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower.' This is said to be the gift of Mars, as he was associated with that colour. He is called 'Mars the rede'; see l. 2589 below; Anelida, l. 1; Kn. Ta., A 1969. The colour of the planet Mars is reddish.

In the present passage reed is a sb.; 'And Mars gave redness to her crown.'

539. Referring to the Balade at l. 249. In the A-text, Alcestis was actually mentioned in the refrain; but Chaucer rewrote it so as to exclude her name. He now writes (in l. 540) as if he had forgotten to put it in. Of course ll. 539-541 are peculiar to the B-text, as marked.

542. Kalender. 'A kalendar is an almanac by which persons are guided in their computation of time; hence it is used, as here, for a guide or example generally'; Bell. The New E. Dict. quotes this passage, and explains the word by 'a guide, directory; an example, model'; and cites Hamlet, v. 2. 114--'He is the card or calendar of gentry.' Nevertheless, I doubt whether this sense arose from the mere usefulness of the calendar. I believe that Chaucer regarded it in quite another aspect, viz. as containing the record or list of the saints whose lives are worthy of imitation. Hence Schmidt explains the word in Hamlet as 'note-book' or 'record'; as is certainly the case in All's Well, i. 3. 4, which Murray duly quotes with the sense of 'record.' So in the present case kalender does not mean 'example' merely, but a whole list or complete record of examples, which gives the word a much greater force. Compare Chaucer's ABC, under the letter K, and the note (l. 73).

549. We hence learn that Chaucer's nineteenth and last Legend was to have been the Legend of Alcestis; but he never wrote more than the former half of the work. Cf. A-text, 532.

555. Thy balade; see ll. 249-268; F. and Th. read my. We here learn that the Ladies about whom the Legends were to be written (l. 557) are all mentioned in the Ballad, which is an important hint. We must of course remove the names of Absalom and Jonathan; and there is reason for supposing that we should exclude Esther. Next, we set aside Lucretia, Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Phyllis, Hypsipyle, Hypermnestra, and Ariadne, whose Legends we possess; observing at the same time that we also have the Legend of Philomela (though she is not mentioned), and of Medea, who shares a Legend with Hypsipyle. The names still left are those of Penelope, Martia, Isoude, Helen, Lavinia, Polyxena, Hero, Laodamia, Canace, and Alcestis. But this list only partially agrees with Chaucer's scheme as given elsewhere, viz. in the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale. See further in the Introduction.

574. The grete, the substance; as in Book of the Duch. 1242; Parl. Foules, 35.

575. 'According as these old authors are pleased to treat (them).'

576. Shal telle, has to narrate.

I. THE LEGEND OF CLEOPATRA.

It is not clear what account Chaucer followed; see the Introduction. The chief sources for the history are Plutarch, Appian, Dion Cassius, and Orosius (bk. vi. c. 19). I shall refer to the Life of M. Antonius in my edition of Shakespeare's Plutarch (denoted below by Sh. Plut.). Bech points out that one of Chaucer's sources was Florus; see note to l. 655.

581. Ptolemy XI., or Ptolemy Auletes, king of Egypt, died B.C. 51, leaving two sons, both called Ptolemy, and two daughters, Cleopatra and Arsinoe. Cleopatra was then 17 years of age, and was appointed queen of Egypt in conjunction with her brother, the elder Ptolemy, whom she was to marry; but she was expelled from the throne by Ptolemy's guardians. In B.C. 47 she was replaced upon it by Julius Cæsar, but still in conjunction with her brother. This led to the Alexandrine war, in the course of which this elder Ptolemy perished. After this, she reigned, nominally, in conjunction with the younger Ptolemy, to whom also she was nominally married; but he was still quite a child, and was murdered by her orders in less than four years, after which she was sole queen, in name as well as in reality.

We thus see that the Ptolemy here mentioned may be either of Cleopatra's brothers of that name; but it is more likely that Chaucer refers to the elder of them. Shakespeare also uses the expression 'queen of Ptolemy'; Ant. i. 4. 6.

583. On a tyme; viz. not long after the battle of Philippi, which took place in B.C. 42. 'Antonius, going to make war with the Parthians, sent to command Cleopatra to appear personally before him when he came into Cilicia, to answer unto such accusations as were laid against her, being this: that she had aided Cassius and Brutus in their war against him ... Cleopatra on the other side ... guessing by the former access and credit she had with Julius Cæsar and C. Pompey (the son of Pompey the Great) only for her beauty, she began to have good hope that she might more easily win Antonius. For Cæsar and Pompey knew her when she was but a young thing, and knew not then what the world meant; but now she went to Antonius at the age when a woman's beauty is at the prime, and she also of best judgment.'--Sh. Plut. p. 174. Almost immediately after this passage follows the celebrated description of Cleopatra in her barge upon the Cydnus, familiar to all in the words of Shakespeare; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 196.

591. 'Octavius Cæsar reporting all these things unto the Senate, and oftentimes accusing him to the whole people and assembly in Rome, he thereby stirred up all the Romans against him.'--Sh. Plut. p. 202.

592. After the death of his first wife, Fulvia, Antony had married Octavia, sister of Octavianus (better known to us as Augustus). But in a few years he deserted her, and surrendered himself wholly to the charms of Cleopatra. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 6.

597. Cf. Sh. Plut. p. 192; Ant. and Cleop. i. 4. 55.

605. Sterve, to die. See Starve, in Trench, Sel. Glossary.

624. Octovian, Octavianus. 'Now for Cæsar, he had 250 ships of war, 80,000 footmen, and well near as many horsemen as his enemy Antonius'; Sh. Plut. p. 207.

634. See the account of the battle of Actium, B.C. 31; in Sh. Plut. p. 210. The vivid description here given by Chaucer resembles the parallel passage in the Kn. Tale, A 2600-20, which should be compared. 'The soldiers fought with their pikes, halbards and darts, and threw halbards and darts with fire. Antonius' ships, on the other side, bestowed among them, with their crossbows and engines of battery, great store of shot from their high towers of wood that were set upon their ships.'--Sh. Plut. p. 211. There is some description of the hostile fleets and of the battle in Florus (see note to l. 655), who tells us that, whilst Octavius had 400 ships against the 200 ships of Antony, the latter were nearly double the size of the former; so that the fleets were thus of equal strength.

637. Bell says this is 'a ludicrous anachronism'; but it is nothing of the kind. The word gonne is here used in the sense of 'shot' or 'missile'; and the line means--'with terrible sound out rushes the huge missile,' being hurled from one of the 'engines of battery' mentioned in the last note. It is the missile, not the engine, that 'out goth'; as a moment's reflection would have informed the commentator, whose remark was needless. The use of gonne in the sense of 'missile' is curious, but not unexampled; for, in the Avowynge of Arthur, st. 65, we read that 'there come fliand a gunne,' i.e. there came flying along a missile. I believe it is also used in the sense of missile in Sir Ferumbras, 5176, though the passage is not decisive.

Even if this were not the case, there is no 'anachronism'; for gonne was originally used in the sense of 'catapult,' as may be seen by consulting the Prompt. Parvulorum, where the Latin for it is petraria, and mangonale. The grisly soun alludes to the whizzing of the ponderous missile through the air; Barbour says of a great stone, hurled from a catapult, that 'It flaw out, quhedirand, with a rout,' i.e. it flew out, whirring, with a great noise. See The Bruce, xvii. 684.

On the other hand, in Ho. Fame, 1643, Chaucer certainly uses gonne in the sense of 'cannon'; but that does not affect the sense of the present passage.

638. Hurtlen, push, dash, ram one against the other; cf. Kn. Ta., A 2616. 'Somtyme they hurtled to-gyder that they felle grovelyng on the ground'; Morte Arthure; by Sir T. Malory, bk. vii. c. 12. Heterly, vehemently, fiercely, occurs frequently in the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat (E. E. T. S.) Compare Vergil's description of the battle, in Æn. viii. 689, &c.: 'Una omnes ruere.'

640. In goth, in there go. Goth is singular in form, because of its position in the sentence; but it has two nominatives, viz. 'grapnel' and 'shearing-hooks.' The former was a contrivance for clutching the ropes, and the latter for severing them.

642. This is wonderfully graphic. A boarder bursts in with a pole-axe; a sailor, on the defence, flees behind the mast, then dashes forward again, and drives the assailant overboard.

646. Rent, rendeth; the present tense.

648. By pouring hard peas upon the hatches, they became so slippery that the boarders could not stand.

649. Some carried pots full of quicklime, which they threw into the eyes of their enemies. See Notes and Queries, 5 S. x. 188. The English did this very thing, when attacking a French fleet, in the time of Henry III. Strutt (Manners and Customs, 1774, ii. 11) quotes from Matthew Paris to this effect:--'Calcem quoque vivam et in pulverém subtilem reductam, in altum projicientes, vento illam ferente, Francorum oculos excaecaverunt.' Cf. Æn. viii. 694.

652. Put, short for putteth, puts; pres. tense.

653. To-go, disperse themselves; pres. tense. The prefix to has the same force as the Lat. dis-, i.e. 'in different directions.' We even find to-ga used as a past tense in Barbour's Bruce (viii. 351, ix. 263, 269, xvii. 104, 575), with the sense 'fled in different directions,' or 'fled away.' Cf. 'the wlcne to-gað,' the clouds part asunder; Morris; Spec. of Eng. pt. I. p. 7, l. 169. And again, 'thagh the fourme of brede to-go,' though the form of bread disappear; Shoreham's Poems, p. 29.

That best go mighte, each in the way he could best go; each made the best of his way to a safe place. 'Sauve qui peut.'

655. 'Suddenly they saw the threescore ships of Cleopatra busily about their yard-masts, and hoising sail to fly'; Sh. Plut. p. 212. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 10. 10; Vergil, Æn. viii. 707-8. The remark about Cleopatra's 'purple sails' may remind us of Plutarch's description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus, already referred to above (note to l. 583):--'the poop [of her barge] was of gold, the sails of purple'; Sh. Plut. p. 174; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 198.

The truth is, however, that (as Bech points out) Chaucer has borrowed this and a few other incidents from L. Annaeus Florus, who wrote an Epitome Rerum Romanarum in the second century. In relating the battle of Actium, he says:--'Prima dux fugae regina, cum aurea puppe ueloque purpureo, in altum dedit. Mox secutus Antonius: sed instare uestigiis Caesar. Itaque nec praeparata in Oceanum fuga, nec munita praesidiis utraque Ægypti cornua, Paraetonium atque Pelusium, profuere: prope manu tenebantur. Prior ferrum occupauit Antonius. Regina ad pedes Caesaris prouoluta tentauit oculos ducis: frustra. Nam pulchritudo intra pudicitiam principis fuit. Nec illa de uita, quae offerebatur, sed de parte regni, laborabat. Quod ubi desperauit a principe, seruarique se triumpho uidit, incautiorem nacta custodiam, in Mausoleum se (sepulcra regum sic uocant) recipit: ibi maximos, ut solebat, induta cultus, in differto odoribus solio, iuxta suum se collocauit Antonium: admotisque ad uenas serpentibus, sic morte quasi somno, soluta est.'--Florus, Epit. Rerum Romanarum, lib. iv. c. 11.

662. Chaucer (following Florus) has hastened the catastrophe. Antony stabbed himself at Alexandria, in the following year, B.C. 30. See Sh. Plut. 221; Ant. and Cleop. iv. 14. 102.

672. Shryne; for 'solio' in Florus; cf. l. 675. Plutarch says only that Cleopatra 'did sumptuously and royally bury him with her own hands'; Sh. Plut. p. 224. Afterwards, however, she 'crowned the tomb with garlands and sundry nosegays, and marvellous lovingly embraced the same'; Sh. Plut. p. 227. But see the account by Florus, in the note to l. 655.

677. Dede cors, dead body; as in l. 876. Chaucer uses cors of the living body, as, e.g. in Sir Thopas, B 2098.

678. Chaucer seems to think that Florus meant, 'in sepulcrum se recipit ... iuxta Antonium.'

679. Shakespeare follows closely the account in Plutarch, except that he makes mention of two asps, whereas Plutarch mentions but one, called by Sir Thos. North 'an aspick'; Sh. Plut. p. 227. However, Florus uses the plural serpentibus. Cf. Cower, C. A., iii. 361.

681. Cf. Cleopatra's lament in Sh. Plut. p. 226; Ant. and Cleop. iv. 15. 59; v. 2. 283.

691. Pronounce unreprovable, as unréprovábl'.

694. Sene, evident. Note that this is an adjective (A.S. gesýne), and not the past participle; cf. l. 2655, and note. See also ll. 340, 741, and my note to the Balade against Women Inconstaunt, l. 13.

696. Naked. It looks as if Chaucer took induta (note to l. 655) to mean 'not clothed.' Perhaps he read it as nudata.

702. Storial sooth, historical truth. The old editions actually put the comma after storial instead of after sooth; and modern editors have followed them. Surely the editors, in some passages, have never attempted to construe their own texts.

II. THE LEGEND OF THISBE.

Chaucer follows Ovid, Metamorph. iv. 55-166; and frequently very closely. The reader should compare the Latin text throughout. For example, Ovid begins thus:--

'Pyramus et Thisbe, iuuenum pulcherrimus alter, altera, quas Oriens habuit, praelata puellis, contiguas habuere domos, ubi dicitur altam coctilibus muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem.'

In Golding's translation, fol. 43, back, thus:--

'Within the town (of whose huge walles so monstrous high and thicke, The fame is giuen Semiramis for making them of bricke) Dwelt hard together two young folke in houses ioynde so nere, That under all one roofe well nie both twaine conuayed were. The name of him was Pyramus, and Thisbe call'd was she; So faire a man in all the East was none aliue as he. Nor nere a woman, mayde, nor wife in beautie like to her.'

This at once explains the allusion to Semiramis, the celebrated but mythical queen who was said to have surrounded Babylon with walls of fabulous strength, having a deep ditch outside them. See Orosius, as translated by King Alfred, in Sweet's A.S. Reader, fourth ed. pp. 28, 29. Gower tells the same story, and likewise follows Ovid; C. A. i. 324.

718. Estward; evidently from Ovid's 'Oriens'; see above.

722. The first foot consists of the single syllable Mai-.

725. Naso, i.e. Ovid; really named Publius Ouidius Naso.

726. Réport; accented on the e. Y-shove, pushed (into notice); cf. l. 1381.

727. 'Tempore creuit amor'; Met. iv. 60.

730. 'Sed uetuere patres'; id. 61.

735. 'As (to quote the proverb) cover up the glowing coal, and the hotter the fire becomes.' Ovid has--'Quoque magis tegitur, tanto magis aestuat ignis'; 64. Wry is in the imperative mood, singular. Cf. Troilus, ii. 538-9.

741. Sene, visible; see note to l. 694. Dere y-nogh a myte, even in a slight degree; lit. '(to an extent) dear enough at a mite.' A singular use of the phrase. Cf. 'dere ynogh a leek'; Can. Yem. Ta., G 795; 'not worth a myte'; id., G 633.

742. 'Quid non sentit amor?' Met. iv. 68.

745. 'In a tone as low as if uttering a confession.' A curious medieval touch. Ovid says, 'murmure ... minimo'; 70.

756. 'Inuide, dicebant, paries, quid amantibus obstas?' 73.

763. Holde, beholden. 'Nec sumus ingrati'; 76.

773. Chaucer practically transposes the offices of Phoebus and Aurora.

'Postera nocturnos Aurora remouerat ignes, solque pruinosas radiis siccauerat herbas'; 82.

782. And for, and because, &c.

783. For stands alone in the first foot. Cf. l. 797.

784. 'Conueniant ad busta Nini, lateantque sub umbra Arboris'; 88. Ll. 786, 787 are explanatory, and added by Chaucer. Ninus, the supposed founder of Nineveh, was the husband of Semiramis. Cf. Shak. Mid. Nt. Dr. v. 1. 139.

786. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 403) says that the pt. t. of herien is heried-e, with final e. But the form is right; héried-e is hardly pronounceable, and the final e is naturally dropped when the accent is thrown so far back. The forms of the past tenses of weak verbs are variable; whether they take a final e or not often depends on the form of the stem. See Ten Brink, Chaucer's Sprache, § 194.

797. Y-wimpled, covered with a wimple, or cloth covering the neck and fitting close round the face, chiefly worn by nuns. Another medieval touch. Ovid has 'adopertaque uultum'; 94. See note to l. 813.

798-801. These four lines are mainly original, and quite in Chaucer's own manner. Ovid has merely 'fallitque suos.'

803. 'Audacem faciebat amor'; 96.

804. She gan her dresse, she settled herself, lit. directed herself. Lat. 'sedit.'

810. Rist, riseth; pres. tense, as in l. 887. So arist, Man of Law's Tale, B 265.

811. With dredful foot; so again in Kn. Ta., A 1479. 'Timido pede fugit in antrum'; 100. See Dreadful in Trench, Select Glossary; and cf. ll. 109, 404 above.

813. 'Dumque fugit, tergo uelamina lapsa reliquit'; 101. 'For fere, and let her wimple falle.'--Gower, Conf. Amant. i. 326.

814-6. These three lines are original. Sit, sitteth. Darketh, lies close. 'The child than darked in his den'; Will. of Palerne, 17; 'drawe him into his den, and darked ther stille'; id. 44. And again in the same poem, ll. 1834, 2851.

823-31. Considerably expanded from the Latin:--

'Serius egressus uestigia uidit in alto puluere certa ferae, totoque expalluit ore Pyramus'; 105.

830. Agroos, shuddered; and again in l. 2314; and in Troil. ii. 930. The infin. agryse is in the Man of Law's Tale, B 614.

834. 'Una duos, inquit, nox perdet amantes'; 108.

835. This line is Chaucer's own.

842. What, whatsoever; 'quicunque ... leones'; 114.

847-9. 'Accipe nunc, inquit, nostri quoque sanguinis haustus'; 118.

851-2.

'Cruor emicat alte non aliter quam quum uitiato fistula plumbo scinditur, et tenues stridente foramine longe eiaculatur aquas, atque ictibus aera rumpit'; 121.

With much good taste, Chaucer omits the next three lines, just as he has omitted to tell us that the trysting-tree was 'a faire high Mulberie with fruite as white as snow,' as Golding says. The blood of Pyramus turned this fruit black, and so it remains to this day! Gower likewise suppresses the mulberry-tree, but Shakespeare mentions it; see Mid. Nt. Dr. v. 1. 149.

853-61. Admirably expanded out of three lines:--

'Ecce metu nondum posito, ne fallat amantem, illa redit; iuuenemque oculis animoque requirit; quantaque uitarit narrare pericula gestit'; 128.

859. The first syllable of Bothe forms a foot by itself. So also in ll. 863, 901, 911, &c.

862-8.

'Dum dubitat, tremebunda uidet pulsare cruentum membra solum; retroque pedem tulit; oraque buxo pallidiora gerens, exhorruit aequoris instar, quod fremit, exigua quum summum stringitur aura'; 133.

869-82. Fourteen lines where Ovid has eight. Chaucer has greatly improved l. 882, where Ovid makes Thisbe ask Pyramus to lift up his head:--'uultusque attolle iacentes'; 144.

887. This line is original. Bost, noise, outcry; such is the original sense of the word now spelt boast, which see in the New E. Dict. Cf. 'Now ariseth cry and boost'; King Alisaunder, 5290; and see P. Plowman, C. xvii. 89. Whitaker, writing in 1813, remarks that boost, in the sense of noise, is 'a provincial word still familiar in the Midland counties.'

894.

'Persequar extinctum; letique miserrima dicar caussa comesque tui'; 151.

905-12. Admirably substituted for Thisbe's address to the mulberry-tree, requesting it to keep its berries always black thenceforth.

913, 14.

'Dixit; et aptato pectus mucrone sub imum incubuit ferro, quod adhuc a caede tepebat'; 162.

916-23. These lines are original. With l. 917 cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 14345:--'Mes moult est poi de tex amans.'

III. THE LEGEND OF DIDO.

This Legend purports to be taken from Vergil and Ovid; see l. 928. There is very little of it from Ovid, viz. only the last 16 lines, which depend on Ovid's Heroides, vii. 1-8, and ll. 1312-6, which owe something to the same epistle.

The rest is from the Æneid, bks. i-iv, as will be pointed out.

Note that Chaucer had already given the story of Dido at some length in his Hous of Fame, 151-382, which should be compared. He mentions Ovid there also; l. 379.

924. Mantuan, born near Mantua. Publius Vergilius [not Virgilius] Maro was born on the 15th Oct., B.C. 70, at Andes, now Pietola, a small village near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul; and died Sept. 22, B.C. 19. It is said that an inscription was placed on his tomb, beginning 'Mantua me genuit.'

926. Cf. 'chi vi fu lucerna?' Dante, Purg. i. 43.

927. Eneas, Æneas, hero of the Æneid.

928. The late editions, for some mysterious reason, put a full stop after Eneid and insert of before Naso. The sense is--'I will take the general tenour (of the story as I find it) in thine Æneid and in Naso,' i.e. in Ovid; 'and I will versify the chief circumstances.'

Roughly speaking, ll. 930-949 are from the Æneid, bk. ii; ll. 950-957 from bk. iii; ll. 958-1155 from bk. i; and ll. 1156-1351 from bk. iv.

931. 'By the craft of the Greeks, and especially by Sinon.' Sinon allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Trojans, and persuaded them to take in a wooden horse through the walls, which he said had been made as an atonement to Minerva for the Palladium carried away by the Greeks. In the dead of night Sinon let out the armed men concealed within the horse, and thus Troy was taken by a stratagem. See Æn. ii. 57-267; and cf. Ho. Fame, 152-6.

934. The ghost of Hector appeared to Æneas, and advised him to flee; Æn. ii. 268-298.

935. The verb agreeing with fyr is appered. 'And there appeared also so mad a fire that it could not be controlled.' See Æn. ii. 311.

936. Ilioun, the usual M.E. form of Ilium; Æn. i. 68, ii. 241, 325, 625. Ilium is only another name for Troy, but the medieval writers invented the explanation here adopted by Chaucer, viz. that it was the palace of Priam, and the castle of Troy in particular. Perhaps they interpreted the word domus in too narrow a sense in the passage--'O patria, O Divum domus Ilium'; Æn. ii. 241. This use of the word is invariable in Guido delle Colonne, author of the Historia Destructionis Troie, a work which was considered of the highest authority in the middle ages, though it was shamelessly copied from the French Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. In fact, a long description of Priam's palace, called Ilion, is given in the alliterative Troy-book, l. 1629, which is translated from Guido; and in Lydgate's Troy-book, ed. 1555, fol. F 6, back, and R 5, back. See the notes to Book Duch. 1070, Ho. Fame, 158, 1467, 1469, 1477.

939. For the death of Priam, killed by Pyrrhus, see Æn. ii. 531-558. Fordoon, slain. Noght, nothing; this alludes to Vergil's 'sine nomine corpus'; Æn. ii. 558.

940. Venus appears to her son Æneas; Æn. ii. 591. Cf. Ho. Fame, 162.

942. Cf. 'dextrae se paruus Iülus [Ascanius] Implicuit'; Æn. ii. 724. See note to Ho. Fame, 177.

945. Lees, lost; 'erepta Creüsa'; Æn. ii. 738; Ho. Fame, 183.

947. Felawshippe, company, companions; 'ingentem comitum numerum'; Æn. ii. 796.

949. Stounde, hour, time; usually dissyllabic in M.E.

953. For these adventures, see Æn. bk. iii; which Chaucer passes over. But see Ho. Fame, 198-221.

959. Libye, Libya, on the N. coast of Africa; Æn. i. 158. For the seven ships saved, see the same, i. 170.

960, 1. These two lines are in no previous edition, (except my own), being preserved only in MSS. C. and P. But they are obviously genuine and necessary; otherwise, the word So (l. 962) is meaningless.

962. Al to-shake, all shaken to pieces, sorely distressed. Cf. l. 820.

964. Æneas and Achates sally forth, Æn. i. 312; Ho. Fame, 226.

971. Hunteresse, huntress; i.e. Venus so disguised; id. i. 319. 'As she had been an hunteresse'; Ho. Fame, 229.

973. Cutted, cut short; 'nuda genu'; id. i. 320. The same expression occurs as 'cutted to the kne' in P. Ploughman's Crede, 296. Compare also l. 434 of the same poem:--

'His wyf walked him with, with a longe gode , In a cutted cote, cutted full heye.'

The editions have knytte, which is an erroneous spelling either of knyt or of knytted; neither of which readings can be right.

978-82. Translated from Æn. i. 321-4.

982. Y-tukked up, with robe tucked up; 'Succinctam.' This settles the meaning of tukked in Ch. Prol. 621.

983-93. Shortened from Æn. i. 325-340.

986. 'Phoebus' sister'; Vergil has 'Phoebi soror'; 329.

994-1001. Alluding to Æn. i. 341-410.

997. Hit nere but, it would only be; nere = ne were.

998. Al and som, the whole matter; wholly and in particulars.

1005. Sitheo, so in all the copies. Nothing is commoner than a confusion between c and t in old MSS.; hence Sitheo is for Sichco, i.e. Sichaeus. Sichaeus (Æn. i. 343) is Vergil's name for Acerbas, a wealthy Tyrian priest, who married Elissa (Vergil's Dido) sister of Pygmalion. Pygmalion murdered Acerbas, hoping to appropriate his treasure; but Elissa fled from Tyre, taking the treasure with her, and founded Carthage. Dante has the form Sicheo; Inf. v. 62.

1010. Fredom, liberality; the old sense of free being 'liberal.' Of here means 'for'; in l. 1012 it means 'by.'

1016. Maister-temple, chief temple; cf. maistre-strete, chief street (Kn. Ta., A 2902), and maistre-tour, chief tower (Squi. Tale, F 226). It was the temple of Juno; Æn. i. 446.

1022. 'So the book says'; Vergil says that Venus shrouded Æneas and Achates with a cloud (i. 412, 516).

1024. The first syllable of Hadden forms a foot by itself; cf. l. 1030. Ov'r al forms the last foot.

1025. 'Uidet Iliacas ex ordine pugnas'; i. 456.

1028. 'Bellaque iam fama totum uulgata per orbem'; i. 457.

1032. Kepe, care; usually with a negative; see Kn. Ta., A 2238, 2960.

1035. See Æn. i. 496, &c. Vergil likens Dido to Diana. In l. 1039 Chaucer uses god in the heathen sense, meaning Jupiter.

1044-6. These lines are original. Fremd, strange; A.S. fremede. In the Squi. Tale, F 429, it means 'foreign.' 'To frende ne to fremmed,' to friend nor to stranger; P. Plowm. B. xv. 137. Misspelt frenne (riming with glenne) in Spenser, Shep. Kal. April, 28, with the sense of 'stranger'; unless he means it for foreign.

1047-60. Epitomised from Æn. i. 509-612.

1048. Wende han loren, he supposed to have lost, he supposed that he had lost.

1050. For which, on which account, wherefore.

1059. Meynee, attendants, followers, lit. household; O.F. meisnee, mesnee, meinee. Very common in Chaucer. The derived adj. menial is still in use. See l. 1089.

1061-5. From Æn. i. 613, 614. Ll. 1066-1074 are from the same, 588-591.

1075. 'Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco'; id. 630.

1076. The first syllable of Lyked forms a foot by itself. God do bote, may God give (us) help! A parenthetical explanation. All former editions (except my own) omit the necessary comma after as.

1077-85. Chaucer here gives a general outline of the state of the case, without following Vergil's words.

1086-90. This answers to Æn. i. 615-630.

1091-1102. From Æn. i 631-642.

1099. His lyve, in his life, during his life.

1103-27. This passage is, practically, original. Chaucer here tells the story in his own language, and gives it a wholly medieval cast.

1104. The M.E. swolow usually means 'a whirlpool' or 'gulf,' and such is Tyrwhitt's explanation. See the Catholicon Anglicum, p. 373, note 1, for examples. Thus, in Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 97, we find--'Swolwis of the see and helle, that resceyuen al that thei may and elden not aen.' Very rarely, it is used of an open mouth; thus in Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, iii. 250, it is said that the whale 'opened his swol' to engulf Jonah. Hence, probably, arose the suggestion in Bell's note, that the reference is to the open mouth of hell, as represented in medieval drawings. Nevertheless, I believe Tyrwhitt is right; though either sense will serve. It is the mod. E. swallow, used as a sb. Cf. Dante, Inf. xxxiv. 137-9.

1106. Parements, ornaments; probably hangings. Cf. 'chambre of parementz' in Squi. Ta., F 269, and Tyrwhitt's note, quoted in my note to the line. In the Kn. Ta., A 2501, paramentz means 'rich clothes.' See Æn. i. 637-9.

1107. For ornaments, which is preserved in MSS. C. and T. only, the other MSS. and all the old editions have the odd reading pavements, which is strangely out of place. I think it clear that this arose from a repetition of the word parements, which was afterwards turned into pavements by way of desperate emendation. The letters v and r are often somewhat alike, and have been mistaken for one another, as shewn in my paper on 'ghost-words' in the Phil. Soc. Transactions, 1886.

1109. The MSS. (except T.) and the black-letter editions have he. Morris's, Bell's, and Corson's editions have she, which gives no sense, and will not suit l. 1111. I do not undertake to notice all the vagaries of the various editions, as the readings of the MSS. are so much more satisfactory. In the present case, I suppose that she is a mere misprint in Bell, preserved in the editions that follow him. Sete is short for seten, the usual M.E. pp. of sitten, to sit; see Kn. Ta., A 1452. It answers to the A.S. pp. seten, with short e. The e in mete was also short in A.S.; hence the rime is perfect.

1110. Cf. Squi. Ta., F 294--'The spyces and the wyn is come anon.' This refers to the custom of serving wine mixed with spices to the guests before going to rest; see a long note in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1840, i. 178 (on the word piment); Weber's note on King Alisaunder, 4178; and Our English Home, p. 85.

1114. The first syllable Ther probably constitutes the first foot of the line. I believe Chaucer accents courser on the former syllable; see Kn. Ta., A 1502, 1704; Squi. Ta., F 195, 310.

1117. Fretted, adorned; not 'fraught,' as in Corson's note.

1119. Shynedè; trisyllabic; in MS. C. only; rest, shyned, shyneth, which will not scan. Cf. lakkedè, Prol. 756; knokkeden, Compl. Mars, 84. Line 2194 has shinèd, and l. 1428 has shoon. Shynede occurs in both the Wycliffite versions of Luke ii. 9; and is therefore an old form. We still have shined as a pt. t. in Ezek. xliii. 2, Acts ix. 3, xii. 7.

1120. 'Nor gentle high-flying falcon for striking herons.' Chaucer has gentil faucon in his Parl. of Foules, 337. Cotgrave, s.v. haultain, has:--'Faulcon haultain, a high-flying hawke.' Heronere means 'used for flying at herons'; only the best hawks would serve for this.

1122. Y-bete, in the Knight's Ta., A 979, means 'ornamented with beaten gold,' or with gold flattened out by the hammer (F. or batu). It might mean 'ornamented by means of the hammer'; but as 'new florins' can hardly be said to be used for decorating cups, it seems best to take with in the sense of 'as well as'; in which case florins newe y-bete means 'florins newly struck.' The allusion to florins is curious; see note to P. Plowman, B. iii. 45. Cf. Æn, i. 640--'Ingens argentum mensis, caelataque in auro Fortia facta patrum.'

1128-35. From Æn. i. 643-656.

1135. Take, present, offer, deliver. This sense was once common; see Sec. Non. Ta., G 223; Can. Yem. Ta., G 1030, 1034, 1365; P. Plowman, B. i. 56, iv. 58, &c.

1136-49. Much abridged from Æn. i. 657-722.

1145. 'Let it be as it may; I care little about it.'

1150-55. Chaucer here comes to the end of Æn. bk. i, and passes over the second book with the remark in l. 1153.

1155. Entendeden, gave their attention. Corson and Gilman explain it by 'attend,' as if it were the present tense.

1156. Chaucer here passes on to Vergil's fourth book, which he epitomises, and seldom follows quite exactly.

1157. Sely, simple, unsuspecting; see l. 1254. See Silly in Trench, Select Glossary.

1161. 'Why I have told the story so far, and must tell the rest.'

1163. The reading his (for her) in MS. C. can be justified, and may be right. The A.S. móna was masculine, but the Lat. luna was feminine. Hence arose a confusion, so that the M.E. mone was of either gender. Hence, in Chaucer's Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 34, l. 12, we find--'And nota, that yif the mone shewe himself by light of day,' &c.; whereas in the same, pt. ii. § 40, l. 54, we find--'the mone, loke thou rekne wel hir cours houre by houre; for she,' &c.

1166. Brayd, start, sudden movement. In the Cursor Mundi, 7169, we read of Samson, that--

'Vte of thair handes son he stert And gaue a braid sa fers and fast, That all the bandes of him brast.'

See Braid in the New E. Dictionary.

1170-81. From Vergil's Æn. iv. 9-29.

1174. 'And eke so likely to be a hero.' Man is here used emphatically; cf. 'quam forti pectore et armis'; iv. 11.

1182, 3. Cf. Æn. iv. 31-53; but Chaucer cuts it short.

1187. Love (A.S. lufu) is here monosyllabic; cf. Kn. Ta., A 1135. 'Love desires (to have) love; for no one will it desist.' Cf. A.S. wandian, to turn aside, blench, fear. And see wol, in l. 1191.

1188-1211. From Æn. iv. 129-159.

1191. An hunting, on hunting, a-hunting. Here an is another form of the prep. on, and hunting is a substantive, like Lat. uenatio. See Skeat, Principles of Eng. Etymology, Ser. 1, p. 260.

Wol, desires (to go); cf. wol in l. 1187.

1196. Hoven, wait in readiness, hover. Cf. 'where that she hoved and abode'; Gower, C. A. iii. 63; and see P. Plowman, B. prol. 210, xviii. 83. It just expresses the notion of slight movement, whilst remaining nearly in the same place. The old editions read heven, which gives no sense; for it never means 'mount,' as has been suggested. Cf. Vergil's 'expectant'; iv. 134.

1198. Paper-whyt, as white as paper; a curious and rare compound. Printed paper white (as two words!) in former editions.

1200. The 4th sense of Bar in the New E. Dict. is--'An ornamental transverse band on a girdle, saddle, &c.; subsequently, an ornamental boss of any shape.'

1201. Sit, sits. Wrye, covered; A.S. wrigen, pp.

1204. Startling, moving suddenly; the frequentative form of starting, which Chaucer preferred when repeating this same line in his Kn. Tale, A 1502.

1205. A litel wyr, i.e. a small bridle-bit. See l. 1208.

1206. Phebus; Vergil's 'Apollo'; iv. 144. To devyse, to describe (him).

1209. Wold, willed, desired; the pp. of willen. This form is very rare, but we again find hath wold in l. 11 of the Compl. of Venus; and hadde wold in P. Plowman, B. xv. 258. Prof. Corson aptly quotes three examples from Malory's Morte Arthur, ed. T. Wright, with the references 'vol. i. c. 33, vol. iii. c. 119, and vol. iii. c. 123.' The first of these answers to bk. ii. c. 8, p. 54 in the 'Globe' edition, where we find--'Then said Merlin to Balin, Thou hast done thyself great hurt, because thou savedst not this lady that slew herself, that might have saved her and thou wouldest.' Caxton (ed. 1485) also has woldest; but Wright, following the edition of 1634, has had would. For the other passages, see bk. xviii. capp. 15 and 19, where Caxton has 'and he had wold,' and 'and I had wolde.'

1212-31. From Vergil, Æn. iv. 154-170.

1213. Go bet, go more quickly, hasten; a term of encouragement. See Pard. Tale, C 667, and the note. Prik thou, spur thou, push on; a like term. Lat goon, let (the dogs) go.

1230. 'Ille dies primus leti, primusque malorum Causa fuit'; iv. 169. It looks as if Chaucer has translated leti by 'gladnesse,' as if it were letitiae. (Bech makes a similar remark.)

1232-41. These lines are original. Cf. Ho. Fame, 253-292.

1242. Here follows, in Vergil, the celebrated description of Fame, which Chaucer had already introduced into his Hous of Fame, 1368-1392; it is therefore here omitted. He passes on to Æn. iv. 195.

1245. Yarbas, i.e. Iarbas, son of Ammon; Æn. iv. 196.

1254-84. Original; but see Ho. Fame, 269-292.

1262. Pilled, robbed. 'A knight ... sholde deffenden holy chirche, and nat robben it ne pilen it'; Persones Tale, De Avaritia, I 767.

1277. Ther-as, whereas. Sterve, to die.

1287. Perhaps copied by the author of fragment B. of the Romaunt of the Rose. We there find (l. 4838, Glasgow MS.)--'The hoote ernes [ernest?] they al foryeten'; there being nothing answering to it in the French text.

1288. 'And he secretly causes his ships to be prepared'; lit. 'causes (men) to prepare his ships.'

1289. Shapeth him, intends, purposes. See Prologue, 772.

1295. 'Me patris Anchisae ... Admonet ... imago'; iv. 351.

1297. Mercurie, Mercury; 'interpres Divûm'; iv. 356.

1305. What womman, what sort of a woman.

1310. Seketh halwes, repairs to saints' shrines; a curious medieval touch. Vergil only mentions the sacrifice; iv. 453. Cf. Prologue, 14, and the note. 'To go seken halwes'; C. T. (Wyf of Bathes Prol.), D 657.

1312, 3. 'Si pudet uxoris, non nupta, sed hospita dicar,' &c.; Ovid, Her. vii. 167.

1316. Cf. 'Sed neque fers tecum'; Her. vii. 79.

1317. Thise lordes; 'Nomadumque tyranni'; Æn. iv. 320. Also Pygmalion and Iarbas, id. 325, 6.

1324. The former syllable of Mercy forms the first foot in the line; cf. l. 1342. 'Have pitee on my sorwes smerte!' Ho. Fame, 316; which see.

1331. Lavyne, Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus; Æn. vii. 359.

1332. A cloth. This refers to the Trojan garments left behind by Æneas; 'Iliacas uestes'; iv. 648. The sword is mentioned by Vergil just two lines above; 646.

1338-40. Here the cloth answers to the Lat. exuuiae; and whyl hit leste = whilst it pleased. These three lines are a close imitation of Vergil, Æn. iv. 651-3:--

'Dulces exuuiae, dum fata Deusque sinebant; Accipite hanc animam, meque his exsoluite curis; Vixi, et quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.'

We hence see that, in l. 1339, the right reading is unbind me of this unreste, a close translation from the Latin. Me of are run together; see note to Complaint to Pitè, l. 11.

1341. Withouten, without any succour from Æneas.

1346. Her norice, her nurse, or rather the nurse of Sichæus, named Barce; Æn. iv. 632.

1351. 'She roof hir-selve to the herte'; Ho. Fame, 373.

1352. Here Chaucer, having done with Vergil, takes up Ovid, who is intended by the words myn autour.

1354. A lettre, i.e. the 7th Epistle in Ovid's Heroides. See l. 1367.

1355-65. From the first 8 lines in the above Epistle.

'Sic, ubi fata uocant, udis abiectus in herbis, ad uada Maeandri concinit albus olor. Nec, quia te nostra sperem prece posse moueri, alloquor. Aduerso mouimus ista deo. Sed merita et famam, corpusque animumque pudicum quum male perdiderim, perdere uerba leue est. Certus es ire tamen, miseramque relinquere Dido; atque îdem uenti uela fidemque ferent.'

IV. (PART I.) THE LEGEND OF HYPSIPYLE.

The chief sources of this fourth Legend are Guido delle Colonne's Historia Troiana, Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. vii, and Heroides, letters vi. and xii. The story of Hypsipyle is also in Statius' Thebaid, bk. v, and in l. 1437 (see note) there is a reference to the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus. See further in the Preface; and see the notes to ll. 1396, 1467.

1368-95. This is a Prologue to the Legend, and is original.

1371. Reclaiming, enticement, power to subdue; lit. a calling back. Halliwell has: 'To reclaim a hawk, to make her gentle and familiar, to bring her to the wrist by a certain call. It is often used metaphorically, to tame.' Cf. 'since this same wayward girl is so reclaimed'; Romeo, iv. 2. 47.

1373. Of, by means of. Farced, stuffed; as in Prol. to C. T., 233.

1377. 'Where others betray one, thou betrayest two.'

1381. Shove, pushed forward, brought into notice; cf. l. 726.

1383. Have at thee! let me attack (or pursue) thee. Thyn horn is blowe, the horn is blown that summons all to pursue thee; a metaphor taken from the chase.

1387. Aboght, bought; pp. of abye, which was corrupted into abide; whence 'thou shalt dearly abide it.'

1388. Box, blow, buffet; now only used of 'a box on the ear.'

1389. Et, eateth; pres. tense. So in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 135, l. 10, and in Ælfric's Grammar, ed. Zupitza, p. 200.

1391. Prof. Lounsbury would read 'the goodë man that ther-for payede,' and remarks that this gives a false rime, because the preterite form payede will not rime with the pp. betrayed. He adds--'in order to follow the reading of the one MS. that makes payed a participial form, the adj. goode, of the definite declension, has to be shorn of its final e in pronunciation.'--Studies in Chaucer, i. 405. I take good-man to be, practically, one word, as in the A. V., Matt. xx. 11, so that the def. form of the adj. is not really required. And I prefer the reading hath payed, though it rests on the authority of one (the best) MS. only. If, however, we adopt the proposed reading, it makes no difference at all to the rime. For the pt. t. of verbs of F. origin, as payen, serven, is usually payed, served, the full ending -ede (with both syllables sounded) being extremely rare in Chaucer; cf. note to l. 1119. We even have shined, not shinede, in l. 2194, in a word of E. origin. Hence there is really no fault to be found, whichever reading be taken; and the cricitism, which is quite superfluous, comes to nothing.

1394, 5. On, in the case of. Y-sene, evident; as in l. 2655. By, with reference to.

1396. The reading Guido (in MSS. C., T., A.) where the other MSS. and the editions have Ouyde, is important; especially as it is correct, and gives us a new clue. The Historia Troiana of Guido delle Colonne begins with the story of Jason, and it is evident that Chaucer follows him, at least as far as l. 1461. This can easily be seen by comparing the present passage with the beginning of Book I. of the alliterative Troy-book, ed. Panton and Donaldson, otherwise called the Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy, which is closely translated from Guido; or else with Lydgate's Troy-book, bk. i. capp. 1-3. Gower also tells the story of Jason (C. A. ii. 236), and says that the tale 'is in the boke of Troie write.'

1397. Pelleus; so spelt in the allit. Troy-book, l. 104; Gower has Peleus. Medieval names are strangely confused. The right form is not Peleus, but Pelias. He was king of Thessaly, half-brother of Æson, and guardian of Jason. The reading king gives him his title in anticipation, but is right. So also, in the allit. Troy-book, l. 103: 'There was a kyng in that coste,' &c.; and Guido has 'rex' here.

1398. Eson (as in Gower); Æson, the aged father of Jason.

1420. Al made he, although he made.

1425. Colcos, properly Colchis, now Mingrelia; between the Caucasus and the Eastern shore of the Black Sea. In the allit. Troy-book, it is called Colchos, l. 152; and so in Gower. It is not really an island, but Chaucer follows the Latin text, which has 'insula'; see note to l. 1590.

1430. Kept, guarded; with, by. Compare the Troy-book, l. 164:--

'Thus coyntly it kept was, all with clene art, By too oxen, oribull on for to loke, And a derfe dragon, drede to behold.'

1438. Oëtes (as in Guido); properly Aeëtes, Ovid, Her. xii. 51. He was king of Colchis, and father of Medea.

1447. 'Then should I be bound to requite thy toil.'

1453. Argus, the builder of the ship Argo, in which Jason undertook the voyage. The name is given by Guido (see the E. Troy-book, l. 273), by Valerius Flaccus, in his Argonauticon, lib. i. 314, and in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.

1457. As Bech points out, Chaucer here copies the remark in Dares:--'Demonstrare cos qui cum Iasone profecti sunt non uidetur nostrum esse: sed qui uolunt eos cognoscere, Argonautas legant.'--De excidio Troiae historia, ed. Meister, 1873; cap. 1. The reference is to the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus, lib. i., where the list of the Argonauts may be found. It also occurs in bk. i. of the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius. It is a dreary catalogue; or, as Chaucer says, a sufficiently long tale. There is a shorter list in Statius, Thebaid, bk. v. All the lists make much of Hercules (see l. 1454).

1459. Philotetes (so spelt by Guido, see the Eng. version, p. 12, ll. 6 and 10, where the passage from Guido is quoted) was the name of the pilot to the expedition. Valerius Flaccus identifies him with Philoctetes, son of Poeas or Pæas; as he introduces him by the name of Poeantius; Argon, i. 391.

1463. Lemnoun, Lemnos; it is very common to quote proper names in forms resembling the accusative case. This, as Chaucer says, is not in Guido, but in Ovid; see Ovid's Heroid. vi. 50, 117, 136. At the same time it would be interesting to know what version of Guido Chaucer followed; for it is a very singular fact, that whilst the story of Hypsipyle is neither in the alliterative Eng. version, nor in Lydgate, it does occur, at this point, in a Spanish version, printed at Medina in 1587. There the heading of bk. ii. c. x. is--'Como Iason aporto con tormenta a la Isla de Lemos, y caso con la infanta Hisifile.'

1467. Isiphilee, Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, and queen of Lemnos; she saved her father when the women of Lemnos killed all the other men in the island, and subsequently entertained Jason. As the letter in Ovid does not give all the circumstances, perhaps Chaucer consulted Valerius Flaccus, Argonauticon, lib. ii., and Statius, Thebais, lib. v., or, perhaps, the Fables of Hyginus, cap. xv.; but he makes more of Hercules than do these authorities, and seems to be inventing.

1468. Thoas doghter the king, the daughter of king Thoas. This is the usual idiom; see my note to Squi. Tale, F 209.

1469. Cf. Valerius Flaccus, Argon. ii. 311:--

'Ecce procul ualidis Lemnon tendentia remis Arma notant: rapitur subito regina tumultu, Conciliumque uocat: non illis obuia tela Ferre, nec infestos deerat furor improbus ignes, Ni Ueneris saeuas fregisset Mulciber iras.'

In Statius, Theb. v., the Lemnian women receive the Argonauts with hostility at first, and attack them with missiles.

1476. Socour; cf. 'succurrere disco'; Verg. Æn. i. 630.

1479. This is a curious error; him should be her. As the Lemnian women had just killed every man in the island, the messenger must needs have been a woman. In fact, her name was Iphinoë; Val. Flacc. Argon. ii. 327. The account in Apollonius Rhodius is somewhat fuller; but I find no mention of the cogge.

1481. Cogge, a cock-boat; from the O. Fr. coque, also spelt cogue, a kind of vessel, sometimes a ship of war, but also a merchant-vessel, and here a small boat. See coque or cogue in Godefroy's O. Fr. Dict. Cogge occurs in the Morte Arthure, 476, 738; Allit. Poems, ed. Morris, iii. 152; &c. 'Cogboote, cokbote, scafa'; Prompt. Parv.

1487. Broken, ship-wrecked. 'The ships were broken' 1 Kings xxii. 48; cf. Jonah i. 4. Oght wo begoon, in any way distressed. Note resemblances to the tale of Dido.

1488. Lodesmen, pilots; see note to Ch. Prol. 403. 'Lodesman of a shippe, pilotte'; Palsgrave.

1509. Cf. Valerius Flaccus, Arg. ii. 351:--

'Praecipueque ducis casus mirata requirit Hypsipyle; quae fata trahant, quae regis agat uis.'

1514. Los; spelt loos in MS. Tn.; for the o is long. It means 'praise' or 'renown,' and occurs six times in Ho. Fame (1620, 1621, 1626, 1722, 1817, 1900). Los, with short o, means 'loss.'

1515. Read th'áventúres, in four syllables.

1528. Prof. Corson cites some parallel passages, viz:--

'And therto he was hardy, wys, and riche'; Squi. Ta., F 19.

'Hardy, and wyse, and riche, and therto free'; Ship. Ta., B 1366.

'We alle desyren, if hit mighte be, To have housbondes hardy, wyse, and free, And secree'; Non. Pr. Ta., B 4103.

1529. Three pointes. The reference is not to l. 1528, which mentions four points, but to ll. 1530-3 following. I.e. the three points are fredom, lustihede, and being a greet gentil-man; or otherwise, liberality, youthful vigour, and high birth. Cf. l. 1405.

1533. Accent Tessálie on the second syllable.

1535. Shamefast (from A.S. sceamu) is here trisyllabic. On the corrupt modern spelling shamefaced see Trench, Eng. Past and Present.

1536. He hadde lever, he would have it dearer, he would rather.

1538-40. In order to scan l. 1538, the word almighty is necessary, though found in MS. A. only. Or else we must insert him, and read--'As wolde God that I hadde him i-yive.' The sense is--'As (I pray) that God would permit that I might have given my blood and flesh, provided that I might still live (to see the result), on the condition that he had anywhere a wife (suitable) to his rank.' So that means 'provided that'; as in 'so that ye be not wroth,' C. T., D 2248 (Sompnoures Tale), in the Harleian MS.; and in the following:--

'Sche saide, sire, ich wille help the, So that thou wille spousi me.'--Seven Sages, ed. Weber, 2663.

As to the expression with the nones, we may compare it with such expressions as with-than, with-thon-that, with-tho-the, with-that, all meaning 'provided that,' and all occurring in the Glossary to Spec. of Eng., Part I. And since for the nones means 'for the occasion' (see Prologue to C. T., 379), so with the nones is 'with the occasion,' and hence 'provided that.' I cannot at all agree with what seems to me the ludicrous emendation in some late editions, which change nones into bones, and delete the comma after live; 'provided that I might live with the bones.' At any rate, there is no authority for this. The old editions and MSS. all alike read nones; and we have the phrase again (pronounced with th' non-es), in the Ho. Fame, 2099.

1546. To come to hous upon, to become at home with, to become familiar with.

1551. The former syllable in Yiftes forms a foot by itself.

1552. As wolde god, as (I wish) that God might will or permit; as in l. 1538.

1558. Thoriginal, the original. As this 'tells all the case,' i.e. all Jason's subtlety, he is probably referring to Ovid, Her. Ep. vi. Flaccus says that Hercules induced Jason to quit Lemnos, and proceed on his voyage. Statius mentions Hypsipyle's twin sons, and relates some of her later history.

1564. Chaucer here follows the sixth letter of Ovid's Heroides. Lines 1569-1575 follow four lines of the Latin text, viz. 123-4, and 159-60, which refer to the twins and Medea:--

'Si quaeris, cui sunt similes; cognosceris illis. Fallere non norunt; caetera patris habent.... Quam fratri germana fuit, miseroque parenti filia; tam natis, tam sit acerba uiro.'