Part 119

2684. ‘Heaven seems no gain to him.’ The forms ‘þinken’ and ‘þenken’ are identified by Gower under ‘þenken’; but ‘þinke’ is sometimes used in rhyme, and indifferently for either, e.g. v. 213, 254.

2701. unavised, adv., ‘in a foolish fashion.’

2703 ff. Cp. Mir. 27337 ff., where the author pleads guilty to these crimes, as the lover also does below.

2705 (margin). Ecclus. xix. 27, ‘Amictus corporis et risus dentium et ingressus hominis enunciant de illo.’

2706 f. the newe guise of lusti folk, i.e. the latest fashion for men of pleasure.

2713 f. This is one of the cases in which the third recension reading has been introduced over erasure into the text of F: cp. Prol. 336, iv. 1321, 1361, vii. Lat. Verses after ll. 1640 and 1984.

The original lines are given in the foot-note in accordance with S. They were altered perhaps to avoid repetition of 2681 f.

2745. songe, so here in F and A, elsewhere ‘song.’

2746. Wherof: cp. l. 498.

2764. hire good astat. For the loss of inflexion cp. ii. 2341, ‘his slyh compas.’

2769. whiche: often treated as a monosyllable in the verse, as ii. 604, iv. 1498, &c., but cp. l. 2825.

2787. Prol. 585 ff.

2795. bere: pret., as shown both by sense and rhyme.

2801. good. The original reading was ‘godd,’ which perhaps may be thought better, but the alteration may have been made by the author to avoid a repetition of the same word that he had used in l. 2796. The meaning is, ‘he did not remember that there was anything else of worth except himself.’

2830. And fedden hem, i.e. ‘And that they fed themselves,’ &c.; cp. 2833, ‘and seide.’

2883. sein: so ii. 170, iii. 757, in rhyme always.

2890. Written in F ‘vnder the þe kinges,’ as if to make a distinction, but ‘þee’ in the next line.

2939. The punctuation after ‘godd’ is on the authority of F: otherwise it would be better to take ‘with godd and stonde in good acord’ together.

2951. He let it passe &c. The preceding sentence is broken off, and a new one begins which takes no account of the negative: see note on i. 98. This seems better than to make ‘it’ refer to his pride, for ‘mynde’ can hardly mean anything here but memory.

3032. ‘He found the same gentleness in his God.’

3050. can no love assise, ‘can adapt no love to his liking.’

3067 ff. The tale of the Three Questions is one of which I cannot trace the origin, notwithstanding the details of name and place which are given at the end, viz. that the king was of Spain and was called Alphonso, that the knight’s name was Pedro and his daughter’s Petronilla. A reference to the second and third questions occurs in the Mirour de l’omme, 12601 ff.

3153. herd you seid: so v. 1623, 7609, ‘herd me told.’ This form of expression, for ‘herd you seie,’ ‘herd me telle,’ may have sprung from such a use of the participle as we have in v. 3376, ‘Sche hadde herd spoke of his name’: cp. the use of participle for infinitive with ‘do’ in ii. 1799 and Chaucer, Cant. Tales, A 1913, ‘Hath Theseüs doon wroght,’ E 1098, ‘Hath doon yow kept.’

3203. par chaunce: see note on 2049.

3246. ansuerde. This seems to be a plural form of the participle, used here for the rhyme: so iv. 1810, v. 6789.

3296. leste: elsewhere ‘lest’; cp. 3106, 3313. Here we have ‘leste’ A, F, ‘lest’ JC, B. The form ‘moste’ is undoubtedly used for ‘most’ (adv.) i. 307.

3308. reprise, ‘trouble,’ as we have ‘paine et reprise’ in Mirour, 3968.

3365 f. lete That I ne scholde be: cp. iv. 454. In both cases ‘lete’ is the past participle of ‘leten’ (lǣtan), and not from ‘letten,’ meaning ‘hinder.’ In these expressions ‘lete’ means ‘left’ in the sense of ‘omitted’ (like ‘lete Of wrong to don,’ vii. 2726), and in this usage is naturally followed by a negative: cp. v. 4465, ‘I wol noght lete, What so befalle of mi beyete, That I ne schal hire yive and lene.’ The same phrase occurs with the past participle ‘let’ (meaning ‘hindered’) in ii. 128, and the sense is nearly the same.