Part 126

3033 ff. This saying is sometimes given in the form of a prophecy, and attributed to the predecessor of Boniface, whose resignation he was said to have procured: see the passage quoted on l. 2803.

3037. to the houndes like, ‘after the likeness of the hound’: cp. i. 2791, ‘to his liche.’ The form ‘like’ would hardly be admissible here as an adjective for ‘lik.’

3056. This prophecy no doubt was current among the many attributed to the Abbot Joachim, but I do not find it exactly in the form here given. The quotation of it in the margin of F is in a different hand from that of the text and of the heading ‘Nota de prophecia’ &c. The omission of the Latin altogether in some manuscripts, as AdT, W, has no special significance for this passage.

3081 f. ‘He shall not be able to abstain from hindering him.’

3095. This saying, which is here attributed to Seneca, and which appears also in the Mirour de l’omme in a slightly different form, 3831 ff., may be based really upon the well-known passage of Dante, Inf. xiii. 64.

Latin Verses. vi. 4. Dumque, for ‘Dum,’ as sometimes in the Vox Clamantis.

ethnica flamma: see note on l. 20.

3122 ff. Cp. Mirour, 3819 ff.

3160. See note on i. 232.

3187. The Latin books referred to are the current lives of Saint Silvester, the substance of which is reproduced in the Legenda Aurea. Gower tells the story in considerably better style than we have it there, with amplifications of his own, especially as regards the reflections of Constantine, 3243 ff., and the preaching of Silvester to the Emperor, 3383 ff. There are some variations in detail from the current account which may or may not point to a special source. For example, in the Life of Silvester we are told that the Emperor met the lamenting mothers as he was riding up to the Capitol to take his bath of blood, and in all forms of the legend that I have seen the mountain where Silvester lay in hiding was Soracte (or Saraptis) and not Celion. The name may however have been altered by Gower for metrical reasons, as was sometimes his habit; see note on i. 1407 (end).

3210. of Accidence. ‘Accidentia’ in its medical sense is explained as ‘affectus praeter naturam’: cp. v. 763.

3243 ff. These reflections, continued to l. 3300, are an expanded and improved form of the rather tasteless string of maxims given in the legend, the most pointed of which is that with which our author concludes, ‘Omnium se esse dominum comprobat, qui servum se monstraverit pietatis.’

3260. his oghne wone. This appears to mean ‘according to his own habits,’ like ‘his oghne hondes’ (i. 1427), ‘his oghne mouth’ (v. 5455), for ‘with his own hands,’ &c.

3507. vertu sovereine: a clear case of the French feminine inflexion, which must have been a very natural variation in such expressions as this; cp. i. 2677. In French as in English our author would feel at liberty to adapt the form to the rhyme or metre: so we have ‘sa joye soverein’ Mir. 4810, but ‘ma sovereine joie’ Bal. ix. 7.

3517. betwen ous tweie, i.e. ‘together’; cp. l. 653.

LIB. III.

4. ther nis on. Note the repetition of the negative from the clause above.

71. the leng the ferre, i.e. ‘the lengere the ferre.’

78. mihte I, for ‘ne mihte I’: cp. ii. 2423.

83. redy to wraththe: cp. ii. 3444, ‘redi to the feith.’

143 ff. The story is from Ovid, Her. Ep. xi. It is that which is referred to by Chaucer, Cant. Tales, B 77,

‘But certeinly no word ne writeth he Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee, That loved hir owene brother synfully.’

(Note that the name ‘Canace’ is used by Gower so as to rhyme with ‘place.’)

In spite of the character of the subject, it must be allowed that Gower tells the story in a very touching manner, and he shows good taste in omitting some of Ovid’s details, as for example those in Ep. 39-44. The appeal of Canace to her father as given by Gower is original, and so for the most part is the letter to her brother and the picturesque and pathetic scene of her death. On the whole this must be regarded as a case in which our author has greatly improved upon his authority. Lydgate obviously has Gower’s story before him when he introduces the tale (quite needlessly) into his Fall of Princes. It may be noted that in Ovid also the catastrophe is given as a consequence of ungoverned anger:

‘Imperat, heu! ventis, tumidae non imperat irae.’

172. lawe positif: see note on Prol. 247. Gower’s view is that there is nothing naturally immoral about an incestuous marriage, but that it is made wrong by the ‘lex positiva’ of the Church. This position he makes clear at the beginning of the eighth book, by showing that in the first ages of the world such marriages must have been sanctioned by divine authority, and that the idea of kinship as a bar to marriage had grown up gradually, cousins being allowed to marry among the Jews, though brother and sister might not, and that finally the Church had ordered,

‘That non schal wedden of his ken Ne the seconde ne the thridde.’ viii. 147 f.

If attacked by Chaucer with regard to the subject of this story, he would no doubt defend himself by arguing that the vice with which it dealt was not against nature, and that the erring brother and sister were in truth far more deserving of sympathy than the father who took such cruel vengeance. Notwithstanding his general strictness in matters of morality, Gower was something of a fatalist, cp. the recurring phrases of 1222, 1348, 1677, iv. 1524, &c., and he repeatedly emphasizes the irresistible character of the impulses of nature in love; cp. i. 17 ff., 1051 ff., 2621, vi. 1261 ff., and here l. 161 (margin), ‘intollerabilem iuuentutis concupiscenciam.’