Part 134

‘to late war’ is in a kind of loose apposition to the subject.

1429. swiche. Rather perhaps ‘swich,’ as ii. 566 f., v. 377. Most MSS. have ‘such.’

1432 ff. warneth ... bidd. The singular of the imperative seems to be freely interchanged with the plural in this form of address.

1454 (margin). The author dissociates himself personally from the extreme doctrines enunciated in the text, as at first he took care to remind his readers that the character of a lover was for him only an assumed one (i. 63 ff. margin).

1490. and longe er that sche changeth &c. This is a puzzling sentence, and we are not helped by the punctuation of the MSS., which for the most part have a stop after ‘herte.’ I can only suppose that it means ‘and is long before she changes her heart in her youth to marriage.’ We can hardly make ‘longe’ a verb, ‘and may be eager until she changes,’ because of the lines which follow.

1505 ff. Judges xi. Our author has expanded the story so far as regards the mourning for the virginity of Jephthah’s daughter, that being the point with which he was particularly concerned here.

1516. ‘Whether it be of man or woman.’

1537 ff. In the original this is different, ‘Heu me, filia mea, decepisti me et ipsa decepta es: aperui enim os meum ad Dominum, et aliud facere non potero.’ Gower deals freely here as elsewhere with the narrative, especially in the matter of speeches.

1563. fourty daies: in the original ‘duobus mensibus.’

1632 ff. Cp. Mirour, 11694.

1649. as me thenketh ... That, equivalent to ‘me thinketh ... That,’ either ‘as’ or ‘That’ being redundant.

1659. The best MSS. give ‘heþen’ here, not ‘heþene.’

1693 ff. Roman de Troie, 18385 ff. In the medieval Tale of Troy it is the love of Polyxena which serves as motive for the withdrawal of Achilles from the war.

1723. which I travaile fore. We have here rather a remarkable instance of emphasis thrown on the preposition, with a modification of form for the sake of the rhyme: cp. ii. 565.

1741. On whether bord, i.e. on which tack: technical terms of the sea occur several times in the Confessio Amantis, e.g. v. 3119, 7048, viii. 1983.

1810. made: cp. Prol. 300.

1815 ff. Gower seems to have dealt rather freely with this story. The usual form of it gives Palamedes, not Nauplius, as the person who came to fetch Ulysses, and makes Ulysses yoke a horse and an ox together in a plough as a sign of madness: see Hyginus, Fab. xcv. As to the name of Nauplus, see notes on iii. 973, 1002.

1833. That is, ‘feigning to be mad,’ not ‘like one who feigns to be mad’: see note on i. 695.

1847 ff. ‘He thought to try if he were mad or no, however it might please Ulysses,’ that is, whether it pleased him or not. ‘Hou’ seems to be for ‘How so evere’: cp. l. 415.

1875. tothe, written so when the emphasis falls on the preposition, see note on i. 232.

1901 ff. Ovid, Her. Ep. xiii.

1927. F has a stop after ‘londeth,’ thus throwing the clause, ‘and was the ferste there Which londeth,’ into a parenthesis.

1935 ff. 1 Sam. xxviii., where the witch is called ‘mulier pythonem habens.’

1968 ff. The story of the education of Achilles by Chiron, as we have it here, is apparently taken, directly or indirectly, from Statius, Achill. ii. 121 (407) ff.,

‘Nunquam ille imbelles Ossaea per avia damas Sectari, aut timidas passus me cuspide lyncas Sternere, sed tristes turbare cubilibus ursos Fulmineosque sues, et sicubi maxima tigris Aut seducta iugis fetae spelunca leaenae. Ipse sedens vasto facta exspectabat in antro, Si sparsus magno remearem sanguine; nec me Ante nisi inspectis admisit ad oscula telis.’

2014 ff. The argument is to the effect that Prowess, which is acknowledged to be the virtue opposed to Sloth, see Mirour, 10136 &c., must show itself partly in the spirit of warlike boldness, ‘the corage of hardiesce,’ leading to such undertakings as those of which the Lover had disputed the necessity.

2040. And that, i.e. ‘And as to that’: cp. Prol. 122.

2045 ff. The fight between Hercules and Achelous is related in detail by Ovid, Metam. ix. 31-88. Some parts of this seem to be reproduced by Gower, but the details are not very exactly copied. For the story generally he had some other authority, whence he got for example the names ‘Oënes’ and ‘Calidoyne.’