• ‘Ne Narcissus, the faire,’ c.; Kn. Tale, 1083 (A 1941).
  • ‘And dye he moste, he seyde, as dide Ekko
  • For Narcisus’; C. T. 11263 (Frank. Tale, F 951).
779.

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

  • ‘Car le droit estat d’innocence
  • Ressemblent (?) proprement la table
  • Blanche, polie, qui est able
  • A recevoir, sans nul contraire,
  • Ce qu’on y veut peindre ou portraire. 1

The rime of table and able settles the point. Mr. Brock points out a parallel passage in Boethius, which Chaucer thus translates:—‘the soule hadde ben naked of it-self, as a mirour or a clene parchemin . . . Right as we ben wont som tyme by a swifte pointed to ficchen lettres emprented in the smothenesse or in the pleinnesse of the table of wex, or in parchemin that ne hath no figure ne note in it’; bk. v. met. 4. But I doubt if Chaucer knew much of Boethius in 1369; and in the present passage he clearly refers to a prepared white surface, not to a tablet of wax. ‘Youth and white paper take any impression’; Ray’s Proverbs.

1

The thief is the Ribauld; the ploughboy, the Labourer; the apothecary, the Physicien; the soldier, the Garde; the tailor, the Marchaunt; the tinker, the Smyth. Only two are changed.

791.

An allusion to the old proverb which is given in Hending in the form—‘Whose young lerneth, olt [old] he ne leseth’; Hending’s Prov. l. 45. Kemble gives the medieval Latin—‘Quod puer adsuescit, leviter dimittere nescit’; Gartner, Dicteria, p. 24 b. Cf. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 69; also Rom. de la Rose, 13094.

799.

John of Gaunt married Blaunche at the age of nineteen.

805.

Imitated from Machault’s Dit du Vergier and Fontaine Amoureuse.

  • ‘Car il m’est vis que je veoie,
  • Au joli prael ou j’estoie,
  • La plus tres belle compaignie
  • Qu’oncques fust veue ne oïe:’
  • Dit du Vergier, ed. Tarbé, p. 14.
  • ‘Tant qu’il avint, qu’en une compagnie
  • Où il avait mainte dame jolie
  • Juene, gentil, joïeuse et envoisie
  • Vis, par Fortune,
  • (Qui de mentir à tous est trop commune),
  • Entre les autres l’une
  • Qui, tout aussi com li solaus la lune
  • Veint de clarté,
  • Avait-elle les autres sormonté
  • De pris, d’onneur, de grace, de biauté; c.
  • Fontaine Amoureuse (in Trial Forewords, p. 47).

These are, no doubt, the lines to which Tyrwhitt refers in his remarks on the present passage in a note to the last paragraph of the Persones Tale. Observe also how closely the fifth line of the latter passage answers to l. 812.

823.

Is, which is; as usual. I propose this reading. That of the MSS. is very bad, viz. ‘Than any other planete in heven.’

824.

‘The seven stars’ generally mean the planets; but, as the sun and moon and planets have just been mentioned, the reference may be to the well-known seven stars in Ursa Major commonly called Charles’s Wain. In later English, the seven stars sometimes mean the Pleiades; see Pleiade in Cotgrave’s French Dictionary, and G. Douglas, ed. Small, i. 69. 23, iii. 147. 15. The phrase is, in fact, ambiguous; see note to P. Plowman, C. xviii. 98.

831.

Referring to Christ and His twelve apostles.

835-7.

Resembles Le Roman de la Rose, 1689-91 (see p. 164)—

  • ‘Li Diex d’Amors, qui, l’arc tendu,
  • Avoit toute jor atendu
  • A moi porsivre et espier.’
840.

Koch proposes to omit maner, and read—‘No counseyl, but at hir loke.’ It is more likely that counseyl has slipped in, as a gloss upon reed, and was afterwards substituted for it.

849.

Carole, dance round, accompanying the dance with a song. The word occurs in the Rom. de la Rose several times; thus at l. 747, we have:—

  • ‘Lors veissies carole aler,
  • Et gens mignotement baler.’
  • (See p. 125, above.)

Cf. Chaucer’s version, ll. 759, 810; also 744. Dante uses the pl. carole (Parad. xxiv. 16) to express swift circular movements; and Cary quotes a comment upon it to the effect that ‘ carolæ dicuntur tripudium quoddam quod fit saliendo, ut Napolitani faciunt et dicunt.’ He also quotes the expression ‘grans danses et grans karolles ’ from Froissart, ed. 1559, vol. i. cap. 219. That it meant singing as well as dancing appears from the Rom. de la Rose, l. 731.

858.

Chaucer gives Virginia golden hair; Doct. Tale, C 38. Compare the whole description of the maiden in the E. version of the Rom. of the Rose, ll. 539-561 (p. 116, above).

861.

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

‘Simpl’ of | good moch | el noght | to wyde.’

894.

‘In reasonable cases, that involve responsibility.’

908.

Somewhat similar are ll. 9-18 of the Doctoures Tale.

916.

Scan by reading—They n’ shóld’ hav’ foúnd-e, c.

917.

A wikked signe, a sign, or mark, of wickedness.

919.

Imitated from Machault’s Remède de Fortune (see Trial Forewords, p. 48):—

  • Et sa gracieuse parole,
  • Qui n’estoit diverse ne folle,
  • Etrange, ne mal ordenée,
  • Hautaine, mès bien affrenèe,
  • Cueillie à point et de saison,
  • Fondée sur toute raison,
  • Tant plaisant et douce à oïr,
  • Que chascun faisoit resjoir’; c.

Line 922 is taken from this word for word.

927-8.

‘Nor that scorned less, nor that could better heal,’ c.

943.

Canel-boon, collar-bone; lit. channel-bone, i. e. bone with a channel behind it. See Three Metrical Romances (Camden Soc.), p. 19; Gloss. to Babees Book, ed. Furnivall; and the Percy Folio MS., i. 387. I put and for or; the sense requires a conjunction.

948.

Here Whyte, representing the lady’s name, is plainly a translation of Blaunche. The insertion of whyte in l. 905, in the existing authorities, is surely a blunder, and I therefore have omitted it. It anticipates the climax of the description, besides ruining the scansion of the line.

950.

There is here some resemblance to some lines in G. Machault’s Remède de Fortune (see Trial Forewords, p. 49):—

  • —‘ma Dame, qui est clamée
  • De tous, sur toutes belle et bonne,
  • Chascun por droit ce nom li donne.
957.

For hippes, Bell prints lippes; a comic reading.

958.

This reading means—‘I knew in her no other defect’; which, as no defect has been mentioned, seems inconsistent. Perhaps we should read no maner lak, i. e. no ‘sort of defect in her (to cause) that all her limbs should not be proportionate.’

964.

A common illustration. See Rom. de la Rose, 7448; Alexander and Dindimus, ll. 233-5. Duke Francesco Maria had, for one of his badges, a lighted candle by which others are lighted; with the motto Non degener addam, i. e. I will give without loss; see Mrs. Palliser’s Historic Devices, p. 263. And cf. Cant. Ta. D 333-5.

973.

The accents seem to fall on She and have, the e in wold-e being elided. Otherwise, read: She wóld-e háv’ be.

982.

Liddell and Scott explain Gk. ϕοίνιξ as ‘the fabulous Egyptian bird phœnix, first in Hesiod, Fragment 50. 4; then in Herodotus, ii. 73.’ Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, bk. 16. c. 74, refers us to Isidore, Ambrosius (lib. 5), Solinus, Pliny (lib. 10), and Liber de Naturis Rerum; see Solinus, Polyhistor. c. 33. 11; A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, c. 34. Philip de Thaun describes it in his Bestiaire, l. 1089; see Popular Treatises on Science, ed. Wright, p. 113. ‘The Phœnix of Arabia passes all others. Howbeit, I cannot tell what to make of him; and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that there is neuer but one of them in all the world, and the same not commonly seen’; Holland, tr. of Pliny, bk. 10. c. 2.

  • ‘Tous jors est-il ung seul Fenis ’; c.
  • Rom. de la Rose, 16179.
  • ‘Una est, quæ reparet, seque ipsa reseminet, ales;
  • Assyrii phœnica uocant.’
  • —Ovid, Met. xv. 392.

Scan: Th’ soléyn | feníx | of A | rabye ∥. Cf. ‘Com la fenix souleine est au sejour En Arabie’: Gower, Balade 35.

987.

Chaucer refers to Esther again; e. g. in his Merchant’s Tale (E 1371, 1744); Leg. of G. Women, prol. 250; and in the Tale of Melibee (B 2291).

997.

Cf. Vergil, Æn. i. 630: ‘Haud ignara mali.’

1021.

In balaunce, i. e. in a state of suspense. F. en balance; Rom. de la Rose, 13871, 16770.

1024.

This sending of lovers on expeditions, by way of proving them, was in accordance with the manners of the time. Gower explains the whole matter, in his Conf. Amant, lib. 4 (ed. Pauli, ii. 56):—

  • ‘Forthy who secheth loves grace,
  • Where that these worthy women are,
  • He may nought than him-selve spare
  • Upon his travail for to serve,
  • Whereof that he may thank deserve, . . .
  • So that by londe and ek by ship
  • He mot travaile for worship
  • And make many hastif rodes,
  • Somtime in Pruse, somtime in Rodes,
  • And somtime into Tartarie,
  • So that these heralds on him crie
  • “Vailant! vailant! lo, where he goth!” ’ c.

Chaucer’s Knight (in the Prologue) sought for renown in Pruce, Alisaundre, and Turkye.

There is a similar passage in Le Rom. de la Rose, 18499-18526. The first part of Machault’s Dit du Lion (doubtless the Book of the Lion of which Chaucer’s translation is now lost) is likewise taken up with the account of lovers who undertook feats, in order that the news of their deeds might reach their ladies. Among the places to which they used to go are mentioned Alexandres, Alemaigne, Osteriche, Behaigne, Honguerie, Danemarche, Prusse, Poulaine, Cracoe, Tartarie, c. Some even went ‘jusqu’à l’Arbre sec, Ou li oisel pendent au bec.’ This alludes to the famous Arbre sec or Dry Tree, to reach which was a feat indeed; see Yule’s edition of Marco Polo, i. 119; Maundeville, ed. Halliwell, p. 68; Mätzner, Sprachproben, ii. 185.

As a specimen of the modes of expression then prevalent, Warton draws attention to a passage in Froissart, c. 81, where Sir Walter Manny prefaces a gallant charge upon the enemy with the words—‘May I never be embraced by my mistress and dear friend, if I enter castle or fortress before I have unhorsed one of these gallopers.’

1028.

Go hoodles, travel without even the protection of a hood; by way of bravado. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. § 18 (ed. Hazlitt, iii. 4), says of a society called the Fraternity of the Penitents of Love—‘Their object was to prove the excess of their love, by shewing with an invincible fortitude and consistency of conduct . . . that they could bear extremes of heat and cold. . . . It was a crime to wear fur on a day of the most piercing cold; or to appear with a hood, cloak, gloves or muff.’ See the long account of this in the Knight de la Tour Landry, ed. Wright, p. 169; and cf. The Squyer of Low Degree, 171-200.

What is meant by the drye se (dry sea) is disputed; but it matters little, for the general idea is clear. Mr. Brae, in the Appendix to his edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe (p. 101), has a long note on the present passage. Relying on the above quotation from Warton, he supposes hoodless to have reference to a practice of going unprotected in winter, and says that ‘dry sea’ may refer to any frozen sea. But it may equally refer to going unprotected in summer, in which case he offers us an alternative suggestion, that ‘any arid sandy desert might be metaphorically called a dry sea.’ The latter is almost a sufficient explanation; but if we must be particular, Mr. Brae has yet more to tell us. He says that, at p. 1044 (Basle edition) of Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographie, there is a description of a large lake which was dry in summer. ‘It is said that there is a lake near the city of Labac, adjoining the plain of Zircknitz [Czirknitz], which in winter-time becomes of great extent. . . . But in summer the water drains away, the fish expire, the bed of the lake is ploughed up, corn grows to maturity, and, after the harvest is over, the waters return, c. The Augspourg merchants have assured me of this, and it has been since confirmed to me by Vergier, the bishop of Cappodistria’ [Capo d’Istria]. The lake still exists, and is no fable. It is the variable lake of Czirknitz, which sometimes covers sixty-three square miles, and is sometimes dry. It is situate in the province of Krain, or Carniola; Labac is the modern Laybach or Laibach, N.E. of Trieste. See the articles Krain, Czirknitz in the Engl. Cyclopædia, and the account of the lake in The Student, Sept. 1869.

That Chaucer really referred to this very lake becomes almost certain, if we are to accept Mr. Brae’s explanation of the next line. See the next note.

1029.

Carrenare. Mr. Brae suggests that the reference is to the ‘gulf of the Carnaro or Quarnaro in the Adriatic,’ to which Dante alludes in the Inferno, ix. 113, as being noted for its perils. Cary’s translation runs thus:—

  • ‘As where Rhone stagnates on the plains of Arles,
  • Or as at Pola, near Quarnaro’s gulf,
  • That closes Italy and laves her bounds,
  • The place is all thick spread with sepulchres.

It is called in Black’s Atlas the Channel of Quarnerolo, and is the gulf which separates Istria from Croatia. The head of the gulf runs up towards the province of Carniola, and approaches within forty miles (at the outside) of the lake of Czirknitz (see note above). I suppose that Quarnaro may be connected with Carn-iola and the Carn-ic Alps, but popular etymology interpreted it to mean ‘charnel-house,’ from its evil reputation. This appears from the quotations cited by Mr. Brae; he says that the Abbé Fortis quotes a Paduan writer, Palladio Negro, as saying—‘E regione Istriæ, sinu Palatico, quem nautæ carnarium vocitant’; and again, Sebastian Munster, in his Cosmographie, p. 1044 (Basle edition) quotes a description by Vergier, Bishop of Capo d’Istria—‘par deça le gouffre enragé lequel on appelle vulgairement Carnarie d’autantque le plus souvent on le voit agité de tempestes horribles; et là s’engloutissent beaucoup de navires et se perdent plusieurs hommes.’ In other words, the true name Quarnaro or Carnaro was turned by the sailors into Carnario, which means in Italian ‘the shambles’; see Florio’s Dict., ed. 1598. This Carnario might become Careynaire or Carenare in Chaucer’s English, by association with the M. E. careyne or caroigne, carrion. This word is used by Chaucer in the Kn. Tale, 1155 (Six-text, A 2013), where the Ellesmere MS. has careyne, and the Cambridge and Petworth MSS. have careyn.

For myself, I am well satisfied with the above explanation. It is probable, and it suffices; and stories about this dry sea may easily have been spread by Venetian sailors. I may add that Maundeville mentions ‘a gravely see’ in the land of Prestre John, ‘that is alle gravele and sonde, with-outen any drope of watre; and it ebbethe and flowethe in grete wawes, as other sees don’: ed. Halliwell, p. 272. This curious passage was pointed out by Prof. Hales, in a letter in the Academy, Jan. 28, 1882, p. 65.

We certainly ought to reject the explanation given with great assurance in the Saturday Review, July, 1870, p. 143, col. 1, that the allusion is to the chain of mountains called the Carena or Charenal, a continuation of the Atlas Mountains in Africa. The writer says—‘Leonardo Dati ( a. d. 1470), speaking of Africa, mentions a chain of mountains in continuation of the Atlas, 300 miles long, “commonly called Charenal.” In the fine chart of Africa by Juan de la Coxa (1500), this chain is made to stretch as far as Egypt, and bears the name of Carena. La Salle, who was born in 1398, lays down the same chain, which corresponds, says Santarem (Histoire de la Cosmographie, iii. 456), to the Καρήνη of Ptolemy. These allusions place it beyond doubt [?] that the drie see of Chaucer was the Great Sahara, the return from whence [ sic ] homewards would be by the chain of the Atlas or [ sic ] Carena.’ On the writer’s own shewing, the Carena was not the Atlas, but a chain stretching thence towards Egypt; not an obvious way of returning home! Whereas, if the ‘dry sea’ were the lake of Czirknitz, the obvious way of getting away from it would be to take ship in the neighbouring gulf of Quarnaro. And how could Chaucer come to hear of this remote chain of mountains?

1034.

‘But why do I tell you my story?’ I. e. let me go on with it, and tell you the result.

1037.

Again imitated from Machault’s Remède de Fortune:—

  • ‘Car c’est mes cuers, c’est ma creance,
  • C’est mes desirs, c’est m’esperaunce,
  • C’est ma santé . . . .
  • C’est toute ma bonne éürté,
  • C’est ce qui me soustient en vie,’ c.

Line 1039 is closely translated. See Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 48.

1040.

I here substitute lisse for goddesse, as in the authorities. The blunder is obvious; goddesse clogs the line with an extra syllable, and gives a false rime such as Chaucer never makes 1 . He rimes blisse with kisse, lisse, misse, and wisse. Thus in the Frankelein’s Tale, F 1237—

  • ‘What for his labour and his hope of blisse,
  • His woful herte of penaunce hadde a lisse.’

Lisse is alleviation, solace, comfort; and l. 1040 as emended, fairly corresponds to Machault’s ‘C’est ce qui me soustient en vie,’ i. e. it is she who sustains my life. The word goddesse was probably substituted for lisse, because the latter was obsolescent.

1

Koch instances góddes in the Envoy to Scogan, 15, which he assumes was góddis. Not at all; it is like Chaucer’s rime of clérkes, derk is; the - es being unaccented. This could never produce goddís, and still less goddísse.

1041.

I change hoolly hirs into hirs hoolly, and omit the following and. In the next line we have—By’r lord; as before (ll. 544, 651, 690).

1047.

Leve (i. e. believe) is here much stronger than trowe, which merely expresses general assent.

1050.

Read—‘And to | behold | e th’alder | fayrest | e.’ After beholde comes the cæsural pause, so that the final e in beholde does not count. Koch proposes to omit alder -. But how came it there?

1057.

The spelling Alcipiades occurs in the Roman de la Rose, 8981, where he is mentioned as a type of beauty—‘qui de biauté avoit adès’—on the authority of ‘Boece.’ The ultimate reference is to Boethius, Cons. Phil. b. iii. pr. 8. l. 32—‘the body of Alcibiades that was ful fayr.’

1058.

Hercules is also mentioned in Le Rom. de la Rose, 9223, 9240. See also Ho. Fame, 1413.

1060.

Koch proposes to omit al; I would rather omit the. But we may read al th.

1061.

See note to l. 310.

1067.

He, i. e. Achilles himself; see next note.

1069.

Antilegius, a corruption of Antilochus; and again, Antilochus is a mistake for Archilochus, owing to the usual medieval confusion in the forms of proper names. For the story, see next note.

1070.

Dares Frigius, i. e. Dares Phrygius, or Dares of Phrygia. Chaucer again refers to him near the end of Troilus, and in Ho. Fame, 1467 (on which see the note). The works of Dares and Dictys are probably spurious. The reference is really to the very singular, yet popular, medieval version of the story of the Trojan war which was written by Guido of Colonna, and is entitled ‘Historia destructionis Troie, per iudicem Guidonem de Columpna Messaniensem.’ Guido’s work was derived from the Roman de Troie, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure; of which romance there is a late edition by M. Joly. In Mr. Panton’s introduction to his edition of the Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy (Early Eng. Text Society), p. ix., we read—‘From the exhaustive reasonings and proofs of Mons. Joly as to the person and age and country of his author, it is sufficiently manifest that the Roman du Troie appeared between the years 1175 and 1185. The translation, or version, of the Roman by Guido de Colonna was finished, as he tells us at the end of his Historia Trioana, in 1287. From one or other, or both, of these works, the various Histories, Chronicles, Romances, Gestes, and Plays of The Destruction of Troy, The Prowess and Death of Hector, The Treason of the Greeks, c., were translated, adapted, or amplified, in almost every language of Europe.’

The fact is, that the western nations of Europe claimed connexion, through Æneas and his followers, with the Trojans, and repudiated Homer as favouring the Greeks. They therefore rewrote the story of the Trojan war after a manner of their own; and, in order to give it authority, pretended that it was derived from two authors named Dares Phrygius (or Dares of Phrygia) and Dictys Cretensis (or Dictys of Crete). Dares and Dictys were real names, as they were cited in the time of Ælian ( a. d. 230); and it was said that Dares was a Trojan who was killed by Ulysses. See further in Mr. Panton’s introduction, as above; Morley’s English Writers, vi. 118; and Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 127 (sect. 3). But Warton does not seem to have known that Guido mainly followed Benoit de Sainte-Maure.

The story about the death of Achilles is taken, accordingly, not from Homer but from Guido de Colonna and his predecessor Benoit. It may be found in the alliterative Geste Hystoriale, above referred to (ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 342); or in Lydgate’s Siege of Troye, bk. iv. c. 32. Hecuba invites Achilles and Archilochus to meet her in the temple of Apollo. When they arrive, they are attacked by Paris and a band of men and soon killed, though Achilles first slays seven of his foes with his own hand.

  • ‘There kyld was the kyng, and the knight bothe,
  • And by treason in the temple tirnyt to dethe.’

Here ‘the kyng’ is Achilles, and ‘the knyght’ is Archilochus. It may be added that Achilles was lured to the temple by the expectation that he would there meet Polyxena, and be wedded to her; as Chaucer says in the next line. Polyxena was a daughter of Priam and Hecuba; she is alluded to in Shakespeare’s Troilus, iii. 3. 208. According to Ovid, Metam. xiii. 448, she was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles.

Lydgate employs the forms Archylogus and Anthylogus.

1071.

I supply hir; Koch would supply queen. I do not find that she was a queen.

1075.

Trewely is properly (though not always) trisyllabic. It was inserted after nay, because nede and gabbe were thought to be monosyllables. Even so, the ‘amended’ line is bad. It is all right if trewly be omitted; and I omit it accordingly.

1081.

Penelope is accented on the first e and on o, as in French. Chaucer copies this form from the Roman de la Rose, l. 8694, as appears from his coupling it with Lucrece, whilst at the same time he borrows a pair of rimes. The French has:—

  • ‘Si n’est-il mès nule Lucrece,
  • Ne Penelope nule en Grece.

In the same passage, the story of Lucretia is told in full, on the authority of Livy, as here. The French has: ‘ce dit Titus Livius’; l. 8654. In the prologue to the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer alludes again to Penelope (l. 252), Lucrece of Rome (l. 257), and Polixene (l. 258); and he gives the Legend of Lucrece in full. He again alludes to Lucrece and Penelope in the lines preceding the Man of Lawes Prologue (B 63, 75); and in the Frankelein’s Tale (F 1405, 1443).

1085.

This seems to mean—‘she (Blaunche) was as good (as they), and (there was) nothing like (her), though their stories are authentic (enough).’ But the expression ‘nothing lyke’ is extremely awkward, and seems wrong. Nothing also means ‘not at all’; but this does not help us. In l. 1086, stories should perhaps be storie; then her storie would be the story of Lucrece; cf. l. 1087.

1087.

‘Any way, she (Blaunche) was as true as she (Lucrece).’

1089, 1090.

Read seyë, subjunctive, and seyë, gerund. Cf. knewë, subj., 1133.

Yong is properly monosyllabic. Read—‘I was right yong, the sooth to sey.’ In. l. 1095, yong-e is the definite form.

1096.

Accent besette (= besett’) on the prefix. Else, we must read Without ’ and besettë. We should expect Without-e, as in 1100. Without is rare; but see IV. 17.

1108.

Yit, still. Sit, sitteth; pres. tense.

1113.

I. e. you are like one who confesses, but does not repent.

1118.

Achitofel, Ahitophel; see 2 Sam. xvii.

1119.

According to the Historia Troiana of Guido (see note to l. 1070) it was Antenor (also written Anthenor) who took away the Palladium and sent it to Ulysses, thus betraying Troy. See the Geste Hystoriale, p. 379; or see the extract from Caxton in my Specimens of English from 1394 to 1579, p. 89. Or see Chaucer’s Troilus, bk. iv. l. 204.

1121.

Genelon; also Genilon, as in the Monkes Tale, B 3579. He is mentioned again in the Nonne Preestes Tale, B 4417 (C. T. 15233), and in the Shipmannes Tale, B 1384 (C. T. 13124), where he is called ‘Geniloun of France.’ Tyrwhitt’s note on Genelon in his Glossary is as follows: ‘One of Charlemaigne’s officers, who, by his treachery, was the cause of the defeat at Roncevaux, the death of Roland, c., for which he was torn to pieces by horses. This at least is the account of the author who calls himself Archbishop Turpin, and of the Romancers who followed him; upon whose credit the name of Genelon or Ganelon was for several centuries a synonymous expression for the worst of traitors. ’ See the Chanson de Roland, ed. Gautier; Dante, Inf. xxxii. 122, where he is called Ganellone; and Wheeler’s Noted Names of Fiction. Cf. also the Roman de la Rose, l. 7902-4:—

  • ‘Qu’onques Karles n’ot por Rolant,
  • Quant en Ronceval mort reçut
  • Par Guenelon qui les deçut.’
1123.

Rowland and Olivere, the two most celebrated of Charlemagne’s Twelve Peers of France; see Roland in Wheeler’s Noted Names of Fiction, and Ellis’s Specimens of Early Eng. Metrical Romances, especially the account of the Romance of Sir Otuel.

1126.

I supply right. We find right tho in C. T. 6398, 8420 (D 816, E 544).

1133.

Knew-e, might know; subjunctive mood. See note to l. 1089.

1137.

Accent thou. This and the next line are repeated, nearly, from ll. 743, 744. See also ll. 1305-6.

1139.

I here insert the word sir, as in most of the other places where the poet addresses the stranger.

1152-3.

Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 2006-7:—

  • ‘Il est asses sires du cors
  • Qui a le cuer en sa commande.’
1159.

For this, B. has thus. Neither this nor thus seems wanted; I therefore pay no regard to them.

The squire Dorigen, in the Frankelein’s Tale, consoled himself in the same way (F 947):—

  • ‘Of swich matere made he manye layes,
  • Songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes.’
1162.

Tubal; an error for Jubal; see Gen. iv. 21. But the error is Chaucer’s own, and is common. See Higden’s Polychronicon, lib. iii. c. 11, ed. Lumby, iii. 202; Higden cites the following from Isidorus, lib. ii. c. 24:—‘Quamvis Tubal de stirpe Cayn ante diluvium legatur fuisse musicæ inventor, . . tamen apud Græcos Pythagoras legitur ex malleorum sonitu et chordarum extensione musicam reperisse.’ In Genesis, it is Jubal who ‘was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ’; and Tubal-cain who was ‘an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron.’ The notion of the discovery of music by the former from the observation of the sounds struck upon the anvil of the latter is borrowed from the usual fable about Pythagoras. This fable is also given by Higden, who copies it from Macrobius. It will be found in the Commentary by Macrobius on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. ii. c. 1; and is to the effect that Pythagoras, observing some smiths at work, found that the tones struck upon their anvils varied according to the weights of the hammers used by them; and, by weighing these hammers, he discovered the relations to each other of the various notes in the gamut. The story is open to the objection that the facts are not so; the sound varies according to variations in the anvil or the thing struck, not according to the variation in the striking implement. However, Pythagoras is further said to have made experiments with stretched strings of varying length; which would have given him right results. See Mrs. Somerville’s Connection of the Physical Sciences, sect. 16 and 17.

1169.

Aurora. The note in Tyrwhitt’s Glossary, s. v. Aurora, runs thus:—‘The title of a Latin metrical version of several parts of the Bible by Petrus de Riga, Canon of Rheims, in the twelfth century. Leyser, in his Hist. Poet. Med. Ævi, pp. 692-736, has given large extracts from this work, and among others the passage which Chaucer seems to have had in his eye (p. 728):—

  • ‘Aure Jubal varios ferramenti notat ictus.
  • Pondera librat in his. Consona quæque facit.
  • Hoc inventa modo prius est ars musica, quamvis
  • Pythagoram dicant hanc docuisse prius.’

Warton speaks of ‘Petrus de Riga, canon of Rheims, whose Aurora, or the History of the Bible allegorised, in Latin verses . . was never printed entire.’—Hist. E. Poet. 1871, iii. 136.

1175.

A song in six lines; compare the eleven-line song above, at l. 475. Lines 1175-6 rime with lines 1179-80.

1198.

Koch scans: Ánd | bounté | withoút’ | mercý∥. This is no better than the reading in the text.

1200.

‘With (tones of) sorrow and by compulsion, yet as though I never ought to have done so.’ Perhaps read wolde, wished (to do).

1206.

Dismal. In this particular passage the phrase in the dismal means ‘on an unlucky day,’ with reference to an etymology which connected dismal with the Latin dies malus. Though we cannot derive dismal immediately from the Lat. dies malus, it is now known that there was an Anglo-French phrase dis mal (= Lat. dies mali, plural); whence the M. E. phrase in the dismal, ‘in the evil days,’ or (more loosely), ‘on an evil day.’ When the exact sense was lost, the suffix - al seemed to be adjectival, and the word dismal became at last an adjective. The A. F. form dismal, explained as les mal jours (evil days), was discovered by M. Paul Meyer in a Glasgow MS. (marked Q. 9. 13, fol. 100, back), in a poem dated 1256; which settles the question. Dr. Chance notes that Chaucer probably took dis-mal to be derived from O. F. dis mal, i. e. ‘ten evils’; see l. 1207.

We can now see the connexion with the next line. The whole sentence means: ‘I think it must have been in the evil days (i. e. on an unlucky day), such as were the days of the ten plagues of Egypt’; and the allusion is clearly to the so-called dies Ægyptiaci, or unlucky days; and woundes is merely a rather too literal translation of Lat. plaga, which we generally translate by plague. In Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 83, we find:—‘In quolibet mense sunt duo dies, qui dicuntur Ægyptiaci, quorum unus est a principio mensis, alter a fine.’ He goes on to shew how they are calculated, and says that, in January, the Egyptian days are the 1st, and the 7th from the end, i. e. the 25th; and he expressly refers the name Ægyptiaci to the plagues of Egypt, which (as some said) took place on Egyptian days; for it was asserted that there were minor plagues besides the ten. See also Brand’s Pop. Antiquities, ed. Ellis, from which I extract the following. Barnabe Googe thus translates the remarks of Naogeorgus on this subject [of days]:—

  • ‘But some of them Egyptian are, and full of jeopardee,
  • And some again, beside the rest, both good and luckie bee.’
  • Brand (as above), ii. 45.

‘The Christian faith is violated when, so like a pagan and apostate, any man doth observe those days which are called Ægyptiaci, ’ c.—Melton’s Astrologaster, p. 56; in Brand, ii. 47. ‘If his Journey began unawares on the dismal day, he feares a mischiefe’; Bp. Hall, Characters of Virtues and Vices; in Brand, ii. 48. ‘Alle that take hede to dysmal dayes, or use nyce observaunces in the newe moone,’ c.; Dialogue of Dives and Pauper (1493); in Brand, i. 9. ‘A dismol day’; Tale of Beryn, 650. Compare also the following:—

  • ‘Her disemale daies, and her fatal houres’;
  • Lydgate, Storie of Thebes, pt. iii.
  • (ed. 1561, fol. 370).

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

  • ‘Thou hast i-be presedent, the people to steere,
  • Thou dotest now on thin olde tos, in the dismale.

In Langtoft’s Chronicle, l. 477 (in Wright’s Polit. Songs, p. 303), John Baliol is attacked in some derisive verses, which conclude with:—‘Rede him at ride in the dismale ’; i. e. advise him to ride on an unlucky day. Cf. The Academy, Nov. 28, 1891, p. 482; c.

The consequence of ‘proposing’ on an unlucky day was a refusal; see l. 1243.

1208.

A priest who missed words in chanting a service was called an overskipper; see my note to P. Plowman, C. xiv. 123.

1219.

Similarly, Troilus was reduced to saying—

‘Mercy, mercy, swete herte!’—Troil. iii. 98.

1234.

‘Unless I am dreaming,’ i. e. unintentionally.

1246.

Cassandra. The prophetic lamentation of Cassandra over the impending fate of Troy is given in the alliterative Geste Hystoriale (E. E. T. S.), p. 88, and in Lydgate’s Siege of Troye, bk. ii. c. 12, from Guido de Colonna; cf. Vergil, Æn. ii. 246.

1248.

Chaucer treats Ilion as if it were different from Troye; cf. Nonne Prestes Tale, B 4546 (C. T. 15362). He merely follows Guido de Colonna and others, who made Ilion the name of the citadel of Troy; see further in note to Ho. of Fame, l. 158.

1288.

M. Sandras (Étude sur Chaucer, p. 95) says this is from Machault’s Jugement du Bon Roi de Behaigne—

  • ‘De nos deux cuers estoit si juste paire
  • Qu’onques ne fu l’un à l’autre contraire.
  • Tuit d’un accord, une pensee avoient.
  • De volenté, de desir se sambloient.
  • Un bien, un mal, une joie sentoient
  • Conjointement.
  • N’onques ne fu entre eux deux autrement.’
1305-6.

Repeated from ll. 743, 744. Cf. ll. 1137-8.

1309.

Imitated in Spenser’s Daphnaida, 184. The Duchess Blaunche died Sept. 12, 1369. The third great pestilence lasted from July to September in that year.

1314.

King, i. e. Edward III; see note to l. 368.

1318.

Possibly the long castel here meant is Windsor Castle; this seems likely when we remember that it was in Windsor Castle that Edward III. instituted the order of the Garter, April 23, 1349; and that he often resided there. A riche hil in the next line appears to have no special significance. The suggestion, in Bell’s Chaucer, that it refers to Richmond (which, after all, is not Windsor) is quite out of the question, because that town was then called Sheen, and did not receive the name of Richmond till the reign of Henry VII., who renamed it after Richmond in Yorkshire, whence his own title of Earl of Richmond had been derived.

1322.

Belle, i. e. bell of a clock, which rang out the hour. This bell, half heard in the dream, seems to be meant to be real. If so, it struck midnight; and Chaucer’s chamber must have been within reach of its sound.

1.

Foules. The false reading lovers was caught from l. 5 below. But the poem opens with a call from a bird to all other birds, bidding them rejoice at the return of Saint Valentine’s day. There is an obvious allusion in this line to the common proverb—‘As fain as fowl of a fair morrow,’ which is quoted in the Kn. Tale, 1579 (A 2437), in P. Plowman, B. x. 153, and is again alluded to in the Can. Yeom. Tale, G 1342. In l. 3, the bird addresses the flowers, and finally, in l. 5, the lovers.

2.

Venus, the planet, supposed to appear as a morning-star, as it sometimes does. See note to Boethius, bk. i. met. 5. l. 9.

Rowes, streaks or rays of light, lit. rows. In the Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 596, Lydgate uses the word of the streaks of light at eventide—‘And while the twilight and the rowes rede Of Phebus light,’ c. Also in Lydgate’s Troy-Book, bk. i. c. 6, ed. 1555, fol. E 1, quoted by Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, 1871, iii. 84:—‘Whan that the rowes and the rayes rede Estward to us full early gonnen sprede.’ Hence the verb rowen, to dawn; P. Plowm. C. ii. 114, xxi. 28; see my Notes to P. Plowman. Tyrwhitt’s Glossary ignores the word.

3.

For day, Bell’s edition has May ! The month is February.

4.

Uprist, upriseth. But in Kn. Tale, 193 (A 1051), uprist-e (with final e ) is the dat. case of a sb.

7.

The final e in sonn-e occurs at the cæsural pause; candle is pronounced nearly as candl’. The sun is here called the candle of Ielosye, i. e. torch or light that discloses cause for jealousy, in allusion to the famous tale which is the foundation of the whole poem, viz. how Phœbus (the Sun) discovered the amour between Mars and Venus, and informed Vulcan of it, rousing him to jealousy; which Chaucer doubtless obtained from his favourite author Ovid (Metam. bk. iv). See the description of ‘Phebus,’ with his ‘torche in honde,’ in ll. 27, 81-84 below. Gower also, who quotes Ovid expressly, has the whole story; Conf. Amant. ed. Pauli, ii. 149. The story first occurs in Homer, Odys. viii. 266-358. And cf. Statius, Theb. iii. 263-316; Chaucer’s Kn. Tale, 1525 (A 2383), c. Cf. also Troil s, iii. 1457.

8.

Blewe; ‘there seems no propriety in this epithet; it is probably a corruption’; Bell. But it is quite right; in M. E., the word is often applied to the colour of a wale or stripe caused by a blow, as in the phrase ‘beat black and blue ’; also to the gray colour of burnt-out ashes, as in P. Plowman, B. iii. 97; also to the colour of lead; ‘as blo as led,’ Miracle-Plays, ed. Marriott, p. 148. ‘Ashen-gray’ or ‘lead-coloured’ is not a very bad epithet for tears:—

  • ‘And round about her tear-distained eye
  • Blue circles streamed.’ Shak. Lucrece, 1586.
9.

Taketh, take ye. With seynt Iohn, with St. John for a surety; borwe being in the dat. case; see note to Squi. Tale, F 596. It occurs also in the Kingis Quair, st. 23; Blind Harry’s Wallace, bk. ix. l. 46; c.

13.

Seynt Valentyne; Feb. 14. See note to Sect, V. l. 309.

21.

Cf. ‘And everich of us take his aventure’; Kn. Tale, 328 (A 1186).

25.

See note to line 7 above; and cf. Troilus, iii. 1450-70:—‘O cruel day,’ c.

29.

In the Proem to Troilus, bk. iii. st. 1, Chaucer places Venus in the third heaven; that is, he begins to reckon from the earth outwards, the spheres being, successively, those of the Moon, Mercury, Venus. Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; see the description of the planets in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, bk. vii. So also, in Troilus, v. 1809, by the seventh sphere he means the outermost sphere of Saturn. But in other poems he adopts the more common ancient mode, of reckoning the spheres in the reverse order, taking Saturn first; in which case Mars comes third. In this he follows Macrobius, who, in his Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. c. 19, has:—‘A sphaera Saturni, quae est prima de septem,’ c.; see further on this borrowing from Macrobius in the note to l. 69. The same mode of reckoning places Venus in the fifth sphere, as in Lenvoy to Scogan, l. 9. In the curious manual of astronomy called The Shepheards Kalendar (pr. in 1604) we find, in the account of Mars, the following: ‘The planet of Mars is called the God of battel and of war, and he is the third planet, for he raigneth next vnder the gentle planet of Jupiter . . . And Mars goeth about the twelue signes in two yeare. ’ The account of Venus has:—‘Next after the Sun raigneth the gentle planet Venus, . . . and she is lady ouer all louers: . . and her two signes is Taurus and Libra . . . This planet Venus runneth in twelue months ouer the xii. signes.’ Also:—‘Next under Venus is the faire planet Mercury . . and his principall signes be these: Gemini is the first . . and the other signe is Virgo, ’ c. See Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 121.

Hence the ‘third heaven’s lord’ is Mars; and Chaucer tells us, that by virtue of his motion in his orbit (as well as by desert) he had won Venus. That is, Venus and Mars were seen in the sky very near each other. We may explain wonne by ‘approached.’

36.

At alle, in any and every case. There is a parallel passage to this stanza in Troilus, bk. iii. st. 4 of the Proem.

38.

Talle, obedient, docile, obsequious. See the account of this difficult word in my Etym. Dictionary, s. v. tall.

42.

Scourging, correction. Compare the phr. under your yerde; Parl. Foules, 640, and the note. I see no reason for suspecting the reading.

49.

‘Unless it should be that his fault should sever their love.’

51.

Loking, aspect; a translation of the Latin astrological term aspectus. They regard each other with a favourable aspect.

54.

Hir nexte paleys, the next palace (or mansion), which belonged to Venus. In astrology, each planet was said to have two mansions, except the sun and moon, which had but one apiece. A mansion, or house, or palace, is that Zodiacal sign in which, for some imaginary reason, a planet was supposed to be peculiarly at home. (The whole system is fanciful and arbitrary.) The mansions of Venus were said to be Taurus and Libra; those of Mars, Aries and Scorpio; and those of Mercury, Gemini and Virgo. See the whole scheme in the introduction to Chaucer’s Astrolabe. The sign here meant is Taurus (cf. l. 86); and the arrangement was that Mars should ‘glide’ or pass out of the sign of Aries into that of Taurus, which came next, and belonged specially to Venus.

55.

A-take, overtaken; because the apparent motion of Venus is swifter than that of Mars. This shews that Mars was, at first, further advanced than Venus along the Zodiac.

61.

Actually repeated in the Nonne Prestes Tale, l. 340 (B 4350):—‘For whan I see the beautee of your face.’ Compare also l. 62 with the same, l. 342; and l. 63 with the same, l. 350.

65.

come, may come; pres. subj. (Lounsbury says ‘preterite’).

69.

That is, the apparent motion of Venus was twice as great as that of Mars. Chaucer here follows Macrobius, Comment. in Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. ch. 19, who says:—‘Rursus tantum a Iove sphæra Martis recedit, ut eundum cursum biennio peragat. Venus autem tanto est regione Martis inferior, ut ei annus satis sit ad zodiacum peragrandum’; that is, Mars performs his orbit in two years, but Venus in one; accordingly, she moves as much in one day as Mars does in two days. Mars really performs his orbit in rather less than two years (about 687 days), and Venus in less than one (about 225 days), but Chaucer’s statement is sufficiently near to facts, the apparent motion of the planets being variable.

71.

This line resembles one in the Man of Lawes Tale, B 1075:—‘And swich a blisse is ther bitwix hem two’; and ll. 71, 72 also resemble the same, ll. 1114, 1115:—

  • ‘Who can the pitous Ioye tellen al
  • Betwix hem three, sin they ben thus y-mette?’
81.

Phebus here passes the palace-gates; in other words, the sun enters the sign of Taurus, and so comes into Venus’ chamber, within her palace. Cf. note to l. 54.

In Chaucer’s time, the sun entered Taurus on the twelfth of April. This is actually mentioned below, in l. 139.

84.

Knokkeden, knocked at the door, i. e. demanded admission.

86.

That is, both Mars and Venus are now in Taurus. The entry of Venus is noticed in l. 72.

89.

The latter syllable of Venus comes at the cæsural pause; but the scansion is best mended by omitting nygh; see footnote.

96.

In the Shepheards Kalendar, Mars is said to be ‘hot and dry’; and Venus to be ‘moist and colde.’ Thus Mars was supposed to cause heat, and Venus to bring rain. The power of Venus in causing rain is fully alluded to in Lenvoy to Scogan, st. 2.

100.

Girt, short for girdeth; not gerte, pt. t.

104.

Nearly repeated in Kn. Tale, 1091 (A 1949):—‘Ne may with Venus holde champartye.’

105.

Bad her fleen, bade her flee; because her motion in her orbit was faster than his. Cf. l. 112.

107.

‘In the palace (Taurus) in which thou wast disturbed.’

111.

Stremes, beams, rays; for the eyes of Mars emitted streams of fire (l. 95). Venus is already half past the distance to which Mars’s beams extend. Obscure and fanciful.

113.

Cylenius, Cyllenius, i. e. Mercury, who was born on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia; Vergil, Æn. viii. 139. Tour, tower; another word for mansion. The tower of Cyllenius, or mansion of Mercury, is the sign Gemini; see note to l. 29. Venus passes out of Taurus into the next sign Gemini. ‘The sign Gemini is also domus Murcurii, so that when Venus fled into “the tour” of Cyllenius, she simply slipped into the next door to her own house of Taurus, leaving poor Mars behind to halt after her as he best might’; A. E. Brae, in Notes and Queries, 1st Series, iii. 235.

114.

Voide, solitary; Mars is left behind in Taurus. Besides (according to l. 116) there was no other planet in Germini at that time.

117.

But litil myght. A planet was supposed to exercise its greatest influence in the sign which was called its exaltation; and its least influence in that which was called its depression. The exaltation of Venus was in Pisces; her depression, in Virgo. She was now in Gemini, and therefore halfway from her exaltation to her depression. So her influence was slight, and waning.

119.

A cave. In l. 122 we are told that it stood only two paces within the gate, viz. of Gemini. The gate or entrance into Gemini is the point where the sign begins. By paces we must understand degrees; for the F. word pas evidently represents the Lat. gradus. Venus had therefore advanced to a point which stood only two degrees within (or from the beginning of) the sign. In plain words, she was now in the second degree of Gemini, and there fell into a cave, in which she remained for a natural day, that is (taking her year to be of nearly the same length as the earth’s year) for the term during which she remained within that second degree. Venus remained in the cave as long as she was in that second degree of the sign; from the moment of entering it to the moment of leaving it.

A natural day means a period of twenty-four hours, as distinguished from the artificial day, which was the old technical name for the time from sunrise to sunset. This Chaucer says plainly, in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 7, l. 12—‘the day natural, that is to seyn 24 houris.’

We thus see that the cave here mentioned is a name for the second degree of the sign Gemini.

This being so, I have no doubt at all, that cave is here merely a translation of the Latin technical astrological term puteus. In Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 42, I find:—‘Et in signis sunt quidam gradus, qui dicuntur putei; cum fuerit planeta in aliquo istorum, dicitur esse in puteo, vt 6 gradus Arietis, et 11, etc.’ There are certain degrees in the signs called putei; and when a planet is in one of these, it is said to be in puteo; such degrees, in Aries, are the 6th, 11th, c. Here, unfortunately, Vincent’s information ceases; he refers us, however, to Alcabitius.

Alcabitius (usually Alchabitius), who should rather be called Abdel-Aziz, was an Arabian astrologer who lived towards the middle of the tenth century. His treatise on judicial astrology was translated into Latin by Johannes Hispalensis in the thirteenth century. This translation was printed at Venice, in quarto, in 1481, 1482, and 1502; see Didot, Nouv. Biograph. Universelle.

I found a copy of the edition of 1482 in the Cambridge University Library, entitled Libellus ysagogic us abdilazi .i. serui gloriosi dei. q ui d icitu r alchabiti us ad magisteriu m iudicior um astror um; i n terpretat us a ioa n ne hispale n si. At sign. a 7, back, I found the passage quoted above from Vincent, and a full list of the putei. The putei in the sign of Gemini are the degrees numbered 2, 12, 17, 26, 30. After this striking confirmation of my conjecture, I think no more need be said.

But I may add, that Chaucer expressly mentions ‘Alkabucius’ by name, and refers to him; Treat. on Astrolabe, i. 8. 9. The passage which he there quotes occurs in the same treatise, sign. a 1, back.

120.

Derk, dark. I think it is sufficient to suppose that this word is used, in a purely astrological sense, to mean inauspicious; and the same is true of l. 122, where Venus remains under this sinister influence as long as she remained in the ill-omened second degree of Gemini. There is no need to suppose that the planet’s light was really obscured.

129.

The Fairfax MS. and some editions have the false reading sterre. As Mars was supposed to complete his orbit (360 degrees) in two years (see note to l. 69), he would pass over one degree of it in about two days. Hence Mr. Brae’s note upon this line, as printed in Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 121:—‘The mention of dayes two is so specific that it cannot but have a special meaning. Wherefore, either sterre is a metonym for degree; or which is more probable, Chaucer’s word was originally steppe ( gradus ), and was miscopied sterre by early scribes.’ Here Mr. Brae was exceedingly near the right solution; we now see that sterre was miswritten (not for steppe, but) for steyre, by the mere alteration of one letter. If the scribe was writing from dictation, the mistake was still more easily made, since steyre and sterre would sound very nearly alike, with the old pronunciation. As to steyre, it is the exact literal translation of Lat. gradus, which meant a degree or stair. Thus Minsheu’s Dict. has:—‘a Staire, Lat. gradus. ’ This difficulty, in fact, is entirely cleared up by accepting the reading of the majority of the MSS.

131.

He foloweth her, i. e. the motions of Mars and Venus were in the same direction; neither of them had a ‘retrograde’ motion, but advanced along the signs in the direction of the sun’s apparent motion.

133.

Brenning, burning in the fire of the sun’s heat.

137.

‘Alas; that my orbit has so wide a compass’; because the orbit of Mars is so very much larger than that of Venus. Still larger was the orbit of Saturn; Kn. Tale, 1596 (A 2454). Spere is sphere, orbit.

139.

Twelfte, twelfth. The false reading twelve arose from misreading the symbol ‘.xij.,’ which was used as an abbreviation both for twelfte and for twelve. See Furnivall, Trial Forewords, p. 88. As a fact, it was on the 12 th day of April that the sun entered Taurus; see note to l. 81.

144.

Cylenius, Mercury; as in l. 113. Chevauche, equestrian journey, ride. Used ludicrously to mean a feat of horsemanship in l. 50 of the Manciple’s Prologue. The closely related word chivachye, in Prologue to C. T. 85, means a military (equestrian) expedition. In the present case it simply means ‘swift course,’ with reference to the rapid movement of Mercury, which completes its orbit in about 88 days. Thus the line means—‘Mercury, advancing in his swift course.’

145.

Fro Venus valance. This is the most difficult expression in the poem, but I explain it by reading fallance, which of course is only a guess. I must now give my reasons, as every preceding commentator has given up the passage as hopeless.

The readings of the MSS. all point back to a form valance (as in Ar.) or valauns (as in Tn.); whence the other readings, such as Valaunses, valanus (for valauns ), balance, balaunce, are all deduced, by easy corruptions. But, as no assignable sense has been found for valance, I can only suppose that it is an error for falance or fallance. I know of no instance of its use in English, but Godefroy gives examples of fallance and falence in O. French, though the usual spelling is faillance. The change from faillance or fallance to vallance or valance would easily be made by scribes, from the alliterative influence of the initial letter of the preceding word Venus. Moreover, we have v for f in E. vixen (for fixen ), and in Southern English generally. Even in a Chaucer MS., the curious spelling vigour or vigur for figure occurs over and over again; viz. in the Cambridge MS. (Dd. 3. 53) of Chaucer’s ‘Astrolabe.’

The sense of fallance or faillance is failure, defective. Cotgrave gives us: ‘Faillance, f. a defection, failing, decaying.’ The numerous examples in Godefroy shew that it was once a common word. It represents a Lat. fem. * fallentia.

I hold it to be the exact literal translation into French of the Lat. technical (astrological) term detrimentum. In my edition of Chaucer’s Astrolabe (E. E. T. S.), p. lxvii., I explained that every planet had either one or two mansions, and one or two detrimenta. The detrimentum is the sign of the Zodiac opposite to the planet’s mansion. The mansions of Venus were Taurus and Libra (see note to l. 54); and her detrimenta were Scorpio and Aries. The latter is here intended; so that, after all, this apparently mysterious term ‘Venus valance’ is nothing but another name for the sign Aries, which, from other considerations, must necessarily be here intended.

If the correction of valance to fallance be disallowed, I should plead that valance might be short for avalance (mod. E. avalanche, literally descent ), just as every reader of our old literature knows that vale is a common form instead of avale, to descend or lower, being the verb from which avalance is derived. This valance (= avalance ) is a fair translation of the Lat. occasus, which was an alternative name for the sign called detrimentum; see my edition of the Astrolabe, as above. The result would then be just the same as before, and would bring us back to the sign of Aries again.

But we know that Aries is meant, from purely astronomical considerations. For the planet Mercury is always so near the sun that it can never have a greater elongation, or angular distance, from it than 29°, which is just a little less than the length of a sign, which was 30°. But, the sun being (as said) in the 1st degree of Taurus on the 12th of April, it is quite certain that Mercury was either in Taurus or in Aries. Again, as there was no mention of Mercury being in Taurus when Mars and Venus were there and were undisturbed (see note to l. 114), we can only infer that Mercury was then in Aries.

Moreover, he continued his swift course, always approaching and tending to overtake the slower bodies that preceded him, viz. the Sun, Mars, and Venus. At last, he got so near that he was able to ‘see’ or get a glimpse of his mansion Gemini, which was not so very far ahead of him. This I take to mean that he was swiftly approaching the end of Aries.

We can now tell the exact position of all the bodies on the 14th of April, two days after the sun had burst into Taurus, where he had found Mars and Venus at no great distance apart. By that time, Venus was in the second degree of Gemini, Mars was left behind in Taurus, the sun was in the third degree of Taurus, and Mercury near the end of Aries, sufficiently near to Venus to salute and cheer her with a kindly and favourable aspect.

I will add that whilst the whole of the sign of Aries was called the occasus or detrimentum of Venus, it is somewhat curious that the last ten degrees of Aries (degrees 20 to 30) were called the face of Venus. Chaucer uses this astrological term face elsewhere with reference to the first ten degrees of Aries, which was ‘the face of Mars’ (see my note to Squieres Tale, F 47). Hence another possible reading is Fro Venus facë mighte, c.

In any case, I think we are quite sufficiently near to Chaucer’s meaning; especially as he is, after all, only speaking in allegory, and there is no need to strain his words to suit rigid astronomical calculations.

I only give this as a guess, for what it is worth; I should not care to defend it.

150.

Remembreth me, comes to my memory; the nom. case being the preceding part of the sentence. Me, by the way, refers to the extraordinary bird who is made responsible for the whole poem, with the sole exception of lines 13 and 14, and half of l. 15. The bird tells us he will say and sing the Complaint of Mars, and afterwards take his leave.

155.

We now come to the part of the poem which exhibits great metrical skill. In order to shew the riming more clearly, I have ‘set back’ the 3rd, 6th, and 7th lines of each stanza. Each stanza exhibits the order of rimes a a b a a b b c c; i.e. the first rime belongs to lines 1, 2, 4, 5; the second rime to lines 3, 6, 7; and the last rime to lines 8 and 9. The first stanza forms an Introduction or Proem. The rest form five Terns, or sets of three stanzas, as has been already said. Each Tern has its own subject, quite separate from the rest.

The first line can only be scanned by reading The ordre as Th’ordr ’ (monosyllable).

164.

The first Tern expresses his Devotion to his love’s service. I gave my love, he says, to her for ever; She is the very source of all beauty; and now I will never leave her, but will die in her service.

170.

That is—who ever approaches her, but obtains from her no favour, loses all joy in love, and only feels its bitterness.

176.

Men, people; men hit selle = it is sold. This parenthetical ejaculation is an echo to that in l. 168.

185.

Hette, promised (incorrectly). The M. E. haten, to promise, is a complicated verb; see the excellent examples in Mätzner’s Dictionary, and in Grein’s A. S. Dict., s. v. hátan. It had two past tenses; the first heet, a strong form, meaning ‘promised, commanded,’ answering to A.S. héht and Goth. haihait; and the second hette, hatte, a weak form, meaning ‘I was named,’ answering to A. S. hátte (used both as a present and a past tense without change of form) and to the Goth. present passive haitada. Chaucer has here used the intransitive weak past tense with the sense of the transitive strong one; just as he uses lernen with the sense of ‘teach.’ The confusion was easy and common.

190.

But grace be, unless favour be shewn me. See, shall see; present as future.

191.

Tern 2. Shall I complain to my lady? Not so; for she is in distress herself. Lovers may be as true as new metal, and yet suffer. To return: my lady is in distress, and I ought to mourn for her, even though I knew no other sorrow.

197.

‘But if she were safe, it would not matter about me.

205.

‘They might readily leave their head as a pledge,’ i. e. might devote themselves to death.

206.

Horowe, foul, unclean, filthy, scandalous; pl. of horow, an adj. formed from the A.S. sb. horu (gen. horwes ). filth; cf. A. S. horweht, filthy, from the same stem horw -. The M. E. adj. also takes the form hori, hory, from A. S. horig, an adj. formed from the closely related A. S. sb. horh, horg, fifth. As the M. E. adj. is not common, I give some examples (from Mätzner). ‘Hit nis bote a hori felle,’ it is only a dirty skin; Early Eng. Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 19, l. 13. ‘Thy saule . . thorugh fulthe of synne Sone is mad wel hory wythinne,’ thy soul, by filth of sin, is soon made very foul within; Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ii. 243. ‘Eny uncleene, whos touchynge is hoory, ’ any unclean person, whose touch is defiling; Wyclif, Levit. xxii. 5. ‘Still used in Devon, pronounced horry ’; Halliwell.

218.

Tern 3. Why did the Creator institute love? The bliss of lovers is so unstable, that in every case lovers have more woes than the moon has changes. Many a fish is mad after the bait; but when he is hooked, he finds his penance, even though the line should break.

219.

Love other companye, love or companionship.

229.

Read putt’th; as a monosyllable.

245.

Tern 4. The brooch of Thebes had this property, that every one who saw it desired to possess it; when he possessed it, he was haunted with constant dread; and when he lost it, he had a double sorrow in thinking that it was gone. This was due, however, not to the brooch itself, but to the cunning of the maker, who had contrived that all who possessed it should suffer. In the same way, my lady was as the brooch; yet it was not she who caused me wo, but it was He who endowed her with beauty.

The story referred to occurs in the account of the war between Eteocles and Polynices for the possession of Thebes, as related in the Thebaïd of Statius.

In the second book of that poem, the story relates the marriage of Polynices and Tydeus to the two daughters of Adrastus, king of Argos. The marriage ceremony was marred by inauspicious omens, which was attributed to the fact that Argia, who was wedded to Polynices, wore at the wedding a magic bracelet (here called a brooch) which had belonged to Harmonia, a daughter of Mars and Venus, and wife of Cadmus. This ornament had been made by Vulcan, in order to bring an evil fate upon Harmonia, to whom it was first given, and upon all women who coveted it or wore it. See the whole story in Statius, Thebais, ii. 265; or in Lewis’s translation of Statius, ii. 313.

246.

It must be remembered that great and magical virtues were attributed to precious stones and gems. See further in the note to Ho. of Fame, l. 1352.

259.

Enfortuned hit so, endued it with such virtues. ‘He that wrought it’ was Vulcan; see note to l. 245.

262.

Covetour, the one who coveted it. Nyce, foolish.

270.

‘For my death I blame Him, and my own folly for being so ambitious.’

272.

Tern 5. I appeal for sympathy, first to the knights who say that I, Mars, am their patron; secondly, to the ladies who should compassionate Venus their empress; lastly, to all lovers who should sympathise with Venus, who was always so ready to aid them.

273.

Of my divisioun, born under my influence. The same word is used in the same way in Kn. Tale, 1166 (A 2024). Of course Mars was the special patron of martial knights.

280.

‘That ye lament for my sorrow.’

293.

Compleyneth hir, lament for her.

298.

‘Therefore display, on her behalf, some kindly feeling.’

The Complaint of Venus, which formerly used to be printed as a part of this poem, is really a distinct piece. See Sect. XVIII.

1.

Part of the first aphorism of Hippocrates is—Ὁ βίσς βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή. This is often quoted in the Latin form—Ars Ionga, uita brevis. Longfellow, in his Psalm of Life, well renders it by—‘Art is long, but life is fleeting.’

2.

Several MSS. transpose hard and sharp; it is of small consequence.

3.

Slit, the contracted form of slideth, i. e. passes away; cf. ‘it slit awey so faste,’ Can. Yeom. Tale; C. T., Group G, l. 682. The false reading flit arose from mistaking a long s for f.

4.

By, with respect to. In l. 7, wher = whether.

8.

Evidently this disclaimer is a pretended one; the preceding stanza and ll. 13, 14 contradict it. So does l. 160. In this stanza we have an early example of Chaucer’s humour, of which there are several instances below, as e. g. in ll. 567-570, 589, 599, 610, c. Cf. Troilus, i. 15, where Chaucer again says he is no lover himself, but only serves Love’s servants.

15.

Cf. Prol. to Legend of Good Women, 29-39.

22.

Men is here a weakened form of man, and is used as a singular sb., with the same force as the F. on or the G. man. Hence the vb. seith is in the singular. This construction is extremely common in Middle English. In ll. 23 and 25 com’th is monosyllabic.

31.

Tullius, i. e. M. Tullius Cicero, who wrote a piece entitled Somnium Scipionis, which originally formed part of the sixth book of the De Republica. Warton (Hist. Eng. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt. iii. 65) remarks:—‘Had this composition descended to posterity among Tully’s six books De Republica, to the last of which it originally belonged, perhaps it would have been overlooked and neglected. But being preserved and illustrated with a prolix commentary by Macrobius, it quickly attracted the attention of readers who were fond of the marvellous, and with whom Macrobius was a more admired classic than Tully. It was printed [at Venice] subjoined to Tully’s Offices, in [1470]. It was translated into Greek by Maximus Planudes, and is frequently [i. e. four times] quoted by Chaucer . . . Nor is it improbable that not only the form, but the first idea, of Dante’s Inferno was suggested by this apologue.’ The other allusions to it in Chaucer are in the Nonnes Prestes Tale, B 4314; Book of the Duchesse, 284; Ho. of Fame, 514. See also l. 111 below, where Macrobie is expressly mentioned. In the E. version of the Romance of the Rose, l. 7, he is called Macrobes.

Aurelius Theodosius Macrobius, about a. d. 400, not only preserved for us Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, but wrote a long commentary on it in two books, and a work called Saturnalia in seven books. The commentary is not very helpful, and discusses collateral questions rather than the dream itself.

32.

Chaucer’s MS. copy was, it appears, divided into seven chapters. A printed copy now before me is divided into nine chapters. As given in an edition of Macrobius printed in 1670, it is undivided. The treatise speaks, as Chaucer says, of heaven, hell, and earth, and men’s souls. It recalls the tale of Er, in Plato’s Republic, bk. x.

35.

The grete, the substance. Accordingly, in the next seven stanzas, we have a fair summary of the general contents of the Somnium Scipionis. I quote below such passages as approach most closely to Chaucer’s text.

36.

Scipioun, i. e. P. Cornelius Scipio Æmilianus Africanus Minor, the hero of the third Punic War. He went to Africa in b.c. 150 to meet Masinissa, King of Numidia, who had received many favours from Scipio Africanus Major in return for his fidelity to the Romans. Hence Masinissa received the younger Africanus joyfully, and so much was said about the elder Africanus that the younger one dreamt about him after the protracted conversation was over, and all had retired to rest. The younger Africanus was the grandson, by adoption, of the elder.

‘Cum in Africam venissem, . . nihil mihi potius fuit, quam ut Masinissam convenirem . . Ad quem ut veni, complexus me senex collacrymavit. . . multisque verbis . . habitis, ille nobis consumptus est dies . . . me . . somnus complexus est . . mihi . . Africanus se ostendit’; c.

43.

‘Ostendebat autem Carthaginem de excelso, et pleno stellarum . . loco . . . tu eris unus, in quo nitatur civitatis salus, c. . . Omnibus qui patriam conservârint, adiuverint, auxerint, certum esse in cælo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur.’

50.

‘Quæsivi tamen, viveretne ipse et Paullus pater et alii, quos nos exstinctos arbitraremur. Immo vero, inquit, ii vivunt . . . vestra vero. quæ dicitur vita, mors est . . . . . corpore laxati illum incolunt locum, quem vides. Erat autem is splendissimo candore inter flammas circus elucens, quem vos, ut a Graiis accepistis, orbem lacteum nuncupatis.’

56.

Galaxye, milky way; see note to Ho. Fame, 936.

57.

‘Stellarum autem globi terræ magnitudinem facile vincebant. Iam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est, c. . . Novem tibi orbibus, vel potius globis, connexa sunt omnia . . . Hic, inquam, quis est, qui complet aures meas, tantus et tam dulcis sonus? . . . impulsu et motu ipsorum orbium conficitur.’

59.

The ‘nine spheres’ are the spheres of the seven planets (Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), that of the fixed stars, and the primum mobile; see notes to the Treatise on the Astrolabe, part 1, § 17, in vol. iii.

61.

This is an allusion to the so-called ‘harmony of the spheres.’ Chaucer makes a mistake in attributing this harmony to all of the nine spheres. Cicero plainly excludes the primum mobile, and says that, of the remaining eight spheres, two sound alike, so that there are but seven tones made by their revolution. ‘Ille autem octo cursus, in quibus eadem vis est duorum, septem efficiunt distinctos intervallis sonos.’ He proceeds to notice the peculiar excellence of the number seven. By the two that sounded alike, the spheres of Saturn and the fixed stars must be meant; in fact, it is usual to ignore the sphere of fixed stars, and consider only those of the seven planets. Macrobius, in his Commentary, lib. ii. c. 4, quite misses this point, and clumsily gives the same note to Venus and Mercury. Each planetary sphere, in its revolution, gives out a different note of the gamut, so that all the notes of the gamut are sounded; and the result is, that the ‘music of the spheres’ cannot be heard at all, just as the dwellers by the cataract on the Nile fail to hear the sound of its fall. ‘Hoc sonitu oppletæ aures hominum obsurduerunt; nec est ullus hebetior sonus in vobis; sicut ubi Nilus ad illa, quæ Catadupa [κατάδουποι] nominantur, præcipitat ex altissimis montibus, ea gens, quæ illum locum accolit, propter magnitudinem sonitus, sensu audiendi caret.’ Macrobius tries to explain it all in his Commentary, lib. ii. c. 1-4. The fable arose from a supposed necessary connection between the number of the planets and the number of musical notes in the scale. It breaks down when we know that the number of the planets is more than seven. Moreover, modern astronomy has exploded the singular notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres, to the surface of which each planet was immoveably nailed. These ‘spheres’ have disappeared, and their music with them, except in poetry.

Shakespeare so extends the old fable as to give a voice to every star. See Merch. of Venice, v. 60:—

  • ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st,
  • But in his motion like an angel sings,’ c.

The notion of the music of the spheres was attributed to Pythagoras. It is denied by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, lib. xv. c. 32—Falsa opinio de concentu cæli. Vincent puts the old idea clearly—‘Feruntur septem planetæ, et hi septem orbes (vt dicitur) cum dulcissima harmonia mouentur, ac suauissimi concentus eorum circumitione efficiuntur. Qui sonus ad aures nostras ideo non peruenit, quia vltra ærem fit’:—a sufficient reason. He attributes the notion to the Pythagoreans and the Jews, and notes the use of the phrase ‘concentum cæli’ in Job xxxviii. 37, where our version has ‘the bottles of heaven,’ which the Revised Version retains. Cf. also—‘Cum me laudarent simul astra matutina’; Job xxxviii. 7.

Near the end of Chaucer’s Troilus, v. 1811, we have the singular passage:—

  • ‘And ther he saugh with ful avysement
  • The erratik sterres, herkening armonye
  • With sounes fulle of hevenish melodye’; c.

This passage, by the way, is a translation from Boccaccio, Teseide, xi. 1. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 17151-5.

See also Longfellow’s poem on the Occultation of Orion, where the poet (heretically but sensibly) gives the lowest note to Saturn, and the highest to the Moon; whereas Macrobius says the contrary; lib. ii. c. 4.

A. Neckam (De Naturis Rerum, lib. i. c. 15) seems to say that the sound of an eighth sphere is required to make up the octave.

64.

‘Sentio, inquit, te sedem etiam nunc hominum ac domum contemplari: quæ si tibi parva, ut est, ita videtur, hæc cælestia semper spectato; illa humana contemnito . . . Cum autem ad idem, unde semel profecta sunt, cuncta astra redierint, eandemque totius anni descriptionem longis intervallis retulerint, tum ille vere vertens annus appellari potest . . . Sermo autem omnis ille . . obruitur hominum interitu, et oblivione posteritatis exstinguitur.’

The great or mundane year, according to Macrobius, Comment. lib. 2. c. 11, contained 15,000 common years. In the Roman de la Rose, l. 17,018, Jeun de Meun makes it 36,000 years long; and in the Complaint of Scotland, ed. Murray, p. 33, it is said, on the authority of Socrates, to extend to 37,000 years. It is not worth discussion.

71.

‘Ego vero, inquam, o Africane, siquidem bene meritis de patria quasi limes ad cæli aditum patet,’ c. ‘Et ille, Tu vero enitere, et sic habeto, non esse te mortalem, sed corpus hoc . . . Hanc [naturam] tu exerce in optimis rebus; sunt autem optimæ curæ de salute patriæ: quibus agitatus et exercitatus animus velocius in hanc sedem et domum suam pervolabit.’

78.

‘Nam eorum animi, qui se corporis voluptatibus dediderunt, . . . corporibus elapsi circum terram ipsam volutantur; nec hunc in locum, nisi multis exagitati sæculis, revertuntur.’ We have here the idea of purgatory; compare Vergil, Æn. vi.

80.

Whirle aboute, copied from volutantur in Cicero; see last note. It is remarkable that Dante has copied the same passage, and has the word voltando; Inf. v. 31-8. Cf. ‘blown with restless violence round about The pendent world’; Meas. for Meas. iii. 1. 125; and ‘The sport of winds’; Milton, P. L. iii. 493.

85.

Imitated from Dante, Inf. ii. 1-3 (with which cf. Æneid, ix. 224). Cary’s translation has—

  • ‘Now was the day departing, and the air,
  • Imbrowned with shadows, from their toils released
  • All animals on earth.’
90.

‘I had what I did not want,’ i. e. care and heaviness. ‘And I had not what I wanted,’ i. e. my desires. Not a personal reference, but borrowed from Boethius, bk. iii. pr. 3; see vol. ii. p. 57, l. 24. Moreover, the same idea is repeated, but in clearer language, in the Complaint to his Lady, ll. 47-49 (p. 361); and again, in the Complaint to Pity, ll. 99-104 (p. 276).

99.

Chaucer discusses dreams elsewhere; see Ho. of Fame, 1-52; Nonne Prestes Tale, 76-336; Troil. v. 358. Macrobius, Comment. in Somn. Scipionis, lib. i. c. 3, distinguishes five kinds of dreams, giving the name ἐνύπνιον to the kind of which Chaucer here speaks. ‘Est enim ἐνύπνιον quotiens oppressi animi corporisve sive fortunæ, qualis vigilantem fatigaverat, talem se ingerit dormienti: animi, si amator deliciis suis aut fruentem se videat aut carentem: . . corporis, si . . esuriens cibum aut potum sitiens desiderare, quærere, vel etiam invenisse videatur, ’ c. But the real original of this stanza (as shewn by Prof. Lounsbury) is to be found in Claudian, In Sextum Consulatum Honorii Augusti Præfatio, ll. 3-10.

  • ‘Venator defessa toro cum membra reponit,
  • Mens tamen ad silvas et sua lustra redit.
  • Iudicibus lites, aurigæ somnia currus,
  • Vanaque nocturnis meta cavetur equis.
  • Furto gaudet amans; permutat navita merces;
  • Et vigil elapsas quærit avarus opes.
  • Blandaque largitur frustra sitientibus ægris
  • Irriguus gelido pocula fonte sopor.’

Cf. Vincent of Beauvais, lib. xxvi. c. 62 and c. 63; Batman upon Bartholome, lib. vi. c. 27, ed. 1582, fol. 84. And see the famous passage in Romeo and Juliet, i. 4. 53; especially ll. 70-88. The Roman de la Rose begins with remarks concerning dreams; and again, at l. 18564, there is a second passage on the same subject, with a reference to Scipio, and a remark about dreaming of things that occupy the mind (l. 18601).

109.

Compare Dante, Inf. i. 83; which Cary translates—

  • ‘May it avail me, that I long with zeal
  • Have sought thy volume, and with love immense
  • Have conn’d it o’er. My master thou, and guide!’
111.

‘Of which Macrobius recked (thought) not a little.’ In fact, Macrobius concludes his commentary with the words—‘Vere igitur pronunciandum est nihil hoc opere perfectius, quo universa philosophiæ continetur integritas.’

113.

Cithérea, Cytherea, i. e. Venus; see Kn. Tale, 1357 (A 2215).

114.

In the Roman de la Rose, 15980, Venus speaks of her bow (F. arc ) and her firebrand or torch ( brandon ). Cf. Merch. Tale, E 1777.

117.

‘As surely as I saw thee in the north-north-west.’ He here refers to the planet Venus. As this planet is never more than 47° from the sun, the sun must have been visible to the north of the west point at sunset; i. e. the poem must have been written in the summer-time. The same seems to be indicated by l. 21 ( the longe day ), and still more clearly by ll. 85-88; Chaucer would hardly have gone to bed at sunset in the winter-time. It is true that he dreams about Saint Valentine’s day, but that is quite another matter. Curiously enough, the landscape seen in his dream is quite a summer landscape; see ll. 172, 184-210.

120.

African, Africanus; as above.

122.

Grene stone, mossy or moss-covered stone; an expression copied by Lydgate, Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 42.

Prof. Hales, in the Gent. Magazine, April, 1882, has an interesting article on ‘Chaucer at Woodstock.’ He shews that there was a park there, surrounded by a stone wall; and that Edward III. often resided at Woodstock, where the Black Prince was born. It is possible that Chaucer was thinking of Woodstock when writing the present passage. See the account of Woodstock Palace in Abbeys, Castles, c. by J. Timbs; vol. ii. But Dr. Köppel has shewn (Anglia, xiv. 234) that Chaucer here partly follows Boccaccio’s poem, Amorosa Visione, ii. 1-35, where we find ‘un muro antico.’ So also the Roman de la Rose has an allusion to Scipio’s dream, and the following lines (129-131, p. 99, above):—

  • ‘Quant j’oi ung poi avant alé
  • Si vi ung vergier grant et lé,
  • Tot clos d’ung haut mur bataillié;’ c.
123.

Y-wroght-e; the final - e here denotes the plural form.

125.

On eyther halfe, on either side; to right and left.

127.

Imitated from Dante, Inf. iii. 1; Cary’s translation has—

  • ‘Through me you pass into the city of woe: . . .
  • Such characters in colour dim, I mark’d
  • Over a portal’s lofty arch inscribed.’

See also l. 134. The gate is the entrance into Love, which is to some a blessing, and to some a curse; see ll. 158, 159. Thus men gon is, practically, equivalent to ‘some men go’; and so in l. 134. The idea is utterly different from that of the two gates in Vergil, Æn. vi. 893. The successful lover finds ‘the well of Favour,’ l. 129. The unsuccessful one encounters the deadly wounds caused by the spear (or dart) guided to his heart by Disdain and Power-to-harm (Daunger); for him, the opened garden bears no fruit, and the alluring stream leads him only to a fatal weir, wherein imprisoned fish are left lying dry.

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

Troil. iii. 35.
140.

‘Avoiding it is the only remedy.’ This is only another form of a proverb which also occurs as ‘Well fights he who well flies.’ See Proverbs of Hending (in Spec. of English), l. 77; Owl and Nightingale, l. 176. Sir T. Wiat has—‘The first eschue is remedy alone’; Spec. of Eng. Part III. p. 235. Probably from the Roman de la Rose, l. 16818—‘Sol foïr en est medicine.’ (O. F. foir = Lat. fugere. )

141.

The alluring message (ll. 127-133) was written in gold; the forbidding one (ll. 134-140) in black; see Anglia, xiv. 235.

142.

A stounde, for a while (rightly); the reading astonied is to be rejected. The attitude is one of deliberation.

143.

That oon, the one, the latter. In l. 145, it means the former.

148.

An adamant was, originally, a diamond; then the name was transferred to the loadstone; lastly, the diamond was credited with the properties of the loadstone. Hence we find, at the end of ch. 14 of Mandeville’s Travels, this remarkable experiment:—‘Men taken the Ademand, that is the Schipmannes Ston, that drawethe the Nedle to him, and men leyn the Dyamand upon the Ademand, and leyn the Nedle before the Ademand; and yif the Dyamand be good and vertuous, the Ademand drawethe not the Nedle to him, whils the Dyamand is there present.’ Cf. A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, lib. ii. c. 98, where the story is told of an iron statue of Mahomet, which, being surrounded by adamants ( lapides adamantini ), hangs suspended in the air. The modern simile is that of a donkey between two bundles of hay. For adamaunt, see Rom. of the Rose, 1182 (p. 142).

156.

Errour, doubt; see l. 146 above.

158.

‘This writing is not at all meant to apply to thee.’

159.

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

163.

I. e. ‘at any rate you can come and look on.’

169.

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

  • ‘And when his hand he had stretch’d forth
  • To mine, with pleasant looks, whence I was cheer’d,
  • Into that secret place he led me on.’
171.

Cf. ‘So Iolyf, nor so wel bigo’; Rom. Rose, 693.

176.

Imitated by Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 8, 9. Chaucer’s list of trees was suggested by a passage in the Teseide, xi. 22-24; but he extended his list by help of one in the Roman de la Rose, 1338-1368; especially ll. 1363-8, as follows (see p. 151, above)—

  • ‘Et d’ oliviers et de cipres,
  • Dont il n’a gaires ici pres;
  • Ormes y ot branchus et gros,
  • Et avec ce charmes et fos,
  • Codres droites, trembles et chesnes,
  • Erables haus, sapins et fresnes.

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

‘The builder oake, sole king of forrests all.’

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

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

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

177.

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

178.

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

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

179.

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

180.

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

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

181.

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

182.

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

183.

In a note to Cant. Tales, l. 1920, Tyrwhitt says—‘Chaucer has [here] taken very little from Boccace, as he had already inserted a very close imitation of this part of the Teseide in his Assemblee of Foules, from verse 183 to verse 287.’ In fact, eleven stanzas (183-259) correspond to Boccaccio’s Teseide, Canto vii. st. 51-60; the next three stanzas (260-280) to the same, st. 63-66; and the next two (281-294) to the same, st. 61, 62. See the whole extract from Boccaccio, given and translated in the Introduction; see p. 68, above.

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

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

185.

‘There where is always sufficient sweetness.’

214.

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

216.

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

217.

See Ovid, Metam. i. 468-471.

218.

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

225.

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

226.

Cf. ‘Jest and youthful Jollity’; L’Allegro, 26.

228.

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

231.

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

234.

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

236.

Office, duty; viz. to dance round.

237.

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

243.

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

245.

Answering to Boccaccio’s ‘Promesse ad arte,’ i.e. ‘artful Promises.’

246.

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

255.

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

261.

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

267.

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

272.

Valence, explained by Urry as Valentia in Spain. But perhaps it may refer to Valence, near Lyons, in France; as Lyons is especially famous for the manufacture of silks, and there is a considerable trade in silks at Valence also. Probably ‘thin silk’ is here meant. Boccaccio merely speaks of ‘texture so thin,’ or, in the original ‘Testa, tanto sottil, ’ which accounts for Chaucer’s ‘subtil.’ Coles’s Dict. (1684) gives: ‘ Valence,-tia, a town in Spain, France, and Milan.’ In the Unton Inventories, for the years 1596 and 1620, ed. J. G. Nichols, I find: ‘one covering for a fielde bedde of green and valens, ’ p. 4; ‘one standinge bedsteed with black velvett testern, black vallance fringed and laced,’ p. 21; ‘one standinge bed with yellow damaske testern and vallence, ’ p. 21; ‘ vallance frindged and laced,’ p. 22; ‘one bedsteed and testern, and valance of black velvett,’ p. 22; ‘one bedsteed . . with vallance imbroydered with ash couler,’ p. 23; ‘one bedsteed, with . . vallance of silke,’ p. 29. It is the mod. E. valance, and became a general term for part of the hangings of a bed; Shakespeare has ‘Valance of Venice gold,’ spelt Vallens in old editions, Tam. Shrew, ii. 1. 356. Spenser imitates this passage, F. Q. ii. 12. 77.

275.

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

277.

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

281.

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

282.

‘Trophies of the conquest of Venus’; Bell.

283.

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

286.

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

287.

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

288.

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

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

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

292.

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

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

The quotation from Boccaccio ends here.

296.

Of spak, spake of; see l. 174.

298.

This quene is the goddess Nature (l. 303). We now come to a part of the poem where Chaucer makes considerable use of the work which he mentions in l. 316, viz. the Planctus Naturæ (Complaint of Nature) by Alanus de Insulis, or Alein Delille, a poet and divine of the 12th century. This work is printed in vol. ii. of T. Wright’s edition of the Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets (Record Series), which also contains the poem called Anticlaudianus, by the same author. The description of the goddess is given at great length (pp. 431-456), and at last she declares her name to be Natura (p. 456). This long description of Nature and of her vesture is a very singular one; indeed, all the fowls of the air are supposed to be depicted upon her wonderful garments (p. 437). Chaucer substitutes a brief description of his own, and represents the birds as real live ones, gathering around her; which is much more sensible. For the extracts from Alanus, see the Introduction, p. 74. As Prof. Morley says (Eng. Writers, v. 162)—‘Alain describes Nature’s changing robe as being in one of its forms so ethereal that it is like air, and the pictures on it seem to the eye a Council of Animals ( Animalium Concilium ). Upon which, beginning, as Chaucer does, with the Eagle and the Falcon, Alain proceeds with a long list of the birds painted on her transparent robe, that surround Nature as in a council, and attaches to each bird the most remarkable point in its character.’ Professor Hales, in The Academy, Nov. 19, 1881, quoted the passages from Alanus which are here more or less imitated, and drew attention to the remarkable passage in Spenser’s F. Q. bk. vii. c. 7. st. 5-10, where that poet quotes and copies Chaucer. Dunbar imitates Chaucer in his Thrissill and Rois, and describes Dame Nature as surrounded by beasts, birds, and flowers; see stanzas 10, 11, 18, 26, 27 of that poem.

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

309.

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

316.

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

323.

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

330.

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

331.

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

332.

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

334.

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

337.

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

339.

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

342.

From Alanus (see p. 74):—‘Illic olor, sui funeris præco, mellitæ citherizationis organo vitæ prophetabat apocopam.’ The same idea is mentioned by Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Nat. lib. xvi. c. 50; Pliny says he believes the story to be false, Nat. Hist. lib. x. c. 23. See Compl. of Anelida, l. 346. ‘The wild swan’s death-hymn’; Tennyson, The Dying Swan. Cf. Ovid, Heroid. vii. 2.

343.

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

  • ‘Li chahuan . . .
  • Prophetes de male aventure,
  • Hideus messagier de dolor.’

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

344.

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

345.

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

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

346.

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

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

347.

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

348.

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

349.

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

350.

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

351.

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

352.

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

353.

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

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

355.

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

356.

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

357.

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

358.

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

  • ‘There is no noise at all
  • Of waking dog, nor gaggling goose more waker then the hound.’
  • Golding, tr. of Ovid’s Metam. bk. xi. fol. 139, back.

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

359.

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

360.

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

361.

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

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

362.

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

363.

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

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

364.

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

371.

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

379.

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

  • ‘Cis Diex meismes, par sa grace, . . .
  • Tant m’ennora, tant me tint chiere,
  • Qu’il m’establi sa chamberiere . . .
  • Por chamberiere! certes vaire,
  • Por connestable, et por vicaire, ’ c.
  • Rom. de la Rose, 16970, c.

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

380.

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

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

  • ‘Et froit, et chaut, et sec, et moiste’;
  • Rom. Rose, 17163.
  • ‘For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
  • Strive here for mastery.’ Milton, P. L. ii. 898.
386.

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

388.

‘Ye come to choose your mates, and (then) to flee (on) your way.’

411.

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

This ’s oúr | uság’ | alwéy, | c.

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

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

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

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

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

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

413.

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

417.

‘I choose the formel to be my sovereign lady, not my mate.’

421.

‘Beseeching her for mercy,’ c.

435.

Read lov’th; monosyllabic, as frequently.

464.

‘Ye see what little leisure we have here.’

471.

Read possíbl ’, just as in French.

476.

Som; quite indefinite. ‘Than another man.’

482.

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

485.

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

499.

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

504.

For, on behalf of; see next line.

507.

For comune spede, for the common benefit.

508.

‘For it is a great charity to set us free.’

510.

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

518.

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

524.

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

545.

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

556.

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

564.

Which a reson, what sort of a reason.

568.

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

572.

‘To have held thy peace, than (to have) shewed.’

574.

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

578.

The sothe sadde, the sober truth.

595.

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

599.

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

603.

‘Pushed himself forward in the crowd.’

610.

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

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

612.

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

613.

Read rewtheles ( reufulles in Gg); cf. Cant. Ta., B 863; and see p. 361, l. 31. Rewtheles became reufulles, and then rewful.

614.

‘Live thou unmated, thou destruction (destroyer) of worms.’

615.

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

616.

‘Go! and remain ignorant for ever.’

620, 1.

Cf. note to l. 411. Read th’eleccioun; i. e. the choice.

623.

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

626.

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

630.

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

633.

‘I would counsel you to take’; two infinitives.

640.

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

641.

The first accent is on As.

653.

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

657.

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

664, 5.

‘Whatever may happen afterwards, this intervening course is ready prepared for all of you.’

670.

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

675.

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

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

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

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

677.

The note, i. e. the tune. Chaucer adapts his words to a known French tune. The words Qui bien aime, a tard 1 oublie (he who loves well is slow to forget) probably refer to this tune; though it is not quite clear to me how lines of five accents (normally) go to a tune beginning with a line of four accents. In Furnivall’s Trial Forewords, p. 55, we find:—‘Of the rondeau of which the first line is cited in the Fairfax MS., c., M. Sandras found the music and the words in a MS. of Machault in the National Library, no. 7612, leaf 187. The verses form the opening lines of one of two pieces entitled Le Lay de plour:

  • ‘Qui bieu aime, a tart oublie,
  • Et cuers, qui oublie a tart,
  • Ressemble le feu qui art,’ c.

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

  • ‘Ki bien aime a tart oublie;
  • Mais ne le puis oublier
  • La douce vierge Marie.’

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

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

1

In old French, a tard means ‘slowly, late’; later French drops a, and uses tard only.

683.

See note above, to l. 309.

693.

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

1.

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

3.

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

7.

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

8, 9.

Cf Anelida, 333, 334.

14, 15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

19.

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

24.

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

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

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

32.

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

35.

Almost identical with Anelida, 222—‘More then myself, an hundred thousand sythe.’

36.

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

39.

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

41.

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

42, 43.

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

44.

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

47-49.

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

50.

Repeated in Anelida, 237.

51, 52.

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

55.

Cf. Anelida, 214—‘That turned is to quaking al my daunce.’

56.

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

63.

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

64, 65.

Cf. Anelida, 272—‘My swete fo, why do ye so for shame?’

73.

For leest, ed. 1561 has best !

79.

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

83.

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

86.

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

88.

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

98.

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

100.

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

102.

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

103.

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

107, 108.

Cf. Anelida, 247, 248.

123.

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

124.

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

125.

For hoolly I perhaps we should read I hoolly.

126.

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

130.

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

133.

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

1.

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

  • Siate presenti, O Marte rubicondo,
  • Nelle tue arme rigido e feroce.

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

2.

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

6, 7.

Partly imitated from Tes. i. 3:—

  • ‘E sostenete la mano e la voce
  • Di me, che intendo i vostri effecti dire.’
8-10.

Imitated from Tes. i. 2:—

  • ‘Chè m’ è venuta voglia con pietosa
  • Rima di scriver una storia antica,
  • Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa,
  • Che latino autor non par ne dica,
  • Per quel ch’ io senta, in libro alcuna cosa.’

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

15.

Read fávourábl’. Imitated from Tes. i. 1:—

  • ‘O sorelle Castalie, che nel monte
  • Elicona contente dimorate
  • D’ intorno al sacro gorgoneo fonte,
  • Sottesso l’ ombra delle frondi amate
  • Da Febo, delle quali ancor la fronte
  • I’ spero ornarmi sol che ’l concediate
  • Gli santi orecchi a’ miei prieghi porgete,
  • E quegli udite come voi volete.’

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

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

  • ‘Ye sustren nyne eek, that by Elicone
  • In hil Parnaso listen for tabyde.’
17.

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

20.

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

21.

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

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

22.

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

  • ‘Jamque domos patrias Scythicæ post aspera gentis
  • Prælia laurigero subeuntem Thesea curru,
  • Lætifici plausus missusque ad sidera vulgi,’ c.

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