xlvii. Longinus was a blind centurion, who pierced the side of Christ; when

drops of the Sacred Blood cured his infirmity. The day of St. Longinus is Mar. 15; see Chambers, Book of Days. The name _Longinus_ is most likely derived from [Greek: lonchê], a lance, the word used in John xix. 34; and the legend was easily developed from St. John's narrative. The name Longinus first appears in the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.' See also the Chester Plays, ed. Wright; Cursor Mundi, p. 962; Coventry Mysteries, ed. Halliwell, p. 334; York Mystery Plays, p. 368; Lamentation of Mary Magdalen, st. 26; &c.

164. _Herte_ is the true M. E. genitive, from the A. S. gen. _heortan_. _Herte blood_ occurs again in the Pardoneres Tale, C 902.

169-171. Close to the French, ll. 253-5; and l. 174 is close to l. 264 of the same. Cf. Heb. xi. 19; Jo. i. 29; Isaiah, liii. 7.

176. This line can best be scanned by taking _That_ as standing _alone_, in the first foot. See note to Compl. to Pite, l. 16. Koch suggests that _our-e_ is dissyllabic; but this would make an unpleasing line; 'That yé | ben fróm | veng'áunce | ay oú | re targe ||.' I hope this was not intended; 'fróm | veng'áun | cë áy | our' would be better.

177. The words of Zechariah (xiii. 1) are usually applied to the blood of Christ, as in Rev. i. 5. Chaucer omits ll. 266-7 of the French.

180. 'That were it not (for) thy tender heart, we should be destroyed.'

181. Koch, following Gg, reads--'Now lady bright, siththe thou canst and wilt.' I prefer 'bright-e, sith'; _brighte_ is a vocative.

184. _To mercy able_, fit to obtain mercy; cf. Cant. Ta. Prol. 167.

II. THE COMPLEYNTE UNTO PITE.

TITLE. In MS. B., the poem is entitled, 'The Complaynte vnto Pyte,' which is right. In MS. Trin., there is a colophon--'Here endeth the exclamacioun of the Deth of Pyte'; see p. 276. In MS. Sh. (in Shirley's handwriting) the poem is introduced with the following words--'And nowe here filowing [_following_] begynnethe a complaint of Pitee, made by Geffray Chaucier the aureat Poete that euer was fonde in oure vulgare to-fore hees [_for_ thees?] dayes.' The first stanza may be considered as forming a Proem; stanzas 2-8, the Story; and the rest, the Bill of Complaint. The title 'A complaint of Pitee' is not necessarily incorrect; for _of_ may be taken in the sense of 'concerning,' precisely as in the case of 'The Vision of Piers the Plowman.' As to the connection of this poem with the Thebaid of Statius, see notes to ll. 57 and 92.

1. I do not follow Ten Brink in putting a comma after _so_. He says: 'That _so_ refers to the verb [_sought_] and not to _yore ago_, is evident from l. 3. Compare the somewhat different l. 93.' I hope it shews no disrespect to a great critic if I say that I am not at all confident that the above criticism is correct; l. 93 rather tells against it. Observe the reading of l. 117 in MS. Sh. (in the footnotes, p. 276).

4. _With-oute dethe_, i. e. without actually dying.

_Shal not_, am not to.

7. _Doth me dye_, makes me die.

9. _Ever in oon_, continually, constantly, always in the same way; cf. Cant. Tales, E 602, 677, F 417.

11. _Me awreke._ 'The _e_ of _me_ is elided'; Ten Brink. He compares also Cant. Ta. Prol. 148; (the correct reading of which is, probably--

'But sorë weep sche if oon of hem were deed';

the _e_ of _sche_ being slurred over before _i_ in _if_). He also refers to the Prioresses Tale (B 1660), where _thalighte_ = _thee alighte_; and to the Second Nonnes Tale (G 32), where _do me endyte_ is to be read as _do mendyte_. Cf. note to A B C, l. 8.

14. The notion of Pity being '_buried in_ a heart' is awkward, and introduces an element of confusion. If Pity could have been buried _out of_ the heart, and thus _separated_ from it, the whole would have been a great deal clearer. This caution is worth paying heed to; for it will really be found, further on, that the language becomes confused in consequence of this very thing. In the very next line, for example, the hearse of Pity appears, and in l. 19 the corpse of Pity; in fact, Pity is never fairly buried out of sight throughout the poem.

15. _Herse_, hearse; cf. l. 36 below. It should be remembered that the old _herse_ was a very different thing from the modern _hearse_. What Chaucer refers to is what we should now call 'a lying in state'; with especial reference to the array of lighted torches which illuminated the bier. See the whole of Way's note in Prompt. Parvulorum, pp. 236, 237, part of which is quoted in my Etym. Dict., s. v. _hearse_. The word _hearse_ (F. _herce_) originally denoted a harrow; next, a frame with spikes for holding lights in a church service; thirdly, a frame for lights at a funeral pageant or 'lying in state'; fourthly, the funeral pageant itself; fifthly, a frame on which a body was laid, and so on. 'Chaucer,' says Way, 'appears to use the term _herse_ to denote the decorated bier, or funeral pageant, and not exclusively the illumination, which was a part thereof; and, towards the sixteenth century, it had such a general signification alone.' In ll. 36-42, Chaucer describes a company of persons who stood round about the hearse. Cf. Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. Ellis, ii. 236-7; Eng. Gilds, ed. Toulmin Smith, p. 176.

'The _hearse_ was usually a four-square frame of timber, which was hung with black cloth, and garnished with flags and scutcheons and lights'; Strutt, Manners and Customs of the English, iii. 159. See the whole passage, which describes the funeral of Henry VII.

16. In most MSS., _Deed_ stands alone in the first foot. In which case, scan--Deed | as stoon | whyl that | the swogh | me laste. Cf. A B C, l. 176, and the note. However, two MSS. insert _a_, as in the text.

27. Cf. _Deth of Blaunche_, l. 587--'This is my peyne withoute reed'; Ten Brink. See p. 297.

33. Ten Brink reads _ay_ for _ever_, on the ground that _ever_ and _never_, when followed by a consonant, are dissyllabic in Chaucer. But see Book of the Duchesse, l. 73 (p. 279).

34. _Hadde_, dissyllabic; it occasionally is so; mostly when it is used by itself, as here. Cf. Book of the Duch. l. 951 (p. 309).

37. 'Without displaying any sorrow.' He now practically identifies Pity with the fair one in whose heart it was said (in l. 14) to be buried. This fair one was attended by Bounty, Beauty, and all the rest; they are called a _folk_ in l. 48.

41. Insert _and_ after _Estaat_ or _Estat_, for this word has no final _-e_ in Chaucer; see Prol. A 522; Squi. Tale, F 26; &c.

44. 'To have offered to Pity, as a petition'; see note to A B C, 110.

47. 'I kept my complaint quiet,' i. e. withheld it; see l. 54.

50. MS. Sh. is right. The scribe of the original of MSS. Tn. Ff. T. left out _I_ and _these_, and then put in _only_; then another scribe, seeing that a pronoun was wanted, put in _we_, as shewn by MSS. F. B. (Ten Brink). Here, and in l. 52, the _e_ of _alle_ is either very lightly sounded after the cæsural pause, or (more likely) is dropped altogether, as elsewhere.

53. _And been assented_, and (who) are all agreed.

54. _Put up_, put by. Cf. 'to _put up_ that letter'; K. Lear, i. 2. 28: &c.

57. He here addresses his fair one's Pity, whom he personifies, and addresses as a mistress.

By comparison of this passage with l. 92, it becomes clear that Chaucer took his notion of personifying _Pity_ from Statius, who personifies _Pietas_ in his Thebaid, xi. 457-496. I explained this at length in a letter to The Academy, Jan. 7, 1888, p. 9. In the present line, we find a hint of the original; for Statius describes _Pietas_ in the words 'pudibundaque longe Ora reducentem' (l. 493), which expresses her _humility_; whilst the _reverence_ due to her is expressed by _reuerentia_ (l. 467).

59. _Sheweth ... Your servaunt_, Your servant sheweth. _Sheweth_ is the word used in petitions, and _servant_ commonly means 'lover.'

63. Accented _rénoun_, as in the Ho. of Fame, 1406. Cf. l. 86.

64. _Crueltee_, Cruelty, here corresponds to the Fury Tisiphone, who is introduced by Statius (_Theb._ xi. 483) to suppress the peaceful feelings excited by Pietas, who had been created by Jupiter to control the passions even of the gods (l. 465). At the siege of Thebes, Pietas was for once overruled by Tisiphone; and Chaucer complains here that she is again being controlled; see ll. 80, 89-91. Very similar is the character of _Daungere_ or Danger (F. _Dangier_) in the Romaunt of the Rose; in l. 3549 of the English Version (l. 3301 of the original), we find Pity saying--

'Wherefore I pray you, Sir Daungere, For to mayntene no lenger here Such cruel werre agayn your man.'

We may also compare Machault's poem entitled Le Dit du Vergier, where we find such lines as--

'Einssi encontre Cruauté Deffent l'amant douce Pité.'

66. _Under colour_, beneath the outward appearance.

67. 'In order that people should not observe her tyranny.'

70. _Hight_, is (rightly) named. The final _-e_, though required by grammar, is suppressed; the word being conformed to other examples of the third person singular of the _present_ tense, whilst _hight-e_ is commonly used as the _past_ tense. Pity's right name is here said to be 'Beauty, such as belongs to Favour.' The poet is really thinking of his mistress rather than his personified Pity. It is very difficult to keep up the allegory.

71. '_Heritage_, of course, stands in the gen. case'; Ten Brink.

76. _Wanten_, are lacking, are missing, are not found in, fall short. 'If you, Pity, are missing from Bounty and Beauty.' There are several similar examples of this use of _want_ in Shakespeare; e.g. 'there _wants_ no junkets at the feast'; Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 250.

78. This _Bille_, or Petition, may be divided into three sets of 'terns,' or groups of three stanzas. I mark this by inserting a paragraph-mark (¶ ) at the beginning of each tern. They are marked off by the rimes; the first tern ends with _seyne_, l. 77; the next with the riming word _peyne_, l. 98; and again with _peyne_, l. 119.

83. _Perilous_ is here accented on the _i_.

87. Ten Brink omits _wel_, with most of the MSS.; but the _e_ in _wite_ seems to be suppressed, as in Book of the Duch. 112. It will hardly bear a strong accent. Mr. Sweet retains _wel_, as I do.

91. Pronounce the third word as _despeir'd_. 'Compare 1 Kings x. 24: And all the earth _sought to_ Solomon'; Ten Brink.

92. _Herenus_ has not hitherto been explained. It occurs in four MSS., Tn. F. B. Ff.; a fifth (T.) has 'herem_us_'; the Longleat MS. has 'heremus' or 'herenius'; Sh. substitutes 'vertuouse,' and MS. Harl. 7578 has 'Vertoues'; but it is highly improbable that _vertuouse_ is original, for no one would ever have altered it so unintelligibly. Ten Brink and Mr. Sweet adopt this reading _vertuousë_, which they make four syllables, as being a vocative case; and of course this is an easy way of _evading_ the difficulty. Dr. Furnivall once suggested _hevenus_, which I presume is meant for 'heaven's'; but this word could not possibly be accented as _hevénus_. The strange forms which proper names assume in Chaucer are notorious; and the fact is, that _Herenus_ is a mere error for _Herines_ or _Herynes_. _Herynes_ (accented on _y_), occurs in St. 4 of Bk. iv of Troilus and Criscide, and is used as the plural of _Erinnys_, being applied to the three Furies:--'O ye _Herynes_, nightes doughtren thre.' Pity may be said to be the _queen_ of the Furies, in the sense that pity (or mercy) can alone control the vindictiveness of vengeance. Shakespeare tells us that mercy 'is mightiest in the mightiest,' and is 'above this sceptred sway'; Merch. Ven. iv. 1. 188.

Chaucer probably found this name precisely where he found his personification of Pity, viz. in Statius, who has the sing. _Erinnys_ (Theb. xi. 383), and the pl. _Erinnyas_ (345). Cf. Æneid, ii. 337, 573.

In a poem called The Remedy of Love, in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 322, back, the twelfth stanza begins with--'Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all,' &c., where it is plain that 'thou Hermes' is a substitution for 'Herines.'

95. The sense is--'the longer I love and dread you, the more I do so.' If we read _ever_ instead of _ay_, then the _e_ in _the_ must be suppressed. 'In _ever lenger the moore, never the moore, never the lesse_, Chaucer not unfrequently drops the _e_ in _the_, pronouncing _lengerth_, _neverth_'; cf. Clerkes Tale, E 687; Man of Lawes Tale, B 982; Ten Brink.

96. Most MSS. read _so sore_, giving no sense. Ten Brink has--'For sooth to seyne, I bere the hevy soore'; following MS. Sh. It is simpler to correct _so_ to _the_, as suggested by Harl. 7578, which has--'For soith [_error for_ sothly] for to saye I bere the sore.'

101. _Set_, short for _setteth_, like _bit_ for _biddeth_, Cant. Tales, Prol. 187, &c. Ten Brink quotes from the Sompnoures Tale (D 1982)--'With which the devel _set_ your herte a-fyre,' where _set_ = sets, present tense.

105. Ten Brink inserts _ne_, though it is not in the MSS. His note is: '_Ne_ is a necessary complement to _but_ = "only," as _but_ properly means "except"; and a collation of the best MSS. of the Cant. Tales shows that Chaucer never omitted the negative in this case. (The same observation was made already by Prof. Child in his excellent paper on the language of Chaucer and Gower; see Ellis, _Early Eng. Pronunciation_, p. 374.) _Me ne_ forms but one syllable, pronounced _meen_ [i. e. as mod. E. _main_]. In the same manner _I ne_ = _iin_ [pron. as mod. E. _een_] occurs, Cant. Tales, Prol. 764 (from MS. Harl. 7334)--

"I _ne_ saugh this yeer so mery a companye";

and in the Man of Lawes Tale (Group B, 1139)--

"_I ne_ seye but for this ende this sentence."

Compare Middle High German _in_ (= _ich ne_), e.g. _in kan dir nicht_, Walter v. d. Vogelweide, ed. Lachmann, 101. 33. In early French and Provençal _me_, _te_, _se_, &c., when preceded by a vowel, often became _m_, _t_, _s_, &c.; in Italian we have _cen_ for _ce ne_, &c.' Cf. _They n' wer-e_ in The Former Age, l. 5; and Book of the Duch. 244 (note).

110. See Anelida, 182; and the note.

119. Observe that this last line is a repetition of l. 2.

III. THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESSE.

I may remark here that the metre is sometimes difficult to follow; chiefly owing to the fact that the line sometimes begins with an accented syllable, just as, in Milton's L'Allegro, we meet with lines like 'Zéphyr, with Aurora playing.' The accented syllables are sometimes indistinctly marked, and hence arises a difficulty in immediately detecting the right flow of a line. A clear instance of a line beginning with an accented syllable is seen in l. 23--'Slép', and thús meláncolýë.'

1. The opening lines of this poem were subsequently copied (in 1384) by Froissart, in his Paradis d'Amour--

'Je sui de moi en grant merveille Comment je vifs, quant tant je veille, Et on ne porrait en veillant Trouver de moi plus travaillant: Car bien sacies que pour veiller Me viennent souvent travailler Pensees et melancolies,' etc. Furnivall; Trial Forewords, p. 51.

Chaucer frequently makes words like _have_ (l. 1), _live_ (l. 2), especially in the present indicative, mere monosyllables. As examples of the fully sounded final _e_, we may notice the dative _light-e_ (l. 1), the dative (or adverbial) _night-e_ (l. 2), the infinitive _slep-e_ (3), the adverb _ylich-e_ (9), the dative _mind-e_ (15), &c. On the other hand, _hav-e_ is dissyllabic in l. 24. The _e_ is elided before a following vowel in _defaute_ (5), _trouthe_ (6), _falle_ (13), _wite_ (16), &c. We may also notice that _com'th_ is a monosyllable (7), whereas _trewely_ (33) has three syllables, though in l. 35 it makes but two. It is clear that Chaucer chose to make _some_ words of variable length; and he does this to a much greater extent in the present poem and in the House of Fame than in more finished productions, such as the Canterbury Tales. But it must be observed, on the other hand, that the number of these variable words is _limited_; in a far larger number of words, the number of syllables never varies at all, except by regular elision before a vowel.

14. The reading _For sorwful ymaginacioun_ (in F., Tn., Th.) cannot be right. Lange proposes to omit _For_, which hardly helps us. It is clearly _sorwful_ that is wrong. I propose to replace it by _sory_. Koch remarks that _sorwful_ has only two syllables (l. 85); but the line only admits of one, or of one and a very light syllable.

15. Observe how frequently, in this poem and in the House of Fame, Chaucer concludes a sentence with the _former_ of two lines of a couplet. Other examples occur at ll. 29, 43, 51, 59, 67, 75, 79, 87, 89; i. e. at least ten times in the course of the first hundred lines. The same arrangement occasionally occurs in the existing translation of the Romaunt of the Rose, but with such less frequency as, in itself, to form a presumption against Chaucer's having written the whole of it.

Similar examples in Milton, though he was an admirer of Chaucer, are remarkably rare; compare, however, Comus, 97, 101, 127, 133, 137. The metrical effect of this pause is very good.

23. The texts read _this_. Ten Brink suggests _thus_ (Ch. Sprache, § 320); which I adopt.

31. _What me is_, what is the matter with me. _Me_ is here in the dative case. This throws some light on the common use of _me_ in Shakespeare in such cases as 'Heat _me_ these irons hot,' K. John, iv. 1. 1; &c.

31-96. These lines are omitted in the Tanner MS. 346; also in MS. Bodley 638 (which even omits ll. 24-30). In the Fairfax MS. they are added in a much later hand. Consequently, Thynne's edition is here our only satisfactory authority; though the late copy in the Fairfax MS. is worth consulting.

32. _Aske_, may ask; subjunctive mood.

33. _Trewely_ is here three syllables, which is the normal form; cf. Prologue, 761; Kn. Ta. A 1267. In l. 35, the second _e_ is hardly sounded.

36. We must here read 'hold-e,' _without_ elision of final _e_, which is preserved by the cæsura.

37. 'The most obvious interpretation of these lines seems to be that they contain the confession of a hopeless passion, which has lasted for eight years--a confession which certainly seems to come more appropriately and more naturally from an unmarried than a married man. 'For eight years,'--he says--'I have loved, and loved in vain--and yet my cure is never the nearer. There is but one physician that can heal me--but all that is ended and done with. Let us pass on into fresh fields; what cannot be obtained must needs be left'; Ward, Life of Chaucer, p. 53. Dr. Furnivall supposes that the relentless fair one was the one to whom his Complaint unto Pite was addressed; and chronology would require that Chaucer fell in love with her in 1361. There is no proof that Chaucer was married before 1374, though he may have been married not long after his first passion was 'done.'

43. 'It is good to regard our first subject'; and therefore to return to it. This first subject was his sleeplessness.

45. _Til now late_ follows _I sat upryght_, as regards construction. The reading _Now of late_, in some printed editions, is no better.

48. This 'Romaunce' turns out to have been a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses, a book of which Chaucer was so fond that he calls it his 'own book'; Ho. of Fame, 712. Probably he really had a copy of his own, as he constantly quotes it. Private libraries were very small indeed.

49. _Dryve away_, pass away; the usual phrase. Cf. 'And dryuen forth the longe day'; P. Plowman, B. prol. 224.

56. 'As long as men should love the law of nature,' i. e. should continue to be swayed by the natural promptings of passion; in other words, for ever. Certainly, Ovid's book has lasted well. In l. 57, _such thinges_ means 'such love-stories.'

62. 'Alcyone, or Halcyone: A daughter of Æolus and Enarete or Ægiale. She was married to Ceyx, and lived so happy with him, that they were presumptuous enough to call each other Zeus and Hera, for which Zeus metamorphosed them into birds, _alku[=o]n_ (a king-fisher) and _k[=e][=u]ks_ (a greedy sea-bird, Liddell and Scott; a kind of sea-gull; Apollod. i. 7. § 3, &c.; Hygin. Fab. 65). Hyginus relates that Ceyx perished in a shipwreck, that Alcyone for grief threw herself into the sea, and that the gods, out of compassion, changed the two into birds. It was fabled that, during the seven days before, and as many after the shortest day of the year, while the bird _alku[=o]n_ was breeding, there always prevailed calms at sea. An embellished form of the story is given by Ovid, Met. xi. 410, &c.; compare Virgil, Georg. i. 399.'--Smith's Dictionary. Hence the expression 'halcyon days'; see Holland's Pliny, b. x. c. 32, quoted in my Etym. Dict. s. v. _Halcyon_.

M. Sandras asserts that the history of Ceyx and Alcyone is borrowed from the Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse, by Machault, whereas it is evident that Chaucer took care to consult his favourite Ovid, though he _also_ copied several expressions from Machault's poem. Consult Max Lange, as well as Furnivall's Trial Forewords to Chaucer's Minor Poems, p. 43. Surely, Chaucer himself may be permitted to know; his description of the book, viz. in ll. 57-59, applies to Ovid, rather than to Machault's Poems. But the fact is that we have further evidence; Chaucer himself, elsewhere, plainly _names_ Ovid as his authority. See Cant. Tales, Group B, l. 53 (as printed in vol. v.), where he says--

'For he [Chaucer] hath told of loveres up and doun Mo than _Ovyde_ made of mencioun In his Epistelles, that been ful olde. What sholde I tellen hem, sin they ben tolde? In youthe he made of _Ceys and Alcion_;' &c.

It is true that Chaucer here mentions Ovid's Heroides rather than the Metamorphoses; but that is only because he goes on to speak of _other_ stories, which he took from the Heroides; see the whole context. It is plain that he wishes us to know that he took the present story chiefly from Ovid; yet there are some expressions which he owes to Machault, as will be shown below. It is worth notice, that the whole story is also in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. iv. (ed. Pauli, ii. 100); where it is plainly copied from Ovid throughout.

Ten Brink (Studien, p. 10) points out one very clear indication of Chaucer's having consulted Ovid. In l. 68, he uses the expression _to tellen shortly_, and then proceeds to allude to the shipwreck of Ceyx, which is told in Ovid at great length (Met. xi. 472-572). Of this shipwreck Machault says never a word; he merely says that Ceyx died in the sea.

There is a chapter _De Alcione_ in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale, bk. xvi. c. 26; made up from Ambrosius, Aristotle, Pliny (bk. 10), and the Liber de Natura Rerum.

66. Instead of quoting Ovid, I shall quote from Golding's translation of his Metamorphoses, as being more interesting to the English reader. (The whole story is also told by Dryden, whose version is easily accessible.) As the tale is told at great length, I quote only a few of the lines that most closely correspond to Chaucer. Compare--

'But fully bent He [_Ceyx_] seemed neither for to leaue the iourney which he ment To take by sea, nor yet to giue Alcyone leaue as tho Companion of his perlous course by water for to go.... When toward night the wallowing waues began to waxen white, And eke the heady eastern wind did blow with greater might.... And all the heauen with clouds as blacke as pitch was ouercast, That neuer night was halfe so darke. There came a flaw [_gust_] at last, That with his violence brake the Maste, and strake the Sterne away.... Behold, euen full vpon the waue a flake of water blacke Did breake, and vnderneathe the sea the head of Ceyx stracke.' fol. 137-9.

See further in the note to l. 136.

67. Koch would read _wolde_ for _wol_; I adopt his suggestion.

76. Alcyone (in the MSS.) was introduced as a gloss.

78. _Come_ (dissyllabic) is meant to be in the pt. t. subjunctive.

80. Of the restoration of this line, I should have had some reason to be proud; but I find that Ten Brink (who seems to miss nothing) has anticipated me; see his Chaucers Sprache, §§ 48, 329. We have here, as our guides, only the edition of Thynne (1532), and the late insertion in MS. Fairfax 16. Both of these read--'Anon her herte began to yerne'; whereas it of course ought to be--'Anon her herte gan to erme.' The substitution of _began_ for _gan_ arose from forgetting that _herte_ (A.S. _heorte_) is dissyllabic in Chaucer, in countless places. The substitution of _yerne_ for _erme_ arose from the fact that the old word _ermen_, to grieve, was supplanted by _earn_, to desire, to grieve, in the sixteenth century, and afterwards by the form _yearn_. This I have already shewn at such length in my note to the Pardoner's Prologue (Cant. Ta. C. 312), in my edition of the Man of Lawes Tale, pp. 39, 142, and yet again in my Etym. Dict., s. v. _Yearn_ (2), that it is needless to repeat it all over again. Chaucer was quite incapable of such a mere assonance as that of _terme_ with _yerne_; in fact, it is precisely the word _terme_ that is rimed with _erme_ in his Pardoner's Prologue. Mr. Cromie's index shews that, in the Cant. Tales, the rime _erme_, _terme_, occurs only once, and there is no third word riming with either. There is, however, a rime of _conferme_ with _ferme_, Troil. ii. 1525, and with _afferme_ in the same, 1588. There is, in Chaucer, no _sixth_ riming word in _-erme_ at all, and none in either _-irme_ or _-yrme_.

Both in the present passage and in the Pardoner's Prologue the verb to _erme_ is used with the same sb., viz. _herte_; which clinches the matter. By way of example, compare 'The bysschop weop for '_ermyng_'; King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1525.

86, 87. L. 86 is too short. In l. 87 I delete _alas_ after _him_, which makes the line a whole foot too long, and is not required. Koch ingeniously suggests, for l. 86: 'That hadde, alas! this noble wyf.' This transference of _alas_ mends both lines at once.

91. _Wher_, short for _whether_ (very common).

93. _Avowe_ is all one word, though its component parts were often written apart. Thus, in P. Plowman, B. v. 457, we find _And made avowe_, where the other texts have _a-vou_, _a-vowe_; see _Avow_ in the New E. Dict. See my note to Cant. Tales, Group C, 695.

97. Here the gap in the MSS. ceases, and we again have their authority for the text. For _Had_ we should, perhaps, read _Hadde_.

105. Doubtless, we ought to read:--'Ne coude she.'

106. This phrase is not uncommon. 'And on knes she sat adoun'; Lay le Freine, l. 159; in Weber's Met. Romances, i. 363. Cf. 'This Troilus ful sone on knees him sette'; Troilus, iii. 953.

107. _Weep_ (not _wepte_) is Chaucer's word; see Cant. Tales, B 606, 1052, 3852, E 545, F 496, G 371.

120. For _knowe_ (as in F. Tn. Th.) read _knowen_, to avoid hiatus.

126. 'And she, exhausted with weeping and watching.' Gower (Confes. Amantis, ed. Pauli, i. 160) speaks of a ship that is _forstormed and forblowe_, i. e. excessively driven about by storm and wind.

130. Or read: 'That madë her to slepe sone'; without elision of _e_ in _made_ (Koch).

136. _Go bet_, go quickly, hasten, lit. go better, i. e. faster. See note to Group C, 667. Cf. _Go now faste_, l. 152.

_Morpheus_ is dissyllabic, i. e. _Morph'ús_; cf. _Mórph'us_ in l. 167. I here add another illustration from Golding's Ovid, fol. 139:--

'Alcyone of so great mischaunce not knowing ought as yit, Did keepe a reckoning of the nights that in the while did flit, And hasted garments both for him and for her selfe likewise To weare at his homecomming which she vainely did surmize. To all the Gods deuoutly she did offer frankincense: But most aboue them all the Church of Iuno she did sence. And for her husband (who as then was none) she kneeld before The Altar, wishing health and soone arriuall at the shore. And that none other woman might before her be preferd, Of all her prayers this one peece effectually was herd. For Iuno could not finde in heart entreated for to bee For him that was already dead. But to th'intent that shee From Dame Alcyons deadly hands might keepe her Altars free She sayd: most faithfull messenger of my commandements, O Thou Rainebow to the sluggish house of slumber swiftly go, And bid him send a dreame in shape of Ceyx to his wife Alcyone, for to shew her plaine the loosing of his life. Dame Iris takes her pall wherein a thousand colours were, And bowing like a stringed bow vpon the cloudie sphere, Immediately descended to the drowzye house of Sleepe, Whose court the cloudes continually do closely ouerdreepe. Among the darke Cimmerians is a holow mountaine found And in the hill a Caue that farre doth run within the ground, The C[h]amber and the dwelling place where slouthfull sleepe doth couch. The light of Phoebus golden beames this place can never touch.... No boughs are stird with blasts of winde, no noise of tatling toong Of man or woman euer yet within that bower roong. Dumbe quiet dwelleth there. Yet from the rockes foote doth go The riuer of forgetfulnesse, which runneth trickling so Upon the litle peeble stones which in the channell ly, That vnto sleepe a great deale more it doth prouoke thereby.... Amid the Caue of Ebonye a bedsted standeth hie, And on the same a bed of downe with couering blacke doth lie: In which the drowzie God of sleepe his lither limbes doth rest. About him forging sundry shapes as many dreams lie prest As eares of corne do stand in fields in haruest time, or leaues Doe grow on trees, or sea to shoore of sandie cinder heaues. Assoone as Iris came within this house, and with her hand Had put aside the dazeling dreames that in her way did stand, The brightnesse of her robe through all the sacret house did shine. The God of sleepe scarce able for to raise his heauie eine, A three or foure times at the least did fall againe to rest, And with his nodding head did knock his chinne against his brest. At length he waking of himselfe, vpon his elbowe leande. And though he knew for what she came: he askt her what she meand': &c.

139. The first accent falls on _Sey_; the _e_ in _halfe_ seems to be suppressed.

154. _His wey._ Chaucer substitutes a male messenger for Iris; see ll. 134, 155, 180-2.

155. Imitated from Machault's Dit de la Fontaine:--

'_Que venue est en une grant valee,_ _De deus grans mons entour environnee,_ Et d'un russel qui par my la contree,' &c.

See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 200; Furnivall, Trial Forewords, p. 44.

It is worth notice that the visit of Iris to Somnus is also fully described by Statius, Theb. x. 81-136; but Chaucer does not seem to have copied him.

158, 159. Two bad lines in the MSS. Both can be mended by changing _nought_ into _nothing_, as suggested by Ten Brink, Chaucers Sprache, § 299.

160. See a very similar passage in Spenser, F. Q. i. 1. 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. And cf. Ho. of Fame, 70.

167. _Eclympasteyre._ 'I hold this to be a name of Chaucer's own invention. In Ovid occurs a son of Morpheus who has two different names: "Hunc _Icelon_ superi, mortale _Phobetora_ vulgus Nominat;" _Met._ xi. 640. _Phobetora_ may have been altered into _Pastora_: _Icelonpastora_ (the two names linked together) would give _Eclympasteyre_.'--Ten Brink, Studien, p. 11, as quoted in Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 116. At any rate, we may feel sure that _Eclym-_ is precisely Ovid's _Icelon_. And perhaps _Phobetora_ comes nearer to _-pasteyre_ than does _Phantasos_, the name of another son of Morpheus, whom Ovid mentions immediately below. Gower (ed. Pauli, ii. 103) calls them _Ithecus_ and _Panthasas_; and the fact that he here actually turns _Icelon_ into _Ithecus_ is a striking example of the strange corruption of proper names in medieval times. Prof. Hales suggests that _Eclympasteyre_ represents _Icelon plastora_, where _plastora_ is the acc. of Gk. [Greek: plastôr], i. e. moulder or modeller, a suitable epithet for a god of dreams; compare the expressions used by Ovid in ll. 626 and 634 of this passage. _Icelon_ is the acc. of Gk. [Greek: ikelos], or [Greek: eikelos], like, resembling. For my own part, I would rather take the form _plastera_, acc. of [Greek: plastêr], a form actually given by Liddell and Scott, and also nearer to the form in Chaucer. Perhaps Chaucer had seen a MS. of Ovid in which _Icelon_ was explained by _plastora_ or _plastera_, written beside or over it as a gloss, or by way of explanation. This would explain the whole matter. Mr. Fleay thinks the original reading was _Morpheus_, _Ecelon_, _Phantastere_; but this is impossible, because Morpheus had but _one_ heir (l. 168).

Froissart has the word _Enclimpostair_ as the name of a son of the god of sleep, in his poem called Paradis d'Amour. But _as he is merely copying this precise passage_, it does not at all help us.

For the remarks by Prof. Hales, see the Athenæum, 1882, i. 444; for those by Mr. Fleay, see the same, p. 568. Other suggestions have been made, but are not worth recording.

173. To _envye_; to be read as _Tenvý-e_. The phrase is merely an adaptation of the F. _à l'envi_, or of the vb. _envier_. Cotgrave gives: '_à l'envy l'vn de l'autre_, one to despight the other, or in emulation one of the other'; also '_envier_ (au _ieu_), to vie.' Hence E. _vie_; see _Vie_ in my Etym. Dict. It is etymologically connected with Lat. _inuitare_, not with Lat. _inuidia_. See l. 406, below.

175. Read _slepe_, as in ll. 169, 177; A.S. _slæpon_, pt. t. pl.

_Upright_, i. e. on their backs; see The Babees Book, p. 245.

181. _Who is_, i. e. who is it that.

183. _Awaketh_ is here repeated in the plural form.

184. _Oon ye_, one eye. This is from Machault, who has: 'ouvri l'un de ses yeux.' Ovid has the pl. _oculos_.

185. _Cast_ is the pp., as pointed out by Ten Brink, who corrects the line; Chaucers Sprache, § 320.

192. _Abrayd_, and not _abrayde_, is the right form; for it is a strong verb (A. S. _ábregdan_, pt. t. _ábrægd_). So also in the Ho. of Fame, 110 However, _brayde_ (as if weak) also occurs; Ho. of Fame, 1678.

195. _Dreynt-e_ is here used as an adj., with the weak declension in _-e_. So also in Cant. Tales, B 69. Cf. also Ho. of Fame, 1783.

199. _Fet-e_ is dat. pl.; see l. 400, and Cant. Ta., B 1104.

206. The word _look_ must be supplied. MS. B. even omits _herte_; which would give--'But good-e swet-e, [look] that ye'; where _good-e_ and _swet-e_ are vocatives.

213. I adopt Ten Brink's suggestion (Chaucers Sprache, § 300), viz. to change _allas_ into _A_. Lange omits _quod she_; but see l. 215.

218. _My first matere_, my first subject; i. e. sleeplessness, as in l. 43.

219. _Whérfor_ seems to be accented on the former syllable. MS. B. inserts _you_ after _told_; perhaps it is not wanted. If it is, it had better come before _told_ rather than after it.

222. _I had be_, I should have been. _Deed and dolven_, dead and buried; as in Cursor Mundi, 5494. Chaucer's _dolven and deed_ is odd.

244. _I ne roghte who_, to be read _In' roght-e who_; i. e. I should not care who; see note to Compl. to Pite, 105. _Roghte_ is subjunctive.

247. _His lyve_, during his life.

248. The readings are _here onwarde_, Th. F.; _here onward_, Tn.; _here on warde_, B. I do not think _here onward_ can be meant, nor yet _hereon-ward_; I know of no examples of such meaningless expressions. I read _here on warde_, and explain it: 'I will give him the very best gift that he ever expected (to get) in his life; and (I will give it) here, in his custody, even now, as soon as possible,' &c. _Ward_ = custody, occurs in the dat. _warde_ in William of Palerne, 376--'How that child from here _warde_ was went for evermore.'

250. Here Chaucer again takes a hint from Machault's Dit de la Fontaine, where we find the poet promising the god a hat and a soft bed of gerfalcon's feathers. See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 204.

'Et por ce au dieu qui moult sout (?) et moult vault Por mielx dormir un chapeau de pavaut Et un mol lit de plume de gerfaut Promes et doing.'

See also Our English Home, p. 106.

255. _Reynes_, i. e. Rennes, in Brittany; spelt _Raynes_ in the Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 358. Linen is still made there; and by 'clothe of Reynes' some kind of linen, rather than of woollen cloth, is meant. It is here to be used for pillow-cases. It was also used for sheets. 'Your shetes shall be of clothe of _Rayne_'; Squyr of Lowe Degre, l. 842 (in Ritson, Met. Rom. iii. 180). 'A peyre schetes of _Reynes_, with the heued shete [head-sheet] of the same'; Earliest Eng. Wills, ed. Furnivall, p. 4, l. 16. 'A towaile of Raynes'; Babees Book, p. 130, l. 213; and see note on p. 208 of the same. 'It [the head-sheet] was more frequently made of the fine white linen of Reynes'; Our Eng. Home, p. 109. 'Hede-shetes of Rennes' are noticed among the effects of Hen. V; see Rot. Parl. iv. p. 228; footnote on the same page. Skelton mentions rochets 'of fyne Raynes'; Colin Clout, 316. The mention of this feather-bed may have been suggested to Machault by Ovid's line about the couch of Morpheus (Metam. xi. 611)--'Plumeus, unicolor, pullo velamine tectus.'

264. We must delete _quene_; it is only an explanatory gloss.

279. 'To be well able to interpret my dream.'

282. The modern construction is--'The dream of King Pharaoh.' See this idiom explained in my note to the Prioresses Tale, Group F, l. 209. Cf. Gen. xli. 25.

284. As to Macrobius, see note to the Parl. of Foules, 31. And cf. Ho. of Fame, 513-7. We must never forget how frequent are Chaucer's imitations of Le Roman de la Rose. Here, for example, he is thinking of ll. 7-10 of that poem:--

'Ung acteur qui ot non Macrobes.... Ancois escrist la vision Qui avint au roi Cipion.'

After _Macrobeus_ understand _coude_ (from l. 283), which governs the infin. _arede_ in l. 289.

286. _Métt-e_ occupies the second foot in the line. Koch proposes _him_ for _he_; but it is needless; see Cant. Tales, B 3930. In l. 288, read _fortúned_.

288. This line, found in Thynne only, is perhaps not genuine, but interpolated. Perhaps _Whiche_ is better than _Swiche_.

292. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 45-47:--

'Avis m'iere qu'il estoit mains.... En Mai estoie, ce songoie.'

And again, cf. ll. 295, &c. with the same, ll. 67-74. See pp. 95, 96.

301. Read _songen_, not _songe_, to avoid the hiatus.

304. Chaucer uses _som_ as a singular in such cases as the present. A clear case occurs in '_Som_ in _his_ bed'; Kn. Tale, 2173. (C. T. A 3031.) Hence _song_ is the sing. verb.

309. _Entunes_, tunes. Cf. _entuned_, pp.; C. T. Prol. 123.

310. _Tewnes_, Tunis; vaguely put for some distant and wealthy town; see ll. 1061-4, below. Its name was probably suggested by the preceding word _entunes_, which required a rime. Gower mentions _Kaire_ (Cairo) just as vaguely:--

'That me were lever her love winne Than Kaire and al that is therinne'; Conf. Amant, ed. Pauli, ii. 57.

The sense is--'that certainly, even to gain Tunis, I would not have (done other) than heard them sing.' Lange thinks these lines corrupt; but I believe the idiom is correct.

323. As stained glass windows were then rare and expensive, it is worth while observing that these gorgeous windows were not real ones, but only seen in a dream. This passage is imitated in the late poem called the Court of Love, st. 33, where we are told that 'The temple shone with windows al of glasse,' and that in the glass were portrayed the stories of Dido and Annelida. These windows, it may be observed, were equally imaginary.

328. The caesural pause comes after _Ector_, which might allow the intrusion of the word _of_ before _king_. But Mr. Sweet omits _of_, and I follow him. The words _of king_ are again inserted before _Lamedon_ in l. 329, being caught from l. 328 above.

_Lamedon_ is Laomedon, father of King Priam of Troy. _Ector_ is Chaucer's spelling of Hector; Man of Lawes Tale, B 198. He here cites the usual examples of love-stories, such as those of Medea and Jason, and Paris and Helen. _Lavyne_ is Lavinia, the second wife of Æneas; Vergil, Æn. bk. vii; Rom. Rose, 21087; cf. Ho. of Fame, 458. Observe his pronunciation of _Médea_, as in Ho. of Fame, 401; Cant. Ta., B 72.

332. 'There is reason to believe that Chaucer copied these imageries from the romance of _Guigemar_, one of the Lays of Marie de France; in which the walls of a chamber are painted with Venus and the _Art of Love_ from Ovid. Perhaps Chaucer might not look further than the temples of Boccaccio's _Theseid_ for these ornaments'; Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, 1871, iii. 63. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, ll. 139-146; see p. 99.

333. _Bothe text and glose_, i. e. both in the principal panels and in the margin. He likens the walls to the page of a book, in which the _glose_, or commentary, was often written in the margin. Mr. Sweet inserts _with_ before _text_, and changes _And_ into _Of_ in the next line; I do not think the former change is necessary, but I adopt the latter.

334. It had all sorts of scenes from the Romance of the Rose on it. Chaucer again mentions this Romance by name in his Merchant's Tale; C. T., E 2032; and he tells us that he himself translated it; Prol. to Legend, 329. The celebrated Roman de la Rose was begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who wrote ll. 1-4070, and completed about forty years afterwards (in a very different and much more satirical style) by Jean de Meung (or Meun), surnamed (like his father) Clopinel, i. e. the Cripple, who wrote ll. 4071-22074; it was finished about the year 1305. The story is that of a young man who succeeded in plucking a rose in a walled garden, after overcoming extraordinary difficulties; allegorically, it means that he succeeded in obtaining the object of his love. See further above, pp. 16-19.

The E. version is invariably called the Romaunt of the Rose, and we find the title Rommant de la Rose in the original, l. 20082; cf. our _romant-ic_. But Burguy explains that _romant_ is a false form, due to confusion with words rightly ending in _-ant_. The right O. F. form is _romans_, originally an adverb; from the phrase _parler romans_, i. e. loqui Romanice. In the Six-text edition of the Cant. Tales, E 2032, four MSS. have _romance_, one has _romans_, and one _romauns_.

For examples of walls or ceilings being painted with various subjects, see Warton's Hist. of E. Poetry, ed. Hazlitt, ii. 131, 275; iii. 63.

340. The first accent is on _Blew_, not on _bright_. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 124, 125 (see p. 98, above):--

'Clere et serie et bele estoit La matinee, et atrempee.'

343. _Ne in_ is to be read as _Nin_; we find it written _nin_ in the Squieres Tale, F 35. See l. 694.

347. _Whether_ is to be read as _Wher_; it is often so spelt.

348. The line, as it stands in the authorities, viz. 'And I herde goyng, bothe vp and doune'--cannot be right. Mr. Sweet omits _bothe_, which throws the accent upon _I_, and reduces _herde_ to _herd_' (unaccented!). To remedy this, I also omit _And_. Perhaps _speke_ (better _speken_) is an infinitive in l. 350, but it may also be the pt. t. plural (A. S. _spræcon_); and it is more convenient to take it so.

352. _Upon lengthe_, after a great length of course, after a long run.

M. Sandras points out some _very_ slight resemblances between this passage and some lines in a French poem in the Collection Mouchet, vol. ii. fol. 106; see the passage cited in Furnivall's Trial Forewords to the Minor Poems, p. 51. Most likely Chaucer wrote independently of this French poem, as even M. Sandras seems inclined to admit.

353. _Embosed_, embossed. This is a technical term, used in various senses, for which see the New Eng. Dict. Here it means 'so far plunged into the thicket'; from O. F. _bos_ (F. _bois_), a wood. In later authors, it came to mean 'driven to extremity, like a hunted animal'; then 'exhausted by running,' and lastly, 'foaming at the mouth,' as a result of exhaustion.

362. A _relay_ was a fresh set of dogs; see _Relay_ in my Etym. Dict.

'When the howndys are set an hert for to mete, And other hym chasen and folowyn to take, Then all the _Relais_ thow may vppon hem make.' Book of St. Alban's, fol. e 8, back.

A _lymere_ was a dog held in a _liam_, _lime_, or leash, to be let loose when required; from O.F. _liem_ (F. _lien_, Lat. _ligamen_), a leash. In the Book of St. Alban's, fol. e 4, we are told that the beasts which should be 'reride with the _lymer_,' i. e. roused and pursued by the dog so called, are 'the hert and the bucke and the boore.'

365. _Oon, ladde_, i. e. one who led. This omission of the relative is common.

368. 'The emperor Octovien' is the emperor seen by Chaucer in his dream. In l. 1314, he is called _this king_, by whom Edward III. is plainly intended. He was 'a favourite character of Carolingian legend, and pleasantly revived under this aspect by the modern romanticist Ludwig Tieck--probably [here] a flattering allegory for the King'; Ward's Life of Chaucer, p. 69. The English romance of Octouian Imperator is to be found in Weber's Metrical Romances, iii. 157; it extends to 1962 lines. He was an emperor of Rome, and married Floraunce, daughter of Dagabers [Dagobert], king of France. The adventures of Floraunce somewhat resemble those of Constance in the Man of Lawes Tale. 'The Romance of the Emperor Octavian' was also edited by Halliwell for the Percy Society, in 1844. The name originally referred to the emperor Augustus.

370. The exclamation 'A goddes halfe' was pronounced like 'A god's half'; see l. 758. See note to l. 544.

374. _Fil to doon_, fell to do, i. e. was fitting to do.

375. _Fot-hoot_, foot-hot, immediately; see my note to Man of Lawes Tale, B 438.

376. _Moot_, notes upon a horn, here used as a plural. See Glossary. 'How shall we blowe whan ye han sen the hert? I shal blowe after one _mote_, ij _motes_ [i. e. 3 motes in all]; and if myn howndes come not hastily to me as I wolde, I shall blowe iiij. _motes_'; Venery de Twety, in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 152.

Cf. a passage in the Chace du Cerf, quoted from the Collection Mouchet, i. 166, in Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 51 (though Chaucer probably wrote his account quite independently of it):--

'Et puis si corneras apel .iij. lons _mots_, pour les chiens avoir.'

379. _Rechased_, headed back. Men were posted at certain places, to keep the hart within certain bounds. See next note.

386. _A forloyn_, a recall (as I suppose; for it was blown when the hounds were all a long way off their object of pursuit). It is thus explained in the Book of St. Alban's, fol. f I:--

'Yit mayster, wolde I fayn thus at yow leere, What is a _forloyng_, for that is goode to here. That shall I say the, quod he, the soth at lest. When thy houndes in the wode sechyn any beest, And the beest is stoll away owt of the fryth, Or the houndes that thou hast meten therwith, And any other houndes before than may with hem mete, Thees oder houndes are then _forloyned_, I the hete. For the beste and the houndes arn so fer before, And the houndes behynde be weer[i]e and soore, So that they may not at the best cum at ther will, The houndes before _forloyne_ [distance] hem, and that is the skyll. They be ay so fere before, to me iff thou will trust; And thys is the _forloyne_; lere hit, iff thou lust.'

The 'chace of the forloyne' is explained (very obscurely) in the Venery de Twety; see Reliquiæ Antiquæ, i. 152. But the following passage from the same gives some light upon _rechased_: 'Another chace ther is whan a man hath set up archerys and greyhoundes, and the best be founde, and passe out the boundys, and myne houndes after; then shall y blowe on this maner a mote, and aftirward the _rechace_ upon my houndys that be past the boundys.'

387. _Go_, gone. The sense is--'I had gone (away having) walked from my tree.' The idiom is curious. _My tree_, the tree at which I had been posted. Chaucer dreamt that he was one of the men posted to watch which way the hart went, and to keep the bounds.

396. The final _e_ in _fled-de_ is not elided, owing to the pause after it. See note to l. 685.

398. _Wente_, path. Chaucer often rimes words that are pronounced alike, if their meanings be different. See ll. 439, 440; and cf. ll. 627-630. The very same pair of rimes occurs again in the Ho. of Fame, 181, 182; and in Troil. ii. 62, 813; iii. 785, v. 603, 1192.

402. Read--_For both-e Flor-a_, &c. The _-a_ in _Flora_ comes at the cæsural pause; cf. ll. 413, 414. Once more, this is from Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 8449-51:--

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

Cf. also ll. 5962-5:--

'Les floretes i fait parair, E _cum estoiles_ flamboier, Et les herbetes verdoier _Zephirus_, quant sur mer chevauche.'

405. The first accent is on _For_; not happily.

408. 'To have more flowers than the heaven (has stars, so as even to rival) seven such planets as there are in the sky.' Rather involved, and probably all suggested by the necessity for a rime to _heven_. See l. 824. Moreover, it is copied from Le Roman de la Rose, 8465-8:--

'Qu'il vous fust avis que la terre Vosist emprendre estrif et guerre Au ciel d'estre miex estelée, Tant iert par ses flors revelée.'

410-412. From Le Roman de la Rose, 55-58 (see p. 95, above):--

'La terre ... Et oblie la poverte Ou ele a tot l'yver este.'

419. Imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 1373-1391; in particular:--

'Li ung [_arbre_] fu loing de l'autre assis Plus de cinq toises, ou de sis,' &c.

Chaucer has treated a _toise_ as if it were equal to two feet; it was really about six. In his own translation of the Romaunt, l. 1393, he translates _toise_ by _fadome_. See p. 151 (above).

429. According to the Book of St. Albans, fol. e 4, the buck was called _a fawne_ in his first year, _a preket_ in the second, _a sowrell_ in the third, _a sowre_ in the fourth, _a bucke of the fyrst hede_ in the fifth, and _a bucke_ (simply) in the sixth year. Also _a roo_ is the female of the _roobucke_.

435. _Argus_ is put for _Algus_, the old French name for the inventor of the Arabic numerals; it occurs in l. 16373 of the Roman de la Rose, which mentions him in company with Euclid and Ptolemy--

'_Algus_, Euclides, Tholomees.'

This name was obviously confused with that of the hundred-eyed Argus.

This name _Algus_ was evolved out of the O.F. _algorisme_, which, as Dr. Murray says, is a French adaptation 'from the Arab. _al-Khow[=a]razm[=i]_, the _native of Khw[=a]razm_ (_Khiva_), surname of the Arab mathematician Abu Ja'far Mohammed Ben Musa, who flourished early in the 9th century, and through the translation of whose work on Algebra, the Arabic numerals became generally known in Europe. Cf. _Euclid_ = plane geometry.' He was truly 'a noble countour,' to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude. That _Algus_ was sometimes called _Argus_, also appears from the Roman de la Rose, ll. 12994, &c., which is clearly the very passage which Chaucer here copies:--

'Se mestre _Argus_ li bien contens I vosist bien metre ses cures, E venist _o ses dix figures_, Par quoi tout certefie et nombre, Si ne péust-il pas le nombre Des grans contens certefier, Tant seust bien monteplier.'

Here _o_ means 'with'; so that Chaucer has copied the very phrase 'with his figures ten.' But still more curiously, Jean de Meun here rimes _nombre_, pres. sing. indic., with _nombre_, sb.; and Chaucer rimes _noumbre_, infin., with _noumbre_, sb. likewise. _Countour_ in l. 435 means 'arithmetician'; in the next line it means an abacus or counting-board, for assisting arithmetical operations.

437. _His figures ten_; the ten Arabic numerals, i. e. from 1 to 9, and the cipher 0.

438. _Al ken_, all kin, i. e. mankind, all men. This substitution of _ken_ for _kin_ (A.S. _cyn_) seems to have been due to the exigencies of rime, as Chaucer uses _kin_ elsewhere. However, Gower has the same form--'And of what _ken_ that she was come'; Conf. Am. b. viii; ed. Pauli, iii. 332. So also in Will. of Palerne, 722--'Miself knowe ich nou[gh]t mi _ken_'; and five times at least in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, as it is a Kentish form. It was, doubtless, a permissible variant.

442. The strong accent on _me_ is very forced.

445. _A man in blak_; John of Gaunt, in mourning for the loss of his wife Blaunche. Imitated by Lydgate, in his Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 130, and by Spenser, in his Daphnaida:--

'I did espie Where towards me a sory wight did cost Clad all in black, that mourning did bewray.'

452. _Wel-faring-e_; four syllables.

455. John of Gaunt, born in June, 1340, was 29 years old in 1369. I do not know why a poet is _never to make a mistake_; nor why critics should lay down such a singular law. But if we are to lay the error on the scribes, Mr. Brock's suggestion is excellent. He remarks that _nine and twenty_ was usually written xxviiij.; and if the _v_ were omitted, it would appear as .xxiiij., i. e. _four and twenty_. The existing MSS. write 'foure and twenty' at length; but such is not the usual practice of earlier scribes. It may also be added that .xxiiij. was at that time always read as _four and twenty_, never as _twenty-four_; so that no ambiguity could arise as to the mode of reading it. See Richard the Redeless, iii. 260.

There is a precisely similiar confusion in Cant. Ta. Group B, l. 5, where _eightetethe_ is denoted by 'xviijthe' in the Hengwrt MS., whilst the Harl. MS. omits the _v_, and reads _threttenthe_, and again the Ellesmere MS. inserts an _x_, and gives us _eighte and twentithe_. The presumption is, that Chaucer knew his patron's age, and that we ought to read _nine_ for _four_; but even if he inadvertently wrote _four_, there is no crime in it.

475. The knight's lay falls into two stanzas, one of five, and one of six lines, as marked. In order to make them more alike, Thynne inserted an additional line--And thus in sorowe lefte me alone--after l. 479. This additional line is numbered 480 in the editions; so I omit l. 480 in the numbering. The line is probably spurious. It is not grammatical; grammar would require that _has_ (not _is_, as in l. 479) should be understood before the pp. _left_; or if we take _left-e_ as a past tense, then the line will not scan. But it is also unmetrical, as the arrangement of lines should be the same as in ll. 481-6, if the two stanzas are to be made alike. Chaucer says the lay consisted of 'ten verses or twelve' in l. 463, which is a sufficiently close description of a lay of eleven lines. Had he said _twelve_ without any mention of _ten_, the case would have been different.

479. Lange proposes: 'Is deed, and is fro me agoon.' F. Tn. Th. agree as to the reading given; I see nothing against it.

481. If we must needs complete the line, we must read 'Allas! o deth!' inserting _o_; or 'Allas! the deth,' inserting _the_. The latter is proposed by Ten Brink, Sprache, &c. § 346.

490. _Pure_, very; cf. 'pure fettres,' Kn. Tale, A 1279. And see l. 583, below.

491. Cf. 'Why does my blood thus muster to my heart?' Meas. for Meas. ii. 4. 20.

501. The MSS. have _seet_, sat, a false form for _sat_ (A.S. _sæt_); due to the plural form _seet-e_ or _s[=e]t-e_ (A.S. _sæt-on_). We certainly find _seet_ for _sat_ in the Kn. Tale, A 2075. Read _sete_, as the pt. t. subj. (A.S. _s[=æ]te_); and _fete_ as dative pl. form, as in Cant. Ta. B 1104.

510. _Made_, i. e. they made; idiomatic.

521. _Ne I_, nor I; to be read _N'I_; cf. note to l. 343.

526. 'Yes; the amends is (are) easily made.'

532. _Me acqueynte_ = _m'acqueynt-e_, acquaint myself.

544. _By our Lord_, to be read as _by'r Lord_. Cf. _by'r lakin_, Temp. iii. 3. 1. So again, in ll. 651, 690, 1042.

547. _Me thinketh_ (= _me think'th_), it seems to me.

550. _Wis_, certainly: 'As certainly (as I hope that) God may help me.' So in Nonne Prestes Tale, 587 (B 4598); and cf. Kn. Tale, 1928 (B 2786); Squ. Ta. F 469, &c. And see l. 683, below.

556. _Paraventure_, pronounced as _Paraunter_; Thynne so has it.

Compare this passage with the long dialogue between Troilus and Pandarus, in the latter part of the first book of Troilus.

568. Alluding to Ovid's Remedia Amoris. Accent _remédies_ on the second syllable.

569. The story of Orpheus is in Ovid's Metamorphoses, bk. x. The allusion is to the harp of Orpheus, at the sound of which the tortured had rest. Cf. Ho. of Fame, 1202:--

'To tyre on Titius growing hart the gredy Grype forbeares: The shunning water Tantalus endeuereth not to drink; And Danaus daughters ceast to fil their tubs that haue no brink. Ixions wheel stood still: and downe sate Sisyphus vpon His rolling stone.'--GOLDING'S Ovid, fol. 120.

570. Cf. Ho. of Fame, 919; Rom. Rose, 21633. Dædalus represents the mechanician. No mechanical contrivances can help the mourner.

572. Cf.

'Par Hipocras, ne Galien, Tant fussent bon phisicien.' Roman de la Rose, 16161.

Hippocrates and Galen are meant; see note to Cant. Tales, C 306.

579. _Y-worthe_, (who am) become; pp. of _worthen_.

582. 'For all good fortune and I are foes,' lit. angry (with each other). Hence _wroth-e_ is a plural form.

589. _S_ and _C_ were so constantly interchanged before _e_ that _Sesiphus_ could be written _Cesiphus_; and _C_ and _T_ were so often mistaken that _Cesiphus_ easily became _Tesiphus_, the form in the Tanner MS. Further, initial _T_ was sometimes replaced by _Th_; and this would give the _Thesiphus_ of MS. F.

_Sesiphus_, i. e. Sisyphus, is of course intended; it was in the author's mind in connection with the story of Orpheus just above; see note to l. 569. In the Roman de la Rose, we have the usual allusions to _Yxion_ (l. 19479), _Tentalus_, i. e. Tantalus (l. 19482), _Ticius_, i. e. Tityus (l. 19506), and _Sisifus_ (l. 19499).

But whilst I thus hold that Chaucer probably wrote _Sesiphus_, I have no doubt that he really meant _Tityus_, as is shewn by the expression _lyth_, i. e. lies extended. See Troil. i. 786, where Bell's edition has _Siciphus_, but the Campsall MS. has _Ticyus_; whilst in ed. 1532 we find _Tesiphus_.

599. With this string of contrarieties compare the Eng. version of the Roman de la Rose, 4706-4753. See p. 212, above.

614. _Abaved_, confounded, disconcerted. See Glossary.

618. Imitated from the Roman de la Rose, from l. 6644 onwards--

'Vez cum fortune le servi ... N'est ce donc chose bien provable Que sa roë n'est pas tenable?' ...

Jean de Meun goes on to say that Charles of Anjou killed Manfred, king of Sicily, in the first battle with him [A.D. 1266]--

'En la premeraine bataille L'assailli por li desconfire, _Eschec_ et _mat_ li ala dire Desus son destrier auferrant, Du trait d'un paonnet errant Ou milieu de son eschiquier.'

He next speaks of Conradin, whose death was likewise caused by Charles in 1268, so that these two (Manfred and Conradin) lost all their pieces at chess--

'Cil dui, comme folz garçonnés, Roz et fierges et paonnés, Et chevaliers as gieus perdirent, Et hors de l'eschiquier saillirent.'

And further, of the inventor of chess (l. 6715)--

'Car ainsinc le dist Athalus Qui des eschez controva l'us, Quant il traitoit d'arismetique.'

He talks of the queen being taken (at chess), l. 6735--

'Car la fierche avoit este prise Au gieu de la premiere assise.'

He cannot recount all Fortune's tricks (l. 6879)--

'De fortune la semilleuse Et de sa roë perilleuse Tous les tors conter ne porroie.'

629. Cf. 'whited sepulchres'; Matt. xxiii. 27; Rom. de la Rose, 8946.

630. The MSS. and Thynne have _floures_, _flourys_. This gives no sense; we must therefore read _flour is_. For a similar rime see that of _nones_, _noon is_, in the Prologue, 523, 524. Strictly, grammar requires _ben_ rather than _is_; but when two nominatives express much the same sense, the singular verb may be used, as in Lenvoy to Bukton, 6. The sense is--'her chief glory and her prime vigour is (i. e. consists in) lying.'

634. The parallel passage is one in the Remède de Fortune, by G. de Machault:--

'_D'un oeil rit, de l'autre lerme_; C'est l'orgueilleuse humilité, _C'est l'envieuse charité_ [l. 642] ... La peinture d'une vipère Qu'est mortable; En riens à li ne se compère.'

See Furnivall's Trial Forewords, p. 47; and compare the remarkable and elaborate description of Fortune in the Anticlaudian of Alanus de Insulis (Distinctio 8, cap. I), in Wright's Anglo-Latin Satirists, vol. ii. pp. 399, 400.

636. Chaucer seems to have rewritten the whole passage at a later period:--

'O sodeyn hap, o thou fortune instable, Lyk to the scorpioun so deceivable, That flaterest with thyn heed when thou wolt stinge; Thy tayl is deeth, thurgh thyn enveniminge. O brotil Ioye, o swete venim queynte, O monstre, that so subtilly canst peynte Thy giftes under hewe of stedfastnesse, That thou deceyvest bothe more and lesse,' &c. Cant. Tales, 9931 (E 2057).

Compare also Man of Lawes Tale, B 361, 404. 'The scorpiun is ones cunnes wurm thet haueth neb, ase me seith, sumdel iliche ase wummon, and is neddre bihinden; maketh feir semblaunt and fiketh mit te heaued, and stingeth mid te teile'; Ancren Riwle, p. 206. Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Naturale, bk. xx. c. 160, quotes from the Liber de Naturis Rerum--'Scorpio blandum et quasi virgineum dicitur vultum habere, sed habet in cauda nodosa venenatum aculeum, quo pungit et inficit proximantem.'

642. A translated line; see note to l. 634.

651. Read--_Trow'st thou? by'r lord_; see note to l. 544.

653. _Draught_ is a move at chess; see ll. 682, 685. Thus in Caxton's Game of the Chesse--'the alphyn [bishop] goeth in vj. _draughtes_ al the tablier [board] rounde about.' So in The Tale of Beryn, 1779, 1812. It translates the F. _trait_; see note to l. 618 (second quotation).

654. '_Fers_, the piece at chess next to the king, which we and other European nations call the _queen_; though very improperly, as Hyde has observed. _Pherz_, or _Pherzan_, which is the Persian name for the same piece, signifies the King's _Chief Counsellor_, or _General_--Hist. Shahilud. [_shahi-ludii_, chess-play], pp. 88, 89.'--Tyrwhitt's Glossary. Chaucer follows Rom. Rose, where the word appears as _fierge_, l. 6688, and _fierche_, l. 6735; see note to l. 618 above. (For another use of _fers_, see note to l. 723 below.) Godefroy gives the O. F. spellings _fierce_, _fierche_, _fierge_, _firge_, and quotes two lines, which give the O. F. names of all the pieces at chess:--

'Roy, roc, chevalier, et alphin, Fierge, et peon.'--

Caxton calls them _kyng_, _quene_, _alphyn_, _knyght_, _rook_, _pawn_. Richardson's Pers. Dict. p. 1080, gives the Pers. name of the queen as _farz[=i]_ or _farz[=i]n_, and explains _fars[=i]n_ by 'the queen at chess, a learned man'; compare Tyrwhitt's remark above. In fact, the orig. Skt. name for this piece was _mantrí_, i. e. the adviser or counsellor. He also gives the Pers. _farz_, learned; _farz_ or _firz_, the queen at chess. I suppose it is a mere chance that the somewhat similar Arab. _faras_ means 'a horse, and the knight at chess'; Richardson (as above). Oddly enough, the _latter_ word has also some connection with Chaucer, as it is the Arabic name of the 'wedge' of an astrolabe; see Chaucer's Astrolabe, Part i. § 14 (footnote), in vol. iii.

655. When a chess-player, by an oversight, loses his queen for nothing, he may, in general, as well as give up the game. Beryn was 'in hevy plyghte,' when he only lost a rook for nothing; Tale of Beryn, 1812.

660. The word _the_ before _mid_ must of course be omitted. The lines are to be scanned thus:--

'Therwith | fortun | e seid | e chek | here And mate | in mid | pointe of | the chek | kere.'

The rime is a feminine one. Lines 660 and 661 are copied from the Rom. Rose; see note to l. 618, above. To be checkmated by an 'errant' pawn in the very middle of the board is a most ignominious way of losing the game. Cf. _check-mate_ in Troil. ii. 754.

663. _Athalus_; see note to l. 618, above. Jean de Meun follows John of Salisbury (bishop of Chartres, died 1180) in attributing the invention of chess to Attalus. 'Attalus Asiaticus, si Gentilium creditur historiis, hanc ludendi lasciuiam dicitur inuenisse ab exercitio numerorum, paululum deflexa materia;' Joan. Saresburiensis Policraticus, lib. i. c. 5. Warton (Hist. E. Poet. 1871, iii. 91) says the person meant is Attalus Philometor, king of Pergamus; who is mentioned by Pliny, Nat. Hist. xviii. 3, xxviii. 2. It is needless to explain here how chess was developed out of the old Indian game for four persons called _chaturanga_, i. e. consisting of four members or parts (Benfey's Skt. Dict. p. 6). I must refer the reader to Forbes's History of Chess, or the article on _Chess_ in the English Cyclopædia. See also the E. version of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. Herrtage, p. 70; A. Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, ed. Wright, p. 324; and Sir F. Madden's article in the Archæologia, xxiv. 203.

666. _Ieupardyes_, hazards, critical positions, problems; see note on Cant. Tales, Group G, 743.

667. _Pithagores_, put for Pythagoras; for the rime. Pythagoras of Samos, born about B.C. 570, considered that all things were founded upon numerical relations; various discoveries in mathematics, music, and astronomy, were attributed to him.

682. 'I would have made the same move'; i. e. had I had the power, I would have taken her _fers_ from her, just as she took mine.

684. _She_, i. e. Fortune; so in Thynne. The MSS. have _He_, i. e. God, which can hardly be meant.

685. The cæsural pause preserves _e_ in _draughte_ from elision. It rimes with _caughte_ (l. 682). Similar examples of 'hiatus' are not common: Ten Brink (Sprache, § 270) instances Cant. Tales, Group C, 599, 772 (Pard. Tale).

694. _Ne in_ is to be read as _nin_ (twice); see note to l. 343.

700. 'There lies in reckoning (i. e. is debited to me in the account), as regards sorrow, for no amount at all.' In his account with Sorrow he is owed nothing, having received payment in full. There is no real difficulty here.

705. 'I have nothing'; for (1) Sorrow has paid in full, and so owes me nothing; (2) I have no gladness left; (3) I have lost my true wealth; (4) and I have no pleasure.

708. 'What is past is not yet to come.'

709. _Tantale_, Tantalus. He has already referred to _Sisyphus_; see note to l. 589. In the Roman de la Rose, we find _Yxion_, l. 19479; _Tentalus_, l. 19482; and _Sisifus_, l. 19499; as I have already remarked.

717. Again from the Rom. de la Rose, l. 5869--

'Et ne priseras une prune Toute la roë de fortune. A _Socrates_ seras semblables, Qui tant fu fers et tant estables, Qu'il n'ert liés en prospérités, Ne tristes en aversités.'

Chaucer's _three strees_ (i. e. straws) is Jean de Meun's _prune_.

723. By _the ferses twelve_ I understand all the pieces except the king, which could not be taken. The guess in Bell's Chaucer says 'all the pieces except the pawns'; but as a player only has _seven_ pieces beside the pawns and king, we must then say that the knight exaggerates. My own reckoning is thus: pawns, _eight_; queen, bishop, rook, knight, _four_; total, _twelve_. The fact that each player has _two_ of three of these, viz. of the _bishop_, _rook_, and _knight_, arose from the conversion of _chatura[.n]ga_, in which each of four persons had a king, bishop, knight, rook [to keep to modern names] and four pawns, into chess, in which each of two persons had two kings (afterwards king and queen), two bishops, knights, and rooks, and eight pawns. The bishop, knight, and rook, were thus duplicated, and so count but one apiece, which makes _three_ (sorts of) pieces; and the queen is a _fourth_, for the king cannot be taken. The case of the pawns was different, for each pawn had an individuality of its own, no two being made alike (except in inferior sets). Caxton's Game of the Chesse shews this clearly; he describes each of the eight pawns separately, and gives a different figure to each. According to him, the pawns were (beginning from the King's Rook's Pawn) the Labourer, Smyth, Clerke (or Notary), Marchaunt, Physicien, Tauerner, Garde, and Ribauld. They denoted 'all sorts and conditions of men'; and this is why our common saying of 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief' enumerates _eight_ conditions[288].

As the word _fers_ originally meant counsellor or monitor of the king, it could be applied to any of the pieces. There was a special reason for its application to each of the pawns; for a pawn, on arriving at its last square, could not be exchanged (as now) for any piece at pleasure, but only for a queen, i. e. the fers _par excellence_. For, as Caxton says again, 'he [the pawn] may not goo on neyther side till he hath been in the fardest ligne of theschequer, & that he hath taken the nature of the draughtes of the quene, & than he is a _fiers_, and than may he goo on al sides cornerwyse fro poynt to poynt onely as the quene'; &c.

726. These stock examples all come together in the Rom. de la Rose; viz. _Jason_ and _Medee_, at l. 13433; _Philis_ and _Demophon_, at l. 13415; '_Dido_, roine de Cartage,' at l. 13379. The story of Echo and Narcissus is told fully, in an earlier passage (see ll. 1469-1545 of the English version, at p. 154); also that of 'Dalida' and 'Sanson' in a later passage, at l. 16879. See also the Legends of Dido, Medea, and Phillis in the Legend of Good Women; and the story of Sampson in the Monkes Tale, B 3205:--

'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.'

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 pointel 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.

791. An allusion to the old proverb which is given in Hending in the form--'Whose yong 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. [Greek: phoinix] as 'the fabulous Egyptian bird phoenix, 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 Phoenix 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 phoenica 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, Wherof 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 [Greek: Karênê] 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[289]. 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.

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_, sittteth; 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.