Category: Poetry
the invaluable help thus rendered, the edition of 1889 would never have been undertaken, and I should never have attained to so clear an understanding of the text. I have already said that Dr. Furnivall was the _first_ person who succeeded in numbering the lines of the poem co...
O god of science and of light, Apollo, through thy grete might, This litel laste book thou gye! Nat that I wilne, for maistrye, Here art poetical be shewed; 1095 But, for the ry...
40. i. 302), after speaking of the collection of stories in the GestaRomanorum, tells us that 'rather before the year 1480, a Latin volume was printed in Germany, written by John Herolt, a Dominican friar of Basle, better known by the adopted and...
38. vii. From one of these Chaucer may have taken the general idea of arranginghis tales in a connected series; and we must not forget that his Legend of Good Women, which was the immediate forerunner of his greater work, is likewise, practically, a collec...
15. PART II.Rekene and knowe which is the day of thy monthe; and ley thy rewle up that same day; and thanne wol the verray point of thy rewle sitten in the bordure, up-on the degree of thy...
13. PART II. THE LEGEND OF MEDEA.To Colcos comen is this duk Iasoun, 1580 That is of love devourer and dragoun. As matere appetyteth forme al-wey, And from forme in-to forme hit passen may, Or as a welle that w...
39. xiv. 183) gives twenty-seven examples of this, and draws what is, in myWe may readily understand that, if Chaucer observed this use of his work, it could not have given him much pleasure; and perhaps we may here see some reason for the seemingly un...
28. l. 2158, Thynne subjoins Caxton's ending, with an alteration in the firstWe thus see that it was never pretended that the lines following l. 2158 were Chaucer's. They are admittedly Caxton's and Thynne's. Even if we had not been told this, we could e...
30. xvii. 104, 575), with the sense 'fled in different directions,' or 'fledaway.' Cf. 'the wlcne _to-gað_,' the clouds part asunder; Morris; Spec. of Eng. pt. I. p. 7, l. 169. And again, 'thagh the fourme of brede _to-go_,' though the form of bread dis...
31. PART II. THE LEGEND OF MEDEA.1582. 'As matter always seeks to have a definite form, and may pass from one form into another.' Mr. Archer Hind refers me to Aristotle, Metaphysica, [LAMDA]. vii. 1072 b. 3:--[...
24. BOOK II.514. _Isaye_, Isaiah; actually altered, in various editions, to _I saye_, as if it meant 'I say.' The reference is to 'the vision of Isaiah'; Isa. i. 1; vi. 1. _Scipioun_, Scipi...
25. BOOK III.1098. This shews that Chaucer occasionally, and intentionally, gives a syllable too little to the verse. In fact, he does so just below, in l. 1106; where _Thou_ forms the first...
10. BOOK II.Now herkneth, every maner man That English understonde can, 510 And listeth of my dreem to lere; For now at erste shul ye here So selly an avisioun, That Isaye, ne Scipioun, Ne...
2. Part i.I have now only to record my indebtedness to others, especially to Dr. Furnivall for his invaluable prints in the Parallel-Texts; to the excellent essay by M. Bech, in vol. v. o...
37. PART II. § 1. Rubric, _hir cours_. The gender of the sun was feminine in§ 3. Between sections 2 and 3, a section is inserted in the late copies, which merely repeats section 1, and is clearly spurious. It does not appear at all in the best MSS.; tho...
9. BOOK I.God turne us every dreem to gode! For hit is wonder, by the rode, To my wit, what causeth swevenes Either on morwes, or on evenes; And why the effect folweth of somme, 5 And of...
16. Part II, § 1. [The Latin headings to the propositions are taken from theMS. in St. John's College, Cambridge.] See fig. 1. Any straight edge laid across from the centre will shew this at once. Chaucer, reckoning by the old style, differs from us by...
29. xxviii. 74, 81; and see Chaucer's reference to 'Barnabo Viscounte' in the381. Bech refers us to Seneca, De Clementia, lib. i. c. 3, § 3; c. 5, § 4. Or perhaps Aristotle is meant, whose supposed advice to Alexander is fully given in Gower's Confessio...
23. BOOK III. Apollo, aid me to write this last book! My rime is artless; I aimThe House of Fame stood high upon a lofty rock, which I climbed laboriously. The rock was formed of ice. On the southern side it was covered with names, many of the letters of w...
8. Part i. and two-thirds of Part ii. is to have made a good start. It mustnot be omitted, that the MSS. of Messahala are not all alike; that some copies have propositions which are not in others; and that the order of the Conclusions is not invariable...
19. PART II. § 2, l. 8. eu_er_ M; euere C; eu_er_y (_wrongly_) AB.§ 3, ll. 31, 32. A _has_ 12 degres, _corrected to_ 18 degres; B. _has_ 12 degrees; C _has_ 18. The numbers in the MSS. in these propositions are somewhat uncertain; it seems pro...
27. i. 333, where Neptune calls Triton, and bids him sound his 'shell,' the1618. _Wite_ is badly spelt _wete_ or _wote_ in the MS. copies; but the very phrase _wite ye what_ occurs in C. T., E 2431. However, Ch. certainly uses the phrase _ye woot_ inst...
36. PART I. § 5, l. 5. _the remenant_, &c. i.e. the rest of this line (drawn,as I said,) from the foresaid cross to the border. This appears awkward, and we should have expected 'fro the forseide _centre_,' as Mr. Brae suggests; but there is no authority...
41. Part ii. sect. 5, l. 1.[52] Mr. Bradshaw gave me the hint; I afterwards found this remark by Selden, in his Preface to Drayton's Polyolbion: 'his [Chaucer's] Treatise of the Astrolabe, which I dare sw...
34. v. 823-5:--Here we find _Thetis_, _chorus_, _Triton_; whilst 'and they alle' answers to _exercitus omnis_. (So also Bech.) _Chorus_ is used for Caurus, the north-east wind, in Chaucer's Bo...
17. letter X in the border (fig. 2). Turn the _rete_ till the first point ofAries lies under the label, which is made to point to X, and the label shews at the same moment that the degree of the sun is very nearly at the point where the equinoctial circ...
14. PART I.1. Thyn Astrolabie hath a ring to putten on the thoumbe of thy right hand in taking the heighte of thinges. And tak keep, for from hennes-forthward, I wol clepe the heighte of a...
12. PART I. THE LEGEND OF HYPSIPYLE.Thou rote of false lovers, duk Iasoun! Thou sly devourer and confusioun Of gentil-wommen, tender creatures, 1370 Thou madest thy reclaiming and thy lures To ladies of thy statly...
26. part 3 of his Sege of Thebes.1460. _Stace_ (as in Troil. bk. v, near the end, and Kn. Tale, A 2294) is Publius Papinius Statius, who died A.D. 96, author of the Thebais and Achilleis (see l. 1463), the latt...
6. Part v; for we actually find him declaring (and it is pleasant to hear him)§ 25. SOURCES OF THE TREATISE. I next have to point out the sources whence Chaucer's treatise was derived. Mr. Halliwell, in a note at the end of his edition of Mandeville's Tra...
1. Part II; and MSS. [alpha], [beta], [gamma], in 'Odd Texts,' 1880. But forthe invaluable help thus rendered, the edition of 1889 would never have been undertaken, and I should never have attained to so clear an understanding of the text. I have alread...
32. ll. 2350-72 is expanded from five lines in the Latin text, 576-580:--2360. _A stamin large_, a large piece of stamine. _Stamin_ or _stamine_ is usually explained as a kind of woollen cloth. Cotgrave gives: '_Estamine_, the stuffe tamine.' Godefro...
35. Part I, sect. 18, l. 8.10. _a certein_, i.e. a certain number; but the word _nombre_ need not be repeated; cf. _a certein holes_, Pt. I. sect. 13, l. 2, and see the very expression in the Milleres Tal...
22. BOOK II. Such a strange vision as mine never appeared to Scipio,Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, or Turnus. O Venus and Muses, help me to tell it! The great eagle swooped down upon me, seized me, and bore me aloft, and told me (in a man's voice) not...
33. ii. 26); and it is likely that he and Chaucer derived it from the same2398. _Demophon_, usually Demophoön, son of Theseus and Phædra, who, on his return from Troy, gained the love of Phyllis, daughter of Sithon, king of Thrace. Observe that Gower...
18. PART I. § 1, l. 3. wol B; wolde AC.21. BOOK I. A discussion on dreams. I will tell you my dream on the 10th ofDecember. But first let me invoke Morpheus. May those who gladly hear me have joy; but may those who dislike my words have as evil a fate as Croesus, King of Lydia! (1-110).
3. Part iii. probably consisted entirely of tables, and some at least of thesemay very well have been transmitted to little Lewis. Indeed, they may have been prepared by or copied from Nicholas of Lynn and John Somer, before Chaucer took the rest in hand....
5. Part v. was to contain the general rules of astrology, with tables ofequations of houses, dignities of planets, and other useful things which God and the Virgin might vouchsafe that the author should accomplish. Sections 36 and 37 tell us somethi...
4. Part iv. was to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies, with theircauses. This was probably never written, though there is an allusion to it in Part ii. § 11, l. 12. It was also to contain a table to shew the position of the moon, according to...
20. BOOK I.Written in three Books; but I number the lines consecutively throughout, for convenience; at the same time giving the _separate_ numbering (of Books II. and III.) within marks o...
7. lix. If it be inquired, whence did Chaucer derive the remaining third ofhis Second Part, I think it very likely that some of it may be found amongst the varied and voluminous contents of such a MS. as Ii 3. 3, which is a sort of general compendium o...