Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 — Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems

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—

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

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 'heremus'; 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)—

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

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—

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, alkuōn (a king-fisher) and kēūks (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 alkuōn 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—

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—

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:—

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:—

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. πλαστώρ, 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. ἴκελος, or εἴκελος, like, resembling. For my own part, I would rather take the form plastera, acc. of πλαστήρ, 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. slǽpon, 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.

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:—

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:—

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:—

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):—