426. The Lyf of Seynt Cecyle is happily preserved. It was one of Chaucer's early productions; but he himself rescued it from possible disappearance by introducing it into the Canterbury Tales, with the title of the Second Nonnes Tale.

428. This is another of the lost works. We gather that he made a translation from a piece attributed to Origen, one of the most eminent of the early Christian writers, who was born at Alexandria in 186. Tyrwhitt says the piece meant is doubtless 'the Homily de Maria Magdalena, which has been commonly, though falsely, attributed to Origen; see Opp. Origenis, Tom. ii. p. 291, ed. Paris, 1604.' Tyrwhitt adds, very justly and incontrovertibly—'I cannot believe that the Poem entitled The Lamentation of Marie Magdaleine, which is in all the [older] editions of Chaucer, is really that work of his. It can hardly be considered as a translation, or even as an imitation, of the Homily; and the composition, in every respect, is infinitely meaner than the worst of his genuine pieces.'

432. Here, in the B-text, the name of Alcestis is first mentioned; yet strange to say, Chaucer does not realise who she is till later; see l. 518. She was the wife of Admetus, not king of Thrace (as here said) but of Pheræ in Thessaly. Apollo obtained from the Moiræ a promise to grant Admetus deliverance from death if, at the hour of his death, his father, mother, or wife, would consent to die for him. Alcestis consented to die in his stead, and is therefore here taken as the chief type of wifely devotion. The mention of Alcestis in the Court of Love, st. 15, is merely copied from Chaucer; so also Lydgate's use of Alceste to mean 'a daisy,' in his Legend of St. Edmund, l. 235 of the additional stanzas found in MS. Ashmole 46, as printed in Horstmann, Alteng. Legenden, Neue Folge (1881), p. 443. Gower has the story of Alcestis in his Confessio Amantis; ed. Pauli, iii. 149.

452. An allusion to the common proverb—'Bis dat, qui cito dat'; he who gives at once, gives twice. Publius Syrus has: 'Bis gratum est, quod dato opus est, ultro si offeras,' v. 44; and again: 'Inopi beneficium bis dat, qui dat celeriter'; v. 235.

465. 'Has no participation in the deed of a thief.' Similarly, in the Squi. Tale, F 537, Chaucer tells us that 'A trew wight and a theef thenken nat oon,' i.e. do not think alike. Trew means 'honest.'

466. The first foot contains Ne a trew-; e in Ne is elided.

475, 6. Closely imitated in the Court of Love, st. 61:—

The substitution of the dissyllabic indeede for Chaucer's monosyllabic be just ruins the scansion of the line; but we must not expect always to find melody in that grossly over-rated poem.

496, 7. Observe that these lines are not in the A-text. They must necessarily have been added after 1382, when Richard II. married Anne of Bohemia, and of course long before 1394, when 'the good queen Anne' died, and her husband at once forsook their favourite residence of Shene, now Richmond; see Annals of England, p. 201.

499. This is a strange question, seeing that Alcestis has already announced her name at l. 432; we must suppose that the poet did not realise that she was the very Alcestis whom he longed to see. But it looks like an oversight, due to his partially rewriting this Prologue.

503. Literally Chaucer's favorite line; for it reappears three times more, viz. in the Kn. Ta., A 1761; March. Ta., E 1986; and Squi. Ta., F 479. And, in the Man of Law's Tale, B 660, we have—'As gentil herte is fulfild of pitee.' It is admirable.

510. Here Chaucer seems to be imitating Froissart; see the Introduction. I cannot find any early account of Alcestis that turns her into a daisy^[68]. See notes to ll. 432, 515.

515. Alcestis 'was afterwards brought back from the lower world by Hercules, and restored to her husband'; Lewis and Short, Lat. Dict. s.v. Alcestis. And see the Introduction.

522. Bountee, goodness. See Clerk. Ta., E 157, 415; and Trench, Sel. Glossary.

526. Agaton, Agathon or Agatho; Dante's Agatone (Purg. xxii. 107). An Athenian poet (B.C. 447-400); who wrote a tragedy called 'the Flower.' See the Introduction.

531. Cibella, Cybela, or more commonly Cybele, a Phrygian goddess, later worshipped at Rome as Ops or Mater Magna. She was the goddess of the earth, and especially represented its fertility; hence she is naturally said to produce flowers. She here answers to the 'Ceres' of Froissart; see the Introduction.

533. The reference is to the red tips on the white petals of the daisy, the 'wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower.' This is said to be the gift of Mars, as he was associated with that colour. He is called 'Mars the rede'; see l. 2589 below; Anelida, l. 1; Kn. Ta., A 1969. The colour of the planet Mars is reddish.

In the present passage reed is a sb.; 'And Mars gave redness to her crown.'

539. Referring to the Balade at l. 249. In the A-text, Alcestis was actually mentioned in the refrain; but Chaucer rewrote it so as to exclude her name. He now writes (in l. 540) as if he had forgotten to put it in. Of course ll. 539-541 are peculiar to the B-text, as marked.

542. Kalender. 'A kalendar is an almanac by which persons are guided in their computation of time; hence it is used, as here, for a guide or example generally'; Bell. The New E. Dict. quotes this passage, and explains the word by 'a guide, directory; an example, model'; and cites Hamlet, v. 2. 114—'He is the card or calendar of gentry.' Nevertheless, I doubt whether this sense arose from the mere usefulness of the calendar. I believe that Chaucer regarded it in quite another aspect, viz. as containing the record or list of the saints whose lives are worthy of imitation. Hence Schmidt explains the word in Hamlet as 'note-book' or 'record'; as is certainly the case in All's Well, i. 3. 4, which Murray duly quotes with the sense of 'record.' So in the present case kalender does not mean 'example' merely, but a whole list or complete record of examples, which gives the word a much greater force. Compare Chaucer's ABC, under the letter K, and the note (l. 73).

549. We hence learn that Chaucer's nineteenth^[69] and last Legend was to have been the Legend of Alcestis; but he never wrote more than the former half of the work. Cf. A-text, 532.

555. Thy balade; see ll. 249-268; F. and Th. read my. We here learn that the Ladies about whom the Legends were to be written (l. 557) are all mentioned in the Ballad, which is an important hint. We must of course remove the names of Absalom and Jonathan; and there is reason for supposing that we should exclude Esther. Next, we set aside Lucretia, Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Phyllis, Hypsipyle, Hypermnestra, and Ariadne, whose Legends we possess; observing at the same time that we also have the Legend of Philomela (though she is not mentioned), and of Medea, who shares a Legend with Hypsipyle. The names still left are those of Penelope, Martia, Isoude, Helen, Lavinia, Polyxena, Hero, Laodamia, Canace, and Alcestis. But this list only partially agrees with Chaucer's scheme as given elsewhere, viz. in the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale. See further in the Introduction.

574. The grete, the substance; as in Book of the Duch. 1242; Parl. Foules, 35.

575. 'According as these old authors are pleased to treat (them).'

576. Shal telle, has to narrate.

I. THE LEGEND OF CLEOPATRA.

It is not clear what account Chaucer followed; see the Introduction. The chief sources for the history are Plutarch, Appian, Dion Cassius, and Orosius (bk. vi. c. 19). I shall refer to the Life of M. Antonius in my edition of Shakespeare's Plutarch (denoted below by Sh. Plut.). Bech points out that one of Chaucer's sources was Florus; see note to l. 655.

581. Ptolemy XI., or Ptolemy Auletes, king of Egypt, died B.C. 51, leaving two sons, both called Ptolemy, and two daughters, Cleopatra and Arsinoe. Cleopatra was then 17 years of age, and was appointed queen of Egypt in conjunction with her brother, the elder Ptolemy, whom she was to marry; but she was expelled from the throne by Ptolemy's guardians. In B.C. 47 she was replaced upon it by Julius Cæsar, but still in conjunction with her brother. This led to the Alexandrine war, in the course of which this elder Ptolemy perished. After this, she reigned, nominally, in conjunction with the younger Ptolemy, to whom also she was nominally married; but he was still quite a child, and was murdered by her orders in less than four years, after which she was sole queen, in name as well as in reality.

We thus see that the Ptolemy here mentioned may be either of Cleopatra's brothers of that name; but it is more likely that Chaucer refers to the elder of them. Shakespeare also uses the expression 'queen of Ptolemy'; Ant. i. 4. 6.

583. On a tyme; viz. not long after the battle of Philippi, which took place in B.C. 42. 'Antonius, going to make war with the Parthians, sent to command Cleopatra to appear personally before him when he came into Cilicia, to answer unto such accusations as were laid against her, being this: that she had aided Cassius and Brutus in their war against him ... Cleopatra on the other side ... guessing by the former access and credit she had with Julius Cæsar and C. Pompey (the son of Pompey the Great) only for her beauty, she began to have good hope that she might more easily win Antonius. For Cæsar and Pompey knew her when she was but a young thing, and knew not then what the world meant; but now she went to Antonius at the age when a woman's beauty is at the prime, and she also of best judgment.'—Sh. Plut. p. 174. Almost immediately after this passage follows the celebrated description of Cleopatra in her barge upon the Cydnus, familiar to all in the words of Shakespeare; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 196.

591. 'Octavius Cæsar reporting all these things unto the Senate, and oftentimes accusing him to the whole people and assembly in Rome, he thereby stirred up all the Romans against him.'—Sh. Plut. p. 202.

592. After the death of his first wife, Fulvia, Antony had married Octavia, sister of Octavianus (better known to us as Augustus). But in a few years he deserted her, and surrendered himself wholly to the charms of Cleopatra. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 6.

597. Cf. Sh. Plut. p. 192; Ant. and Cleop. i. 4. 55.

605. Sterve, to die. See Starve, in Trench, Sel. Glossary.

624. Octovian, Octavianus. 'Now for Cæsar, he had 250 ships of war, 80,000 footmen, and well near as many horsemen as his enemy Antonius'; Sh. Plut. p. 207.

634. See the account of the battle of Actium, B.C. 31; in Sh. Plut. p. 210. The vivid description here given by Chaucer resembles the parallel passage in the Kn. Tale, A 2600-20, which should be compared. 'The soldiers fought with their pikes, halbards and darts, and threw halbards and darts with fire. Antonius' ships, on the other side, bestowed among them, with their crossbows and engines of battery, great store of shot from their high towers of wood that were set upon their ships.'—Sh. Plut. p. 211. There is some description of the hostile fleets and of the battle in Florus (see note to l. 655), who tells us that, whilst Octavius had 400 ships against the 200 ships of Antony, the latter were nearly double the size of the former; so that the fleets were thus of equal strength.

637. Bell says this is 'a ludicrous anachronism'; but it is nothing of the kind. The word gonne is here used in the sense of 'shot' or 'missile'; and the line means—'with terrible sound out rushes the huge missile,' being hurled from one of the 'engines of battery' mentioned in the last note. It is the missile, not the engine, that 'out goth'; as a moment's reflection would have informed the commentator, whose remark was needless. The use of gonne in the sense of 'missile' is curious, but not unexampled; for, in the Avowynge of Arthur, st. 65, we read that 'there come fliand a gunne,' i.e. there came flying along a missile. I believe it is also used in the sense of missile in Sir Ferumbras, 5176, though the passage is not decisive.

Even if this were not the case, there is no 'anachronism'; for gonne was originally used in the sense of 'catapult,' as may be seen by consulting the Prompt. Parvulorum, where the Latin for it is petraria, and mangonale. The grisly soun alludes to the whizzing of the ponderous missile through the air; Barbour says of a great stone, hurled from a catapult, that 'It flaw out, quhedirand, with a rout,' i.e. it flew out, whirring, with a great noise. See The Bruce, xvii. 684.

On the other hand, in Ho. Fame, 1643, Chaucer certainly uses gonne in the sense of 'cannon'; but that does not affect the sense of the present passage.

638. Hurtlen, push, dash, ram one against the other; cf. Kn. Ta., A 2616. 'Somtyme they hurtled to-gyder that they felle grovelyng on the ground'; Morte Arthure; by Sir T. Malory, bk. vii. c. 12. Heterly, vehemently, fiercely, occurs frequently in the Wars of Alexander, ed. Skeat (E. E. T. S.) Compare Vergil's description of the battle, in Æn. viii. 689, &c.: 'Una omnes ruere.'

640. In goth, in there go. Goth is singular in form, because of its position in the sentence; but it has two nominatives, viz. 'grapnel' and 'shearing-hooks.' The former was a contrivance for clutching the ropes, and the latter for severing them.

642. This is wonderfully graphic. A boarder bursts in with a pole-axe; a sailor, on the defence, flees behind the mast, then dashes forward again, and drives the assailant overboard.

646. Rent, rendeth; the present tense.

648. By pouring hard peas upon the hatches, they became so slippery that the boarders could not stand.

649. Some carried pots full of quicklime, which they threw into the eyes of their enemies. See Notes and Queries, 5 S. x. 188. The English did this very thing, when attacking a French fleet, in the time of Henry III. Strutt (Manners and Customs, 1774, ii. 11) quotes from Matthew Paris to this effect:—'Calcem quoque vivam et in pulverém subtilem reductam, in altum projicientes, vento illam ferente, Francorum oculos excaecaverunt.' Cf. Æn. viii. 694.

652. Put, short for putteth, puts; pres. tense.

653. To-go, disperse themselves; pres. tense. The prefix to has the same force as the Lat. dis-, i.e. 'in different directions.' We even find to-ga used as a past tense in Barbour's Bruce (viii. 351, ix. 263, 269, xvii. 104, 575), with the sense 'fled in different directions,' or 'fled away.' 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 disappear; Shoreham's Poems, p. 29.

That best go mighte, each in the way he could best go; each made the best of his way to a safe place. 'Sauve qui peut.'

655. 'Suddenly they saw the threescore ships of Cleopatra busily about their yard-masts, and hoising sail to fly'; Sh. Plut. p. 212. Cf. Ant. and Cleop. iii. 10. 10; Vergil, Æn. viii. 707-8. The remark about Cleopatra's 'purple sails' may remind us of Plutarch's description of Cleopatra on the Cydnus, already referred to above (note to l. 583):—'the poop [of her barge] was of gold, the sails of purple'; Sh. Plut. p. 174; Ant. and Cleop. ii. 2. 198.

The truth is, however, that (as Bech points out) Chaucer has borrowed this and a few other incidents from L. Annaeus Florus, who wrote an Epitome Rerum Romanarum in the second century. In relating the battle of Actium, he says:—'Prima dux fugae regina, cum aurea puppe ueloque purpureo, in altum dedit. Mox secutus Antonius: sed instare uestigiis Caesar. Itaque nec praeparata in Oceanum fuga, nec munita praesidiis utraque Ægypti cornua, Paraetonium atque Pelusium, profuere: prope manu tenebantur. Prior ferrum occupauit Antonius. Regina ad pedes Caesaris prouoluta tentauit oculos ducis: frustra. Nam pulchritudo intra pudicitiam principis fuit. Nec illa de uita, quae offerebatur, sed de parte regni, laborabat. Quod ubi desperauit a principe, seruarique se triumpho uidit, incautiorem nacta custodiam, in Mausoleum se (sepulcra regum sic uocant) recipit: ibi maximos, ut solebat, induta cultus, in differto odoribus solio, iuxta suum se collocauit Antonium: admotisque ad uenas serpentibus, sic morte quasi somno, soluta est.'—Florus, Epit. Rerum Romanarum, lib. iv. c. 11.

662. Chaucer (following Florus) has hastened the catastrophe. Antony stabbed himself at Alexandria, in the following year, B.C. 30. See Sh. Plut. 221; Ant. and Cleop. iv. 14. 102.

672. Shryne; for 'solio' in Florus; cf. l. 675. Plutarch says only that Cleopatra 'did sumptuously and royally bury him with her own hands'; Sh. Plut. p. 224. Afterwards, however, she 'crowned the tomb with garlands and sundry nosegays, and marvellous lovingly embraced the same'; Sh. Plut. p. 227. But see the account by Florus, in the note to l. 655.

677. Dede cors, dead body; as in l. 876. Chaucer uses cors of the living body, as, e.g. in Sir Thopas, B 2098.

678. Chaucer seems to think that Florus meant, 'in sepulcrum [suum] se recipit ... iuxta Antonium.'

679. Shakespeare follows closely the account in Plutarch, except that he makes mention of two asps, whereas Plutarch mentions but one, called by Sir Thos. North 'an aspick'; Sh. Plut. p. 227. However, Florus uses the plural serpentibus. Cf. Cower, C. A., iii. 361.

681. Cf. Cleopatra's lament in Sh. Plut. p. 226; Ant. and Cleop. iv. 15. 59; v. 2. 283.

691. Pronounce unreprovable, as unréprovábl'.

694. Sene, evident. Note that this is an adjective (A.S. gesýne), and not the past participle; cf. l. 2655, and note. See also ll. 340, 741, and my note to the Balade against Women Inconstaunt, l. 13.

696. Naked. It looks as if Chaucer took induta (note to l. 655) to mean 'not clothed.' Perhaps he read it as nudata.

702. Storial sooth, historical truth. The old editions actually put the comma after storial instead of after sooth; and modern editors have followed them. Surely the editors, in some passages, have never attempted to construe their own texts.

II. THE LEGEND OF THISBE.

Chaucer follows Ovid, Metamorph. iv. 55-166; and frequently very closely. The reader should compare the Latin text throughout. For example, Ovid begins thus:—

In Golding's translation, fol. 43, back, thus:—

This at once explains the allusion to Semiramis, the celebrated but mythical queen who was said to have surrounded Babylon with walls of fabulous strength, having a deep ditch outside them. See Orosius, as translated by King Alfred, in Sweet's A.S. Reader, fourth ed. pp. 28, 29. Gower tells the same story, and likewise follows Ovid; C. A. i. 324.

718. Estward; evidently from Ovid's 'Oriens'; see above.

722. The first foot consists of the single syllable Mai-.

725. Naso, i.e. Ovid; really named Publius Ouidius Naso.

726. Réport; accented on the e. Y-shove, pushed (into notice); cf. l. 1381.

727. 'Tempore creuit amor'; Met. iv. 60.

730. 'Sed uetuere patres'; id. 61.

735. 'As (to quote the proverb) cover up the glowing coal, and the hotter the fire becomes.' Ovid has—'Quoque magis tegitur, tanto magis aestuat ignis'; 64. Wry is in the imperative mood, singular. Cf. Troilus, ii. 538-9.

741. Sene, visible; see note to l. 694. Dere y-nogh a myte, even in a slight degree; lit. '(to an extent) dear enough at a mite.' A singular use of the phrase. Cf. 'dere ynogh a leek'; Can. Yem. Ta., G 795; 'not worth a myte'; id., G 633.

742. 'Quid non sentit amor?' Met. iv. 68.

745. 'In a tone as low as if uttering a confession.' A curious medieval touch. Ovid says, 'murmure ... minimo'; 70.

756. 'Inuide, dicebant, paries, quid amantibus obstas?' 73.

763. Holde, beholden. 'Nec sumus ingrati'; 76.

773. Chaucer practically transposes the offices of Phoebus and Aurora.

782. And for, and because, &c.

783. For stands alone in the first foot. Cf. l. 797.

784. 'Conueniant ad busta Nini, lateantque sub umbra Arboris'; 88. Ll. 786, 787 are explanatory, and added by Chaucer. Ninus, the supposed founder of Nineveh, was the husband of Semiramis. Cf. Shak. Mid. Nt. Dr. v. 1. 139.

786. Lounsbury (Studies in Chaucer, i. 403) says that the pt. t. of herien is heried-e, with final e. But the form is right; héried-e is hardly pronounceable, and the final e is naturally dropped when the accent is thrown so far back. The forms of the past tenses of weak verbs are variable; whether they take a final e or not often depends on the form of the stem. See Ten Brink, Chaucer's Sprache, § 194.

797. Y-wimpled, covered with a wimple, or cloth covering the neck and fitting close round the face, chiefly worn by nuns. Another medieval touch. Ovid has 'adopertaque uultum'; 94. See note to l. 813.

798-801. These four lines are mainly original, and quite in Chaucer's own manner. Ovid has merely 'fallitque suos.'

803. 'Audacem faciebat amor'; 96.

804. She gan her dresse, she settled herself, lit. directed herself. Lat. 'sedit.'

810. Rist, riseth; pres. tense, as in l. 887. So arist, Man of Law's Tale, B 265.

811. With dredful foot; so again in Kn. Ta., A 1479. 'Timido pede fugit in antrum'; 100. See Dreadful in Trench, Select Glossary; and cf. ll. 109, 404 above.

813. 'Dumque fugit, tergo uelamina lapsa reliquit'; 101. 'For fere, and let her wimple falle.'—Gower, Conf. Amant. i. 326.

814-6. These three lines are original. Sit, sitteth. Darketh, lies close. 'The child than darked in his den'; Will. of Palerne, 17; 'drawe [drew] him into his den, and darked ther stille'; id. 44. And again in the same poem, ll. 1834, 2851.

823-31. Considerably expanded from the Latin:—

830. Agroos, shuddered; and again in l. 2314; and in Troil. ii. 930. The infin. agryse is in the Man of Law's Tale, B 614.

834. 'Una duos, inquit, nox perdet amantes'; 108.

835. This line is Chaucer's own.

842. What, whatsoever; 'quicunque ... leones'; 114.

847-9. 'Accipe nunc, inquit, nostri quoque sanguinis haustus'; 118.

851-2.

With much good taste, Chaucer omits the next three lines, just as he has omitted to tell us that the trysting-tree was 'a faire high Mulberie with fruite as white as snow,' as Golding says. The blood of Pyramus turned this fruit black, and so it remains to this day! Gower likewise suppresses the mulberry-tree, but Shakespeare mentions it; see Mid. Nt. Dr. v. 1. 149.

853-61. Admirably expanded out of three lines:—

859. The first syllable of Bothe forms a foot by itself. So also in ll. 863, 901, 911, &c.

862-8.

869-82. Fourteen lines where Ovid has eight. Chaucer has greatly improved l. 882, where Ovid makes Thisbe ask Pyramus to lift up his head:—'uultusque attolle iacentes'; 144.

887. This line is original. Bost, noise, outcry; such is the original sense of the word now spelt boast, which see in the New E. Dict. Cf. 'Now ariseth cry and boost'; King Alisaunder, 5290; and see P. Plowman, C. xvii. 89. Whitaker, writing in 1813, remarks that boost, in the sense of noise, is 'a provincial word still familiar in the Midland counties.'

894.

905-12. Admirably substituted for Thisbe's address to the mulberry-tree, requesting it to keep its berries always black thenceforth.

913, 14.

916-23. These lines are original. With l. 917 cf. Le Rom. de la Rose, 14345:—'Mes moult est poi de tex amans.'

III. THE LEGEND OF DIDO.

This Legend purports to be taken from Vergil and Ovid; see l. 928. There is very little of it from Ovid, viz. only the last 16 lines, which depend on Ovid's Heroides, vii. 1-8, and ll. 1312-6, which owe something to the same epistle.

The rest is from the Æneid, bks. i-iv, as will be pointed out.

Note that Chaucer had already given the story of Dido at some length in his Hous of Fame, 151-382, which should be compared. He mentions Ovid there also; l. 379.

924. Mantuan, born near Mantua. Publius Vergilius [not Virgilius] Maro was born on the 15th Oct., B.C. 70, at Andes, now Pietola, a small village near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul; and died Sept. 22, B.C. 19. It is said that an inscription was placed on his tomb, beginning 'Mantua me genuit.'

926. Cf. 'chi vi fu lucerna?' Dante, Purg. i. 43.

927. Eneas, Æneas, hero of the Æneid.

928. The late editions, for some mysterious reason, put a full stop after Eneid and insert of before Naso. The sense is—'I will take the general tenour (of the story as I find it) in thine Æneid and in Naso,' i.e. in Ovid; 'and I will versify the chief circumstances.'

Roughly speaking, ll. 930-949 are from the Æneid, bk. ii; ll. 950-957 from bk. iii; ll. 958-1155 from bk. i; and ll. 1156-1351 from bk. iv.

931. 'By the craft of the Greeks, and especially by Sinon.' Sinon allowed himself to be taken prisoner by the Trojans, and persuaded them to take in a wooden horse through the walls, which he said had been made as an atonement to Minerva for the Palladium carried away by the Greeks. In the dead of night Sinon let out the armed men concealed within the horse, and thus Troy was taken by a stratagem. See Æn. ii. 57-267; and cf. Ho. Fame, 152-6.

934. The ghost of Hector appeared to Æneas, and advised him to flee; Æn. ii. 268-298.

935. The verb agreeing with fyr is appered. 'And there appeared also so mad a fire that it could not be controlled.' See Æn. ii. 311.

936. Ilioun, the usual M.E. form of Ilium; Æn. i. 68, ii. 241, 325, 625. Ilium is only another name for Troy, but the medieval writers invented the explanation here adopted by Chaucer, viz. that it was the palace of Priam, and the castle of Troy in particular. Perhaps they interpreted the word domus in too narrow a sense in the passage—'O patria, O Divum domus Ilium'; Æn. ii. 241. This use of the word is invariable in Guido delle Colonne, author of the Historia Destructionis Troie, a work which was considered of the highest authority in the middle ages, though it was shamelessly copied from the French Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. In fact, a long description of Priam's palace, called Ilion, is given in the alliterative Troy-book, l. 1629, which is translated from Guido; and in Lydgate's Troy-book, ed. 1555, fol. F 6, back, and R 5, back. See the notes to Book Duch. 1070, Ho. Fame, 158, 1467, 1469, 1477.

939. For the death of Priam, killed by Pyrrhus, see Æn. ii. 531-558. Fordoon, slain. Noght, nothing; this alludes to Vergil's 'sine nomine corpus'; Æn. ii. 558.

940. Venus appears to her son Æneas; Æn. ii. 591. Cf. Ho. Fame, 162.

942. Cf. 'dextrae se paruus Iülus [Ascanius] Implicuit'; Æn. ii. 724. See note to Ho. Fame, 177.

945. Lees, lost; 'erepta Creüsa'; Æn. ii. 738; Ho. Fame, 183.

947. Felawshippe, company, companions; 'ingentem comitum numerum'; Æn. ii. 796.

949. Stounde, hour, time; usually dissyllabic in M.E.

953. For these adventures, see Æn. bk. iii; which Chaucer passes over. But see Ho. Fame, 198-221.

959. Libye, Libya, on the N. coast of Africa; Æn. i. 158. For the seven ships saved, see the same, i. 170.

960, 1. These two lines are in no previous edition, (except my own), being preserved only in MSS. C. and P. But they are obviously genuine and necessary; otherwise, the word So (l. 962) is meaningless.

962. Al to-shake, all shaken to pieces, sorely distressed. Cf. l. 820.

964. Æneas and Achates sally forth, Æn. i. 312; Ho. Fame, 226.

971. Hunteresse, huntress; i.e. Venus so disguised; id. i. 319. 'As she had been an hunteresse'; Ho. Fame, 229.

973. Cutted, cut short; 'nuda genu'; id. i. 320. The same expression occurs as 'cutted to the kne' in P. Ploughman's Crede, 296. Compare also l. 434 of the same poem:—