^{page 749 note 1} Publications Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 593–683. To a dissertation of Dr. John C. French (The Problem of the Two Prologues to Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, Baltimore, 1905), which re-argues the question from the point of view of the priority of the A-version, the reader may be referred for a criticism of the article just mentioned. It is impossible, within the limits of a foot-note, to do justice to Dr. French's suggestive study; yet a note is all that space allows. One may perhaps be permitted to observe, however, that Dr. French's criticism of the paper under discussion seems to rest on a misapprehension of the purport of its first three sections, which have been given in consequence a turn that obscures the real point at issue. Those sections (whose mention here seems necessary, in order to bring the problem itself into the clear) deal throughout with the relations of the Prologue, particularly the B-version, to its sources, leaving explicitly the argument for the relation of the two versions to each other to the final section, where the problem is considered in the light of the relations of each to the French and Italian originals. It surely needs no elaborate argument to demonstrate that if a poem x is derived from an original y, and z is a revision of x, a great deal of y will continue to appear in z, and that very obvious fact was taken for granted by the present writer in the discussion of the sources of B. Dr. French's interesting argument (op. cit., pp. 32–38) to prove that A. also agrees in many points with those same sources deals, accordingly, with a man of straw. In the case of only one passage has Dr. French attempted to show what alone, on his premises, would invalidate the argument he is examining—the fact, namely, that A. is closer to the sources than B. And in that one case—the comparison (op. cit., p. 36) of A. 51–52 and B. 60–61 with Lay de Franchise, ll. 44–45—the phrase “whan the sonne ginneth for to weste” (quant il [le soldi] fait son retour) is common to both versions, and “than closeth hit” (Ses fueilles clot) of A. is exactly balanced by “And whan that hit is eve” (Et au vespre) of B. Dr. French's conclusion that A. 51–52 “are much nearer to the French than are the corresponding lines of F. [B.]” accordingly falls to the ground, while the striking parallel of B. 64 and Lay de Franchise, l. 47 is scarcely explained away by the remark that “hir chere and son atour are certainly not equivalent save in the sense that they are different figures of speech for the same literal original” (op. cit., p. 39; cf. Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 615, n. 3). In like manner, Dr. French's very sound conclusion (op. cit., p. 33)—after pointing out that structurally A. as well as B. agrees in certain respects with the Lay de Franchise—that “the difference between the two versions, therefore, is not so great as might seem, for it is merely a difference in the treatment of the same material” [italics mine], again simply emphasizes the obvious fact taken for granted throughout the particular sections under discussion, which leave this (somewhat important!) “difference in the treatment” for discussion later in a passage (Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 679–80) to which Dr. French does not refer. The same fallacy vitiates the discussion of the passages cited on pp. 65–66 of the dissertation. In other words, Dr. French confuses the issue entirely by pointing out in extenso what no one would think of denying—the fact that A. as well as B. contains passages which go back to the French originals; while in but one instance does he attempt to demonstrate what for his case is the sine qua non—that A. stands in closer relations to those originals than B.

As for the other main point at issue, the balade, Dr. French's admission (op. cit., p. 26) that “the ballad in F [B] is therefore somewhat out of harmony with its context, and bears the appearance of a passage wrested from its former connection to serve a new purpose,” while “in G [A], on the other hand, the ballad is perfectly in place,” grants the whole case (see Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 655–57, 681); while his criticism (p. 50) of the “awkward device”—as he elsewhere (p. 96) calls it—of the herald lark (A. 138–143) on the ground that “the allusion to his [the god of Love's] spreading wings is … incongruous, for it is hard to conceive him at one moment as flying through the air and the next as walking beside his queen attended by a multitude of ladies “—this criticism unluckily overlooks the fact that Chaucer was so inconsiderate as to retain this same incongruity (B. 236) in his supposed revision! To mention but a single other instance where one fact has been overlooked in attending to another, it is in B. and not A. that the real confusion of antecedents exists to which Dr. French refers on p. 46, as a glance at the following couplets makes clear:

A. 48–49. To seen these floures agein the sonne sprede,

Whan it up-riseth by the morwe shene:

B. 48–49. To seen this flour agein the sonne sprede,

Whan hit upryseth erly by the morwe.

Dr. French's assertion (p. 32) “that the bifurcation of F [B] at line 196 is entirely arbitrary,” is an extreme reaction upon a statement which, it may be frankly admitted, was perhaps itself somewhat strongly put. Arbitrary the division (“bifurcation” is Dr. French's word) at B. 196 is not; but a happier statement of the position criticized would have laid the emphasis first, as well as last (see op. cit., p. 680—the passage which Dr. French overlooks), upon the mechanical character of the unity of B. (whose unity, of this lower type, it was never intended to deny), as contrasted with the organic unity of A. The contention is not for unity vs. lack of unity, but for a higher vs. a distinctly lower type of it.

Dr. French's main positive contribution to the discussion of the problem—for his “thorough line by line comparison of the whole of the two versions” (p. 3) can scarcely be granted when sixty-four lines, including such important variations as those of A. 135–36 = B. 150–51, A. 231 = B. 305, A. 253–54= B. 327–28, A. 340–42 = B. 362–64, are merely appended (p. 98) in a list “for the sake of completeness”—is his treatment (pp. 75–98) of the lines partly identical in both versions. But practically everything Chaucer has done in passing, according to Dr. French, from A. to B., he can be shown to have done on the hypothesis of a change from B. to A., and even the instances actually cited seem hopelessly at variance with one another. Space permits brief reference to the “changes for metrical improvement” alone. When, to take a single example, story and stryf of A. 80 are (supposedly) changed to story and thing of B. 196, it is to avoid “a heaping up of sibilants” (p. 78); when sat and than this of A. 228, however, are changed to sat and sith his of B. 302, thus introducing the fatal second sibilant, it is to avoid “the recurrence of the th-sounds” (p. 80). But when, again, in A. 95 the Scylla of a repeated of is avoided, it is only to fall, in B. 199, into the Charybdis of a repeated the, which gives the very “repetition of the harsh th-sound” that, not only in the passage just cited, but also in A. 4 = B. 4, A. 5= B. 5, A. 228 =B. 302, Dr. French had insisted Chaucer was bent on cutting out. Unluckily, too, the supposed change from A. to B. has introduced quite as many “awkward heaping[s] up of the th-sounds” as it has obviated—among others, A. 116 = B. 128, A. 137 = B. 151, A. 170 = B. 238, A. 209 = B. 255 (the refrain of the balade itself !), A. 342 = B. 364. Indeed, as one reads Dr. French's argument, one recalls with some bewilderment lines that are among the glories of English poetry: “Full fathom five thy father lies;” “That there hath past away a glory from the earth;” “Both of them speak of something that is gone.” Scarcely less arbitrary than his standards of euphony seem Dr. French's other criteria of improvement, read in the light of Chaucer's own usage or that of other English poetry; but space precludes detailed examination here.

^{page 749 note 1} Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 615–16, 620–21, 635–41.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib., 603–06.

^{page 749 note 3} See the article on “Chaucer and some of his Friends,” Mod. Philol., i, 15–18.

^{page 749 note 4} It is needless to repeat the evidence collected by Vollmer (Das mittelenglische Gedicht The Boke of Cupide, Berlin, 1898, pp. 49–50) and Skeat (Chaucerian and other Pieces, pp. 526 S., under ll. 20, 23, 243). The passages there given are individually none of them entirely conclusive, inasmuch as they are in large measure commonplaces. The whole atmosphere of the poem is, however, that of the Prologue, and the fact that the author does undoubtedly borrow from the Knight's Tale and probably from the Parlement of Foules as well (Kittredge, op. cit., p. 14; Vollmer, loc. cit.) points with practical certainty to the Prologue as the source of the passages in question.

^{page 749 note 1} I am indebted to Professor Kittredge, since the present article has been in type, for the exact date of Sir John Clanvowe's death and for the note which follows regarding its circumstances. The reference is found in John Malverne's continuation of Higden's Polychronicon (Rolls Ser., Polychron., ix, 261): “Item xvii^o. die Octobris dominus Johannes Clanvowe miles egregius in quodam vico juxta Constantinopolim in Græcia diem clausit extremum.” Malverne, as Professor Kittredge points out, is the best kind of authority, since he was not only a contemporary of Clanvowe, but seems to have known him particularly well. What Clanvowe was doing at Constantinople is not clear. Perhaps he returned from Barbary that way; perhaps he was going on a pilgrimage. It is worth noting that William Nevil, his companion on the journey, died of grief. “Quam ob causam,” continues Malverne, “dominus Willelmus Nevyle ejus comes in itinere, quem non minus se ipsum diligebat, inconsolabiliter dolens numquam postea sumpsit cibum. Unde transactis duobus diebus sequentibus in eodumvico lamentabiliter exspiravit” (Polychron., Appendix, ix, 261–62). This William Nevil had gone on the Barbary expedition with Clanvowe (or Clanvowe with him); see ix, 234. Nowhere does Malverne say anything of Clanvowe's return. He does briefly describe the evil fate of the expedition (ix, 240): “Dux Bourbon … primo victoriam obtinuit de praedictis paganis; sed secunda vice ex adverso venit intolerabilis copia paganorum cum magna audacia Christianos compulit fugere ad naves eomm in multo discrimine personarum, sicque Christiani qui vivi evaserunt a manibus paganorum ad propria sunt reversi de eormn evasione deum multipliciter collaudantes.” It is probably safe to say that Clanvowe did not compose much love poetry after he started on the Barbary expedition !

^{page 749 note 2} The question will certainly be asked: Does this date not likewise give the limit for the composition of A. as well? For Vollmer (op. cit., p. 50) concludes his discussion of the relation of the Book of Cupid to the Prologue as follows: “Endlich eine stelle aus der nur in einer hs. erlialtenen, von der im Fairfax ms. stark abweichenden version A…: v. 139/40 heisst es da: This song to herkne I dide al myn entente, For-why I mette I wiste what they mente, womit zu vergleichen ist [Boke of Cupide, ll. 108–09]: Me thoghte (ebenfalls im traum) I wiste al that the briddes mente, And what they seide and what was her entente.” The parallel is at first sight a striking one, and the inference of a borrowing from A. would of course, if valid, date the A-version, on the hypothesis just stated, before 1390–92. But such an inference overlooks, as Professor Kittredge has pointed out regarding it, two important facts. The first is that the rhyme mente: entente is of so frequent occurrence as to render it worthless as evidence of the influence of one passage on another. Moreover, as a glance at the examples will show, the rhyme is also associated with certain other stock phrases, appearing in both the passages in question, which even further diminish its evidential value. See, for instance, the following: “‘Never erst,’ quod she, ‘ne wiste I what ye mente. But now, Aurelie, I knowe your entente'” (F. 981–82); “She com to diner in hir playn entente. But god and Pandare wiste al what this mente“(Troilus, ii, 1560–61); “To telle me the fyn of his entente; Yet wiste I never wel what that he mente” (ib., iii, 125–26); “Answerde him tho; but, as of his entente, It semed not she wiste what he mente” (ib., v, 867–68); “[By] privee signes, wiste he what she mente; And she knew eek the fyn of his entente (E. 2105–6). Cf. also G. 998–99; A. 2989–90; B. 4613–14; F. 107–08; F. 521–22; B. 324, 327; Troilus, ii, 363–64; 1219, 1221; iii, 1185, 1188; iv, 172–73; 1416, 1418; v, 1693–94.

The second observation, which applies to the coincidence in substance, is that in the Book of Cupid the device of assuming knowledge of the language of the birds is not, as in the A-version of the Prologue, a mere incident (however effective), but grows out of the fundamental motive of the poem itself, inasmuch as the very thing it purports to give is a dialogue between two birds. If the poem is to be at all, the device is virtually inevitable, and the hypothesis of borrowing accordingly uncalled for. A very much closer parallel, indeed, than that in the Prologue exists for the Clanvowe passage in another poem of Chaucer's, where a similar couplet appears in connection with similar inherent requirements of the plot. In the Squire's Tale, when Canace walks out on the morning after the gift of her magic ring, she has new delight in the singing of the birds,

For right anon she wiste what they mente

Eight by hir song, and knew al hir entente (F. 399–400).

That is to say, in the Squire's Tale and the Book of Cupid alike the situations proposed carry with them as a corollary the employment of such a device, and in each instance, along with the almost inevitable stock phrase “wiste what they mente” would come the no less predestined rhyme “entente.” No conclusion, then, of any sort can well be drawn from the couplet in Clanvowe, regarding the date of A. That to Chaucer himself, whose phrases had a habit of clinging to his mind, the fundamental situation of one of his own poems might conceivably suggest an incidental touch in another is a possibility of a different sort, to be considered later.

^{page 749 note 1} It is not altogether unilluminating that the collector of such data finds in Deschamps a mine of historical material, while in Chaucer he discovers only—poetry! What follows, accordingly, even should it be deemed to serve no other purpose, may at least enhance by contrast our appreciation of what Chaucer might in his own day have been, and by the countenance and grace of heaven was not.

^{page 749 note 2} Coming, as he does, very near being his own Boswell, Deschamps explains at length in balade No. 1154 (vi, 87–88), with the characteristic refrain “C'est de ce mot l'interpretacion,” the terms he applies to England in the obscure Chaucer balade itself. “Chaque fois,” said the Marquis de Queux de Saint-Hilaire, “que Deschamps parle de l'Angleterre, il devient obscur;” and for any light he voluntarily offers, one may be duly thankful.

^{page 749 note 3} No. 845 (v, 17). See Nos. 250 (ii, 86), 835–36 (v, 5, 6), 864 (v, 42) for further statements regarding the catastrophe, and cf. Raynaud in Oeuvres, xi, 11, 32–33.

^{page 749 note 4} We are left in no doubt on this point. “II. M. frans et plus lui a couste Ceste guerre,” he writes in the third person to the king (No. 250); “.II^m. frans m'a leur guerre couste,” he informs the Dukes of Anjou and Bourgogne (No. 864); in the identical line he also complains to the world in general (No. 835).

^{page 749 note 1} See Raynaud, xi, 37–38; Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 607, n. 2.

^{page 749 note 2} Raynaud, xi, 39–40; Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., loc. cit.

^{page 749 note 3} From January 2(5 to October 1, 1384. See Rymer (2d ed., Holmes), vii, 418–20; cf. Raynaud, xi, 42.

^{page 749 note 4} Rymer, vii, 429 (27 May, 1384), cf. 432. See particularly Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt (1904), pp. 287–88, and references there given.

^{page 749 note 5} Rymer, vii, 431 (27 May, 1384). With the French ambassadors were, among others, the Count of Sancerre, Arnault de Corbie, and Guy de Trémouille (Rymer, vii, 433), all of them friends or acquaintances of Deschamps (see Raynaud's index in Oeuvres de Deschamps, x, s. v. Corbie, Champagne (Louis de), La Trémouille (Guy de).

^{page 749 note 6} Oeuvres, xi, 42.

^{page 749 note 1} In the Itinéraires de Philippe le Hardi (ed. Petit) the time from Aug. 4 to Sept. 15 is given up to “Sejour a Boulogne pour le traittie de la paix” (p, 169). See also the documents for July in Rymer, vii, 433, 438–39, 441

^{page 749 note 2} dog.

^{page 749 note 3} ride.

^{page 749 note 4} good day.

^{page 749 note 5} come hither.

^{page 749 note 6} No. 893 (v, 79–80). For the legend of the Anglici caudati—which Deschamps also makes use of in Nos. 671 (iv, 130), 847 (v, 20), 868 (v, 48), the latter beginning: “Franche dogue, dist un Anglois, Vous ne faictes que boire vin”—at first applied only to the inhabitants of Dorset, see Roman de Brut (ed. Le Roux de Lincy), ii, 251–53; Montaiglon, Rec. de poésies fr., vi, 347–48; P. Meyer, Romania, xxi, 51 n; Étienne de Bourbon (ed. Lecoy de la Marche), p. 234; Du Cange, s. v. Cavdatus; Wright, Reliquiae Antiquae, ii, 230; P. d'Auvergne (Mahn, Gedichte der Troubadours, No. 222); Godefroy, ii, 167.

^{page 749 note 2} Rymer, vii, 441–43. The Duke of Burgundy leaves Sept. 15 (Petit, Itinéraires, p. 169); the account of Walter Skirlawe, sent to Calais “pro tractatu pacis,” etc., covers the period 15 June-28 Sept. (Mirot et Deprez, Les Ambassades anglaises pendant la guerre de Cent ans, in Bibliothique de l'Ecole des Charles, Vol. lx, p. 206).

^{page 749 note 3} No. 765 (iv, 259–60).

^{page 749 note 4} Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 608–10. I had entirely overlooked the corroboration afforded the view there stated by the facts, just commented on, connected with the peace negotiations of 1384.

^{page 749 note 5} See Kittredge, Modern Philology, i, 5.

^{page 749 note 1} The following balades of Deschamps have reference to the negotiations of 1384 at Boulogne: Nos. 785 (iv, 289), 66 (i, 162), 337 (iii, 47), 344 (iii, 62–63), 359 (iii, 93–95). See also xi, 43.

^{page 749 note 2} Rymer, vii, 466–67.

^{page 749 note 3} See for each Raynaud's index to Descliamps.

^{page 749 note 4} See the accounts of the Bishop of Hereford, Skirlawe and Clanvowe, all closing April 30th, in Mirot et Deprez, op. cit., p. 207. From Cal. Pat. Rolls. Rich. II, 1381–85, p. 569, we learn that on May 18th Sir John Clanvowe was about to go to Wales on the King's service.

^{page 749 note 5} Cal. Pat. Rolls. Rich. II, 1381–85, p. 569.

^{page 749 note 6} See the account of Deschamps's movements in the spring of 1385 in Oeuvres, xi, pp. 45–46.

^{page 749 note 1} One must of course recognize that poetry is not contraband of war, and may run the blockade in ways hard to trace. But we are dealing here with a case which seems to involve the relations of the poets as well.

^{page 749 note 2} Terrier de Loray, Jean de Vienne, Amiral de France (Paris, 1877), p. 189, cf. pp. 185 ff.; Chronographia Region Francorum (ed. Moranville), iii, 75; cf. Oeuvres de Deschamps, xi, 46; Armitage-Smith, op. cit., p. 293, n. 3.

^{page 749 note 3} Oeuvres, xi, 46.

^{page 749 note 4} No. 26 (i, 106–07). The other balade, No. 143 (i, 268–269) is a less bloodthirsty prophecy of victory.

^{page 749 note 5} Chronographia Reg. Franc., iii, 75, n. 3; Oeuvres de Deschamps, xi, 47.

^{page 749 note 6} Oeuvres de Deschamps, xi, 47. See particularly the balades referred to there and in note 1.

^{page 749 note 1} Ib., p. 48.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib., p. 48.

^{page 749 note 3} Rymer, vii, 473 (4 June), 474 (13 June); cf. Armitage-Smith, op. cit., p. 294.

^{page 749 note 4} Rymer, vii, 474.

^{page 749 note 5} Nichols, Wills of the Kings and Queens of England, p. 78.

^{page 749 note 6} The Monk of Evesham (Hist. Regni et Vitae Rich. II, p. 63) gives the date as “circa principium mensis Augusti.” Nichols’ statement (op. cit., p. 82) that the Princess Joan died July 8, 1385, is a manifest error. On his assertion that she died “of grief for the King her son's just resentment to her son John Holland, for killing Lord Stafford in a fray” (loc. cit.), see Walsingham, Hist. Angl., ii, 130, and cf. the Monk of Evesham, loc. cit. See also Armitage-Smith, op. cit., p. 294. The Princess Joan's will was proved Dec. 9, 1385, and Clifford was one of her executors (Nichols, op. cit., p. 81).

^{page 749 note 7} Wallon, Richard II, i, 243; Terrier de Loray, op. cit., p. 200.

^{page 749 note 1} Ed. Kervyn, x, 394.

^{page 749 note 2} Terrier de Loray, op. cit., p. 203.

^{page 749 note 3} See the various references in An Jung. Chron. of the Reigns of Rich. II, Henry IV, etc. (Camden Soc., 1856), p. 146, and add Chron. de St. Denys, i, 418 ff.

^{page 749 note 4} Rymer, vii, 491–94; cf. Mirot et Deprez, op. cit., pp. 207–08. The accounts are from the 9th (10th, 12th) of February to the 28th of March.

^{page 749 note 5} Rymer, vii, 497; cf. 496, 498.

^{page 749 note 1} See p. 758, n. 5, adding for Charles de Trie, index to Desehamps, s. v. Trie.

^{page 749 note 2} Chron. de St. Denys, i, 426–27; cf. Oeuvres de Deschamps, xi, 48.

^{page 749 note 3} Oeuvres de Deschamps, xi, 45–48.

^{page 749 note 4} The safe conduct granted the commissioners included, however, “leurs Gents, Familiers, Chevalers, Esquiers, Clers, Varies et autres, de quel estat ou condicion que ils soient, jusques au dit nombre de Trois cens Parsonnes“(Rymer, loc. cit.).

^{page 749 note 5} It should be remembered that Chaucer's name, for example, is not included in the commissions of 1377 to treat of peace, although his own statement of accounts for both and Froissart's mention of him in connection with one prove him to have been on the two missions.

^{page 749 note 6} “Et fut la ville de Saint-Jaques à ung chevallier d'Angleterre bailliée a garder, et pour en estre le chief et capitaine, lequel on appelloit messire Loys Clifford, et avoit par dessoubs luy trente lances et cent archiers (ed. Kervyn, xii, 94–95). Cf. Scrope-Grosvenor Roll, ii, 429; Morant, Hist. and Antiq. of the Deanery of Graven, p. 315; Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, p. 263.

^{page 749 note 1} Armitage-Smith, op. cit., pp. 309–310; Scrope-Grosvenor Roll, i, 49.

^{page 749 note 2} Scrope-Grosvenor Roll, i, 183; Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter, p. 263.

^{page 749 note 3} See Modern Philology, i, 4.

^{page 749 note 4} “Froissart's account of the Galician campaign is simply hopeless. Chronology and topography are nothing to him. The Marshal takes a town in the heart of Leon, and goes back to Santiago to dinner! It is curious that Froissart should have made such a muddle of it, for he was at Foix in 1388, where there were eye-witnesses to question, and João Fernandes Pacheo, who told him about it at Middleburgh a few years later, was in a position to know.” Armitage-Smith, op. cit., p. 321 n.

^{page 749 note 5} It may be mentioned (though of course the argumentum ex süentio has only corroboratory value in such a case) that Clifford's name does not occur in the lists of those to whom letters of protection were issued in connection with the expedition. See Rymer, vii, 490–91, 499–501, 508; Cal. Pat. Rolls. Rich. II, 1385–89, pp. 139, 160, 164, 191–93, 198, 209, 213, 250, 276, 309.

^{page 749 note 1} Modern Philology, i, 11; Rymer, vii, 526; Livre des Faicts du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Boucicault, Pt. I, Ch. xiv (Collec. des Memoires, ed. Pettitot, xvi, pp. 413–16; Memoires, ed. Michaud and Ponjoulat, ii, 226).

^{page 749 note 2} Rotvii Scotiae, ii, 75 (29 Oct., 1385) and passim; Cal. Pat. Rolls. Rich. II, 1381–85, pp. 518 (26 Jan., 1385), 527 (16 Dec., 1384).

^{page 749 note 3} Livres des Faicts, loc. cit.

^{page 749 note 4} See Wallon, op. cit., i, 280 ff. and references.

^{page 749 note 5} Walsingham, Hist. Angl., ii, 145, cf. 147.

^{page 749 note 6} Wallon, op. cit., i, 287 ff.

^{page 749 note 7} No. 48 (1, 136–37); cf. Oeuvres, xi, 50.

^{page 749 note 1} No. 211 (ii, 33–34); cf. Oeuvres, xi, 50, 98, n. 1. See the other balades on the same theme referred to in Vol. xi, 49 ff.

^{page 749 note 2} No. 1060 (v, 351–52).

^{page 749 note 3} No. 798 (iv, 309).

^{page 749 note 4} No. 211 (ii, 33).

^{page 749 note 5} No. 1145 (vi, 73–74), quoted by Raynaud in Oeuvres, xi, 50–51. See the other references there given.

^{page 749 note 1} No. 180 (i, 315–16); cf. especially Oeuvres, xi, 51 for the personal attack on Deschamps for his freedom of speech, and cf. his own bitter complaint in No. 772 (iv, 270); cf. No. 773.

^{page 749 note 2} Rymer, vii, 622 ff., esp. 626.

^{page 749 note 3} See Kittredge, op. cit., pp. 10–11 for references, and add Livre des Faicts, Pt. I, Ch. xvii, and the interesting Joules de Saint-Ingelbert, Poème contemporain, in Partie inédite des Chroniques de Saint-Denis, ed. Pichon (Paris, 1864), especially pp. 69–70.

^{page 749 note 4} Kittredge, op. cit., p. 11. Clifford seems to have returned to England after the tournament, which lasted thirty days, for Froissart (ed. Kervyn, xiv, 150–51) speaks of the Englishmen as all returning together. The Earl of Derby was at Calais from May 9th to May 31st, with the intention (later changed) of joining the expedition (Toulmin-Smith, Derby Accounts, p. xxxix), and Clifford was picked up at Calais (Cabaret, Chron. du bon Duc Lays de Bourbon, ed. Chazaud, p. 222). The expedition started back at the end of September, 1390 (Delaville le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIV Siècle, i, 194). In April, 1390, and again at the close of the same year, then, we know Clifford to have passed from France to England.

^{page 749 note 5} Kittredge, op. cit., p. 10, and references.

^{page 749 note 6} The Complaint de l'Eglise (vii, 293–311) is dated by Deschamps April 13, 1393, and the Epilogue reads: Ceste epistre fist et compila Eustace des Champs, dit Morel, au traictié de la paix des II. rois de France et de Angleterre, estans pour lors a Lolinghem, etc. From Rymer, vii, 738–39 we know that Clifford was one of the English commissioners.

^{page 749 note 1} See p. 760.

^{page 749 note 2} See p. 754.

^{page 749 note 1} One needs to guard one's self against the fallacy of supposing that spring poems are necessarily composed in the spring !

^{page 749 note 2} Life Records, p. 264.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., loc. cit. The exact date of the lease was 5th October, 1386. There is no actual record of the surrender. The lease was delivered on 6th November. See Life Records, pp. xxxiv, 264.

^{page 749 note 1} Italics mine.

^{page 749 note 2} Oxford Chaucer, i, xxxviii.

^{page 749 note 3} Life Records, p. 261.

^{page 749 note 1} Ib., pp. xxxiii, 259. Chaucer had been an “associate” Justice since 12 Oct., 1385 (ib., pp. xxxiii, 254).

^{page 749 note 2} J. B. Bilderbeck, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (London, 1902), pp. 93 ff.

^{page 749 note 3} A. 353–375 = B. 373–389.

^{page 749 note 4} Op. cit., p. 94.

^{page 749 note 1} It., p. 95.

^{page 749 note 2} I am using the A-version at this point, since it is the one from which Bilderbeck argues.

^{page 749 note 3} A. 366–67.

^{page 749 note 4} A. 374–76. The subordination of the reference to the lords is still more distinct in B., through the “al … yit” of ll. 334, 388.

^{page 749 note 1} Op. cit., p. 98.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib. p. 99.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., p. 96.

^{page 749 note 4} Bilderbeck himself calls attention two pages earlier to the fact that on the same day on which de la Pole was created Earl of Suffolk the king likewise created his uncles Edward and Thomas Duke of York and Duke of Gloucester respectively!

^{page 749 note 1} Op. cit., p. 99.

^{page 749 note 2} I am still using the A-version, from which Bilderbeck argues.

^{page 749 note 3} The sly humor of Alcestis's opening words: “god, right of your courtesye“is one of Chaucer's most delicious touches. Though, indeed, on the hypothesis under discussion one is at a loss to know precisely where to draw the line. May not Alcestis, who is Queen Anne, be gently reading the god of Love, who is King Richard, a “lecture” on kingly restraint of speech? For Richard, if one may believe the chroniclers, often availed himself in right regal fashion of his prerogatives as “lord of this langage!”

^{page 749 note 4} Nothing, indeed, could be more characteristic than the evident zest with which the figure of Love as a pettish and captious young person is drawn; and precisely the tyranny which Alcestis deprecates is animadverted on by Theseus (A. 1623–26), by Pandare (Troilus, i, 904–40), and, not to name others, by Chaucer in his own person:

For al be that I knowe not love in dede,

Ne wot how that he quyteth folk hir hyre,

(Parl. of Faules, ll. 8–14. Cf. ll. 1–7; Merciles Beaute, ll. 27–39; Envoy to Scogan, ll. 22–28; etc.).

^{page 749 note 1} It is interesting to note that Legouis (see below, p. 787, n. 1) recognized a similar humorous incongruity in another connection. Speaking of Amour's references “aux bons auteurs” in his long speech in A. 268 ff., he writes: “Quelque comique naissait sans doute de la discordance qu'il y avait entre sa jolie figure et son lourd étalage d'erudition” (p. 9). This is, however, he thinks, to the detriment, even to the ruin, of a Prologue till then all grace and all poetic charm.

^{page 749 note 2} There is a seemingly valid distinction to be made between the Parlement of Foules and the Prologue, which is possibly of some importance in its bearing on the subject under discussion. In the Parlement, in the very nature of the case, one is forced to go outside the poem itself for any significance it may have over and above the ostensible picture it gives of the parliament of the birds. That prima facie significance does not in and for itself justify its elaboration in the poem; one instinctively looks outside it for its real occasion. In the Prologue, on the other hand, the allegory is in itself “totus, teres atque rotundus.” Every detail can be adequately accounted for by reference to the three central figures in precisely the characters they purport to have. The burden of proof rests wholly upon those who import an ulterior significance. The two poems, in other words, belong to distinct types, and to argue from one to another involves an initial fallacy.

^{page 749 note 1} Bilderbeck, op. cit., p. 96.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib., p. 108.

^{page 749 note 3} The uncertainties incident to such a method of interpretation as Bilderbeck's may be shown in another way. For independent reasons one has arrived at the summer or autumn of 1386 as a probable date for the composition of B. One turns to Knighton and finds that in the autumn of 1386 the Parliament (of which Chaucer was then a member) sent to King Richard as envoys the Duke of Gloucester and the Bishop of Ely, who were to inform the King, among other things, that it was his duty to summon a parliament once a year, “tanquam ad summam curiam totius regni, in qua omnis aequitas relucere deberet absque qualibet scrupulositate vel nota, tanquam sol in ascensu meridiei, ubi pauperes et divites pro refrigerio tranquillitatis et pacis et repulsione injuriarum refrigium infallibile quaerere possent,” etc. (Knighton, ii, 217). There at once is Chaucer's “right to pore and riche.” Moreover, the envoys also called attention to the fact that “si rex… nec voluerit per jura regni et statuta ac laudibiles ordinationes cum salubri consilio dominorum et procerum regni gubernari et regulari, sed capitose in suis insanis consiliis propriam voluntatem suam singularem proterve exercere, extunc licitum est eis …. regem de regali solio abrogare,” etc. (Knighton, ii, 219). There is also the “keping his lords hir degre;” there is the “tyrannye”—to say nothing of the striking parallel in the whole situation as Knighton gives it. One might, accordingly, with the utmost plausibility argue that in the autumn of 1386 Chaucer, himself a Member of Parliament, was in the B-version voicing as a friend the admonition which he feared would come in sterner form from the king's enemies, whose temper he had ample opportunity to know.

One recalls, moreover, that there are in A. five lines which Bilderbeck, with his theory of 1385 as the date of that version, overlooks, although if any lines in the poem seem to have specific contemporary reference it is they:

These lines do not occur in B. One will recall further that on August 29, 1393, Richard visited London to be publicly reconciled with the citizens—an occasion celebrated in a famous Latin poem by Richard de Maidstone (Wright, Political Poems, Rolls Series, I, 282–300), in which Richard literally heard the “excusaciouns” of his people, and at the “supplicatio reginae pro eisdem civibus“did show them “pleyn benignitee.” But, in the very article of ten Brink whose argument Bilderbeck is attempting to refute, it will be remembered that ten Brink suggested for A. the possibility of a date scarcely before 1393, or possibly in 1394. Applying Bilderbeck's own principle of interpretation, then, one finds in A. what seems to be an almost startling reference to an event at the close of 1393. (To Legouis, on the other hand, the scene recalls something else: “Elle fait penser à l'intercession de la bonne reine Philippine de Hainaut en faveur des pauvres bourgeois de Calais voués à la mort par Edouard III. Plusieurs traits renforcent cette impression: la colère du dieu calmée par Alceste; l'allusion au pénitent qui implore merci et s'offre ‘in his bare sherte,” etc.” (op. cit., p. 18). That was in 1347! The riches of the allusion are somewhat embarrassing). In other words, one may readily find in the supposed references to contemporary events equally strong arguments (I should myself be inclined to say much stronger ones) for referring B. and A. respectively to 1386 and 1394, as for Bilderbeck's suggestion of 1385 and 1390 respectively for A. and B. Bilderbeck's argument proves too much.

^{page 749 note 1} That Chaucer's phraseology is possibly, even probably, here and there more or less reminiscent of the general situation in England for a period extending over several years (precisely as the phrase “tyraunts of Lombardye” is reminiscent of well-known foreign affairs) one may readily admit. But that is a very different thing indeed from the claim that the whole situation of the poem is to be identified with the situation at the English court.

^{page 749 note 1} B. 496–97.

^{page 749 note 2} Eng. Stud., xvii, 19.

^{page 749 note 3} Both Koch (Chronology, p. 85) and Bilderbeck (op. cit., p. 81) call attention to the improbability of such a reason for the excision of the couplet, but both overlook entirely the fact that ten Brink had offered an alternative suggestion.

^{page 749 note 4} Gower's change in the dedication of the Confessio Amantis is not, as Bilderbeck with right points out (op. cit., p. 81), a case in point.

^{page 749 note 1} See Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 671, n. 4.

^{page 749 note 2} Annales (1615), p. 308; cf. the Monk of Evesham, Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi II (ed. Hearne), p. 125. Reference is made to the incident in another connection by Bilderbeck, op. cit., p. 84.

^{page 749 note 3} Koeppel's suggestion regarding the revision of the Prologue—“dass sie nämlich als ein missglückter versuch Chaucer's zu betrachten ist, aueh den prolog und einige der legenden für das hauptwerk seiner letzten periode, für die Canterbury-geschichten zu erwerten (Eng. Stud., xxx, 467; reiterated in Literaturblatt, 1893, p. 51)—rests solely upon the supposed implications of the phrase “or I fro yow fare” of A. 85, which is, however, a simple narrative commonplace, with no hint whatever of actually riding away from one's company.

^{page 749 note 1} It is also worth noting that on July 12th, 1394, Froissart, after twenty-seven years’ absence, landed in England, led by an overmastering desire to see the country once more. With him he brought, as he says, a book to present to the King: “Et avoie de pourvéance fait escripre, grosser et enluminer et fait recueillier tous les traittiés amoureux et de moralité que ou terme de xxxiiii ans je avoie par le grace de Dieu et d'amours fais et compiles” (ed. Kervyn, xv, 141). After trying in vain to obtain audience with the King at Canterbury, whither Richard had come to make his pilgrimage on his return from Ireland, and after several rather pathetic disappointments, he found at last at Eltham his own and Chaucer's old friend Sir Richard Stury, with whom he talked much, “en gambiant les galleries de l'ostel à Eltem où il faisoit moult bel et moult plaisant et umbru, car icelles galleries pour lors estoient toutes couvertes de vignes.” Through Sir Richard Stury the old chronicler and poet was at last informed that the King was anxious to see his book. “Si le vey en sa chambre, car tout pourveu je l'avoie, et luy mis sur son lit. Il l'ouvry et regarda ens, et luy pleut très-grandement et bien plaire luy devoit, car il estoit enluminé, escript et historié et couvert de vermeil velours à dix clous attachiés d’ argent dorés et roses d’ or ou milieu, a deux grans frumans dorés et richement ouvrés ou milieu de roses d'or. Adont me demanda le roy de quoy il traittoit. Je luy dis: ‘D'amours.'” How the king was greatly pleased with this reply, and how he had the book carried to his “chambre de retraite,” Froissart goes on to tell (ed. Kervyn, xv, 167). Is it not at least possible that Chaucer, hearing through their common friend of the return of this one of his old “lovers that can make of sentement” and of the gift to the King of the volume, part of which he knew so well, may have thus had called to his mind with double force the earlier poem? It is only a possibility, but it seems worthy of a moment's entertainment.

^{page 749 note 2} A. 258–63, 315, 400–401.

^{page 749 note 1} Oxford Chaucer, i, xvi. To the instances there given add those on p. 86 of the same volume, and compare Vollmer, The Boke of Cupide, p. 55. See, too, Lounsbury's discussion (Studies, i, 48 ff.) of the statement in the Pricke of Conscience (ll. 764–65) that

Fone men may now fourty yhere pas,

And foner fifty, als it somtym was.

^{page 749 note 2} See Oeuvres de Desehamps, ii, 265.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., ii, 264.

^{page 749 note 4} For this same division of the sixty years see Nos. 25 (i, 104), 321 (iii, 14), 675 (iv, 134), 1450 (viii, 135). The limit of sixty years is set, without division into decades, in Nos. 134 (i, 258), 198 (ii, 17), 330 (iii, 33), 565 (iv, 23). For part of these references I am indebted to Raynaud in Oeuvres, xi, 96, 146. One must not confuse this mediæval attitude with the later conventional device, on the part of youthful sonneteers, of feigning old age; cf. Sidney Lee, William Shakspeare, pp. 85, 86.

^{page 749 note 1} No. 321, ll. 33–35 (iii, 15); cf. especially in the last stanza of No. 1450 (viii, 136).

^{page 749 note 2} ii, 8, 9.

^{page 749 note 3} Cf. No. 297 (ii, 156). For a woman old age began much earlier. See, for example, in the “Lamentations d'une dame sur la perte de sa jeunesse,” No. 535 (iii, 373–74), such lines as the following:

With this, which should be read entire for its full effect, one may compare the parallel passage in No. 305 (ii, 187), ll. 165 ff.:

^{page 749 note 1} Col. Pat. Rolls Rich. II, 1385–89, p. 95.

^{page 749 note 2} Scrope-Grosvenor Roll, i, 178; Life Records, p. 265, cf. xiii; cf. also Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, i, xxxvii.

^{page 749 note 3} So Bond, in Life Records, p. 102; cf. Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, i, xv-xvi; Koch, Chronology, p. 2, etc.

^{page 749 note 4} Macaulay, The Works of John Gower, ii, xxi.

^{page 749 note 5} Ib., xxii. Professor Macaulay has shown the previous conjectures regarding the dates of composition and revision to be worthless.

^{page 749 note 1} Works (ed. Macaulay), iii, 466 (Bk. viii, ll. 2941*-2957*).

^{page 749 note 2} Englische Studien, xvii, 14.

^{page 749 note 1} Quel fut le premier compose par Chaucer des deux prologues de la Légende des Femmes Exemplaires? (Le Havre, 1900.), p. 10. Through the courtesy both of Professor Legouis himself and also of Professor Kaluza, this important essay has been made accessible to me. One wishes it were possible to agree as heartily with the conclusions of Professor Legouis's extremely able paper, as with the fundamental principle it enunciates: “N'entendons pas par là qu'il [Chaucer] se soit préoccupé de fournir à ses futurs biographes un plus grand nombre de renseignements sur la vie et ses æuvres, mais qu'il a, en vrai poète, retouché le plan pour lui donner le plus de cohesion et d'harmonie possible; que, s'il a modifié des vers particuliers, c'est afin de les rendre plus clairs, plus expressifs et plus beaux” (p. 4). But the two alternatives which Professor Legouis states are those of a revision undertaken in the poet's decline (p. 4), which he rejects, and a revision which almost immediately followed the first composition (p. 18), which he accepts. This fails, however, to take into account a third possibility: namely, that the revision was undertaken at a period not of declining, but of heightened, powers—powers, however, whose direction and emphasis had meantime somewhat changed, so that from their exercise upon the earlier work there resulted a certain inevitable loss as well as a no less inevitable gain. For the present contention is not that the superiority of A. to B. holds absolutely at every point, but that A. bears unmistakable marks of a revision by a maturer, a firmer, a more sparing hand.

^{page 749 note 1} Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 658 ff.

^{page 749 note 2} Op. cit., p. 9.

^{page 749 note 1} Legouis does believe of Chaucer that “le génie poétique suivit un progrès constant jusque'au jour où la plume lui tomba des maines” (op. cit., p. 4). But his view that the two Prologues fall in the same year, “très rapprochées” (see ib., p. 18), prevents his application to the present problem of the principle involved.

^{page 749 note 2} Bilderbeck has offered the extremely interesting suggestion that Gower's message to Chaucer, already quoted, was the cause of the elimination, in 1390, of the “old age passages” in A. “Whether Chaucer took offense is an open question,” he concludes, “but there can be little doubt that he recognized the reductio ad absurdum of the position in which Gower had placed him, and his recognition of this probably reinforced his determination to eliminate all references to old age which his artistic sense also condemned” (op. cit., p. 106; cf. the fuller statements on pp. 105–6). If the lines in the Prologue have any direct connection with the passage at the close of the Confessio—something of which one may entertain no small doubt—is it not far more in keeping with Chaucer's character that they should have been added, in the spirit of the Canacee passage of the Man of Law's head-link, as a sly retort upon his friend? Venus's advice to Chaucer, it will be recalled, is that he

Do make his testament of love,

As thou hast do thi schrifte above.

In other words, like Gower and for the same reason—namely, that

…. loves lust and lockes hore

In chambre acorden neveremore,

And thogh thou feigne a yong corage,

It scheweth wel be the visage

That olde grisel is no fole (2403–7)—

Chaucer is exhorted to “made a plein reles To love” (see, for Gower's use of “testament,” as above, in the sense of last will, Confessio, vii, 3860; Praise of Peace, 177). For Gower's shrift, which Chaucer is thus to supplement, is, as the priest's specific words make clear (2895–96), precisely his confession that he is “unbehovely Your Court fro this day forth to serve” (2884–85), and his prayer: “I preie you to ben excused” (2888). If one turn, now, to the A-version of the Prologue, one finds in the first threat of the god of Love the lines:

Although [that] thou reneyed hast my lay,

As othere olde foles many a day,

Thou shalt repente hit, that hit shall be sene (314–16),

to which Alcestis later replies, in a couplet that does not occur in B.:

Whyl he was yong, he kepte your estat;

I not wher he be now a renegat (400–401).

That is to say, the god of Love is characterizing, in the two lines italicized, precisely such an attitude as that of Gower (“olde foles” in A. having replaced “wreches han don” of B.); while Alcestis—in two lines which sum up, the first by affirmation, the second by implied denial, the two parts of the message of Venus to Chaucer, with its admission of early service (11. 2943*-49*) and its implication that his day, for her, was done (11. 2950*-57*) — refuses to admit its application to Chaucer. When one remembers, now, that in the Man of Law's head-link, in direct connection with a long and explicit reference to the Legend (B. 60–76), occurs what is generally conceded to be a good-natured fling at Gower (B. 77–89), the possibility in the case of the Prologue of a clever reference, in perfect good humor, to Gower's not altogether tactful assumption that Chaucer and he were in similar parlous case may perhaps be admitted. I confess to thinking any connection between the two poems extremely doubtful. If there be one, however, it is sufficiently ambiguous to warrant the contention that it points quite as much to the insertion as to the rejection of the “olde age passages” after 1390.

^{page 749 note 1} Literaturblatt, 1893, p. 54.

^{page 749 note 2} Geschichte, ii, 123–24.

^{page 749 note 3} Eng. Stud., xvii, 22.

^{page 749 note 1} Compare, too, the Compleint to his Empty Purse.

^{page 749 note 2} Oxford Chaucer, i, xxxix.

^{page 749 note 3} Perhaps, on the whole, the best corrective to such conjectures as those of Koeppel and ten Brink would be to construct a theoretical chronology of the writings of Thomas Hood, based on the axiom that humor and prosperity go hand in hand, and humbly submit it to the castigation of the facts.

^{page 749 note 1} Koch likewise believes that Chaucer had given way to ascetic feelings when he made the translation, but, also believing A. to be the earlier version, he places the Wrecked Engendring with the Life of St. Cecily in 1374 (Chron., pp. 28–29, 78). It would of course be equally extreme to deny in toto the thesis that a writer's fortunes may be more or less reflected in his work. So wholesale a disclaimer would find its refutation in any one of a score of instances. What gives one pause is the confident erection into a general principle of a matter of individual temperament.

^{page 749 note 2} Eng. Stud., xvii, 21.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., p. 198.

^{page 749 note 4} Loc. cit.

^{page 749 note 5} Perhaps one line of the Monk's Tale (B. 3199) is to be assigned here. It is interesting—in its bearing on ten Brink's theory that the original Palamon and Arcite was in 7-line stanzas, because the fragments of the Teseide in the Parlement and the Troilus so appear—to observe that the fragments of the De Contemptu are in 7-line stanzas (in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale) and decasyllabic couplets (in the Pardoner's Tale), while the original version was in prose! In other words, the material is given the metre of the poem in which it happens to be inserted, without reference to its original form. That, indeed, is what common sense would lead one to suppose, were common sense always allowed to influence the consideration of such problems. Even more to the point is it to observe that on ten Brink's hypothesis the lines from the Filostrato in the Prologue to the Legend would force us to the acceptance of a proto-Troilus in decasyllabic couplets.

^{page 749 note 1} It should be observed, moreover, that the Pardoner's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Prologue are linked with the A-version on another side—through their common borrowings from Jerome ageyns Jovynyan and from Valerie. See esp. Koeppel, Anglia, N. F., i, 174 ff.

^{page 749 note 2} See Miss Peterson's The Sources of the Parson's Tale (Boston, 1901).

^{page 749 note 1} Even Deschamps, whom one can easily imagine revelling in its gloomy pages, seems to have been unable to finish it. For it is worth noting that on April 18, 1383, Deschamps presented to Charles VI a translation (more accurately, a paraphrase) of parts of the De Contemptu under the title of Livre de la Fragilité d'umaine Nature (Oeuvres, ii, 237–305). His selections are made from the following chapters (Bonn edition): i, 1–10, 12–14, 16–17, 19, 22–24, 29; ii, 1, 6, 29; iii, 1, 11, 15–17. Chaucer's fragments are from i, 1 (?), 16, 18, 22, 23; ii, 17, 18, 19, 21 (see Koeppel, loc. cit.). It is of course a bare possibility that Deschamps's Double Lay de la Fragilité humaine was included among the poems he sent to Chaucer, in which case it may have given to Chaucer the suggestion for his own translation of the work. For other translations of the treatise, see the bibliographical notes to Le Passe Temps de tout Homme et de toute Femme, in Oeuvres poétiques de Guillaume Alexis (Soc. de Anc. Textes fr.), ii, 71 ff.

^{page 749 note 1} The introduction of the lark passage in A. (ll. 139–143; cf. Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 682) may possibly also point to the period of the Canterbury Tales. It has already been noted (p. 75–1, n. 2) that the couplet A. 139–140, which closely parallels F. 399–400, is too nearly a commonplace to give such a verbal detail evidential value. But that Chaucer's interest in the various strands which had entered or were to enter the tangled web of the Squire's Tale—particularly his treatment of the virtue of the magic ring—may have suggested not so much the phrasing as the finely imagined device itself of the herald lark whose words were understood, is not impossible. Moreover, that the Squire's Tale and the A-version were in mind not far from the same time seems probable from another interesting parallel—A. 113–18 with F. 52–57—which includes the reference to the sword of winter. The passage in A. differs from B., except in tenses, in one detail, the substitution in A. 112 of “And clothed him in grene al” for “That naked was and clad hit” of B. 130. F. 54 reads: “What for the seson and the yonge grene.” That is, at the one point where A. varies from B, it agrees with the parallel passage in the Squire's Tale. (One should further compare with the three passages referred to The Book of the Duchesse, 410 ff., and R. R., 56 ff.) It may be noted, also, that F. 481–82 recalls A. 83–84. The evidence is in itself altogether too slight to be convincing. Taken in connection with other considerations, however, which point the same way, it gains at least corroborative value.

^{page 749 note 1} (1) A. 13–14 = B. 13–14; (2) A. 49–50 = B. 49–50; (3) A. 53–54 = B. 63–64; (4) A. 91–92 = B. 181–82; (5) A. 224–25 = B. 270–71; (6) A. 264–65 = B. 332–33; (7) A. 266–67 = B. 334–35; (8) A. 312–13 = B. 338–39; (9) A. 330–31 = B. 354–55; (10) A. 332–33 = B. 356–57; (11) A. 526–27 = B. 538–39. Of these, it will be noted that (2) and (3) belong to the recasting of the cento from the Marguerite poems; that (4) is among the introductory lines of the passage that has been carried back over one hundred lines in order to fuse the two parts of the poem into one; that (5) has lost from between its two lines twenty-nine lines of B., through the omission and transposition involved in the modification of the balade setting; that (6), (7) and (8) form the setting of the long book-paragraph inserted in A.; and that (11) forms part of the notable change in the god of Love's final reference to the balade. That is to say, all but three—(1), (9), (10) — of the changes in the rhyme of couplets belong to the more thoroughgoing portions of the revision, where rather heroic measures were rendered necessary. (Couplets added or omitted in toto are of course not included.)

^{page 749 note 1} A. 28 = B. 28; 51 = 61; 58 = 56; 59 = 67; 60 = 68; 69 = 81; 70 = 82; 72 = 188; 78 = 194; 83 = 99; 84 = 100; 107 = 120; 127 = 139; 146 = 214; 160 = 228; 165 = 233; 179 = 276; 227 = 300; 348 = 368; 402 = 414; 532 = 543. Cf. 106 = 202; 108 = 119.

^{page 749 note 2} A. 33 = B. 33; 36 = 36; 52 = 62; 68 = 80; 89 = 108; 117 = 129; 136 = 150; 144=212; 242 = 316; 341 = 363.

^{page 749 note 3} A. 73 = B. 189; 98 = 204.

^{page 749 note 4} A. 94 = B. 198; 166 = 234; 533 = 542.

^{page 749 note 6} A. 39 = B. 39; 138 = 152; 143 = 211; 164 = 231; 234 = 308; 247 = 321; 317 = 341; 364 = 380; 544 = 578.

^{page 749 note 1} Chaucer's problem, as he set it, was very like that which confronts the modern writer who wishes to revise his work after page-proof has been reached. The flexibility even of galley-proof is no longer there; one is forced to cut one's phrase—still more one's thought—to the measure of the space already occupied.

^{page 749 note 2} Compare, for an excellent illustration, the elimination from the Palace of Art, on revision, of the stanzas dealing with the sensuous delights of the soul. And, indeed, the relation of Tennyson's revised Palace of Art in the volume of 1842 to the original of 1833 has some rather illuminating points of contact with the relation of A. to B. Tennyson's growing sense of artistic unity found expression in the transposition of large groups of stanzas in order to make the ground-plan of his palace more consistent, just as Chaucer transposed large groups of couplets seemingly for greater temporal unity. The same sterner sense of the subordination of beauty of detail to the demands of the artistic whole that seems to have underlain the excision from A. of the lovely Filostrato lines and the condensation of the panegyric on the daisy, one finds in the omission from the Palace of Art of the beautiful stanza (among many others) on the “deep unsounded skies Shuddering with silent stars.” And curiously enough, while in its first three-fourths the Palace of Art has undergone perhaps more extensive revision than any other poem of its length in the language, its last twenty stanzas—save for the omission of one, and four slight verbal changes in three others—remain untouched. Perhaps on the whole no more convincing evidence of any sort could be offered that the qualities of revised work, particularly after the lapse of a few years, are not those of spontaneity but of restraint, not those of lavishness but of economy, not those of “sweet disorder” but of conscious plan, than a detailed comparison of Tennyson's volume of 1842 with that of 1833, for the poems common to both.

^{page 749 note 1} Compleynt of Venus, ll. 79–82.

^{page 749 note 1} See p. 781.

^{page 749 note 3} Bilderbeck assigns B., which he of course regards as the revised version, to the year 1390. Chaucer's gratitude to the Queen, as expressed in the Prologue, is for his appointment, July 12, 1389, as Clerk of the King's Works (p. 101); the love-making of the birds (which Bilderbeck connects with his elaborate interpretation of the details of the allegory in the Parlement of Foules: see his edition of Chaucer's Minor Poems, London, 1895, pp. 77–78) symbolizes “the healing of differences among the political parties of the period under reference” (p. 102); the lines on pity's “stronge gentil myght” laud “the moderation and forgiving spirit which characterized the new policy of the King (ib.); the “note of admonition” in the lecture on the duties of a king “gives place to a note of admiration in the [revised Prologue], which reads like a compliment to a king whose acts and policy are in strict accordance with the ideal of kingship presented by the poet” (p. 103); the lilies are removed from the god of Love's garland on account of the three years’ truce with France (ib.); the references to Chaucer's own age go out on a gentle hint from Gower (pp. 105–6)—and the poem becomes a veritable cryptogram. Moreover, Bilderbeck's selection of 1390 is manifestly influenced in another respect by his strong penchant for allegorizing, which extends even to numbers. There are nineteen ladies, for instance, following the god of Love and Alcestis, because in 1385 Queen Anne was nineteen years old (pp. 90, 99); and Chaucer's “statement that the month of May always draws him …. to observe the resurrection of the daisy …. may be a symbolical way of describing something of the nature of an annual birthday tribute to the queen” (p. 90). As for this tribute we must note that “from 1.385 to 1394 we have a period of ten years. There are ten good women whose stories are given in nine legends” (p. 89). Ergo, while “the coincidence in number may be accidental, it is at least consistent with the hypothesis” that the annual tribute of a legend continued up to the Queen's death! (It may be remarked in passing that as “Chaucer's plan or commission contemplated the incorporation of only nineteen legends” (p. 92), one each year, and as the Queen was nineteen years old when the series began, each annual tribute would constitute a graceful reminder of the approach of her fortieth year). Moreover, Bilderbeck finds “evidence of a revision of the Legends up to and including the Legend of Ariadne, which is the sixth in order” (p. 89). “Now, the period from May, 1385, to May, 1390, includes six months of May” (p. 108). Therefore, if one legend were written each year and six are found to be revised, the revision of the Legends, and presumably of the Prologue, must have taken place in the sixth year, namely, 1390. But unfortunately Bilderbeck forgets entirely what he had previously pointed out—the fact that ten good women have between them only nine legends! The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea (No. IV), accordingly, must do duty for both 1388 and 1389 (Bilderbeck actually assigns the Legend of Dido, as the third in order, to 1387; see p. 90), the Legend of Lucretia (No. V) would fall in 1390, and the Legend of Ariadne (No. VI), and the revision, in 1391! The theory thus furnishes its own reductio ad absurdum. “La preoccupation chronologique,” says Legouis with justice, though in another connection, “devient peu à peu idée fixe. Elle se fait tyrannique et arrive à gauchir le sentiment esthétique en le sollicitant vers ses fins propres. L'appréciation de l'æuvre n'y est jamais tout à fait pure et désintéressée. … Il n'est peut-être pas nécessaire que la vie de Chaucer soit conjecturée, il est essentiel que son æuvre soit lue avec justesse et avec gout” (op. cit., pp. 19–20).

^{page 749 note 1} See Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, iii, xxxix, 333, for references to the sources of the story in Ovid, Plutarch, Boccaccio, Hyginus, and Virgil. Cf. Bech, Anglia, v, 337–42.

^{page 749 note 2} “The idea that the son of Minos went to Athens to study philosophy, [and] the incident of the ball of pitch given by Ariadne to Theseus to be used against the Minotaur” (Works of John Gower, ed. Macaulay, iii, 503); cf. also Bech, Anglia, v, 339–41. For Gower's version of the story see Confessio Amantis, v, ll. 5231 ff. (ed. Macaulay, iii, 89 ff.)

^{page 749 note 1} The tour, ther as this Theseus is throwe

^{page 749 note 2} Fro yow, whyl that me lasteth lyf or breeth,

I wol nat twinne, after this aventure,

But in your servise thus I wol endure,

That, as a wrecche unknowe, I wol yow serve

For ever-mo, til that myn herte sterve.

Forsake I wol at hoom myn heritage,

And, as I seide, ben of your court a page,

If that ye vouche-sauf that, in this place,

Ye graunte me to han so gret a grace

That I may han nat but my mete and drinke;

And for my sustenance yit wol I swinke.

(Leg. 2031–2041.)

^{page 749 note 1} Leg. 2045 ff.: cf. 2060–65:

And, if I profre yow in low manere

To ben your page and serven yow right here,

But I yow serve as lowly in that place,

I prey to Mars to yive me swiche a grace

That shames deeth on me ther mote falle,

And deeth and povert to my frendes alle.

Cf. also ll. 2080–2082.

^{page 749 note 2} Teseide, iii, ll. For the relation of the garden, and so of the dungeon, to Emily's room, see iii, 8:

Ogni mattina venuta ad un'ora

In un giardin se n'entrava soletta,

Ch'allato alla sua camera dimora

Faceva, etc.

^{page 749 note 1} “The tour, ther as this Theseus is throwe” (Leg. 1960); “The grete tour…. (Ther-as the knightes weren in prisoun),” A. 1056–58.

^{page 749 note 2} Perchè di sangue reale eran nati,

E felli dentro al palagio abitare,

E così in una camera tenere (ii, 99).

The three accounts differ entirely in the elevation of the prison. In the Legend Theseus is thrown “Down in the botom derke and wonder lowe” (1961); in the Teseide the prisoners’ room seems to be on the garden level, for when Emily hears Palamon's cry, “Si volse destra in su la poppa manca;” in the Knight's Tale Palamon “romed in a chambre on heigh, in which he al the noble citee seigh” (A. 1065–66).

^{page 749 note 3} Tes., iii, 17–18.

^{page 749 note 4} Tes., iii, 19. In all three accounts the jailor appears, but in the Legend it is by his aid that Theseus escapes (1987–90, 2021, 2026, 2051–53, 2141, 2150, 2153); while in both the Teseide and the Knight's Tale he is drugged, and the escape is made by the aid of a friend (Tes., v, 24–25; A. 1468–74).

^{page 749 note 5} Tes., iv, 22.

^{page 749 note 6} Ib., iv, 40 ff.

^{page 749 note 1} Ib., iv, 31.

^{page 749 note 2} A. 1422–25; cf. 1415 ff.

^{page 749 note 3} Tes., iv, 28.

^{page 749 note 4} He is with Menelao “vicin d'un anno” (iv, 20), but for his service at Egina (iv, 21–39) and with Theseus (iv, 40 ff.) no definite notes of time seem to be given.

^{page 749 note 1} There is a very curious blunder in the poem which seems to corroborate the view of the influence of the Teseide. All the mss. except two—Addit. 9832, Brit. Mus., and R. 3. 19, Trin., Camb.—read at the beginning of l. 1966 “Of Athenes”— i. e.

Dwelten above, toward the maister-strete

Of Athenes—

and the text in the Globe Chaucer so stands, with the note: “probably Chaucer's own slip.” The reading of the Oxford Chaucer—‘In mochel mirth’—is Professor Skeat's “bold alteration,” as he himself calls it (iii, 335), “suggested by ms. T., and supported by ms. Addit. 9832, which has ‘in moche myrth.’” But it is interesting to note that the prison in the Teseide which Chaucer seems to have had in mind in his description was in Athens, so that the reason of the slip may have been his overlooking, for the moment, the fact that in the story he was really telling the scene had been transferred to Crete.

It is perhaps worth while to note, too, the connection, in the Legend, of Mars with a vow conditioned on victory:

^{page 749 note 1} Ten Brink's theory of an original Palamon and Arcite in seven-line stanzas has been, I think, entirely refuted by Dr. F. J. Mather, Jr. (An English Miscellany, presented to Dr. Furnivall (1901), pp. 301–13; cf. Dr. Mather's edition of The Prologue and the Knight's Tale, xvii), and by Dr. J. S. P. Tatlock (in a discussion soon to be published). Cf. also the present paper, p. 793, n. 5. That the Knight's Tale as it stands represents substantially the original “love of Palamon and Arcyte” (slightly modified here and there, it may be, to adapt it to the character of the Knight) seems by far the most probable hypothesis.

^{page 749 note 2} Ten Brink assures us (Studien, p. 63) that the Palamon in stanzas was closer to the original and fuller than the present Knight's Tale, so that even on his hypothesis the inference of the text holds.

^{page 749 note 3} The N. E. D. is probably correct in accepting here the usual sense of chambre foreine (s. v. foreign, B., 2). Much as one wishes to agree with Professor Skeat (iii, 335) and Mätzner against the meaning ‘privy,’ the usage seems all to point the other way. Cf. also Bech, Anglia, v, 342.

^{page 749 note 1} Part (indeed the main part, it would seem) of Chaucer's purpose in writing the Legend of Ariadne he declares to be

^{page 749 note 2} It is noteworthy that Boccaccio's device of making Emily overhear Palamon's groans, and so become aware of the prisoner's presence—the device so essential to Chaucer's treatment of the situation in the Ariadne—is altogether omitted from the Knight's Tale. For the change Tyrwhitt's reason still seems to be sufficient: “As no consequence is to follow from their being seen by Emilia at this time, it is better, I think, to suppose, as Chaucer has done, that they are not seen by her” (The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, 1775, iv, 136 n.). The omission, accordingly, is perhaps independent of the fact that the device seems to have been already used, although the agreement of the Ariadne and the Knight's Tale as against the Teseide in the explicit mention of the tower and in the reference to the seven years seems to indicate that (as indeed with Chaucer would be almost inevitable) the earlier handling of the material was not absent from his mind when the Knight's Tale was written.

^{page 749 note 1} To the evidence already adduced for the early date of the Ariadne should be added its curious inconsistencies. The tribute to Minos is twice said to be an annual one (ll. 1926, 1941), while between the two statements occurs another (l. 1932) to the effect that it is every third year. Theseus in l. 2075 is said to be “but of a twenty yeer and three;” in ll. 2099–2100 Ariadne requests that he have Phaedra married to his son on their arrival! Theseus declares (though how he could have previously known her is not told) that he has been Ariadne's servant seven years in his own country—to which, however, it may of course be replied that a lover is not to be held rigidly to the truth in such a pass. Ariadne is greatly delighted for her sister and herself that “Now be we duchesses, bothe I and ye” (l. 2127), as if they were not princesses already. And it may be added that it is really Phaedra and not the heroine who does all the planning for Theseus's escape, Ariadne simply asserting, in seven lines, that he is to be helped, while Phaedra, in forty lines, furnishes the details. The discrepancy involved in I. 1966 has been already referred to (p. 808, n. 1).

^{page 749 note 2} That would also follow upon the rejection of the theory that the original Palamon was in seven-line stanzas.

^{page 749 note 3} Dr. Mather's belief (An English Miscellany, p. 312, n. 1) that, should metrical statistics be collected for all of Chaucer's poems in the heroic couplet, “it is possible that results as valuable as those obtained from the analytical study of Shakespeare's blank verse might be reached,” one hopes may be prophetic. And within certain limits results are perhaps even now attainable. Such attempts, however, as I have myself made in this direction in the study of the Legend have gone far to convince me, on comparing their conclusions with the results of similar attempts by one or two others, that a more definite working basis than any that at present exists is necessary before the data themselves can be relied on.

^{page 749 note 1} B. 197 ff.

^{page 749 note 2} Leg. 2144 ff. The two passages were chosen at random—except that both were to be narrative.

^{page 749 note 3} One is often painfully conscious of the line-lengths as one reads, as one is conscious of the bumping of the ties when one's train is off the track. In the passage from the Prologue one keeps serenely on the rails.

^{page 749 note 1} The number of lines so beginning in the entire Legend of Ariadne is 91—i. e., 1 in every 3.7.

^{page 749 note 2} The line as it actually stands at the close of the Prologue—” Make the metres of hem as the leste” (B. 562)—has usually been taken as a reference of Chaucer's to the new metre of the Legend. If so, the present view leaves the allusion untouched, for even though some or all of the Legends in fact antedated the Prologue, the latter by a conventional fiction would of course refer to them as still to come. At the same time it seems very doubtful whether “make the metres” really means any more than “ryme” of l. 570, so that the real emphasis falls on “as the leste,” and the sense of the passage is merely: Tell their stories in metre, but otherwise as you like—save they must not be too long drawn out.

^{page 749 note 1} See, for example, ll 2399–2400, 2446–51, 2459–61, 2464, 2543–49. The two stories are also directly associated at the close of the first book of the House of Fame, ll. 388–426.

^{page 749 note 2} Ll. 2454–57; cf. also ll. 2490–91:

^{page 749 note 1} That one or two of the better told stories may have been added after the Prologue was composed, is of course a possibility.

^{page 749 note 2} See, for instance, ten Brink: In demselben und im folgenden jahre [1385, his date for the Prologue] mag Chaucer die uns erhaltenen oder verloren gegangenen erzählungen von guten frauen gedichtet haben (Studien, p. 149); and Skeat: “I suppose that Chaucer went on with one tale of the series after another during the summer and latter part of the same year [1385, the date assigned both forms of the Prologue] till he grew tired of the task, and at last gave it up in the middle of a sentence” (Oxford Chaucer, iii, xxii). See also Bilderbeck's view, referred to above, pp. 801–03.

^{page 749 note 1} It will at once be objected that the Prologue itself implies a greater number of Legends than are actually extant, so that its allusions to the Legends as still to be composed are at least not wholly the poet's pleasing fiction. It may be granted that Chaucer possibly intended, even when he wrote the Prologue, to continue at some later day the execution of his plan. The present argument deals and can deal only with the stories which we have. But have not, in general, Chaucer's statements regarding the details of the continuation of the Legend been taken far too seriously?

Much has been made of the lists of names in the balade and the Man of Law's head-link. But so soon as one really examines the facts, it seems obvious that Chaucer is speaking in the most general terms. I subjoin the lists of women in (a) the House of Fame, i, 380–426; (b) the titles of the Legends actually written; (c) the balade of the Prologue; and (d) the Man of Law's head-link. One might add at least four names, the rest being rather remote, from the Franklin's Tale (F. 1405–8, 1442–8), but the connection is not so close. The lists are as follows:

Of these, eight names occur in but one of the lists: Oënone (a), Philomela (b), Ester (c), Marcia Catoun (c), Isoude (c), Lavyne (c), Polixene (c), Hermion (d); eight occur in two lists: Briseida (ad), Dyanira (ad), Cleopatra (bc), Eleyne (cd), Herro (cd), Canacee (c[d]), Penelopee (cd), Ladomea (cd); four occur in three lists: Tisbe (bcd), Hypermestre (bcd), Alceste ([b]cd), Lucresse (bcd); only five (5) occur in all four lists: Dido (abcd), Phyllis (abcd), Isiphile and Medea (abc[-Medea]d), Ariadne (abcd).

One may put the case another way:

(1) Of one Legend the heroine (Philomela) is in none of the other lists.

(2) Five names in the balade (Ester, Marcia Catoun, Isoude, Lavyne, Polixene) do not occur in the other lists.

(3) The heroines of two of the Legends (Philomela and Medea) are not included in the balade.

(4) Six names in the balade are not in the head-link (i. e., those of (2) and Cleopatra).

(5) Three names in the head-link are not in the balade (Hermion, Briseida, Dyanira).

(6) The heroines of two of the Legends are not in the head-link (Philomela, Cleopatra).

(7) Seven [eight] names in the head-link have no Legends (Hermion, Briseida, Dyanira, Eleyne, Herro, Penelopee, Ladomea, [Canacee]; I have included Alceste among the Legends).

(8) Ten names in the balade have no Legends (i. e., those of (2) and Herro, Canacee, Penelopee, Ladomea, Eleyne).

The confusion is inextricable, and it seems hard to believe that Chaucer ever intended to do more than give indefinite lists of more or less typical names, such as one finds by the score in Deschamps, Froissart, and their contemporaries. Since the above note was written, a similar conviction has been expressed by Dr. French, op. cit., p. 31.

^{page 749 note 1} Ll. 405–426.

^{page 749 note 2} The same argument applies to the story of Phyllis (H. F., i, 388–396) and to a less degree to that of Dido (H. F., i, 239–382).

^{page 749 note 3} On account of Professor Tatlock's very full and able treatment of the various theories concerned with the chronology of Chaucer's middle period in the forthcoming work already referred to, I have not felt myself at liberty to enter, in many cases, into so full a discussion as I should otherwise have deemed necessary of the views of different investigators. Such views have, I believe, been none the less taken into account.

^{page 749 note 1} Studien, p. 120.

^{page 749 note 2} Oxford Chaucer, iii, xviii.

^{page 749 note 3} To the significance of this stanza Professor Kittredge first called my attention.

^{page 749 note 4} Prologue, B. 486 = A. 476.

^{page 749 note 5} Leg., 2226–27.

^{page 749 note 1} Leg., 2546–47.

^{page 749 note 2} Leg., 2559, 2561.

^{page 749 note 3} Leg. 2387.

^{page 749 note 4} I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for the query whether Deschamps's insistence on this particular work of Chaucer's may not have had something to do with its being mentioned so prominently in the Prologue (although its association with the Troilus would of course be natural enough in any case). This gives another point of contact between the Prologue and Deschamps.

^{page 749 note 1} The god of Love himself knew better:

For who-so yeveth a yift, or doth a grace,

Do hit by tyme, his thank is wel the more.

Bis dat qui cito dat !

^{page 749 note 2} Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 618–626.

^{page 749 note 1} i, 317 ff. The passage from the Mirour is quoted in full on p. 831 of the present article.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib., pp. 323–24.

^{page 749 note 1} Such seems also to be Professor Macaulay's opinion. For Tatlock (p. 322, n. 3), in crediting to Hamilton (Chaucer's Indebtedness to Guido dalle. Colonne, p. 136) the discovery of the reference, has apparently overlooked the fact that Macaulay himself had made use of it in his edition of Gower: “This [i. e., the Mirour] was the work upon which Gower's reputation rested when Chaucer submitted Troilus to his judgment, and though he may have been indulging his sense of humour in making Gower one of the correctors of his version of that—

'geste

De Troÿlus et de la belle

Creseide,'

which the moralist had thought only good enough for the indolent worshipper to dream of in church,” etc. (Works of Gower, i, xii, xiii).

^{page 749 note 1} See Works, ed. Macaulay, i, lvii-lviii.

^{page 749 note 2} This consideration breaks the force of Tatlock's statement that Chaucer's Troilus “is the only English work before the end of the century which treats the story at all.” As for the accuracy of the statement itself, one should bear in mind the possibilities in the case of the Laud Troy-book, as stated by Miss Kemp (Eng. Stud., xxix, 3–6) and discussed by Wülfing (ib., 377–78, cf. 396).

^{page 749 note 3} See Kittredge, Englische Studien, xxvi, 330–31.

^{page 749 note 4} Paradys d'Amours, l. 974; see Tatlock, op. cit., 323, note; cf. Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 648.

^{page 749 note 1} Oeuvres, ed. Scheler, i, 286.

^{page 749 note 2} Ib., i, 287, 323, 327, 340.

^{page 749 note 3} Ll. 1316–1995. Froissart's reference is, indeed, doubly suggestive, for it seems to obviate entirely any necessity of assuming that the Man of Law's statement, “In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcion” (B. 571, refers to an originally separate work of Chaucer's rather than to the existing episode in the Book of the Duchesse.

^{page 749 note 4} The bearing of this is manifest upon Tatlock's reference to the Troilus as the only work known in the fourteenth century except the Filostrato, “in which the story of Troilus forms anything but an episode.”

^{page 749 note 5} Op. cit., p. 323, n. 1.

^{page 749 note 6} Romania, xxi, 101, n. 1, referred to by Tatlock.

^{page 749 note 1} Tatlock seems to have overlooked ms. Palat. 154 in Morf's statement, for he refers only to the G and C “in some fifteenth century mss. of Guido” (loc. cit.).

^{page 749 note 2} Moland et d'Héricault, Nouvelles françoises du XIV^e siecle, pp. ci-ciii, cf. 121. Tatlock's reference to it as a “late French romance” is perhaps slightly misleading—though in the previous note he gives its date as above.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., pp. cxxxiv-v.

^{page 749 note 4} Ib., p. cxxxiv.

^{page 749 note 5} Moreover, “Armannino a précédé Boccace en appelant la fille de Calcas Criseida“(Morf, loc. cit.). “Mais,” Morf goes on, “il n'a guère été le modèle de Boccace parce qu'il ne parle pas des amours de Criseida et de Troilus.” The fact, however—to which Tatlock also refers—does show still further the danger of basing any chronological argument upon the form of the name.

^{page 749 note 1} See Herzberg, Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, vi, 197: “Boccaccio wollte die Chriseis als die Goldige gedeutet wissen.” It must be remembered that Gower himself—and we may be sure Chaucer—knew of the “faire maiden” who “cleped is Criseide, douhter of Crisis (Conf. Amantis, v, 6443–44; cf. Hyginus, Fab. 121: Chryseidam Apollinis sacerdotis filiam), as distinguished from Criseida the daughter of Calchas.

^{page 749 note 2} One may put the matter thus: Supposing Chaucer's Troilus never to have existed, would such a reference as Gower's, on the basis of known relations of the other versions of the story, have seriously puzzled any one for a moment?

^{page 749 note 3} Eng. Stud., xxix, 5, 377.

^{page 749 note 1} Works of Gower, i, lxix. For that matter, if (to put a case) the ms. was written under Gower's direction after the publication of Chaucer's Troilus, an original G may have been changed to C by Gower's own orders—a suggestion for which I am indebted to Professor Kittredge.

^{page 749 note 2} Troilus, iv, 15, repeated identically in Leg., A. 265, as the theme of the Troilus.

^{page 749 note 1} Works of Gower, i, xliii.

^{page 749 note 2} Op. cit., p. 324, n. 3; cf. Macaulay, op. cit., p. xlii.

^{page 749 note 1} Ll. 5179–84.

^{page 749 note 2} Ll. 5245–56.

^{page 749 note 3} Passus v, 392–403; C-text, Passus viii, 1–12; not in A-text; see ed. Skeat, i, 166. I am indebted for this reference to a lecture of Professor Kittredge's.

^{page 749 note 1} Ed. Skeat, n, p. xii, cf. xi-xiv.

^{page 749 note 2} “On the whole we may conclude without hesitation that the book was completed before the summer of the year 1381” (Macaulay, op. cit., i, p. xlii), though, as Macaulay continues, “there are some other considerations which will probably lead us to throw the date back a little further than this.”

^{page 749 note 1} Op. cit., p. 322.

^{page 749 note 2} Loc. cit.

^{page 749 note 3} I hope at some time to be able to go on with a study, already begun, of the Troilus in its relation to the Filostrato (and, as far as possible, to Benoît and Guido), with special reference to just this question of Chaucer's artistic methods as shown in his management of his materials.

^{page 749 note 1} This does not in the least overlook the infinite variety of the life of the Middle Ages. But underlying that variety there are none the less certain common characteristics which one thinks of as par excellence “mediæval.”

^{page 749 note 1} That happens to be also the order of their divergence from Boccaccio.

^{page 749 note 2} The fact—if I may adapt a suggestion of Professor Kittredge's—that the characters of the Troilus are drawn at full length, as in a work of (let us say) Thackeray's, while the others are treated with the superb compression of Kipling's short stories, should not blind one to their parallel realism.

^{page 749 note 1} Pandare's unfailing urbanity, too, his infinite savoir faire, his Mephistophelean plausibility are possibly equalled, scarcely surpassed, in the graceless intriguers of the later Tales. Moreover, one finds in Pandare, as in them, the same gift of being all things to all men. Few details seem better to show Chaucer's immense superiority in characterization to Boccaccio than his subtle differentiation between the Pandare who talks with Creseyde, and the Pandare who deals with Troilus. It is really far subtler (for the canvas is larger) than the changes of tactics of which Daun John or the Somnour's Frere are past masters, and it certainly adds its quota to one's feeling of the maturity of power that underlies the Troilus.

^{page 749 note 1} Bk. II, ll. 78–100, 120–140.

^{page 749 note 1} Chaucer's use, to take a single point, of conversational repetition (as, for instance, in lines 122, 127–8, 136) is consummately realistic, and yet escapes entirely the touch of caricature which one feels in certain modern attempts, notably Maeterlinck's earlier ones, to lend similar verisimilitude to dramatic dialogue. Moreover, to an astonishing, for myself to an unequalled, degree, the rapid dialogue of the Troilus, particularly when Pandare is speaking, possesses actual vocalizing and visualizing power. That is, it carries with it, to the mental ear and eye, its own tones and inflections, even its own subtle play of gesture. The effect seems due, in part at least, to the presence of so large a number of the purely connotative words and phrases just referred to, which in actual speech are little more than vehicles for certain familiar tones and cadences, with their attendant shrugs, or lifted eyebrows, or whatever fugitive gesture it may be. The art with which in the rapid dialogue of the Troilus these most evanescent qualities of speech are caught and kept, and that in verse, is unapproachable.

^{page 749 note 1} Professor Price has pointed out in a most suggestive study in Chaucer's method of narrative construction (Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xi, 307–22) that Chaucer “has arranged all the action [of the Troilus] into a sequence of fifty scenes.” However one may modify the mere number of scenes, the observation is a very valuable one. A much more elaborate study of the construction of the Troilus is made in Rudolf Fischer's Zu dem Kunstformen des Miltelalterlichen Epos (Wiener Beiträge, ix, 1899).

^{page 749 note 2} Troilus, ii, 1591–92.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., iv, 706–07.

^{page 749 note 1} At the opening of the third book.

^{page 749 note 2} Troilus, iii, 59.

^{page 749 note 3} Ib., iv, 742.

^{page 749 note 4} In a different way this same sense for dramatic contrasts is shown in the antithesis, worked out with consummate skill, between the action of the first book and that of the first part of the second. In the first, the interest centres about Pandare's characteristic attempts to extract from the unwilling Troilus the confession of his lady's name; in the second, it is centred in Pandare's shifts and turns, depicted with irresistible humor, to conceal from Creseyde, while playing incessantly upon her curiosity, her supposed lover's name. The heightening of the situation in the case of Troilus and the creation of it in the case of Creseyde are Chaucer's modifications of Boccaccio. For the wonderful and subtly drawn scene at the beginning of Bk. II (stanzas 1–37) is Chaucer's expansion of a mere hint in a single stanza (Filostrato, ii, st. 35) of Boccaccio.

^{page 749 note 5} Pandare is really to the characters of the Troilus something of what—mutatis mutandis very thoroughly !—Harry Bailly is to the dramatis personae of the setting of the Tales.

^{page 749 note 6} Studien, p. 77; cf. Englische Studien, xvii, 8: “Der Troilus zeugt von grosser künstlerischer reife und virtuosität und bildet nächst den besten partien der Canterbury Tales zweifellos das bedeutendste werk, das überhaupt aus Chaucer's feder geflossen ist. Schon aus diesen gründen wird man ihm einen platz gegen den schluss der zweiten periode anweisen müssen.”

^{page 749 note 1} An English Miscellany, p. 310.

^{page 749 note 2} Mod. Lang. Notes, Dec., 1904, pp. 240–43.

^{page 749 note 1} Troilus, ii, 56 ff.

^{page 749 note 2} A. 1462–64, 1467–68.

^{page 749 note 1} “And hit was tho the thridde nyght of May“(1. 55).

^{page 749 note 2} See p. 753, n. 4.

^{page 749 note 3} It may be well to say again that this name is uniformly used in this paper to designate the Knight's Tale before it was adapted to its position in the Canterbury Tales.

^{page 749 note 4} Troilus, v, 1807 ff.

^{page 749 note 1} Op. cit., p. 309.

^{page 749 note 2} “Ueber die enstehungszeit von Palamon and Arcite können wir nur das sagen, dasz diese dichtung vor Troylus and Cryseyde fällt” (Studien, p. 124).

^{page 749 note 3} “I follow Prof. ten Brink in placing the first version of Palamon and Arcite between the Life of St. Cecily and Troilus“(Essays on Chaucer, Chancer Society, p. 396).

^{page 749 note 4} “Not wishing, however, to abandon it [i. e., the original Palamon and Arcite] altogether, Chaucer probably used some of the lines over again in ‘Anelida,’ and introduced others into the Parlement of Foules and elsewhere” (The Prologue, the Knight's Tale, etc., 1898, p. liii).

^{page 749 note 1} This fact, pointed out in the earlier part of this discussion (Pubs. Mod. Lang. Assoc., xix, 618 ff.), establishes the somewhat important principle that it is unsafe to argue, from the presence in a poem x of fragments from the source of another poem Y, that the passage has been omitted from y because it had been already used in x. That it may have been used in x because it had been already rejected from Y is not only a priori possible, but, at least in the case of the Prologue and the Filostrato, actually demonstrable.

^{page 749 note 2} Troilus, iii, 1744–1768 (De Consolatione, Bk. II, Met. 8); iv, 953–1085 (De Consolatione, Bk. V, Pr. 2, Pr. 3). See Globe Chaucer, p. xli, and cf. Mather, op. cit., pp. 308–09.

^{page 749 note 3} Troilus, iii, 813–33 (De Consolatione, Bk. II, Pr. 4); cf. Globe Chaucer, loc. cit.

^{page 749 note 4} It should be noted that one of the two added passages (iii, 1744–68) is from the same book of the De Consolatione as the long passage found from the first in the Troilus (iii, 813–33).

^{page 749 note 5} Once suppose the inadequacy of the treatment of Troilus's death to have been noticed by Chaucer when he came, for some reason, to revise the poem, and it follows as a necessary corollary that he would cast about for something with which to fill the gap. In other words, the Teseide stanzas were not inserted, one may suppose, in the first form of the Troilus, simply because the occasion for using them did not occur to Chaucer—not because the stanzas were not available. It is scarcely fair to confine a poet, in his revision, to the use of such material only as he has acquired since the first draught! Tennyson added in 1842, for example, in the Palace of Art, in order to round out a plan more clearly conceived on revision than in the first ardor of composition, a passage alluding to Egeria and Numa Pompilius. Are we to suppose that he did not, in 1833, know of the wood-nymph and the Ausonian king, or that for any reason they were not then available for use? Dr. Mather's argument at this point limits entirely too closely a poet's possible motives in dealing with his work.

^{page 749 note 1} See Temporary Preface, pp. 104–05.

^{page 749 note 2} A. 2809–15.

^{page 749 note 1} See especially Legend, ll. 1–9; Troilus, ii, 894–96.

^{page 749 note 2} If I may borrow an apt phrase of Professor Kittredge.

^{page 749 note 1} See Mr. Pollard's fair and judicial statement of the case in the Chaucer Primer, pp. 53–54.

^{page 749 note 2} We are really asked to believe that he not only did that, in the Prologue to the Legend, but that he thereupon proceeded, in the Legends themselves, to go through the omitted apprentice stages after the event!

^{page 749 note 1} It should not be forgotten that the seven-line stanza itself ends in two decasyllabic couplets.

^{page 749 note 2} For in this see the boot hath swich travayle

Of my conning, that unnethe I it stere.

(Troilus, ii, 3–4.)

^{page 749 note 1} Troilus, ii, 1030 ff.

^{page 749 note 1} This previous preoccupation with the story readily explains, too, the fact that when he did come at last to the real telling of it, he treated it with a magnificently free hand. The story had become his, rather than Boccaccio's, one may guess, before he put pen to paper for the Palamon. This obviates, too, the objection sure to be raised from the fact that the Troilus follows more closely than the Knight's Tale its sources. For that, so far as it is true, the suggestion offered furnishes a reason. But it is only partly true. For one thing, Chaucer has exercised his freedom in the Troilus to an extent that one realizes only upon close comparison of the English poem with the Filostrato. In Bk. I of the Troilus 67 stanzas (42.9 per cent. of the whole number) are independent of the Filostrato; in Bk. II, 192 stanzas (76.5 per cent.); in Bk. III, 188 stanzas (72.3 per cent.); in Bk. IV, 65 stanzas (26.7 per cent.); in Bk. V, 78 stanzas (29.2 per cent.). Just 50.1 per cent. of Chaucer's stanzas, that is, are wholly his own, while 206 of Boccaccio's stanzas (28.9 per cent.) are left untouched. And of the 49.9 per cent. of Chaucer's stanzas for which he is indebted to the Filostrato a very large proportion follow Boccaccio only in part, over and over again breaking away from the Italian after the first two, three, or four lines, and taking their own course in the two decasyllabic couplets with which the stanza ends. (See, for examples of this, Bk. I, stanzas 18, 31, 93, 102, 104, 137; Bk. II, stanzas 78, 81–83, 157–58, 164, 172, 194; Bk. III, stanzas 6, 56, 58, 60, 188–89, 218, 235, 237–39, 243, 245–46, 256–57, 259, etc.). Moreover, Chaucer in another way uses a freedom in dealing with the Filostrato which is of a far more mature type than that exercised in his handling of the Teseide. For the character's of the Teseide are taken over bodily, with no important modification; the characters of the Filostrato, on the other hand, have been transformed from comparatively simple, though well-drawn figures, to superlatively complex human beings. It is scarcely too much to say that Pandare and Creseyde are Chaucer's own creations—a point, however, which will be considered in another connection. But the supposed greater freedom of the treatment of the Teseide is an extremely fallacious argument for the priority of the Troilus.

^{page 749 note 1} I am indebted for the suggestion of the parallel between Creseyde and Cleopatra to a remark of Professor Kittredge.

^{page 749 note 1} Bk. V, 1051–1085.

^{page 749 note 2} Equally subtle and no less characteristic in their fatalism are the lines that give Pandare's attitude towards Troilus's confidence that Creseyde will return:

Pandare answerde, ‘It may be, wel y-nough !'

And held with him of al that ever he seyde;

But in his herte he thoughte, and softe lough,

And to him-self ful sobrely he seyde:

'From hasel-wode, ther joly Robin pleyde,

Shal come al that that thou abydest here;

Ye, fare-wel al the snow of feme yere !'

(Troilus, v, 1170 ff.).

^{page 749 note 3} For it is not so much relative merits as it is relative methods with which we are here concerned.

^{page 749 note 1} Troilus, v, 1786–88.

^{page 749 note 2} “Wir haben es wahrscheinlich gemacht, dasz Chaucer an jener stelle der dantische begriff der komödie wie der tragödie vorschwebte, folglich dass er dabei an Dantes göttliches gedicht dachte” (ten Brink, Studien, p. 122)—and so arose the Hous of Fame. The fallacy of the arguments hitherto urged, particularly by Rambeau (Eng. Stud., iii, 209–68) in support of the supposed parallel has been recently shown in an entirely convincing way by Mr. W. O. Sypherd, in a discussion to be available later, and it has accordingly seemed unnecessary to go farther into the question here. For that reason, in what follows regarding the Hous of Fame, I have confined myself to what is absolutely necessary for my present purpose.

^{page 749 note 1} Remedie, which rhymes with tragedie in B. 3183, 3974, is about the only other word there was to use.

^{page 749 note 2} One feels, too, by the way, that “or elles songe“of 1. 1797 is a rhyme-tag which, rather than something else, is there because ‘'tonge” ends the preceding line. A somewhat important application of the same principle may be made in the case of the reference to the Romaunce of the Rose in the Prologue (A. 254–55 = B. 328–329). For any conclusions regarding the nature of Chaucer's translation of the poem drawn from the phrase “with-outen nede of glose” (so B; “hit nedeth nat to glose” in A.) are vitiated by the fact that some such rhyme-tag in “glose” habitually accompanies references to the Romaunce of the Rose. (It is of course “Rose” that is the determining word in the rhyme, independently of its position in the second line of the couplet). Cf. Machault (quoted in Sandras, Étude, p. 289): La fin du Romans de la Rose, Il m'est avis qu'il a escript, Je ne scay en texte ou en glose, etc.; Christine de Pisan (Oeuvres, ed. Roy, ii, 78): Bien en parla le Romans de la Rose A grant procès et aucques ainse glose Ycelle amour, etc.; Book of the Duchesse, ll. 333–34: the walles…. Were peynted, bothe text and glose, Of al the Romaunce of the Rose, etc.

^{page 749 note 3} One should compare, for the spirit of the thing, the closing lines of the Parlement of Foules:

I hope, y-wis, to rede so somday

That I shal mete som thing for to fare

The bet; and thus to rede I nil not spare.

Cf., too, the Prologue to the Nun's Priest's Tale, and Troilus, v, 367–73.

^{page 749 note 1} Troilus, iii, 1060–64.

^{page 749 note 2} All this close relation of the tregedie-comedie lines to their immediate context ten Brink's theory is forced to ignore.

^{page 749 note 3} In his Chaucer seminary.

^{page 749 note 1} Aenád, iv, 180.

^{page 749 note 2} H. F., 1391–92.

^{page 749 note 3} Oxford Chaucer, iii, 276; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii, 205.

^{page 749 note 4} Troilus, iv, 659–62. ⁶Fil., iv, st. 78.

^{page 749 note 1} His words may be found on page 840, n. 6 of the present paper.

^{page 749 note 2} Eng. Stud., xvii, 8.

^{page 749 note 3} One may at least indulge surmises as to the probable metre of the translation of the Romaunce of the Rose.

^{page 749 note 1} Some, at least, of the theories which have gained acceptance seem strangely to ignore the obvious fact, emphasized in this paragraph, that hard and fast lines can never be drawn where genuine development is concerned. New powers constantly come to maturity while old ones are still being exercised; the whole notion of mutual exclusiveness belongs to artificial systems, not to life.

^{page 749 note 1} Mr. Heath's view (Globe Chaucer, p. xliii) that Bk. III of the Hous of Fame followed the first two books at an interval of some years rests upon what seems to me to’ be, so far as it is given, quite insufficient evidence. The third book is more satirical than the other two simply because the place for satire has been reached. It is the description of Fame's doings which gives the occasion, and the House of Fame is arrived at only in third book. All that Mr. Heath ascribes to the passage of time may be entirely accounted for by shift of emphasis in the subject-matter.

^{page 749 note 2} Once more it must be noted that so far as the evidence here submitted goes, it is possible that the date may be even somewhat later.

^{page 749 note 1} The poem, as has been pointed out, seems to have been begun not long before the end of 1381, Old Style. See p. 841, and Mod. Lang. Notes, Dec., 1904, pp. 240–43.

^{page 749 note 2} The stanzas describing the temple of Venus may have been inserted in the Parlement because the temple had been but slightly sketched in the Palamon, or the temple may have been but slightly sketched in the Palamon because the stanzas had been already inserted in the Parlement. On that score honors are easy. In either case the two seem to belong very close together, and since the Parlement probably followed at short interval the betrothal of Richard and Anne, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it preceded the Palamon.

^{page 749 note 3} Dr. Mather's view that “after writing Troilus Chaucer began Anelida as a pendant, or rather offset, to the greater poem” (op. cit., p. 312, cf. p. 311) seems scarcely tenable. The characters of the poem are the merest lay-figures; its story is awkwardly handled, and is, moreover, perhaps the one instance in Chaucer of a narrative altogether without vividness, as a reading of the falcon's parallel story in the Squire's Tale makes by contrast clear enough; its stanza lacks wholly the “bright speed” so characteristic of the stanza of the Troilus. That after Pandare's inimitable instructions for the writing of a letter Chaucer should insert the long and utterly conventional compleynt in the Anelida, would be an anticlimax indeed. One may argue, it is true, that the compleynt is an earlier poem inserted here, since its mention of Arcite is confined to parallel stanzas (the fifth) of strophe and antistrophe, and to the last couplet of the conclusion, all of which might readily have been added by way of adaptation. But it is hard to think of Chaucer as returning, after the Troilus, even for the sake of a stop-gap, to such superlatively conventional work. In a word, except in the few stanzas which tell how Arcite's “newe lady” held him “up by the bridle at the staves ende,” there is not a trace of the qualities already pointed out as characterizing the Troilus. We may safely assign the Anelida, accordingly, to a date before the Palamon and the Troilus.

^{page 749 note 1} May the collections of Legends perhaps have been originally a sort of companion-piece to the collection of Tragedies which later form the Monk's Tale? If that be so, the later return to the Legends (with the possible addition of one or two) when the Prologue was conceived, would have, apparently, a close parallel in the return to the Tragedies (with the probable addition of three or four) in the Canterbury Tales.

^{page 749 note 1} Op. cit., p. 4.

^{page 749 note 2} It may be urged, however, that the chronology proposed still leaves the decade between the Hook of the Duchesse and the return from the second Italian journey too bare of poetic production. To that objection there are two things to be said. The first is that during this same decade Chaucer was many times abroad—twice in Italy, once in Flanders, several times, apparently, in France (Life Records, pp. xxi-xxix, and documents in Pt. IV)—on the king's business, which occupied a total of many months and which implied activity of many sorts at home. During the latter part of this period, moreover,—the years immediately following 1374—Chaucer was occupied in mastering the details and performing the duties of an arduous official position. It is accordingly entirely reasonable to suppose that his poetic activity was more or less limited up to the return from the second Italian journey. The second thing to be noted is that even so there is sufficient poetry not improbably assignable to this earlier decade to account for such time as may have been available. I need only refer to Mr. Pollard's cautious and illuminating summary of the matter in the Globe Chaucer (pp. xxv-xxvii), and to the suggestion there made (not, of course, in all its details, for the first time) that the Second Nun's Tale, the body of the Monk's Tale, the Man of Law's Tale, the Clerk's Tale, perhaps the Doctor's Tale and the Maunciple's Tale, may be assigned to this earlier period. There also must probably be placed the translation of the Romance of the Rose, and a number of the minor poems still extant, as well as Balades, Roundels, Virelays doubtless lost; there belongs presumably Origenes upon the Maudeleyne. With the latter one seems at liberty to associate, if one will, the translations later used in Chaucer's Tale of Melibeus and in the Parson's Tale. In a word, the decade before the second Italian journey may not have been so barren of poetic achievement as one is inclined to think. Certainly there is at least enough that may be reasonably assigned to it to preclude the necessity of urging its leanness as a reason for robbing, to piece out a chronology, the fat years that follow.