Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Booknt._ 5.' Dr. Köppell quotes the last passage, from Boccaccio, Am. Vis. v. 34, in Anglia, xiv. 237, and shews that other passages in the same resemble other lines in the Hous of Fame. See notes to ll. 1311, 1342, 1360, 1483, 1487, and 1499. 1463. 'Cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille'; Dante, Purg. xxi. 92. 1466. _Omeer_, Homer; see ll. 1477-1480 below. 1467. In Chaucer's Troil. i. 146, is the line--'In Omer, or in Dares, or in Dyte.' _Dares_ means Dares Phrygius; and _Tytus_ is doubtless intended for the same person as _Dyte_, i.e. Dictys Cretensis. See the account in Warton, Hist. E. Poet., ed. Hazlitt, ii. 127, beginning:--'But the Trojan story was still kept alive in two Latin pieces, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis,' &c.; and further in vol. iii. p. 81. The chief source of the romantic histories of Troy in the middle ages is the Roman de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, which appeared between 1175 and 1185, and has lately been edited by M. Joly. This was copied by Guido delle Colonne (see note to l. 1469 below), who pretended, nevertheless, to follow Dares and Dictys. Chaucer cites Dares and Dictys at second-hand, from Guido. 1468. _Lollius_; evidently supposed by Chaucer to be a writer on the Trojan war. See Tyrwhitt's note on the words _the boke of Troilus_, as occurring at the end of the Persones Tale. Chaucer twice quotes _Lollius_ in Troilus, viz. in bk. i. 394 and bk. v. 1653. At the beginning of sect. xiv of his Hist. of Eng. Poetry, Warton shews that there was a Lollius Urbicus among the _Historici Latini profani_ of the third century; 'but this could not be Chaucer's Lollius; ... none of his works remain.' The difficulty has never been wholly cleared up; we know, however, that the Troilus is chiefly taken from Boccaccio's Filostrato, just as his Knight's Tale is chiefly taken from Boccaccio's Teseide. My idea of the matter is that, in the usual mode of appealing to old authorities, Chaucer refers us (not to Boccaccio, whom he does not mention, but) to the authorities whom he supposed Boccaccio must have followed. Accordingly, in his Troilus, he mentions Homer, Dares, Dictys, and Lollius, though he probably knew next to nothing of _any one_ of these authors. On this account, the suggestion made by Dr. Latham (Athenæum, Oct. 3, 1868, p. 433) seems quite reasonable, viz. that he got the idea that Lollius wrote on the Trojan war by misunderstanding the lines of Horace, Epist. i. 2:-- 'Troiani belli scriptorem, maxime Lolli, Dum tu declamas Romæ, Præneste relegi.' See Ten Brink, Studien, p. 87. This supposition becomes almost a certainty when we observe how often medieval writers obtained their information from MSS. containing short extracts. Chaucer clearly never read Horace at all; he merely stumbled on a very few extracts from him in notebooks. In this way, he may easily have met with the _first line_ above, apart from its context. Cf. vol. ii. pp. lii, liii. 1469. Guido delle Colonne, or Guido de Columnis (_not_ da Colonna), finished his translation or version of Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie in the year 1287. His work is called Historia Troiana. The 'Geste Hystoriale' of the Destruction of Troy, edited by Panton and Donaldson for the Early English Text Society, is a translation of Guido's Historia into Middle English alliterative verse. See Warton, Hist. E. P., ed. Hazlitt, iii. 81; and Introd. to vol. ii. pp. liv-lxv. 1470. _Gaufride_, Geoffrey, viz. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died A.D. 1154, and wrote a History of the Britons in Latin, full of extravagant but lively fictions, which was completed in 1147; see Morley's Hist. E. Writers, i. 496. He is rightly mentioned among the writers who 'bore up Troy,' because he makes the Britons the descendants of Æneas. See note below. 1477. _Oon seyde_, one (of them) said. Guido was one of those who said this; this appears from the Gest Hystoriale above mentioned, which was translated from Guido; see ll. 41-47, and 10312-10329 of Panton and Donaldson's edition. Guido asserts, for example, that Achilles slew Hector by treachery, and not, as Homer says, in fair fight; and Chaucer asserts the same, Troil. v. 1560. The fact is, that the Latin races declined to accept an account which did not sufficiently praise the Trojans, whom they regarded as their ancestors. Geoffrey of Monmouth ingeniously followed up this notion, by making the Trojans also the ancestors of the ancient Britons. Hence English writers followed on the same side; Lydgate, as well as Chaucer, exclaims against Homer. See Warton, ed. Hazlitt, iii. 82. But Dante exalts Homer above Horace, Ovid, and Lucan: Inf. iv. 88. 1482. 'Homer's iron is admirably represented as having been by Virgil covered over with tin'; note in Bell's Chaucer. 1483. There is a similar mention of Vergil in Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 7. See note to l. 1460. 1487. _Ovide_, Ovid; from whom perhaps Chaucer borrows more than from any other Latin writer. He stands on a pillar of copper, the metal sacred to Venus. See note to l. 820 of Can. Yeom. Tale. And cf. Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 25: 'Eravi Ovidio, lo quale poetando Iscrisse tanti versi per amore.' 1494. _High the_ (as in F.) is an error for _highthe_, height; Cx. Th. have _heyght_. Read _highte_, as in l. 744. 1499. _Lucan_; alluding to Lucan's Pharsalia, which narrates the war between Cæsar and Pompey. See Man of Lawes Tale, B 401; Monkes Tale, De Caesare, B 3909 (and note), and a fourth mention of him in Troilus, v. 1792. There is an English translation by Rowe. Cf. Boccaccio, Amorosa Visione, v. 19: 'A' quai Lucan seguitava, ne' cui Atti parea ch'ancora la battaglia Di Cesare narrasse, e di colui Magno Pompeo chiamato.' 1509. Claudius Claudianus, in the fourth century, wrote a poem De Raptu Proserpinæ, alluded to here and in the Merchant's Tale (C. T., E 2232), and several other pieces. See note to Parl. Foules, 99. 1512. Imitated from Dante, Inf. ix. 44: 'Della regina dell' eterno pianto.' 1519. _Write_, wrote; pt. t. pl. _Highte_, were named. 1521. Perhaps from Dante, Inf. xvi. 1, which Cary translates:-- 'Now came I where the water's din was heard,... Resounding like the hum of swarming bees, When forth together issued from a troop,' &c. 1527. Cf. Ovid, Met. xii. 53: 'Atria turba tenent; ueniunt leue uulgus, euntque.' 1530. _Alles-kinnes_ is in the gen. sing., and _Of_ governs _condiciouns_; thus the line is equivalent to--'Of conditions of every kind'; whereas modern English uses--'Of every kind of condition.' This peculiar idiom was formerly common; and precisely similar to it is the phrase _noskinnes_, for which see note to l. 1794. Observe that the phrase is oddly written _alle skynnes_ in MS. F., by a misdivision of the words. So in Piers Plowman, A. ii. 175, we have the phrase _for eny kunnes yiftus_, for gifts of any kind, where one MS. has _any skynes_. In my note to P. Plowman, C. xi. 128, I give numerous examples, with referen |