Today | News | Books | Recipes Adventure | Science Fiction | Ghost stories | Poetry | Children | History Book3. In accordance with the proverb--'Audi alteram partem.' See A. 325. Cf. Seneca, _Medea_, 195. 348. 'And even if you were not an omniscient god.' 352. From the Rom. of the Rose; the E. version has (ll. 1050, 1):-- 'Hir court hath many a losengere, And many a traytour envious.' Again repeated in Cant. Tales, B 4515-8. 353. _Totelere_ (C. _totulour_), tattling; properly a sb., meaning 'tattler,' but here used in apposition, and, practically, as an adjective. Tyrwhitt explains it by 'whisperer.' Halliwell quotes 'Be no _totiler_' from MS. Bibl. Reg. 17 B. xvii. fol. 141. It clearly means a gossiping tattler, or tale-bearer. The word is scarce, but we find a helpful passage in P. Plowman, B. xx. 297:-- 'Of alle taletellers and _tyterers_ in ydel.' Here _tyterers_ means gossipers, or retailers of tittle-tattle; and various readings give the forms _titeleris_ (as printed by Wright) and _tutelers_ (as printed by Crowley). The last form _tuteler_ is clearly identical with Chaucer's _totelere_, spelt _tutelere_ in MS. Arch. Selden B. 24. 357. 'These are the causes why, if I am not to lie'; &c. See note to l. 217. 358. _Lavender_, laundress, washerwoman; (Bell's interpretation of 'gutter' is utter nonsense). See _Laundress_ in my Etym. Dict., where I refer to the present passage. _Laundress_ is formed by adding _-ess_ to _launder_ or _laundre_, the contracted form of _lavender_ as here used. In Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, xvi. 273, 292, the word for 'washerwoman' is spelt _lauender_, _laynder_, and _landar_. Palsgrave's Eng. and Fr. Dict. gives--'_Laundre_, that wassheth clothes; _lauendiere_'; and Cotgrave explains the Fr. _lauandiere_ by the Eng. _launderesse_. Chaucer's presentation to us of Envy as the person who washes all the dirty linen in the court, is particularly happy. As a matter of fact, he is here quoting Dante, but he has substituted _lavender_ (perhaps in an ill sense, though I do not feel sure of this) for the _meretrice_ of the original. The passage referred to is in the Inferno, xiii. 64:-- 'La meretrice, che mai dall' ospizio Di Cesare non torse gli occhi putti, Morte comune, e delle corti vizio, Infiammò contre me gli animi tutti.' Cary's translation has:-- 'The harlot, who ne'er turned her gloating eyes From Cæsar's household, common vice and pest Of courts, 'gainst me inflamed the minds of all.' Gower (C. A. ed. Pauli, i. 263) says:-- 'Senec witnesseth openly How that envie properly Is of the court the comun wenche.' Note that _parteth_ in l. 359 means 'departeth.' 361. 'Whoever goes away, at any rate she will not be wanting.' Men come and go, but Envy remains. This is the right sense; but Bell, whom Prof. Corson follows, gives it quite a false twist. He says, 'Whosoever goes, i.e. falls, she will not be in want'; a desperate and unmeaning solution, due to not appreciating the force of the verb _to want_, which here simply means 'to be absent,' and can be applied to _persons_ as well as to _things_. 'There _wanteth_ but a mean to fill your song'; Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2. 295; 'though bride and bridegroom _wants_,' i.e. are absent, Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 248: 'There _wanteth_ now our brother of Gloucester here'; Rich. III. ii. 1. 43. 364. 'But only because he is accustomed to write poems.' 366. 'Or it was enjoined him by some patron to compose those two poems (the Romaunce of the Rose and Troilus; _see_ A. 344); and he did not dare to refuse.' 371. _As thogh that_, as he would have done if. 372. _And had_, i.e. and had composed it all himself. 374. 'The allusion is to the several successful adventurers, like the Visconti, who in the 13th and 14th centuries succeeded in seizing upon the governments of Milan, and other free cities of Lombardy'; Bell. See the article _Visconti_ in the Eng. Cyclopædia; we are there referred to Verri, Storia di Milano, and to Muratori, Annali d' Italia. Cf. Dante, Inf. xxviii. 74, 81; and see Chaucer's reference to 'Barnabo Viscounte' in the Monkes Tale, B 3589. 375. _Reward at_, regard to. _Reward_ and _regard_ are etymologically identical. Observe the accent on the _former_ syllable. Cf. l. 399. 378. _Fermour_, a farmer of taxes; who is naturally exacting and oppressive. 380. Before _is_ supply _hit_, which, as in l. 379, refers to a suppliant culprit. His own vassals are a lord's treasures, to be cherished, not oppressed. 381. Bech refers us to Seneca, De Clementia, lib. i. c. 3, § 3; c. 5, § 4. Or perhaps Aristotle is meant, whose supposed advice to Alexander is fully given in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. vii. See particularly the passage in Pauli's edition, iii. 176:-- 'What is a king in his legeaunce, Wher that ther is no law in londe?' There is a similar long and tedious passage in Lancelot of the Laik, ed. Skeat, ll. 1463-1998. Gower calls Aristotle 'the philosophre'; C. A. iii. 86. We may also compare Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, pp. 102-3, translated from Ægidius, De Reg. Princ., lib. i. pars 1, cap. xiv; where the reference to Aristotle is:--'Propter quod V. Ethicorum scribitur, quod _principatus uirum ostendit_.' 384. _Al_, although. 'Although he will preserve their rank for his lords.' Note that _his lordes_ is in the dative case. It was probably from not observing this that Thynne's edition and the Pepys MS. have needlessly inserted the word _in_ before _hir_. Cf. A. 370. 387. _Half-goddes_, demi-gods. Cf. 'the demi-god Authority'; Meas. for Meas. i. 2. 124. 391. So, in his Epitaph on Inigo Jones, Ben Jonson says:--'The Libyan lion hunts no butterflies'; which he took from Martial, Epig. xii. 61. 6. And see Pliny, Nat. Hist. viii. 16. 397. _Areste._ Bell seems to suggest the sense of 'restraint,' and Prof. Corson, following him, suggests 'self-command'; but such a sense does not exactly appear in Murray's Dictionary. Nevertheless, 'self-restraint' suits not only this passage, but also the passage cited from the Harleian MS. in the foot-note to the Somnour's Tale, D 2048, in vol. iv. p. 381. 399. Here, as in l. 375, _reward_ means 'regard,' and is accented on the _e_. 400. _Maystrie_, masterly act; _no maystrie_, an easy matter. 405. This is not altogether a metaphorical expression. We remember something very like it at the siege of Calais in 1347, when, according to Froissart, Edward III. sent for the six inhabitants of Calais, who were to present themselves 'with bare heads and feet, with ropes round their necks'; see Froissart, tr. by Johnes, bk. i. c. 145. 415. In the earlier text (A 403), the word _He_ stands alone in the first foot, which is less pleasing. 417. See Introd. to the Minor Poems (in vol. i.) for a discussion of some of the poems here mentioned. He here mentions, first of all, three of his lesser poems, in the order of their length; viz. the Hous of Fame, the Deeth of Blaunche, and the Parlement of Foules. 420. The 'Palamoun and Arcyte' here referred to was no doubt a translation of Boccaccio's Teseide, or of selections f |