as may be seen in Anselme's Histoire Généalogique de France, and a MS. Généalogies de France in the British Museum. Next, if we turn to Mr. D. F. Jamison's excellent Life and Times of Bertrand du Guesclin, we not only find on its cover Bertrand's arms as above described, but also at vol. ii. p. 92-4, an account of the plot and murder to which Chaucer alludes, and an identification of his traitorous or "Genylon" Oliver, with Sir Oliver de Mauny of Brittany (or Armorica), Bertrand's cousin.

'After the battle of Monteil, on March 14, 1369, Pedro was besieged in the castle of Monteil near the borders of La Mancha, by his brother Enrique, who was helped by Du Guesclin and many French knights. Finding escape impossible, Pedro sent Men Rodriguez secretly to Du Guesclin with an offer of many towns and 200,000 gold doubloons if he would desert Enrique and reinstate Pedro. Du Guesclin refused the offer, and "the next day related to his friends and kinsmen in the camp, and especially to his cousin, Sir Oliver de Mauny, what had taken place." He asked them if he should tell Enrique; they all said yes: so he told the king. Thereupon Enrique promised Bertrand the same reward that Pedro had offered him, but asked him also to assure Men Rodriguez of Pedro's safety if he would come to his (Du Guesclin's) lodge. Relying on Bertrand's assurance, Pedro came to him on March 23; Enrique entered the lodge directly afterwards, and after a struggle, stabbed Pedro, and seized his kingdom.

'We see then that Chaucer was justified in asserting that Du Guesclin and Sir Oliver Mauny "brew this cursednesse"; and his assertion has some historical importance; for as his patron and friend, John of Gaunt, married one of Pedro's daughters [named Constance] as his second wife [Michaelmas, 1371], Chaucer almost certainly had the account of Pedro's death from his daughter, or one of her attendants, and is thus a witness for the truth of the narrative of the Spanish chronicler Ayala, given above, against the French writers, Froissart, Cuvelier, &c., who make the Bégue de Villaines the man who inveigled Pedro. This connection of Chaucer with John of Gaunt and his second wife must excuse the poet in our eyes for calling so bad a king as Pedro the Cruel "worthy" and "the glorie of Spayne, whom Fortune heeld so heigh in magestee."

'In the Corpus MS. these knights are called in a side-note Bertheun Claykyn (which was one of the many curious ways in which Du Guesclin's name was spelt) and Olyuer Mawny; in MS. Harl. 1758, they are called Barthilmewe Claykeynne and Olyuer Mawyn; and in MS. Lansdowne 851 they are called Betelmewe Claykyn and Oliuer Mawnye. Mauni or Mauny was a well-known Armorican or Breton family. Chaucer's epithet of "Genylon" for Oliver de Mauny is specially happy, because Genelon was the Breton knight who betrayed to their death the great Roland and the flower of Charlemagne's knights to the Moors at Roncesvalles. Charles's or Charlemagne's great paladin, Oliver, is too well known to need more than a bare mention.'-F. J. Furnivall, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, viii. 449.

PETER, KING OF CYPRUS.

1. 3581. In a note to Chaucer's Prologue, 1. 51, Tyrwhitt says-' Alexandria in Egypt was won, and immediately afterwards abandoned, in 1365, ty Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus. The same Prince, soon after his accession to the throne in 1352, had taken Satalie, the antient Attalia; and in another expedition about 1367 he made himself master of the town of Layas in Armenia. Compare II Mémoire sur les Ouvrages de Guillaume de Machaut. Acad. des Ins. tom xx., pp. 426, 432, 439; and Mémoire sur la Vie de Philippe de Maizières, tom. xvii. p. 493.' He was assassinated in 1369.

6

BARNABO OF LOMBARDY.

1. 3589. Bernabo Visconti, duke of Milan, was deposed by his nephew and thrown into prison, where he died in 1385.'-Tyrwhitt. This date of 1385 is that of the latest circumstance incidentally referred to in the Canterbury Tales.

UGOLINO OF PISA.

3597. Chaucer himself has referred us to Dante for the original of this tragedy: see Inferno, canto xxxiii.'-Tyrwhitt. An account of Count Ugolino is given in a note to Cary's Dante, from Villani, lib. vii. capp. 120127. This account is different from Dante's, and represents him as very treacherous. He made himself master of Pisa in July 1288, but in the following March was seized by the Pisans, who threw him, with his two sons and two of his grandsons, into a prison, where they perished of hunger in a few days. Chaucer says three sons, the eldest being five years of age. Dante says four sons.

1. 3606. Roger; i.e. the Archbishop Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, who was Ugolino's enemy.

1. 3616. I have ventured to insert ne to improve the scansion of the line. Besides, it is usual to insert it in such a case, and perhaps the scribes simply omitted it by accident. The Harl. MS. has- He herd it wel, but he saugh it nought'; where Mr. Bell inserts ne before saugh without any comment. The hour drew near

When they were wont to bring us food; the mind

Of each misgave him through his dream, and I

Heard, at its outlet underneath lock'd up

The horrible tower: whence, uttering not a word,
I look'd upon the visage of my sons.

I wept not so all stonę I felt within.

They wept and one, my little Anselm, cried,
"Thou lookest so! Father, what ails thee?""' &c.

Cary's Dante.

1. 3621. Dante does not mention the ages; but he says that the son named Gaddo died on the fourth day, and the other three on the fifth and sixth days. Observe that Chaucer's tender lines, 11. 3623-8, are his own. 1. 3624. Morsel breed, morsel of bread; cf. barel ale for barrel of ale,

1. 3083.-M.

1. 3636. 'I may lay the blame of all my woe upon thy false wheel.' Cf. 1. 3860.

1. 3640. Two; there were now but two survivors, the youngest, according to Chaucer, being dead.

'They, who thought

I did it through desire of feeding, rose

O' the sudden, and cried, “Father, we should grieve
Far less, if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gavest
These weeds of miserable flesh we wear,

And do thou strip them off from us again.""

Cary's Dante.

1. 3651. Dante; i. e. Dante Alighieri, the great poet of Italy, born in 1265, died Sept. 14, 1321. Chaucer mentions him again in his House of Fame, book i, as the author of the Inferno, and in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, 1. 361.

NERO.

1. 3655. Swetonius; this refers to the Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius; but it would be a mistake to suppose that Chaucer has followed his account very closely. Our poet seems to have had a habit of mentioning authorities whom he did not immediately follow, by which he seems to have meant no more than that they were good authorities upon the subject. Here, for instance, he merely means that we can find in Suetonius a good account of Nero, which will give us all minor details. But in reality he draws the story more immediately from other sources, especially from Boccaccio, De Casibus Virorum, lib. vii. cap. 4, from the Roman de la Rose, and from Boethius, de Cons. Philos. lib. ii. met. 6, and lib. iii. met. 4. The English Romaunt of the Rose does not contain the passage about Nero, but it is interesting to refer to Chaucer's translation of Boethius. Vincent of Beauvais has an account of Nero, in his Speculum Historiale, lib. ix. capp. 1-7, in which he chiefly follows Suetonius. See also Orosius, lib. vii. 7 ; and Eutropius, lib. vii.

1. 3657. South; the MSS. have North, but it is fair to make the correction, as Chaucer certainly knew the sense of Septemtrioun, and the expression is merely borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, l. 6501, where we read,

'Ce desloyal, que je te dy,

Et d'Orient et de Midy,

D'Occident, de Septentrion,
Tint il la jurisdicion.'

And, in his Boethius, after saying that Nero ruled from East to West, he adds—' And eke bis Nero gouernede by Ceptre alle be peoples þat ben vndir þe colde sterres þat hyzten þe seuene triones; þis is to seyn, he gouernede alle be poeples pat ben vndir þe parties of pe norpe. And eke Nero gouerned alle pe poeples þat þe violent wynde Nothus scorchip, and bakiþ þe brennynge sandes by his drie hete; þat is to seyne, alle pe poeples in þe soupe'; ed. Morris, p. 55.

1. 3665. This is from Suetonius, who says 'Piscatus est rete aurato, purpura coccoque funibus nexis'; cap. xxx. So also Orosius, vii. 7; Eutropius, vii. 9.

1. 3685. A maister; i. e. Seneca, mentioned below by name. In the year 65, Nero, wishing to be rid of his old master, sent him an order to destroy himself. Seneca opened a vein, but the blood would not flow freely; whereupon, to expedite its flow, he entered into a warm bath, and thence was taken into a vapour stove, where he was suffocated. Nero constreinede his familier & his maistre seneca to chesen on what deep he wolde deien '; Chaucer's transl. of Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 5, ed. Morris, p. 76.

1. 3692. 'It was long before tyranny or any other vice durst attack him'; literally, durst let dogs loose against him.' To uncouple is to release dogs from the leash that fastened them together; see P. Pl. B. pr. 206. Compare'At the uncoupling of his houndis.'

Book of the Duchesse, 1. 377.

'The laund on which they fought, th' appointed place

In which th' uncoupled hounds began the chace.'

Dryden; Palamon and Arcite, bk. ii. 1. 845.

He

1. 3720. 'Where he expected to find some who would aid him.' Suetonius says ipse cum paucis hospitia singulorum adiít. Verum clausis omnium foribus, respondente nullo, in cubiculum rediit,' &c; cap. xlvii. afterwards escaped to the villa of his freedman Phaon, four miles from Rome, where he at length gave himself a mortal wound in the extremity of his despair. 1. 3736. Girden of, to strike off; cf. 'gurdeth of gyles hed,' P. Pl. B. ii. A gird is also a sharp striking taunt or quip.-M.

201.

HOLOFERNES.

1. 3746. Olofern. The story of Holofernes is to be found in the apocryphal book of Judith.

1. 3750. For lesinge, for fear of losing, lest men should lose.

1. 3752. He had decreed to destroy all the gods of the land, that all nations should worship Nabuchodonosor only,' &c.; Judith iii. 8.

1. 3756. Eliachim. Tyrwhitt remarks that the name of the high priest was Joacim; Judith iv. 6. But this is merely the form of the name in our English version. The Vulgate version has the equivalent form Eliachim; cf. 2 Chron. xxxvi. 4.

1. 3761. Vpryghte, i. e. on his back, with his face upwards. See Knightes Tale, l. 1150.

ALEXANDER.

1. 3821. There is a whole cycle of Alexander romances, in Latin, French, and English, so that his story is common enough. There is, for example, a good life of him by Plutarch, but in Chaucer's time the principal authority for an account of him was Quintus Curtius. In Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum there is only a casual mention of Alexander, in the story of Darius, lib. iv. cap. 9. See Warton's Hist. of English Poetry.

1. 3826. They were glad to send to him (to sue) for peace.'

1. 3843. Writ, should write, pt. subj.; hence the change of vowel from indic. wroot.-M.

1. 3845. So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died'; I Mac. i. 7. Machabee, i. e. the first book of the Maccabees, in the Apocrypha.

1. 3851. 'Fortune hath turned thy six (the highest and most fortunate throw at dice) into an ace (the lowest).'

1. 3860. Which two (fortune and poison) I accuse of all this woe.'

JULIUS CAESAR.

1. 3862. For humble bed Tyrwhitt, Wright, and Bell print humblehede, as in some MSS. But this word is an objectionable hybrid compound, and I think it remains to be shown that the word belongs to our language. In the Knightes Tale, Chaucer has humblesse, and in the Persones Tale, humilitee. Until some authority for humblehede can be adduced, I am content with the reading of the three best MSS.

1. 3863. Julius. For this story Chaucer refers us below to Lucan, Suetonius, and Valerius; see note to 1. 3909. There is also an interesting life of him by Plutarch. Boccaccio mentions him but incidentally.

1. 3866. Tributárie; observe the rime with aduersárie. Fortune in 1. 3868 is a trisyllable; so also in l. 3876.

1. 3870. Against Pompey, thy father-in-law.' Caesar gave Pompey his daughter Julia in marriage.

1. 3875. Puttest; to be read as putt'st.

1. 3878. Pompeius. Boccaccio gives his life at length, as an example of misfortune; De Casibus Virorum, lib. vi. cap. 9. He was killed Sept. 29, B.C. 48.

1. 3881. Him, for himself; but in the next line it means 'to him.'-M. 1. 3885. Chaucer refers to this triumph in the Man of Lawes Tale,

1. 400.

1. 3887. Chaucer is not alone in making Brutus and Cassius into one person; see note to 1. 3892.

1. 3891. Cast, contrived, appointed.

1. 3892. Boydekins, lit. bodkins, but with the signification of daggers. It