guards or gates, rides directly forward to the high table, and, with an imperious tone, orders the count to follow him.-Nic. Gillos, Chron. ann. 1120.' See also Warton's Obs. on the Fairy Queen, p. 202; the Ballad of King Estmere; and Stowe's Survey of London, p. 387, ed. 1599. In Scott's Rokeby, Bertram rides into a church. 81. Stede of bras, &c. See note to l. 209, and the Preface, p. xxxiv. 95. Sir Gawain, nephew to king Arthur, according to the British History which goes by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth, is always upheld as a model of courtesy in the French romances and the English translations of them. He is often contrasted with Sir Kay, who was equally celebrated for his churlishness. See the Percy Folio MS.; Sir Gawain, ed. by Sir F. Madden; Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight, ed. by Dr. Morris; the Morte D'Arthur, &c. Cf. Rom. Rose, 2205-12. 103. Accordant, according. The change from the Fr. -ant to the common Eng. -ing should be noted.-M. 106. Style, stile. Such puns are not common in Chaucer; cf. E. 1148.-M. 116. Day naturel. In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. c. 7 (ed. Skeat, p. 21) Chaucer explains that the day artificial is the time from sunrise to sunset, which varies; to which he adds-'but the day naturel, þat is to seyn 24 houris, is the reuolucioun of the equinoxial with as moche partie of the zodiak as the sonne of his propre moeuinge passeth in the mene while.' See note to Group B, 1. 2, p. 129. 122. The air, pronounced th'air, as usual with Chaucer. 129. Wayted, watched; alluding to the care with which the maker watched for the moment when the stars were in a propitious position, according to the old belief in astrology. 131. Seel, seal. Mr. Wright notes that 'the making and arrangement of seals was one of the important operations of medieval magic, and treatises on this subject are found in MSS.' He refers to MS. Arundel, no. 295, fol. 265. Solomon's seal is still commemorated in the name of a flower. 132. Mirour. For some account of this, see the Preface, p. xxxvii, and note to 1. 231. 137. Ouer al this, besides all this. Elsewhere ouer-al is a compound word, meaning everywhere; as in Prol. 216.-M. 154. And whom, &c., and to whom it will do good, or operate as a remedy; alluding to the virtues attributed to many herbs. So Spenser, F. Q. i. 2. 10 'O who can tell The hidden power of herbes, and might of magicke spell!' 162. With the platte, with the flat side of it; see 1. 164. 171. Stant, stands; contracted from standeth; so also in 1. 182. Cf. sit for sitteth in 1. 179, hit for hideth in 1. 512, and note to E. 1151. 6 184. By means of any machine furnished with a windlass or a pulley.' The modern windlass may be compounded of wind and lace, but it is much more probably a corruption of the form windas here used. The confusion would be facilitated by the fact that there really was a form windlas (doubtless from wind and lace) with a different meaning, viz. that of a circuitous way or path; see note to Hamlet, ii. 1. 65 (Clar. Press). In the Promptorium Parvulorum, our word is spelt both wyndlas and wyndas; p. 529. The Mid. E. windas may have been derived from the Low-German directly, or more probably from the Old French, which has both guindas and windas. The meaning and derivation are clearly shewn by the Du. windas, which means a winding-axle or capstan, from the sb. as, an axle; so, too, the Icel. vind-áss. In Falconer's Shipwreck, canto 1, note 3, the word windlass is used in the sense of capstan. 190. Gauren, gaze, stare. Used again by Chaucer, B. 3559, and in Troil. and Cres. ii. 1157 (ed. Tyrwhitt). In the Clerkes Tale he has gazed. Mr. Wedgwood is certainly right in considering gaze and gaure (also spelt gare) as mere variations of the same word. Cf. the adj. garish, i. e. staring, in Milton, Il Pens. 141. The reader should notice this interchange of r and s, not only as distinguishing the G. eisen, hase, &c., from the E. forms iron, hare, but as exhibited within the compass of our own language; e. g. in dare, another form of doze (see Ch. C. T. 13033); in frore for frozen, Milton, P. L. ii. 595; in Mid. E. coren for chosen; in lorn for lost, &c. See Peile, Introd. to Greek and Latin Etymology, 2nd ed. p. 332; Skeat, Moso-Gothic Glossary, p. viii. c. 7. Gauring, i.e. stupor, occurs in Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. 193. Lumbardye, Lombardy, formerly celebrated for horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from a patent in Rymer, 2 Edw. II- De dextrariis in Lumbardiâ emendis,' i. e. of horses to be bought in Lombardy. 195. Poileys, Apulian. Apulia was called Poille or Poile in Old French, and even in Middle English; the phrase 'king of Poile' occurs in the Seven Sages (ed. Weber), 1. 2019. It was celebrated for its horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from MS. James vi. 142 (Bodleian Library) a passage in which Richard, archbishop of Armagh, in the fourteenth century, has the words 'nec mulus Hispaniæ, nec dextrarius Apuliæ, nec repedo Æthiopiæ, nec elephantus Asiæ, nec camelus Syriæ.' Chaucer ascribes strength and size to the horses of Lombardy, and high breeding to those of Apulia. 200. Gon, i. e. move, go about, have motion. 201. Of fairye, of fairy origin, magical. I do not subscribe to Warton's opinion (Obs. on Faerie Queene, p. 86) that this necessarily means that it was 'the work of the devil.' Cf. the same expression in Piers Pl. B. prol. 6. 203. Compare the Latin proverb-'quot homines, tot sententiae.' See Hazlitt's Eng. Proverbs, pp. 340, 437. 207. The Pegasee, Pegasus. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Hl. is written i. equs Pegaseus,' meaning 'id est, equus Pegaseus'; shewing that Chaucer was thinking of the adjective Pegaseus rather than of the sb. Pegasus, the name of the celebrated winged horse of Bellerophon and of the Muses. Cf. Complaint of the Black Knight, 1. 92. 209. Or else it was the horse of the Greek named Sinon.' This very singular-looking construction is really common in Middle English; yet the scribe of the Harleian MS. actually writes the Grekissch hors Synon,' which makes Sinon the name of the horse; and this odd blunder is retained in the editions by Wright and Bell. The best way of clearing up the difficulty is by noting similar examples; a few of which are here appended. The kinges meting Pharao'; i. e. the dream of King Pharaoh; Book of the Duchesse, 1. 282. 'The erles wif Alein'; i. e. the wife of earl Alein; Rob. of Gloucester, in Spec. of Eng. ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 11, 1. 303. Themperours moder william,' i. e. the mother of the Emperor named William; Will. of Palerne, 1. 5437. 'Pieres pardon þe plowman'; i. e. the pardon of Piers the Plowman; P. Pl. B. xix. 182. In Piers berne pe plowman'; i. e. in the barn of Piers the Plowman; id. xix. 354. For Piers loue pe plowman'; i. e. for love of Piers the Plowman; id. xx. 76. Chaucer again alludes to Sinon in the House of Fame, i. 152, and in the Legend of Good Women, Dido, 8; which shews that he took that legend partly from Virgil, Aen. ii. 195. But note that Chaucer here compares a horse of brass to the Trojan horse; this is because the latter was also said to have been of brass, not by Virgil, but by Guido de Colonna; see note to 1. 211. This is why Gower, in his Confess. Amant. bk. i, and Caxton, in his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, both speak of the Trojan horse as a horse of brass.' 211. Olde gestes, old accounts. The account of the taking of Troy most valued in the middle ages was not that by Virgil or Homer, but the Latin prose story written in 1287 by Guido de Colonna, who obtained a great reputation very cheaply, since he borrowed his work almost entirely from an old French Roman de Troie, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. See the preface to The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and Donaldson (Early English Text Society). 219. Jogelours, jugglers. See the quotation from Marco Polo, i. 340, in the Preface, p. xliv; and Tyrwhitt's note to Cant. Tales, 1. 11453. 224. They are very prone to put down things to the worst cause.' 226. Maister tour, principal tower, the donjon or keep-tower. So also maistre strete, principal street, Kn. Ta. 2044; maister temple, Leg. of Good Women, 1. 1014. 230. For slye, MS. Hl. has heigh, an inferior reading. Mr. Marsh observes upon this line-This reasoning reminds one of the popular explanation of table-turning and kindred mysteries. Persons who cannot detect the trick . . . ascribe the alleged facts to electricity. . . Men love to cheat themselves with hard words, and indolence often accepts the name of a phenomenon as a substitute for the reason of it'; Origin and Progress of the English Language, Lect. ix. p. 427. 231. The magic mirror in Rome was said to have been set up there by Virgil, who was at one time reverenced, not as a poet, but as a great enchanter. The story occurs in the Seven Sages, in the Introduction to his edition of which Mr. Wright says, at p. lix.-' The story of Virgil's tower, which was called salvatio Romæ, holds rather a conspicuous place in the legendary history of the magician. Such a tower is first mentioned, but without the name of Virgil, in a Latin MS. of the eighth century, in a passage published by Docen and republished by Keller, in his introduction to the Sept Sages. Vincent of Beauvais, in the thirteenth century... describes Virgil's tower; and it is the subject of a chapter in the legendary history of Virgilius.' See also the other version of the Seven Sages edited by Weber, and reprinted in Mätzner's Sprachproben, We there find that besides the tower, i. 254. 'Amiddeward the cite, on a stage, That held a mirour in his hond, Gower tells the story of this mirror in his Confessio Amantis, bk. v. It occurs also in the Chronicle of Helinand, and in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury; Morley's Eng. Writers, ii. 126. Warton notes that the same fiction is in Caxton's Troybook, bk. ii. ch. 22. 6 232. Alhazeni et Vitellonis Opticae are extant, printed at Basil, 1572. The first is supposed by his editor to have lived about A. D. IICO. and the second to A. D. 1270.'—Tyrwhitt. Hole's Brief Biographical Dictionary has the notices-'Alhazel or Alhazen, Arabian Astronomer and Optician; died A. D. 1038'; and—Vitello or Vitellio, Polish Mathematician; floruit circa 1254.' See also the Preface, p. xxxvi. 233. Aristotle, the famous Grecian philosopher, born B. c. 384, died 322. Writen in hir lyues, wrote in their life-time. Observe that writen is here the past tense. The pres. pl. is wryten; pt. s. wrat, wrot, or wroot; pt. pl. writen; pp. writen. 238. Thelophus. Telephus, king of Mysia, in opposing the landing of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy, was wounded by the spear of Achilles. But as an oracle declared that the Greeks would require his aid, he was healed by means of the rust taken from the same spear. Chaucer may easily have learnt this story from his favourite Ovid, who says And again Telephus aeterna consumptus tabe perisset Tristium lib. v. El. 2. 15. Uulnus Achilleo quae quondam fecerat hosti, Remed. Amor. 47. See also Met. xii. 112; xiii. 171; Ex Ponto ii. 2. 26. Or he may have taken it from Dante, Inferno, xxxi. 5. Cf. Shak. 2 Hen. VI, v. 1. 100. 247. Canaceës; four syllables, as in 1. 631. 250. Great skill in magic was attributed in the middle ages to Moses and Solomon, especially by the Arabs. Moses was supposed to have learnt magic from the Egyptians; cf. Acts vii. 22; Exod. vii. 11. See the story of the Fisherman and Genie in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, where the genie invokes the name of Solomon. 253. Some said was a wonderful thing to make glass from fernashes, since glass does not resemble fern-ashes at all.' Glass contains two principal ingredients, sand and some kind of alkali. For the latter, the calcined ashes of seaweed, called kelp, were sometimes used; or, according to Chaucer, the ashes of ferns. Modern chemistry has developed many greater wonders. art of glass-making) so The art is of very high 256. But, because men have known it (the long, their talking and wonder about it ceases.' antiquity, having been known even to the Egyptians. So fern, so long ago; Chaucer sometimes rimes words which are spelt exactly alike, but only when their meanings differ. See Prol. 1. 17, where seke, to seek, rimes with seke, sick. Other examples are seen in the Kn. Tale, see being repeated in 11. 1097, 1098; caste in l. 1313, 1314; caas in ll. 1499, 1500; and fare in 11. 1577, 1578. Imperfect rimes like disport, port, Prol. 137, 138, are common; see Prol. 241, 433, 519, 579, 599, 613, 811; Kn. Ta. 379, 381, &c. For examples of fern compare 'Ye, farwell all the snow of ferue yere,' |