Darke was that place, but, after, lightnesse
I sawe a lite, unnethes it might be lesse;
And on a bedde of golde she lay to reste,
Till that the hote Sonne gan to weste.1

Her gilte heeres with a golde threde
Ybound were, untressed as she lay;
And naked from the brest unto the hede
Men might her see; and, sothly for to saie,
The remnaunt, covered welle, to my paie,
Right with a little kerchefe of Valence;2
There was no thicker clothe of defence.

The place gave a thousand savoures soote,
And Bacchus god of wine sate her beside;
And Ceres next, that doeth of hunger boote;
And, as I said, amiddes lay Cupide,

3

To whom on knees the yonge folkes cride
To be their helpe; but thus I let her lie,
And farther in the temple gan espie,*

That, in dispite of Diané the chaste,

Ful
many a bowe ybroke hing on the walle,
Of maidenes, suche as gone hir times waste
In her service: and painted over alle,
Of many a storie, of which I touch shalle
A fewe, as of Calixte, and Athalant,*

And many a maid, of which the name I want.

1 West here seems to be a verb, meaning to draw towards the west; thewestling sun' occurs in modern writers.

2 Valentia, in Spain, celebrated for the manufacture of very fine transparent cloths.

3 This is an allusion to the well-known proverb, Sine Baccho et Cerere friget Venus.'

4 Speght reads And farther in the temple I gan espie,' producing an excess in the measure, which is avoided by the omission of the personal pronoun.

5 Trophies of the conquest of Venus.

6 Calisto and Atalanta.-See vol. i. p. 156, notes 1 and 4.

VOL. II.

2 B

Semyramus,' Candace,' and Hercules,*
Biblis, Dido, Tisbe, and Piramus,
Tristram, Isoude, Paris, and Achilles,
Helaine, Cleopatre, and Troilus,

6

5

Sylla, and eke the mother of Romulus :-
Alle these were paynted on that other side,
And al hir love, and in what plite they dide.

Whan I was commen ayen into the place
That I of spake, that was so soote and grene,
Forth walked I tho my selven to solace:
Tho was I ware, where there sate a quene,
That, as of light the sommer Sunne shene
Passeth the sterre, right so over mesure,
She fairer was than any creature.

1 Semiramis, Queen of Babylon, and wife of Ninus, whom she put to death. Her alleged licentiousness entitles her to a place in the Temple of Venus. See Valerius Maximus, ix. 3.

2 Canace, the daughter of Æolus and Enaretta, is probably the person intended. Her Epistle to her brother Macareus is the ninth of Ovid's Heroides.

3 Hercules is entitled to a niche in the Temple of Venus, as an example of her power in subduing the strongest of men. The allusion is to his spinning with the distaff of Omphale, who beat him with her slipper.

4 The story of Biblis is told by Ovid, Metam. ix. 415. The Cambridge MS. reads Fillis, meaning Phyllis, the daughter of Lycurgus, King of Thrace, who hanged herself for love of Demophoon. Her letter to him forms Epist. ii. of Ovid's Heroides.

5 Tristram and Isoude are the hero and heroine of one of the most celebrated of the medieval romances. Sir Walter Scott printed an edition of it from a MS. in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.

6 By Sylla is meant, not the Roman Dictator, but either Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, King of Megara, who for love of Minos betrayed her father and country, and afterwards in despair threw herself into the sea and was changed into a lark, which was doomed to be pursued by her father, who was changed into a hawk.-Ovid, Tristia, ii. 393. Or Scylla, who was changed by Circe into a sea-monster.—Ovid, Metam. xiv.

7 Ilia, daughter of Numitor, consecrated by her uncle Amulius to the service of Vesta, and buried alive by him for violating her vows.― Vide Livy, lib. i.

And in a launde, upon an hille of floures,
Was sette this noble goddesse Nature;1
Of branches were her halles and her boures
Ywrought, after her craft and her mesure;
Ne there nas foul that cometh of engendrure,
That there ne were prest, in her presence,
To take hir dome, and yeve hir audience.

For this was on sainct Valentines day,'
Whan every foule cometh to chese hir make,
Of every kind that men thinke may;

But

[This deification of Nature is very characteristic of Chaucer. Comp. "Sommer our governour and lorde," in the Legende of Good Women, v. iii. p. 324. In these and in many detached passages of Chaucer's other poems, may be detected a tendency to pantheism, or the worshipping a principle supposed to pervade the Universe, rather than a personal Deity. Chaucer's pantheism does not appear to have sunk so deep as to corrupt his faith, but rather to have been a poetical day-dream, in which his intense love of nature made his imagination delight to revel. [See also vol. ii. p. 58, note 4.]

2 The origin of the custom of choosing valentines on St. Valentine's day is involved in obscurity. It has no connexion with St. Valentine, who was an exemplary priest, put to death for the faith of Christ about A.D. 280. Butler, in his Lives of the Saints, assigns to it a heathen origin. He says, To abolish the heathen, lewd, superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls in honour of their goddess Februata Juno on the 14th of February, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on that day.' The heathen custom, however, has survived all these attempts to abolish it, and remains enshrined in our poetry and popular customs. In the catalogue of Lydgate's works, printed at the end of Speght's edition of Chaucer, is a ballad entitled Chusing Loves on St. Valentine's Day; and in a poem written by him in praise of Queen Catherine, consort of Henry V., in the Harl. collection, 2251, the following stanza occurs:

Seynte Valentine, of custom yeere by yeere

Men have an usaunce in this regioun,

To loke and serche Cupide's Kalendere,

And choose theyr choyse by grete affeccioun ;
Such as ben prike with Cupid's mocioun,
Taking theyr choyce as theyr sort doth falle;
But I love oon which excellith alle.'

Mr. Pepys, in his diary for this day, in the year 1667, has the following characteristic entry. This morning came up to my wife's bedside, I being up dressing myself, Little Will. Mercer to her Valentine, and

And that so huge a noise gan they make,
That earth, [and] sea, and tree, and every lake,
So ful was, that unnethe there was space
For me to stande, so ful was al the place.

And right as Alain, in the Plaint of Kinde,'
Deviseth Nature of such araie and face;
In suche aray men might her there finde.
This noble empresse, ful of alle grace,
Bad every foule take hir owne place,
As they were wont alway, fro yere to yere,
On sainct Valentines day standen there.

That is to say, the foules of ravine

Were highest sette; and then the foules smale,
That eaten, as that nature would encline,

As worm or foule,2 of which I telle no tale;
But water foule sat lowest in the dale,
And foules that liveth by seed sat on the grene,
And that so many, that wonder was to sene.

There might men the royal egle finde,
That with his sharpe looke perseth the Son;
And other egles of a lower kinde,

Of which that clerkes wel devisen con;
There was the tyrant with his fethers don

brought her name written upon blue paper, in gold letters done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife's valentine, and it will cost me 5l., but that I must have laid out if we had not been valentines.' He adds, I find that Mrs. Pierce's little girl is my valentine, she having drawn me; which I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more that I must have given to others. But here I do first observe the fashion of drawing of mottos as well as names; so that Pierce, who drew my wife, did also draw a motto, and this girl drew another for me. What mine was I forgot; but my wife's was Most courteous and most kind." The custom of drawing valentines has quite disappeared, and has been replaced by that of sending anonymous verses and presents.

1 Alanus de Insulis, among other things wrote a booke, De Planctu Naturæ.

2 The reading of the Cambridge MS. is here adopted, in preference to Speght's, or thing.

And grene, I mean the goshauke' that doth pine
To birdes, for his outragious ravine.

The gentle faucon," that with his fete distreineth
The kinges hand; the hardy sperhauke eke,
The quailes foe; the merlion' that peineth
Himself ful ofte the larke for to seke;
There was the dove, with her eyen meke;
The jelous swan, ayenst his deth that singeth;*
The oul eke, that of deth the bode bringeth."

6

The crane, the geaunt, with his trompes soune:
The thief the chough, and the chattring pie;
The scorning jaye,' the eles foe the heroune;"

1 The goshawk is the largest and fiercest of the short-winged hawks. It and the sparrowhawk are the only hawks of this species used in falconry. Their manner of taking their prey is quite different from that of the long-winged hawks; when the game is flushed they dart at it immediately, and if they fail in taking it at the first pounce, they fly to a tree, where they sit till it is again put up.

2 The gentle falcon is the falco peregrinus (see vol. i. p. 478, note 1.), one of the most esteemed of the long-winged hawks, and beautifully described as distreining the king's hand with its foot, because carried by persons of the highest rank, and petted by them even on occasions of ceremony. Thus Sir Walter Scott, Hist. of Scotland, vol. i., relates, that Mary of Guise, the Queen Regent, making some unpalatable request of the Earl of Angus, he answered her, as if speaking to a hawk which he held on his wrist, and was feeding at the time, The devil,' said he, ‘is in the greedy gled (kite). Will she never be full ?'

3 The merlin is the smallest of the long-winged hawks, and was generally carried by ladies.

4 The idea that swans sing before their death is of great antiquity; but Pliny, Hist. x. 23, says, Olorum morte narratur flebilis cantus, falsò ut arbitror aliquot experimentis.' The domestic swan is called sometimes the mute swan,' because it has no voice; the wild swan, when on the wing, makes a loud hooping, which, when heard from a distance, has a very sweet sound.

5 Solaque culminibus ferali carmine bubo

Sæpe queri, et longas in fletum ducere voces.-Eneid. iv., 462. 6 The chough, or red-legged Cornish crow, like its relative the magpie, has a strange fancy for anything that glitters, and has been known to carry off a fire-brand.

7 The epithet scorning is applied to the jay, probably, because it follows, and seems to mock at, the owl, whenever the latter is so unfortunate as to be caught abroad in the day-light; for this reason a trap for jays is always baited with a live owl.

8 The heron will stand for hours in the shallow water watching for eels.