Tant seust bien monteplier.'
Here o means 'with'; so that Chaucer has copied the very phrase 'with his figures ten.' But still more curiously, Jean de Meun here rimes nombre, pres. sing. indic., with nombre, sb.; and Chaucer rimes noumbre, infin., with noumbre, sb. likewise. Countour in l. 435 means 'arithmetician'; in the next line it means an abacus or counting-board, for assisting arithmetical operations.
437. His figures ten; the ten Arabic numerals, i. e. from 1 to 9, and the cipher 0.
438. Al ken, all kin, i. e. mankind, all men. This substitution of ken for kin (A.S. cyn) seems to have been due to the exigencies of rime, as Chaucer uses kin elsewhere. However, Gower has the same form—'And of what ken that she was come'; Conf. Am. b. viii; ed. Pauli, iii. 332. So also in Will. of Palerne, 722—'Miself knowe ich nouȝt mi ken'; and five times at least in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, as it is a Kentish form. It was, doubtless, a permissible variant.
442. The strong accent on me is very forced.
445. A man in blak; John of Gaunt, in mourning for the loss of his wife Blaunche. Imitated by Lydgate, in his Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 130, and by Spenser, in his Daphnaida:—
'I did espie
Where towards me a sory wight did cost
Clad all in black, that mourning did bewray.'