[216] Nos. 28-30 are in no previous edition.
[217] Stowe did not observe that this had occurred already, in the midst of poem no. 33.
[218] Miscalled Fol. cccxxxix. Also, the next folio is called cccxlviij., after which follows cccxlix., and so on.
[219] In the Preface to Morris's Chaucer, p. x, we are told that the editor took his copy of this poem from Thynne's edition of 1532. This is an oversight; for it does not occur there; Stowe's edition is meant.
[220] 'Thomas Occleve mentions it himself, as one of his own compositions, in a Dialogue which follows his Complaint, MS. Bodley 1504.'—Tyrwhitt.
[221] See Political, Religious, and Love Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 52. Cf. Englische Studien, x. 206.
[222] I have found the reference. It is Shirley who says so, in a poetical 'introduction'; see MS. Addit. 16165, fol. 3.
[223] It runs thus:—'Quod loue, I shall tel thee, this lesson to learne, myne owne true seruaunte, the noble Philosophicall Poete in Englishe, which euermore hym busieth & trauaileth right sore, my name to encrease, wherefore all that willen me good, owe to doe him worship and reuerence both; truly his better ne his pere, in schole of my rules, coud I neuer finde: He, quod she, in a treatise that he made of my seruaunt Troilus, hath this matter touched, & at the full this question [of predestination] assoiled. Certainly his noble saiyngs can I not amend; in goodness of gentil manlich spech, without any maner of nicitie of starieres (sic) imaginacion, in wit and in good reason of sentence, he passeth al other makers'; ed. 1561. (Read storieres, story-writer's.)
[224] Hoccleve appeals to St. Margaret, in his Letter of Cupid, st. 6 from the end. Lydgate wrote 'the Lyfe of St. Margarete.' I have a strong feeling that the poem is one of Lydgate's. Lines 24-26 seem to be imitated from Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, ll. 197-9.
[225] I leave this sentence as I wrote it in 1888; shortly afterwards, the attribution of no. 57 to Chaucer received confirmation from a note in the Phillipps MS. See p. [75].