'Vultur, dum satur est modis,
Non traxit Tityi iecur.'
See also Verg. Æn. vi. 595; Ovid, Met. iv. 456.
[811]. First foot deficient, as in ll. 603, 1051, 1069, &c. winter, years. Perhaps imitated from Le Rom. de la Rose, 21145-9.
[846, 847]. See Boethius, Bk. ii. Pr. 3. 52-54.
[848]. From Boethius, Lib. II. Pr. 1: 'si manere incipit, fors esse desistit.' See p. 26 above, l. 83.
[887]. 'And, to augment all this the more.'
[890-966]. This is all Chaucer's own; so also 994-1008.
[916]. a blaunche fevere, a fever that turns men white; said jocosely. Lovers were supposed to be pale; Ovid, Art. Am. i. 729. Cotgrave is somewhat more precise. He gives: 'Fievres blanches, the agues wherewith maidens that have the green sickness are troubled; hence, Il a les fievres blanches, either he is in love, or sick of wantonness.' In the Cuckoo and the Nightingale, l. 41, we find: 'I am so shaken with the feveres white.'
[932]. beet; beat thy breast (to shew thy repentance). Cf. P. Plowm. B. v. 454.