Light credit dwelleth there, there dwells rash error, there doth dwell
Vaine ioy: there dwelleth hartlesse feare, and brute that loues to tell
Uncertaine newes vpon report, whereof he doth not knowe
The author, and sedition who fresh rumors loues to sowe.
This Fame beholdeth what is done in heauen, on sea, and land,
And what is wrought in all the world he layes to vnderstand.'
§ 5. Date of the Poem. Ten Brink, in his Chaucer Studien, pp. 120, 121, concludes that The House of Fame was, in all probability, composed shortly after Troilus, as the opening lines reproduce, in effect, a passage concerning dreams which appears in the last Book of Troilus, ll. 358-385. We may also observe the following lines in Troilus, from Book I, 517-8:—
'Now, thonked be god, he may goon in the daunce
Of hem that Love list febly for to avaunce.'
These lines, jestingly applied to Troilus by Pandarus, are in the House of Fame, 639, 640, applied by Chaucer to himself:—