Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

En diverses complexions,

Et selonc lors divers corages

Des meurs divers et des aages;

Ou se Diex par tex visions

Envoie revelacions,

Ou li malignes esperiz,

Por metre les gens en periz;

De tout ce ne m'entremetrai.'

[2]. This long sentence ends at line 52.

[7]. This opens up the question as to the divers sorts of dreams. Chaucer here evidently follows Macrobius, who, in his Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, lib. i. c. 3, distinguishes five kinds of dreams, viz. somnium, visio, oraculum, insomnium, and visum. The fourth kind, insomnium, was also called fantasma; and this provided Chaucer with the word fantome in l. 11. In the same line, oracles answers to the Lat. oracula. Cf. Ten Brink, Studien, p. 101.