3384. The word tho is supplied for the metre. The scribes have considered vesselles (sic) as a trisyllable; but see ll. 3391, 3416, 3418.
3388. Of, for. Cf. 'thank God of al,' i. e. for all; in Chaucer's Balade of Truth.—M. See note in vol. i. pp. 552-3.
3422. Tyrwhitt has trusteth, in the plural, but thou is used throughout. Elsewhere Chaucer also has 'on whom we truste,' Prol. A. 501; 'truste on fortune,' B. 3326; cf. 'syker on to trosten,' P. Pl. Crede, l. 350.
3427. Dárius, so accented. degree, rank, position.
3429-36. I have no doubt that this stanza was a later addition.
3436. proverbe. The allusion is, in the first place, to Boethius, de Cons. Phil., bk. iii. pr. 5—'Sed quem felicitas amicum fecit, infortunium
faciet inimicum'; which Chaucer translates—'Certes, swiche folk as weleful fortune maketh freendes, contrarious fortune maketh hem enemys'; see vol. ii. p. 63. Cf. Prov. xix. 4—'Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour,' &c. So also—'If thou be brought low, he [i. e. thy friend] will be against thee, and will hide himself from thy face'; Ecclus. vi. 12. In Hazlitt's Collection of English Proverbs, p. 235, we find—
'In time of prosperity, friends will be plenty;
In time of adversity, not one among twenty.'
See also note to l. 120 above; and, not to multiply instances, note st. 19 of Goldsmith's Hermit:—