1135. The general sense is—'if gentle conduct were naturally implanted in a particular family, none of that family could ever behave badly.' Cf. ll. 1150, 1151.
'Were virtue by descent, a noble name
Could never villanise his father's fame.'
Dryden's paraphrase.
1140. Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 7. 43, mentions 'the mountaigne that highte Caucasus.' This is probably where he got the name from. Cf. Shakespeare's 'frosty Caucasus'; Rich. II. i. 3. 295. The whole passage is imitated from another place in Boethius, where Chaucer's translation has:—'Certes, yif that honour of poeple were a natural yift to dignitees, it ne mighte never cesen ... to don his office, right as fyr in every contree ne stinteth nat to eschaufen and to ben hoot'; bk. iii. pr. 4. 44-8. In l. 1139, Dryden merely alters in to to.
1142. lye, i. e. blaze. 'Hevene y-leyed wose syth,' whoever sees heaven in a blaze; Relig. Antiq. i. 266. The sb. lye, a flame, occurs in P. Pl. C. xx. 172. Cf. A. S. lȳg, līg, flame.
1146-56. Much altered and expanded in Dryden.
1158. Cf. Rom. of the Rose, 2181:—
'For vilany makith vilayn;
And by his dedis a cherl is seyn.'