springers, origins, sources. I adopted this reading from Hl., because none of the other MSS. make sense. They have spryngen of or springen of (Hn. sprynge of), which can only mean 'arise from,' thus exactly contradicting the sense intended. Thynne has springe of; but Wright, Morris, and Bell all have springers of, as they follow the Harl. MS. I know no other example of this rare word; and it is difficult to see why the commoner form springes would not have served the purpose. Tyrwhitt gets over the difficulty by transposing the words, as in the Selden MS., thus reading—'and of hem springen alle,' &c. But the other MSS. do not countenance this arrangement.
388. Pride is usually accounted as the chief of all sins, and the source of the rest; cf. Ecclus. x. 13; P. Plowman, C. vii. 3 (B. v. 63), and the note; Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 16.
There is a long passage in St. Gregory's Moralium lib. xxxi. c. 45 (ed. Migne, vol. 76. col. 621), to which I suppose that later writers were much indebted. It is explicitly referred to, for instance, by John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus, lib. viii. c. 1. I quote some passages from it further on, in suitable places. It begins thus:—
'Radix quippe cuncti mali Superbia est. Primae autem ejus soboles, septem nimirum principalia vitia, de hac virulenta radice proferuntur, scilicet inanis gloria, invidia, ira, tristitia, avaritia, ventris ingluvies, luxuria; ... sed habet contra nos haec singula exercitum suum.'
389. hise braunches, its branches. In the Ayenbite of Inwyt, p. 17, they are called boghes, boughs; and the 'twigs' are called little boghes.
De Superbia.
390. In Essays on Chaucer, p. 510, Dr. Eilers gives a detailed and careful comparison of the English with the French text from which it is partly derived. The result, through no fault of his, is more bewildering than useful; for the numerous alterations in the arrangement of the parts of the subject are altogether too tedious to explain. The reader will gain the best idea of the state of the case, if I here quote Dr. Eilers' summary of his comparison of the two texts, as to their treatment of 'Pride.' Similar numberless alterations of detail occur in the treatment of the other 'Sins.' (Fr. = French text).
'From the above [comparison] it will appear that a well-ordered scheme underlies the French text. Orguel is divided into 7 branches, and each of these again into a similar number of reinselez (branchettes). Let us examine the English text (Chaucer's) more closely. After first pointing out (substantially in agreement with Fr.) the impossibility of naming all the parts (twigges) into which Pride may be divided, 16 twigges are enumerated, but without that logical coherence apparent in Fr. Next follow short definitions of the twigs, in which, however, the 11th twig (Strif) is omitted from the list, and is added instead at the end, under janglinge, which had never been mentioned before. These 16 twigs correspond partly to the branches, partly to the reinselez of Fr., whilst some of them are not found in Fr. at all, or at least not under the same heading.
'The definitions correspond only in their general sense with Fr. [Here instances are given.]