[49] For is wente read his wente, i.e. his path. This is all that is needed to restore the sense. Wente is a sb., not a pp.
[50] It occurs in no MS. but F.; and the writing in F. (in this passage) is quite late, and of no authority.
[51] Quite 180, in my opinion, if not more; about 4 in every 100 lines. Surely a large percentage.
[52] Chatterton added two lines to Chaucer's stanza, one of the usual length, and the second an Alexandrine. This ten-line stanza occurs in his Battle of Hastings.
[53] Every student of Old French poetry of the fourteenth century must be aware that none of Machault's Balades (in Tarbé's edition) have envoys; and that a large number were written, without envoys, by Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, and Christine de Pisan. Besides, Chaucer introduces a Balade into his Legend of Good Women, which could not have had an Envoy, from the nature of the case; there was no one to address it to.
'Why will ye suffre than that I thus spille,
And for no maner gilt but my good wille?' vol. i. p. 364.
'For I am set on yow in swich manere