J'aim une fleur qui s'uevre et qui s'encline
Vers le soleil, de jour quand il chemine;
Et quand il est couchiez soubz sa courtine
Par nuit obscure,
Elle se clost ainsois que le jour fine.
[460] Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first part of the "Roman" ab. 1237; Jean de Meun wrote the second towards 1277. On the sources of the poem see the important work of Langlois: "Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose," Paris, 1891, 8vo. M. Langlois has traced the originals for 12,000 out of the 17,500 lines of Jean de Meun; he is preparing (1894) a much-needed critical edition of the text.
[461] One of them has a sort of biographical interest as having belonged to Sir Richard Stury, Chaucer's colleague in one of his missions (see below, p. 284); it was afterwards purchased for Thomas, duke of Gloucester, son of Edward III., and is now in the British Museum, MS. Royal 19 B xiii. "Ceste livre est à Thomas fiz au Roy, duc de Glouc', achates dez executeurs Mons' Ric' Stury." It has curious miniatures exemplifying the way in which people pictured to themselves at that time Olympian gods and romance heroes. The "Dieu d'amour" figures as a tall person with a tunic, a cloak, and a crown, a bow in his hand and large red wings on his back. See fol. 16, "coment li diex d'amours navra l'amant de ses saietes."
[462] "A vous qui belles filles avez et bien les désirez à introduire à vie honneste, bailliez leur, bailliez le Rommant de la Rose, pour aprendre à discerner le bien du mal, que diz-je, mais le mal du bien. Et à quel utilité ne à quoy proufite aux oyans oïr tant de laidures?" Jean de Meun "oncques n'ot acointance ne hantise de femme honorable ne vertueuse, mais par plusieurs femmes dissolues et de male vie hanter, comme font communément les luxurieux cuida ou faingny savoir que toutes telles feussent car d'autres n'avoit congnoissance." "Débat sur le Rommant de la Rose," in MS. Fr. 604 in the National Library, Paris, fol. 114 and 115.
[463] An incomplete translation of the "Roman" in English verse has come down to us in a single MS. preserved in the Hunterian collection, Glasgow. It is anonymous; a study of this text, by Lindner and by Kaluza, has shown that it is made up of three fragments of different origin, prosody, and language. The first fragment ends with line 1705, leaving a sentence unfinished; between the second and third fragments there is a gap of more than 5,000 lines. The first fragment alone might, on account of its style and versification, be the work of Chaucer, but this is only a surmise, and we have no direct proof of it. The "Romaunt" is to be found in Skeat's edition of the "Complete Works" of Chaucer, 1894, vol. i. For Fragment I. the French text is given along with the English translation.
Mais pran en gré les euvres d'escolier
Que par Clifford de moy avoir pourras.
For Des Champs, Chaucer is a Socrates, a Seneca, an Ovid, an "aigle très hault," "Œuvres Completes," Paris, 1878 ff., vol. ii. p. 138.
[465] "Hous of Fame," line 622; "Legend of Good Women," line 422, "Complete Works," 1894, vol. i. pp. 19 and 96. Such was the reputation of Chaucer that a great many writings were attributed to him—a way to increase their reputation, not his. The more important of them are: "The Court of Love"; the "Book of Cupid," otherwise "Cuckoo and Nightingale"; "Flower and Leaf," the "Romaunt of the Rose," such as we have it; the "Complaint of a Lover's Life"; the "Testament of Love" (in prose, see below, page 522); the "Isle of Ladies," or "Chaucer's Dream"; various ballads. Most of those works (not the "Testament") are to be found in the "Poetical Works" of Chaucer, Aldine Poets, ed. Morris.