Hec est nuptorum carnis quasi regula morum, 5
Que saluandorum sacratur in orbe virorum.
Hinc vetus annorum Gower sub spe meritorum[968]
Ordine sponsorum tutus adhibo thorum.
NOTES
MIROUR DE L’OMME
Table of Contents.—This table is written in a hand which differs somewhat from that of the text, and it has some peculiar forms of spelling, as ‘diable,’ ‘eyde,’ ‘por,’ ‘noet,’ ‘fraunchement,’ ‘fraunchise,’ ‘governaunce,’ ‘sount,’ ‘lesserount’: some of these forms are also found in the rubrics.
After the Table four leaves have been cut out, and the first leaf that we have of the text is signed a iiii. It is probable that the first of the lost leaves was something like f. 6 in the Glasgow MS. of the Vox Clamantis, which is blank on one side and has a picture and some verses on the other (being, as this is, a half-sheet left over after the Table of Contents), and that the text of the Mirour began with the first quire of eight (a i). If this is so, three leaves of the text are missing, probably containing forty-seven stanzas, i.e. 564 lines, an allowance of twelve lines of space being made for title and rubrics. The real subject of the book begins at l. 37 of the existing text, as will be seen by the rubric there, and what preceded was probably a prologue dealing with the vanity of worldly and sinful pleasures: see ll. 25-30.