29798. ‘Witness thy Gospels,’ i.e. ‘the witness is that of thy Gospels.’
29821. le livre: cp. 27475 ff., where it is implied that the author follows a Latin book.
29869. me donne, ‘tells me.’
29878 ff. ‘But in order that it may perchance please thee, I set all my business, as best I may, to do honour to thy person.’ I have separated ‘Maisque,’ because that seems necessary for the sense. The author hopes that, though his Lady has the crown of heaven, yet she may be pleased by his humble endeavours to do her honour on earth.
29890. t’en fais continuer, ‘thou dost continue in the work,’ a reflexive use of ‘continuer’ with ‘faire’ as auxiliary.
DEDICATION OF BALADES
I. 7. ‘He who trusts in God,’ &c. ‘Qe’ is used for ‘Qui.’
15. Vostre oratour. The poet means no doubt to speak of himself as one who is bound to pray for the king. At the same time it is to be noticed that ‘Orator regius’ was at the beginning of the sixteenth century an official title, borne by Skelton in the reign of Henry VIII, and perhaps nearly equivalent to the later ‘Poet-laureate.’ Skelton was ‘laureatus’ of the Universities, that is he had taken a degree in rhetoric and poetry at Oxford, and apparently something equivalent at Cambridge.
16. The pronunciation of the name ‘Gower’ as a dissyllable with the accent on the termination, which is required here and in the Envoy to the Traitié, is the same as that which we have in the Confessio Amantis viii. 2908, where it rhymes with ‘-er.’
23. perfit: so written in full in the MS. and correctly given by the Roxburghe editor. Dr. Stengel gives ‘parfit’ on the assumption that there is a contraction. That is not so here, but in many cases of this kind he is right.