17. en droit de mon atour, ‘as regards my state.’
22. falcoun: the Roxb. ed. gives ‘facon,’ a false reading which has hitherto entirely obscured the sense.
XXXVI. 3. Papegai. This seems to stand for any bright-plumaged bird. It is not to be supposed that Gower had the definite idea of a parrot connected with it.
6. au tiel: so MS., but Roxb. ed. ‘aut tiel,’ whence Dr. Stengel ‘au ttiel,’ in pursuance, no doubt, of his theory of ‘Verdoppelung anlautender Consonanten’: see note on ii. l. 4.
au tiel assai, ‘with such trial,’ i.e. ‘so sharply.’
10. Cp. Mir. 8716.
15. For the opposition of the rose and the nettle cp. xxxvii. 24, Mir. 3538, &c.
XXXVII. 4. la: used (as well as ‘le’) for indirect object fem. See Glossary.
9. See note on xx. l. 2.
10. entrée. The termination ‘-ée’ constitutes one syllable only here, as at the end of the verse, where ‘-é’ and ‘-ée’ rhyme freely together: see, for example, the rhymes in xvii.