LIB. I.
After setting forth in the Prologue the evils of the existing state of society and tracing them for the most part to lack of love and concord between man and man, the author now deliberately renounces the task of setting right the balance of the world, an undertaking which he has not shrunk from in former years, but recognizes now as too great for his strength. He proposes to change the style of his writings and to deal with something which all may understand, with that emotion of love which Nature has implanted both in man and beast, which no one is able to keep within rule or measure, and which seems to be under the dominion of blind chance, like the gifts of fortune.
Latin Verses. i. 7 f. Cp. the lines ‘Est amor in glosa pax bellica, lis pietosa,’ &c., which follow the Traitié.
10. of thing is, i.e. ‘of thing which is’: cp. ii. 1393, ‘Withinne a Schip was stiereles,’ so iii. 219, v. 298 &c., and Mirour, 16956.
21. natheles: as in Prol. 36, this seems to mean here ‘moreover,’ or perhaps ‘in truth,’ rather than ‘nevertheless.’
37. That is, ‘Wheresoever it pleases him to set himself,’ ‘him’ serving a double function.
50. went: present tense, ‘goes.’
62. I am miselven &c. Note, however, that the author guards himself in the margin with ‘quasi in persona aliorum, quos amor alligat, fingens se auctor esse Amantem.’
88. jolif wo, cp. ‘le jolif mal sanz cure,’ Bal. xiii. 24.
98 ff. The construction is broken off, and then resumed in a new form: cp. i. 2948, iii. 1595, 2610, iv. 3201, v. 1043, 1339, &c.