‘Planxere sorores
Naides, et sectos fratri posuere capillos;
Planxerunt Dryades, plangentibus assonat Echo,’
but when they desired to celebrate his obsequies, they found nothing there but a flower.
2350. par aventure: see note on 2049.
2355 ff. This application of the story, founded on the fact that the narcissus blooms in early spring, seems to be due to our author: cp. ii. 196, iii. 1717.
2377. a place, equivalent to ‘aplace,’ which we find in l. 1888, i.e. ‘on place,’ ‘into place.’ We might read ‘aplace’ here also, for though the words were at first written separately in F, there seems to have been an intention of joining them afterwards. However, such separations are often found elsewhere, as ‘a doun,’ iv. 2710, v. 385; ‘a ferr’; i. 2335; ‘a game,’ viii. 2319; and most MSS. have ‘a place’ here.
2398. The reading of F, ‘Which elles scholde haue his wille,’ is a possible one, but the preservation of final ‘e’ before ‘have’ used unemphatically, as here, would be rather unusual. Instances such as l. 2465, ‘a werre hadde,’ are not to the point, and in l. 2542, where there is a better example, ‘Of such werk as it scholde have,’ the word ‘have’ is made more emphatic by standing in rhyme.
Latin Verses. ix. 2. cilens. Such forms of spelling are not uncommon in Gower’s Latin: cp. ‘cenatore,’ v. 4944 (margin).
2410. wynd. The curious corruption ‘hunt,’ which appears in one form or another in all the copies of the unrevised first recension, must have been one of the mistakes of the original copyist. The critical note here should be, ‘hunt(e) H₁YX ... C hante L haunt B₂,’ and the actual reading in L is, ‘Haþ þilke errour hante in his office,’ which seems due to a marginal note having been incorporated in the text.