Forsque soy mesmes poet ardoir;
Ensi q’ Envie tient ou pis
En sentira deinz soy le pis.’
The idea is that Envy, like Mount Etna, burns within itself continually, but is never consumed: cp. Ovid, Met. xiii. 867 (in the tale which follows below of Acis and Galatea),
‘Uror enim, laesusque exaestuat acrius ignis,
Cumque suis videor translatam viribus Aetnam
Pectore ferre meo.’
83. Write in Civile. ‘Civile’ is certainly the Civil Law, for so we find it in Mirour, 15217, 16092, &c., and also personified in Piers Plowman. The reference here has puzzled me rather, but the following, I believe, is the explanation of it, strange as it may seem at first sight.
In the Institutions of Justinian, i. 7, ‘De lege Furia Caninia sublata,’ we read that this law, which restricted the power of owners of slaves to manumit them by will, was repealed ‘quasi libertatibus impedientem et quodammodo invidam.’ It seems that medieval commentators upon this, reading ‘canina’ for Caninia in the title of the law, explained the supposed epithet by reference to the adjective ‘invidam’ used in the description of it, and conceived the law to have been called ‘canina’ because it compelled men to imitate the dog in the manger by withholding liberty from those for whom they no longer had any use as slaves. In Bromyard’s Summa Predicantium we find the following under the head of ‘Invidia’: ‘Omnes isti sunt de professione legis Fusie canine. Ille enim Fusius inventor fuit legis cuius exemplum seu casus est iste. Quidam habet fontem quo non potest proprium ortum irrigare ... posset tamen alteri valere sine illius nocumento; ipse tamen impedit ne alteri prosit quod sibi prodesse non potest, ad modum canis, sicut predictum est: a cuius condicione lex canina vocata est inter leges duodecim tabularum, que quia iniqua fuit, in aliis legibus correcta est, sicut patet Institut. lib. i. de lege Fusia canina tollenda.’
It seems likely then that Gower took the fable from some comment on this passage of the Institutions.