FOOTNOTES:
[A] In some unpublished papers kindly communicated to me by Miss Bateson.
[B] Froissart, Chron., ed. K. de Lettenhove, vol. xv. p. 167.
[C] B. ten Brink, Geschichte der Engl. Litt. ii. 141.
[D] This date has hitherto been omitted from the text of the printed editions.
[E] The last two lines, which contain the mention of the earl of Derby, are omitted in some MSS. of the first recension, and this may be an indication that the author circulated some copies without them. A full account of the various recensions of the poem is given later, under the head of ‘Text.’
[F] The term ‘epilogue’ is used for convenience to designate the conclusion of the poem after viii. 2940, but no such designation is used by the author: similarly ‘preface’ means here the opening passage of the Prologue (ll. 1-92).
[G] ‘Minoris etatis causa inde excusabilem pronuncians.’
[H] Dr. Karl Meyer, in his dissertation John Gower’s Beziehungen zu Chaucer und König Richard II (1889), takes account of these various notes of time, having made himself to some extent acquainted with the MSS., but his conclusions are in my opinion untenable.
[I] This has been equally the procedure of Prof. Hales on the one hand, who endeavours to throw back the composition of the first recension to an extravagantly early period, and of Dr. Karl Meyer on the other, who wishes to bring down the final form of the book to a time later than the deposition of Richard II. The theory of the latter, that the sixteenth year of King Richard is given as the date of the original completion of the poem, and not of the revised preface, is sufficiently refuted by the date ‘fourteenth year’ attached to the rewritten epilogue.