7591 ff. This incident is related in the Rom. de Troie, 17457 ff. The occasion was an anniversary celebration at the tomb of Hector, and though the temple of Apollo is not actually named here by Benoît, it has been previously described at large as Hector’s burial place.
7597 ff. The scene in Chaucer’s Troilus, i. 155 ff., is well known. He took it from Boccaccio.
7612. In the treatment of Avarice Gower has departed entirely from the plan of fivefold division which he follows in the first three books, as throughout in the Mirour. In the sixth book he deliberately declines to deal with more than two of the branches of Gule (vi. 12f.), and the treatment of Lechery is also irregular.
7651. here tuo debat, i. e. the strife of those two.
7716. the Cote for the hod: that is, he gets a return larger than the amount that he gave; a different form of the expression from that which we have in l. 4787.
7719. hors: probably plural in both cases.
7724. ‘If a man will go by the safe way.’
7736 ff. This saying is not really quoted from Seneca, but from Caecilius Balbus, Nug. Phil. xi. It must have been in Chaucer’s mind when he wrote ‘Suffice unto thy good, though it be smal,’ that is, ‘Adapt thy life to thy worldly fortune.’
7830 f. I take this to mean, ‘And suddenly to meet his flowers the summer appears and is rich.’ For the meaning of ‘hapneth’ see the examples in the New English Dictionary.
7838. be war: written as one word in F and afterwards divided by a stroke.