2132. is in manere: cp. l. 4344. It seems to mean that the virtue of giving depends on the measure with which it is done: cp. Praise of Peace, 53.
2139. To helpe with: cp. i. 452, 2172, ii. 283, &c.
2194. holden up his oil: cp. l. 2584, ‘To bere up oil.’ The only other instance which I can quote of this expression is from Trevisa’s translation of the Polychronicon (Rolls’ Series, vol. iii. p. 447, a reference which I owe to Dr. Murray), ‘There Alisaundre gan to boste ... and a greet deel of hem that were at the feste hilde up the kynges oyl.’ (In the Latin, magna convivantium parte assentiente.’) In all these cases it is used of flatterers, and ‘oil’ seems to stand in this phrase for ‘pride’ or ‘vainglory.’ I am disposed to think it is simply the French ‘oil,’ meaning ‘eye,’ and getting its present sense from such Biblical expressions as ‘oculi sublimium deprimentur,’ ‘oculos superborum humiliabis,’ ‘oculos sublimes, linguam mendacem’; but I can quote no examples of this meaning in French.
2217 ff. This story is based originally on an anecdote told by Valerius Maximus: ‘Idem Syracusis, cum holera ei lavanti Aristippus dixisset, Si Dionysium adulari velles, ista non esses, Immo, inquit, si tu ista esse velles, non adularere Dionysium’ (Mem. iv. 3). It has been repeated often in a short form.
2268. the worldes crok, that is, the crooked way of the world. See the quotations in the New Engl. Dictionary under ‘crook,’ 12.
2279. joutes: see Godefroy’s Dictionary, where an instance is quoted of the use of this word in a French version of this very story.
2302. F punctuates after ‘pyke,’ and no doubt rightly so. The word ‘trewely’ corresponds to the Latin ‘certe’ in the margin above.
2355 ff. The Roman Triumph as here related was a commonplace of preachers and moralists, cp. Bromyard, Summa Praedicantium, T. v. 36, ‘Triumphus enim secundum Isidorum dicitur a tribus: quia triumphator Romanus cum victoria versus civitatem veniens tres honores habere debuit,’ &c. So l. 2366, ‘Of treble honour he was certein.’ It is also in the Gesta Romanorum, 30 (ed. Oesterley), but from neither of these could Gower have got his ‘Notheos’ (for Γνῶθι σεαυτόν).
2416 ff. This custom is spoken of in Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes with a marginal reference to the Vita Iohannis Eleemosynarii, where it is in fact mentioned (Migne, Patrol., vol. 73, p. 354).
2527 ff. From 1 Kings xxii. It will be seen that the story is told rather freely as regards order of events, as if from memory.