3147. Here, at the beginning of f. 186, the hand in F changes again and the rest of the manuscript, including the Traitié, the Latin poems and the author’s account of his books, is written in the hand which we have in the first leaf of the Prologue.
2955*. his testament of love. There is no reason to suppose that this is a reference to any particular work which Gower may have known that Chaucer had in hand. It may be a general suggestion that Chaucer should before his death compose some further work on love, which should serve as his last testimony (or last will and testament) on the subject, as the shrift of the present poem was our author’s leave-taking. To assume that the poem referred to must be the Legend of Good Women, and to argue from this that the Confessio Amantis was written before the Legend was given to the public, would be very rash. It is not likely that Usk’s Testament of Love was known to Gower when he wrote this.
2991*. This quality of mercy, for which Richard is especially praised, seems to have been precisely the point in which he was afterwards most found wanting by our author, so that he finally earns the title of ‘crudelissimus rex.’ Matters had not gone so far as this when the second form of epilogue was substituted, in which these praises were simply omitted. Gower was then (in the fourteenth year of the reign) in a state of suspended judgement, expressed by the ‘orat pro statu regni’ of 2974 (margin). The subsequent events, and especially the treatment of the duke of Gloucester and his friends, finally decided his opinions and his allegiance, as we may see in the Cronica Tripertita.
3054* ff. See Prol. 83* ff.
3102*. no contretaile, ‘no retribution’ afterwards: cp. Traitié, vii. 3, ‘De son mesfait porta le contretaille.’
3104*. That is, it tends rather to set us free from evil consequences than to bring them upon us.
Explicit, 5 f. The following copies of the first recension contain these last two lines, XERB₂Cath. Of the rest MH₁YGODAr.Ash. are imperfect at the end, N₂ omits the Explicit altogether, and I have no note as regards this point about Ad₂P₁Q. Of the seven which I note as having the ‘Explicit’ in four lines only, three are of the revised and four of the unrevised group. All copies of the second and third recensions have the last two lines, except of course those that are imperfect here.
Quam cinxere freta, &c. The ‘philosopher’ who was the author of this epistle is no doubt responsible also for the lines ‘Eneidos, Bucolis,’ &c. (printed in the Roxb. ed. of the Vox Clamantis, p. 427), in which our author is compared to Virgil, the chief difference being that whereas Virgil had achieved fame in one language only, Gower had distinguished himself in three. The writer in that case also is ‘quidam philosophus’ (not ‘quidam Philippus,’ as he is called in the printed copy), and I suspect that he was the ‘philosophical Strode’ who is coupled with Gower in the dedication of Troilus.