Humidaque est fletu litera facta meo.’
The first line however was altered so as to lose its grammatical construction, and the couplet was subsequently emended.
43 f. Cp. Ovid, Tristia, i. 5. 53 f.
47 f. Cp. Pont. iv. 2. 19, where the comparison to a spring choked with mud is more clearly brought out.
49. The original reading here was ‘confracto,’ but it has been altered to ‘contracto’ in C and G, while E gives ‘contracto’ from the first hand. The general meaning seems to be that as the long pilgrimage to Rome is to one with crippled knee, so is this work to the author, with his limited powers of intellect.
56. The reading ‘conturbant’ in all the best MSS. seems to be a mistake.
57 f. The author is about to denounce the evils of the world and proclaim the woes which are to follow, like the writer of the Apocalypse, whose name he bears. Perhaps he may also have some thought of the formula ‘seint John to borwe’ by which travellers committed themselves to the protection of the saint on their setting forth: cp. Conf. Amantis, v. 3416.
LIB. I.
1. The fourth year of Richard II is from June 22, 1380 to the same date of 1381. The writer here speaks of the last month of that regnal year, during which the Peasants’ rising occurred.
4. Cp. Ovid, Her. xvii. 112, ‘Praevius Aurorae Lucifer ortus erat.’