874. ‘Men sein, Old Senne newe schame,’ Conf. Amantis, iii. 2033.
903. Cp. Ovid, Metam. ii. 632, ‘Inter aves albas vetuit consistere corvum.’ Gower’s line seems to have neither accidence nor syntax.
953 f. Fasti, ii. 219 f.
959. A reference to Ps. lxxii. 5, ‘In labore hominum non sunt, et cum hominibus non flagellabuntur.’ The same passage is alluded to in Walsingham’s chronicle (i. 324), where reference is made to the fact that the friars were exempted from the poll-tax. The first half of this psalm seems to have been accepted in some quarters as a prophetic description of the Mendicants.
963. There is no variation of reading here in the MSS., but the metre cannot be regarded as satisfactory. A fifteenth (or sixteenth) century reader has raised a slight protest against it in the margin of S, ‘at metrum quomodo fiet.’
969. Cp. Ps. lxxii. 7, ‘Prodiit quasi ex adipe iniquitas eorum: transierunt in affectum cordis.’
971 ff. Cp. Mirour, 21517 ff.,
‘Mal fils ne tret son pris avant,
Par ce qant il fait son avant
Q’il ad bon piere,’ &c.