'Another feature characteristic of Lydgate is his self-deprecatory vein'; T. G., Introd. p. cxl. We have here an instance of an imitation of it.
6. Cf. 'Save that he wol conveyen his matere'; C. T., E 55.
8. He refers to Cicero's flowers of rhetoric. He may have found the name in Chaucer, P. F. 31. But he probably took the whole idea from a line of Lydgate's:—'Of rethoriques Tullius fond the floures': Minor Poems, p. 87.
9. borne, burnish, adorn; it rimes (as here) with sojorne in Troil. i. 327.
11. Galfrid, Geoffrey de Vinsauf; his 'craft' refers to his treatise on the art of poetry, entitled 'Nova Poetria'; see note to C. T., B 4537 (vol. v. p. 257). [I once thought (see vol. i. p. 43) that Galfrid here means Chaucer himself, as he also is twice called Galfrid in Lydgate's Troy-book. But I find that Dr. Schick thinks otherwise, and the use of the word craft is on his side. At the same time, this renders it impossible for Chaucer to have written 'The Court of Love'; his opinion of his namesake was the reverse of reverential.] With ll. 4-11 compare the opening lines of Benedict Burgh's Poem in Praise of Lydgate, pr. at p. xxxi of Steele's edition of Lydgate's Secrees of Philosophers.
19. Calliope; twice mentioned by Chaucer; also by Lydgate, T. G. 1303. Lydgate's Troy-book opens with an invocation to Mars, followed by one to Calliope:—'Helpe me also, o thou Callyope'; and only
four lines above there is a mention of 'Helicon the welle' (see l. 22 below).
22. Elicon, mount Helicon in Bœotia, sacred to Apollo and the Muses; confused by Chaucer and his followers with the fountain Hippocrene; see note in vol. i. p. 531. Hence Lydgate's expression 'Helicon the welle' in the last note and in T. G. 706, and the reference in the text to its dropes.
suger-dropes; Lydgate was fond of sugar; he has 'soote sugred armonye,' Minor Poems, p. 182; and 'sugrid melody,' ib., p. 11. Also 'sugred eloquence'; XII. 200 (p. 288); with which cf. l. 933 below. I have observed several other examples.
24. Melpomene; the muse who presided over tragedy.