288. Similarly the God of Love pardoned Chaucer (L. G. W. 450), but upon a condition (ib. 548).
290. serven, false grammar for serve.
302. Here follow the twenty statutes; ll. 302-504. They are evidently expanded from the similar set of injunctions given by Venus to the Knight in The Temple of Glas, ll. 1152-213; as clearly shewn by Schick in his Introduction, p. cxxxi. The similarity extends to the first, second, third, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth and eighteenth statutes, which resemble passages found in the Temple of Glas, ll. 1152-213, or elsewhere in the same poem. It is also possible that the author, or Lydgate, or both of them, kept an eye upon Ovid's Art of Love. See also Rom. Rose (Eng. version), 2355-950, which is much to the point.
305. This is also the first injunction in T. G. 1152-3, and is immediately followed by the second, which enjoins secrecy. The reader should compare the passages for himself.
311. MS. synk and flete; which must of course be corrected to 'sink or flete,' as in Anelida, 182; C. T., A 2397.
317. 'Withoute chaunge in parti or in al'; T. G. 1155.
319. The MS. has brynde, and Stowe has brinde; so I let the reading stand. Morris has blynde, and Bell blind; neither of them has a note as to the change made. Perhaps brind = brend = burnt, in the sense of 'inflamed by passion'; or it may be an error for brim = breme, furious, applied especially to the desire of the boar for the sow. The sense intended is clear enough; we should now write 'base.'
324-5. From C. T., A 2252-3:—
'And on thyn [Venus'] auter, wher I ryde or go,