755. heth, heath. Here, and in l. 757, the author refers to two occasions when he was in great danger of falling in love; but he does not go into details.
768. Here we must read ee (eye) for the rime; in other cases it appears as eye, ye, y, riming with words in -y. This points to a somewhat late date; see note to l. 81 above. As for stremes, it is Lydgate's word for glances of the eye; see T. G. 263, 582. And Lydgate had it from Chaucer, who mostly uses it of sunbeams, but twice applies it to the beams from the eyes of Criseyde; Troil. i. 305, iii. 129.
782. flawe, generally explained as representing Lat. flauus, yellowish, or the O.F. flave, with the same sense. Her hair was gold, so her eyebrows may have been of a similar colour. I suspect that flawe was a Northern form; cf. braw, as a Northern variant of brave.
783. mene disseverance, a moderate distance; evidently meant with reference to Criseyde, whose one demerit was that her eye-brows joined each other; Troil. v. 813.
787. milk-whyt path, the galaxy, or milky way; but surely this is quite a unique application of it, viz. to the prominent ridge of Rosial's nose.
789. smaragde, emerald. The eyes of Beatrice are called smeraldi; Dante, Purg. xxxi. 116. Juliet's nurse said that an eagle's eye was not so green as that of Paris; Romeo, iii. 5. 222. Eyes in Chaucer are
usually 'as gray as glas'; the O.F. vair, an epithet for eyes, meant grayish-blue.
797. basse, kiss, buss; see Bass in the New E. Dict. ben is yet another instance of a false concord; read be, as basse is singular. See next note.
798. Cornelius Maximianus Gallus, a poet of the sixth century, wrote six elegies which have come down to us. The quotation referred to occurs in the first Elegy (ll. 97-8), which is also quoted by Chaucer; see note to C. T., C 727 (vol. v. p. 287). The lines are:—
'Flammea dilexi, modicumque tumentia labra,