yng doune in his legge. After a tyme, forsop, þer wex puscelez brounysch and clayisch.1 . At pe last, forsop, þer grow in þat party of þe legge a large wounde, and about þe ankles pre or four smale woundez to be brede of ane halfpeny. And þe legge semed of zelow2 colour, medled with rednes, fro pe calf to þe ankelez. And þe skynne kast evermore out many skalez. ... It come to a mormale; þe which, when I had sene it, I affermed it to be a mormale. 'And I did sich a cure to it: þis is be cure to be mormale— ffirst sewe be pacient [s] legge strongly with a lynne clope. After wasche wele þat legge so sewed with hote watre, after þat þe pacient may suffre. And so after þe waschyng lat it lye by a naturel day, þat is ane hole day & a nizt,2 kepyng þe legge fro aier and fro cold. Þe second day, forsop, remove pe clope, and mundifie pe wounde, or be woundes if þai be many, and putte in every wounde a litel pece of lynne clope moisted in cold watre. Afterward putte of þe oyntement of Dyvylyne in þe circuite of þe wounde above þe hole skynne, so þat it touche no waiez þe woundez within, & cover it with a lynne clope ywette. Do bus euery day tuyez, renewyng þe oyntment, and mundifying þe woundez, and fyllyng þam of a lynne clope ywette, as it is seid above. . 'Þer was dede flesch of blo colour, to be brede of a peny; þat dede flesch, forsop, was mich þikke, and, þat yse, I kutte with a rasour a litel þe over party of þat flesch. Afterward I putte to larde, and so at þe last, with larde & with cuttyng, I dissolved, i. [e.] lesyd, it utterly. Þat flesch þerfor remove [d], eftsonez with þe oyntment of Dyvylyn aforeseid, and a clope wette in water, I held þe wounde opne to þe brede of a peny. And þan eftsonez þer brest out a wounde aboute pe sidez, and it bygan to large it unto þat it was almost of þe same gretnez as it was afore. 'And if bou se þe bone mortified, witte pou þat it is incurable, or unnep for to merowe [mowe?] be cured. If þou trow it be curable, it is to be helped with some cure of pe mormale in þe boke of Lamfrank. Also, as it is seid above, som tyme a man is smytyn som party of þe legge violently without wondyng of þe skynne, as of ane hors fote, or of a stone or staffe, or sich oper, and þan is it gode sone for to scarifie pe place ysmyten, and drawe be blode pennez, and after put on enplastrez repressyng akyng and bolnyng, ffor ofttymez þe mormale comep of sich þings.' IV. PROLOGUE 493-8, 527-8 We are told of Chaucer's Parson that he would visite The ferreste in his parisshe, muche and lyte, Upon his feet, and in his hand a staf. This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte. But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, In the Oxford Chaucer, published in 1894, Skeat has two notes on the sources of these lines: '498. The allusion is to Matt. v. 19, as shewn by a parallel passage in P. Plowman, C. xvi. 127. 528. Cf. Acts, i. I; Gower, Conf. Amantis, ii. 188.' More than a dozen years earlier, Mayor and Lumby, in their edition of Books 3 and 4 of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, had brought the above lines into relation with Bede's account of Aidan, in their notes on Eccl. Hist. 3. 5. Thus they quote: 'Non. aliter quam vivebat cum suis ipse docebat. . Discurrere per cuncta et urbana et rustica loca non equorum dorso sed pedum incessu vectus solebat'; and to this they add a number of parallels. Still other parallels may be found in Plummer's edition (1896) of Bede, Opera Historica 1. xxxvi. To these we may add a line from the epitaph on Gregory the Great (Eccl. Hist. 2. 1): Implebatque actu quicquid sermone docebat. 'In his hand a staf' scarcely demands a literary source; if it did, the Bible would readily suggest the form: Gen. 33. 18; Exod. 12. 11; 1 Sam. 17. 40; 2 Kings 4. 29; Zech. 3. 4. V. KNIGHT'S TALE 1290 On the wall of the Camera degli Sposi of the Castello di Corte at Mantua, Andrea Mantegna, between 1468 and 1474, represented a meeting between Lodovico II Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, and his son Francesco, then Cardinal. In one of the smaller compartments of the fresco is depicted the horse from which the Marquis has just alighted, and near the horse two large dogs, perhaps three feet in height to the top of the head, white or grey in color, one at least being held by a leash. This dog, the one facing the spectator, is of powerful build, the head large, the eyes small, and the ears cropped. The picture is reproduced by Thode (Mantegna, p. 61), Knapp (Andrea Mantegna, p. 41), and Kristeller (Andrea Mantegna, p. 251). Thode describes the dogs merely as Lodovico's favorites; Cruttwell (Andrea Mantegna, p. 69), as 'fierce looking boarhounds'; and Kristeller (p. 249), as 'huge dogs (not hounds for the chase, as has been supposed).' It is evident that the biographers are in considerable uncertainty as to the species of the dogs in question, even though Kristeller elsewhere maintains (p. 262) that these 'animals [are] studied from nature with amazing care and fidelity.' It occurs to me to suggest that these dogs may perhaps be alaunts, of which Baillie-Grohman remarks (Cook, The Last Months of Chaucer's Earliest Patron: Trans. Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences 21. 135): 'Both Gaston [de Foix] and the Spanish king [Alfonso XI] say that the body of the Alaunt was like that of a heavy greyhound, their eyes were small, they were square in the jaw, and that their ears were trimmed and pointed to make them look alert. The tail was rather large than small. They were of three colors, white, grey, and blackish.' De Noirmont (op. cit., p. 136) 'compares it to the Great Dane or German boarhound, to which he assigns a height of 30 to 32, or, exceptionally, 34 inches'— that is, to the shoulder. It will be seen that these accounts apply sufficiently well to the dogs delineated by Mantegna. Chaucer's alaunts, as we know, were white. Other representations of dogs which might be consulted in this connection are in Titian's picture of Charles V (Prado), Venus and Adonis (Prado), and Van Dyck's Duke of Juliers and Berg (Munich). For the alaunt in a fifteenth-century shield, see Encyc. Brit., 11th ed., 13. 326. VI. BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 368 The present Master of Peterhouse, writing in 1880,1 thus comments on this line: 'The Emperor Octovian (a favorite character of Carolingian legend,2 in Chaucer's poem probably a flattering allegory for the King) is holding his hunt.' Skeat, though he says 'the name originally referred to the emperor Augustus,' and notwithstanding its occurrence in that sense in L. G. W. 624, apparently accepts Ward's view, and supposes the allusion to be to the personage of the medieval romance. As bearing on this matter, it may be noted that Deschamps, who employs the name five times, never alludes to the legendary personage. Once, in discoursing on the Nativity, and the conditions then prevailing in the Roman world, he says*: Octovien sanz doubtance Regnoit vertueusement. 'Le temps Octovien' is conceived as a golden age. Thus (2. 5): Quant verray je le temps Octovien, Que toute paix fut au monde affermée? And at the beginning of another ballade (7. 251): Que toute paix fut reformée, Je voy Saincte Eglise essaucée, Bonnes euvres, devocion, Faire et tenir sanz fiction. -Dit il voir?-Par may foy, il ment. Elsewhere he compares the Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378), son of John of Bohemia, to Augustus (1. 296): Et l'empereur ot gracieux renom, L'empire tint com fist Octoviens, 1 Chaucer (English Men of Letters), pp. 68-9. 'Cf. Gaston Paris, Litt. Fr. au Moyen Age, 3d ed., p. 50; Wells, Manual, p. 118. Finally, after the death of Charles V of France (1380), he complains to Charles VI, possibly with allusion to his father (8. 159)5: Li tempts n'est pas qu'Octoviens Regnoit. In the light of these instances, then, it would seem probable that Chaucer is comparing Edward III to Augustus Cæsar. In representing Edward as enjoying the pleasures of the chase, Chaucer is upheld by the monk of St. Albans to whom we owe the Chronicon Anglia. On his deathbed, it appears, being encouraged by Alice Perrers to believe that he would recover, he would talk of nothing but hunting and hawking, 'and trifles of that sort." VII. CHAUCER'S 'SWERD OF WINTER' In the Legend of Good Women (125-7) we read: Of winter, that him naked made and mat, And in the Squire's Tale (52-7): Ful lusty was the weder and benigne, For which the foules, agayn the sonne shene, With these may be compared Roman de la Rose 6678-82 (ed. Et quant bise resouffle, il fauche Les floretes et la verdure A l'espée de sa froidure, Si que la flor i pert son estre Sitost cum el commence a nestre. The general notion is that of the 'penetrale frigus' of Lucretius I. 494, and the 'penetrabile frigus' of Virgil, Georg. I. 93; Martial 4. 19. 9; so in English we speak of piercing, biting (and bitter), cutting, sharp, keen cold. 6 8 Cf. Oeuvres II. 253-5. * Ed. Thompson (Rolls series), p. 142: 'Itaque factum est ut, per totum illud tempus, de aucupatione, venatione, talibus quoque nugis sermocinaretur.' |