APPENDIX.

The following notes refer to passages in Vol. II. (Part I.).

To p. 5, 1. 7 from below. With regard to the year of Wyclif's birth I adhere meanwhile to the traditional date 1324, for I see as little necessity for moving it back (with Lechler and Matthew) to about 1320, as for bringing it (with Buddensieg) forward to about 1330.

To p. 8, 1. 17.-The pamphlet against Garnier. For what reasons does Matthew (The English Works of W., ed. E.E.T.S., 1880, p. xiii.), I should be glad to know, refer this tract to the beginning of the reign of Richard II.?

To p. 18, 1. 2.-A critical examination of Wyclif's works started by Shirley in the Catal. and the Fasc. Ziz. has scarcely as yet touched the works written in English; however, in connection with his Latin works a very good commencement has been made by Lechler, and above all by Buddensieg in his Lat. Streitschriften. The question of their chronological order is by no means satisfactorily settled, and even as regards the genuineness of some of the treatises published by Arnold and Matthew, all sorts of uncertainties and doubts remain to be solved (even where no mention of them is made by the editors). I shall here refer only to the circumstance still in need of explanation that the passages from the Bible quoted as texts of sermons and otherwise, in the Sermons published by Arnold, do not altogether correspond with the wording of Wyclif's Bible.-A careful examination is above all necessary with regard to the relation in which the English tracts and sermons stand to the Latin ones, and, in fact, not only in such cases where the question deals with different forms of a treatise in reality identical, but the treatises generally. Compare, for instance, De Christo et Antichristo C. 11-15 (see, more especially, p. 683, f., ed. Buddensieg) and the English treatises De Papa C. 2 (ed. Matthew, p. 462, f.); also De Officio Pastorali C. 32 (more especially Matthew, p. 457). The last-mentioned tract, moreover, does not appear to exist in

its original shape it would seem absolutely clear that Chap. 15 (Matthew, p. 429, f.) belonged in a different connection, and was here an interpolation. Hence a whole series of questions still needs explanation. Without a careful study of the language and style, it can scarcely be hoped that much advance will be made in the criticism of Wyclif's writings.

As

To p. 21, 1. 21.-Struggle against the mendicant friars. When Wyclif began it is uncertain, still Lechler may be right in referring the beginning of the systematic struggle to 1381 (comp. Englisch. Uebersetz., ii. 143). After what was said above respecting Matthew's treatise it seems to me somewhat hazardous to draw with him (p. xliii., f.) far-reaching inferences from the English version De Off. Past. and the supposed date of its origin. regards Buddensieg (Lat. Streitschr., p. xvii. note 2), the following point must be taken into consideration. If Wyclif in his struggle with the mendicant friars remembered his predecessors, and among them Richard of Armagh, and said in regard to them (Lat. Streitschr., p. 92): Que ergo mali suspicio, si nos intrantes in labores eorum, ex innovacione sceleris fratrum, addimus super eos? this in no way means to imply that the thought of continuing the work of his predecessors had led him to open the dispute, and much less that this thought had struck him immediately after the death of Richard of Armagh; and yet this is the point in question.

To p. 48, 1. 23.-Chaucer invariably follows the rhyme system : ababbcc, whereas his prototypes more frequently show ababbaa. By the change of rhyme at the close of the strophe, the arrangement gains in clearness and the ending in decision.

To p. 74, 1. 3.—In the Shirley MS. in Trinity College, Cambridge (R. 3. 20), the poem bears the title: Loo yee louers gladepe and comfortepe you. of pallyaunce etrayted bytwene pe hardy and furyous Mars. pe god of armes and Venus be double goddesse of loue made by. Geffrey Chaucier. at þe comandement of Pe renoumed and excellent Prynce my lord pe Duc John of Lancastre.

To p. 75, 1. 29.-" The long Compleynte of Mars:" it consists of 5 x 3 and of an introductory strophe. The strophe of the Compleynte shows itself to be an extension of the seven-lined stanza employed in the other portions of the poem : aabaabbcc.

To p. 107, 1. 8.-The House of Fame has not come down to us altogether perfect in form. The structure of the traditional text, however, does not warrant the inference that it proceeded thus from the poet's hand, and taking everything well into consideration this is not exactly probable. Fortunately the missing end (for what the prints offer as such seems to have originated mainly with Caxton) can scarcely have consisted of many verses, although perhaps very interesting ones.

To p. 126, 1. 12.—That we have an independent poem in the Preamble to The Wyf of Bathe-after withdrawing the parts from lines 163-192, and from lines 829-856 (in doing which, however, 1. 828 would probably have to be altered)—and one that originated outside of the frame of the Canterbury Tales, seems probable for the following reasons: (1) because of the great length and singular nature of this delineation in monologue form; (2) because it begins quite independently (an important criterion for recognizing earlier portions of a large collective work, that have subsequently been brought into a new connection, cf. the stories of the Doctor, the Shipman, and the Second Nun-in the present case this is of course much more important where the question deals with a Tale); (3) because it in no way seems intended to lead over to any other regular story, but to have itself as its object, cf. lines 1-3 and 193-195 (while among the supplementary lines 1. 831 contains a subsequent criticism of itself meant to anticipate that of the reader); (4) because the sketch of the Wife of Bath which adorns the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales appears rather to be a resumé than to have developed from it; (5) because it is mentioned in Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton as an independent work; and (6) what is more important, because it figures precisely in the same manner in the story of January and May (the Marchauntes Tale). With regard to the last-mentioned Tale, it is evident from the reference to the Wife of Bath that it cannot have been produced long after the latter (which is probable for other reasons as well); further, that the story of January and May, if intended to be used in some wider connection-which is not necessarily to be inferred from 1. 1106, f.—can nevertheless scarcely have been written with regard to the Canterbury Tales.

To p. 131, 1. 2 from below.-Very different in form-even though connected with the fundamental motive of the fable (probably belonging to the East)—are the contents of the detailed story in the Comœdia Lydia of Matthieu de Vendôme and those of a well-known tale from the Decameron (vii. 9), also made use of by La Fontaine.

To p. 143, 1. 23.-The picture which Chaucer gives of his Mendicant Friar coincides exactly, in many an individual feature, with the accounts given in the poetical pamphlets of the time of the pious friars, generally without any attempt at delineating individual characters. See more especially the Song against the Friars (by a neophyte who had again withdrawn from the order) in Wright, Political Poems and Songs, i. 263, ff. Another poem, l.c., p. 268, ff., is directed against the Franciscans in particular. Mendicant friars and monks are both sharply rebuked in a curious Latin poem written in 1382 by an adherent of Wyclif's, under the influence of the London

Council and of the Oxford disputations, l.c., p. 253, ff. The poet, who had himself been a Benedictine neophyte, subsequently left the order (hence is not, as has been said, identical with the author of the Song against the Friars), in the first half of his poem is clearly under the influence of an English satire on all classes of society written in the reign of Edward II. (See this work, vol. i. p. 318, ff.). He, again, seems to have exercised an influence as regards form at least-upon the author of the Satire against the Franciscans. The three above-mentioned poems are also printed in Breuer, Monumenta Franciscana, pp. 591-608, in part from better texts.

To p. 150, 1. 14.-To my mind it is an arbitrary proceeding to make two fragments out of the group: Student, Merchant, Squire, Franklin, which in the earlier stages of the Canterbury Tales represents four fragments, yet at a later stage forms a definite whole. And I call it an act of violence, in so doing, to take the connecting-piece before the Merchant's Tale, which leads on to the following one, and to cut it right in two, although the traditional text preserves the unity, in spite of the variety of application.

To p. 160, 1. 14.-The large majority of the MSS. read squier in place of sompnour, and this-in spite of the contrary opinion of so distinguished a Chaucerian scholar as Bradshawcan as little correspond with the poet's first as with his last intentions. Only one manuscript, which is not specially trustworthy either with regard to the text or the arrangement of the parts, reads: Shipman. It must be confessed that of the pilgrims who come into question here, the Shipman would be the one best fitted to fill the vacant place. And, further, it cannot be denied that by connecting the fragment of the story begun by the Shipman, with the Man of Law's Tale, a number of difficult questions with regard to the poetical chronology and geography of the whole series would be solved. Hence it may, therefore, be advisable to accept this order in an edition of the Canterbury Tales. Why we have not made it the basis of our presentation has already been stated on p. 165. I shall here confine myself to the remark that it cannot have been Chaucer's intention to place the words originally written for the sompnour into the shipman's mouth unaltered-the less so as, among the reasons which induced him to assign the sompnour a position different to the one at first intended, the poet was probably also affected by the knowledge that it was wiser not directly to touch upon any question concerning the Lollards in his poem.

Top. 161, 1. 5 from below.-Fabliau of Dan John, subsequently Shipmanes Tale. The subsequent intention of the poet is placed beyond doubt by the testimony of the traditional texts, and above all by the connecting link which Chaucer inserted between The