66. _Eight goodly questions with their answers_; printed in Bell's Chaucer,
vol. iv. p. 421; nine 7-line stanzas. In st. 3, _tree_ rimes with _profer_;
but _tree_ is an obvious misprint for _cofer_! In st. 5, the gerund _to
lie_ (Ch. _ly-e_) rimes with _honestie_ (Ch. _honestee_). This is quite
enough to condemn it. But it may be Lydgate's.
67. _To the Kings most noble Grace, and to the Lords and Knights of the
Garter_; pr. as above, p. 424; eight 8-line stanzas. In MS. Phillipps 8151,
and written by Hoccleve; it much resembles his poem printed in _Anglia_, v.
23. The date may be 1416. The 'King' is Henry V.
68. _Sayings._ Really three separate pieces. They are all found on the
fly-leaf of the small quarto edition of Caxton, described above, p. 27.
When Caxton printed Chaucer's _Anelida_ and _Purse_ on a quire of ten
leaves, it so happened that he only filled up nine of them. But, after
adding _explicit_ at the bottom of the ninth leaf, to shew that he had come
to the end of his Chaucer, he thought it a pity to waste space, and so
added three popular sayings on the front of leaf 10, leaving the back of it
still blank. Here is what he printed:--
'Whan feyth failleth in prestes sawes
And lordes hestes ar holden for lawes
And robbery is holden purchas
And lechery is holden solas
Than shal the lond of albyon
Be brought to grete confusio_u_n.
Hit falleth for euery gentilman
To saye the best that he can
In mannes absence
And the soth in his presence.
'Hit cometh by kynde of gentil blode
To cast away al heuynes
And gadre to-gidre wordes good
The werk of wisedom berith witnes
Et sic est finis ****.'
The first of these sayings was probably a bit of popular rime, of the
character quoted in Shakespeare's _King Lear_, iii. 2. 81. Shakespeare
calls his lines _Merlin's_ prophecy; and it has pleased the editors of
Chaucer to call the first six lines _Chaucer's_ Prophecy[234]. They appear
in Bell's Chaucer, vol. iii. p. 427, in an 'improved' form, not worth
discussing; and the last eight lines are also printed in the same, vol. iv.
p. 426. Why they are separated, is mysterious. Those who think them genuine
may thank me for giving them Caxton's spelling instead of Speght's.
§ 13. PIECES ADDED IN MORRIS'S EDITION, 1866.
In Morris's edition are some pieces which either do not appear in previous
editions, or were first printed later than 1700.
69. Roundel; pr. in vol. vi. p. 304. The same as Merciless Beaute; here
printed as no. XI. It first appeared, however, in Percy's Reliques of
English Poetry. See p. 80 below.
70. The Former Age; pr. in vol. vi. p. 300, for the first time. Here
printed as no. IX. See p. 78.
71. _Prosperity_; pr. in vol. vi. p. 296, for the first time. This is taken
from MS. Arch. Selden B. 24, fol. 119, where it follows Chaucer's Poem on
'Truth.' It has but one stanza of eight lines, and I here give it precisely
as it stands in this Scottish MS.:--
'Richt as pou_er_t causith sobirnes,
And febilnes enforcith contenence,
Ry_ch_t so prosperitee and grete riches
The moder is of vice and negligence;
And powere also causith Insolence;
And hono_ur_ oftsiss changith gude thewis;
Thare is no more p_er_ilouss pestilence
Than hie estate geven vnto schrewis.
Q_uo_d Chaucere.'
I have no belief in the genuineness of this piece, though it is not ill
written. In general, the ascription of a piece to Chaucer in a MS. is
valuable. But the scribe of this particular MS. was reckless. It is he who
made the mistake of marking Hoccleve's 'Mother of God' with the misleading
remark--'Explicit or_aci_o Galfridi Chaucere.' At fol. 119, back, he gives
us a poem beginning 'Deuise prowes and eke humylitee' in seven 7-line
stanzas, and here again at the end is the absurd remark--'Q_uo_d Chaucer
quhen he was ry_ch_t auisit.' But he was himself quite 'wrongly advised';
for it is plainly not Chaucer's at all. His next feat is to mark Lydgate's
Complaynt of the Black Knight by saying--'Here endith the Maying and
disporte of Chaucere'; which shews how the editors were misled as to this
poem. Nor is this all; for he gives us, at fol. 137, back, another poem in
six 8-line stanzas, beginning 'O hie Emperice and quene celestial'; and
here again at the end is his stupid--'Q_uo_d Chaucere.' The date of this
MS. appears to be 1472; so it is of no high authority; and, unless we make
some verbal alteration, we shall have to explain how Chaucer came to write
_oftsiss_ in two syllables instead of _ofte sythe_ in four; see his Can.
Yem. Tale, Group G, l. 1031.
72. _Leaulte vault Richesse_; pr. in vol. vi. p. 302, for the first time.
This is from the same MS., fol. 138, and is as follows:--
'This warldly Ioy is onely fantasy,
Of quhich non erdly wicht ca_n_ be _con_tent;
Quho most has wit, leste suld In It affy,
Quho taist_is_ It most, most sall him repent;
Quhat valis all this richess and this rent,
Sen no ma_n_ wate quho sall his tresour haue?
P_re_sume no_ch_t gevin th_a_t god has done but lent,
Within schort tyme the quhiche he think_is_ to craue.
_Leaulte vault richess._'
On this poem, I have three remarks to make. The first is that not even the
reckless Scottish scribe attributes it to Chaucer. The second is that
Chaucer's forms are _content_ and _lent_ without a final _e_, and
_repent-e_ and _rent-e_ with a final _-e_, so that the poem cannot be his;
although _content_, _repent_, _rent_, and _lent_ rime well enough in the
Northern dialect. The third is that if I could be sure that the above lines
were by a well-known author, I should at once ascribe them to King James
I., who might very well have written these and the lines called
_Prosperity_ above. It is somewhat of a coincidence that the very MS. here
discussed is that in which the unique copy of the _Kingis Quair_ is
preserved.
73. _Proverbs of Chaucer_; printed in vol. vi. p. 303. The first eight
lines are genuine; here printed as no. XX. But two 7-line stanzas are
added, which are spurious. In MS. Addit. 16165, Shirley tells us that they
were 'made by Halsham Esquyer'; but they seem to be Lydgate's, unless he
_added_ to them. See Lydgate's Minor Poems (Percy Soc. 1840), pp. 193 and
74. And see pp. 52, 57.
It thus appears that, of the 73 pieces formerly attributed to Chaucer, not
more than 26, and a part of a 27th, can be genuine. These are: _Canterbury
Tales_, _Troilus_, _Legend of Good Women_, _House of Fame_, about a quarter
of _The Romaunt of the Rose_, the _Minor Poems_ printed in the present
volume and numbered I-XI, XIII-XXI, and two pieces in prose.
§ 14. DESCRIPTION OF THE MSS.
After the preceding somewhat tedious, but necessary discussion of the
contents of the black-letter and other editions (in many of which poems
were as recklessly attributed to Chaucer as medieval proverbs used to be to
King Solomon), it is some relief to turn to the manuscripts, which usually
afford much better texts, and are altogether more trustworthy.
The following is a list of the MSS. which have been followed. I must here
acknowledge my great debt to Dr. Furnivall, whose excellent, careful, and
exact reproduction in print of the various MSS. leaves nothing to be
desired, and is a great boon to all Chaucer scholars. They are nearly
all[235] printed among the Chaucer Society's publications. At the same
time, I desire to say that I have myself consulted most of the MSS., and
have thus gleaned a few hints which could hardly have been otherwise
acquired; it was by this process that I became acquainted with the poems
numbered XXII. and XXIII., which are probably genuine, and with the poem
numbered XII., which is certainly so. An editor should always look at the
MSS. for himself, if he can possibly contrive to do so.