'Car il m'est vis que je veoie,
Au joli prael ou j'estoie,
La plus tres belle compaignie
Qu'oncques fust veue ne oïe:'
Dit du Vergier, ed. Tarbé, p. 14.
'Tant qu'il avint, qu'en une compagnie
Où il avait mainte dame jolie
Juene, gentil, joïeuse et envoisie
_Vis_, par Fortune,
(Qui de mentir à tous est trop commune),
_Entre les autres l'une_
Qui, tout aussi _com li solaus la lune_
_Veint de clarté,_
_Avait-elle les autres sormonté_
_De pris, d'onneur, de grace, de biauté;' &c._
Fontaine Amoureuse (in Trial Forewords, p. 47).
These are, no doubt, the lines to which Tyrwhitt refers in his remarks on
the present passage in a note to the last paragraph of the Persones Tale.
Observe also how closely the fifth line of the latter passage answers to l.
812.
823. _Is_, which is; as usual. I propose this reading. That of the MSS. is
very bad, viz. 'Than any other planete in heven.'
824. 'The seven stars' generally mean the planets; but, as the sun and moon
and planets have just been mentioned, the reference may be to the
well-known seven stars in Ursa Major commonly called Charles's Wain. In
later English, the _seven stars_ sometimes mean the Pleiades; see _Pleiade_
in Cotgrave's French Dictionary, and G. Douglas, ed. Small, i. 69. 23, iii.
147. 15. The phrase is, in fact, ambiguous; see note to P. Plowman, C.
xviii. 98.