713. This 'old man' answers to the _romito_ or hermit of the Italian text.
Note _an old_ (indefinite), as compared with _this oldë_ (definite) in l.
714.
715. Tyrwhitt, in his Glossary, remarks--'_God you see!_ 7751 [D. 2169];
_God him see!_ 4576 [B. 156]. May God keep you, or him, in his sight! In
Troilus, ii. 85, it is fuller[27]:--_God you save and see!_' Gower
has--'And than I bidde, _God hir see!_' Conf. Amant. bk. iv. (ed. Chalmers,
p. 116, col. 2, or ed. Pauli, ii. 96). In Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, ed.
Stallybrass, i. 21, we find a similar phrase in O. H. German:--'daz si got
iemer schouwe'; Iwain, l. 794. Cf. 'now loke the owre lorde!' P. Plowman,
B. i. 207. See also l. 766 below.
727. This is a great improvement upon the Italian Tale, which represents
the hermit as _fleeing_ from death. 'Fratelli miei, io fuggo la morte, che
mi vien dietro cacciando mi.'
Professor Kittredge, of Harvard University, informs me that ll. 727-733 are
imitated from the first Elegy of Maximian, of which ll. 1-4, 223-8 are as
follows:--
'Almula cur cessas finem properare senectus?
Cur et in hoc fesso corpore tarda sedes?
Solue, precor, miseram tali de carcere uitam;
Mors est iam requies, uiuere poena mihi....
Hinc est quod baculo incumbens ruitura senectus
Assiduo pigram uerbere pulsat humum.
[288]
Et numerosa mouens certo uestigia passu
Talia rugato creditur ore loqui:
"Suscipe me, genetrix, nati miserere laborum,
Membra uelis gremio fessa fouere tuo."'
Cf. Calderon, Les Tres Justicias en Una; Act ii. sc. 1.