'Rarely into the branches of the tree
Doth human worth mount up: and so ordains
He who bestows it, that as His free gift
It may be called.'
[320] Marsh notes that similar sentiments occur in the Canzone prefixed to
the fourth Trattato in Dante's Convito.
1135. The general sense is--'if gentle conduct were naturally implanted in
a particular family, none of that family could ever behave badly.' Cf. ll.
1150, 1151.
'Were virtue by descent, a noble name
Could never villanise his father's fame.'
Dryden's paraphrase.
1140. Chaucer's tr. of Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 7. 43, mentions 'the
mountaigne that highte _Caucasus_.' This is probably where he got the name
from. Cf. Shakespeare's 'frosty _Caucasus_'; Rich. II. i. 3. 295. The whole
passage is imitated from another place in Boethius, where Chaucer's
translation has:--'Certes, yif that honour of poeple were a natural yift to
dignitees, it ne mighte never cesen ... to don his office, right as fyr in
every contree ne stinteth nat to eschaufen and to ben hoot'; bk. iii. pr.
4. 44-8. In l. 1139, Dryden merely alters _in_ to _to_.
1142. _lye_, i. e. blaze. 'Hevene _y-leyed_ wose syth,' whoever sees heaven
in a blaze; Relig. Antiq. i. 266. The sb. _lye_, a flame, occurs in P. Pl.
C. xx. 172. Cf. A. S. _l[=y]g_, _l[=i]g_, flame.
1146-56. Much altered and expanded in Dryden.