223. _titlelees_, title-less, glossed in Hn. by the words _sine titulo_. It
means 'usurping,' as applied to one who has no title or claim to a throne
except force. Obviously written before 1399!
224. Here _out-law-e_ is trisyllabic, and the final _e_ is preserved by the
caesura. But in l. 231 the accent is thrown back, and it is dissyllabic, as
in modern English. Tyrwhitt puts _any_ for _a_, against all authority.
227. This well-known story of Alexander occurs in the Gesta Romanorum, c.
146; and this circumstance gave it vogue. In Swan's translation, the tale
begins thus:--'Augustine tells us in his book, De Civitate Dei, that
Diomedes, in a piratical galley, for a long time infested the sea,
plundering and sinking many ships. Being captured by command of Alexander,
before whom he was brought, the king inquired how he dared to molest the
seas. "How darest _thou_," replied he, "molest the earth? Because I am
master only of a single galley, I am termed a robber; but you, who oppress
the world with huge squadrons, are called a king and a conquerour."' John
of Salisbury repeats the story in his Policraticus, lib. iii. c. 14. Cf.
Higden, Polychron. iii. 422.
239. _volage_, giddy, thoughtless; cf. E. _volatile_. See the E. version of
the Romaunt of the Rose, l. 1284 (vol. i. p. 147).
243. It was already understood that _cuckoo_ was, as Shakespeare says, 'a
word of fear'; see Love's Labour's Lost, v. 2. 920. In the Parl. of Foules,
358, we find: 'the cukkow ever unkinde'; vol. i. p. 348.
252. _blered is thyn ye_, thine eye is bleared or dimmed, i. e. thou art
deceived or cajoled. See A. 4049.