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Laz cum de male heure nez fu

(Cil) . . . qui par sa feruant auarice
Tant foux que par artifice

Celle chose qui veult celer
Nature ce fist reueler

Et terre tant parfont affine

Que cuers humains art et mine."

There is a third version in a solitary MS., dated 1397, which M. Paul Meyer declares to be but "un vulgaire plagiat" of J. de Meun's translation.1

SECTION IX.-JEHAN DE CIS (fourteenth century).

Authority.-M. Paulin Paris, 'Les Manuscrits français,' t. v.,

1842.

The Bibl. Nat. possesses yet another fourteenthcentury rendering, coming from the hand of a fellow-townsman of Jehan de Meun. This common birthplace naturally led to a confusion of the two writers, and indeed the copyist of MSS. fr., No. 576 (fifteenth century) assigns it to the poet of 'Le Roman de la Rose.' But M. Paulin Paris in 1842 finally dispelled this illusion, and conjectured the author to be Jehan de Cis, a Dominican,2 of whom mention is made in the epilogue of the translation beginning "Celui qui bien bat les buissons."

The obscurity and affectation of the work we are 1 Romania, 1873, p. 272. 2 Les MSS. fr., v. pp. 46 and 52.

considering are sufficient excuse for a fresh translation such as the one which used to be attributed to Charles d'Orléans.

SECTION X.-FRERE RENAUT DE LOUHANS.

Authority.-M. Paul Meyer in 'Romania,' t. ii., 1873, p. 272. MSS. in B. M., Roy. 19. a, iv.* (early xv.); Eg. 2633 (xv.)

Passing over a prose translation into French by an Italian (fourteenth century) and a verse translation which M. Meyer has shown to be nothing more than a variation of “Celui qui bien bat les buissons," 1 another verse translation must be remarked, which enjoyed a great vogue, to judge by the number of MSS. extant. Its date is fixed by the words of the epilogue as 1336, and the author's name, Frere Renaut de Louhans, is given by the initial letters of the nineteen octaves of the prologue.

Frere Renaut appears to have paraphrased rather than translated the Consolation.' Thus, in dealing with ii. m. 5, he is not content, like Boethius, to contrast the former with the present age, but divides the life of the world into four periods-the first, of innocence; the second and third, when agriculture and avarice respectively began; the last, our own, "plus mauvais que les quatre devant."

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I will quote a few lines as a specimen of his closer adhesion to the Latin :

"Nestoient perduz par outrage,
La glan mengoient du boscage
Quant jeune grant piece avoient
Clare ne pyment ne buvoient
Et ne savoient artifices
Comment le vin et les espices
Se doivent ensemble meller
Dieu ne leur vouloit reveler
Comment li drap se coulouroient
Tout vestu sur lerbe gisoient

Ilz buvoient a grant alaine
Leaue qui vint de la fontaine
Car ne cognoissoient les vins.
Sur les arbres et sur les pins
Estoit leur habitacion;
Navoient autre mancion."

ENGLAND.

SECTION XI-CHAUCER (1340-1400).

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Authorities.-Ten Brink, 'Chaucer-Studien.' 1870. Furnivall, Trial-Forewords,' Chaucer Soc. Publ., 1871. Chaucer's Boëce,' ed. Morris. E. E.T.S., 1868. MS. in C. U. L., Ii. 3. 21* (early xv.)

But the middle-age writer upon whom, more than upon any other, Boethius left his mark, and with whom the English reader will probably feel most sympathy, is Geoffrey Chaucer, "the first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence" in our language,

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as Caxton reverently calls him. His acquaintance with the works of the Roman philosopher, which would seem to date from about the year 1369, when he wrote the Deth of Blaunche,' had ripened into a real intimacy by the middle of the seventies and the beginning of the eighties,—the period, that is, which saw the production of Troylus and Cryseyde,' the Parlement of Foules,' the Hous of Fame,' and the rendering into prose of the Consolation of Philosophy.' At this time, indeed, Chaucer must have known his Boethius almost by heart. Troylus and Cryseyde' teems with echoes and direct imitations of the Latin book, and Boethius is the deus ex machina brought in by the poet to help him out of the difficulty into which his treatment of the story, so different from that of Boccaccio, had led him. For it will be remembered that the Italian poet in the 'Filostrato hastens over the courtship of Troylus to dwell upon the catastrophe and its after results, while it is just upon the scenes which Boccaccio neglected that Chaucer expended all his powers of humour and pathos. From Boccaccio we only get one more illustration of the line, " Frailty, thy name is woman"; from Chaucer a true love-story, the most beautiful of the middle ages, and perhaps of all time.

After Cryseyde has been wooed and won-in other words, when the poem has reached its culminating point of interest-Chaucer seems to shrink from the unwelcome task, which the development of the theme as he had it from Boccaccio set before him, of dragging his heroine in the dust; and so he calls in the aid of the Consolation' to account for her faithlessness.

"For al that cometh, comth by necessite;
Thus to ben lorne, it is my desteyne,"

cries Troylus, when he learns that his love is to be parted from him and carried back to the Grecian camp; and he goes on in the words of Boethius (Cons., v. pr. 2 and 3) to show how God's foreknowledge must of necessity destroy man's freewill, and that therefore Cryseyde and he, luckless pair, must accept and bow to the inevitable. He is interrupted in the midst of his meditations by Pandarus, and so never reaches the answer given by Philosophy to her imprisoned disciple, in which she tells him that the arm of God is not to be measured by the finger of man-that the divine. prescience does not at all interfere with human. freedom of choice. "Manet intemerata mortalibus

arbitrii libertas " are among the last words she speaks to him. But to have developed the argu

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