fully related as a rule, in the Confessio Amantis. Only one or two, the stories of St. Macaire and the devil (12565, 20905), of the very undeserving person who was relieved by St. Nicholas (15757), of the dishonest man who built a church (15553), together with various Bible stories rather alluded to than related, and the long Life of the Virgin at the end of the book, remain the property of the Mirour alone.

[Pg xxxix]

[Pg xxxix]

If we take next the anecdotes and emblems of Natural History, we shall find them nearly all again in either the Latin or the English work. To illustrate the vice of Detraction we have the ‘escarbud,’ the ‘scharnebud,’ of the Confessio Amantis, which takes no delight in the flowery fields or in the May sunshine, but only seeks out vile ordure and filth (2894, Conf. Am. ii. 413). Envy is compared to the nettle which grows about the roses and destroys them by its burning (3721, Conf. Am. ii. 401). Homicide is made more odious by the story of the bird with a man’s features, which repents so bitterly of slaying the creature that resembles it (5029, Conf. Am. iii. 2599); and we may note also that in both books this authentic anecdote is ascribed to Solinus, who after all is not the real authority for it. Idleness is like the cat that would eat fish without wetting her paws (5395, Conf. Am. iv. 1108). The covetous man is like the pike that swallows down the little fishes (6253, Conf. Am. v. 2015). Prudence is the serpent which refuses to hear the voice of the charmer, and while he presses one ear to the ground, stops the other with his tail (15253, Conf. Am. i. 463). And so on.

Then again there are a good many quotations common to the Mirour and one or both of the other books, adduced in the same connexion and sometimes grouped together in the same order. The passage from Gregory’s Homilies about man as a microcosm, partaking of the nature of every creature in the universe, which we find in the Prologue of the Confessio and also in the Vox Clamantis, appears at l. 26869 of the Mirour; that about Peter presenting Judea in the Day of Judgement, Andrew Achaia, and so on, while our bishops come empty-handed, is also given in all three (Mir. 20065, Vox. Cl. iii. 903, Conf. Am. v. 1900). To illustrate the virtue of Pity the same quotations occur both in the Mirour and the Confessio Amantis, from the Epistle of St. James, from Constantine, and from Cassiodorus (Mir. 13929, 23055 ff., Conf Am. vii. 3149*, 3161*, 3137). Three quotations referred to ‘Orace’ occur in the Mirour, and of these three two reappear in the Confessio with the same author’s name 

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