(Mir. 3801, 10948, 23370, Conf. Am. vi. 1513, vii. 3581). Now of these two, one, as it happens, is from Ovid and the other from Juvenal; so that not only the quotations but also the false references are repeated. These are not by any means all the examples of common quotations, but they will perhaps suffice.

Again, if we are not to accept the theory of common authorship,[Pg xl] we can hardly account for the resemblance, and something more than resemblance, in passages such as the description of Envy (Mir. 3805 ff., Conf. Am. ii. 3095, 3122 ff.), of Ingratitude (Mir. 6685 ff., Conf. Am. v. 4917 ff.), of the effects of intoxication (Mir. 8138, 8246, Conf. Am. vi. 19, 71), of the flock made to wander among the briars (Mir. 20161 ff., Conf. Am. Prol. 407 ff.), of the vainglorious knight (Mir. 23893 ff., Conf. Am. iv. 1627 ff.), and many others, not to mention those lines which occur here and there in the Confessio exactly reproduced from the Mirour, such as iv. 893,

[Pg xl]

compared with Mir. 5436,

Conf. Am. Prol. 213,

compared with Mir. 18675,

the context in this last case being also the same.

The parallels with the Vox Clamantis are not less numerous and striking, and as many of them as it seems necessary to mention are set down in the Notes to the Mirour, especially in the latter part from l. 18421 onwards.

Before dismissing the comparison with the Confessio Amantis, we may call attention to two further points of likeness. First, though the Mirour is written in stanzas and the Confessio in couplets, yet the versification of the one distinctly suggests that of the other. Both are in the same octosyllabic line, with the same rather monotonous regularity of metre, and the stanza of the Mirour, containing, as it does, no less than four pairs of lines which can be read as couplets so far as the rhyme is concerned, often produces much the same effect as the simple couplet. Secondly, in the structure of sentences there are certain definite characteristics which produce themselves equally in the French and the English work.

Resemblances of this latter kind will be pointed out in the Notes, but a few may be set down here. For example, every reader of Gower’s English is familiar with his trick of setting the conjunctions ‘and,’ ‘but,’ &c., in the middle instead of at the beginning 

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