apparently for no reason except to show the author’s learning, and reaching the highest pitch of grotesque absurdity when the Confessor occupies himself in demolishing the claim of Venus to be accounted a goddess, and that too without even the excuse of having forgotten for the moment that he is supposed to be her priest. Minor excrescences of the same kind are to be found in the third book, where the lawfulness of war is discussed, and in the fourth, where there is a dissertation on the rise of the Arts, and especially of Alchemy. All that can be said is that these digressions were very common in the books of the age—the Roman de la Rose, at least in the part written by Jean de Meun, is one of the worst offenders.

[Pg xx]

Faults of detail it would be easy enough to point out. The style is at times prosaic and the matter uninteresting, the verse is often eked out with such commonplace expressions and helps to rhyme as were used by the writers of the time, both French or English. Sometimes the sentences are unduly spun out or the words and clauses are awkwardly transposed for the sake of the uninterrupted smoothness of the verse. The attainment of this object moreover is not always an advantage, and sometimes the regularity of the metre and the inevitable recurrence of the rhyme produces a tiresome result. On the whole however the effect is not unpleasing, ‘the ease and regularity with which the verse flows breathes a peaceful contentment, which communicates itself to the reader, and produces the same effect upon the ear as the monotonous but not wearisome splashing of a fountainC.’ Moreover, as has already been pointed out, when the writer is at his best, the rhyme is kept duly in the background, and the paragraph is constructed quite independently of the couplet, so that this[Pg xxi] form of metre proves often to be a far better vehicle for the narrative than might have been at first supposed.

[Pg xxi]

ii. Date and Circumstances.—The Confessio Amantis in its earliest form bears upon the face of it the date 1390 (Prol. 331 margin)D, and we have no reason to doubt that this was the year in which it was first completed. The author tells us that it was written at the command of King Richard II, whom he met while rowing on the Thames at London, and who invited him to come into his barge to speak with him. It is noticeable, however, that even this first edition has a dedication to Henry earl of Derby, contained in the Latin lines at the end of the poemE, so that it is not quite accurate to say that the dedication was afterwards changed, but rather that this dedication was made more prominent and 

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