caused it to be generally overlookedH.

The form of epilogue which was substituted for that of the first recension, and in which the over-sanguine praise of Richard as a ruler is cancelled, bears in the margin the date of the fourteenth year of his reign (viii. 2973 margin), ‘Hic in anno quarto decimo Regis Ricardi orat pro statu regni,’ &c. Now the fourteenth year of King Richard II was from June 21, 1390, to the same day of 1391. We must therefore suppose that the change in this part of the book took place, in some copies at least, within a few months of its first completion.

Thirdly, we have an equally precise date for the alteration in the Prologue, by which all except a formal mention of Richard II is[Pg xxiii] excluded, while the dedication to Henry of Lancaster is introduced into the text of the poem; and here the time indicated is the sixteenth year of King Richard (Prol. 25), a date which appears also in the margin of some copies here and at l. 97, so that we may assume that this final change of form took place in the year 1392-93, that is, not later than June 1393.

[Pg xxiii]

Having thus every step dated for us by the author, we may, if we think it worth while, proceed to conjecture what were the political events which suggested his action; but in such a case as this it is evidently preposterous to argue first from the political conditions, of which as they personally affected our author and his friends we can only be very imperfectly informed, and then to endeavour to force the given dates into accordance with our own conclusionsI.

It will be observed from the above dates that we are led to infer two stages of alteration, and the expectation is raised of finding the poem in some copies with the epilogue rewritten but the preface left in its original state. This expectation is fulfilled. The Bodley MS. 294 gives a text of this kind, and it is certain that there were others of the same form, for Berthelette used for his edition a manuscript of this kind, which was not identical with that which we have.

In discussing the import of the various changes introduced by the author it is of some importance to bear in mind the fact already mentioned that even the first issue of the Confessio Amantis had a kind of dedication to Henry of Lancaster in the Latin lines with which it concluded,

This seems rather to dispose of the idea that a dedication to Henry would be inconsistent with loyalty to Richard, a suggestion 

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