once the meaning of an obsolete word or form. Where the same word often recurs, the explanation is repeated often but not always: often enough, it is hoped, for the convenience of a reader who dips into the book for a tale or two, and has not yet read it through. The only modernised word is the pronoun 'thee' in a few earlier pages of the volume. It had in Gower's time, like 'me,' only one 'e.' This of course gives readers the trouble of discriminating between pronoun and article.. Wherever in the early pages of the book the word 'thee' is found, the second 'e' is of my adding; but after those earlier pages I have avoided making even that slight alteration. A few notes on the sources of Gower's Tales will be found in the Table of Contents. Of John Gower himself and of his works a fuller account than it is here possible to give will be found in the fourth volume of my "English Writers." CARISBROOKE, March 1889. H. M. (Gower's Tales of Troy are chiefly from Guido de Colonna, PAGES Story of the pious Constance . (Partly from the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais, and the Rhyme of Emare. Used by Chaucer Story of Demetrius and Perseus, sons of Alexander (The Treachery of Perseus from the Epitome of Trogus Pompeius, by Justinus, Lib. XXXII. cap. 2. The PAGES (Ovid: Heroides, Ep. IX.; Metamorphoses, Book IX.). Agamemnon's taking of Briseis from Achilles . 128, 129 The Supplanting of Troilus with Cressida by (From Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida.) Story of the Roman Emperor's son, the Caliph of Egypt's daughter, and the Knight's false Book IIE. Story of Canace from Ovid, Heroides, Ep. XI. Against this story Chaucer protested in the Prologue to the Man of Lawes Tale, where he made the Man of Lawes, after giving a list of tales that had been told "But certainly no word ne writeth he |