made by one of the characters in the _Court of Love_, a poem which scholars are now universally of opinion is not Chaucer's work, it has little weight. As a matter of fact Chaucer's name does not appear in the records of any college at either university, and, as Professor Lounsbury has conclusively shown, wide as are the poet's interests, and great as his knowledge undoubtedly is, the scholarship shown by his works is not so remarkable as necessarily to imply close and protracted study. Classical legends were frequently embodied in the romances of an age in which, if we may believe Jean Bodel, himself a poet, Ne sont que trois matières à nul homme entendant, De France, et de Bretagne, et de Rome la grant,[4] and the habit of treating Alexander the Great as if he were brother-in-arms to Roland and Oliver naturally opened the door to all sorts of embellishments and modifications. A veil of romance covers and colours the history of Greece and Rome. To Chaucer, Cleopatra is akin to the Lady of the Hideous Pass, or Morgan le Fay. The account of her death given in the _Legend of Good Women_ (l. 671, etc.) is purely mediæval:-- (She) made her subtil workmen make a shryne Of alle the rubies and the stones fyne In all Egipte that she coude espye; And putte ful the shryne of spycerye, And leet the cors embaume;[5] and forth she fette This dede cors, and in the shryne hit shette.[6] And next the shryne a pit than doth she grave; And alle the serpents that she mighte have She putte hem in that grave.... * * * * * And with that word, naked, with ful good herte, Among the serpents in the pit she sterte.[7]