Todd, in his Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer, p. xxxi, mentions another MS. 'in the possession of Mr. G. Nicol, his Majesty's bookseller,' in which the above translation is differently attributed in the colophon, which ends thus: 'translatus anno d_omi_ni millesimo ccccx^o. per Capellanum Iohannem Tebaud, alius Watyrbeche.' This can hardly be correct[17]. I may here note that this verse translation has _two_ separate Prologues. One Prologue gives a short account of Boethius and his times, and is extant in MS. Gg. iv. 18 in the Cambridge University Library. An extract from the other is quoted below. MS. E Museo 53, in the Bodleian Library, contains both of them. § 14. As to the work itself, Metre 1 of Book i. and Metre 5 of the same are printed entire in Wülker's Altenglisches Lesebuch, ii. 56-9. In one of the metrical prologues to the whole work the following passage occurs, which I copy from MS. Royal 18 A xiii:-- 'I have herd spek and sumwhat haue y-seyne, Of diuerse men[18], that wounder subtyllye, In metir sum, and sum in prosë pleyne, This book translated haue[19] suffishantlye In-to[20] Englissh tongë, word for word, wel nye[21]; Bot I most vse the wittes that I haue; Thogh I may noght do so, yit noght-for-thye, With helpe of god, the sentence schall I saue. To Chaucer, that is floure of rethoryk In Englisshe tong, and excellent poete, This wot I wel, no-thing may I do lyk, Thogh so that I of makynge entyrmete: And Gower, that so craftily doth trete, As in his book, of moralitee, Thogh I to theym in makyng am vnmete, [Gh]it most I schewe it forth, that is in me.' This is an early tribute to the excellence of Chaucer and Gower as poets. § 15. When we examine Walton's translation a little more closely, it soon becomes apparent that he has largely availed himself of Chaucer's prose translation, which he evidently kept before him as a model of language. For example, in Bk. ii. met. 5, l. 16, Chaucer has the expression:--'tho weren the cruel clariouns ful hust and ful stille.' This reappears in one of Walton's lines in the form:--'Tho was ful huscht the cruel clarioun.' This is poetry made easy, no doubt. In order to exhibit this a little more fully, I here transcribe the whole of Walton's translation of this metre, which may be compared with Chaucer's rendering at pp. 40, 41 below. I print in italics all the words which are common to the two versions, so as to shew this curious result, viz. that Walton was here more indebted to Chaucer, than Chaucer, when writing his poem of 'The Former Age,' was to himself. The MS. followed is the Royal MS. mentioned above (p. xvi). BOETHIUS: BOOK II: METER V. A VERSE TRANSLATION BY JOHN WALTON.