Hence _ye_ in l. 520 answers to Dante's _Muse_, the Muses; and _Thought_ in l. 523 answers to Dante's _mente_, Cf. also Parad. xviii. 82-87. And see the parallel passage in Anelida, 15-19. The reason why Chaucer took _Helicon_ to be a well rather than a mountain is because Dante's allusion to it is dubiously worded; see Purg. xxix. 40. 528. _Engyn_ is accented on the latter syllable, as in Troil. ii. 565, iii. 274. 529. _Egle_, the eagle in l. 499; cf. ll. 503-7. 534. Partly imitated from Dante, Purg. ix. 28-30:-- 'Poi mi parea che, più rotata un poco, Terribil come fulgor discendesse, E me rapisse suso infino al foco.' Cary's translation is:-- 'A little wheeling in his aëry tour, Terrible as the lightning, rushed he down, And snatch'd me upward even to the fire.' But Chaucer follows still more closely, and verbally, a passage in Machault's Jugement du Roi de Navarre, ed. Tarbé, 1849, p. 72, which has the words-- 'la foudre Que mainte ville mist en poudre'; i.e. literally, 'the _foudre_ (thunder-bolt) which reduces many a town to powder.' Machault nearly repeats this; ed. Tarbé, p. 97. Curiously enough, almost the same words occur in Boethius, bk. i. met. 4, where Chaucer's translation has:--'ne þe wey of thonder-leyt, that is wont to smyten heye toures.' It hence appears that Chaucer copies Machault, and Machault translates Boethius. There are some curious M.E. verses on the effects of thunder in Popular Treatises on Science, ed. Wright, p. 136. _Foudre_ represents the Lat. _fulgur_. One of the queer etymologies of medieval times is, that _fulgur_ is derived _a feriendo_; Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Nat. iv. 59. It was held to be quite sufficient that both _fulgur_ and _ferire_ begin with _f_. 537. _Brende,_ was set on fire; cf. l. 163. The idea is that of a falling thunderbolt, which seems to have been conceived of as being a material mass, set on fire by the rapidity of its passage through the air; thus confusing the flash of lightning with the fall of a meteoric stone. See Mr. Aldis Wright's note on _thunder-stone_, Jul. Cæs. i. 3. 49. 543. _Hente_, caught. We find a similar use of the word in an old translation of Map's Apocalypsis Goliæ, printed in Morley's Shorter Eng. Poems, p. 13:-- 'And by and by I fell into a sudden trance, And all along the air was marvellously _hent_.' 544. _Sours_, sudden ascent, a springing aloft. It is well illustrated by a passage in the Somp. Tale (D 1938):-- 'Therfor, right as an hauk up, at a _sours_, Up springeth into their, right so prayeres Of charitable and chaste bisy freres Maken hir _sours_ to Goddes eres two.'