'The harlot, who ne'er turned her gloating eyes From Cæsar's household, common vice and pest Of courts, 'gainst me inflamed the minds of all.' Gower (C. A. ed. Pauli, i. 263) says:-- 'Senec witnesseth openly How that envie properly Is of the court the comun wenche.' Note that _parteth_ in l. 359 means 'departeth.' 361. 'Whoever goes away, at any rate she will not be wanting.' Men come and go, but Envy remains. This is the right sense; but Bell, whom Prof. Corson follows, gives it quite a false twist. He says, 'Whosoever goes, i.e. falls, she will not be in want'; a desperate and unmeaning solution, due to not appreciating the force of the verb _to want_, which here simply means 'to be absent,' and can be applied to _persons_ as well as to _things_. 'There _wanteth_ but a mean to fill your song'; Two Gent. of Verona, i. 2. 295; 'though bride and bridegroom _wants_,' i.e. are absent, Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 248: 'There _wanteth_ now our brother of Gloucester here'; Rich. III. ii. 1. 43. 364. 'But only because he is accustomed to write poems.' 366. 'Or it was enjoined him by some patron to compose those two poems (the Romaunce of the Rose and Troilus; _see_ A. 344); and he did not dare to refuse.' 371. _As thogh that_, as he would have done if. 372. _And had_, i.e. and had composed it all himself. 374. 'The allusion is to the several successful adventurers, like the Visconti, who in the 13th and 14th centuries succeeded in seizing upon the governments of Milan, and other free cities of Lombardy'; Bell. See the article _Visconti_ in the Eng. Cyclopædia; we are there referred to Verri, Storia di Milano, and to Muratori, Annali d' Italia. Cf. Dante, Inf. xxviii. 74, 81; and see Chaucer's reference to 'Barnabo Viscounte' in the Monkes Tale, B 3589. 375. _Reward at_, regard to. _Reward_ and _regard_ are etymologically identical. Observe the accent on the _former_ syllable. Cf. l. 399. 378. _Fermour_, a farmer of taxes; who is naturally exacting and oppressive. 380. Before _is_ supply _hit_, which, as in l. 379, refers to a suppliant culprit. His own vassals are a lord's treasures, to be cherished, not oppressed. 381. Bech refers us to Seneca, De Clementia, lib. i. c. 3, § 3; c. 5, § 4. Or perhaps Aristotle is meant, whose supposed advice to Alexander is fully given in Gower's Confessio Amantis, bk. vii. See particularly the passage in Pauli's edition, iii. 176:-- 'What is a king in his legeaunce, Wher that ther is no law in londe?' There is a similar long and tedious passage in Lancelot of the Laik, ed. Skeat, ll. 1463-1998. Gower calls Aristotle 'the philosophre'; C. A. iii. 86. We may also compare Hoccleve, De Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, pp. 102-3, translated from Ægidius, De Reg. Princ., lib. i. pars 1, cap. xiv; where the reference to Aristotle is:--'Propter quod V. Ethicorum scribitur, quod _principatus uirum ostendit_.'