61. _the seintes legende of Cupyde_; better known now as The Legend of Good Women. Tyrwhitt says--'According to Lydgate (Prologue to Boccace), the number [of good women] was to have been _nineteen_; and perhaps the Legend itself affords some ground for this notion; see l. 283, and Court of Love, l. 108. But this number was never completed, and the last story, of Hypermnestra, is seemingly unfinished.... In this passage the Man of Lawe omits two ladies, viz. Cleopatra and Philomela, whose histories are in the Legend; and he enumerates eight others, of whom there are no histories in the Legend as we have it at present. Are we to suppose, that they have been lost?' The Legend contains the nine stories following: 1. Cleopatra; 2. Thisbe; 3. Dido; 4. Hypsipyle and Medea; 5. Lucretia; 6. Ariadne; 7. Philomela; 8. Phyllis; 9. Hypermnestra. Of these, Chaucer here mentions, as Tyrwhitt points out, all but two, Cleopatra and Philomela. Before discussing the matter further, let me note that in medieval times, proper names took strange shapes, and the reader must not suppose that the writing of _Adriane_ for _Ariadne_, for example, is peculiar to Chaucer. The meaning of the other names is as follows:--_Lucresse_, Lucretia; _Babilan Tisbee_, Thisbe of Babylon; _Enee_, Æneas; _Dianire_, Deianira; _Hermion_, Hermione; _Adriane_, Ariadne; _Isiphilee_, Hypsipyle; _Leander_, _Erro_, Leander and Hero; _Eleyne_, Helena; _Brixseyde_, [138] Briseis (acc. Briseïda); _Ladomea_, Laodamia; _Ypermistra_, Hypermnestra; _Alceste_, Alcestis. Returning to the question of Chaucer's plan for his Legend of Good Women, we may easily conclude what his intention was, though it was never carried out. He intended to write stories concerning nineteen women who were celebrated for being martyrs of love, and to conclude the series by an additional story concerning queen Alcestis, whom he regarded as the best of all the good women. Now, though he does not expressly say who these women were, he has left us two lists, both incomplete, in which he mentions some of them; and by combining these, and taking into consideration the stories which he actually wrote, we can make out the whole intended series very nearly. One of the lists is the one given here; the other is in a Ballad which is introduced into the Prologue to the Legend. The key to the incompleteness of the present list, certainly the later written of the two, is that the poet chiefly mentions _here_ such names as are _also_ to be found in Ovid's Heroides; cf. l. 55. Putting all the information together, it is sufficiently clear that Chaucer's intended scheme must have been very nearly as follows, the number of women (if we include Alcestis) being twenty.