95. _with hawe bake_, with plain fare, as Dr. Morris explains it; it obviously means something of a humble character, unsuited for a refined taste. This was left unexplained by Tyrwhitt, but we may fairly translate it literally by 'with a baked haw,' i. e. something that could just be eaten by a very hungry person. The expression _I sette nat an hawe_ (= I care not a haw) occurs in the Wyf of Bathes Prologue, D. 659. _Haws_ are mentioned as given to feed hogs in the Vision of Piers Plowman, B. x. 10; but in The Romance of William of Palerne, l. 1811, a lady actually tells her lover that they can live in the woods on _haws_, hips, acorns, and hazel-nuts. There is a somewhat similar passage in the Legend of Good Women, Prol. ll. 73-77. I see no difficulty in this explanation. That proposed by Mr. Jephson--'hark back'--is out of the question; we cannot rime _bak_ with _makë_, nor does it make sense. _Baken_ was a strong verb in M. E., with the pp. _baken_ or _bake_ (A. S. _bacen_). Dr. Stratmann, apparently by mistake, enters this phrase under _hawe_, adj. dark grey! But he refrains from explaining _bake_. 96. _I speke in prose_, I generally have to speak in prose in the law courts; so that if my tale is prosy as compared with Chaucer's, it is only what you would expect. Dr. Furnivall suggests that perhaps the prose tale of Melibeus was originally meant to be assigned to the Man of Lawe. See further in vol. iii. p. 406. 98. _after_, afterwards, immediately hereafter. Cf. _other_ for _otherwise_ in Old English.--M. PROLOGUE TO THE MAN OF LAWES TALE. 99-121. It is important to observe that more than three stanzas of this Prologue are little else than a translation from the treatise by Pope Innocent III. entitled De Contemptu Mundi, sive de Miseria Conditionis Humanae. This was first pointed out by Prof. Lounsbury, of Yale, Newhaven, U.S.A., in the _Nation_, July 4, 1889. He shewed that the lost work by Chaucer (viz. his translation of 'the Wreched Engendring of Mankinde As man may in Pope Innocent y-finde,' mentioned in the Legend of Good Women, Prologue A, l. 414) is not lost altogether, [142] since we find traces of it in the first four stanzas of the present Prologue; in the stanzas of the Man of Lawes Tale which begin, respectively, with lines 421, 771, 925, and 1135; and in some passages in the Pardoner's Prologue; as will be pointed out. It will be observed that if Chaucer, as is probable, has preserved extracts from this juvenile work of his without much alteration, it must have been originally composed in seven-line stanzas, like his Second Nonnes Tale and Man of Lawes Tale. I here transcribe the original of the present passage from Innocent's above-named treatise, lib. i. c. 16, marking the places where the stanzas begin.