_a_ 23. _As he which wolde go_: otiose, or at best meaning no more than 'desiring to go'. Cp. _b_ 25 _As he which hadde_ = 'having' simply; and similarly _b_ 37, 203. It is an imitation of a contemporary French idiom _comme celui qui_. _a_ 26. _and_: the displacement of the conjunction from its natural position at the beginning of the clause is characteristic of Gower's verse. Cp. l. 152 _Upon the morwe and up sche sterte_ = 'and in the morning she got up', and _a_ 45, 49, _b_ 121, 124, 135, 160, 182. See notes to ll. 32, 78 f. _a_ 32. Editors put a comma after _wepende_, and no stop after _seileth_: but it is Alceoun who weeps. The displacement of _and_ is exemplified in the notes to l. 26 and ll. 78 f. _a_ 37. 'One had not to look for grief'; a regular formula of understatement, meaning 'her grief was great'. _a_ 53. _Hire reyny cope_, &c.: the rainbow, which was the sign or manifestation of Iris. _a_ 59 ff. _Prope Cimmerios longo spelunca recessu, Mons cavus, ignavi domus et penetralia Somni._ (_Metamorphoses_ xi. 592-3.) Much of the poetry of Gower's description is due to Ovid. _a_ 78 f. Editors put no stop after _may_ and a comma after _hell_. Hence _The New English Dictionary_ quotes this passage as an isolated instance of _noise_, transitive, meaning 'disturb with noise'. But _noise_ is intransitive, _hell_ is governed by _aboute round_, and the position of _bot_ is abnormal as in l. 105. Cp. notes to ll. 26, 32, and render 'But all round about the hill'. _a_ 105. For the word order see notes to ll. 26, 32, 78 f. _a_ 117. _The lif_, 'the man', cp. IV _a_ 43. _a_ 118. _Ithecus_: for Icelos. According to Ovid 'Icelos' was the name by which he was known to the gods, but men called him 'Phobetor'. _a_ 123. _Panthasas_: Ovid's _Phantasos_. _a_ 152. See note to l. 26. _a_ 197. The halcyon, usually identified with the kingfisher, was supposed to build a floating nest on the sea in midwinter, and to have power to calm the winds and waves at that season, bringing 'halcyon weather'. _b_ 2. _I finde._ Matthew Paris in his _Chronica Maiora_ (ed. Luard, Rolls Series, vol. ii, pp. 413 ff.) gives a similar story, which, he says, King Richard the First often told to rebuke ingratitude. In this version, Vitalis of Venice falls into a pit dug as a trap for wild beasts. The rescued animals are a lion and a serpent; the rescuer is nameless, and the gem given to him by the serpent has not the magic virtue of returning whenever sold. Nearer to Gower is the story told in Nigel Wireker's _Speculum Stultorum_, a late twelfth-century satire in Latin verse, which, from the name of its principal character Burnellus the Ass, who is ambitious to have a longer tail, is sometimes called _Burnellus_; cp. Chaucer, _Nun's Priest's Tale_, l. 492: _I have wel rad in Daun Burnel the Asse Among his vers_, &c.