_Troilus and Creseide_ seems to have been translated from the _Filostrato_ of Boccaccio, when {519} Chaucer was a young man, as we are informed by Dan John Lydgate in the Prologue to his Translation of Boccaccio's _Fall of Princes_, where he speaks of his "Maister Chaucer" as the "chefe poete of Bretayne," and tells us that-- "_In youthe he made a translacion_ Of a boke which called is Trophe, In Lumbard tongue, as men may rede and se, _And in our vulgar, long or that he deyde_ Gave it the name of Troylous and Cresseyde." Chaucer's translation is sometimes very close, sometimes rather free and paraphrastic, as may be seen in the following examples: "But right as floures through the cold of night Yclosed, stoupen in hir stalkes lowe, Redressen hem ayen the Sunne bright, And spreaden in hir kinde course by rowe." _Troilus and Creseide_, b. ii. "_Come fioretto dal notturno gelo_ _Chinato e chiuso, poi che il Sol l' imbianca,_ _S'apre, e si leva dritto sopra il stelo._" Boccaccio, _Il Filostrato_, iii. st. 13. "She was right soche to sene in her visage As is that wight that men on bere ybinde." _Troilus and Creseide_, b. iv. "_Essa era tale, a guardarla nel viso,_ _Qual donna morta alla fossa portata._" _Il Filostrato_, v. st. 83. "As fresh as faucon coming out of mew." _Troilus and Creseide_, b. iii. "_Come falcon ch' uscisse dal cappello._" _Il Filostrato_, iv. st. 83. "The Song of Troilus," in the first book of _Troilus and Creseide_, is a paraphrase from one of the Sonnets of Petrarca: "_S' Amor non e, che dunque e quel ch' i' sento?_ _Ma s' egli e Amor, per Dio che cosa, e quale?_ _Se buona, ond' e l' effetto aspro mortale?_" Petrarca, _Rime in Vita di Laura_, Son. cii. "If no love is, O God, what feele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whence cometh my wo?" _Troilus and Creseide_, b. i. Chaucer evidently had the following lines of the _Paradiso_ in view when writing the invocation to the Virgin in _The Second Nonnes Tale_: "Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio, Umile e alta piu che creatura, Termine fisso d' eterno consiglio, Tu se' colei, che l' umana Natura, _Nobilitasti_ si, che il suo Fattore Non disdegno di farsi sua fattura." _Paradiso_, xxxiii, I. "Thou maide and mother, doughter of thy Son, Thou well of mercy, sinful soules cure, In whom that God of bountee chees to won; Thou humble and high over every creature, Thou _nobledest_ so fer forth our nature, That no desdaine the maker had of kinde His Son in blood and flesh to clothe and winde." _The Second Nonnes Tale_, 15,504. Traces of Chaucer's proficiency in Italian are discoverable in almost all his poems; but I shall conclude with two citations from _The Assembly of Foules_: