No doubt the feeling for gender had been to some extent worn away in England; nevertheless the measure in which this affects our author’s language is after all rather limited. A much more wide-reaching principle is that which has to do with the ‘rule of _s_.’ The old System of French noun inflexion had already been considerably broken up on the Continent, and it would not have been surprising if in England it had altogether disappeared. In some respects however Anglo-Norman was rather conservative of old forms, and our author is not only acquainted with the rule, but often shows a preference for observing it, where it is a matter of indifference in other respects. Rhyme however must be the first consideration, and a great advantage is obtained by the systematic combination of the older and the newer rule. Thus the poet has it in his power either to use or to omit the _s_ of inflexion in the nominatives singular and plural of masculine nouns, according as his rhymes may require, and a few examples will show what use he makes of this licence. In _Bal. Ded._ i. 3 he describes himself as ‘Vostre Gower, q’est trestout _vos soubgitz_,’ but in rhyme with this the same form of inflexion stands for the plural subject, ‘u sont les _ditz floriz_,’ and in xxvi. 1 he gives us nearly the same expression, ‘q’est tout vostre _soubgit_,’ without the inflexion. So in iv. 3 we have ‘come _tes loials amis_’ (sing. nom.), but in the very same balade ‘_ton ami_ serrai,’ while in _Trait._ iii. 3 we have the further development of _s_ in the oblique case of the singular, ‘Loiale amie avoec _loials amis_.’ In _Bal._ xviii. 1 _menu_ is apparently fem. pl. for _menues_, while _avenu_, rhyming with it, is nom. sing. masc.; but so also are _conuz_, _retenuz_, _venuz_, in xxxix, while _veeuz_ is sing. object., and in the phrase ‘tout bien sont _contenuz_’ there is a combination of the uninflected with the inflected form in the plural of the subject. Similarly in the _Mirour_ we have _principals_, _desloyals_, ll. 63, 70, as nom. sing., and so _governals_, _desloyals_ 627, 630, but _espirital_ 709, _principal_, _Emperial_, 961 ff., are forms used elsewhere for the same. Again as nom. sing. we have _rejoïz_ 462, _ruez_, _honourez_, _malurez_ 544 ff., &c., and as nom. plur. _enamouré_ 17, _retorné_ 792, _marié_ (f) 1010, _née_ 1017, _maluré_ 1128, _il_ 25064; but also _enamouré_ 220, _privé_ 496, _mené_ 785, &c., as nom. singular, and _perturbez_, _tuez_, 3639 ff., _travaillez_, _abandonnez_, 5130 ff., as nom. plural: ‘ce dist _ly sage_’ 1586, but ‘il est _nounsages_’ 1754, and ‘_Ly sages_ dist’ 3925, _ly soverein_ 76, but _ly capiteins_ 4556, and so on. We also note occasionally forms like that cited above from the _Traitié_, where the _s_ (or _z_) of the termination has no grammatical justification at all; e.g. _enginez_ 552, _confondus_ 1904, ‘fort et _halteins_’ (obj.) 13024, cp. _offenduz_, _Bal._ xxxix. 2, and cases where the rules which