26830. ‘Homme; et puis de l’omme prist’ 27598. ‘Qant l’angle ot ses ditz contez,’ This, it will be allowed, is a sufficiently moderate total to be placed to the joint account of author and scribe in a matter of more than 28,000 lines--on an average one in about 1,500 lines. Of these more than half can be corrected in very obvious ways: in 276, 397, we may read ‘grantment’ as in 8931; in 2955, 4832, we should read ‘deliverer,’ and in 9786 ‘metteroit,’ this _e_ being frequently sounded in the metre, e.g. 3371, 16448, 18532; we may correct 3160, 9617, by altering to ‘mal,’ ‘autre’; in 4745 ‘plussoudeinement’ is certainly meant; 13503 is to be corrected by reading ‘en la fin,’ as in 15299, for ‘en fin,’ 19108 by substituting ‘avoltre’ for ‘avoltire,’ and 27598 by reading ‘angel,’ as in 27731 and elsewhere, for ‘angle.’ Of the irregularities that remain, one, exemplified in 3116 and 14568, consists in the introduction of an additional foot into the measure, and I have little doubt that it proceeds from the scribe, who wrote ‘predicacioun’ and ‘contemplacioun’ for some shorter word with the same meaning, such as ‘prechement’ and ‘contempler.’ In the latter of these cases I have corrected by introducing ‘contempler’ into the text; in the former, as I cannot be so sure of the word intended, the MS. reading is allowed to stand. There is a similar instance of a hypermetrical line in _Bal._ xxvii. 1, and this also might easily be corrected. The other irregularities I attribute to the author. These consist, first, in the use of ‘dame’ in several lines as a monosyllable, and I am disposed to think that this word was sometimes so pronounced, see Phonol. § ix (_c_); secondly, in the introduction of a superfluous unaccented syllable at a pause after the second foot, which occurs in 10623, 10628 (and perhaps 3160); thirdly, in the omission of the unaccented syllable at the beginning of the verse, as: ‘Prestre, Clerc, Reclus, Hermite,’--2742; ‘Doun, priere, amour, doubtance,’--24625; ‘Homme; et puis de l’omme prist’--26830. Considering how often lines of this kind occur in other Anglo-Norman verse, and how frequent the variation is generally in the English octosyllables of the period, we may believe that even Gower, notwithstanding his metrical strictness, occasionally introduced it into his verse. It may be noted that the three lines just quoted resemble one another in having each a pause after the first word. With all this ‘correctness,’ however, the verses of the _Mirour_ have an unmistakably English rhythm and may easily be distinguished from French verse of the Continent and from that of the earlier Anglo-Norman writers. One of the reasons for this is that the verse is in a certain sense accentual as well as syllabic, the writer imposing upon himself generally the rule of the alternate beat of accents and seldom allowing absolutely weak syllables[J] to stand in the even places of his verse. Lines such as these of Chrétien de Troyes,