taken had been read as a whole. No doubt Gower may have been acquainted with some portions of them, as for instance that part of Jerome’s book against Jovinian which treats of the objections to marriage, but it is likely enough that he picked up most of these quotations at second hand. There are about a dozen quotations from Cicero, mostly from the _De Officiis_ and _De Amicitia_, but I doubt whether he had read either of these books. In the _Confessio Amantis_ he speaks as if he did not know that Tullius was the same person as Cicero (iv. 2648). Boethius is cited four times, one of the references being false; Cassiodorus and Isidore each four times, and Bede three times. Stories of natural history seem to be referred rather indiscriminately to Solinus, for several of these references prove to be false. Three quotations are attributed by the author to Horace (‘Orace’), but of these one is in fact from Ovid and another from Juvenal. He certainly got them all from some book of commonplaces. The same may be said of the passage alleged to be from Quintilian and of the references to Aristotle and to Plato. ‘Marcial,’ who is quoted three times, is not the classical Martial, but the epigrammatist Godfrey of Winchester, whose writings were in imitation of the Roman poet and passed commonly under his name. The distichs of Cato are referred to five times, and it is certain of course that Gower had read them. Ovid is named only once, and that is a doubtful reference, but the author of the _Confessio Amantis_ was certainly well acquainted at least with the _Metamorphoses_ and the _Heroides_. Valerius Maximus is the authority for two stories, but it is doubtful whether he is quoted at first hand. Fulgentius is cited twice, and ‘Alphonses,’ that is Petrus Alphonsi, author of the _Disciplina Clericalis_, twice. ‘Pamphilius’ (i.e. _Pamphilus, de Amore_) is cited once, but not in such a way as to suggest that Gower knew the book itself; and so too Maximian, but the passage referred to does not seem to be in the _Elegies_. The quotation from Ptolemy is, as usual, from the maxims often prefixed in manuscripts to the _Almagest_. Other writers referred to are Chrysostom, Cyprian, Remigius, Albertus Magnus, Hélinand, Haymo, and Gilbert. We know from a passage in the _Confessio Amantis_ that Gower had read some of the works of Albertus, and we may assume as probable that he knew Gilbert’s _Opusculum de Virginitate_, for his reference is rather to the treatise generally than to any particular passage of it.