In several MSS. the _Traitié_ is found attached to the _Confessio Amantis_, and with a heading to the effect that the author, having shown above in English the folly of those who love ‘par amour,’ will now write in French for the world generally a book to instruct married lovers by example to keep the faith of their espousals. But though appearing thus as a pendant to the English work in the Fairfax, Harleian, Bodley, Trin. Coll. Camb., Wadham, Keswick Hall and Wollaton MSS., it does not necessarily belong to it. It is absent in the great majority of copies of the _Confessio Amantis_, and in the Fairfax MS. it appears in a different hand from that of the English poem and was certainly added later. Moreover the _Traitié_ is found by itself in the Trentham book, and following the _Vox Clamantis_ in the All Souls and Glasgow MSS., in both these cases having been added later than the text of that work and in a different hand. We cannot tell what heading it had in the Trentham or the All Souls MSS., but probably the same as that of the Glasgow copy, which makes no reference to any other work. ‘This is a treatise which John Gower has made in accordance with the authors, touching the estate of matrimony, whereby married lovers may instruct themselves by example to hold the faith of their holy espousals.’ This variation of the heading is certainly due to the author, and we are entitled to regard the _Traitié_ as in some sense an independent work, occasionally attached by the author to the _Confessio Amantis_, but also published separately. As to the versification, the remarks already made upon that of the _Balades_ apply also to these poems. The subject of the work is defined by the title: it is intended to set forth by argument and example the nature and dignity of the state of marriage and the evils springing from adultery and incontinence. The tendency to moralize is naturally much stronger in these poems than in the _Cinkante Balades_, and they are consequently less poetical. The most pleasing is perhaps xv, ‘Comunes sont la cronique et l’istoire’: ‘Still is the folly of Lancelot and of Tristram remembered, that others by it may take warning. All the year round the fair of love is kept, where Cupid sells or gives away hearts: he makes men drink of one or the other of his two tuns, the one sweet and the other bitter. Thus the fortune of love is unstable: the lover is now in joy and now in torment, but the wise will be warned by others, as a bird avoids the trap in which he sees another caught, and they will not take delight in wanton love.’ Many of the examples are from stories already told in the _Confessio Amantis_, as those of Nectanabus, Hercules and Deianira, Jason, Clytemnestra, Lucretia, Paulina, Alboin and Rosamond, Tereus, Valentinian.