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NOTES TO THE KINGIS QUA1R (122-132).
122. Cf. Chaucer, C. T. 2455 (A 2453):—
My dere doghter Venus, quod Saturne ; &c.
Al hale, all whole, wholly, entirely.
Be tyme, betimes, in good time.
In 1. 6, with helps out both sense and metre.
124. In 1. 3, hy helps out the metre, and is a fitting epithet.
125. In Chaucer’s Assembly of Foules, 1. 242, we find that
‘ Dame Patience ’ is mentioned as sitting before the temple-door
which the poet saw in his dream.
The said renewe; this, says Tytler, is unintelligible and must be
wrong. By renewe we may understand ‘ renewal ’; the chief diffi¬
culty is in said. Perhaps it should be sad, which is constantly used
in the sense of sober, serious, orderly (see N.E.D.), and is very
fittingly applied to anything connected with Minerva. Perhaps we
may take sad renewe to mean ‘orderly renewal.’ Cf. digne, 1. 6.
127. Procure must be accented on the former syllable. That
it really was sometimes so accented, is clear from the poem of
Alexander and Dindimus, ed. Skeat, where it is thrice spelt
procre.
Fonde, to endeavour to obtain some comfort for thy penance at
my hand. Fonde is not ‘ to find,’ as Tytler says, but ‘ to try to find’;
it answers to B.S. fandian, a derivative offindan.
128. Anothir is much better than othir, as in the MS.
129. On nyce lust, upon foolish desire. For Of read On.
Gif the ne list, if it does not please thee to set, &c. Compare
this stanza with the Temple of Glass, 11. 869-875.
130. Him, viz., God ; as explained by the line following, ‘ who
has the guidance of you all in his hand.’
132. Bot gif, unless.
And vtrid, &c. ; we must certainly understand hot gif again
before this clause. I suppose it to mean, ‘ and (unless) your work
be uttered according to moderation (lit. by measure) ; (according
to) the place, the hour, the manner, and the way, if mercy is to
admit your service.’ Tytler proposes to alter vtrid to outrid, which
he explains by ‘ out-red, gone through, or regulated by measure and
propriety, as to time and place.’ But he does not tell us where he
found out-red, nor why it means ‘gone through.’ There can be no
doubt that vtred is the modern uttered, which sometimes meant
‘published’ or ‘made known.’ I had at first thought that we are
to construe the sentence thus: ‘ and (unless) the place, hour,
manner, and way (be) uttered (put forward) according to moderation ’;
for this is what the grammar would lead us to. I still think that
1. 6 stands alone, and is left, very awkwardly, without anything
to govern the substantives except a verbal be, which must be
understood. As to the ‘ circumstances ’ here referred to, see my
notes to P. Plowman, p. 186.