-that special mention is made of him and his magnificence in some French chronicler or chroniclers of the thirteenth century—that is, by some contemporary of De Lorris. The lord of Windsor, then, is King John. He 'frequently resided' at Windsor; and hence his grant of Magna Charta at Runymede-'

3. Cf. Wicked Tongue (Malebouche) when he sees the lover and Bialacoil together, the translation says:

He myghte not his tunge withstonde
Worse to reporte than he fonde,
He was so fulle of cursed rage;

It satte hym welle of his lynage,

For hym an Irish womman bare ;

His tunge was fyled sharpe and square,
Poygnaunt and right kervyng.

And wonder bitter in spekyng:

-a passage that cannot but be read with a special painful interest just now. 'Writing not far from the time' remarks one of Chaucer's biographers, 'when the Statute of Kilkenny was passed, he (Chaucer) cannot lose the opportunity of inventing an Irish parentage for Wicked-tongue.' But alas! here, too, the translator, whoever he was, followed conscientiously the words of the original, where occurs the line,

Qu'il fu filz d'une vieille Irese.

Mr Robert Bell thinks that 'irese' here does not denote the lady's nation, but her disposition, as being given to lie. But I presume M. Francisque Michel is right in glossing the word by Irlandaise and in his annotation: 'Les Irlandais ont toujours eu chez nous la plus détestable réputation, même avant les evénements qui en jetèrent sur notre sol un si grand nombre.'

He goes on to give an illustration of this statement, dated 1606. Something earlier would have been more to the purpose.

Τ

(2) ECLYMPASTE YRE
(From The Athenæum for April 8, 1882)

There these goddys lay and slepe,
Morpheus and Eclympasteyre,
That was the god of slepes eyre,

That slepe and dide noon other werke.

Boke of the Duchesse, 166-9.

Mais la déesse noble et chière

Tramist puis sa messagiere

Pour moi au noble dieu dormant.

Et le doulc dieu fit son commant;

Car il envoya parmi l'air

L'un de ses fils Enclimpostair.

Froissart's Paradis d'Amour.

YRWHITT, as is well known, gives up this strange word, which is known to occur only in these two passages. The annotator in the edition connected with the name of Robert Bell 'ventures to consider it a Greek word (inλtάorwp), which cannot, however, be traced to classical authors, formed from ἐκλιμπάνω, a rare form of ἐκλείπω, one of the meanings of which is to cease, to die,' etc. This, is indeed, being venturesome-it is reckless audacity. To make no other objection, how could such a form as inλμάorwp be drawn from ixλμzávw? Not of more value-of less, if possible-is M. Sandras's suggestion that the word in question is compounded of engle (=ange) imposteur. Nor yet satisfactory are the derivations from ἐκλυπητήρ or ἐγκαλυπτήρι Nor does Dr. ten Brink seem as happy as his excellent scholar

ship might lead us to hope when he solves the difficulty by supposing that 'pasteyre' is a corruption of 'Phobetora,' undoubtedly right as I believe him to be in his interpretation of 'Eclym,' which he takes to be 'Ikelon.'

The passage in Ovid, which Chaucer is more or less following, runs as follows, 'Met.' xi. 633-48 :—

At pater [Somnus] e populo natorum mille suorum
Excitat artificem simulatoremque figuræ
Morphea. Non illo jussos sollertius alter
Exprimit incessus, vultumque sonumque loquendi ;
Adjicit et vestes et consuetissima cuique

Verba. Sed hic solos homines imitatur; at alter
Fit fera, fit volucris, fit longo corpore serpens.
Hunc Ikelon superi, mortale Phobetora vulgus
Nominat. Est etiam diversæ tertius artis,
Phantasos. Ille in humum saxumque undamque trabemque
Quæque vacant anima fallaciter omnia transit.
Regibus hi ducibusque suos ostendere vultus
Nocte solent; populos alii plebemque pererrant.
Præterit hos senior; cunctisque e fratribus unum
Morphea qui peragat Thaumantidos edita, Somnus
Eligit.

Dr. ten Brink, it will be seen, links together the celestial and the mortal names of the second of these thousand sons of Sleep; and so 'Eclympasteyre' would mean Like-Scarer. This is a somewhat awkward combination, as if one were to speak of Reuchlin-Capnio, Gerrit-Erasmus, etc. Still it is not impossible, especially as Chaucer's scholarship was not of the most accurate kind. But a graver, if not a fatal, objection to this explanation is the difficulty of that corruption of Phobetora into Pasteyre.

I now beg to propose a new solution of this perplexing term. I hold that it is a compound of Ikelon and plastor or plaster, and so means simply likeness-maker, semblancemoulder. Thus it exactly contains the idea of Ovid's phrase,

'Artificem simulatoremque figuræ,' and of a line immediately preceding those quoted, viz. :—

Somnia quæ veras æquent imitamine formas.

This is, indeed, the dominant idea of the passage, and is well expressed by such a compound as Ikelo-plastor.

Every one, I think, will agree that this formation would readily, would quite naturally, yield Eclympasteyre. Ikelon would so easily become Iklon, and this Eklon, Eklin, and through the influence of the p, Eklim, or Eklym, or Eclym. And plastor would so easily drop its 7, for phonetic reasons, through the influence of the / in Eclym; and would inevitably corrupt its termination.

If it is objected that Chaucer could not know Greek enough to make such a compound, I answer, without going into the question how much Greek was known in England in the fourteenth century-a question on which something might well be said, if there were any need, or if the occasion served that both Ikelon and plastor were accessible enough, if no Greek whatever was known to Chaucer and his contemporaries. Ikelon, as we have seen, he would find in Ovid; and derivatives of λάoow were sufficiently common in Latin. Thus Pliny has plastes; and plasso itself, plasticator, plasticus, as well as plasma and plasmo, occur in Latin writers of one age or another in post-classical literature. Ducange registers plastaria, plasteria, plastrarius, plastrierius, etc. Perhaps the identical form in Chaucer's mind was one of these latter. The stem must also have been familiar to Chaucer in various French derivatives. As to the meaning, Pliny uses plastes in the sense of a modeller, a statuary, and quotes a saying that plastice was 'mater statuariæ scalpturæque et cælaturæ.' Chaucer's acquaintance with the Historia Naturalis is well known.

TH

(3) 'THE DRY SEA'

(From The Academy for Jan. 28, 1882)

'HERE has been, and is, much doubt as to what is meant by 'the dry sea' in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. A writer in The Saturday Review plausibly suggested the desert of the Great Sahara; and there are current several other suggestions of more or less value. But I am much inclined to think that the phrase may be best explained by a reference to Mandeville's Travels—a book that must have been thoroughly familiar to Chaucer-and to the account given by that veracious writer of a Sea of Sand. See Mr HalliwellPhillipps' edition of Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, Knt., pp. 27-28 :

And he (Prester John) hathe in his Lordscipes many grete marveyles. For in his Contre is the See that men clepen the Gravely See that is all Gravelle and Sand with outen ony drope of Watre; and it ebbethe and flowethe in grete waives as other Sees don; and it is never stille ne in pes in no maner cesoun. And no man may passe that See be navye ne be no maner of craft; and therefore may no man knowe what Land is beyond that See. And alle be it that it have no Watre, yit men fynden there in and on the Bankes fulle gode Fissche of other maner of kynde and schappe thanne men fynden in ony other See; and thei ben of righte goode tast, and delycious to mannes mete.

Here is a dry sea' with a vengeance. Surely this is what Chaucer means. The author who called himself Mandeville, seems to have derived his account of this remarkable phenomenon from Cedric of Portenau. See, however, Prof. Skeat's note in his valuable edition of Chaucer's Minor Poems (1891).