Prologue i-ii 19 



Licinius, 'se gladio percnssum ab uno de illis' (he was stabbed 

 by one of them). If, then, we may suppose Chaucer to have read 

 perciisscc, his translation is accounted for, since that word is used 

 in the metaphorical sense of 'agitate, excite' (so, for example, 

 Pro Milonc 29. 70). Cf. K. T. 185-6: 



The sesoun priketh every gentil herte, 

 And maketh him out of his sleep to sterte. 



It may be objected that Chaucer could have known nothing of 

 Lucretius,*- since scholars were ignorant of that poet until 

 Poggio sent a manuscript of his poem from Germany to Italy 

 in 1417.*^ However, there is testimony that Lucretius was read 

 throughout the Middle Ages,** and Philippe (33. 133; see note 

 44) speaks of manuscripts of the De Rermn Natiira as existing 

 in abbeys*^ ruled over by disciples of Alcuin. 



Nolhac denies*" that either Petrarch or Boccaccio knew Lucre- 

 tius at first hand ; but, however that may be, it seems reasonably 

 certain that Dante was acquainted with him. The evidence for 



^ Cf. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer 3. 405. 



^ Lucretius, ed. Munro, 4th ed., Text, p. 2. 



" Jourdain, Recherches Critiques sur I'Age et I'Origine des Traductions 

 Latines d'Aristote (Paris, 1843), p. 21: 'A toutes les epoques du moyen 

 age on a lu . . . le poeme de Lucrece.' Cf. Monnier, Alcuin et 

 Charlemagne (Paris, 1864), p. 279; Philippe, Lucrece dans la Theologie 

 Chretienne du Ille au XIII^ Siecle (Rev. de VHistoire des Religions^ 

 2,2. 284-302; 33. 19-36, 125-162). 



*" Corbie (p. 153), St. Bertin, near St. Omer (p. 151; cf. Munro, Text, 

 p. 22), Bobbio (pp. 151-2; cf. Munro, p. 2), Mainz (p. 132). The 

 manuscript of the last-named abbey was copied by a scribe of the calli- 

 graphic school of Tours, and carefully corrected by a Saxon scribe (p. 

 132). A twelfth-century catalogue of the library of Corbie has an entry: 

 'Titus Lucretius Poeta.' It is hardly to be supposed that Chaucer read 

 Lucretius at either St. Bertin or Bobbio; yet St. Bertin (in the vicinity 

 of Chaucer's 'Popering,' Sir Thopas 9) was only a day's easy ride from 

 Calais (in or near which Chaucer was in 1360 and 1377), and Bobbio was 

 on the main road from Genoa to Piacenza, about 60 miles from the former 

 (where Chaucer was in 1373, being again in Lombardy in 1378). Seven 

 manuscript copies, made directly or indirectly, between 1417 and 1473, 

 from that which Poggio sent to Italy, are still extant in England (Munro, 

 p. 3), but of course none of these could have been in Chaucer's hands. 



^'' Petrarquc et I'Humanisme, 2d ed., i. 159-160. 



