34 love's meinie. 



well worth your patience to observe. The monkish Latin 

 " angelus," you see, is j^assing through the very nnpoetical 

 form " angle," into "-ange ; " but, in order to get a rhyme 

 with it in that angular form, the French troubadour ex- 

 pands the bird's name, " mesange," quite arbitrarily, into 

 " mesangel." Then Chaucer, not liking the " mes " at the 

 beginning of the word, changes that unscrupulously into 

 ^' arch ; " and gathers in, though too shortly, a lovely bit 

 from another place about the nightingales flying so close 

 round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves oif 

 his crown of roses ; so that the English runs thus : 



But nightingales, a full great rout 



That flien over his head about, 



The leaves felden as they flien 



And he was all with birds wrien, 



Wit]j popinjay, with nightingale, 



With chelaundre, and with wodewale, 



With finch, with lark, and with archangel. 



lie seemed as he were an angell. 



That down were comen from Heaven clear. 



ITow, when I first read this bit of Chaucer, without re- 

 ferring to the original, I was greatly delighted to find 

 that there was a bird in his time called an archangel, and 

 set to work, with brightly hopeful industry, to find out 

 what it was. 1 was a little discomfited by finding that 

 in old botany the word only meant " dead-nettle," but 

 was still sanguine about my bird, till I found the French 

 form descend, as you have seen, into a mesangel, and 

 finally into mesange, which is a provincialism from fieiov 



