autumn, he sees the cranes, birds which then spent the summer in Scotland, flying
in a Y formation. This ‘Northern’ realist detail is new.
The Prologue to a thirteenth book, a happy ending to the Aeneidwritten by
Mapheus Vegius, an Italian humanist, in 1428, is brilliantly entertaining. Glad to
have finished Virgil, Douglas walks in a garden in June, ‘and in a sege down sat, /
Now musing apon this and now on that.’ An old man comes to him in a dream, ‘Lyk
to sum poet of the ald fasson [old guise]’ and reproaches him for not including his- thirteenth – book. Douglas replies:
‘Mastir,’ I said, ‘I heir weill quhat yhe say what you
And in this cace of perdon I you pray – pardon
Not that I have you onything offendit in any point
But rathir that I have my tyme misspendit
So lang on Virgillis volume ....’
He tells Vegius that some think his thirteenth book unnecessary:
As to the text accordyng never-a-deill not a bit
Mair than langis to the cart the fift quheill. belongs wheel
At this Vegius strikes him twenty times with his club – much as an old-fashioned
author excluded from this history might cudgel its author. Douglas resumes his task.
nFurther reading
Benson, L. D. (gen. ed.),The Riverside Chaucer(Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1987;
Oxfor d:Oxford University Press, 1988). The standard edition.
Burrow,J. and T. Turville-Petre (eds),A Boo k of Middle English, 3rd edn (Oxford:Blackwell,
2004). A textbook anthology, well designed and annotated.
Cooper, H.,The Canterbury Tales, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). A well-
judged critical introduction.
Pearsall, D. (ed.),Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology of Writing in English, 1375–1575 (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1999). Well chosen and annotated.
Schmidt, A. V. (ed.),The Vision of Piers Plowman(London: Everyman, 1978). A well-
annotated text.74 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500