ON THE COMPLAINT OF NATURE.

PREFACE

The connection of the De Planctu Naturae with Chaucer's Parlement of Foules and with the Roman de la Rose, the increasing frequency of references to it in works of scholarship, and its inaccessibility save in its peculiar Latin, have furnished the reasons for this translation. The importance of Alain's work lies wholly in what it prompted; by itself it would have long since been justly forgotten. The theologian whose great stores of recondite learning made him the `Doctor Universalis' of his day, the 'Alain who was very sage,' the 'Doctor SS. Theologiae Famosus,' is now known chiefly because of two lines in the blithe and famous poet of early England. He is distinctly of that number to whom the interests of scholarship alone give any present life. Still, in the eye of scholarship his importance is not inconsiderable. Not only the great interest attending everything which has to do with Chaucer, with the sources from which he drew, and with the very hints which he throws out so lightly, but also the extensive influence which the De Planctu Naturae exerted on Jean de Meun's part of the Roman de la Rose, give him a position which all investigators in these fields of literature must recognize. The statement of Langlois that more than five thousand verses of the Roman de la Rose are translated, imitated, or inspired by the De Planctu Natura is excellent authority that this mysterious scholar of the Middle Ages, whose very identity is unascertained, was of those who beget kings in literature, though he himself were none.

It is difficult to render the Latin of Alain into a translation which shall be at once accurate and yet not too much at variance with the fundamental

standards of good English literature. Truly, as was said by Robert Holkoth long ago, the De Planctu Naturae is 'metro et prosa compositum scientifice multum et curiose.' Those repetitions, those fantastic circumlocutions, those wonderful wild flowers of metaphor which grow up constantly around him, leave on the translator's hands a multitude of words, fluttering over an embarrassing paucity of ideas, for which English synonyms and approved figures of English speech are manifestly few or lacking. The present translator hopes that he is not chargeable too heavily with the weaknesses of a compromise. It has not been thought advisable to render into anything but prose those portions of the original which are in verse.

I have been unable to find any thoroughly good text of the De Planctu Naturce. The one which I have used as a basis is that of Thomas Wright, found in Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, Vol. 2 (Rolls Series, London, 1872) ; but several of the variants which he notes, and several from the text of Migne in the Patrologia Latina, Vol. 210 (Paris, 1855), which Wright does not note, have been adopted, and a few emendations have been made. To all such changes attention is called in the foot-notes.

I owe many thanks to Professor Charles U. Clark, of Yale University, and to Dr. Richard M. Gummere, of Haverford College, for their careful revision of large portions of the translation. To Professor Albert S. Cook, of Yale University, at whose suggestion the work was undertaken, I have been greatly indebted for help and guidance at every stage.

D. M. M.

YALE UNIVERSITY,

May 2, 1908

THE BOOK OF ALAIN ON THE COMPLAINT OF NATURE.