ewhat as Cervantes' _Don
Quixote_ later ridicules the romances of chivalry. In Luxury Land
everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with
cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ran with good wine;
and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they
went.

Footnote 58: Child's _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ is the most
scholarly and complete collection in our language. Gummere's _Old English
Ballads_ is a good short work. Professor Kittredge's Introduction to the
Cambridge edition of Child's _Ballads_ is the best summary of a very
difficult subject. For an extended discussion of the literary character of
the ballad, see Gummere's _The Popular Ballad_.

Footnote 59: little bird.

Footnote 60: in her language.

Footnote 61: I live

Footnote 62: fairest

Footnote 63: I am

Footnote 64: power, bondage.

Footnote 65: a pleasant fate I have attained.

Footnote 66: I know

Footnote 67: gone

Footnote 68: lit, alighted

Footnote 69: For titles and publishers of reference books see General
Bibliography at the end of this book.

Footnote 70: The reader may perhaps be more interested in these final
letters, which are sometimes sounded and again silent, if he remembers that
they represent the decaying inflections of our old Anglo-Saxon speech.

Footnote 71: _House of Fame_, II, 652 ff. The passage is more or less
autobiographical.

Footnote 72: _Legend of Good Women_, Prologue, ll. 29 ff.

Footnote 73: wealth.

Footnote 74: the crowd.

Footnote 75: success.

Footnote 76: blinds.

Footnote 77: act.

Footnote 78: trouble.

Footnote 79: i.e. the goddess Fortune.

Footnote 80: kick.

Footnote 81: awl.

Footnote 82: judge.

Footnote 83: For the typography of titles the author has adopted the plan
of putting the titles of all books, and of all important works generally
regarded as single books, in italics. Individual poems, essays, etc., are
in Roman letters with quotation marks. Thus we have the "Knight's Tale," or
the story of "Palamon and Arcite," in the _Canterbury Tales_. This system
seems on the whole the best, though it may result in some inconsistencies.

Footnote 84: _Troilus and Criseyde_, III.

Footnote 85: See p. 107.

Footnote 86: For a summary of Chaucer's work and place in our literature,
see the Comparison with Spenser, p. 111.

Footnote 87: clad