chapter 23 in the English version).

_walkinge as a swan_, i. e. with slow and stately gait. Jerome (Contra Iovin. i. 40) calls Jovinian 'iste formosus monachus, crassus, nitidus, et _quasi sponsus_ semper _incedens_.'

1931. 'All as full of wine as a bottle in the buttery.'

1932. For _gret_, ed. 1550 has _lytle_; but, as Tyrwhitt remarks, the expression is ironical.

1933. _Davit_ is put for _David_, for the rime. MSS. E. Hn. Ln. have _Dauit_; Cm. _dauith_; Cp. Hl. _dauid_; Pt. _davyd_.

1934. _Lo but_ is the reading of MS. E. But the right reading is probably _buf_, not _but_. The readings are; E. _but_; Hn. Cm. Ln. _buf_; [336] Cp. _buff_; Pt. _boþ_ (wrongly); Hl. _boef_; ed. 1550, _bouffe_. This gives the line in the following form:--

Lo, 'buf!' they seye, '_cor meum eructavit!_'

Here the interjectional '_buf!_' is probably intended to represent the sound of eructation. We find _baw!_ as an interjection of strong contempt in P. Plowman, C. xiii. 74, xxii. 398.

Ps. xlv (xliv in the Vulgate) begins, in Latin, with the words _Cor meum eructauit uerbum bonum_; and the Somnour here takes _eructauit_ in the most literal sense.

1935. _fore_, path, course; such is certainly the right reading, as in D. 110, on which see the note.

1937. See James, i. 22.

1938. _at a sours_, at a soaring, in her rise, in her upward swoop. The same word as _source_ of a river; from F. _source_, O. F. _sorse_, the fem. pp. of the verb which arose from Lat. _surgere_. Most likely, this is the origin of the later _souse_, v., in the sense 'to swoop downward'; see Pope, Epilogue to Satires, Dial. ii. 15; Sh. K. John, v. 2. 150; Spenser, F. Q. i. 5. 8. See my note on the House of Fame, l. 544. In the Book of St. Alban's, fol. d 1, back, we find: 'Iff your hawke nym the fowle a-lofte, ye shall say, she toke it _at the mount_ or _at the souce_'; where the _r_ is dropped.

1939. _their_, for _the eir_, the air; see footnote.

1943. _Seint Yve_; see the note to B. 1417 (p. 172), with which this line entirely coincides.

1944. 'If thou wert not our brother, thou wouldst not fare well'; see l. 1951.

1947. _welden_, wield, have the full use of.

1963-5. These lines are quoted by the friar as (supposed) ejaculations by Thomas.

1968. In the margin of MS. E., 'Omnis virtus unita fortior est seipsa dispersa.' Compare the fable in Æsop about the difficulty of breaking a bundle of sticks; and see Boeth. bk. iii. pr. 11. 37-40.

1973. See Luke, x. 7. In the margin of MS. E., 'Dignus est operarius mercede, &c.'

1980. 'In the life of Thomas of India.' For this construction, see note to F. 209. St. Thomas the apostle is often so called, because he is said to have preached in India; and perhaps the tradition is true; see my note on P. Plowman, C. xxii. 165, and especially the remarks in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 292. Cf. note to E. 1230 (p. 353).

The mention of the 'building up of churches' refers to a well-known legend of St. Thomas, who built churches with the money given to him by King Gondoforus for the purpose of building a palace.

'Churchene he arerde mani on, and preostes he sette there.' Legends of Saints, ed. Horstmann, p. 381.

The story is prettily told in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. [337]

Cf. 'Seyn Tomas of Ynde'; Amis and Amiloun, 758, in Weber, Met. Rom. ii. 401. So also in The Assumption of our Lady, 775; in King Horn, ed. Lumby, p. 96; Political and other Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 112, l. 19, p. 123, l. 278, p. 139, l. 735.

How intent the friars were on building fine churches and convents for their own use, appears from Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, pp. 5, 14; Pierce the Plowman's Crede, 191; Jack Upland, § 10, and § 33; Skelton's Colin Clout, 936; &c.

1986. 'As will be best for thee.' Tyrwhitt has _the_ for _thy_; but _thy_ is right. I find in the New E. Dict., s. v. _Best_, 8 b, a quotation from Sir E. Sandys, Europae Speculum (1637), 247: 'I have also, to _my best_, avoyded that rashnesse.' Cf. 'for your beste,' in B. 2427.

1989. 'Be not as a lion in thy house, nor frantick among thy servants'; Ecclus. iv. 30. In the margin of MS. E. is the Vulgate version (Ecclus. iv. 35):--'Noli esse sicut leo in domo tua, euertens domesticos tuos, et opprimens subiectos tibi.'

1993. _hir_, her; so in all the MSS. but Pt., which has _yre_. Tyrwhitt has wrongly taken _ire_ as the reading, and Wright and Bell follow him, without giving any notice that MS. Hl. reads _hir_! But it makes all the difference; _hir_ means 'thy wife'; cf. ll. 1994-2004, all of which lines are robbed of their meaning by this insidious and uncalled-for alteration. Even ed. 1550 and ed. 1561 have _her_.

It is easily seen how the error crept in, viz. from confusion with the friar's sermon against _ire_; but that does not really begin till we come to l. 2005.

As this passage has been so grossly misunderstood, I annex an outline of the sense intended. 'Beware of thy wife; she is like the snake in the grass; remember how many men have lost their lives through their wives. But _your_ wife is a meek one; then why strive? No serpent is so venomous as a provoked woman.' The fact is, that this passage is imitated from Le Roman de la Rose, 16779, &c., where the author bids us beware of women, as being like Vergil's 'snake in the grass.' See next note. With ll. 2001-3 cf. Rom. de la Rose, 9832-6.

1995. Cf. 'latet anguis in herba'; Vergil, Ecl. iii. 95. See F. 512, 513. But Chaucer took this at second-hand, viz. from Le Roman de la Rose, l. 16793; and combined it with another passage from the same, 9832-6, which, in its turn, is copied from Ovid, Ars Amat. ii. 376:--'Nec breuis ignaro uipera laesa pede Femina quam,' &c.

2002. _tret_, short for _tredeth_, treads. Cm. has _trat_. Cf. _hit_, hideth, F. 512; _rit_, rideth, A. 974; &c.

2003. Cf. 'furens quid foemina possit'; Vergil, Æn. v. 6.

'Nulla uis flammae tumidique uenti Tanta, nec teli metuenda torti Quanta cum coniux uiduata taedis Ardet et odit.' Seneca, Medea; iii. 567.

2005. Here begins the sermon against _ire_. See the Persones Tale, [338] I. 533. _oon_, &c., 'one of the chief of the seven Deadly Sins'; all of which are described in the Persones Tale; see I. 387.

After l. 2004, MS. Hl. has two spurious lines, for which see the footnote. It is probable, however, that they are reminiscences of two _genuine_ lines; for they occur in Le Rom. de la Rose, 16536-8. There are two more such after l. 2012, where the sense of _grate_ is not obvious.

2007. _himself_, i. e. the sinner. See Pers. Tale, I. 557.

2009. _homicyde_; see this, in full, in the Pers. Tale, I. 564-579.

2010. 'Ire comth of pryde'; I. 534.

2017. '_Potestat_, a chief magistrate'; Halliwell. '_Podestà_, a potestate, a mayor'; Florio. See Malory, Morte Arth. bk. v. c. 8.

2018. _Senek_, Seneca. The story is given in Seneca's De Ira, i. 16, beginning:--'Cn. Piso fuit memoria nostra, uir a multis uitiis integer, sed prauus,' &c. It ends:--'Constituti sunt in eodem loco perituri tres, ob unius innocentiam.' This Piso was a governor of Syria under Tiberius. Precisely the same story is told, of the emperor Heraclius, in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. cxl. Warton gravely describes it in the words--'The emperor Eraclius reconciles (!) two knights.'

2030-1. Wright says these two lines are not in Tyrwhitt, but he is mistaken. His note was meant to refer to the spurious lines (in MS. Hl.) after l. 2037; the former of which is _repeated_ from l. 2030.

2043. 'This story is also in Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 14. It differs a little from one in Herodotus, lib. iii.' [capp. 34, 35].--Tyrwhitt. Seneca's story begins:--'Cambysen regem nimis deditum uino Praexaspes unus ex carissimis monebat.'

2048. Here MS. Hl. inserts two more spurious lines, for the fourth time; see the footnote.

2061. MSS. E. Hn. Cp. Ln. Dd. all insert _ful_, which is necessary to the rhythm. MSS. Pt. Hl. omit it, and actually read _dronk-e_ (!), with an impossible final e. Tyrwhitt has _dranke_, omitting _ful_, and even Wright, Bell, and Morris have _dronk-e_, with the same omission. Owing to the carelessness of scribes, who often added an idle final _e_, such forms as _dranke_, _dronke_ are not very astonishing. But it would be very curious to know _how these editors scanned this line_.

2075. _Placebo._ 'The allusion is to an anthem in the Romish church, from Ps. cxvi. 9, which in the Vulgate [Ps. cxiv. 9] stands thus: _Placebo Domino in regione uiuorum_. Hence the _complacent_ brother in the _Marchant's Tale_ is called _Placebo_.'--Tyrwhitt. Being used in the office for the dead, this anthem was familiar to every one; and 'to sing Placebo' came to mean 'to be complaisant'; as in Bacon, Essay 20. See Pers. Tale, I. 617; and see my notes to P. Plowman, C. iv. 467 (B. iii. 307), B. xv. 122.

2079. This story is also from Seneca, De Ira, lib. iii. c. 21. Cf. Herodotus, i. 189, 202; v. 52. In these authorities, the river is called the _Gyndes_; and in Alfred's translation of Orosius, bk. ii. c. 4, it is the _Gandes_. 'Sir John Maundeville (Travels, cap. 5) tells this story of the Euphrates.'--Wright. [339]

2085. _he_, i. e. Solomon; see Prov. xxii. 24, 25.

2090. _as Iust as is a squire_, as exact (i. e. upright) as a square. He means that he will deal out exact justice, and not condone the sick man's anger without appointing him a penance for it. A _squire_ is a measuring-square, or T-square, as explained in my Dictionary; it is used for measuring right angles with exactitude. For the use of the word, see Shak. L. L. L. v. 2. 474; Spenser, F. Q. ii. 1. 58; Minshew's Dict.; Romaunt of the Rose, 7064; Floris and Blancheflur, ed. Lumby, 325. Cotgrave gives: '_A l'esquierre_, justly, directly, evenly, straightly; by line and levell, to a haire.' Godefroy, s. v. _esquarre_, refers us to the O. F. translation of 1 Kings, v. 17; 'e que tuz fussent taillie _a esquire_.' Lydgate has: 'By compas cast, and squared out by _squyers_'; Siege of Troye, ed. 1555, fol. F 5, back, col. 1.

2095. 'Thei [the friars] cryen faste that thei haf more power in confessioun then other curatis; for thei may schryve alle that comen to hem, bot curatis may no ferther then her owne parischens'; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 374. Cf. Rom. Rose, 6390-8 (vol. i. 238).

2098. So in I. 1008: 'but-if it lyke to thee of thyn humilitee.'

2105. 'The pavements were made of encaustic tiles, and therefore must have been rather expensive.'--Wright. See my note to Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, l. 194; and Our English Home, p. 20.

2107. 'For the sake of Him who harried hell'; see note to A. 3512; p. 107.

2116. _Elie_, Elias, Elijah. _Elisee_, Eliseus, Elisha. There was great strife among the four orders of friars as to the priority of their order. The Carmelites, who took their name from mount Carmel (see 1 Kings, xviii. 19, 20), actually pretended that their order was founded by the prophet Elijah when he retired to mount Carmel to escape the wrath of Ahab; and by this unsurpassable fiction secured to themselves the credit of priority to the rest. It is therefore clear that the friar of Chaucer's story was a _Carmelite_, as _no other_ friar would have alluded to this story. See Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 353; Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, 382.

2119. _for seinte charitee_; a common expression. It occurs in the Tale of Gamelin, 513; with which Chaucer was familiar. Cf. B. 4510.

2126. _your brother._ This alludes to the _letters of fraternity_, which friars were accustomed to grant, under the conventual seal, to such laymen as had given them benefactions or were likely to leave them money in their wills. The benefactors received in return a brotherly participation in such spiritual benefits as the friars could confer. Thus, in Jack Upland, §§ 28, 29, we find:--'Why be ye [friars] so hardie to grant, by letters of fraternitie, to men and women, that they shall haue part and merite of all your good deeds, and ye weten neuer whether God be apayed with your deeds because of your sin?... What betokeneth that yee haue ordeined that, whan such one as ye haue made your brother or sister, and hath a letter of your seale, that letter mought be brought in your holy chapter, and there be rad, [340] or els yee will not pray for him?' See Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 377, 420; ed. Matthew, p. 4. Such lay brethren were usually dressed for burial in a friar's habit; see Milton, P. L. iii. 479; Rock, Church of our Fathers, i. 487. A benefactor could even thus belong to _all_ the orders of friars at once; cf. P. Plowman, C. x. 343 (B. vii. 192). This gives point to the question in l. 1955 above.

2156. _His meynee_, i. e. the menials of the sick man.

2159. His companion was in the nearest inn; see l. 1779.

2162. _court_, the house of the lord of the manor. 'The larger country-houses consisted generally of an enclosed court, from which circumstance this name was usually given to the manorial residence, and it has been preserved to modern times, as a common term for gentlemen's seats.'--Wright. Cf. P. Plowman, C. xxiii. 344. It was also called a _place_; see note to B. 1910; p. 184.

2164. 'Of ech sich privat seete, by licence of the pope, ben maad, some _chapeleyns of houshold_, summe chapeleyns of honour,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 511. 'Frere, what charity is this, to be confessors of lords and ladies,' &c.; Jack Upland, § 37. And see Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 333; P. Plowman, B. v. 136-142, xx. 341-345.

2185. _maister._ The hypocrite here declines to be called 'master,' though he had allowed the good wife to call him so twice without reproof; see ll. 1800, 1836; and cf. l. 1781. At the same time, he declares that he had gained the title of Master in the schools. As he was the prior or principal of his convent (see ll. 2260, 2265, 2276) he may have been 'capped,' or have received the degree of Master of Divinity. 'Also capped freris, that ben calde maystres of dyvynite, have her chaumber and servise as lordis or kynges.... And what cursidenesse in this ... to gete hym a cappe of maysterdome, by preyer of lordis and grete giftis,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Arnold, iii. 376. An LL.D. of Edinburgh is 'capped,' or has a doctor's cap momentarily laid upon his head, when he receives his degree; as I know by experience.

See also Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, ll. 498, 574.

2187. See Matt. xxiii. 7, 8.

2196. See Matt. v. 13.

2205. 'How does it seem to me?' Read _think'th_.

2209. 'I consider him to be in a kind of frenzy'; cf. 2240, 2292.

2219. _Shewe_ here means 'to propose' or 'propound.'

2235. See Chaucer's own explanation of the method of propagation of a sound, in the Hous of Fame, 782-821. He seems to have taken it from Boethius, De Musica, i. 14; see vol. iii. p. 260.

2238. _my cherl_, i. e. my serf; as being his dependant. It probably implies vassalage.

2244. Cf. A. 100. Although the squire was not above winning 'a new gown,' he was probably a young man of (future) equal rank with the lord of the manor. In fact, his scornful boldness proves it. [341]

2247. _goune-cloth._ 'In the middle ages, the most common rewards, and even those given by the feudal landholders to their dependants and retainers, were articles of apparel, especially the gown or outward robe.... Money was comparatively very scarce in the middle ages; and as the household retainers were lodged and fed, clothing was almost the only article they wanted.'--Wright.

2259. 'The regular number of monks or friars in a convent had been fixed at twelve, with [i. e. besides] their superior; in imitation, it is said, of the number of twelve apostles and their divine master. The larger religious houses were considered as consisting of a certain number of convents. Thus Thorn, speaking of the abbot of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, says:--Anno Domini m.c.xlvi, iste Hugo reparavit antiquum numerum monachorum istius monasterii, et erant lx. monachi professi praeter abbatem, hoc est, _quinque_ conuentus in universo.--_Decem Scriptores_, col. 1807.'--Wright. That is, this house consisted of sixty-one members, the abbot and five convents of twelve each. The smaller (single) convents were also called _cells_, and the principal, the _prior_; see A. 172, and note that, in A. 167, the Monk is said, not to be an abbot, but to be _fit_ to be an abbot. The expression '_his_ covent,' in l. 2261, shews that the friar confessor was the prior or head of his cell.

2279. 'Yif a frere be a _maister_, or a riche frere in-mong hise bretheren, he shal be loutid and worshipid more then Cristis lawe techith,' &c.; Wyclif's Works, ed. Matthew, p. 306.

2281. This implies that the squire, with the rest, had heard the friar preach in church that morning, and had been greatly bored by the sermon.

2289. I supply the word _as_, which is plainly wanted. MS. Hl. supplies _elles_, but I believe _as_ to be right. The way in which the second _as_ came to be dropped in this line, is very curious. It arose from misunderstanding the spelling of Ptolemy.

The occurrence of an unpronounceable _P_ at the beginning of _Ptolomee_ made the scribes think something must be _omitted_. Hence several of them introduced a stroke through the _p_, which stood as an abbreviation for 'ro,' and this turned it into _Protholomee_, which looked right, but made the second _as_ superfluous. Thus MSS. Cp. Hl. both have 'p_ro_tholome,' with the mark of abbreviation; in MSS. E. Hn. Dd. it is expanded into 'Protholomee' at length. We again find the scribes in the same difficulty in D. 324. A still stranger spelling is _plotolomee_, for which see vol. iii. p. 359, l. 18. Cf. the note on Ptolemy in the same volume, at p. 354.

* * * * *

[342]

NOTES TO GROUP E.

THE CLERKES PROLOGUE.

1. _clerk._ See the description of him, Prol. A. 285.

3. _were newe spoused_, who should be (i. e. is) newly wedded; see Rom. de la Rose, (F. version), 1004; in vol. i. p. 136.

6. See Eccles. iii. 1; 'To every thing there is a season,' &c.

7. _as beth_, pray be. The word _as_, nearly equivalent to 'I pray,' is sometimes used thus with the imperative mood. Since _as_ is short for _al-so_, it means literally _even so_, _just so_. Cp. _as keep_, A. 2302; _as sende_, A. 2317; _as doth_, F. 458; '_as beth_ not wroth with me,' Troil. and Cress. v. 145; '_as_ go we seen,' i. e. pray let us go to see, id. 523; see also A. 3777. See Mätzner, Engl. Gram. ii. 2. 505.

10. A French proverb. 'Ki en jeu entre jeu consente,' i. e. approves of; Le Roux de Lincy, Proverbes Français, ii. 85.

18. _Heigh style_, lofty, learned, somewhat pedantic style; see l. 41.

22. _yerde_, control, governance; lit. yard, rod; so we say 'under the rod.' Cf. B. 1287, and the note at p. 169.

27. _Padowe_, Padua, in the N. E. of Italy. Petrarch resided at Arqua, two miles from Padua. He died July 18, 1374. See vol. iii. p. 454; vol. i. p. xxv.

33. _of poetrye_, with his poetry. _Of_ is similarly used in l. 34.

34. _Linian_; 'the canonist Giovanni di Lignano, once illustrious, now forgotten, though several works of his remain. He was made Professor of Canon Law at Bologna in 1363, and died at Bologna in 1383'; Morley's English Writers, v. 339. Tyrwhitt first pointed out the person here alluded to, and says--'there is some account of him in Panzirolus, de Cl. Leg. Intrepret. l. iii. c. xxv:--Joannes, a Lignano, agri Mediolanensis vico, oriundus, et ob id _Lignanus_ dictus,' &c. One of his works, entitled Tractatus de Bello, is extant in MS. Reg. 13 B. ix [Brit. Mus.]. He composed it at Bologna in the year 1360. He was not however a mere lawyer. Chaucer speaks of him as excelling in _philosophy_, and so does his epitaph in Panzirolus. The only specimen of his philosophy that I have met with is in MS. Harl. 1006. It is an astrological work, entitled Conclusiones Judicii composite per Domnum Johannem de Lyniano super coronacione Domni Urbani [343] Pape VI. A.D. 1387,' &c. Lignano is here said to be near Milan, and to have been the lawyer's birthplace. In l. 38, Chaucer speaks of his death, showing that Chaucer wrote this prologue later than 1383.

43. _proheme_, proem, introduction. Petrarch's treatise (taken from Boccaccio's Decamerone, Day x. Novel 10) is entitled 'De obedientia ac fide uxoria Mythologia.' It is preceded by a letter to Boccaccio, but this is not here alluded to. What Chaucer means is the first section of the tale itself, which begins thus:--'Est ad Italiae latus occiduum Vesulus, ex Apennini iugis mons unus altissimus.... Padi ortu nobilissimus, qui eius a latere fonte lapsus exiguo orientem contra solem fertur, mirisque mox tumidus incrementis.... Liguriam gurgite uiolentus intersecat; dehinc Aemiliam, atque Flaminiam, Venetiamque discriminans ... in Adriaticum mare descendit.' _Pemond_, Piedmont. _Saluces_, Saluzzo, S. of Turin. _Vesulus_, Monte Viso. See the description of the route from Mont Dauphin to Saluzzo, by the Col de Viso, in Murray's Guide to Switzerland and Piedmont. Cf. Vergil, Aen. x. 708.

51. _To Emelward_, towards Aemilia. Tyrwhitt says--'One of the regions of Italy was called Aemilia, from the _via Aemilia_, which crossed it from Placentia [Piacenza] to Rimini. Placentia stood upon the Po. Pitiscus, Lex. Ant. Rom. in v. _Via Aemilia_. Petrarch's description ... is a little different.' See note above. _Ferrare_, Ferrara, on the Po, not far from its mouth. _Venyse_, rather the Venetian territory than Venice itself.

54. 'It seems to me a thing irrelevant, excepting that he wishes to impart his information.'

56. _this_, contraction for _this is_ (see footnote); common.

THE CLERKES TALE.

57. In many places this story is translated from Petrarch almost word for word; and as Tyrwhitt remarks, it would be endless to cite illustrative passages from the original Latin; see further in vol. iii. p. 453. The first stanza is praised by Professor Lowell, in his Study Windows, p. 208, where he says--'What a sweep of vision is here!' Chaucer is not quite so close a translator here as usual; the passage in Petrarch being--'Inter caetera ad radicem Vesuli, terra Salutiarum, uicis et castellis satis frequens, Marchionum arbitrio nobilium quorundum regitur uirorum.'

82. _leet he slyde_, he allowed to pass unattended to, neglected. So we find 'Let the world _slide_'; Induction to Taming of the Shrew, l. 5; and 'The state of vertue never _slides_'; The Sturdy Rock (in Percy's Reliques). See March's Student's Manual of Eng. Lang. p. 125, where the expression is noted as still current in America. Petrarch has--'alia pene cuncta negligeret.' With ll. 83-140, cf. Shakesp. Sonnets, i-xvii. [344]

86. _flockmele_, in a flock or troop; Pet. has 'cateruatim.' 'Treuly theder came _flockemele_ the multitude of tho blessyd sowlys':--Monk of Evesham, ed. Arber, c. 55; p. 107. Palsgrave's French Dict. has--'Flockmeale, _par troupeaux_'; fol. 440, back. Cf. E. _piece-meal_; we also find _wukemalum_, week by week, Ormulum, 536; _lim-mele_, limb from limb, Layamon, 25618; _hipyllmelum_, by heaps, Wycl. Bible, Wisdom xviii. 25: Koch, Eng. Gramm. ii. 292.

99. 'Although I have no more to do with this matter than others have who are here present.' Observe that the Marquis is addressed as _ye_, not _thou_, the former being a title of respect.

103-105. These three lines are not in the original.

106. We should have expected to find here _us lyketh ye_, i. e. you are pleasing to us; but we really have an instance of a double dative, so that _us lyketh yow_ is equivalent to 'it pleases us with respect to you.' The nominative case is _ye_, the dative and accusative _yow_ or _you_. _Yow leste_, it may please you, in l. 111, is the usual idiom.

107. _and ever han doon_, and (both you and your doings) have ever brought it about. Such is the usual force of _doon_; cf. ll. 253, 1098.

115. Cf. Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, i. 266-8.--M.

118-119. Expanded from--'uolant enim dies rapidi.'

121. _still as stoon_; Latin text, 'tacita.' Cf. F. 171.

129. _we wol chese yow_, we will choose for you.

147. _Ther_, where. This line is Chaucer's own.

157. _Bountee_, goodness. _streen_, race, stock. Petrarch has--'Quicquid in homine boni est, non ab alio quam a Deo est.'

168. _As_, as if. This line, in Petrarch, comes after l. 173. Lines 174, 175 are Chaucer's own.

172. _as ever_, &c., as ever I may thrive, as I hope to thrive.

190-196. Expanded from--'Et ipse nihilominus eam ipsam nuptiarum curam domesticis suis imposuit, edixitque diem.'

197-203. Expanded from--'Fuit haud procul a palatio uillula paucorum atque inopum incolarum.'

211-217. Sometimes Chaucer translates literally, and sometimes he merely paraphrases, as here. Lines 215-217 are all his own.

220. _rype and sad corage_, a mature and staid disposition. Petrarch has--'sed uirilis senilisque animus uirgineo latebat in pectore.'

223. _spinning_; i. e. she spun whilst keeping the sheep; see a picture of St. Geneviève in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art. Line 224 is Chaucer's.

227. _shredde and seeth_, sliced and sod (or boiled). Lat. 'domum rediens oluscula et dapes fortunae congruas praeparabat, durumque cubiculum sternebat,' &c.

229. _on lofte_, aloft. She kept up her father's life, i. e. sustained him. His death is recorded in l. 1134.

234. For this line the Latin has only the word _transiens_.

237. _in sad wyse_, soberly; Lat. 'senili grauitate.' [345]

242. Here _the people_ means the common people; Lat. '_uulgi_ oculis.' In the next line _he_ is emphatic, meaning that _his_ eyes were quicker to perceive than _theirs_.

253. _hath don make_, hath caused to be made. Lat. 'Ipse interim et anulos aureos et coronas et balteos conquirebat.' Chaucer inserts _asure_, the colour of fidelity; see F. 644, and note. For _balteos_ he substitutes the English phrase _broches and ringes_; cf. P. Plowm. B. prol. 75.

257. Scan--Bý | a maýd | e lýk | to hír | statúrë. ||

259. Here Chaucer apparently omits a sentence, namely:--'Uenerat expectatus dies, et cum nullus sponsae rumor audiretur, admiratio omnium uehementer excreuerat.' But he has, in fact, given us this above, in ll. 246-8.

260. _undern_ (lit. the intervening or middle period) has two meanings in the Teutonic tongues; (1) mid-forenoon, i. e. originally 9 A. M.; and (2) mid-afternoon, originally 3 P. M. In this passage it is clearly the former that is meant; indeed in l. 981, where it occurs again, the original has 'proximae lucis _hora tertia_,' i. e. 9 A. M. In _this_ passage, the original has _hora prandii_, meaning luncheon-time, which in Chaucer's time would often be 9 A. M.; see note to B. 1396, at p. 171; and cf. Ælfric's Homilies, ed. Thorpe, ii. 77. See note to Piers Pl. B. vi. 147; and see _Undern_ in the Glossary.

But it may be noted here, that the sense of _undern_ is variable. Sometimes it meant the period from 9 to 12, or the middle of that period, i. e. about 10.30 or 11. Sometimes, the period from 3 to 6 P. M., or the middle of it, i. e. about 4.30 or 4. In modern E. dialects, it means about 4 P. M. See B. 4412, D. 875.

260-294. Expanded and improved from the following short passage: 'Hora iam prandii aderat, iamque apparatu ingenti domus tota feruebat. Tum Gualtherus, aduentanti ueluti sponsae obuiam profecturus, domo egreditur, prosequente uirorum et matronarum nobilium caterua. Griseldis omnium quae erga se pararentur ignara, peractis quae agenda domi erant, aquam e longinquo fonte conuectans paternum limen intrabat: ut, expedita curis aliis, ad uisendam domini sui sponsam cum puellis comitibus properaret.'

322. _governeth_, arrange, dispose of. Observe the use of the _plural_ imperative, as a mark of respect. When the marquis addresses Griseldis as _ye_, it is a mark of extreme condescension on his part; the Latin text has _tu_ and _te_.

337-343. Expanded from--'insolito tanti hospitis aduentu stupidam inuenere; quam iis uerbis Gualtherus aggreditur.'

350. _yow avyse_, consider the matter; really a delicate way of expressing refusal. Compare the legal formula _le roy s'avisera_ for expressing the royal refusal to a proposed measure.

364. _For to be deed_, even if I were to be dead, were to die; Lat. 'et si me mori iusseris, quod moleste feram.'

375-376. These characteristic lines are Chaucer's own. So are ll. 382, 383. [346]

381. _corone_, nuptial garland; Lat. 'corona.' See Brand's Pop. Antiq. ed. Ellis, ii. 123.

388. _snow-whyt_; Lat. 'niueo.' Perhaps Spenser took a hint from this; F. Q. i. 1. 4. In the Leg. of Good Women, l. 1198, Chaucer calls a horse _paper-whyt_.

393. Repeated, slightly altered, from l. 341.

409. _thewes_, mental qualities. So also in E. 1542; Gower, Conf. Amant. lib. vii. sect. 1 (ed. Pauli, iii. 85); Spenser, F. Q. i. 9. 3; i. 10. 4; ii. 1. 33, &c. 'The common signification of the word _thews_ in our old writers, is manners, or qualities of mind and disposition.... By _thews_ Shakespeare means unquestionably brawn, nerves, muscular vigour (Jul. Caes. i. 3; 2 Hen. IV, iii. 2; Hamlet, i. 3). And to this sense, and this only, the word has now settled down; the other sense, which was formerly so familiar in our literature, is quite gone out and forgotten. [With respect to _theawe_ = sinew, in Layamon, l. 6361] Sir F. Madden remarks (iii. 471):--"This is the only instance in the poem of the word being applied to bodily qualities, nor has any other passage of an earlier date than the sixteenth century been found in which it is so used." It may be conjectured that it had only been a provincial word in this sense, till Shakespeare adopted it'; Craik's English of Shakespeare; note on Jul. Caesar, i. 3. 81.

412. _embrace_, hold fast; 'omnium animos nexu sibi magni amoris _astrinxerat_.' Compare Tennyson's Lord of Burleigh with ll. 394-413.

413. Nearly identical with Troil. i. 1078.

421. _royally_; alluding to the royal virtues of Griseldis.

429. Not only the context, but the Latin text, justifies the reading _homlinesse_. _Feet_ is fact, i. e. act. The Latin is--'Neque uero solers sponsa muliebria tantum haec _domestica_, sed, ubi res posceret, publica etiam obibat officia.' Lines 432-434 are Chaucer's own.

444. 'Although it would have been liefer to her to have borne a male child'; i. e. she would rather, &c. The Latin has--'quamuis filium maluisset.'

449-462. Expanded from--'Cepit (ut fit) interim Gualtherum, cum iam ablactata esset infantula (mirabilis quaedam quàm laudabilis, [_aliter_, an mirabile quidem magis quam laudabile,] doctiores iudicent) cupiditas satis expertam charae fidem coniugis experiendi altius [_aliter_, ulterius], et iterum atque iterum retentandi.'

452. _tempte_, make trial of, prove; see ll. 1152, 1153 below. _sadnesse_, constancy, equanimity.

483. Note Walter's use of the word _thee_ here, and of _thy_ twice in the next stanza, instead of the usual _ye_. It is a slight, but significant sign of insult, offered under pretence of reporting the opinion of others. In l. 492 we have _your_ again.

504. _thing_, possession. Lat. 'de rebus tuis igitur fac ut libet.'

516. _a furlong wey or two_, the distance of one or two furlongs, a short distance, a little. The line simply means--'a little after.' [347]

525. _stalked him_; marched himself in, as we should say. This use of _him_ is remarkable, but not uncommon.

533-539. Lat. 'Iussus sum hanc infantulam accipere, atque eam--Hîc sermone abrupto, quasi crudele ministerium silentio exprimens, subticuit.' Compare 'Quos ego--'; Vergil, Aen. i. 135.

540-546. Lat. 'Suspecta uiri fama; suspecta facies; suspecta hora; suspecta erat oratio; quibus etsi clare occisum iri dulcem filiam intelligeret, nec lachrymulam tamen ullam, nec suspirium dedit.' Mr. Wright quotes this otherwise, putting _dulce_ for _dulcem_, and stopping at _intelligeret_.

547-567. Chaucer expands the Latin, and transposes some of the matter. Lines 561-563 precede ll. 547-560 in the original, which merely has--'in nutrice quidem, nedum in matre durissimum; sed tranquilla fronte puellulam accipiens aliquantulum respexit & simul exosculans benedixit, ac signum sanctae crucis impressit, porrexitque satelliti.'

570. After _That_ in this line, we ought, in strict grammar, to have _ye burie_ in the next line, instead of the imperative _burieth_. But the phrase is idiomatic, and as all the seven best MSS. agree in this reading, it is best to retain it. Tyrwhitt alters _That but_ to _But if_.

579. _Somwhat_, in some degree. But Petrarch says differently--'_uehementer_ paterna animum pietas mouit.'

582-591. Lat. 'Iussit satelliti obuolutam pannis, cistae iniectam, ac iumento impositam, quiete omni quanta posset diligentia Bononiam deferret ad sororem suam, quae illic comiti de Panico nupta erat,' &c.

586. 'But, under penalty of having his head cut off'; lit. of cutting off his head.

589. _Boloigne_, Bologna, E. by S. from Modena, and a long way from Saluzzo. _Panik_ answers to the _de Panico_ in note to l. 582; Boccaccio has _Panago_. I observe in the map the river _Panaro_ flowing between Modena and Bologna; perhaps there is some connexion between the names. Tyrwhitt has _Pavie_ (Pavia) in his text, but corrects it in the notes.

602. _in oon_, in one and the same state: _ever in oon_, always alike, continually; so also in l. 677. Cf. Kn. Ta. 913 (A. 1771).

607. This must mean--'no accidental sign of any calamity.'

612. _A knave child_, a male child, boy; as in Barbour's Bruce, xiii. 693; English Gilds, ed. T. Smith, p. 30.

615. _merië_; three syllables; cf. A. 1386, B. 4156. Ll. 621-623 are Chaucer's own.

625. _sikly berth_, hardly bear, dislike. Lat. 'populum _aegre ferre_,' &c.

643. Lat. 'ne te inopinus et subitus dolor turbet.'

645-651. Expanded from--'Dixi (ait) et repeto, nihil possum seu uelle, seu nolle, nisi quae tu; neque uero in ijs filiis quicquam habeo, praeter laborem.'

663. _plesancë_, three syllables; _stabl'_, one syllable.

666. 'The pain of death is not to be compared to the pleasure of your [348] love.' Lat. 'nec mors ipsa nostro fuerit par amori.' Cf. ll. 817, 1091.

687. _ever lenger_, &c., i. e. ever the longer (he thinks of it) the more he wonders. In _the more_, the word _the_ is for A. S. _þý_.

700. _And he_; cf. _And ye_, l. 105.

701-707. Expanded from--'sed sunt qui, ubi semel inceperint, non desinant; immo incumbant, haereantque proposito.'

704. _a stake_; cf. Macb. v. 7. 1; Jul. Caesar, iv. 1. 48.

714. _more penible_, more painstaking; Lat. 'obsequentior.'

719. 'She made it clear that no wife should of herself, on account of any worldly anxiety, have any will, in practice, different from that of her husband.'

722. _sclaundre_, ill fame, ill report concerning Walter. See l. 730.

738. _message_, a messenger; Lat. '_nuncios_ Romam misit.' So in Old English we find _prisoun_ or _prison_ for prisoner; Piers Pl. B. vii. 30.

772. _anon_, immediately. It was not uncommon in olden times for girls to be married at twelve years of age. The Wife of Bath was first married at that age; see D. 4.

797. Lat. 'magna omnis fortuna seruitus magna est; non mihi licet, quod cuilibet liceret agricolae.'

850. _were_ agrees with the word _clothes_ following; cf. _it ben_, Piers Plowm. B. vi. 56. She did not really bring her husband even the dower of her old clothes, as they had been taken from her. Lines 851-861 are all Chaucer's own, and shew his delicacy of touch.

866. Lat. 'neque omnino alia mihi dos fuit, quam fides et nuditas.'

871. Probably suggested by Job, i. 21. So l. 902 is from Job, iii. 3.

880-882. These lines are Chaucer's own; l. 880 is characteristic of him. The phrase in l. 880 seems to have been proverbial. Cf. 'I walke as werme, withoute wede'; Coventry Mysteries, p. 28. But Chaucer got it from Le Roman de la Rose, 445; see his translation, l. 454; vol. i. p. 112.

888-889. The latter part of l. 888, and l. 889, are Chaucer's own.

903. _lyves_, alive; _a lyves creature_, a creature alive, a living being. _Lyves_ is an adverb, formed like _nedes_, from the genitive case of the substantive. There are other instances of its use.

'Yif I late him _liues_ go'; Havelok, 509.

i. e. if I let him go away _alive_. And again _lyues_ = alive, in Piers Pl. B. xix. 154. Nearly repeated from Troil. iv. 251-2.

910. After this line, Chaucer has omitted the circumstance of Janicola's preserving his daughter's old clothing; 'tunicam eius hispidam, et attritam senio, abditam paruae domus in parte seruauerat.' See l. 913.

911. _Agayns_, towards, so as to meet. _To go agayns_, in M. E., is _to go to meet_. So also _to come agayns_, _to ride agayns_ (or _agayn_). See _Agayn_ in Glossary to Spec. of Eng. (Morris and Skeat); and Barbour's Bruce, xiv. 420. Ll. 915-917 are Chaucer's own. [349]

916. 'For the cloth was poor, and many days older now than on the day of her marriage.'

932. 'Men speak of Job, and particularly of his humility.' Cf. Job, xl. 4, xlii. 1-6.

934. _Namely of men_, especially of _men_, where _men_ is emphatic. The whole of this stanza (932-938) is Chaucer's.

938. _but_, except, unless; _falle_, fallen, happened; _of-newe_, newly, an adverbial expression. It means then, 'unless it has happened very lately.' In other words, 'If there is an example of a man surpassing a woman in humility, it must have happened very lately; for I have never heard of it.'

939. _Pars Sexta._ This indication of a new part comes in a fitting place, and is taken from Tyrwhitt, who may have found it in a MS. But there is no break here in the Latin original, nor in any of the MSS. of Chaucer which I have consulted. _erl of Panik_; Lat. 'Panicius comes.'

940. _more and lesse_, greater or smaller; i. e. everybody. So also in the Frank. Tale, 'riveres _more and lesse_'; F. 1054. So also _moche and lyte_, great and small, Prol. 494; _moste and leste_, greatest and least, A. 2198. Spenser has, F. Q. vi. 6. 12,--

''Gainst all, both bad and good, both most and least.'

941. _alle and some_, i. e. all and one, one and all. See Morris's Eng. Accidence, sect. 218, p. 142.

960. _wommen_; some MSS. have _womman_, as in Tyrwhitt. But MS. E. is right. Petrarch uses the word _foeminas_, not _foeminam_.

965. _yvel biseye_, ill provided; lit. ill beseen. The word _yvel_ is pronounced here almost as a monosyllable (as it were _yv'l_), as is so commonly the case with _ever_; indeed generally, words ending with _el_ and _er_ are often thus clipped. A remarkable instance occurs in the Milleres Tale (A. 3715), where we not only have a similar ending, but the word _ever_ in the same line--

'That trewë love was ever so yvel biset.'

See also _yvel apayed_ in line 1052 below. The converse to _yvel biseye_, is _richely biseye_, richly provided or adorned, in l. 984 below.

981. Lat. 'Proximae lucis hora tertia comes superuenerat'; see note to l. 260.

995-1008. These two stanzas are Chaucer's own, and are so good that they must have been a later addition; Prof. Ten Brink suggests the date 1387 (Eng. Lit. ii. 123, Eng. version). In MS. E. the word _Auctor_ is inserted in the margin, and l. 995 begins with a large capital letter. At the beginning of l. 1009 is a paragraph-mark, shewing where the translation begins again. _unsad_, unsettled. Cf. Shakesp. Cor. i. 1. 186, Jul. Caesar, i. 1. 55; Scott, Lady of the Lake, v. 30.

999. 'Ever full of tittle-tattle, which would be dear enough at a halfpenny.' See n. to l. 1200. _Iane_, a small coin of Genoa (Janua); see Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 1925. The first stanza (995-1001) is supposed [350] to be uttered by the sober and discreet part of the population; see l. 1002.

1031. _lyketh thee_, pleases thee. The marquis addresses her as _thou_, because all suppose her to be a menial.

1039. _mo_, lit. more; but also used in the sense of _others_, or, as here, _another_. The modern phrase would be, 'as you did _somebody else_.' The extreme delicacy of the hint is admirable. This use of _mo_ is common in Chaucer; see the Glossary. So also, in Specimens of English, ed. Morris and Skeat, we have, at p. 47, l. 51--

'Y sike for vnsete; Ant mourne ase men doþ _mo_';

i. e. I sigh for unrest, and mourn as _other_ men do. And on the next page, p. 48, l. 22, we have

'Mody meneþ so doþ _mo_, Ichot ycham on of þo';

i. e. 'The moody moan as _others_ do; I wot I am one of them.' In l. 240 of How the Good Wife taught her Daughter, pr. with Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, we find--'And slanderit folk vald euir haue _ma_,' i. e. would ever have _others like themselves_. Somewhat similar is the expression _oþer mo_, where we should now say _others as well_; Piers Plowman, C. v. 10, xxii. 54. A somewhat similar use of _mo_ occurs in Tudor English. 'It fortuned Diogenes to ... make one among the _moo_ at a dyner.'--Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes (1564), bk. i. § 91. So also:--'that he also, emong the _mo_ [i. e. the rest] might haue his pleasure'; id. bk. ii. § 13. Tyrwhitt's suggestion that Chaucer has licentiously turned _me_ into _mo_ for the mere sake of getting a rime, in which he has hitherto been followed by nearly every editor, is only to be repudiated. It may well have been with the very purpose of guarding against this error that, in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt MSS., the original Latin text is here quoted in the margin--'unum bona fide te precor ac moneo: ne hanc illis aculeis agites, quibus _alteram_ agitasti.' Chaucer, who throughout surpasses his original in delicacy of treatment, did not permit himself to be outdone here; and Boccaccio also has the word _altra_. The use of _me_ would have been a _direct_ charge of unkindness, spoiling the whole story. See l. 1045 and l. 449.

1049. _gan his herte dresse_, addressed his heart, i. e. prepared it, schooled it. The M. E. _dresse_ is our modern _direct_; both being from Lat. _dirigere_.

1053. Here we may once more note the use of the word _thy_, the more so as it is used with a quite different tone. We sometimes find it used, as here, _between equals_, as a term of _endearment_; it is, accordingly, very significant. See l. 1056.

1066. _that other_, the other, the boy.

1071. _non_, any, either. The use of it is due to the preceding _nat_.

1079. Professor Morley, in his English Writers, v. 342, aptly remarks here--'And when Chaucer has told all, and dwelt with an [351] exquisite pathos of natural emotion all his own upon the patient mother's piteous and tender kissing of her recovered children--for there is nothing in Boccaccio, and but half a sentence in Petrarch, answering to these four beautiful stanzas (1079-1106)--he rounds all, as Petrarch had done, with simple sense, which gives religious meaning to the tale, then closes with a lighter strain of satire which protects Griselda herself from the mocker.'

1098. 'Hath caused you (to be) kept.' For the same idiom, see Kn. Tale, A. 1913; Man of Law's Tale, B. 171, and the note. Cf. 'Wher I have beforn ordeyned and _do mad_ [caused to be made] my tombe.' Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 278.

1133. _His wyves fader_, i. e. Janicola. This circumstance should have been mentioned _before_ l. 1128, as in the original.

1140. For _of_ (Ellesmere MS.) the other MSS. read _in_.

1141. _auctour_, author, i. e. Petrarch, whom Chaucer follows down to l. 1162. Ll. 1138-1141 are Chaucer's own, and may be compared with his poem on the Golden Age (vol. i. 380).

1144. _importable_, intolerable; Lat.--'huius uxoris patientiam, quae mihi _uix imitabilis_ uidetur.' Of course ll. 1147-8 are Chaucer's.

1151. 'Receive all with submission.' Fr. _en gré_, gratefully, in good part. _sent_, sendeth; present tense, as in Piers Plowman, C. xxii. 434. The past tense is _sente_, which would not rime.

1152. 'For it is very reasonable that He should prove (or test) that which He created.'

1153. _boghte_, (hath) redeemed. See St. James, i. 13.

1162. Here Petrarch ends his narrative, and here, beyond all doubt, Chaucer's translation originally ended also. From this point to the end is the work of a later period, and in his best manner, though _unsuited to the coy Clerk_. He easily links on his addition by the simple expression _lordinges, herkneth_; and in l. 1170, he alludes to the _Wife of Bath_, of whom probably he had never thought when first translating the story.

We can thus understand the stanza in the footnote, on p. 424. It is genuine, but was rejected at the time of adding ll. 1163-1212. It was afterwards expanded into The Monkes Prologue, with the substitution of the patient Prudence for the patient Griselda; see B. 3083-6.

1177. Here the metre changes; the stanzas are of six lines; and all six stanzas are linked together. There are but three rimes throughout; _-ence_ in the first and third lines of every stanza, _-aille_ in the second, fourth, and sixth, (requiring _eighteen_ rimes in all), and _-inde_ in the fifth line. It is a fine example even from a metrical point of view alone.

1188. _Chichevache_, for _chiche vache_, i. e. lean cow. The allusion is to an old fable, of French origin, which describes a monstrous cow named _Chiche Vache_ as feeding entirely upon patient wives, and being very lean in consequence of the scarcity of her diet. A later form of the fable adds a second beast, named _Bicorne_ (two-horned), who, by adopting the wiser course of feeding upon patient husbands, was [352] always fat and in good case. Mr. Wright says--'M. Achille Jubinal, in the notes to his _Mystères inédits du xv Siècle_, tom. i. p. 390, has printed a French poetical description of _Chichevache_ from a MS. of the fourteenth century. In the French miracle of St. Geneviève, of the fifteenth century (Jubinal, ib. p. 281), a man says satirically to the saint,

"Gardez vous de la _chicheface_, El vous mordra s'el vous encontre, Vous n'amendez point sa besoigne."'

A poem by Lydgate on _Bycorne and Chichevache_ is printed in Mr. Halliwell's Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, p. 129 (Percy Society); see Morley's English Writers, vi. 107, and his Shorter English Poems, p. 55. In his Étude sur G. Chaucer, p. 221, M. Sandras refers us, for information about _Chicheface_, lit. 'thin face' or 'ugly face' (of which _Chiche vache_ was a perversion), to the Histoire Littéraire de France, vol. xxiii. Dr. Murray refers us to Montaiglon, _Poésie franç. 15^e et 16^e siècles_ (1855), ii. 191. The passage in Chaucer means, 'Beware of being too patient, lest Chichevache swallow you down.'

1189. _Folweth Ekko_, imitate Echo, who _always replies_.

1196. The forms _chamail_, _kamail_, a camel, occur in the A. F. Romance of King Horn, ed. Brede and Stengel, l. 4177. For the M. E. _camayl_, see Rich. Cuer de Lion, 2323; Cursor Mundi, 3304 (Trin. MS.).

1200. 'Always talk (or rattle) on, like a mill' (that is always going round and making a noise). 'Janglinge is whan men speken to muche biforn folk, and _clappen as a mille_, and taken no kepe what they seye'; Ch. Persones Tale, De Superbia (I. 406). Palsgrave's French Dict. has--'I clappe, I make a noyse as the clapper of a mill, _Ie clacque_.'

'Thou art as fulle of clappe, as is a mille.' Hoccleve, de Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, p. 7.

Cf. 'As fast as millwheels strike'; Tempest, i. 2. 281.

1204. _aventaille_, the lower half of the moveable part of a helmet which admitted air; called by Spenser the _ventail_, F. Q. iv. 6. 19; v. 8. 12; and by Shakespeare the _beaver_, Hamlet, i. 2. 230. It is explained, in Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, that the moveable part of the helmet in front was made in two parts, which turned on hinges at the sides of the head. The upper part is the _visor_, to admit of vision, the lower the _ventail_, to admit of breathing. Both parts could be removed from the face, but only by lifting them _upwards_, and throwing them _back_. If the _visor_ alone were lifted, only the upper part of the face was exposed; but if the _ventail_ were lifted, the visor also went with it, and the whole of the face was seen. Compare Fairfax's Tasso, vii. 7:--

'But sweet Erminia comforted their fear, Her _ventail_ up, her visage _open laid_.'

So also in Hamlet. With reference to the present passage, Mr. Jephson says that _and eek his aventaille_ is a perfect example of bathos. I fail to see why; the weapon that pierced a _ventail_ would pass into the [353] head, and inflict a death-wound. The passage is playful, but not silly.

1206. _couche_, cower. Hence the phrase--'to play couch-quail'; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 348.

1211. 'As light as a leaf on a linden-tree' was an old proverb. See Piers Pl. B. i. 154.

THE MARCHAUNTES PROLOGUE.

1213. _Weping and wayling_; an expression caught from l. 1212, and linking this Prologue to the foregoing Tale. Yet in fourteen MSS. the Merchant's Tale is separated from the Clerk's; Trial Forewords, by F. J. Furnivall (Chaucer Soc.), p. 28.

1221-2. _What_, why. _at al_, in every respect; like Lat. _omnino_.

1227. This theme is enlarged upon in Lenvoy de Chaucer à Bukton, a late minor poem (vol. i. 398).

1230. _Seint Thomas._ Whenever this Apostle is mentioned, he is nearly always said to be _of India_, to distinguish him, it may be, from Saint Thomas of Canterbury. See D. 1980, and the note. Some account of the shrine of St. Thomas, of the manner of his death, and of miracles wrought by him, is given in Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 18. Colonel Yule tells us that the body of St. Thomas lay at Mailapúr, a suburb of Madras. The legend of St. Thomas's preaching in India is of very high antiquity. St. Jerome speaks of the Divine Word being everywhere present in His fulness 'cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae,' &c.; Sci. Hieronomi Epist. lix., ad Marcellam. Gregory of Tours (A. D. 544-595) speaks of the place _in India_ where the body of St. Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa in the year 394. See the whole of Colonel Yule's long note upon the subject; and the account of Saint Thomas in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.

THE MARCHANTES TALE.

For remarks on the sources of this Tale, see vol. iii. p. 458. The modern version by Pope may be compared, though it was a juvenile performance. Cf. Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 28.

This Tale frequently adopts passages from the Tale of Melibeus, which was doubtless written several years before it. See also the article by Dr. Köppel in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, vol. 86, p. 39.

1246. _Pavye_, Pavia. I suppose that Chaucer had no special reason for locating the tale in Lombardy.

1248-52. For _sixty_, some MSS. have _lx._; the scribes of MSS. Hl. and Ln. wrongly have _fourty_, which looks as if they took _lx._ to mean _xl._ I see no point in turning the former _sixty_ (in 1248) into _fourty_, as Wright does, on the pretence that the first twenty years of his life did not count. Sixty was considered a great age (l. 1401). [354]

1251. _seculeer_, secular; as distinguished from the monks and friars. Chaucer probably speaks ironically, meaning that these holy orders were as bad as the rest. See l. 1322.

1267-1392. The whole of this passage presents the arguments that prevailed with January; as shewn by the words _For which_ (i. e. wherefore) in l. 1393. That is to say, Chaucer here purposely keeps reasons _against_ marriage out of sight, reserving them for ll. 1521-1565, 1659-1681. Hence the opinion in l. 1269, that a man should marry when old, is not Chaucer's opinion at all.

1270. 'The fruit of his treasure,' i. e. purchased with his own wealth. A queer reason, and not Chaucer's. Cf. l. 1276.

1277. _sit wel_, is very fit. Palsgrave has: 'It sytteth, it becometh, _il siet_.'

1284. For _blisful_, MS. Hl. wrongly has _busily_.

1294. _Theofraste_, Theophrastus. The allusion is to the Liber Aureolus Theophrasti de Nuptiis, partly preserved by St. Jerome, who quotes a long extract from it in his tractate Contra Iovinianum, lib. i. John of Salisbury quotes the same passage, almost word for word, in his Polycraticus, lib. viii. c. 11. The point discussed is:--'an uir sapiens ducat uxorem.' Amongst other things, he has a passage answering to ll. 1296-1304 below. 'Quod si propter dispensationem domus ... ducuntur uxores: multo melius seruus fidelis dispensat, obediens auctoritati domini, et dispensationi eius obtemperans quàm uxor.... Assidere autem aegrotanti magis possunt amici et uernulae beneficiis obligati, quàm illa quae nobis imputat lachrymas suas, et haereditatis spe uendit illuuiem.' Cf. Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 366.

1305-6. These two lines occur in E. Cm., and are doubtless correct. The MSS. vary considerably; see Six-Text, Pref. p. 70.

Hn.--And if thow take a wyf _she wole destroye_ _Thy good substance, and thy body annoye_.

N.B. The words in italics are added in a later hand.

Hl.--And if that thou take a wif be war Of oon peril which declare I ne dar.

Neither of these lines will scan. MSS. Harl. 7335 and Bodley 686 nearly agree with this, but read _be wel y-war_ for _be war_.

Arch. Seld.--And if thow take a wiff in thin age oolde Ful lightly maist thow be a cokewoolde.

Pt.--And if thou take a wif that to the is vntrewe Ful ofte tyme it shal the r[e]we.

So also MS. Harl. 1758, Laud 600 and 739, Lichfield, &c. The black-letter editions of 1550 and 1561 have a much better version of the same, for they omit _that_ and _is_ in the former (too long) line, and insert _sore_ before _rewe_ in the latter (too short) one.

Dd.--And if thow take a wyf of heye lynage She shal be hauteyn and of gret costage.

[355] So also (according to Tyrwhitt) the Haistwell MS. and MS. Royal 17. D. xv; and, according to Furnivall, MS. Chr. Ch. C. 6.

In six MSS., according to Tyrwhitt, they are omitted; and on this account he omits them, on the plea that they 'form the opening of a new argument,... and consequently would have been cancelled, if he [Chaucer] had lived to publish his work.' But the sense is quite complete in the form in which I give them, from the two best MSS.

1311. Against this line is written, in the margin of MS. E.--'Uxor est diligenda quia donum Dei est: Iesus filius Sirac: domus et diuicie dantur a parentibus, a Domino autem proprie uxor bona uel prudens.' But the reference is wrong; the quotation is not from Ecclesiasticus (or Jesus the son of Sirach), but from Prov. xix. 14. The Vulgate has _uxor prudens_, omitting _bona uel_. The _whole_ quotation is from Albertano of Brescia's Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1315. Compare B. 1199, and I. 1068.

1318. This parenthetical line is Chaucer's very own.

1319. 'Sacramentum hoc magnum est'; Eph. v. 32. Marriage, in the Romish Church, is one of the seven sacraments.

1323-35. All from Albertano of Brescia's Liber de Amore Dei (Köppel).

1326. Hl. has _body-naked_; but all the rest (like the old editions) have _bely-naked_, which is the usual expression; see examples in Halliwell.

1328. In the margin of E.--'Faciamus ei adiutorium,' &c. From Gen. ii. 18, 24.

1335-6. From Le Roman de la Rose, 16640-4.

1337. _Seint-e_ is feminine; _ben'cite_ is trisyllabic.

1358-61. Of course these lines are genuine; they occur in nearly every MS. but E. and Trin. Coll. R. 3. 3. The scribe of E. slipped from _reed_ in 1357 to _rede_ in 1362; a common mistake. Dr. Furnivall objects that _wyse_ in 1359 is made to rime with _wyse_ in 1360, and _rede_ in 1361 with _rede_ in 1362; the riming words being used _in the same sense_. This is not the case. The first _wyse_ is plural; the second is singular, and used generally. The first _rede_ means 'advise'; the second, 'read.' To leave them out would give a rime of _reed_ (monosyllable) with _rede_ (dissyllable).

1362. The examples of Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther are quoted, in the same order and in similar terms, in the Tale of Melibeus; see B. 2288-2291, and the Notes.

1373, 4. _Mardochee_, Mordecai; in the Vulgate, Mardochaeus. _Assuere_, Ahasuerus; in the Vulgate, Assuerus; see l. 1745.

1376. In the margin of MS. Hn. is written:--'Seneca: sicut nichil est superius benigna coniuge, ita nichil est crudelius infesta muliere.' This is from Albertano of Brescia, Lib. Consolationis, cap. v. (p. 18). Sundby gives the reference, not to Seneca, but to Fulgentius, Mythologiarum, L. i. c. 27.

1377. _bit_, biddeth, bids. The passage referred to is in Dionysius [356] Cato, lib. iii. dist. 25, and is given in the margin of MSS. E. Hn. and Dd.,

Uxoris linguam, si frugi est, ferre memento.

Quoted, at second-hand, from Albertano (Köppel).

1380. In the margin of MS. E.--'Bona mulier fidelis custos est, et bona domus.' From Albertano, as above.

1381-2. 'Ubi non est mulier, ingemiscit _egens_'; Ecclus. xxxvi. 27. Albertano quotes this, but alters _egens_ to _eger_; hence Chaucer has 'the syke man'; see Köppel's article, p. 42.

1384. See Eph. v. 25, 28, 29, 31.

1385. _thou lovest_, thou wilt love; the present for the future; in the second instance. There is no real difficulty here, though Tyrwhitt makes one, and alters the text to _love thou_.

1401. 'On the brink of my grave.' Cf. Ps. xxx. 3, 9; &c.

1407-16. 'Uxorem accipias potius puellam quam uiduam'; from Albertano. See Köppel's article, p. 42.

1412. _mo_, more in number; T. has _more_ (badly).

1418. 'I like fish when old, preferring a full grown pike to a pikerel; and I like flesh young, preferring veal to beef.'

1424. _Wades boot_, Wade's boat. Wade was a famous hero of antiquity, to whom Chaucer again alludes in Troil. iii. 614. In the Traveller's Song, l. 22, we find:--'Witta w[=e]old Sw[=æ]fum, Wada Hælsingum,' i. e. Witta ruled over the Swabians, Wada over the Hælsings.' Wade is again mentioned in the alliterative Morte Arthure, l. 964. In a translation of Guido delle Colonne, in MS. Laud K. 76, in the Bodleian library, the romance of Wade is mentioned in conjunction with those of Havelok and Horn, both of which are well known; see the whole passage, as cited in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, in a note to Section III. In Sir Beves of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, 2605, we have an allusion to his fight with a fire-drake or fiery dragon. And in Sir T. Malory's Morte Arthur, bk. vii. c. 9, we find:--'were thou as wyghte as euer was Wade or Launcelot.' Speght knew the story, but has not recorded it; his note is:--'Concerning Wade and his bote called Guingelot, as also his straunge exploits in the same, because the matter is long and fabulous, I pass it over.' On which Tyrwhitt remarks--'_Tantamne rem tam negligenter?_ Mr. Speght probably did not foresee, that posterity would be as much obliged to him for a little of this _fabulous matter_ concerning _Wade_ and his _bote_, as for the gravest of his annotations.' Tyrwhitt also refers us, for a mention of Wade, to Camden's Britannia, 907, and to Charlton's History of Whitby, p. 40. M. Michel endeavoured to collect the particulars concerning Wade, and published them in a brochure, entitled _Wade: Lettre à M. Henri Ternaux-Compans, &c. sur une Tradition Angloise du Moyen Age_; Paris, 1837; 8vo. But it does not tell us much more that is helpful, except in furnishing a reference to the Wilkina Saga, capp. 18-20.

After all, the most light is given us by the following sentence in the [357] Corpus Poeticum Boreale, ed. Vigfusson and Powell, i. 168, with reference to the Lay of Weyland. 'Weyland is trapped by Nidad, king of the Niars, hamstrung, and forced to work for him in his forge on the isle of Seastead in lake Wolfmere. He contrives to slay his tyrant's sons, beguile his daughter [named Bodwild], and by the aid of a pair of wings which he has fashioned to soar away from his prison-house, rejoicing in his revenge.... That the King's daughter had a son by Weyland, _the famous Wade_ (the memory of whose magic boat _Wingelock_ lingered in N. England till the Reformation), we know from Wilkina Saga.'

I entirely differ from M. Michel's extraordinary conclusion about the boat--'Nous avons quelques raisons de croire que ce bateau n'étoit pas d'une course aussi rapide: en effet, dans l'Edda il est dit qu'Odin avoit un valet et une servante nommés _Ganglate_ et _Gangloet_, mots qu'on dit signifier _marchant lentement_.' Of course _Ganglati_ and _Ganglöt_ (as they should be written) mean 'slow-goer,' but this has nothing to do with _Guingelot_, which is merely a French spelling of some such form as _Wingelok_. It is obvious that the sole use of a magic boat is to transport its possessor from place to place in a few minutes, like the magic wings of Wade's own father. This is all we need to know, to see the point of the allusion. Old widows, says Chaucer in effect, know too much of the craft of Wade's boat; they can fly from place to place in a minute, and, if charged with any misdemeanour, will swear they were a mile away from the place at the time alleged. Mr. Pickwick, on the other hand, being only a man, failed to set up the plea of an _alibi_, and suffered accordingly.

1425. _broken harm._ This is one of the phrases which Tyrwhitt includes in his list as being 'not understood'; nor is it easy. But if we take it in connexion with the context, I think it can be explained. _Harm_ is 'mischief, injury'; broken is 'fragmentary,' as in 'broken meat,' and the like; so that _broken harm_ refers to slight disconnected acts of mischief, or what we should now call 'petty annoyances,' or 'small worries.' Thus the sense is that 'widows know so much about ways of creating small annoyances, that I should never live in peace with one.' Taken all together, ll. 1424-6 simply imply that 'old widows are so full of tricks for deceiving me, and can inflict at pleasure such small but constant annoyances, that I,' &c.

1447. _Take him_, let him take; see the Exhortation in the Marriage-Service in the Book of Common Prayer; cf. Pers. Tale, I. 939, 940, 861.

1469. Cf. F. 202.

1474. _disputisoun_, disputation. Many MSS. have _disputacioun_, which is too long. The form, as Tyrwhitt remarks, is quite correct; see B. 4428, F. 890. Spelt _desputeson_ in Gower, Conf. Amant. i. 90. See _disputoison_ in Godefroy, with the variants in _-aison_, _-eison_, _-eson_, _-ison_. Compare _orison_ with _oration_.

1476. _Placebo._ This name has reference to his complaisant disposition; see note to D. 2075. So, in the Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. [358] Morris, p. 60, we have: 'The verthe zenne is, thet huanne hi alle zingeth Placebo, thet is to zigge: "mi lhord zayth zoth, my lhord doth wel"; and wendeth to guode al thet the guodeman deth other zayth, by hit guod, by hit kuead.'

1485. This quotation is not from Solomon, but from Jesus son of Sirach; see Ecclus. xxxii. 19:--'Do nothing without advice, and when thou hast once done, repent not.' Chaucer follows the Vulgate version; see note to B. 2193, where the quotation recurs.

1516. 'Your heart hangs on a jolly pin,' i. e. is in a merry state. A _pin_ was a name for a wooden peg; and _to hang on a pin_ was to be hung up conspicuously. Palsgrave, p. 844, has: 'Upon a mery pynne, _de hayt_; as, _il a le cueur de hayt_'; cf. '_Hait_, liveliness, ... cheerfulness' in Cotgrave. Halliwell gives: '_on the pin_, on the _qui vive_.' Later, the phrase became _in a merry pin_, i. e. in a good humour; but this is thought to refer to the pins or pegs in a 'peg-tankard'; see _Pin_ in Nares. Cowper, in his John Gilpin, has 'in merry pin.'

1523. See Seneca, De Beneficiis, capp. 14-16; Lounsbury, Studies, ii. 270. However, it is _really_ taken from Map's Epistola Valerii, c. 9: 'Philosophicum est: Videto cui des. Ethica est: Videto cui te des.'--Anglia, xiii. 183. Cf. P. Plowman, B. vii. 74, and the note.

1535. _chydester_, the feminine form of _chyder_, which is the form used in MSS. Pt. and Hl. I can find no other example; but, in the Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 150, 4266, we find _chideresse_.

1536. _mannish wood_, with masculine manners, and mad; virago-like. Certainly the right reading, and found in E. Hn. Cm. Unluckily, Tyrwhitt and others have adopted the nonsensical reading of Pt. and Hl., viz. _a man is wood_! Cp. Ln. have _of maneres wood_, which is better, but is clearly a mere substitution for the original _mannish_. For _mannish_, masculine, we have Chaucer's own authority; see B. 782, and the note.

1538. 'A metaphor from horses, meaning, No woman is without faults, just as there is no horse which will trot perfectly sound in all respects.'--Bell. From Albertano of Brescia, Liber de Amore Dei: 'Nulla tam bona uxor, in qua non inuenias quod queraris.'--Köppel.

1553. 'I know best where my shoe pinches me.' This story has been already alluded to; see D. 492, and the note.

1558. Tyrwhitt has:--'By him that made water, _fire_, erthe, and aire.' This will not scan, and the word _fire_ is introduced merely to please the editor, being found in none of the seven MSS., nor in the old editions. When Chaucer wishes to mention _all_ the four elements, he does so; see A. 1246, 2992.

1560-1. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 14055-6:--

'Car cil a moult poi de savoir Qui seus cuide sa fame avoir.'

1582. Cf. Boeth. bk. v. met. 4. 8; Troil. i. 365; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 158.

1584. E. Hn. have _se ful many_, but the rest omit _ful_. Scan the [359] line by reading _many a_ in one foot, and making _figúr-e_ trisyllabic, as in B. 3412, E. 16.

1592. _voys_, fame, general approval.

1609. Read _inpossíbl'_, and _wer-e_. _were_, would be.

1640-1. The seven deadly sinnes, for which see the Persones Tale. 'The popular medieval treatises on the seven sins arrange the minor transgressions connected with each as _branches_ of the primary tree.'--Wright. And each of the _branches_ have _twigs_, as Chaucer himself says; see I. 389. Cf. my note to P. Plowman, C. viii. 70.

1665. _forbed-e_, may (God) forbid. _sente_, subj., could send.

1682. This line is incomplete in all the seven MSS. There is a pause at the caesura, so that the word _for_ occupies the whole of the third foot. Tyrwhitt conceals this fact by inserting _but_ before _thinne_. Cf. D. 1647, and the note.

1684-7. These four parenthetical lines interrupt the story rather awkwardly. They obviously belong to the narrator, the Marchant, as it is out of the question that Justinus had heard of the Wife of Bath. Perhaps it is an oversight.

If we take these lines in this way, it is necessary to read _we have_ in l. 1686, as in Hn. The other MSS. and editions read _ye have_. I explain 'which we have on honde' as meaning, 'which we are now discussing.' Moreover, the reading _we_ is exactly appropriate after the reading _us_ of l. 1684, where it is difficult to see how _us_ can refer to any but the Canterbury pilgrims.

1693. _Maius_ is a masculine form, because the name of the month is so; see l. 1748.

1702. _sacrement_, i. e. of marriage; see l. 1319. The couple also used to 'receive the sacrament,' i. e. the eucharist, in the modern sense.

1704. Referring to the prayers in the marriage service, which mention Isaac and Rebecca, and Abraham and Sarah.

1709-52. Quoted by Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, ii. 354.

1716. _Orpheus_, the celebrated minstrel, whose story is in Ovid, Met. x. 1-85; xi. 1-66. Mentioned again in the Book of the Duchesse, 569; House of Fame, 1203; Troil. iv. 791. For the minstrelsy at the feast, cf. F. 78.

_Amphioun_, Amphion, king of Thebes, who helped to build Thebes by the magic of his music; Hyginus, Fab. 6 and 7; cf. Ovid, Met. vi. 221, 271, 402; xv. 427. Already mentioned in connexion with Thebes in A. 1546. (The _i_ is shortened.)

1719. Cf. 'Ther herde I trumpe Ioab also'; Ho. of Fame, 1245. 'Joab blew a trumpet,' 2 Sam. ii. 28; xviii. 16; xx. 22.

1720. _Theodomas_; also mentioned in the above passage, Ho. of Fame, 1246. As he blew a trumpet at Thebes, when the city was in fear (or danger), he is clearly to be identified with the Thiodamas mentioned in the Thebaid of Statius. He succeeded Amphiaraus as augur, and furiously excited the besiegers to attack Thebes. His invocation was succeeded by a great sound of trumpets (Theb. viii. [360] 343), but Statius does not expressly say that he blew a trumpet himself.

1723. _Venus_; cf. F. 272-274.

1727. _fyrbrond_, fire-brand, torch; which she carried as appropriate to the marriage procession. This attribute of Venus is found in Le Roman de la Rose, l. 3434:--

'Ele tint ung brandon flamant En sa main destre, dont la flame A eschauffee mainte dame.'

Observe that l. 2250 of the Legend of Good Women runs thus:--'N'Ymenëus, that god of wedding is.' This agrees with line 1730 except as regards the prefixed _Ne_. The 'fire-brand' reappears in l. 1777 below.

1731. _his lyf_, i. e. during his life, in all his life.

1732. _Marcian._ Chaucer is still thinking of his own House of Fame (cf. notes to ll. 1719, 1720), where he had already mentioned Marcian, at l. 985. Martianus Minneus Felix Capella, a native of Carthage, was a writer of the fifth century, and wrote the Nuptials of Philology and Mercury, _De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii_. This consists of two books, immediately followed by seven books on the Seven Sciences; see Warton's Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, iii. 77; Smith's Classical Dictionary, s. v. _Capella_; Lydgate's Temple of Glass, l. 130.

1734. _hir_; cf. 'he, Theofraste,' in l. 1294; also ll. 1368, 1373. For _him_ (as in E. Cm.), MSS. Hn. Hl. have _he_ (badly).

1745. _Assuer_, Ahasuerus, as in l. 1374. There is a special reference here to the banquet at which Esther obtained her request; see Esther, v. 6. See further in Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, i. 288, iii. 142.

1754. For other allusions to Paris and Eleyne, see Parl. of Foules, 290, 291; Book of the Duch. 331.

1783. The word 'Auctor' in the margin of MS. E. signifies that ll. 1783-1794 form a reflection on the subject by the author, who here personates the Marchant. There are similar passages further on, viz. ll. 1866-1874, 2057-2068, 2107-2115, and 2125-2131.

1784. _bedeth_, proffers; cf. G. 1065. From Boeth. bk. iii. pr. 5. 50.

1785. _false hoomly hewe_, O false domestic servant! Cp. Pt. Ln. have the reading _holy_, which doubtless arose, as Wright points out, from missing the mark of abbreviation in the form 'h[=o]ly,' i. e. ho_m_ly. 'Tyrwhitt, however,' he adds, 'adopts this reading, mistakes the meaning of the word _hewe_, adds _of_, which is found in none of the MSS.; and in his text it stands _false of holy hewe_, which he supposes to signify false of holy colour. Conjectural emendations are always dangerous.' Yet Wright _silently adopts_ such emendations over and over again; cf. l. 1812 below. Cf. _hoomly fo_ in ll. 1792, 1794.

1786. 'Like the sly and treacherous snake in the bosom.' This refers to the fable in Phaedrus, lib. iv. fab. 18. But Chaucer probably [361] took it from the Gesta Romanorum, ch. clxxiv. For numerous references, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. Crane, 1890, p. 201.

1790. Here the monosyllabic pp. _born_ takes a final _e_ in the definite form, as noticed by Prof. Child; see Ellis, E. E. Pronunc. p. 350, § 32. Cf. _her dreint-e lord_, Gower, C. A., ii. 105; and see B. 69.

1793. From Boethius, lib. iii. pr. 5:--'Quae uero pestis efficacior ad nocendum, quàm familiaris inimicus?' See vol. ii. p. 63.

1795. _his ark diurne_, the daily arc of his apparent motion. See Chaucer on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 7:--'To knowe the _arch of the day_'; or, as in l. 7 of the same:--'tak ther thyn _ark of the day_.'

1797. _On thorisonte_, upon the horizon; i. e. the time was come for the sun to descend _below_ it.

_that latitude_; because the apparent motion of the sun depends upon the latitude as well as upon the day of the year; cf. the Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. § 13.

1799. _hemisperie_, the hemisphere above the horizon; see the Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. i. § 18.

1807. _ipocras_, the usual medieval spelling of Hippocrates; but the name is here given to a prepared drink. Halliwell (s. v. _Hippocras_) defines it as 'a beverage composed of wine, with spices and sugar, strained through a cloth. It is said to have taken its name from _Hippocrates' sleeve_, the term [which] apothecaries gave to a strainer.' Long and elaborate recipes for it exist, and may be found in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, pp. 125 and 267; and in Halliwell's Dictionary, s. v. _ipocras_. The shortest is that in Arnold's Chronicle:--'Take a quarte of red wyne, an ounce of synamon, and halfe an unce of gynger; a quarter of an ounce of greynes [i. e. cardamoms], and longe peper, and half a pounde of suger; and brose [bruise] all this, and than put them in a bage of wullen clothe, made therefore [i. e. for the purpose], with the wyne; and lete it hange over a vessel, tyll the wyne be rune thorowe.' All the recipes insist upon the straining, and some direct the use of as many as six straining-bags. See Our English Home, p. 83.

_clarree_, clarified wine; see note to A. 1471.

_vernage_, a sweet wine, sometimes red, but more often white; 'grown in Tuscany, and other parts of Italy, and [it] derived its name from the thick-skinned grape, _vernaccia_ (corresponding with the _vinaciola_ of the ancients), that was used in the preparation of it. The wine known as _vernaccia_ in Tuscany was always of a white or golden colour. See Bacci, Nat. Vinor. Hist., pp. 20, 62.'--Henderson, Hist. of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824; quoted in the Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 203. Florio's Ital. Dict. gives:--'_Vernaccia_, a kinde of strong wine like malmesie or muskadine, or bastard wine.' Chaucer speaks of it again, in conjunction with _malvesye_; see B. 1261. For other notices of it, see Babees Book, pp. 125, 267, and the Glossary; Halliwell, s. v. _Piment_; Gower, C. A., iii. 8; Squyer of Lowe Degree, l. 754. The derivation, sometimes given, of _vernage_ from _Verona_, is clearly wrong. [362]

1810. _dan_, i. e. _Dominus_, a common title; see note to B. 3119.

_Constantine._ 'Dan Constantine, according to Fabricius, Bibl. Med. Æt. t. i. p. 423, ed. Pat. 4to., wrote about the year 1080. His works, including the treatise mentioned in the text, were printed at Basil, 1536, fol.'--T. He has been mentioned before; see A. 433; and cf. Warton, Hist. E. Poetry, ed. 1871, ii. 368.

1812. _nas no-thing eschu_, was not at all remiss, or _shy_. Cm. Ln. read _was_; the rest _nas_; but the sense is the same. Tyrwhitt reads--_he wolde nothing eschue_. Wright says: 'the Harl. MS. reads _nas_, which seems not to furnish so good a grammatical construction'; accordingly, he reads--_he wold nothing eschieu_. Morris likewise reads _wolde_; and Bell reads _wold_. But the editors are all wrong; for the verb _eschew-e_ will not rime with _coitu_, and it is clear that they did not know that _eschu_ is here _an adjective_! Yet it occurs again in the Pers. Tale, Group I, 971; and I subjoin three more examples.

'She is escheue [_read_ eschu] of bothe two.' Gower, Conf. Amant. ii. 286.

'Yit gooses dounge _eschew is_.' Palladius on Husbandry, bk. i. l. 528.

In this passage it rimes with _mew-es_, pl. sb.

'Her taste is eke _eschewe_.'--id. bk. iv. l. 586.

Godefroy gives the O. F. adj. _eschif_, _eskif_, 'animé de sentiments hostiles, défavorables, mauvais, mécontent, de mauvaise volonté, rétif.' Amongst his examples, we find the spellings _eskius_, _eschius_, _eskieus_, _esqueus_, _eskieu_, _esquieu_, _esehieu_; where the _-s_ is a case-ending. The O. F. adj. is derived from the adj. which appears as M. H. G. _schiech_, cognate with E. _shy_. Chaucer's _eschu_ is, accordingly, just as good an adjective as the mod. E. _shy_.

1817. _travers_, curtain, drawn across to form a screen; as in Troil. iii. 674. Ill spelt _trauas_ in the Prompt. Parv., but explained by _transversum_, which is the Low Latin form. See Way's note; he quotes--"i. trauers du satin vermaille," so that they were sometimes made of crimson satin. In the Kingis Quair, st. 90, we find the form _trauerse_; in st. 82 it is spelt _travesse_, and is there applied to a screen which happened to be nearly transparent, as was not the case in our text. See vol. ii. pp. 478, 506.

1819. A note in Bell's Chaucer gives a translation of the form of blessing the nuptial bed to be found in old service-books.

1825. _houndfish_, dog-fish. I suppose this is the spotted dog-fish, _Scyllium catulus_, or _Scyllium canicula_. Randle Holme has: '_Dog fish_, or _Sea dog fish_. It is by the Dutch termed a _Flackhund_ and a _Hundfisch_; the skin is hard and redish, beset with hard and sharp scales, sharp, and rough and black; the Belly is more white and softer.' Bk. ii. ch. xiv. See Gloss. to the Babees Book; Lydgate, Minor Poems, p. 201.

[363] 1840. In the Pers. Tale, Chaucer says just the contrary; see I. 859.

1849. _shaketh._ Cf. 'The slake skin trembleth upon myn empted body'; Ch. tr. of Boethius, bk. i. met. 1. 12.

1862. From Le Rom. de la Rose, 19931-2.

1879. _a penner._ 'The penner was a case containing the pens, ink, and other apparatus of writing, which the clerk carried about with him, as the Eastern students do at the present day. As such articles belonged only to clergy and scholars, we understand why the squire Damyan was obliged to borrow one for his use. An early vocabulary entitled _Nominale_ mentions, among the _Nomina rerum pertinentium clerico_, 'Hoc pennare, _a pener_.'--Wright. See Wright-Wülcker, Vocab. 682. 15; also 601. 34.

1881. _compleynt._ See specimens in Chaucer's Compleints of Mars, of Venus, and of Anelida; also the Compleint to his Lady. And cf. F. 943-948.

1883. _heng_, i. e. which hung; the relative is omitted.

1887. _two of Taur_, the second degree of Taurus. Tyrwhitt unluckily altered _two_ to _ten_, on the plea that 'the time given (_four days complete_, l. 1893) is not sufficient for the moon to pass from the second degree of Taurus into Cancer.' And he then proceeds to shew this, taking the _mean_ daily motion of the moon as being 13 degrees, 10 minutes, and 35 seconds. But, as Mr. Brae has shewn, in his edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe, p. 93, footnote, it is a mistake to reckon here the moon's _mean_ motion; we must rather consider her _actual_ motion. The question is simply, can the moon move from the 2nd degree of Taurus to the 1st of Cancer (through 59 degrees) in four days? Mr. Brae says decidedly, that examples of such motion are to be seen 'in every almanac.'

E.g. in the Nautical Almanac, in June, 1886, the moon's longitude at noon was 30° 22' on the 9th, and 90° 17' on the 13th; i. e. the moon was in the _first_ of Taurus on the former day, and in the _first_ of Cancer on the latter day, at the same hour; which gives (very nearly) a degree more of change of longitude than we here require. The MSS. all have _two_ or _tuo_, and they are quite right. The motion of the moon is so variable that the mean motion affords no safe guide.

1887-8. The _i_ in _gliden_, _biden_ (as in M. E. _riden_, E. _ridden_) is short.

1921. _At-after_, immediately after; a compound preposition; see F. 302.

1924. _a gentil man_, a man of rank, as squires usually were, although in service, and therefore a _hewe_ (1785). Cf. l. 1907, and note to D. 2243.

1932. This proceeding was quite in accordance with ancient custom. See the tale of Eglamore, in the Percy Folio MS., st. 11; and the Ballad of Sir Cauline, st. 9.

1943-4. Misarranged and corrupt in MS. Hl.

1962. _precious_, over-nice, scrupulous, prim; as in D. 148.

1966. _evensong._ Only Cp. Ln. have _euesong_. Perhaps _even_ was [364] pronounced as _e'en_ (een); cf. _yest're'en_, _Hallowe'en_. But _eve_ for _even_ is very common.

1971. For _Was_, only Hn. Hl. have _As_. The latter seems to afford an easier construction, and is adopted by the editors. But we are bound to take the reading _Was_, as in most MSS., and explain it. I take it thus:--'Whether it were ... that the heavens stood in such a condition, that it was a fortunate time.' This is quite exact, though one dependent clause on the top of another is not felicitous. The reference is, of course, to the old astrological belief about fortunate positions of the planets; cf. A. 417. See Boeth. bk. iv. pr. 6, 62-71.

1986. Chaucer's favourite line; see note to F. 479.

1991. _lete_, allowed; A. S. _l[=æ]ten_. MS. Harl. omits _him_.

2002. _visit-è_; trisyllabic. See the footnote.

2013. _lowe_ means 'tractable, docile, obedient'; cf. note to D. 1369. 'And after that he had with lacke of vitailles brought those pratlers as _lowe as dogge to the bowe_'; Udall, tr. of Erasmus' Apophthegmes; Antigonus, § 27. This shews how the dogs were tamed.

2018. _lady_, lady's. See note to A. 88.

2021. 'Alluding to the Epicurean philosophy.'--Bell. See A. 335-8.

2026. _honestly_, honourably, worthily; cf. l. 2028.

2032. _he_, viz. Guillaume de Lorris. There were _two_ authors of Le Roman de la Rose, but the reference is here to the earlier portion of it; see ll. 130-146, 480-512, 645-688 of the English version, where the description of the garden occurs; and for the description of the well mentioned in l. 2036, see ll. 1462-1634 of the same.

2034. 'Hortorum decus et tutela Priapus'; Ovid, Fast. i. 415.

2038. _Pluto._ In his Introductory Discourse, Tyrwhitt remarks:--'The machinery of the Fairies, which Chaucer has used so happily, was probably added by himself; and indeed, I cannot help thinking that his _Pluto_ and _Proserpine_ were the true progenitors of _Oberon_ and _Titania_.... This observation is not meant to extend further than _the King and Queen_ of Faery; in whose characters I think it is plain that Shakespeare, in imitation of Chaucer, has dignified our Gothic Elves with the manners and language of the classical Gods and Goddesses. In the rest of his Faery system, Shakespeare seems to have followed the popular superstition of his own time.'

This remark is important; I doubt if the influence of Chaucer upon Shakespeare in this matter has been sufficiently recognised. In both works, the Fairy king and queen have a dispute in hand, which is settled by the assistance of mortals.

Not only here, but in the Hous of Fame, 1509-1511, Chaucer refers us to Claudian as his authority for Pluto and Proserpine; see note to l. 2232 below.

2046. The insertion of _smal_ is necessary; the rime _wiket, cliket_, being a feminine one.

_cliket_, (1) a latch, (2) a latch-key; here used in the latter sense. In Shropshire, the word is used of a particular kind of fastening for a gate, [365] which Miss Jackson thus describes. 'An iron link is attached to the gate by means of a staple; this link is terminated by a short hasp-like bolt. On the gate-post is an iron plate, having in it a kind of key-hole, into which the before-mentioned bolt fits, much after the manner of the fastening of a trunk, thus securing the gate.'

2058. _scorpion_, scorpion; see notes to B. 360, 404; cf. H. 271, and see Chaucer's description of the scorpion in the Book of the Duchesse, ll. 636-641. Vincent of Beauvais, in his Speculum Naturale, bk. xx. c. 160, quotes from the Liber de Naturis Rerum--'Scorpio blandum et quasi virgineum dicitur vultum habere, sed habet in cauda nodosa venenatum aculeum, quo pungit et inficit proximantem.' And see Boeth. bk. ii. pr. 1. 10-14; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 62, l. 13.

2080. _Soul_, sole; cf. the law-phrase _femme sole_. See P. de Thaun, Bestiary, 1250; Morris, O. E. Misc. p. 22; Ayenb. of Inwyt, p. 226.

2093. _Damian_, here to be read as _Dam-yan_, nearly in two syllables. _Benignely_, favourably; altered by Tyrwhitt to _brenningly_, without authority; pronounced _benign-e-ly_, in four syllables.

2107. 'What might it avail thee if thou couldst see to the very horizon?'

2109. 'For it is just as good to be deceived when blind.'

2111. See note to A. 1390.

2115. Cf. 'Of sufferance cometh ease'; in Heywood's Proverbs.

2117. To scan the line, we must read _warm-e_, and _émprentèd_. _Emprented hath_ would run much better. The scribes who wrote _warm_ probably pronounced the last word as _clikét_; but the rime is feminine. And see l. 2121, 2123.

2125. The reference is to the story of Pyramus in Ovid, Met. iv. 55; especially (in l. 2126) to the line--'Quid non sentit amor?'

2127. _he_, i. e. the lover; used generally. This line answers to l. 742 of the Legend of Good Women:--'But what is that, that _love_ can nat espye'; where _love_ means a lover.

2133. This has to be taken in connexion with ll. 2222-4 below, in which the date is said to be _a little before June 12_; see note to the line. Consequently, the 'eight days' mentioned in l. 2132 must be _the first eight days of June_. Again, if we refer to l. 2049, we see that January used to go to the garden 'in the summer season,' which would seem to be intended to begin with June. Accordingly, the month of June is here expressed, in a mere parenthesis, by the phrase 'ere the month of July.' Hence the sense really is--'ere that eight days (of the summer season) were passed, (of the month) before that of July.' And the whole passage merely means--'before the 8th of June was over,' or simply, 'on June 8.' This date precisely agrees with that given, by quite a different method, in ll. 2222-4.

As the month meant is here certainly that of _June_, as shewn by Mr. Brae in 1851 (see his edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe, pp. 67, 83), Mr. Brae proposed to read _Juin_ for _Juil_. But this was because he followed Tyrwhitt's text, which has _of_ for _er_, and therefore reads-- [366]

'er that daies eighte Were passed _of_ the month of Juil, befill,' &c.

And it is the fact, that, with the reading _of_, we also should have to accept the reading _Juin_. But we must set against this the fact that no MS. (at least of any authority) reads either _Juin_ or _of_! Tyrwhitt has made this alteration _silently_, and Wright and Bell have _silently_ adopted it. Morris also makes the alteration, but prints _of_ in italics to shew that it is not the reading of his MS. These _silent_ conjectural emendations are very troublesome, as they are copied by one editor after another without any enquiry as to the sense of the context.

The Harl. MS., supposed to be followed by Wright, actually has _a stop_ before 'er'; the reading being--'were passid . er the moneth of Iuyl bifille.' The reading _bifille_ (might befal) is probably due to taking _Iuyl_ as the nominative to this verb, whereas _bifil_ is meant to be impersonal, with the sense--'it happened.'

2138-2148. This passage is almost entirely composed of fragments of Solomon's Song. We may compare ll. 2138-2140 with ch. ii. vv. 10, 11, 12; l. 2141 with ch. i. v. 15; l. 2142 with ch. iv. v. 10; l. 2143 with ch. iv. vv. 12, 16; ll. 2144, 2145 with ch. iv. vv. 9, 10; l. 2146 with ch. iv. v. 7.

2194. The first foot is defective (in all seven MSS.). To fill out the line, Tyrwhitt inserts _owen_ before _lord_; a 'correction' which Wright and Bell _silently_ adopt. There is no hint as to the source of this _owen_. Thynne's edition (as frequently elsewhere) agrees with the seven MSS.

2200. This drowning in a sack is quite oriental. Cf. 'There yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea'; Byron, The Corsair, iii. 8.

2202. _wenche._ For this word, cf. H. 220, and Ho. of Fame, 206.

2222. _in Geminis_, in the sign of Gemini. We are also told that he was near his 'declination of Cancer,' i. e. his _maximum_ northern declination, which he obtains when entering Cancer, at the summer solstice. In Chaucer's time, the sun entered Cancer about June 12, and therefore just before that day was in Gemini. Taking this statement in conjunction with the 'eight days' of the summer season mentioned in l. 2132, we may feel sure that the date meant is June 8, just four days before the sun left Gemini, and attained his maximum declination. See my edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe (E. E. T. S.), p. lv., which requires partial correction, as shewn in the note to l. 2132 above.

2224. The 'exaltation' of a planet was the sign in which it was (quite arbitrarily) supposed to exercise its greatest power. The exaltation of Jupiter was Cancer, as Chaucer correctly says.

2227. This notion of identifying Pluto with the king of Fairyland occurs again in the Romance of Sir Orpheo; see Ritson, Met. Rom. ii. 259. Sir Orpheo is the Greek Orpheus, who redeemed Eurydice from 'the kyng of fayrè,' i. e. from Pluto. See the remarks on this poem in Warton, Hist. E. Poet. ed. 1871, i. 31, 32.

The construction of this sentence is awkward. Lines 2231-3 are [367] parenthetical; _Pluto_ is in apposition with _This king_ in l. 2234, and agrees with the verb _sette_ in the same.

2229-30. Tyrwhitt prints these lines differently, thus:--

Folwing his wif, the quene Proserpina, Which that he ravisshed out of Ethna.

This reading is from MS. Harl. 7335; and T. adds--'In some other MSS. _Ethna_, by a manifest error of the copyist, has been changed into _Proserpina_ [as in Cp. Pt. Ln.]. The passage being thus made nonsense, other transcribers left out the [second] line, and substituted in its stead--

Eche after other, right as any lyne.'

But it would appear that the line just quoted, which Tyrwhitt pronounces to be a substitution, is really the original reading, and we must not hastily reject it. It is found in E. Cm. and Hl., whilst in Hn. the line has been erased or omitted, and then filled in (in a spurious form) by a later hand.

Wright and Bell have followed Tyrwhitt's lead, and altered the passage accordingly. Morris silently changes the _preserpine_ of the Harl. MS. to _Preserpina_, and gives the next line in the objectionable form--'Whiche that he ravysched out of _Cecilia_' (Sicily).

It seems very much better to restore the original reading, especially when we notice that _Próserpýne_ (not Prosérpiná) is the undoubted reading in the House of Fame, 1511, and that _quen-e_ is constantly dissyllabic (see B. 161, 1671, G. 1089), In l. 2264, we again have _Próserpýne _. The old black-letter editions are not of much value; still they give line 2230 as in my text, except that they wrongly change _any_ into a.

2232. _Claudian_; Claudius Claudianus, at the close of the fourth century, wrote an epic poem in three books _De raptu Proserpinae_, which he left unfinished, besides several other works. He is mentioned again in the Ho. of Fame, 449, 1509. The story of Proserpine is also in Ovid, Fasti, iv. 427; and in Gower, C. A., ii. 170.

2240. The line is plainly imperfect, both in sense and rhythm, yet is the same in all seven MSS. and in ed. 1550. They agree in reading:--

Ten hundred thousand telle(n) I can.

Tyrwhitt reads:--

Ten hundred thousand _stories_ tell I can.

He does not tell us where he found the word _stories_. Wright and Bell silently adopt _stories_; Morris inserts it between square brackets. It occurs, however, in a parallel line, F. 1412, as well as in a similar passage in the Leg. of Good Women, Prol. A. 274.

2247. From Eccles. vii. 28. Cf. B. 2247, where Chaucer quotes the same passage.

2250. I. e. the author of Ecclesiasticus. This book contains both praise and dispraise of women; see Ecclus. xxiii. 22-26; xxv. 17-26; [368] xxvi. 1-3, 7-16, 22-27; xxxvi. 21-24; xl. 19, 23; xlii. 9-14. The dispraise predominates.

2252. _wilde fyr_; see A. 4172, and the note.

2264. 'So you shall, if you so wish.'

2265. 'I swear by the soul of my mother's sire'; i. e. by Saturn (Ovid, Fasti, vi. 285). The wisdom of Saturn is referred to in A. 2444. Tyrwhitt altered _sires_ into _Ceres_, for which I find no authority. Wright notes that Hl. has _sires_, and Ln. _sire_; and adds--'Ceres is of course the word intended.' I see no evidence for it; and I do not admit that an editor should alter all that he fails to understand.

2273. _visage_, pronounced (vizaa·j), the _e_ being elided. We still say 'to _face_ a thing out.' 'Suffolk doth not flatter, _face_, or feign'; 1 Hen. VI. v. 3. 142; and see Com. Errors, iii. 1. 6; Tam. Shrew, ii. 291; Tw. Nt. iv. 2. 201; &c.

2279-2281. Repeated from B. 2266, 7; so also ll. 2286-2290 is taken from B. 2268, 9.

2283. Cf. The Second Nonnes Tale, G. 512.

2284. Here 'the Romayn gestes' simply means Roman history. The Gesta Romanorum also contains a story of a devoted wife, in ch. vi; the story of Lucretia, ch. cxxxv; and of the faithful wife of Guido, ch. clxxii. But there are other stories of a very different character.

2300. Referring to 1 Kings, xi. 12.

2304. _ye_, i. e. ye men. So in all the seven MSS. Tyrwhitt alters it to--That _he_ of women _wrote_. But why? Cf. D. 688-696.

2308. 'As ever I desire to keep my tresses whole.' See _Brouke_ in the Glossary.

2310. 'That would wish (to do) us a disgrace.'

2321-2. Cf. Rom. de la Rose, 10131-2:--

'Cerchant prés et jardins et gaus, Plus envoisiés que papegaus.'

See also above, B. 1559, 1957.

2335. _plyt_, condition. 'An allusion to the well-known vulgar error about the longings of pregnant women.'--Bell.

2355. By confusion with l. 2357, MS. Harl. alters _agayn his sighte_ to _his sight agayn_, and then misses ll. 2356, 7.

2365. From Ovid; see B. 2167, and the note.

2367. _store_, bold, rude, audacious, impudent; lit. 'great.' A. S. _st[=o]r_, great; Icel. _stórr_, great, rough, strong, proud. _Stronge_ must here have a similar sense:--'O bold rude lady.' _Strong-e_ and _stor-e_ both have final _e_, as being vocatives.

2410. 'He who misapprehends comes to a false conclusion.'

EPILOGUE TO THE MERCHANT'S TALE.

2420. _swich a wyf_, such a wife as that described in the Merchant's Tale.

2422. _bees_, bees. Elsewhere, the pl. is _been_; see B. 4582, F. 204. [369]

2431. _in conseil_, in (secret) counsel, between ourselves. For this use of _conseil_, see C. 819, and the note; also G. 145, 192.

2435. The phrase _cause why_ is now considered vulgar; it is common in London. _Caus-e_ is dissyllabic.

2436. _of somme_, by some, by some one. So _of whom_ = by whom; in the next line. He says, he need not say _by whom_ it would be told; for women are sure to utter such things, as is expressly said in D. 950. This alludes, of course, to the ladies in the company, and, in particular, to the Wife of Bath, who was not the person to keep such things to herself. _outen_, to utter; a rare word; it occurs again in G. 834, and in D. 521. Also in The Tale of Beryn, 2408.

* * * * *

[370]

NOTES TO GROUP F.

THE SQUIERES TALE.

1. There is nothing to link this tale with the preceding one; hence it begins a new Group. In many MSS. (including E.) it follows the preceding Epilogue without any break. In other MSS. it follows the Man of Law's Tale; but that is the wrong place for it. See note to B. 1165; also vol. iii. p. 462.

2. An allusion to Prol. l. 97, unless (which is quite as probable) the passage in the Prologue was written afterwards.

9. _Sarray_, Sarai. This place has been identified, past all doubt, by Colonel Yule in his edition of Marco Polo's Travels, vol. i. p. 5, and vol. ii. p. 424. The modern name is Tzarev, near Sarepta. Sarepta is easily found on any good map of Russia by following the course of the Volga from its mouth _upwards_. At first this backward course runs N. W. till we have crossed the province of Astrakhan, when it makes a sudden bend, at Sarepta and Tsaritzin. Tsarev is now a place of no importance, but the ancient Sarai was so well known, that the Caspian Sea was sometimes named from it; thus it is called 'the sea of Sarain' in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 424; 'the sea of Sarra' in the Catalan map of 1375; and Mare Seruanicum, or the Sea of Shirwan, by Vincent of Beauvais. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight's Chaucer, speaks to the same effect, and says of 'Sara' that it is 'a place yet well knowen, and bordering vppon the lake Mare Caspium.' Sarai was the place where Batu Khan, the grandson of Gengis Khan, held his court. Batu, with his Mongolian followers known as the _Golden Horde_, had established an empire in Kaptchak, or Kibzak, now S. E. Russia, about A. D. 1224. The Golden Horde further invaded Russia, and made Alexander Newski grand-duke of it, A. D. 1252. (See _Golden Horde_ in Haydn's Dictionary of Dates.)

Chaucer has here confused two accounts. There were two celebrated Khans, both grandsons of Gengis Khan, who were ruling about the same time. Batu Khan held his court at Sarai, and ruled over the S. E. of Russia; but the Great Khan, named Kublai, held his court at Cambaluc, the modern Pekin, in a still more magnificent manner. And it is easy to see that, although Chaucer _names_ Sarai, his description really _applies to_ Cambaluc. See vol. iii. pp. 471-2. [371]

10. _Russye_, Russia; invaded by the Golden Horde, as just explained. The end of the Tartar influence in Russia was in the year 1481, when Svenigorod, general of Ivan III., defeated them at the battle of Bielawisch. In the following year Ivan assumed the title of czar.

12. _Cambinskan_; so in all seven MSS. (Six-text and Harleian), except that in the Ellesmere MS. it more resembles _Cambyuskan_. Yet Tyrwhitt prints _Cambuscan_, probably in deference to Milton, who, however, certainly accents the word wrongly, viz. on the second syllable; Il Penseroso, l. 110. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight's Chaucer, speaking of the year 1240, says--'whiche must be in the tyme of the fyrst Tartariane emperor called _Caius canne_, beinge, I suppose, he whome Chaucer namethe _Cambiuscan_, for so ys [it in] the written copies, such affynytye is there betwene those two names.' Now, although the celebrated Gengis Khan died probably in 1227, the allusion to the 'fyrst Tartariane emperor' is clear; so that Thynne makes the forms _Cambius_, _Caius_ (perhaps miswritten for C[=a]ius, i. e. Ca_m_ius) and _Gengis_ all equivalent. But this is the very result for which Colonel Yule has found authority, as explained in vol. iii. p. 471; to which the reader is referred. It is there explained that Chaucer has again confused two accounts; for, whilst he _names_ Gengis Khan (the first 'Grand Khan'), his description really _applies_ to Kublai Khan, his grandson, the celebrated 'Grand Khan' described by Marco Polo.

18. _lay_, religious profession or belief. 'King Darie swor by his _lay_': King Alisaunder, ed. Weber, l. 1325. From A. F. _lei_, law. See _lei_ in Stratmann.

20. This line scans ill as it stands in most MSS. Tyrwhitt and Wright insert _and_, which gives _two_ accented 'ands'--

And pí | tous ánd | just ánd | alwéy | ylíche.

The Hengwrt MS. has--

Pietous and Iust, and euere-moore yliche,

which, otherwise spelt, becomes--

Pitous and Iust, and ever-more y-liche--

and this is the reading which I have adopted in the text. However, I have since observed that Chaucer twice makes _pi-e-tous_ trisyllabic, viz. in Troil. iii. 1444, v. 451; and the Hengwrt MS. has the same spelling here. The common reading, with this alteration, becomes quite right. That is, we may read--

And piëtous and Iust, alwey y-liche.

22. _centre_; often used in the sense of a fulcrum or pivot, or point of extreme stability. Cf. Milton, Par. Reg. iv. 533--

'Proof against all temptation, as a rock Of adamant, _and, as a centre, firm_.'

The old astronomy supposed the centre of the earth to be the _fixed_ centre of the universe.

30. Tyrwhitt inserts _sone_ after _eldeste_; fortunately, it is not in the [372] MSS. _Whichë_ is a dissyllable, the _e_ denoting the plural form. The words _th' eldest'_ form but two syllables, the _e_'s being elided; but we may fairly preserve the _e_ in _highte_ (cf. l. 33) from elision, for the greater emphasis, by a short pause; and we then have a perfect line--

Of which | e th' el | dest' high | te--Al | garsyf.

31. _Cambalo._ I have no doubt that this name was suggested by the _Cambaluc_ of Marco Polo. See vol. iii. p. 472.

39. _longing for_, belonging to. Cf. _longen_, Kn. Ta. 1420 (A. 2278).

44. _I deme_, I suppose. This looks as if Chaucer had read some account of a festival made by the Grand Khan on _one_ of his birthdays, from which he inferred that he _always_ held such a feast every year; as, indeed, was the case. See vol. iii. p. 473.

45. _He leet don cryen_, he caused (men) to have the feast cried. The use of both _leet_ and _don_ is remarkable; cf. E. 523. He gave his orders to his officers, and they took care that the proclamation was made.

47. It is not clear _why_ Chaucer hit upon this day in particular. Kublai's birthday was in September, but perhaps Chaucer noted that the White Feast was on New Year's day, which he took to mean the vernal equinox, or some day near it. The day, however, is well defined. The 'last Idus' is the very day of the Ides, i. e. March 15. The sun entered Aries, according to Chaucer (Treatise on the Astrolabe, ii. 1. 4) on March 12, at the vernal equinox; and, as a degree answers to a day very nearly, would be in the _first_ degree of Aries on the 12th, in the _second_ on the 13th, in the _third_ on the 14th, in the _fourth_ on the 15th, and in the _fifth_ (or at the end of the _fourth_) on the 16th, as Chaucer most expressly says below; see note to l. 386. The sign Aries was said, in astrology, to be the _exaltation_ of the Sun, or that sign in which the Sun had most influence for good or ill. In particular, the 19th degree of Aries, for some mysterious reason, was selected as the Sun's exaltation, when most exactly reckoned. Chaucer says, then, that the Sun was in the sign of Aries, in the fourth degree of that sign, and therefore nigh (and approaching to) the 19th degree, or his special degree of exaltation. Besides this, the poet says the sun was in the 'face' of Mars, and in the mansion of Mars; for '_his_ mansioun' in l. 50 means _Mars's_ mansion. This is exactly in accordance with the astrology of the period. Each sign, such as Aries, was said to contain 30 degrees, or 3 _faces_; a _face_ being 10 degrees. The first face of Aries (degrees 1-10) was called the face of Mars, the second (11-20) the face of the Sun, the third (21-30) that of Venus. Hence the sun, being in the fourth degree, was in Mars's _face_. Again, every planet had its (so-called) _mansion_ or _house_; whence Aries was called the mansion of Mars, Taurus that of Venus, Gemini that of Mercury, &c. See Chaucer's Astrolabe, in vol. iii. p. lxxviii; or Johannis Hispalensis Isagoge in Astrologiam, which gives all the technical terms.

50. _Martes_ is a genitive from the nom. _Mart._ or _Marte_ (A. 2021), which is itself formed, as usual, from the Latin acc. _Martem_. [373]

51. In the old astrology, different qualities are ascribed to the different signs. Thus Aries is described as _choleric and fiery_ in MS. Trin. Coll. Cam. R. 15. 18, tract 3, p. 11. So, too, Tyrwhitt quotes from the Calendrier des Bergers that Aries is 'chault et sec,' i. e. hot and dry.

53. _agayn_, against, opposite to. So also in Kn. Ta. 651 (A. 1509).

54. _What for_; cf. Mod. Eng. _what with_. See Kn. Tale, 595 (A. 1453).

59. _deys_, raised platform, as at English feasts. But this is in Marco Polo too; see vol. iii. p. 473. Cf. Kn. Tale, l. 1342 (A. 2200); and note to Prol. l. 370.

63. In a similar indirect manner, Chaucer describes feasts, &c. elsewhere: see Kn. Ta. 1339 (A. 2197); Man of Lawes Tale, B. 701-707. And Spenser imitates him; F. Q. i. 12. 14; v. 3. 3.

67. _sewes_, seasoned broths. '_Sewes_ and potages'; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 151, l. 523; cf. p. 149, l. 509.

68. Mr. Wright's note on the line is--'It is hardly necessary to observe that _swans_ were formerly eaten at table, and considered among the choicest ornaments of the festive board. Tyrwhitt informs us that at the intronization of Archbp. Nevil, 6 Edward iv, there were "Heronshawes iiijc." [i. e. 400]; Leland's Collectanea, vi. 2: and that at another feast in 1530 we read of "16 _Heronsews_, every one 12_d_"; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, ii. 12.' _Heronsew_ is derived from A. F. _heronceau_, variant of _heroncel_. Godefroy gives _herouncel_, from the Liber Custumarum, i. 304 (14 Edw. II.), and the pl. _heroncaulx_ in an account dated 1330. Cotgrave only has 'Haironneau, a young heron,' and 'Hairon, a heron, herne, _herneshaw_.' Halliwell quotes 'Ardeola, an _hearnesew_' from Elyot's Dict. 1559, and the form _herunsew_ from Reliquiae Antiquae, i. 88. Certainly _heronsewe_ is the name of a bird, not of a dish, as some have guessed, by comparing the _sewes_ in l. 67. In fact, the word _heronsew_ (for heron) is still used in Swaledale, Yorkshire. And in Hazlitt's old Plays (The Disobedient Child), vol. ii. p. 282, we have--

'There must be also pheasant and swan; There must be _heronsew_, partridge, and quail.'

See the quotations in Nares; also Notes and Queries, 1st Ser. iii. 450, 507; iv. 76; vii. 13; Babees Book, ed. Furnivall, p. 152, l. 539. Cf. _handsaw_, for _hernshaw_, in Hamlet, ii. 2. _Heroncel_, or _-ceu_, or _-ceau_, is simply the diminutive form; so also, _lioncel_, or _lionçeau_, as a diminutive of _lion_.

70. _som mete_; viz. 'horses, dogs, and Pharaoh's rats.' See vol. iii. p. 474.

73. _pryme_; the word _prime_ seems to mean, in Chaucer, the first quarter of the day, reckoned from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M.; and more particularly, the _end_ of that period, i. e. 9 A.M. In the Nonne Prestes Tale, B. 4387, the cock crew at _prime_, or 9 A.M. So here, the Squire says it is 9 o'clock, and he must proceed quickly with his story. The word is used in different senses by different writers. [374]

75. _firste_, first design or purpose. I believe this reading is right. MS. Harl. has _purpos_, which will not scan: unless _my_ be omitted, as in Tyrwhitt, though that MS. retains _my_. MSS. Cp. Ln. insert _purpos_ as well as _firste_, making the line too long: whilst Hn. Cm. Pt. agree with the text here given, from MS. E.

76. The second syllable in _after_ is rapidly pronounced, and _thridde_ is a dissyllable.

78. _thinges_, pieces of music. Minstrelsy at feasts was common; cf. Man of Lawes Tale, B. 705; March. Tale, E. 1715.

80. The incident of a man _riding_ into the hall is nothing uncommon. Thus we have, in the Percy Folio MS. ii. 486, the line--

'The one came _ryding into the hall_.'

Warton observes--'See a fine romantic story of a Comte de Macon who, while revelling in his hall with many knights, is suddenly alarmed by the entrance of a gigantic figure of a black man, mounted on a black steed. This terrible stranger, without receiving any obstruction from guards or gates, rides directly forward to the high table, and, with an imperious tone, orders the count to follow him--Nic. Gillos. Chron. ann. 1120.' Alexander rode into a hall up to the high table, according to the romance, ed. Weber, l. 1083. See also Warton's Obs. on the Fairy Queen, p. 202; the Ballad of King Estmere; and Stowe's Survey of London, p. 387, ed. 1599. In Scott's Rokeby, Bertram _rides_ into a church.

81. _stede of bras_, &c. See note to I. 209, and vol. iii. pp. 465, 475.

95. Sir Gawain, nephew to king Arthur, according to the British History which goes by the name of Geoffrey of Monmouth, is always upheld as a model of courtesy in the French romances and the English translations of them. He is often contrasted with Sir Kay, who was equally celebrated for churlishness. See the Percy Folio MS.; Sir Gawain, ed. by Sir F. Madden; Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight, ed. by Dr. Morris; the Morte D'Arthur, &c. Cf. Rom. Rose, 2205-12.

103. _Accordant_, according. The change from the Fr. _-ant_ to the common Eng. _-ing_ should be noted.--M.

106. _style_, stile. Such puns are not common in Chaucer; cf. E. 1148.--M.

116. _day naturel._ In his Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. c. 7 (see vol. iii. p. 194), Chaucer explains that the day _artificial_ is the time from sunrise to sunset, which varies; to which he adds--'but the _day natural_, that is to seyn 24 houres, is the revolucioun of the equinoxial with as moche partie of the zodiak as the sonne of his propre moevinge passeth in the mene whyle.' See note to B. 2.

122. _the air_, pronounced _th'air_, as usual with Chaucer; see D. 1939.

129. _wayted_, watched; alluding to the care with which the maker watched for the moment when the stars were in a propitious position, according to the old belief in astrology.

131. _seel_, seal. Mr. Wright notes that 'the making and arrangement [375] of seals was one of the important operations of medieval magic, and treatises on this subject are found in MSS.' He refers to MS. Arundel, no. 295, fol. 265. _Solomon's seal_ is still commemorated in the name of a flower.

132. _mirour._ For some account of this, see vol. iii. p. 476, and note to l. 231.

137. _over al this_, besides all this. Elsewhere _over-al_ is a compound word, meaning _everywhere_; as in Prol. 216.--M.

150. Compare Tale xv (The Ravens) in the Seven Sages, ed. Weber, about the child who understood the language of all birds.

154. _and whom_, &c., and to whom it will do good, or operate as a remedy; alluding to the virtues attributed to many herbs. So Spenser, F. Q. i. 2. 10--

'O who can tell The hidden power of herbes, and might of magicke spell!'

162. _with the platte_, with the flat side of it; see l. 164. Cf. Troil. iv. 927.

171. _Stant_, stands; contracted from _standeth_; so also in l. 182. Cf. _sit_ for _sitteth_ in l. 179, _hit_ for _hideth_ in l. 512, and note to E. 1151.

184. 'By means of any machine furnished with a windlass or a pulley.' The modern _windlass_ looks like a compound of _wind_ and _lace_, but really stands for _windel-as_, variant of the form _windas_ here used. The confusion would be facilitated by the fact that there was another form _windlas_ (probably from _wind_ and _lace_) with a different meaning, viz. that of a circuitous way or path; see note to Hamlet, ii. 1. 65 (Clar. Press). In the Promptorium Parvulorum, our word is spelt both _wyndlas_ and _wyndas_; p. 529. The Mid. E. _windas_ may have been derived from the Low-German directly, or more probably from the Old French, which has both _guindas_ and _windas_. The meaning and derivation are clearly shewn by the Du. _windas_, which means a winding-axle or capstan, from the sb. _as_, an axle; so, too, the Icel. _vindâss_. In Falconer's Shipwreck, canto 1, note 3, the word _windlass_ is used in the sense of capstan.

190. _gauren_, gaze, stare. Used again by Chaucer, A. 3827, B. 3559, and in Troil. and Cres. ii. 1157 (vol. ii. p. 225). In the Clerkes Tale (E. 1003), he has _gazed_. Mr. Wedgwood is perhaps right in considering _gaze_ and _gaure_ (also spelt _gare_) as mere variations of the same word. Cf. the adj. _garish_, i. e. staring, in Milton, Il Pens. 141. For the occasional change of _s_ to _r_, see my Principles of Eng. Etymology, i. 379.

_gauring_, i. e. stupor, occurs in Batman upon Bartholomè, lib. vii. c. 7.

193. _Lumbardye_, Lombardy, formerly celebrated for horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from a patent in Rymer, 2 Edw. II--'De dextrariis in _Lumbardiâ_ emendis,' i. e. of horses to be bought in Lombardy.

195. _Poileys_, Apulian. Apulia was called _Poille_ or _Poile_ in Old French, and even in Middle English; the phrase 'king of _Poile_' occurs in the Seven Sages (ed. Weber), l. 2019. It was celebrated for [376] its horses. Tyrwhitt quotes from MS. James vi. 142 (Bodleian Library), a passage in which Richard, archbishop of Armagh, in the fourteenth century, has the words--'nec mulus Hispaniae, nec _dextrarius Apuliae_, nec repedo Æthiopiae, nec elephantus Asiae, nec camelus Syriae.' Chaucer ascribes strength and size to the horses of Lombardy, and high breeding to those of Apulia.

200. _goon_, i. e. move, go about, have motion.

201. _of Fairye_, of fairy origin, magical. I do not subscribe to Warton's opinion (Obs. on Faerie Queene, p. 86) that this necessarily means that it was 'the work of the devil.' Cf. the same expression in Piers Pl. B. prol. 6.

203. Compare the Latin proverb--'quot homines, tot sententiae.' See Hazlitt's Eng. Proverbs, pp. 340, 437. A good epigram on this proverb is given in Camden's Remaines concerning Britaine, ed. 1657, sig. Gg.

'So many heads, so many wits--fie, fie! Is't not a shame for Proverbs thus to lie? My selfe, though my acquaintance be but small, Know many heads that have _no wit at all_.'

207. _the Pegasee_, Pegasus. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Hl. is written 'i. equs Pegaseus,' meaning 'id est, equus Pegaseus'; shewing that Chaucer was thinking of the adjective _Pegaseus_ rather than of the sb. _Pegasus_, the name of the celebrated winged horse of Bellerophon and of the Muses. Cf. Lydgate's Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 92.

209. 'Or else it was the horse of the Greek named Sinon.' This very singular-looking construction is really common in Middle English; yet the scribe of the Harleian MS. actually writes 'the Grekissch hors Synon,' which makes Sinon the _name of the horse_; and this odd blunder is retained in the editions by Wright, Bell, and Morris. The best way of clearing up the difficulty is by noting similar examples; a few of which are here appended:--

'The kinges meting Pharao';

i. e. the dream of King Pharaoh; Book of the Duchesse, l. 282.

'The erles wif Alein';

i. e. the wife of earl Alein; Rob. of Gloucester, in Spec. of Eng., ed. Morris and Skeat, p. 11, l. 303.

'Themperours moder william,'

i. e. the mother of the Emperor named William; Will. of Palerne, l. 5437.

'Pieres pardon þe plowman';

i. e. the pardon of Piers the Plowman; P. Pl. B. xix. 182.

'In Piers berne þe plowman';

i. e. in the barn of Piers the Plowman; id. xix. 354.

'For Piers loue þe plowman';

i. e. for love of Piers the Plowman; id. xx. 76. Chaucer again alludes [377] to Sinon in the House of Fame, i. 152, and in the Legend of Good Women, Dido, 8; which shews that he took that legend partly from Vergil, Aen. ii. 195. But note that Chaucer here compares a horse of _brass_ to the Trojan horse; this is because the latter was also said to have been of brass, not by Vergil, but by Guido delle Colonne; see note to l. 211. This is why Gower, in his Confess. Amant. bk. i., and Caxton, in his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, both speak of the Trojan horse as a 'horse of brass'; see Spec. of English, 1394-1579, ed. Skeat, p. 91, l. 67.

211. _olde gestes_, old accounts. The account of the taking of Troy most valued in the middle ages was not that by Vergil or Homer, but the Latin prose story written in 1287 by Guido delle Colonne, who obtained a great reputation very cheaply, since he borrowed his work almost entirely from an old French _Roman de Troie_, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. See the preface to The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and Donaldson (Early English Text Society). And see vol. ii. p. lxi.

219. _Iogelours_, jugglers. See the quotation from Marco Polo, i. 340, in vol. iii. p. 473; and cf. The Franklin's Tale, F. 1140-1151, and the notes.

223. _comprehende_; so in the MSS. But read _comprende_; see Troil. iii. 1687; and pronounce _lew-ed-nes_ fully.

224. 'They are very prone to put down things to the worst cause.'

226. _maister-tour_, principal tower, the donjon or keep-tower. So also _maistre strete_, principal street, Kn. Ta. 2044 (A. 2902); _maister temple_, Leg. of Good Women, l. 1016.

230. For _slye_, MS. Hl. has _heigh_, an inferior reading. Mr. Marsh observes upon this line--'This reasoning reminds one of the popular explanation of table-turning and kindred mysteries. Persons who cannot detect the trick ... ascribe the alleged facts to _electricity_.... Men love to cheat themselves with hard words, and indolence often accepts the _name_ of a phenomenon as a substitute for the reason of it'; Origin and Progress of the English Language, Lect. ix. p. 427.

231. The magic mirror in Rome was said to have been set up there by Vergil, who was at one time reverenced, not as a poet, but as a great enchanter. The story occurs in the Seven Sages, in the Introduction to his edition of which Mr. Wright says, at p. lix., 'The story of Virgil's tower, which was called _salvatio Romae_, holds rather a conspicuous place in the legendary history of the magician. Such a tower is first mentioned, but without the name of Virgil, in a Latin MS. of the eighth century, in a passage published by Docen and republished by Keller, in his introduction to the _Sept Sages_. Vincent of Beauvais, in the thirteenth century ... describes Virgil's tower; and it is the subject of a chapter in the legendary history of Virgilius.' See also the other version of the Seven Sages edited by Weber, and reprinted in Mätzner's Sprachproben, i. 254; where the _mirror_ is mentioned. [378] Gower tells the story of this mirror in his Confessio Amantis, bk. v. It occurs also in the Chronicle of Helinand, and in the Otia Imperialia of Gervase of Tilbury; Morley's Eng. Writers, iv. 225. Warton notes that the same fiction is in Caxton's Troybook, bk. ii. ch. 22. It also occurs in Higden, Polychronicon, bk. i. c. 24.

232. '_Alhazeni et Vitellonis Opticae_ are extant, printed at Basil, 1572. The first is supposed by his editor to have lived about A.D. 1100, and the second to A.D. 1270.'--Tyrwhitt. Hole's Brief Biographical Dictionary has the notices--'Alhazel or Alhazen, Arabian Astronomer and Optician; died A.D. 1038'; and--'Vitello or Vitellio, Polish Mathematician; floruit circa 1254.' See also the remarks in Warton (Hist. Eng. Poetry), on the Clerk's Tale. _Alhacen (sic)_ is mentioned in Le Rom. de la Rose, l. 18234. In l. 18376 of the same, we find the very phrase: 'Par composicions diverses'; and again, in l. 18387: 'Par les diversités des angles.' Mirrors are there described at length. R. Scot, in his Discoverie of Witchcraft, bk. xiii. c. 19, declares that 'the wonderous deuises and miraculous sights and conceipts made and conteined in glasse, doo farre exceed all other.'

233. Aristotle, the famous Grecian philosopher, born B.C. 384, died 322. _writen in hir lyves_, wrote in their lifetime. Observe that _writen_ is here the past tense. The pres. pl. is _wryten_; pt. s. _wrat_, _wrot_, or _wroot_; pt. pl. _writen_; pp. _writen_.

238. _Thelophus._ Telephus, king of Mysia, in opposing the landing of the Greeks in the expedition against Troy, was wounded by the spear of Achilles. But as an oracle declared that the Greeks would require his aid, he was healed by means of the rust taken from the same spear. Chaucer may easily have learnt this story from his favourite Ovid, who says--

'Telephus aeterna consumptus tabe perisset Si non quae nocuit dextra tulisset opem. Tristium, lib. v. El. 2. 15.

And again--

'Vulnus Achilleo quae quondam fecerat hosti, Vulneris auxilium Pelias hasta tulit.' Remed. Amor. 47.

See also Met. xii. 112; xiii. 171; Ex Ponto, ii. 2. 26; Propertius, Eleg. ii. 1. 65 (_or_ 63). Or he may have taken it from Dante, Inferno, xxxi. 5; or from Hyginus, Fab. 101. Cf. Shak. 2 Hen. VI., v. i. 100.

247. _Canaceës_; four syllables, as in l. 631.

250. Great skill in magic was attributed in the middle ages to Moses and Solomon, especially by the Arabs. Moses was supposed to have learnt magic from the Egyptians; cf. Acts vii. 22; Exod. vii. 11. See the story of the Fisherman and Genie in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, where the genie invokes the name of Solomon.

253. 'Some said it was a wonderful thing to make glass from fern-ashes, since glass does not resemble fern-ashes at all.' Glass contains two principal ingredients, sand and some kind of alkali. For the latter, [379] the calcined ashes of seaweed, called _kelp_, were sometimes used; or, according to Chaucer, the ashes of ferns. Modern chemistry has developed many greater wonders.

256. 'But, because men have known it (the art of glass-making) so long, their talking and wonder about it ceases.' The art is of very high antiquity, having been known even to the Egyptians. _so fern_, so long ago; Chaucer sometimes rimes words which are spelt exactly alike, but only when their meanings differ. See Prol. l. 17, where _seke_, to seek, rimes with _seke_, sick. Other examples are seen in the Kn. Tale, _see_ being repeated in A. 1955-6; _caste_ in A. 2171-2; _caas_ in A. 2357-8; and _fare_ in A. 2435-6. Imperfect rimes like _disport_, _port_, Prol. 137, 138, are common; see Prol. 241, 433, 519, 579, 599, 613, 811; Kn. Ta. 379, 381 (A. 1237, 1239), &c. For examples of _fern_ compare--

'Ye, farewel al the snow of _ferne_ yere,'

i. e. good bye to all last year's snow; Troil. and Cres. v. 1176 (see vol. ii. p. 394). So also _fernyere_, long ago, in P. Pl. B. v. 440; spelt _uernyere_, in Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 92. Adverbs commonly terminate in _-e_, but the scribes are right in writing _fern_ here; see A. S. Gospels, Matt. xi. 21, for the forms _gefyrn_, _gefern_, meaning _long ago_. Occleve, in La Male Regle, 196, uses the expression _fern ago_, i. e. long ago; Poems, ed. Furnivall, p. 31. And in Levins's Manipulus Vocabulorum, ed. Wheatley, we find--'Old farne years, _anni praeteriti, seculum prius_.'

With these examples in view, we might interpret _ferne halwes_ in Chaucer's Prologue, l. 14, by 'olden' rather than by 'distant' saints; yet the latter is decisively authenticated by a passage in his translation of Boethius, bk. ii. met. 7, where the expression 'renoun ysprad to _ferne poeples_, goth by dyverse tonges,' can only mean 'distant' peoples. _Fern_, in the sense of _old_, is explained at once by the Gothic _fairnis_, old; but, in the sense of _distant_, would seem to be corruptly and incorrectly formed, since the A. S. _feorran_, meaning _far_, is strictly an adverb, from the adjective _feorr_. But in course of time this adverb came to be declined as an adjective; see the examples in Stratmann, s. v. _feorren_.

258. Cf. 'What is the cause of thunder'; K. Lear, iii. 4. 160. The opinions of various ancient philosophers as to the cause of thunder are given in Plutarch's treatise, De Placitis Philosophorum ([Greek: peri tôn areskontôn tois philosophois]), lib. iii. c. 3. It was usually believed to result from the collision of clouds. 'Fulmina autem collisa nubila faciunt'; Isidore, Originum lib. xiii. c. 9. Cf. A. S. Leechdoms, iii. 281.

263. For a full explanation of this difficult passage, I must be content to refer the reader to Mr. Brae's edition of Chaucer's Astrolabe, pp. 77 and 86, and my own edition of the same (E. E. T. S.), p. lvi. The chief points that now seem tolerably certain are these.

(1) The Angle Meridional was an astrological term. The heavens were divided into twelve equal parts called 'mansions,' and four of [380] these mansions were technically called 'angles'; the _angle meridional_ was the same as the _tenth mansion_, which was bounded on the one edge by the meridian, and on the other by a semi-circle passing through the N. and S. points of the horizon, and lying 30° to the E. of the meridian; so that, at the equinoxes, at any place situate on the equator, the sun would cross this portion of the sky between 10 A. M. and the hour of noon.

(2) Since this 'angle' corresponds to the end of the forenoon, the sun leaves the said angle at the moment of noon, and l. 263 means no more than 'it was now past noon.'

(3) The 'royal beast' means the king of beasts, the lion, and (here in particular) the sign of the zodiac named Leo. This sign, on March 15, in Chaucer's time, and in the latitude of London, began to 'ascend,' or rise above the horizon, just about noon. An additional reason for calling Leo 'royal' is because the principal star in the constellation is called _Regulus_ in Latin, [Greek: Basiliskos] in Greek, and _Melikhi_ in Arabic, all epithets signifying _kingly_ or _royal_.

(4) But, before the Tartar king rose from the feast, the time past noon had so increased that the star called Aldiran, situate in Leo, was now rising above the horizon. In other words it was very nearly two o'clock. It may be added, that, by the time the _whole_ of the sign had ascended, it would be about a quarter to three. Hence Chaucer speaks of the sign as yet (i. e. still) ascending.

The chief remaining point is to fix the star _Aldiran_.

Most MSS. read _Aldrian_, owing to the frequent shifting of _r_ in a word; just as _brid_, for instance, is the old spelling of _bird_. But the Hengwrt MS. is right. The name _Aldiran_, _Aldurin_, or _Aldiraan_, occurs in the old Parisian star-lists as the name of a star in the constellation Leo, and is described in them as being 'in fronte Leonis.' The word means 'the two fore-paws,' and the notes of the star's position are such that I am persuaded it is the star now called [theta] Hydrae, situate near the Lion's fore-paws, as commonly drawn. The only objection to this explanation arises from the comparative insignificance of the star; but whoever will take the trouble to examine the old lists will see that certain stars were chosen quite as much for the sake of _position_ as of _brightness_. When it was desired to mark particular points in the sky, bright stars were chosen if they were conveniently placed; but, failing that, any would serve the purpose that were fairly distinct. This is why, in a star-list of only 49 stars in MS. Camb. Univ. Lib. Ii. 3. 3, such stars as [delta] Capricorni, [delta] Aquarii, [delta] Ophiuchi, &c., find a place. The star _Aldiran_ ([theta] Hydrae) was remarkable for rising, in the latitude of Paris, _just before_ the splendid star [alpha] Leonis of the first magnitude, whose coming it thus heralded. That star is _also_ found in the same star-lists, with the name _Calbalesed_, or 'the lion's heart'; in Latin, Cor Leonis; another name for it being _Regulus_, as stated above.

On the whole, we fairly suppose Chaucer's meaning to be, that before [381] the feast concluded, it was not only _past noon_, but nearly _two hours past noon_.

269. _chambre of parements._ Tyrwhitt's note is--'_Chambre de parement_ is translated by Cotgrave, the presence-chambre, and _lit de parement_, a bed of state. _Parements_ originally signified all sorts of ornamental furniture or clothes, from Fr. _parer_, to adorn. See Kn. Ta. 1643 (A. 2501), and Legend of Good Women; Dido, l. 181.' He adds that the Italians use _camera de' paramenti_ in the same sense.

272. _Venus children_, the worshippers or subjects, of Venus. It merely means the knights and ladies at the feast, whose thoughts then turned upon love, because the season was astrologically favourable for it; cf. Kn. Tale, 1628, 1629 (A. 2486). The reason is given in l. 273, viz. that 'hir lady,' i. e. _their_ lady or goddess, as represented by the planet Venus, was then situate in the sign Pisces. This sign, in astrology, is called the 'exaltation' of Venus, or the sign in which she exerts most power. Hence the expression _ful hye_, and the statement that Venus regarded her servants with a friendly aspect. In the Wyf of Bathes Prol. (D. 704), Chaucer has the line--

'In _Pisces_, wher _Venus is exaltat_.'

'Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces'; Sir T. Browne, Works, ed. Wilkin, iv. 382.

287. _Lancelot_, the celebrated lover of queen Guinever in the Arthur romances. Cp. Dante, Inf. v. 128.

291. 'The steward bids (them) to be quick with the spices.' Cf. Joseph of Arimathea, ed. Skeat, note to l. 698. And see vol. ii. 506.

300. _Hath_ is here used like the mod. F. _il y a_, for which O. F. often has _a_ only. The sense is--'there is plenty.' The idiom is borrowed from French, and the text is correct. (I owe this note to a friend.)

316. 'You must twirl round a pin (which) stands in his ear.'

318. 'You must also tell him to what place or country you wish to ride.'

334. _Ryde_, ride; so in the Six-text; Hl. has _Byd_, i. e. bid.

340. The bridle is here said to have been put away with the _jewels_. So also, when Richard I., in a crusade, took Cyprus, among the treasures in the castles are mentioned precious stones, golden cups, &c., together with golden saddles, _bridles_, and spurs; Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Iter Hierosol. c. xli. p. 328; in Vet. Script. Angl. tom. ii.

346. Tyrwhitt inserts _that_ after _Til_, to fill up the line. It is not required; it is one of the many lines in which the first syllable is lacking.

347. 'Sleep, digestion's nurse, winked upon them, and bade them take notice, that much drink and exercise must require repose.' Cf. 2 Hen. IV., iii. 1. 6. Tyrwhitt supposes l. 349 to be corrupt; I do not know why.

351. To scan the line, retain the _e_ in _seyde_, preserved by the caesura. [382]

352. By the old physicians, blood was supposed to be in domination, or chief power, for seven hours, from the ninth hour of the night (beginning at 8 P. M.) to the third hour of the day. Tyrwhitt quotes from a book De Natura, ascribed to Galen, tom. v. p. 327--'_Sanguis dominatur_ horis septem, ab hora noctis nona ad horam diei tertiam.' Other authorities were pleased to state the matter somewhat differently. 'Six houres after midnight bloud hath the mastery, and in the sixe houres afore noon choler reigneth, and six houres after noon raigneth melancholy, and six hours afore midnight reigneth the flegmatick'; Shepheardes Kalender, ed. 1656, ch. xxix. Chaucer no doubt followed this latter account, which he may have found in the original French Calendrier des Bergers; see note to l. 51, p. 373.

358. _fumositee_, fumes arising from wine-drinking. See C. 567; and concerning dreams, see the Nonne Prestes Tale, 103-149 (B. 4113-59).

359. _no charge_, no weight; to which no weight, or no significance, can be attached.

360. _pryme large_; probably the same as _fully pryme_, Sir Thop., B. 2015, which see. It must then mean the time when the period of prime was quite ended; i. e. 9 A. M. This would be a very late hour for rising, but the occasion was exceptional.

365. _appalled_, enfeebled, languid; lit. 'rendered pallid,' cf. Kn. Ta. 2195 (A. 3053); and Shipm. Tale, B. 1290-2:--

'"Nece," quod he, "it oghte y-nough suffyse Fyve houres for to slepe upon a night, But it were for an old _appalled_ wight,"' &c.

373. 'Before the sun began to rise'; i. e. before 6 A. M., as it was near the equinox.

374. _maistresse_, governess; as appears from the Phis. Tale, C. 72.

376-377. Though the sense is clear, the grammar is incurably wrong. Chaucer _says_--'These old women, that would fain seem wise, just as did her governess, answered her at once.' What he _means_ is--'This governess, that would fain seem wise, as such old women often do, answered her,' &c. The second part of this tale seems to have been hastily composed, left unfinished, and never revised. Cf. l. 382.

383. _wel a ten_, i. e. about ten. Cf. Prol. l. 24.

386. _four._ The Harl. MS. wrongly has _ten_. There is no doubt about it, because on March 15, the day before, the sun was in the _third_ degree of the sign; on the 16th, he was in the _fourth_ degree.

387. It means--'and, moreover, the sun had risen but four degrees above the horizon'; i. e. it was not yet a quarter past six.

396. _her hertes_, their hearts. _lighte_, to feel light, to feel happy; an unusual use of the verb; but see F. 914. In l. 398, the sudden change to the singular _she_ is harsh.

401. Again hastily written. Chaucer says--'The point for which every tale is told--if it be delayed till the pleasure of them that have [383] hearkened after (or listened attentively to) the former part of it grows cold--then the pleasantness of it passes off, on account of the prolixity in telling it; and the more so, the longer it is spun out.' _Knotte_ is cognate with the Lat. _nodus_ (written for _gnodus_), as used by Horace, Ars Poet. l. 191.

409. _fordrye_, exceedingly dry. The tree was white too, owing to loss of its bark. This reminds me of the famous _Arbre Sec_, or Dry Tree; see Marco Polo, ed. Yule, i. 119; Maundeville, ed. Halliwell, p. 68; Mätzner, Sprachproben, ii. 185.

428. _faucon peregryn._ 'This species of falcon is thus described in the Tresor de Brunet Latin, P. i. ch. _Des Faucons_; MS. Reg. 19 C. x. "La seconde lignie est _faucons_, qui hom apele _pelerins_, par ce que nus ne trove son ni; ains est pris autresi come en _pelerinage_, et est mult legiers a norrir, et mult cortois et vaillans, et de bone maniere" [i. e. the second kind is the falcon which is called the pilgrim (or peregrine), because no one ever finds its nest; but it is otherwise taken, as it were on _pilgrimage_, and is very easily fed, and very tame and bold, and well-mannered]. Chaucer adds that this falcon was of _fremde lond_, i. e. from a foreign country.'--Tyrwhitt.

435. _ledene_, language; from A. S. _læden_, _leden_, sometimes used in the sense of language, though it is, after all, a mere corruption of _Latin_, which is the sense which it most often bears. Thus, the inscription on the cross of Christ is said to have been written 'Ebreisceon stafon, and Grecisceon, and _Leden_ stafon,' in Hebrew letters and in Greek and Latin letters; John, xix. 20. So also 'on _Ledenisc_ gereorde,' in the Latin language; Beda, bk. iv. c. 1. Hence the word was used more generally in the sense of language; as, 'Mara is, on ure _lyden_, biternes,' i. e. Marah is, in our speech, bitterness; Exod. xv. 23. This extension of the meaning, and the form of the word, were both influenced, probably, by confusion with the sb. _l[=e]od_, people. The student should learn to distinguish this word from the A. S. _l[=e]oð_, G. _lied_, a song. Tyrwhitt notes that Dante uses _latino_ in the sense of language; 'E cantine gli augelli Ciascuno in suo _latino_'; Canzone 1.

458. _as dooth_, so do, pray do. See Note to Cler. Tale, E. 7.

469. 'As verily as may the great God of nature help me.' _Wisly_, verily, is quite different from _wysly_, wisely; cf. Kn. Ta. 1376 (A. 2234).

471. 'To heal your hurts with quickly.' Note the position of _with_; and cf. l. 641.

474. _aswowne_ = _a swowne_ = _on swoune_, in a swoon.

479. Chaucer's favourite line; he repeats it four times. See Kn. Ta. 903 (A. 1761); March. Ta. 9860 (E. 1986); Prol. to Leg. G. W. 503. Also, in The Man of Lawes Ta. B. 660, we have it again in the form--'As gentil herte is fulfild of pitee.'

480. _similitude_ is pronounced nearly as _sim'litude_.

483. _kytheth_, manifests. Cf. Rom. Rose, 2187-2238 (vol. i. p. 172).

490. 'And to make others take heed by my example, as the lion is [384] chastised (or reproved) by means of the dog.' The explanation of this passage was a complete riddle to me till I fortunately discovered the proverb alluded to. It appears in George Herbert's Jacula Prudentum (Herbert's Works, ed. Willmott, 1859, p. 328) in the form 'Beat the dog before the lion,' where _before_ means _in the sight of_. This is cleared up by Cotgrave, who, in his French Dictionary, s. v. _Batre_, has the proverb--'Batre le chien devant le Lion, to punish a mean person in the presence, and to the terror of, a great one.' It is even better explained by Shakespeare, Othello, ii. 3. 272--'What, man! there are ways to recover the general again: you are but now cast in his mood, _a punishment more in policy than in malice_; even so as one would beat his offenceless dog to affright an imperious lion.'

499. _Ther_, where. The numerous expressions in this narrative certainly shew that the falcon was really a princess (cf. l. 559) who had been changed into a falcon for a time, as is so common in the Arabian Tales. Thus, in l. 500, the _roche_ or rock may be taken to signify a palace, and the _tercelet_ (l. 504) to be a prince. This gives the whole story a human interest.

505-506. _welle_, well, fountain. _Al were he_, although he was.

511. _coloures_, colours; and, in a secondary sense, pretences, which meaning is also intended; cf. l. 560. On dyeing _in grain_, i. e. of a fast colour, see note to Sir Thopas, B. 1917.

512. _hit him_, hideth himself. The allusion is to the well-known lines 'Qui legitis flores ... fugite hinc, latet anguis in herba'; Verg. Bucol. iii. 92. Cf. D. 1994; and Macbeth, i. 5. 66.

516. Read _k[=e]p'th_. MS. Hl. gives lines 514-6 thus:--

'Right so this god of loue, this ypocrite, Doth so his sermonys and his obseruaunce Under subtil colour and aqueyntaunce.'

517. _sowneth in-to_, tend to, are consonant with; see Prol. 307.

518. Cf. P. Plowm. B. xv. 109. Both passages are from Matt. xxiii. 27.

537. Chaucer clearly quotes this as a proverb; _true_ man means _honest_ man, according to Dogberry; Much Ado about Nothing, iii. 3. 54. The sense seems to be much the same as 'You cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear,' or 'Once a knave, always a knave.' Compare the use of _theef_ in Anelida,