[Footnote 1: Pope in this particular has not followed Chaucer. The story
is told by the merchant, who announces in the prologue, that he has been
two months married, and that in this brief space he has endured more
misery from the fiendishness of his wife than a bachelor could undergo
in an entire lifetime from the enmity of the world. He lays it down for
a general maxim, that
We wedded men live in sorwe and care;
Assay it whoso will, and he shall find
That I say sooth, by Saint Thomas of Inde,
As for the more part; I say not all;
God shielde that it shoulde so befall.
The host begs that since the merchant knows so much of the trials of
matrimony, he will instruct the company in some of them.
Gladly, quoth he, but of mine owne sore
For sorry heart I telle may no more.
He accordingly relates the adventures of January and May in illustration
of the misfortunes of the wedded state, and commences with the panegyric
of January upon its unmixed blessings. The merchant then adds,
Thus said this olde knight that was so wise,
which is an ironical comment on what the narrator of the tale considers
a delusive dream, and a proof of the credulous folly of the speaker. The
idea of ascribing genuine sense and wisdom to the knight,
notwithstanding that he was weak enough, at the age of sixty, to marry a
girl, is confined to the version of Pope, and is not in itself
unnatural; but the character, upon the whole, is better preserved in
Chaucer, since the entire talk and conduct of January indicate a feeble
mind.]
[Footnote 2: "Courage" in the original is not used in the modern sense,
but signifies a hearty desire.]
[Footnote 3:
And when that he was passed sixty year,
Were it for holiness or for dotage,
I cannot say, but such a great courage
Hadde this knight to be a wedded man,
That day and night he doth all that he can
Taspye where that he might wedded be;
Praying our Lord to grante him that he
Might ones knowen of that blissful life,
That is betwixt a husband and his wife.]
[Footnote 4: In the original,
And certainly, as sooth as God is king,
To take a wife it is a glorious thing;
And namely when a man is old and hoar,
Then is a wife the fruit of his tresor.
This is another instance that the merchant's remarks are sarcastic; for
no rational person would gravely assert that to wed was especially wise
in old age, when a man was married for his money alone. The whole
purport of the tale was to prove that such an alliance ended in
discomfiture. The vein of satire is continued through the subsequent
reflections. The merchant represents January as imagining wives to be
models of obedience and fidelity, who will cleave to a husband through
weal and woe, and will never be weary of loving and serving him, though
he is bed-ridden all his days. The example of May, to which the
description is a preface, shows that the praises are meant to be
interpreted in an adverse sense.]
[Footnote 5: In the original the merchant is quoting an invective
against wives from the Liber Aureolus of Theophrastus, who had long been
dead. Hence the narrator calls down a curse upon his _bones_ in the name
of the advocates of matrimony:
This entent and an hundred sithe worse
Writeth this man; there God his bones curse.
"Sithe" signifies "times." Pope has generalised the imprecation, and
extended it to all bards, living or deceased, whereby the fitness of
invoking a curse upon their bones is destroyed.]
[Footnote 6: Chaucer would have thought it an anomaly for a Christian
knight to invoke the heathen deities. The original is,
A wife! ah! Sainte Mary, _benedicite_,
How might a man have any adversite
That hath a wife? certes I cannot say.
The requirements of the metre in this and other passages of Chaucer,
show that _benedicite_ was sometimes contracted, in the pronunciation,
to _ben'cite_.]
[Footnote 7: The merchant, in his account of the motives which actuated
the knight, dilates more largely in the original, and in more
enthusiastic language, upon the felicity of marriage. A wife helps her
husband in his work, is the careful guardian of his property, and is
perfect in her submission.
She saith nought ones nay when he saith ye;
Do this, saith he; all ready, sir, saith she.