It is not absolutely necessary to have any previous knowledge of the hours
at which these altitudes were respectively obtained, because these may be
discovered by the trial method of seeking two such hours as shall most
nearly agree in requiring a declination common to both at the known
altitudes. Of course it will greatly simplify the process if we furthermore
know that the observations must have been obtained at some determinate
intervals of time, such, for example, as complete hours.
Now, in the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" we know that the
observations could not have been recorded except at complete hours, because
the construction of the metre will not admit the supposition of any parts
of hours having been expressed.
We are also satisfied that there can be no mistake in the altitudes,
because nothing can alter the facts, that an equality between the length of
the shadow and the height of the substance can only subsist at an altitude
of 45 degrees; or that an altitude of 29 degrees (more or less) is the
nearest that will give the ratio of 11 to 6 between the shadow and its
gnomon.
{386}
With these data we proceed to the following comparison:
_Forenoon altitude_ 45deg.|| _Afternoon altitude_ 29deg.
||
Hour. Declin. || Hour. Declin.
XI A.M. 8deg 9' N. || II P.M. 3deg 57' S.
X " 13deg 27' " || III " 3deg 16' N.
IX " 22deg 34' " || IV " 13deg 26' "
VIII " Impossible. || V " Impossible.
Here we immediately select "X A.M." and "IV P.M." as the only two items at
all approaching to similarity; while, in these the approach is so near that
they differ by only a single minute of a degree!
More conclusive evidence therefore could scarcely exist that these were the
hours intended to be recorded by Chaucer, and that the sun's declination,
designed by him, was somewhere about thirteen degrees and a half North.
Strictly speaking, this declination would more properly apply to the 17th
of April, in Chaucer's time, than to the 18th; but since he does not
profess to critical exactness, and since it is always better to adhere to
written authority, when it is not grossly and obviously corrupt, such MSS.
as name the 18th of April ought to be respected; but Tyrwhitt's "28th,"
which he states not only as the result of his own conjecture but as
authorised by the "the best MSS.," ought to be scouted at once.
In the latest edition of the "Canterbury Tales" (a literal reprint from one
of the Harl. MSS., for the Percy Society, under the supervision of Mr.
Wright), the opening of the Prologue to "The Man of Lawes Tale" does not
materially differ from Tyrwhitt's text, excepting in properly assigning the
day of the journey to "the eightetene day of April;" and the confirmation
of the forenoon altitude is as follows:
"And sawe wel that the schade of every tree
Was in the lengthe the same quantite,
That was the body erecte that caused it."
But the afternoon observation is thus related:
"By that the Manciple had his tale endid,
The sonne fro the southe line is descendid
So lowe that it nas nought to my sight,
Degrees nyne and twenty as in hight.
_Ten_ on the clokke it was as I gesse,
For eleven foote, or litil more or lesse,
My schadow was at thilk time of the yere,
Of which feet as my lengthe parted were,
In sixe feet equal of proporcioun."
In a note to the line "Ten on the clokke" Mr. Wright observes,
"_Ten_. I have not ventured to change the reading of the Harl. MS.,
which is partly supported by that of the lands. MS., _than_."
If the sole object were to present an exact counterpart of the MS., of
course even its errors were to be respected: but upon no other grounds can
I understand why a reading should be preserved by which broad sunshine is
attributed to ten o'clock at night! Nor can I believe that the copyist of
the MS. with whom the error must have originated would have set down
anything so glaringly absurd, unless he had in his own mind some means of
reconciling it with probability. It may, I believe, be explained in the
circumstance that "ten" and "four," in horary reckoning, were _convertible
terms_. The old Roman method of naming the hours, wherein noon was the
sixth, was long preserved, especially in conventual establishments: and I
have no doubt that the English idiomatic phrase "o'clock" originated in the
necessity for some distinguishing mark between hours "of the clock"
reckoned from midnight, and hours of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more
frequently from six A.M. With such an understanding, it is clear that _ten_
might be called _four_, and _four ten_, and yet the same identical hour to
be referred to; nor is it in the least difficult to imagine that some
monkish transcriber, ignorant perhaps of the meaning of "o'clock," might
fancy he was correcting, rather that corrupting, Chaucer's text, by
changing "foure" into "ten."
I have, I trust, now shown that all these circumstances related by Chaucer,
so far from being hopelessly incongruous, are, on the contrary,
harmoniously consistent;--that they all tend to prove that the day of the
journey to Canterbury could not have been later than the 18th of
April;--that the times of observation were certainly 10 A.M. and 4
P.M.;--that the "arke of his artificial day" is to be understood as the
horizontal or azimuthal arch;--and that the "halfe cours in the Ram"
alludes to the completion of the last twelve degrees of that sign, about
the end of the second week in April.
There yet remains to be examined the signification of those three very
obscure lines which immediately follow the description, already quoted, of
the afternoon observation:
"Therewith the Mones exaltacioun
In mena Libra, alway gan ascende
As we were entryng at a townes end."
It is the more unfortunate that we should not be certain what it was that
Chaucer really did write, inasmuch as he probably intended to present, in
these lines, some means of identifying the year, similar to those he had
previously given with respect to the day.
When Tyrwhitt, therefore, remarks, "In what year this happened Chaucer does
not inform us"--he was not astronomer enough to know that if Chaucer had
meant to leave, in these lines, a record of the moon's place on the day of
the journey, he could not have chosen a more certain method of informing us
in what year it occurred.
But as the present illustration has already extended far enough for the
limits of a single number of "NOTES AND QUERIES," I shall defer the {387}
investigation of this last and greatest difficulty to my next
communication.