33. _Trewely_ is here three syllables, which is the normal form; cf.
Prologue, 761; Kn. Ta. A 1267. In l. 35, the second _e_ is hardly sounded.
36. We must here read 'hold-e,' _without_ elision of final _e_, which is
preserved by the cæsura.
37. 'The most obvious interpretation of these lines seems to be that they
contain the confession of a hopeless passion, which has lasted for eight
years--a confession which certainly seems to come more appropriately and
more naturally from an unmarried than a married man. 'For eight years,'--he
says--'I have loved, and loved in vain--and yet my cure is never the
nearer. There is but one physician that can heal me--but all that is ended
and done with. Let us pass on into fresh fields; what cannot be obtained
must needs be left'; Ward, Life of Chaucer, p. 53. Dr. Furnivall supposes
that the relentless fair one was the one to whom his Complaint unto Pite
was addressed; and chronology would require that Chaucer fell in love with
her in 1361. There is no proof that Chaucer was married before 1374, though
he may have been married not long after his first passion was 'done.'
43. 'It is good to regard our first subject'; and therefore to return to
it. This first subject was his sleeplessness.
45. _Til now late_ follows _I sat upryght_, as regards construction. The
reading _Now of late_, in some printed editions, is no better.
48. This 'Romaunce' turns out to have been a copy of Ovid's Metamorphoses,
a book of which Chaucer was so fond that he calls it his 'own book'; Ho. of
Fame, 712. Probably he really had a copy of his own, as he constantly
quotes it. Private libraries were very small indeed.
49. _Dryve away_, pass away; the usual phrase. Cf. 'And dryuen forth the
longe day'; P. Plowman, B. prol. 224.
56. 'As long as men should love the law of nature,' i. e. should continue
to be swayed by the natural promptings of passion; in other words, for
ever. Certainly, Ovid's book has lasted well. In l. 57, _such thinges_
means 'such love-stories.'
62. 'Alcyone, or Halcyone: A daughter of Æolus and Enarete or Ægiale. She
was married to Ceyx, and lived so happy with him, that they were
presumptuous enough to call each other Zeus and Hera, for which Zeus
metamorphosed them into birds, _alku[=o]n_ (a king-fisher) and
_k[=e][=u]ks_ (a greedy sea-bird, Liddell and Scott; a kind of sea-gull;
Apollod. i. 7. § 3, &c.; Hygin. Fab. 65). Hyginus relates that Ceyx
perished in a shipwreck, that Alcyone for grief threw herself into the sea,
and that the gods, out of compassion, changed the two into birds. It was
fabled that, during the seven days before, and as many after the shortest
day of the year, while the bird _alku[=o]n_ was breeding, there always
prevailed calms at sea. An embellished form of the story is given by Ovid,
Met. xi. 410, &c.; compare Virgil, Georg. i. 399.'--Smith's Dictionary.
Hence the expression 'halcyon days'; see Holland's Pliny, b. x. c. 32,
quoted in my Etym. Dict. s. v. _Halcyon_.
M. Sandras asserts that the history of Ceyx and Alcyone is borrowed from
the Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse, by Machault, whereas it is evident that
Chaucer took care to consult his favourite Ovid, though he _also_ copied
several expressions from Machault's poem. Consult Max Lange, as well as
Furnivall's Trial Forewords to Chaucer's Minor Poems, p. 43. Surely,
Chaucer himself may be permitted to know; his description of the book, viz.
in ll. 57-59, applies to Ovid, rather than to Machault's Poems. But the
fact is that we have further evidence; Chaucer himself, elsewhere, plainly
_names_ Ovid as his authority. See Cant. Tales, Group B, l. 53 (as printed
in vol. v.), where he says--
'For he [Chaucer] hath told of loveres up and doun
Mo than _Ovyde_ made of mencioun
In his Epistelles, that been ful olde.
What sholde I tellen hem, sin they ben tolde?
In youthe he made of _Ceys and Alcion_;' &c.
It is true that Chaucer here mentions Ovid's Heroides rather than the
Metamorphoses; but that is only because he goes on to speak of _other_
stories, which he took from the Heroides; see the whole context. It is
plain that he wishes us to know that he took the present story chiefly from
Ovid; yet there are some expressions which he owes to Machault, as will be
shown below. It is worth notice, that the whole story is also in Gower's
Confessio Amantis, bk. iv. (ed. Pauli, ii. 100); where it is plainly copied
from Ovid throughout.
Ten Brink (Studien, p. 10) points out one very clear indication of
Chaucer's having consulted Ovid. In l. 68, he uses the expression _to
tellen shortly_, and then proceeds to allude to the shipwreck of Ceyx,
which is told in Ovid at great length (Met. xi. 472-572). Of this shipwreck
Machault says never a word; he merely says that Ceyx died in the sea.
There is a chapter _De Alcione_ in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Naturale,
bk. xvi. c. 26; made up from Ambrosius, Aristotle, Pliny (bk. 10), and the
Liber de Natura Rerum.
66. Instead of quoting Ovid, I shall quote from Golding's translation of
his Metamorphoses, as being more interesting to the English reader. (The
whole story is also told by Dryden, whose version is easily accessible.) As
the tale is told at great length, I quote only a few of the lines that most
closely correspond to Chaucer. Compare--
'But fully bent
He [_Ceyx_] seemed neither for to leaue the iourney which he ment
To take by sea, nor yet to giue Alcyone leaue as tho
Companion of his perlous course by water for to go....
When toward night the wallowing waues began to waxen white,
And eke the heady eastern wind did blow with greater might....
And all the heauen with clouds as blacke as pitch was ouercast,
That neuer night was halfe so darke. There came a flaw [_gust_] at last,
That with his violence brake the Maste, and strake the Sterne away....
Behold, euen full vpon the waue a flake of water blacke
Did breake, and vnderneathe the sea the head of Ceyx stracke.'
fol. 137-9.
See further in the note to l. 136.