'Et ne priseras une prune
Toute la roë de fortune.
A _Socrates_ seras semblables,
Qui tant fu fers et tant estables,
Qu'il n'ert liés en prospérités,
Ne tristes en aversités.'
Chaucer's _three strees_ (i. e. straws) is Jean de Meun's _prune_.
723. By _the ferses twelve_ I understand all the pieces except the king,
which could not be taken. The guess in Bell's Chaucer says 'all the pieces
except the pawns'; but as a player only has _seven_ pieces beside the pawns
and king, we must then say that the knight exaggerates. My own reckoning is
thus: pawns, _eight_; queen, bishop, rook, knight, _four_; total, _twelve_.
The fact that each player has _two_ of three of these, viz. of the
_bishop_, _rook_, and _knight_, arose from the conversion of
_chatura[.n]ga_, in which each of four persons had a king, bishop, knight,
rook [to keep to modern names] and four pawns, into chess, in which each of
two persons had two kings (afterwards king and queen), two bishops,
knights, and rooks, and eight pawns. The bishop, knight, and rook, were
thus duplicated, and so count but one apiece, which makes _three_ (sorts
of) pieces; and the queen is a _fourth_, for the king cannot be taken. The
case of the pawns was different, for each pawn had an individuality of its
own, no two being made alike (except in inferior sets). Caxton's Game of
the Chesse shews this clearly; he describes each of the eight pawns
separately, and gives a different figure to each. According to him, the
pawns were (beginning from the King's Rook's Pawn) the Labourer, Smyth,
Clerke (or Notary), Marchaunt, Physicien, Tauerner, Garde, and Ribauld.
They denoted 'all sorts and conditions of men'; and this is why our common
saying of 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary,
ploughboy, thief' enumerates _eight_ conditions[288].
As the word _fers_ originally meant counsellor or monitor of the king, it
could be applied to any of the pieces. There was a special reason for its
application to each of the pawns; for a pawn, on arriving at its last
square, could not be exchanged (as now) for any piece at pleasure, but only
for a queen, i. e. the fers _par excellence_. For, as Caxton says again,
'he [the pawn] may not goo on neyther side till he hath been in the fardest
ligne of theschequer, & that he hath taken the nature of the draughtes of
the quene, & than he is a _fiers_, and than may he goo on al sides
cornerwyse fro poynt to poynt onely as the quene'; &c.
726. These stock examples all come together in the Rom. de la Rose; viz.
_Jason_ and _Medee_, at l. 13433; _Philis_ and _Demophon_, at l. 13415;
'_Dido_, roine de Cartage,' at l. 13379. The story of Echo and Narcissus is
told fully, in an earlier passage (see ll. 1469-1545 of the English
version, at p. 154); also that of 'Dalida' and 'Sanson' in a later passage,
at l. 16879. See also the Legends of Dido, Medea, and Phillis in the Legend
of Good Women; and the story of Sampson in the Monkes Tale, B 3205:--
'Ne Narcissus, the faire,' &c.; Kn. Tale, 1083 (A 1941).
'And dye he moste, he seyde, as dide Ekko
For Narcisus'; C. T. 11263 (Frank. Tale, F 951).
779. M. Sandras points out the resemblance to a passage in G. de Machault's
Remède de Fortune:--
'Car le droit estat d'innocence
Ressemblent (?) proprement la table
_Blanche_, polie, _qui est able_
_A recevoir_, sans nul contraire,
Ce qu'on y veut peindre ou portraire.'
The rime of _table_ and _able_ settles the point. Mr. Brock points out a
parallel passage in Boethius, which Chaucer thus translates:--'the soule
hadde ben naked of it-self, as a mirour or a clene parchemin.... Right as
we ben wont som tyme by a swifte pointel to ficchen lettres emprented in
the smothenesse or in the pleinnesse of the table of wex, or in parchemin
that ne hath no figure ne note in it'; bk. v. met. 4. But I doubt if
Chaucer knew much of Boethius in 1369; and in the present passage he
clearly refers to a prepared white surface, not to a tablet of wax. 'Youth
and white paper take any impression'; Ray's Proverbs.
791. An allusion to the old proverb which is given in Hending in the
form--'Whose yong lerneth, olt [old] he ne leseth'; Hending's Prov. l. 45.
Kemble gives the medieval Latin--'Quod puer adsuescit, leviter dimittere
nescit'; Gartner, Dicteria, p. 24 b. Cf. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 69; also Rom.
de la Rose, 13094.