(Vol. i., p. 254.; Vol. v., p. 180.)
Why this word should have "set all editors of Chaucer at defiance" is
not very apparent, for he himself sufficiently explains its meaning by
the context. The passage in which it occurs is in _Troylus and
Creseyde_, b. iii. 931. seq. thus:
"Creseyde answerde, As wisely God at reste
My soule bringe, as me is for him wo,
And eme, iwys, fayne wolde I dône the best,
If that I a grace had for to do so.
But whether that ye dwell, or for him go,
I am, tyl God me bettre mynde sende,
At _Dulcarnon, right at my wyttes end_.
"(Quod Pandarus). Ye nece! Wol ye here?
_Dulcarnon_ is called flemyng of wretches.
It semeth harde, for wretches wol nought lere
For very slouthe, or other wylful tetches:
This is said by hem, that be not worthe two fetches.
But ye ben wyse," &c.
Now Speght, in his Glossary to the edition of 1602, says:
"Dulcarnon is a proposition in Euclide, lib. i. theorem 33.
propos. 47., which was found out by Pythagoras after an whole
yeeres study, and much beating of his brayne. In thankfulnes
whereof he sacrificed an oxe to the gods; which sacrifice he
called _Dulcarnon_. Alexander Neckham, an ancient writer, in his
booke _De Naturis rerum_, compoundeth this word of _Dulia_ and
_Caro_, and will have Dulcarnon to be _quasi sacrificium carnis_.
Chaucer aptly applieth it to Creseide in this place: showing that
she was as much amazed how to answer Troilus, as Pythagoras was
wearied to bring his desire to effect."
Master Speght is somewhat in error in his solution: let us hear another
expositor. I have mentioned in your pages the existence of a translation
into rhymed Latin verse of the whole of Chaucer's _Troilus_, with a
copious commentary by Sir Francis Kynaston; and I may now add, for Mr.
Lang's satisfaction, that it is _penes me_. The following note there
occurs on this word:
"_Dulcarnon_, &c. By this exposition, which Pandarus makes of the
word _Dulcarnon_, it is plaine that Chaucer sets it downe here as
a worde in use in his time, and such a one as the logicians do
call (being a word of no significant sense) _vox significans ad
placitum_, as in English _twittle twattle_, _fiddle faddle_,
quibling and conundrums, and the like. So _Dulcarnon_ in those
times was a word of the same signification as we at this day do
use _nonplus_; as we say by a scholler that is apposed and cannot
answer any further, that he is _put to a nonplus_, a phrase
derived from Hercules' motto written upon the two great Gaditane
pillars set on either side the Straights of Gibraltar: which
Hercules constituted as the end of the world with these words, NON
PLUS ULTRA: meaning that no man ever did or could go further than
those pillars. For Neckham's far-fetch'd criticisme in deriving
the etymologie of the word Dulcarnon from the Greeke word
_Doulia_, and the Latine word _Carnium_, that is, the service of
flesh, which Euclide sacrificed for joy of the invention of a
probleme which he demonstrated, [and] on which he had long
studied, [it] is in my minde quite from the purpose."
The usual explanation, with a reference to Chaucer, will be found in
Blount's _Glossographia_, and in Philips's _World of Words_, as well as
in the folio edition of Bailey's _Dictionary_, where it is well defined
"_to be nonplussed, to be at one's wit's end_."
Mr. Inglis's note to his translation of Richard de Bury's
_Philobiblion_, which is taken from Billingsley, points out the
connexion between the words _Ellefuga_ and _Dulcarnon_, which, as he
says, "have been a _pons asinorum_ to some good Grecians." The reason
will appear to have been that the words were derived from the _Arabic_,
and not from the _Greek_, according to Dr. Adam Littleton:
"_Dulcarnon_, i.e. bicorne, cornutum, à figura sic dicta. A hard
proposition in Euclid, l. 1. prop. 47. So called in _Arabic_, and
used by old English writers for _any hard question or point_.
DILEMMA, PROBLEMA."
So that to be at Dulcarnon may be said to be _on the horns of a
dilemma_.