360. 'O serpent under the form of woman, like that Serpent that is bound in
hell.' The allusion here is not a little curious. It clearly refers to the
old belief that the serpent who tempted Eve appeared to her _with a woman's
head_, and it is sometimes so represented. I observed it, for instance, in
the chapter-house of Salisbury Cathedral; and see the woodcut at p. 73 of
Wright's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art. In Peter Comestor's
Historia Libri Genesis, we read of Satan--'Elegit etiam quoddam genus
serpentis (vt ait Beda) _virgineum vultum_ habens.' In the alliterative
Troy Book, ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 144, the Tempter is called Lyuyaton
(i. e. Leviathan), and it is said of him that he
'Hade a face vne fourmet _as a fre maydon_'; l. 4451.
And, again, in Piers the Plowman, B. xviii. 355, Satan is compared to a
'lusarde [lizard] _with a lady visage_.' In the Ancren Riwle, p. 207, we
are gravely informed that a scorpion is a kind of serpent that has a face
somewhat like that of a woman, and puts on a pleasant countenance. To
remember this gives peculiar force to ll. 370, 371. See also note to l.
404.
367. _knowestow_ is a trisyllable; and _the olde_ is to be read _tholdè_.
But in l. 371, the word _Makestow_, being differently placed in the line,
is to be read with the _e_ slurred over, as a dissyllable.