1199. _elenge_, miserable, hard to bear. _Elenge_ is also spelt _alenge_,
_alinge_, _alange_; see _Alange_ in the New English Dictionary, though the
proper form is rather _alenge_. It is a derivative of the intensive A. S.
prefix _[=æ]_ and _lenge_, a secondary form of _lang_, long; so that A. S.
_[=æ]lenge_ meant protracted, tedious, wearisome, as in Alfred's tr. of
Boethius, xxxix. 4. But it was confused with the M. E. _elend_, strange,
foreign, and so acquired the sense of 'strange' as well as 'trying' or
'miserable.' See _Elynge_ in the Gl. to P. Plowman, and the note to P. Pl.
C. i. 204; also Mätzner's note to the Land of Cokayne, l. 15.
1200. This line translates 'possessio absque calumnia.' The E. _challenge_
is, in fact, derived from _calumnia_, through Old French.
1202. Understand _him_: 'maketh (him) know his God and himself'; see
Dryden's paraphrase. Against this line, in the margin of MS. E., [322] is
written:--'Unde et Crates ille Thebanus, proiecto in mari non paruo auri
pondere, Abite (inquit) pessime male cupiditates! Ego uos mergam, ne ipse
mergar a uobis.' Probably Chaucer once intended to introduce this story
into the text. It relates, apparently, to Crates of Thebes, the Cynic
philosopher, who flourished about B. C. 320.
1203. _spectacle_, i. e. an optic glass, a kind of telescope. In the modern
sense, the word was used in the plural, as at present. From Lydgate's
London Lickpenny, st. 7, we learn that 'spectacles to reede' was, in his
time, one of the cries of London. Cf. _prospectyves_, i. e. perspective
glasses, in F. 234. Chaucer is here thinking of a passage in Le Roman de la
Rose, where the E. version (l. 5551) has:--
'For infortune makith anoon
To knowe thy freendis fro thy foon.'
This, again, is from Boethius, bk. ii. pr. 8. 22-33. Compare Chaucer's poem
on Fortune, ll. 9, 32, 34, and my notes upon these lines; vol. i. pp. 383,
544.
1208. See note to l. 1276 below; and cf. D. 1.
1210. Compare C. 743, and the note.
1215. For _also_, Tyrwhitt reads _also so_, against all authority, as he
admits. The text is right as it stands. _Eld-e_ is dissyllabic, the final
_e_ being preserved by the cæsura; and _also_ means no more than 'so.' I
suspect this is quoted from some French proverb. Dryden alters 'filth' to
'ugliness.'
1224. _repair_, great resort, viz. of visitors.
1234. 'I care not which of the two it shall be.' Cf. Gower, Conf. Amantis,
i. 103:--
'Chese for us bothe, I you praie,
And what as ever that ye saie,
Right as ye wolle, so wol I.
My lord, she saide, grauntmercy.
For of this word that ye now sain,
That ye have made me soverein,
My destinè is overpassed'; &c.
1260. _toverbyde_, to over-bide, to outlive. Tyrwhitt substitutes _to
overlive_, from the black-letter editions. _Gra-ce_ is dissyllabic.
1261. _shorte_, shorten; see D. 365.