880-882. These lines are Chaucer's own; l. 880 is characteristic of him.
The phrase in l. 880 seems to have been proverbial. Cf. 'I walke as werme,
withoute wede'; Coventry Mysteries, p. 28. But Chaucer got it from Le Roman
de la Rose, 445; see his translation, l. 454; vol. i. p. 112.
888-889. The latter part of l. 888, and l. 889, are Chaucer's own.
903. _lyves_, alive; _a lyves creature_, a creature alive, a living being.
_Lyves_ is an adverb, formed like _nedes_, from the genitive case of the
substantive. There are other instances of its use.
'Yif I late him _liues_ go'; Havelok, 509.
i. e. if I let him go away _alive_. And again _lyues_ = alive, in Piers Pl.
B. xix. 154. Nearly repeated from Troil. iv. 251-2.
910. After this line, Chaucer has omitted the circumstance of Janicola's
preserving his daughter's old clothing; 'tunicam eius hispidam, et attritam
senio, abditam paruae domus in parte seruauerat.' See l. 913.
911. _Agayns_, towards, so as to meet. _To go agayns_, in M. E., is _to go
to meet_. So also _to come agayns_, _to ride agayns_ (or _agayn_). See
_Agayn_ in Glossary to Spec. of Eng. (Morris and Skeat); and Barbour's
Bruce, xiv. 420. Ll. 915-917 are Chaucer's own. [349]
916. 'For the cloth was poor, and many days older now than on the day of
her marriage.'
932. 'Men speak of Job, and particularly of his humility.' Cf. Job, xl. 4,
xlii. 1-6.
934. _Namely of men_, especially of _men_, where _men_ is emphatic. The
whole of this stanza (932-938) is Chaucer's.
938. _but_, except, unless; _falle_, fallen, happened; _of-newe_, newly, an
adverbial expression. It means then, 'unless it has happened very lately.'
In other words, 'If there is an example of a man surpassing a woman in
humility, it must have happened very lately; for I have never heard of it.'
939. _Pars Sexta._ This indication of a new part comes in a fitting place,
and is taken from Tyrwhitt, who may have found it in a MS. But there is no
break here in the Latin original, nor in any of the MSS. of Chaucer which I
have consulted. _erl of Panik_; Lat. 'Panicius comes.'
940. _more and lesse_, greater or smaller; i. e. everybody. So also in the
Frank. Tale, 'riveres _more and lesse_'; F. 1054. So also _moche and lyte_,
great and small, Prol. 494; _moste and leste_, greatest and least, A. 2198.
Spenser has, F. Q. vi. 6. 12,--
''Gainst all, both bad and good, both most and least.'
941. _alle and some_, i. e. all and one, one and all. See Morris's Eng.
Accidence, sect. 218, p. 142.
960. _wommen_; some MSS. have _womman_, as in Tyrwhitt. But MS. E. is
right. Petrarch uses the word _foeminas_, not _foeminam_.
965. _yvel biseye_, ill provided; lit. ill beseen. The word _yvel_ is
pronounced here almost as a monosyllable (as it were _yv'l_), as is so
commonly the case with _ever_; indeed generally, words ending with _el_ and
_er_ are often thus clipped. A remarkable instance occurs in the Milleres
Tale (A. 3715), where we not only have a similar ending, but the word
_ever_ in the same line--
'That trewë love was ever so yvel biset.'
See also _yvel apayed_ in line 1052 below. The converse to _yvel biseye_,
is _richely biseye_, richly provided or adorned, in l. 984 below.
981. Lat. 'Proximae lucis hora tertia comes superuenerat'; see note to l.
260.
995-1008. These two stanzas are Chaucer's own, and are so good that they
must have been a later addition; Prof. Ten Brink suggests the date 1387
(Eng. Lit. ii. 123, Eng. version). In MS. E. the word _Auctor_ is inserted
in the margin, and l. 995 begins with a large capital letter. At the
beginning of l. 1009 is a paragraph-mark, shewing where the translation
begins again. _unsad_, unsettled. Cf. Shakesp. Cor. i. 1. 186, Jul. Caesar,
i. 1. 55; Scott, Lady of the Lake, v. 30.
999. 'Ever full of tittle-tattle, which would be dear enough at a
halfpenny.' See n. to l. 1200. _Iane_, a small coin of Genoa (Janua); see
Rime of Sir Thopas, B. 1925. The first stanza (995-1001) is supposed [350]
to be uttered by the sober and discreet part of the population; see l.
1002.
1031. _lyketh thee_, pleases thee. The marquis addresses her as _thou_,
because all suppose her to be a menial.
1039. _mo_, lit. more; but also used in the sense of _others_, or, as here,
_another_. The modern phrase would be, 'as you did _somebody else_.' The
extreme delicacy of the hint is admirable. This use of _mo_ is common in
Chaucer; see the Glossary. So also, in Specimens of English, ed. Morris and
Skeat, we have, at p. 47, l. 51--
'Y sike for vnsete;
Ant mourne ase men doþ _mo_';
i. e. I sigh for unrest, and mourn as _other_ men do. And on the next page,
p. 48, l. 22, we have
'Mody meneþ so doþ _mo_,
Ichot ycham on of þo';
i. e. 'The moody moan as _others_ do; I wot I am one of them.' In l. 240 of
How the Good Wife taught her Daughter, pr. with Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat,
we find--'And slanderit folk vald euir haue _ma_,' i. e. would ever have
_others like themselves_. Somewhat similar is the expression _oþer mo_,
where we should now say _others as well_; Piers Plowman, C. v. 10, xxii.
54. A somewhat similar use of _mo_ occurs in Tudor English. 'It fortuned
Diogenes to ... make one among the _moo_ at a dyner.'--Udall, tr. of
Erasmus' Apophthegmes (1564), bk. i. § 91. So also:--'that he also, emong
the _mo_ [i. e. the rest] might haue his pleasure'; id. bk. ii. § 13.
Tyrwhitt's suggestion that Chaucer has licentiously turned _me_ into _mo_
for the mere sake of getting a rime, in which he has hitherto been followed
by nearly every editor, is only to be repudiated. It may well have been
with the very purpose of guarding against this error that, in the Ellesmere
and Hengwrt MSS., the original Latin text is here quoted in the
margin--'unum bona fide te precor ac moneo: ne hanc illis aculeis agites,
quibus _alteram_ agitasti.' Chaucer, who throughout surpasses his original
in delicacy of treatment, did not permit himself to be outdone here; and
Boccaccio also has the word _altra_. The use of _me_ would have been a
_direct_ charge of unkindness, spoiling the whole story. See l. 1045 and l.
449.
1049. _gan his herte dresse_, addressed his heart, i. e. prepared it,
schooled it. The M. E. _dresse_ is our modern _direct_; both being from
Lat. _dirigere_.
1053. Here we may once more note the use of the word _thy_, the more so as
it is used with a quite different tone. We sometimes find it used, as here,
_between equals_, as a term of _endearment_; it is, accordingly, very
significant. See l. 1056.
1066. _that other_, the other, the boy.
1071. _non_, any, either. The use of it is due to the preceding _nat_.
1079. Professor Morley, in his English Writers, v. 342, aptly remarks
here--'And when Chaucer has told all, and dwelt with an [351] exquisite
pathos of natural emotion all his own upon the patient mother's piteous and
tender kissing of her recovered children--for there is nothing in
Boccaccio, and but half a sentence in Petrarch, answering to these four
beautiful stanzas (1079-1106)--he rounds all, as Petrarch had done, with
simple sense, which gives religious meaning to the tale, then closes with a
lighter strain of satire which protects Griselda herself from the mocker.'
1098. 'Hath caused you (to be) kept.' For the same idiom, see Kn. Tale, A.
1913; Man of Law's Tale, B. 171, and the note. Cf. 'Wher I have beforn
ordeyned and _do mad_ [caused to be made] my tombe.' Royal Wills, ed.
Nichols, p. 278.
1133. _His wyves fader_, i. e. Janicola. This circumstance should have been
mentioned _before_ l. 1128, as in the original.
1140. For _of_ (Ellesmere MS.) the other MSS. read _in_.
1141. _auctour_, author, i. e. Petrarch, whom Chaucer follows down to l.
1162. Ll. 1138-1141 are Chaucer's own, and may be compared with his poem on
the Golden Age (vol. i. 380).
1144. _importable_, intolerable; Lat.--'huius uxoris patientiam, quae mihi
_uix imitabilis_ uidetur.' Of course ll. 1147-8 are Chaucer's.
1151. 'Receive all with submission.' Fr. _en gré_, gratefully, in good
part. _sent_, sendeth; present tense, as in Piers Plowman, C. xxii. 434.
The past tense is _sente_, which would not rime.
1152. 'For it is very reasonable that He should prove (or test) that which
He created.'
1153. _boghte_, (hath) redeemed. See St. James, i. 13.
1162. Here Petrarch ends his narrative, and here, beyond all doubt,
Chaucer's translation originally ended also. From this point to the end is
the work of a later period, and in his best manner, though _unsuited to the
coy Clerk_. He easily links on his addition by the simple expression
_lordinges, herkneth_; and in l. 1170, he alludes to the _Wife of Bath_, of
whom probably he had never thought when first translating the story.
We can thus understand the stanza in the footnote, on p. 424. It is
genuine, but was rejected at the time of adding ll. 1163-1212. It was
afterwards expanded into The Monkes Prologue, with the substitution of the
patient Prudence for the patient Griselda; see B. 3083-6.
1177. Here the metre changes; the stanzas are of six lines; and all six
stanzas are linked together. There are but three rimes throughout; _-ence_
in the first and third lines of every stanza, _-aille_ in the second,
fourth, and sixth, (requiring _eighteen_ rimes in all), and _-inde_ in the
fifth line. It is a fine example even from a metrical point of view alone.
1188. _Chichevache_, for _chiche vache_, i. e. lean cow. The allusion is to
an old fable, of French origin, which describes a monstrous cow named
_Chiche Vache_ as feeding entirely upon patient wives, and being very lean
in consequence of the scarcity of her diet. A later form of the fable adds
a second beast, named _Bicorne_ (two-horned), who, by adopting the wiser
course of feeding upon patient husbands, was [352] always fat and in good
case. Mr. Wright says--'M. Achille Jubinal, in the notes to his _Mystères
inédits du xv Siècle_, tom. i. p. 390, has printed a French poetical
description of _Chichevache_ from a MS. of the fourteenth century. In the
French miracle of St. Geneviève, of the fifteenth century (Jubinal, ib. p.
281), a man says satirically to the saint,
"Gardez vous de la _chicheface_,
El vous mordra s'el vous encontre,
Vous n'amendez point sa besoigne."'
A poem by Lydgate on _Bycorne and Chichevache_ is printed in Mr.
Halliwell's Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, p. 129 (Percy Society); see
Morley's English Writers, vi. 107, and his Shorter English Poems, p. 55. In
his Étude sur G. Chaucer, p. 221, M. Sandras refers us, for information
about _Chicheface_, lit. 'thin face' or 'ugly face' (of which _Chiche
vache_ was a perversion), to the Histoire Littéraire de France, vol. xxiii.
Dr. Murray refers us to Montaiglon, _Poésie franç. 15^e et 16^e siècles_
(1855), ii. 191. The passage in Chaucer means, 'Beware of being too
patient, lest Chichevache swallow you down.'
1189. _Folweth Ekko_, imitate Echo, who _always replies_.
1196. The forms _chamail_, _kamail_, a camel, occur in the A. F. Romance of
King Horn, ed. Brede and Stengel, l. 4177. For the M. E. _camayl_, see
Rich. Cuer de Lion, 2323; Cursor Mundi, 3304 (Trin. MS.).
1200. 'Always talk (or rattle) on, like a mill' (that is always going round
and making a noise). 'Janglinge is whan men speken to muche biforn folk,
and _clappen as a mille_, and taken no kepe what they seye'; Ch. Persones
Tale, De Superbia (I. 406). Palsgrave's French Dict. has--'I clappe, I make
a noyse as the clapper of a mill, _Ie clacque_.'
'Thou art as fulle of clappe, as is a mille.'
Hoccleve, de Regimine Principum, ed. Wright, p. 7.
Cf. 'As fast as millwheels strike'; Tempest, i. 2. 281.
1204. _aventaille_, the lower half of the moveable part of a helmet which
admitted air; called by Spenser the _ventail_, F. Q. iv. 6. 19; v. 8. 12;
and by Shakespeare the _beaver_, Hamlet, i. 2. 230. It is explained, in
Douce's Illustrations of Shakespeare, that the moveable part of the helmet
in front was made in two parts, which turned on hinges at the sides of the
head. The upper part is the _visor_, to admit of vision, the lower the
_ventail_, to admit of breathing. Both parts could be removed from the
face, but only by lifting them _upwards_, and throwing them _back_. If the
_visor_ alone were lifted, only the upper part of the face was exposed; but
if the _ventail_ were lifted, the visor also went with it, and the whole of
the face was seen. Compare Fairfax's Tasso, vii. 7:--
'But sweet Erminia comforted their fear,
Her _ventail_ up, her visage _open laid_.'
So also in Hamlet. With reference to the present passage, Mr. Jephson says
that _and eek his aventaille_ is a perfect example of bathos. I fail to see
why; the weapon that pierced a _ventail_ would pass into the [353] head,
and inflict a death-wound. The passage is playful, but not silly.
1206. _couche_, cower. Hence the phrase--'to play couch-quail'; see
Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 348.
1211. 'As light as a leaf on a linden-tree' was an old proverb. See Piers
Pl. B. i. 154.