201. _of Fairye_, of fairy origin, magical. I do not subscribe to Warton's
opinion (Obs. on Faerie Queene, p. 86) that this necessarily means that it
was 'the work of the devil.' Cf. the same expression in Piers Pl. B. prol.
6.
203. Compare the Latin proverb--'quot homines, tot sententiae.' See
Hazlitt's Eng. Proverbs, pp. 340, 437. A good epigram on this proverb is
given in Camden's Remaines concerning Britaine, ed. 1657, sig. Gg.
'So many heads, so many wits--fie, fie!
Is't not a shame for Proverbs thus to lie?
My selfe, though my acquaintance be but small,
Know many heads that have _no wit at all_.'
207. _the Pegasee_, Pegasus. In the margin of MSS. E. Hn. Hl. is written
'i. equs Pegaseus,' meaning 'id est, equus Pegaseus'; shewing that Chaucer
was thinking of the adjective _Pegaseus_ rather than of the sb. _Pegasus_,
the name of the celebrated winged horse of Bellerophon and of the Muses.
Cf. Lydgate's Complaint of the Black Knight, l. 92.
209. 'Or else it was the horse of the Greek named Sinon.' This very
singular-looking construction is really common in Middle English; yet the
scribe of the Harleian MS. actually writes 'the Grekissch hors Synon,'
which makes Sinon the _name of the horse_; and this odd blunder is retained
in the editions by Wright, Bell, and Morris. The best way of clearing up
the difficulty is by noting similar examples; a few of which are here
appended:--
'The kinges meting Pharao';
i. e. the dream of King Pharaoh; Book of the Duchesse, l. 282.
'The erles wif Alein';
i. e. the wife of earl Alein; Rob. of Gloucester, in Spec. of Eng., ed.
Morris and Skeat, p. 11, l. 303.
'Themperours moder william,'
i. e. the mother of the Emperor named William; Will. of Palerne, l. 5437.
'Pieres pardon þe plowman';
i. e. the pardon of Piers the Plowman; P. Pl. B. xix. 182.
'In Piers berne þe plowman';
i. e. in the barn of Piers the Plowman; id. xix. 354.
'For Piers loue þe plowman';
i. e. for love of Piers the Plowman; id. xx. 76. Chaucer again alludes
[377] to Sinon in the House of Fame, i. 152, and in the Legend of Good
Women, Dido, 8; which shews that he took that legend partly from Vergil,
Aen. ii. 195. But note that Chaucer here compares a horse of _brass_ to the
Trojan horse; this is because the latter was also said to have been of
brass, not by Vergil, but by Guido delle Colonne; see note to l. 211. This
is why Gower, in his Confess. Amant. bk. i., and Caxton, in his Recuyell of
the Historyes of Troy, both speak of the Trojan horse as a 'horse of
brass'; see Spec. of English, 1394-1579, ed. Skeat, p. 91, l. 67.
211. _olde gestes_, old accounts. The account of the taking of Troy most
valued in the middle ages was not that by Vergil or Homer, but the Latin
prose story written in 1287 by Guido delle Colonne, who obtained a great
reputation very cheaply, since he borrowed his work almost entirely from an
old French _Roman de Troie_, written by Benoit de Sainte-Maure. See the
preface to The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, ed. Panton and
Donaldson (Early English Text Society). And see vol. ii. p. lxi.
219. _Iogelours_, jugglers. See the quotation from Marco Polo, i. 340, in
vol. iii. p. 473; and cf. The Franklin's Tale, F. 1140-1151, and the notes.
223. _comprehende_; so in the MSS. But read _comprende_; see Troil. iii.
1687; and pronounce _lew-ed-nes_ fully.