853. _limaille_, filings, fine scrapings. 'Take fyn gold and make it into
smal _lymail_'; Book of Quinte Essence, p. 8.
861. 'To raise a fiend, though he look never so rough,' i. e. forbidding,
cross.
874. _it is to seken euer_, it is always to seek, i. e. never found. In
Skelton's Why Come Ye Nat to Court, l. 314, the phrase 'they are to seke'
means 'they are at a loss'; this latter is the commoner use.
875. _temps_, tense. The editors explain it by 'time.' If Chaucer had
_meant_ time, it is reasonable to suppose that he would have _said_ so.
Surely it is better to take 'that futur temps' in the special sense of
'that future tense.' The allusion is to the phrase 'to seken' in the last
line, which is not an infinitive mood but a gerund, and often used as a
future tense, as Chaucer very well knew. Compare the A. S. version of Matt.
xi. 3--'eart þ[=u] þe to cumenne eart'--with the Lat. 'Tu es qui _uenturus_
es.'
878. _bitter swete_, i. e. a fatal, though alluring, pursuit. An example
[428] of oxymoron; cf. 'insaniens sapientia,' Horat. Carm. i. 34; 'strenua
inertia,' Epist. i. xi. 28. Cf. the plant-name _bittersweet_ (_Solanum
dulcamara_).
879. _nadde they but_, if they only should have (_or_, were to have).
_Nadde_ is for _ne hadde_, past tense subjunctive.
880. _inne_, within; A. S. _innan_; see l. 881. _a-night_, for _on night_,
in the night. Perhaps it should be _nighte_ (with final _e_), and _lighte_
in l. 881.
881. _bak_, cloth; any rough sort of covering for the back. So in most
MSS.; altered in E. to _brat_, but unnecessarily. That the word _bak_ was
used in the sense of garment is quite certain; see William of Palerne, ed.
Skeat, l. 2096; Piers the Plowman, B. x. 362; and the same, A. xi. 184.
Pronounce the words _And a_ rapidly, in the time of one syllable.
907. _to-brek'th_, bursts in pieces. _go_, gone. This must have been a very
common result; the old directions about 'luting' and hermetically sealing
the vessels employed are so strict, that every care seems to have been
(unwittingly) taken to secure an explosion; see note to l. 766 above. So in
the Alchemist, iv. 3:--
_Face._ O, sir, we are defeated! all the works
Are flown _in fumo_, every glass is burst': &c.