FOOTNOTES:
[1] Pope in this particular has not followed Chaucer. The story is told by the merchant, who announces in the prologue, that he has been two months married, and that in this brief space he has endured more misery from the fiendishness of his wife than a bachelor could undergo in an entire lifetime from the enmity of the world. He lays it down for a general maxim, that
We wedded men live in sorwe and care;
Assay it whoso will, and he shall find
That I say sooth, by Saint Thomas of Inde,
As for the more part; I say not all;
God shielde that it shoulde so befall.
The host begs that since the merchant knows so much of the trials of matrimony, he will instruct the company in some of them.
Gladly, quoth he, but of mine owne sore
For sorry heart I telle may no more.
He accordingly relates the adventures of January and May in illustration of the misfortunes of the wedded state, and commences with the panegyric of January upon its unmixed blessings. The merchant then adds,
Thus said this olde knight that was so wise,
which is an ironical comment on what the narrator of the tale considers a delusive dream, and a proof of the credulous folly of the speaker. The idea of ascribing genuine sense and wisdom to the knight, notwithstanding that he was weak enough, at the age of sixty, to marry a girl, is confined to the version of Pope, and is not in itself unnatural; but the character, upon the whole, is better preserved in Chaucer, since the entire talk and conduct of January indicate a feeble mind.
[2] "Courage" in the original is not used in the modern sense, but signifies a hearty desire.
And when that he was passed sixty year,
Were it for holiness or for dotage,
I cannot say, but such a great courage
Hadde this knight to be a wedded man,
That day and night he doth all that he can
Taspye where that he might wedded be;
Praying our Lord to grante him that he
Might ones knowen of that blissful life,
That is betwixt a husband and his wife.
[4] In the original,
And certainly, as sooth as God is king,
To take a wife it is a glorious thing;
And namely when a man is old and hoar,
Then is a wife the fruit of his tresor.
This is another instance that the merchant's remarks are sarcastic; for no rational person would gravely assert that to wed was especially wise in old age, when a man was married for his money alone. The whole purport of the tale was to prove that such an alliance ended in discomfiture. The vein of satire is continued through the subsequent reflections. The merchant represents January as imagining wives to be models of obedience and fidelity, who will cleave to a husband through weal and woe, and will never be weary of loving and serving him, though he is bed-ridden all his days. The example of May, to which the description is a preface, shows that the praises are meant to be interpreted in an adverse sense.
[5] In the original the merchant is quoting an invective against wives from the Liber Aureolus of Theophrastus, who had long been dead. Hence the narrator calls down a curse upon his bones in the name of the advocates of matrimony:
This entent and an hundred sithe worse
Writeth this man; there God his bones curse.
"Sithe" signifies "times." Pope has generalised the imprecation, and extended it to all bards, living or deceased, whereby the fitness of invoking a curse upon their bones is destroyed.
[6] Chaucer would have thought it an anomaly for a Christian knight to invoke the heathen deities. The original is,
A wife! ah! Sainte Mary, benedicite,
How might a man have any adversite
That hath a wife? certes I cannot say.
The requirements of the metre in this and other passages of Chaucer, show that benedicite was sometimes contracted, in the pronunciation, to ben'cite.
[7] The merchant, in his account of the motives which actuated the knight, dilates more largely in the original, and in more enthusiastic language, upon the felicity of marriage. A wife helps her husband in his work, is the careful guardian of his property, and is perfect in her submission.
She saith nought ones nay when he saith ye;
Do this, saith he; all ready, sir, saith she.
Consequently the married man
Upon his bare knees ought all his life
Thanken his God that him hath sent a wife;
and if he is not yet possessed of the treasure, he ought to pray without ceasing that it may be vouchsafed him, for then he is established in safety, and
May not be deceived as I guess.
From the praise of wives, the merchant, speaking the views of the knight, proceeds to extol the trustworthy advice of women in general, and his first instance is Rebecca, who instructed Jacob how to supplant Esau. The reasoning is purposely rendered inconsistent, and the assertion that a married man was secured against deception is immediately followed by an example in which the husband was deluded by the stratagem of the wife.
Lo Judith, as the story telle can,
By wise counsel she Goddes people kept
And slew him Holofernes while he slept.
Lo Abigail by good counsel how she
Saved her husband Nabal, when that he
Should have been slain.
The respite that Abigail obtained for Nabal was very short. He died by a judgment from heaven in about ten days from the time that she went forth to meet David, and with presents and persuasions diverted him from his purpose, as he was advancing to take vengeance on her husband. The striking narrative in the apocryphal book of Judith is undoubtedly fabulous. The pretended Judith was a widow. The deceptions by which she is said to have got the captain of the Assyrian army into her power are abhorrent to our purer morality, but they would have been considered legitimate stratagems of war in the East.
[9] Dryden, Juvenal, vi. 640.
The rest are summoned on a point so nice.
[10] In Chaucer the knight does not ask his friends to choose for him because many heads are wiser than one, but because with several people on the look out there is more likelihood that a suitable wife will be found quickly than if he was unassisted in the search.
[11] In the original,
But one thing warn I you, my friendes dear,
I will none old wife have in no manere.
Marriages seem to have taken place in those days at a very early age. The wife of Bath married at twelve, and the knight's notion of an "old wife" it appears, five lines further on, was a woman of twenty. He insists that he will marry nobody that is above sixteen:
She shall not passe sixteene year certain.
Old fish, and young flesh, that would I have full fain.
Bet is, quoth he, a pike than a pikerel,
And bet than old beef is the tender veal.
"Bet" is for "better."
[12] Chaucer's knight assigns it as a motive to wedlock that he may have
Children to thonour of God above,
And not only for paramour, and for love.
But a little before he had given a more worldly reason for his desire to have a son and heir, and said that he would rather be eaten by dogs than that his inheritance should go to a stranger.
[13] The flippancy of this couplet, which departs from the original, is at variance with the tone of the knight, whose speech commenced with the words,
Friendes I am hoar and old,
And almost, God wot, at my pittes brink
Upon my soule somewhat must I think.
I have my body folily dispended
Blessed be God that it shall be amended.
In the passage, for which Pope's lines are the substitute, the knight is enumerating the causes why men should marry, and one reason, he says, is that each person ought to
Helpen other
In meschief, as a sister shall the brother,
And live in chastity full holily.
But, sires, by your leave that am not I,
For, God be thankèd, I dare make avaunt,
I feel my limbes stark and suffisaunt.
The meaning is, that when a husband is "in meschief," or, in other words, in a state of helpless decrepitude, his wife ought to live in holy chastity, and nurse him as a sister would a brother. But, adds the knight, thank God I am not decrepit myself, and feel my limbs to be still stout; which is a very different sentiment from sneering at the saintly life he had just commended.
[14] This verse, which has no counterpart in the original, is altered from a line in Dryden's Flower and Leaf:
Ev'n when the vital sap retreats below,
Ev'n when the hoary head is hid in snow.
[15] The infatuation of the knight is more strongly marked in the original. He summons his friends to hear his fixed resolution, and to beg their assistance. He wants no advice, and instead of inviting them to speak their minds with freedom, he concludes his address with the words
And synnes ye have heard all mine intent,
I pray you to my wille ye assent.
They do, indeed, offer him counsel where he solicited help, which is a true stroke of nature on both sides.
[16] Pope gives the real character of Placebo, but sets probability at defiance in making him parade with boastful effrontery his own systematic fawning and flattery. Chaucer has not committed the extravagance. With him Placebo justifies his assentation on the ground that lords are better informed than their inferiors.
A full great fool is any counsellor
That serveth any lord of high honour,
That dare presume, or once thinken it,
That his counsel should pass his lordes wit.
Nay lordes be no fooles by my fay.
Ye have yourself y-spoken here to-day
So high sentence, so holy, and so well,
That I consent, and confirm every dole
Your wordes all, and your opinion.
[17] The last four lines are interpolated by Pope, and are again inconsistant with the tenor of Chaucer's narrative. The knight had notoriously been a dissolute man, and the coarse reflection would be out of place when the avowed object of his projected marriage was that he might live more soberly than he had hitherto done.
[18] Seneca.
[19] The qualities specified by Chaucer are whether she is wise, sober or given to drink, proud or in any other respect unamiable, a scold or wasteful, rich or poor. "And all this," says Justinus, "asketh leisure to enquire," which he urges in reply to the announcement of January that he was determined not to wait.
[20] In Chaucer Justinus does not pronounce decisively against marriage, but recommends January to consider well before he enters upon it, and especially before he marries "a young wife and a fair."
[21] This couplet is an addition by Pope. The manly Justinus says nothing in the original about "offending his noble lord."
[22] Chaucer is more particular in his description:
He portrayed in his heart, and in his thought
Her fresche beauty, and her age tender,
Her middle small, her armes long and slender,
Her wise governance, her gentilnesse
Her womanly bearing, and her sadnesse.—Bowles.
For when that he himself concluded had,
He thought each other mannes wit so bad,
That impossible it were to replie
Against his choice; this was his fantasie.
[24] In seeking a wife for him.
Placebo came, and eke his friendes soon,
And althirfirst he bad them all a boon,
That none of them no argumentes make
Against the purpose which that he had take;
Which purpose was pleasaunt to God said he,
And very ground of his prosperite.
[26] "And may serve my turn" is one of Dryden's familiar colloquial terms, happily used. Dryden among other excellencies of a varied style was happy in the use of such terms.—Warton.
The phrase fails to convey the conception of Chaucer, that the knight too much smitten by the charms of May to consider anything else of the slightest importance.
All were it so she were of small degree,
Sufficeth him her youth and her beaute.
[27] The humour is brought out by Chaucer with increased force from his dwelling with greater detail on the fond conviction of January that the only risk he runs in marriage is from the excess of the felicity. He says he stands aghast when he contemplates passing his life in that perfect peace, and blessedness,
As alle wedded men do with their wives,
and trembles to think that he shall have his heaven upon earth.
This is my dread, and ye my brethren twey
Assoileth me this question I you pray.
And when they saw that it must needis be,
They wroughten so by sleight and wise treate,
That she, this maiden, which that Maybus hight,
As hastily as ever that she might,
Shall wedded be unto this January.
[29] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
For women to the brave an easy prey,
Still follow fortune where she leads the way.
[30] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
I pass their warlike pomp, their proud array.
[31] This line has no warrant from Chaucer.
[32] Here followed a bad couplet, which Pope afterwards omitted:
Expensive dainties load the plenteous boards,
The best luxurious Italy affords.
[33] Joab, the leader of the Israelites in battle, blew the trumpet, as is recorded in the Bible, to gather them together. Theodomas is thought by Tyrwhitt to be a character in some fictitious history which was popular in the days of Chaucer.
[34] Chaucer says that the bed was blessed by the priest, and the form used on these occasions may be seen in the old Latin service books.
[35] Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo:
What thoughts he had beseems me not to say.
[36] A circumstance is added by Chaucer which brings vividly before the reader the advanced age of the knight:
The slacke skin about his necke shaketh
While that he sung.
[37] Chaucer had previously mentioned that it was the usage for newly married wives to keep their chambers till the fourth day, and he repeats the fact here:
As custom is unto these nobles all,
A bride shall not eaten in the hall,
Till dayes four, or three days atte least
I-passed be; then let her go to the feast.
The fourthe day complete from noon to noon,
When that the highe masse was i-doon,
In halle sit this January and May,
As fresh as is the brighte summer's day.
[38] In the original January passes a warm panegyric upon the excellent qualities of Damian, which is meant to display in broader contrast the treachery and infamy of the squire. The merchant in his own person denounces the villany of Damian's conduct, and prays that all persons may be protected from the machinations of those deceitful vipers, who, when fostered in a family, employ their opportunities to injure their benefactors. Pope has omitted every allusion of the kind, and has treated the baseness of the squire as if he regarded it in the light of a joke.
[39] It was at first "speaking sigh," which was distinctive. "Heaving" is the accompaniment of all sighs, and, as the sigh of Damian was soft, did not mark his in an especial degree.
[40] There is not a word, as may be supposed, in Chaucer of the squire asking for divine assistance in his wicked schemes.
[41] May, on her return from the visit which, at her husband's desire, she paid to Damian in his chamber, that she might cheer him in his illness, read the billet that he had given her covertly, and the result is thus told by Chaucer in a passage which has not been versified by Pope:
This gentle May fulfillèd of pite,
Right of her hand a letter makèd she;
In which she granteth him her very grace;
There lacked nought but only day and place.
And when she saw her time upon a day
To visite this Damian goeth May,
And subtilely this letter down she thrust
Under his pillow; read it if him lust.
She taketh him by the hand, and hard him twist
So secretly, that no wight of it wist,
And bade him be all whole; and forth she went
To January, when that he for her sent.
Up riseth Damian the nexte morrow;
All passed was his sickness and his sorrow.
[42] The Epicurean philosophers.
[43] Addison's Letter from Italy:
My humbler verse demands a softer theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling stream.
[44] Pope has here shown his judgment in adopting the lighter fairy race of Shakespeare and Milton. Chaucer has king Pluto and his queen Proserpina.—Bowles.
There was not much judgment required. They are fairies in Chaucer, but, as was not unusual in his day, he called them by names taken from the heathen mythology. Pope merely dropped the classical appellations, which would have been an incongruity when he wrote. In the details of his description he did not copy Shakespeare or Milton, but Dryden's version of Chaucer's Wife of Bath:
The king of elfs, and little fairy queen
Gambolled on heaths, and danced on ev'ry green.
[45] Another couplet preceded this in the first edition:
Thus many a day with ease and plenty blessed
Our gen'rous knight his gentle dame possessed.
[46] Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
Nor art, nor nature's band can ease my grief,
Nothing but death, the wretch's last relief.
[47] There is a natural trait in the original which is not preserved by Pope. The knight weeps piteously at his sudden calamity:
But atte last, after a month or tweye,
His sorrow gan assuage sooth to say;
For when he wist it may not other be
He patiently took his adversitie.
This is one of the deeper and more solemn touches which Pope systematically rejected. Although the old man gets reconciled to the loss of his sight, his jealousy remains unabated.
Oh! January, what might it thee avail
If thou might see as far as shippes sail?
For as good is blind deceivèd be,
As to be deceivèd when a man may see.
[49] Chaucer only says that they whispered through the crevice they discovered in the wall which divided the houses of their parents. All their kisses were bestowed upon the wall itself, or as Sandys puts it in his translation of Ovid,
Their kisses greet
The senseless stones, with lips that could not meet.
[50] This couplet, which is not in the original, is in the style of the pastorals which were common in Pope's youth.
Thou art the creature that I best love;
For by the Lord that sit in heaven above,
Lever I had to dyen on a knife.
Than thee offende, deare, trewe wife.
[52] By the injudicious interpolation of this parenthesis Pope makes the knight express his belief to May that she is more likely to be kept faithful by her love of money than by her sense of honour and religion. It is undeniable that covetousness would be the predominant motive with a depraved woman, such as was poor old January's wife, but this is not his settled conviction, and he would have shrunk from openly admitting the idea.
[53] The knight's promise was to be performed the next morning. His doubt was whether May, on her side, would fulfil the pledge of perpetual fidelity. The ceremony is, therefore, reversed in the original, and January asks her to kiss him in token of her adhesion to the covenant.
[54] In the original the knight avows the jealousy, which in Pope's version he denies, and excuses his misgivings on the ground of May's beauty, and his own age. Having disclaimed all jealousy, there is no longer any meaning in representing him as pleading the inequality of his years to justify his conduct.
[55] May in the original is the same wicked, shameless woman that she is described by Pope, but Chaucer is content to put into her mouth the wish that she may die a foul death if she breaks her marriage vows. There is not a hint of the more frightful imprecation she invokes on herself in expressing the hope that she may descend alive into hell when she commits the crime she is meditating at the moment.
[56] "Infidelity in women is a subject of the severest crimination among the Turks. When any of these miserable girls are apprehended, for the first time they are put to hard labor, &c.; but for the second, they are recommitted, and many at a time tied up in sacks, and taken in a boat to the Seraglio-Point, where they are thrown into the tide." Dallaway's Constantinople.—Bowles.
[57] The squire kneeling to worship May as she passed by is an exaggerated trait supplied by Pope.
[58] At the conclusion of the hypocritical rejoinder of May, in which she speaks the language of indignant innocence, the narrative goes on thus in the original:
And with that word she saw where Damyan
Sat in the bush, and coughing, she began;
And with her fingers signes made she,
That Damyan should climb upon a tree,
That chargèd was with fruit, and up he went,
For verily he knew all her intent;
For in a letter she had told him all
Of this mattier, how he worke shall.
[59] These lines, which have no counterpart in Chaucer, owe their beauty to Dryden's Wife of Bath's Tale:
He saw a choir of ladies in a round,
That featly footing seemed to skim the ground:
Thus dancing hand in hand, so light they were,
He knew not where they trod, on earth or air.
[60] The author of the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. Chaucer says that he seldom speaks of women with reverence, which is correct. The statement of Pope that the son of Sirach asserted, like Solomon, that there was no such thing as a good woman, is in direct contradiction to various passages among his precepts.
[61] There is no specification of "these ladies" in Chaucer.
Now by my mother Ceres' soul, I swear
That I shall give her suffisaunt answere,
And alle women after for her sake;
That though they be in any guilt i-take,
With face bold they shall themselves excuse,
And bear them down that woulde them accuse.
For lack of answer none of them shall dyen.
All had ye seen a thing with both your eyen,
Yet shall we women visage it hardily,
And weep, and swear, and chide subtilely.
I wot well that this Jew, this Solomon,
Found of us women fooles many one;
But though he be founde no good woman,
Yet hath there founde many another man
Women full true, full good, and vertuous;
Witness on them that dwell in Christes house;
With martyrdom they proved their constaunce.
[64] Pluto and Proserpine each select that portion of the meaning which is convenient. Both senses are included in the words of Solomon, who at once asserts the general wickedness of mankind, and the comparative worthlessness of women.
[65] The queen has just been boasting that she will endow the sex with the art of ingenious lying to cover the violation of their most solemn vows, and now she tauntingly tells her husband that it is not in woman to break her word. This contradiction is imported into the story by Pope. The original is as follows:—
Dame, quoth this Pluto, be no longer wroth,
I give it up; but since I swore mine oath,
That I will grante him his sight again,
My word shall stand, I warne you certain;
I am a king it sit me not to lie.
And I, quoth she, am queen of faierie.
Her answer shall she have I undertake,
Let us no more wordes hereof make.
[66] The allusion is to the common longing of pregnant women for particular articles of diet. May cries out that she shall expire unless she has some of the "small green pears" to eat, and then exclaims anew,
I tell you well, a woman in my plight
May have to fruit so great an appetite,
That she may dyen, but she it have.
[67] The moral is Pope's own, and is in the dissolute spirit which had descended from the reign of Charles II. The comment on the story, in Chaucer, is put into the mouth of the host, who begs that he may be preserved from such a wife, and inveighs against the craft and misdoings of women.