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: