76. Wanten, are lacking, are missing, are not found in, fall short. 'If you, Pity, are missing from Bounty and Beauty.' There are several similar examples of this use of want in Shakespeare; e.g. 'there wants no junkets at the feast'; Tam. Shrew, iii. 2. 250.
78. This Bille, or Petition, may be divided into three sets of 'terns,' or groups of three stanzas. I mark this by inserting a paragraph-mark (¶ ) at the beginning of each tern. They are marked off by the rimes; the first tern ends with seyne, l. 77; the next with the riming word peyne, l. 98; and again with peyne, l. 119.
83. Perilous is here accented on the i.
87. Ten Brink omits wel, with most of the MSS.; but the e in wite seems to be suppressed, as in Book of the Duch. 112. It will hardly bear a strong accent. Mr. Sweet retains wel, as I do.
91. Pronounce the third word as despeir'd. 'Compare 1 Kings x. 24: And all the earth sought to Solomon'; Ten Brink.
92. Herenus has not hitherto been explained. It occurs in four MSS., Tn. F. B. Ff.; a fifth (T.) has 'heremus'; the Longleat MS. has 'heremus' or 'herenius'; Sh. substitutes 'vertuouse,' and MS. Harl. 7578 has 'Vertoues'; but it is highly improbable that vertuouse is original, for no one would ever have altered it so unintelligibly. Ten Brink and Mr. Sweet adopt this reading vertuousë, which they make four syllables, as being a vocative case; and of course this is an easy way of evading the difficulty. Dr. Furnivall once suggested hevenus, which I presume is meant for 'heaven's'; but this word could not possibly be accented as hevénus. The strange forms which proper names assume in Chaucer are notorious; and the fact is, that Herenus is a mere error for Herines or Herynes. Herynes (accented on y),
occurs in St. 4 of Bk. iv of Troilus and Criscide, and is used as the plural of Erinnys, being applied to the three Furies:—'O ye Herynes, nightes doughtren thre.' Pity may be said to be the queen of the Furies, in the sense that pity (or mercy) can alone control the vindictiveness of vengeance. Shakespeare tells us that mercy 'is mightiest in the mightiest,' and is 'above this sceptred sway'; Merch. Ven. iv. 1. 188.
Chaucer probably found this name precisely where he found his personification of Pity, viz. in Statius, who has the sing. Erinnys (Theb. xi. 383), and the pl. Erinnyas (345). Cf. Æneid, ii. 337, 573.
In a poem called The Remedy of Love, in Chaucer's Works, ed. 1561, fol. 322, back, the twelfth stanza begins with—'Come hither, thou Hermes, and ye furies all,' &c., where it is plain that 'thou Hermes' is a substitution for 'Herines.'
95. The sense is—'the longer I love and dread you, the more I do so.' If we read ever instead of ay, then the e in the must be suppressed. 'In ever lenger the moore, never the moore, never the lesse, Chaucer not unfrequently drops the e in the, pronouncing lengerth, neverth'; cf. Clerkes Tale, E 687; Man of Lawes Tale, B 982; Ten Brink.