9. 'Mariage est maus liens,' marriage is an evil tie; Rom. de la Rose, 8871. And again, with respect to marriage—'Quel forsenerie [witlessness] te maine A cest torment, a ceste paine?' R. Rose, 8783; with much more to the same effect. Cf. Cant. Tales, Marchauntes Prologue (throughout); and Barbour's Bruce, i. 267.
18. Cf. 1 Cor. vii. 9, 28. And see Wife of Bath's Prol. D 154-160.
23. 'That it would be more pleasant for you to be taken prisoner in Friesland.' This seems to point to a period when such a mishap was not uncommon. In fact, some Englishmen were present in an expedition against Friesland which took place in the autumn of 1396. See the whole account in Froissart, Chron. bk. iv. cc. 77, 78. He tells us that the Frieslanders would not ransom the prisoners taken by their enemies; consequently, they could not exchange prisoners, and at last
they put their prisoners to death. Thus the peculiar peril of being taken prisoner in Friesland is fully explained.
25. Proverbes, set of proverbs. Koch remarks—'Proverbes is rather curious, referring to a singular, but seems to be right, as proverbe would lose its last syllable, standing before a vowel.' Perhaps we should read or proverbe.
27. This answers to the modern proverb—'Let well alone.'
28. I. e. learn to know when you are well off. 'Half a loaf is better than no bread.' 'Better sit still than rise and fall' (Heywood). 'Better some of a pudding than none of pie' (Ray). In the Fairfax MS., the following rimed proverb is quoted at the end of the poem:—
'Better is to suffre, and fortune abyde,
Than[[292]] hastely to clymbe, and sodeynly to slyde.'
The same occurs (says Hazlitt) at the end of Caxton's edition of Lydgate's Stans Puer ad Mensam; but does not belong to that poem.