2243. Piers Alfonce, Petrus Alfonsi. 'Peter Alfonsus, or Alfonsi, was a converted Spanish Jew, who flourished in the twelfth century, and is well known for his Disciplina Clericalis, a collection of stories and moralisations in Latin prose, which was translated afterwards into French verse, under the title of the Chastoiement d'un pere a son fils. It was a book much in vogue among the preachers from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.'—Wright. Tyrwhitt has a long note here; he says that a copy of this work is in MS. Bibl. Reg. 10 B. xii in the British Museum, and that there is also a copy of another work by the same author, entitled Dialogus contra Judaeos, in MS. Harl. 3861. He also remarks that the manner and style of the Disciplina Clericalis 'show many marks of an Eastern original; and one of his stories Of a trick put upon a thief is entirely taken from the Calilah a Damnah, a celebrated collection of Oriental apologues.' All the best fables of Alfonsus
were afterwards incorporated (says Tyrwhitt) into the Gesta Romanorum. He was born at Huesca, in Arragon, in 1062, and converted to Christianity in 1106.
The words here referred to are the following: 'Ne properes ulli reddere mutuum boni uel mali, quia diutius expectabit te amicus, et diutius timebit te inimicus'; Disc. Cler. xxv. 15; ed. F. W. V. Schmidt, Berlin, 1827, 4to., p. 71.
2244. The proverbe, &c.; not in either the Latin or the French texts. Cf. the proverb of Hending—'ofte rap reweth,' often haste rues it. Heywood has—'The more haste, the worse speed'; on which Ray notes—'Come s'ha fretta non si fa mai niente che stia bene'; Ital. Qui trop se hâte en cheminant, en beau chemin se fourvoye souvent; Fr. Qui nimis properè minus prosperè; et nimium properans serius absoluit.
'Tarry a little, that we may make an end the sooner, was a saying of Sir Amias Paulet. Presto e bene non si conviene; Ital.' See 2325 below, and observe that Chaucer has the same form of words in Troil. i. 956.
2247. From Ecclesiastes, vii. 28. Cf. A. 3154.
2249. From Ecclus. xxv. 30 (Vulgate): 'Mulier, si primatum habeat, contraria est uiro suo.' Not in the A. V.; cf. v. 22 of that version.
2250. From Ecclus. xxxiii. 20-22 (Vulgate); 19-21 (A. V.).
2251. After noght be, ed. 1550 adds—'if I shuld be counsayled by the'; but this is redundant. See next note.
2252-3. These clauses are omitted in the MSS. and black-letter editions, but are absolutely necessary to the sense. The French text has—'car il est escript: la jenglerie des femmes ne puet riens celer fors ce qu'elle ne scet. Apres, le philosophe dit: en mauvais conseil les femmes vainquent les hommes. Pour ces raisons, je ne doy point user de ton conseil.' It is easy to turn this into Chaucerian English, by referring to ll. 2274, 2280 below, where the missing passage is quoted with but slight alteration.