3200. So Boccaccio—'O caeca rerum cupiditas! Hii, quibus rerum omnium, dante Deo, erat imperium,' &c. Cf. Gen. i. 29; ii. 16.
Sampson.
3205. The story of Sampson is also in Boccaccio, lib. i. c. 17 (not 19, as Tyrwhitt says). But Chaucer seems mostly to have followed
the account in Judges, xiii-xvi. The word annunciat, referring to the announcement of Samson's birth by the angel (Judges xiii. 3), may have been suggested by Boccaccio, whose account begins—'Praenunciante per angelum Deo, ex Manue Israhelita quodam et pulcherrima eius vxore Sanson progenitus est.' thangel in l. 3206=the angel.
3207. consecrat, consecrated. A good example of the use of the ending -at; cf. situate for situated.—M. Shakespeare has consecrate; Com. of. Err. ii. 2. 134.
3208. whyl he mighte see, as long as he preserved his eyesight.
3210. To speke of strengthe, with regard to strength; to speke of is a kind of preposition.—M. Cf. Milton's Samson Agonistes, 126-150.
3211. wyves. Samson told the secret of his riddle to his wife, Judges xiv. 17; and of his strength to Delilah, id. xvi. 17.
3215. al to-rente, completely rent in twain. The prefix to- has two powers in Old English. Sometimes it is the preposition to in composition, as in towards, or M. E. to-flight (G. zuflucht), a refuge. But more commonly it is a prefix signifying in twain, spelt zer- in German, and dis- in Mœso-Gothic and Latin. Thus to-rente = rent in twain; to-brast = burst in twain, &c. The intensive adverb al, utterly, was used not merely (as is commonly supposed) before verbs beginning with to-, but in other cases also. Thus, in William of Palerne, l. 872, we find—'He was al a-wondred,' where al precedes the intensive prefix a- = A. S. of. Again, in the same poem, l. 661, we have—'al bi-weped for wo,' where al now precedes the prefix bi-. In Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, x. 596, is the expression—
'For, hapnyt ony to slyde or fall,