Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

3274. two pilers, better than the reading the pilers of MS. E.; because two are expressly mentioned; Judg. xvi. 29.

3282. So Boccaccio—'Sic aduersa credulitas, sic amantis pietas, sic mulieris egit inclyta fides. Vt quem non poterant homines, non uincula, non ferrum uincere, a mulieribus latrunculis uinceretur.' Lydgate has the expressions—

'Beware by Sampson your counseyll well to kepe,

Though [misprinted That] Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe';

and again:—

'Suffre no nightworm within your counseyll crepe,

Though Dalida compleyne, crye, and wepe.'

Hercules.

3285. There is little about Hercules in Boccaccio; but Chaucer's favourite author, Ovid, has his story in the Metamorphoses, book ix, and Heroides, epist. 9. Tyrwhitt, however, has shewn that Chaucer more immediately copies a passage in Boethius, de Cons. Phil. lib. iv. met. 7, which is as follows:—