One of Gower's French Balades contains the lines:—
'Deux tonealx ad [Cupide] dont il les gentz fait boire;
L'un est assetz plus douls que n'est pyment,
L'autre est amier plus que null arrement.'
180. The saying referred to is written in the margin of Dd., as Tyrwhitt tells us. It runs:—'Qui per alios non corrigitur, alii per ipsum corrigentur.' With regard to its being written in Ptolemy's Almagest, Tyrwhitt quaintly remarks:—'I suspect that the Wife of Bath's copy of Ptolemy was very different from any that I have been able to meet with.' The same remark applies to her second quotation in l. 326 below. I have no doubt that the Wife is simply copying, for convenience, these words in Le Roman de la Rose, 7070:—
'Car nous lisons de Tholomee
Une parole moult honeste
Au comencier de s'Almageste,' &c.
Jean de Meun then cites a passage of quite another kind, but the Wife of Bath did not stick at such a trifle. The Almagest is mentioned again in the same, l. 18772.