487. In Hazlitt's Proverbs is given—'To fry in his own grease,' from Heywood; it is explained to mean 'to be very passionate,' but means rather 'to torment oneself.' He also quotes, from Heywood:—
'She fryeth in hir owne grease, but as for my parte,
If she be angry, beshrew her angry harte.'
See also Rich. Coer de Lion, 4409; Lydgate's Temple of Glas, ed. Schick, pp. 14, 94.
492. The story is given by Jerome, in the treatise so often quoted above. 'Legimus quendam apud Romanos nobilem, cum eum amici arguerent quare uxorem formosam et castam et diuitem repudiasset, protendisse pedem, et dixisse eis: Et hic soccus quem cernitis, uidetur uobis nouus et elegans, sed nemo scit praeter me ubi me premat.'—Hieron. c. Iouinianum, lib. i.: Epist. ii. 52 (Basil. 1524). John of Salisbury has the same story, almost in the same words, but gives the name of the noble Roman, viz. P. Cn. Graecinus. See his Policraticus, lib. v. c. 10. Chaucer alludes to it again below, in E. 1553.
495. She went thrice to Jerusalem; see A. 463.
496. 'Across the arch which usually divides the chancel from the nave in English churches was stretched a beam, on which was placed a rood, i. e. a figure of our Lord on the cross.'—Bell.
498. In the margin of E. is the note:—'Appelles fecit mirabile opus
in tumulo Darij: vnde in Alexandro, libro sexto.' There is a similar sidenote at C. 16; see note to that line. This tomb of Darius is due to fiction. The description of it occurs (as said) in the sixth book of the Alexandreid, a vast poem in Latin, by one Philippe Gualtier de Chatillon, a native of Lille and a canon of Tournay, who flourished about A. D. 1200. According to this poet, the tomb was the work of a Jewish artist named Apelles. See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, ii. 353-5, and G. Douglas, ed. Small, i. 134.
503. There is a parallel passage in Le Rom. de la Rose, 14678-99.