Her ventail up, her visage open laid.'
So also in Hamlet. With reference to the present passage, Mr. Jephson says that and eek his aventaille is a perfect example of bathos. I fail to see why; the weapon that pierced a ventail would pass into the
head, and inflict a death-wound. The passage is playful, but not silly.
1206. couche, cower. Hence the phrase—'to play couch-quail'; see Skelton, ed. Dyce, ii. 348.
1211. 'As light as a leaf on a linden-tree' was an old proverb. See Piers Pl. B. i. 154.
The Marchauntes Prologue.
1213. Weping and wayling; an expression caught from l. 1212, and linking this Prologue to the foregoing Tale. Yet in fourteen MSS. the Merchant's Tale is separated from the Clerk's; Trial Forewords, by F. J. Furnivall (Chaucer Soc.), p. 28.
1221-2. What, why. at al, in every respect; like Lat. omnino.
1227. This theme is enlarged upon in Lenvoy de Chaucer à Bukton, a late minor poem (vol. i. 398).
1230. Seint Thomas. Whenever this Apostle is mentioned, he is nearly always said to be of India, to distinguish him, it may be, from Saint Thomas of Canterbury. See D. 1980, and the note. Some account of the shrine of St. Thomas, of the manner of his death, and of miracles wrought by him, is given in Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 18. Colonel Yule tells us that the body of St. Thomas lay at Mailapúr, a suburb of Madras. The legend of St. Thomas's preaching in India is of very high antiquity. St. Jerome speaks of the Divine Word being everywhere present in His fulness 'cum Thomâ in India, cum Petro Romae,' &c.; Sci. Hieronomi Epist. lix., ad Marcellam. Gregory of Tours (A. D. 544-595) speaks of the place in India where the body of St. Thomas lay before it was transported to Edessa in the year 394. See the whole of Colonel Yule's long note upon the subject; and the account of Saint Thomas in Mrs. Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art.