Geoffrey Chaucer

“ A planet is said to ascend directly, when in a direct sign; but tortuously, when in a tortuous sign. The tortuous signs are those which ascend most obliquely to the horizon, viz. the signs from Capricornus to Gemini inclusive. Chaucer tells us this himself; see his Treatise on the Astrolabe, part ii. sect. 28, in vol. iii. The most 'tortuous' of these are the two middle ones, Pisces and Aries. ”

“ Such alterations would have been useful even in Shakespeare's time, and would not have touched the character of the spelling. But the spelling of Chaucer's time refers to quite a different age, when a large number of inflections were still in use that have since been discarded; so that it involves changes in essential and vital points. As it happens, the spelling of the Ellesmere MS. is phonetic in a very high degree. Pronounce the words as they are spelt, but with the Italian vowel-sounds and the German final e, and you come very near the truth. ”

“ It is plain that the unmeaning words phislyas and phillyas, as in the MSS., must be corruptions of some difficult form. I think that form is certainly physices, with reference to the Physics of Aristotle, here conjoined with 'philosophy' and 'law' in order to include the chief forms of medieval learning. Aristotle was only known, in Chaucer's time, in Latin translations, and Physices Liber would be a possible title for such a translation. ”

“ Chaucer, says Tyrwhitt, seems to consider all pilgrims to foreign parts as palmers. The essential difference between the two classes of persons here mentioned, the palmer and the pilgrim, was, that the latter had 'some dwelling-place, a palmer had none; the pilgrim travelled to some certain place, the palmer to all, and not to any one in particular; the pilgrim might go at his own charge, the palmer must profess wilful poverty; the pilgrim might give over his profession, the palmer must be constant'; Blount's Glossographia (taken from Speght) . ”

“ The reason for the delay is astrological; for Leo was the mansion of the Sun, so that the sun's power would then be greatest; besides which, the sign Leo greatly increased a planet's influence; see A. 2462, and the note.
We may notice the various allusions in the above lines. In l. 1033, the sun's declination changes from day to day, and with it the solar power and heat; so that the vegetable kingdom fails or grows according as the sun's 'harbour,' or position in the ecliptic, causes his meridian altitude to be low or high (l. 1035) . ”

“ The thridde hour inequal. 'In the astrological system, the day, from sunrise to sunset, and the night, from sunset to sunrise, being each divided into twelve hours, it is plain that the hours of the day and night were never equal except just at the equinoxes. The hours attributed to the planets were of this unequal sort. See Kalendrier de Berg. loc. cit., and our author's treatise on the Astrolabe.'—Tyrwhitt. ”

“ Tyrwhitt says: 'it means, I suppose, smutty, dirty; but the whole passage is obscure.' Rather, it is perfectly clear when the allusion is perceived. The allusion is to the smutch upon her reputation, on account of her illegitimacy. This explains also the use of somdel; 'because she was, in some measure, of indifferent reputation, she was always on her dignity, and ready to take offence'; which is true to human nature. Thus the whole context is illuminated at once. ”

“ The 'royal beast' means the king of beasts, the lion, and (here in particular) the sign of the zodiac named Leo. This sign, on March 15, in Chaucer's time, and in the latitude of London, began to 'ascend,' or rise above the horizon, just about noon. An additional reason for calling Leo 'royal' is because the principal star in the constellation is called Regulus in Latin, Βασιλίσκος in Greek, and Melikhi in Arabic, all epithets signifying kingly or royal. ”

“ Tyrwhitt suggests that perhaps Boccaccio's book had fallen into Chaucer's hands under the name of Petrarch. We may, however, suppose that Chaucer had read the account in a borrowed book, and did not certainly know whether Petrarch or Boccaccio was the author. Instances of similar mistakes are common enough in Early English. Modern readers are apt to forget that, in the olden times, much information had to be carried in the memory, and there was seldom much facility for verification or for a second perusal of a story. ”

“ For the dejection of every planet occurs in the sign opposite to that in which is its exaltation; and Virgo and Pisces are opposite. The word casus is here used in the astrological sense of 'dejection.' It further follows that Pisces was the 'depression' of Mercury, which Chaucer expresses by the term desolat. The note also tells us that the planet Mercury implies 'science and philosophy'; whilst Venus implies 'lively joys and whatever is agreeable to the body.'
Venus is again alluded to as being in her exaltation in Pisces, in F. 273. Gower refers to Virgo as being the exaltation of Mercury ”

“ I see in thought, O my sweet flame, when (my) one tongue is cold, and (your) two fine eyes are closed, remaining after us, full of sparkles.
y-reke, raked or heaped together, collected. Not explained by Wright or Morris; Tyrwhitt explains it by 'smoking,' and takes it to be a present participle, which is impossible. It is the pt. t. of the scarce strong verb reken, pt. t. rak, pp. y-reken, y-reke, of which the primary notion was to 'gather together.' It occurs, just once, in Gothic, in the translation of Romans, xii. 20: 'haurja funins rikis ana haubith is,' i. e. ”

“ Internally, we observe the great peculiarity of the rhythm. Not only is the poem arranged in nine-line stanzas, but the whole is a tour de force. In the course of 33 lines, there are but 3 rime-endings; and we may particularly notice the repetition of the first two lines at the end of the poem, just as in the Complaint of Anelida, which likewise begins and ends with a line in which remembraunce is the last word. We have here a specimen of the kind of nine-line stanza (examples of which are very scarce) which Hoccleve endeavoured to imitate in his Balade to my Lord of York [11] ”

“ On April 18 the sun was in the 6th degree of Taurus at that date, as we again learn from Chaucer's treatise. Set this 6th degree of Taurus on the East horizon on a globe, and it is found to be 22 degrees to the North of the East point, or 112 degrees from the South. The half of this is at 56 degrees from the South; and the sun would seem to stand above this 56th degree, as may be seen even upon a globe, at about a quarter past nine; but Mr. Brae has made the calculation, and shews that it was at twenty minutes past nine. ”

“ Chaucer says—'These old women, that would fain seem wise, just as did her governess, answered her at once.' What he means is—'This governess, that would fain seem wise, as such old women often do, answered her,' &c. ”

“ In D. 1112, the phrase is 'not worth a hen.' Tyrwhitt says, 'I do not see much force in the epithet pulled'; but adds, in his Glossary—'I have been told since, that a hen whose feathers are pulled, or plucked off, will not lay any eggs.' Becon speaks of a 'polled hen,' i. e. pulled hen, as one unable to fly; Works, p. 533; Parker Soc. It is only one of the numerous old phrases for expressing that a thing is of small value. See l. 182. I may add that pulled, in the sense of 'plucked off the feathers,' occurs in the Manciple's Tale ”

“ As this passage has been so grossly misunderstood, I annex an outline of the sense intended. 'Beware of thy wife; she is like the snake in the grass; remember how many men have lost their lives through their wives. ”

“ Veneris' means 'one of the mansions of Venus; her two mansions being Taurus and Libra.' The former is expressly referred to in l. 613, and is therefore intended.
In sect. 28 of the same treatise, we find:—'Cum fuerit interrogatio pro muliere, simpliciter accipe significationem à Venere.' Hence Venus is the planet that ruled over women.
'The woman that is born in this time [i. e. under Taurus] shall be effectuall ... she shall have many husbands and many children; she shall be in her best estate at xvi years, and she shall have a sign in the middest of her body.'—Shepherdes Kalender, ed. ”

“ The eleventh hour "inequal" of Sunday night, or the second hour before sunrise of Monday, is dedicated to Venus, as explained by Tyrwhitt (l. 2217) ; and therefore Palamon then goes to the temple of Venus. The next hour is dedicated to Mercury. The third hour, the first after sunrise on Monday, is dedicated to Luna or Diana, and during this Emily goes to Diana's temple. The fourth after sunrise is dedicated to Mars, and therefore Arcite then goes to the temple of Mars. But the rest of the day is spent merely in jousting and preparations ”

“ Such an explanation turns the whole into nonsense, as it could then only mean: 'the worms, &c. never devoured themselves (!) at all upon my apparel.' Tyrwhitt evidently took it to mean 'never fed themselves upon (i. e. with) my apparel'; but it is impossible that frete hem could ever be so interpreted. Frete can only mean 'devoured,' and it requires an accusative case; this accusative is hem, which can only refer to the gytes or 'gowns.' And this leaves no other sense for peril except precisely 'peril,' which is of course right. ”

“ The word alle, being plural, is dissyllabic. Thing is often a plural form, being an A. S. neuter noun. The words over, ever, never are, in Chaucer, generally monosyllables, or nearly so; just as o'er, e'er, ne'er are treated as monosyllables by our poets in general. Hence the scansion is—'Ov'r al | lë thing |,' &c.
289. The word at is inserted from the Cambridge MS.; all the other six MSS. omit it, which makes the passage one of extreme difficulty. Tyrwhitt reads 'Or Ylion brent, or Thebes the citee.' Of course he means brende, past tense, not brent, the past participle ”

“ Tsarev is now a place of no importance, but the ancient Sarai was so well known, that the Caspian Sea was sometimes named from it; thus it is called 'the sea of Sarain' in Marco Polo, ed. Yule, ii. 424; 'the sea of Sarra' in the Catalan map of 1375; and Mare Seruanicum, or the Sea of Shirwan, by Vincent of Beauvais. Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speight's Chaucer, speaks to the same effect, and says of 'Sara' that it is 'a place yet well knowen, and bordering vppon the lake Mare Caspium.' Sarai was the place where Batu Khan, the grandson of Gengis Khan, held his court. ”

“ I entirely differ from M. Michel's extraordinary conclusion about the boat—'Nous avons quelques raisons de croire que ce bateau n'étoit pas d'une course aussi rapide: en effet, dans l'Edda il est dit qu'Odin avoit un valet et une servante nommés Ganglate et Ganglœt, mots qu'on dit signifier marchant lentement.' Of course Ganglati and Ganglöt (as they should be written) mean 'slow-goer,' but this has nothing to do with Guingelot, which is merely a French spelling of some such form as Wingelok. ”

“ For wene, the correct reading, Tyrwhitt substitutes winne, against all authority, because he could make no sense of wene. It is odd that he should have missed the sense so completely. Wene is to imagine, think, also to expect; and the line means 'he must not expect good who does evil.' The very word is preserved by Ray, in his Proverbs, 3rd ed., 1737, p. 288:—'He that evil does, never good weines.' Hazlitt quotes a proverb to a like effect: 'He that does what he should not, shall feel what he would not.' Cf. 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap' ”

“ In order to make allowance for the difference in the value of money in that age, we must at least multiply by ten; or we may say in round numbers, that the Pardoner made at least £700 a year. We may contrast this with Chaucer's own pension of 20 marks, granted him in 1367, and afterwards increased till, in the very last year of his life, he received in all, according to Sir Harris Nicolas, as much as £61 13s. 4d. Even then his income did not quite attain to the 100 marks which the Pardoner gained so easily. ”

“ Chaucer is not quite exact. The Latin says that three things reside in a man's wisdom, the said wisdom being but one. 'Sicut in una hominis sapientia tria sunt, ingenium, memoria et intellectus.' The notion resembles that in a favourite passage from Isidore quoted in Piers Plowman, B. xv. ”

“ Maior lex amor est sibi.'
Chaucer's translation (vol. ii. p. 92, l. 37) has—'But what is he that may yive a lawe to loveres? Love is a gretter lawe ... than any lawe that men may yeven.' And see Troil. ”

“ Weber, ii. 222.
2054. Jewes werk, Jew's work. Tyrwhitt imagined that Jew here means a magician, but there is not the least foundation for the idea. Mr. Jephson is equally at fault in connecting Jew with jewel, since the latter word is etymologically connected with joy. The phrase still remains unexplained. I suspect it means no more than wrought with rich or expensive work, such as Jews could best find the money for. It is notorious that they were the chief capitalists, and they must often have had to find money for paying armourers. ”

“ Ye, yea. The difference in Old English between ye and yis (yes) is commonly well marked. Ye is the weaker form, and merely assents to what the last speaker says; but yis is an affirmative of great force, often followed by an oath, or else it answers a question containing a negative particle, as in the House of Fame, 864. Cf. B. 4006 below.
The Tale of Sir Thopas.
In the black-letter editions, this Tale is called 'The ryme of Sir Thopas,' a title copied by Tyrwhitt, but not found in the seven best MSS. This word is now almost universally misspelt rhyme, owing to confusion with the Greek rhythm ”

“ Expression du petit peuple, qui raporte pieusement tout à Dieu. Rien n'est plus commun dans la bouche des bonnes vieilles, que ces espèces d'Hébraïsmes: Il m'en conte un bel écu de Dieu; Il ne me reste que ce pauvre enfant de Dieu. Donnez-moi une bénite aumône de Dieu. See goddes halfpeny in l. 1749. (The explanation by Speght, and in Cowel's Interpreter, s. v. kichell, seems to be, as Tyrwhitt says, an invention.)
kechil, a little cake. The form kechell occurs in the Ormulum, l. 8662; answering to the early A. S. coecil, occurring as a gloss to tortum in the Epinal Glossary, 993 ”

“ Now, in passing from Sittingbourne to Canterbury, we find that the distance is divided into three very nearly equal parts by the situations of Ospringe and Boughton, giving five miles for each portion. The distance from Ospringe to Canterbury, only ten miles, left very little to be done on the last day; but pilgrims liked arriving at Canterbury in good time. Chaucer says, as plainly as possible, that the pilgrims really did rest all night on the road, at a place which can only be Ospringe ”

“ This is exactly in accordance with the astrology of the period. Each sign, such as Aries, was said to contain 30 degrees, or 3 faces; a face being 10 degrees. The first face of Aries (degrees 1-10) was called the face of Mars, the second (11-20) the face of the Sun, the third (21-30) that of Venus. Hence the sun, being in the fourth degree, was in Mars's face. Again, every planet had its (so-called) mansion or house; whence Aries was called the mansion of Mars, Taurus that of Venus, Gemini that of Mercury, &c. ”