The Works of Alexander Pope Part 26

And certainly, as sooth as G.o.d is king, To take a wife it is a glorious thing; And namely when a man is old and h.o.a.r, Then is a wife the fruit of his tresor.

This is another instance that the merchant's remarks are sarcastic; for no rational person would gravely a.s.sert that to wed was especially wise in old age, when a man was married for his money alone. The whole purport of the tale was to prove that such an alliance ended in discomfiture. The vein of satire is continued through the subsequent reflections. The merchant represents January as imagining wives to be models of obedience and fidelity, who will cleave to a husband through weal and woe, and will never be weary of loving and serving him, though he is bed-ridden all his days. The example of May, to which the description is a preface, shows that the praises are meant to be interpreted in an adverse sense.]

[Footnote 5: In the original the merchant is quoting an invective against wives from the Liber Aureolus of Theophrastus, who had long been dead. Hence the narrator calls down a curse upon his _bones_ in the name of the advocates of matrimony:

This entent and an hundred sithe worse Writeth this man; there G.o.d his bones curse.

"Sithe" signifies "times." Pope has generalised the imprecation, and extended it to all bards, living or deceased, whereby the fitness of invoking a curse upon their bones is destroyed.]

[Footnote 6: Chaucer would have thought it an anomaly for a Christian knight to invoke the heathen deities. The original is,

A wife! ah! Sainte Mary, _benedicite_, How might a man have any adversite That hath a wife? certes I cannot say.

The requirements of the metre in this and other pa.s.sages of Chaucer, show that _benedicite_ was sometimes contracted, in the p.r.o.nunciation, to _ben'cite_.]

[Footnote 7: The merchant, in his account of the motives which actuated the knight, dilates more largely in the original, and in more enthusiastic language, upon the felicity of marriage. A wife helps her husband in his work, is the careful guardian of his property, and is perfect in her submission.

She saith nought ones nay when he saith ye; Do this, saith he; all ready, sir, saith she.

Consequently the married man

Upon his bare knees ought all his life Thanken his G.o.d that him hath sent a wife;

and if he is not yet possessed of the treasure, he ought to pray without ceasing that it may be vouchsafed him, for then he is established in safety, and

May not be deceived as I guess.

From the praise of wives, the merchant, speaking the views of the knight, proceeds to extol the trustworthy advice of women in general, and his first instance is Rebecca, who instructed Jacob how to supplant Esau. The reasoning is purposely rendered inconsistent, and the a.s.sertion that a married man was secured against deception is immediately followed by an example in which the husband was deluded by the stratagem of the wife.]

[Footnote 8:

Lo Judith, as the story telle can, By wise counsel she G.o.ddes people kept And slew him Holofernes while he slept.

Lo Abigail by good counsel how she Saved her husband Nabal, when that he Should have been slain.

The respite that Abigail obtained for Nabal was very short. He died by a judgment from heaven in about ten days from the time that she went forth to meet David, and with presents and persuasions diverted him from his purpose, as he was advancing to take vengeance on her husband. The striking narrative in the apocryphal book of Judith is undoubtedly fabulous. The pretended Judith was a widow. The deceptions by which she is said to have got the captain of the a.s.syrian army into her power are abhorrent to our purer morality, but they would have been considered legitimate stratagems of war in the East.]

[Footnote 9: Dryden, Juvenal, vi. 640.

The rest are summoned on a point so nice.

[Footnote 10: In Chaucer the knight does not ask his friends to choose for him because many heads are wiser than one, but because with several people on the look out there is more likelihood that a suitable wife will be found quickly than if he was una.s.sisted in the search.]

[Footnote 11: In the original,

But one thing warn I you, my friendes dear, I will none old wife have in no manere.

Marriages seem to have taken place in those days at a very early age.

The wife of Bath married at twelve, and the knight's notion of an "old wife" it appears, five lines further on, was a woman of twenty. He insists that he will marry n.o.body that is above sixteen:

She shall not pa.s.se sixteene year certain.

Old fish, and young flesh, that would I have full fain.

Bet is, quoth he, a pike than a pikerel, And bet than old beef is the tender veal.

"Bet" is for "better."]

[Footnote 12: Chaucer's knight a.s.signs it as a motive to wedlock that he may have

Children to thonour of G.o.d above, And not only for paramour, and for love.

But a little before he had given a more worldly reason for his desire to have a son and heir, and said that he would rather be eaten by dogs than that his inheritance should go to a stranger.]

[Footnote 13: The flippancy of this couplet, which departs from the original, is at variance with the tone of the knight, whose speech commenced with the words,

Friendes I am h.o.a.r and old, And almost, G.o.d wot, at my pittes brink Upon my soule somewhat must I think.

I have my body folily dispended Blessed be G.o.d that it shall be amended.

In the pa.s.sage, for which Pope's lines are the subst.i.tute, the knight is enumerating the causes why men should marry, and one reason, he says, is that each person ought to

Helpen other In meschief, as a sister shall the brother, And live in chast.i.ty full holily.

But, sires, by your leave that am not I, For, G.o.d be thanked, I dare make avaunt, I feel my limbes stark and suffisaunt.

The meaning is, that when a husband is "in meschief," or, in other words, in a state of helpless decrepitude, his wife ought to live in holy chast.i.ty, and nurse him as a sister would a brother. But, adds the knight, thank G.o.d I am not decrepit myself, and feel my limbs to be still stout; which is a very different sentiment from sneering at the saintly life he had just commended.]

[Footnote 14: This verse, which has no counterpart in the original, is altered from a line in Dryden's Flower and Leaf:

Ev'n when the vital sap retreats below, Ev'n when the h.o.a.ry head is hid in snow.]

[Footnote 15: The infatuation of the knight is more strongly marked in the original. He summons his friends to hear his fixed resolution, and to beg their a.s.sistance. He wants no advice, and instead of inviting them to speak their minds with freedom, he concludes his address with the words

And synnes ye have heard all mine intent, I pray you to my wille ye a.s.sent.

They do, indeed, offer him counsel where he solicited help, which is a true stroke of nature on both sides.]

[Footnote 16: Pope gives the real character of Placebo, but sets probability at defiance in making him parade with boastful effrontery his own systematic fawning and flattery. Chaucer has not committed the extravagance. With him Placebo justifies his a.s.sentation on the ground that lords are better informed than their inferiors.

A full great fool is any counsellor That serveth any lord of high honour, That dare presume, or once thinken it, That his counsel should pa.s.s his lordes wit.

Nay lordes be no fooles by my fay.

Ye have yourself y-spoken here to-day So high sentence, so holy, and so well, That I consent, and confirm every dole Your wordes all, and your opinion.]

[Footnote 17: The last four lines are interpolated by Pope, and are again inconsistant with the tenor of Chaucer's narrative. The knight had notoriously been a dissolute man, and the coa.r.s.e reflection would be out of place when the avowed object of his projected marriage was that he might live more soberly than he had hitherto done.]

[Footnote 18: Seneca.]

[Footnote 19: The qualities specified by Chaucer are whether she is wise, sober or given to drink, proud or in any other respect unamiable, a scold or wasteful, rich or poor. "And all this," says Justinus, "asketh leisure to enquire," which he urges in reply to the announcement of January that he was determined not to wait.]

[Footnote 20: In Chaucer Justinus does not p.r.o.nounce decisively against marriage, but recommends January to consider well before he enters upon it, and especially before he marries "a young wife and a fair."]

[Footnote 21: This couplet is an addition by Pope. The manly Justinus says nothing in the original about "offending his n.o.ble lord."]