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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In a series of recent articles Professor Frederick Tupper has put forward, with great skill and learning, a view regarding the plan of the Canterbury Tales which demands, on account of its originality and its importance, the most respectful and open-minded consideration. As one who was fortunate enough to be present at the inception of the theory, and who welcomed enthusiastically the promise of fresh light which it seemed to hold, I am free, I think, from antecedent prejudice. But as the theory has been developed in article after article I have felt myself compelled to dissent, with steadily strengthening conviction, from Professor Tupper's contention, and it is the purpose of this article to make clear the grounds on which it seems to me that that contention, in spite of its uncommon plausibility, must be rejected. All students of Chaucer are under a debt to Mr. Tupper, whether they agree with him or not. A fresh and original conception, maintained with an enthusiasm that vivifies dead facts, is of all too rare occurrence, and its “Forth, beste, out of thy stal” is wholesome stimulus. But Mr. Tupper would be the last to wish his vigorous challenge to gird up our loins and give a reason for the faith that is in us, to go unanswered. He has already offered hospitality to various objections in his articles, but he and his critics have not met, apparently, on common ground. In my own case I wish to accept, without question, his own choice of field and weapons.
The Beiblatt zur Anglia for October-November, 1914, which contains (pp. 327–32) Koch's review of Tupper's article in the Publications, reached me (on account of delays presumably due to the war) on March 2nd, a week after the last sentence of this paper had been written. Professor Koch's conclusions and my own agree in general, and often in detail. I have, however, left this examination precisely as it stood, inasmuch as its angle of approach is somewhat different from Koch's, and its scope considerably wider.
page 237 note 2 “Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins,” Publications of the Modem Language Association of America, xxix (March, 1914), pp. 93–128 (hereafter referred to as Publications); “Wilful and Impatient Poverty,” Nation, vol. 99, No. 2558 (July 9, 1914), p. 41 (referred to as Nation); “The Pardoner's Tavern,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, xiii (Oct., 1914), pp. 553–65 (referred to as Journal); “ Chaucer's Bed's Head,” Modem Language Notes, xxx (Jan. 1915), pp. 5–12 (referred to as Notes); compare also “Saint Venus and the Canterbury Pilgrims,” Nation, vol. 97, No. 2520 (Oct. 16, 1913), pp. 354–56.
page 238 note 3 See Publications, pp. 124 ff.; Journal, p. 565.
page 238 note 4 Journal, p. 565; of. pp. 553–54. One could wish that Mr. Tupper had left the exemplification of one of his Sins entirely to the Manciple. “Chydinge and reproche … [is] if he repreve him uncharitably of sinne, as ‘thou [Peter Bell of scholarship],’ ‘thou [attenuating scholiast],’ and so forth” (Parson's Tale, § 42). Still, like Phoebe, one had rather hear Tupper chide than less racy writers woo.
page 239 note 5 Journal, p. 554.
page 239 note 6 See Journal of English and Germanic Philology, viii, pp. 513–69.
page 239 note 7 I am compelled to emphasize this, for Tupper's skill as an advocate is so uncommon,: his style so racy and picturesque, and his enthusiasm for his doctrine so contagious, that (if he is read apart from his authorities) one feels that Chaucer should have done this, even if he didn't. It is a necessary, even though an ungrateful task, to view Mr. Tupper's “many-hued theme” in dryer light.
page 239 note 8 Journal, p. 565.
page 240 note 1 Journal, p. 553; cf. Publications, p. 97.
page 240 note 2 Publications, p. 96.
page 240 note 3 Ibid.
page 240 note 4 Publications, p. 117; cf. the whole paragraph.
page 240 note 5 Publications, p. 125, text, and note 56.
page 240 note 6 Publications, pp. 100, 111, 128.
page 240 note 7 Ibid., pp. 100 ff.; cf. also p. 107.
page 240 note 8 Ibid., p. 107.
page 241 note 9 Ibid., p. 114.
page 242 note 10 From the various forms in which the categories of the Sins were embodied, “every mediæval reader gleaned as intimate a knowledge of the Sins as of his Paternoster and his Creed, and hence was able to respond to every reference to these, explicit or implicit?” (Publications, p. 93). The italics are mine. Unless it is otherwise stated, that will uniformly be the case.
page 242 note 11 Publications, pp. 93–96.
page 242 note 12 Publications, p. 93.
page 242 note 13 Ibid., pp. 94–96.
page 243 note 14 Ibid., p. 95.
page 243 note 15 Among them, the accounts in Piers Plowman, the Pèlerinage, Handlyng Synne, the Cursor Mundi, Frère Lorens, Peraldus, etc. These omissions, it may be remarked, are all in Mr. Tupper's favor. Every additional classification thus analyzed strengthens the case against the assumed rigidity of the categories—as any reader so inclined may easily demonstrate for himself.
page 243 note 16 Even so, I am omitting in almost every instance numerous “privee speces,” some of which are no less ubiquitous than the major branches. I am also omitting, at this point, all but general references. My lists can easily be verified, for they follow in each case the order of treatment. The full references would double the space required.
page 244 note 17 The subheads of each main branch are given in brackets after their respective branches. Since there are no rubrics in the Mirour for any but the major subdivisions, I have included in parenthesis, in this ease, the line-numbers for the “twigs.”
page 246 note 18 I have given no references in the case of the Confessio. They may be easily found in Macaulay's analysis, Works of John Gower, II, pp. xxxiii-lxxxix.
page 246 note 19 Ed. Morris (E. E.T. S.), pp. 16 ff. The numerals in parenthesis are the page-numbers.
page 248 note 20 Ed. Brandeis (E.E.T.S.), pp. 68 ff.
page 249 note 21 The interweavings of the antitypes of the Sins yield little in interest to the overlappings of the Sins themselves, and since Mr. Tupper deals also in antitypes, their inclusion would he highly pertinent. But space is not available. In the Parson's Tale the remedia follow their respective Sins. See especially Eilers, pp. 567 ff. In the Mirour de l'Omme each branch of each Sin has its corresponding antitype. See the long series beginning with 1. 10177. The chief antitypes for the Confessio Amantis are given above. For the Ayenbite see ed. Morris, pp. 130 ff. (summarized in the Introduction, pp. xciv ff.). For Jacob's Well, see ed. Brandeis, pp. 238 ff. For one or two concrete instances, see below, pp. 300, n. 74; 327 ff.; 347, n. 21.
page 250 note 22 Publications, p. 96.
page 250 note 23 Publications, p. 95.
page 250 note 24 Publications, pp. 95–96.
page 251 note 25 I am not exaggerating Mr. Tupper's position. See Publications, p. 93, 11.8 ff.; p. 96, 11. 5 ff.; Journal, p. 555, ¶ 2, 11. 5 ff., etc.
page 251 note 26 Including seven out of the ten on which Mr. Tupper bases his argument—Inobedience, Chiding, “Grucching” against Poverty, Detraction, Hazardry, Blasphemy, Cursing.
page 251 note 27 At the risk of the charge of pedantry, I shall give in this article, so far as possible, the reference for every statement of fact that I make. I am challenging assertions, and I wish my own to be susceptible of immediate verification.
page 251 note 28 Cursor Mundi, I. 27604; Pèlerinage, 1. 14070; Raymund of Pennaforte (Petersen, Sources of the Parson's Tale, p. 27).
page 251 note 29 I, 563 (§ 35), 640 (§ 45); Jacob's Well, p. 99.
page 251 note 30 I, 510; Cursor Mundi, 1. 28174.
page 251 note 31 Ayenbite, p. 43; Jacob's Well, p. 132.
page 251 note 32 Ayenbite, pp. 66–67.
page 251 note 33 I, 635 (§ 43); Jacob's Well, p. 99.
page 251 note 34 I, 510.
page 251 note 35 Ayenbite, p. 22; Jacob's Well, p. 70; Handlyng Synne, p. 109; Piers Plowman, C. vii, 22 ff., b. xiii, 277.
page 251 note 36 Jacob's Well, p. 105.
page 252 note 37 Ayenbite, p. 58.
page 252 note 38 I, 607 (§ 39).
page 252 note 39 Mirour, 11. 6495 ff.; Ayenbite, p. 45; Pèlerinage, 11. 18175 ff.; Cursor Mundi, 1. 27833.
page 252 note 40 Piers Plowman, B. xiii, 288; Handlyng Synne, p. 125.
page 252 note 41 Cursor Mundi, 1. 27924.
page 252 note 42 Jacob's Well, p. 113.
page 252 note 43 Jacob's Well, p. 145.
page 252 note 44 Ayenbite, pp. 62–63; Jacob's Well, p. 151.
page 252 note 45 I, 390; etc.
page 252 note 46 I, 505.
page 252 note 47 Jacob's Well, p. 145.
page 252 note 48 Pèlerinage, 11. 15680 ff.; Jacob's Well, p. 100.
page 252 note 49 I, 405; Ayenbite, p. 20; Cursor Mundi, 11. 27620–22.
page 252 note 50 I, 648.
page 252 note 51 Piers Plowman, B. ii, 94; Jacob's Well, pp. 145, 148.
page 252 note 52 Mirour, 1. 6286.
page 252 note 53 I, 650.
page 252 note 54 Jacob's Well, p. 134.
page 252 note 55 Piers Plowman, B. ii, 94.
page 252 note 56 Jacob's Well, p. 113.
page 252 note 57 Piers Plowman, B. xiii, 353.
page 252 note 58 I, 610–15 (§ 40).
page 252 note 59 Mirour, 11. 1369 ff.; Pèlerinage, 11. 14644 ff.; Ayenbite, p. 23; Handlyng Synne, p. 121.
page 252 note 60 Ayenbite, pp. 60–61; Jacob's Well, p. 149.
page 252 note 61 I, 602–605 (§§ 37–38).
page 252 note 62 Jacob's Well, pp. 131–32.
page 252 note 63 Cursor Mundi, 1. 28311.
page 252 note 64 Ayenbite, p. 21; Jacob's Well, p. 70.
page 252 note 65 Mirour, 11. 8401 ff.; Ayenbite, p. 55.
page 252 note 66 Confessio, v, 7644–45.
page 252 note 67 I, 692 (§ 56); Pèlerinage, 11. 13932 ff.; Handlyng Synne, p. 170; etc.
page 252 note 68 Ayenbite, p. 29; Jacob's Well, p. 85.
page 252 note 69 Raymund of Pennaforte (Petersen, p. 27); Mirror of St. Edmund, p. 24.
page 253 note 70 I, 582.
page 253 note 71 Jacob's Well, p. 70.
page 253 note 72 Gaytryge's Sermon (E.E.T.S., 26), p. 13.
page 253 note 73 Ayenbite, p. 22.
page 253 note 74 Jacob's Well, p. 120.
page 253 note 75 Mirour, 11. 3398 ff.
page 253 note 76 I, § 75; etc.
page 253 note 77 Jacob's Well, p. 130; Ayenbite, p. 37; cf. Confessio, v, 11. 6135 ff.
page 253 note 78 I, 390; Mirour, 11. 1057 ff.; Pèlerinage, 11. 14588; Handlyng Synne, pp. 110 ff.
page 253 note 79 Ayenbite, p. 53; Jacob's Well, p. 143.
page 253 note 80 Pèlerinage, 11. 13921 ff.
page 253 note 81 Ayenbite, p. 43; Jacob's Well, p. 122; Cursor Mundi, 1. 27824.
page 253 note 82 Pèlerinage, 11.14982–15232; Handlyng Synne, pp. 142–43.
page 253 note 83 Frère Lorens (Eilers, in “Essays on Chaucer”—Chaucer Soc.—Pt. v, p. 511); Handlyng Synne, p. 125.
page 253 note 84 Handlyng Synne, p. 126.
page 253 note 85 Mirour, 1. 4841.
page 253 note 86 Cursor Mundi, 1. 28517.
page 253 note 87 Mirour, 1. 4292; Jacob's Well, p. 93; Gaytryge, p. 12.
page 253 note 88 Jacob's Well, p. 83; Mirour, 11. 2906 ff.
page 253 note 89 Jacob's Well, p. 113.
page 253 note 90 Ayenbite, p. 66.
page 253 note 91 I, 510.
page 253 note 92 Frère Lorens (Eilers, p. 543).
page 253 note 93 Mirour, 1. 4502.
page 253 note 94 I, § 41.
page 253 note 95 Ayenbite, p. 27.
page 253 note 96 Jacob's Well, p. 145.
page 253 note 97 I, 390; etc.
page 253 note 98 Jacob's Well, p. 144; Ayenbite, p. 55.
page 253 note 99 Ayenbite, p. 32; Jacob's Well, p. 109; Confessio, iv, 539–886.
page 253 note 100 I, 825.
page 253 note 101 I, 510.
page 253 note 102 Mirour, 1. 6315.
page 253 note 103 Ayenbite, p. 43; Jacob's Well, p. 131.
page 253 note 104 Ayenbite, p. 19; Jacob's Well, p. 73.
page 254 note 105 I, 564; etc.
page 254 note 106 Jacob's Well, p. 132; Cursor Mundi, 1. 27838.
page 254 note 107 Mirour, 11. 4983 ff.; etc.
page 254 note 108 Pèlerinage, 11. 14192 ff.
page 254 note 109 Pèlerinage, 11. 17879 ff.
page 254 note 110 Mirour, 11. 3469 ff.; Confessio, ii, 1879 ff.
page 254 note 111 Handlyng Synne, p. 125.
page 254 note 112 I, 645, (§ 47).
page 254 note 113 Handlyng Synne, p. 196.
page 254 note 114 Mirour, 11. 4273 ff.
page 254 note 115 I, 750 ff.; Ayenbite, pp. 38–39; Jacob's Well, p. 129.
page 254 note 116 Handlyng Synne, pp. 218–19; Mirour, 11. 8438 ff.
page 254 note 117 I, 795; Ayenbite, pp. 39, 44; Jacob's Well, p. 131; Piers Plowman, B. xiii, 359; Confessio, v, 2863.
page 254 note 118 Piers Plowman, B. v, 89.
page 254 note 119 I, § 35; etc.
page 254 note 120 Raymund of Pennaforte (Petersen, p. 27); Gaytryge, p. 12.
page 254 note 121 Frère Lorens (Eilers, p. 511); Ayenbite, p. 23.
page 254 note 122 I, 566. 637.
page 254 note 123 Jacob's Well, p. 105.
page 254 note 124 Cursor Mundi, 1. 27617.
page 254 note 125 Cursor Mundi, 1. 28252.
page 254 note 126 Jacob's Well, p. 155.
page 254 note 127 Mirour, 1. 6566.
page 254 note 128 Cursor Mundi, 1. 27662.
page 254 note 129 I, 390; etc.
page 254 note 130 Cursor Mundi, 11. 27800, 28358–59.
page 254 note 131 I, 800; etc.
page 254 note 132 Cursor Mundi, 1. 27946.
page 254 note 133 I, § 46.
page 254 note 134 Mirour, 11. 3529, 3580, 3599, etc.
page 254 note 135 Ayenbite, p. 18.
page 254 note 136 Confessio, v, 4887 (see gloss).
page 254 note 137 Mirour, 1. 4633; Ayenbite, p. 30.
page 254 note 138 Ayenbite, p. 22.
page 255 note 139 Confessio, v, 2866.
page 255 note 140 Jacob's Well, p. 153.
page 255 note 141 Handlyng Synne, p. 126.
page 255 note 142 Jacob's Well, p. 113.
page 255 note 143 Piers Plowman, C. vii, 435.
page 255 note 144 Publications, p. 96.
page 256 note 145 Publications, p. 93.
page 256 note 146 Spenser, for example, drew freely on the branches for the traits which he combined in his portraits of the Sins (see these Publications, xxix, pp. 410 ff.)—but each portrait was named. Dante's method is also explicit.
page 257 note 147 Modern Philology, vii, p. 115. This statement is quoted (Modem Language Review, v, p. 19) with assent by R. W. Chambers, whose mediævalism Mr. Tupper accepts.
page 257 note 148 I, § 32 (de Ira).
page 257 note 149 I, § 34 (de Ira).
page 257 note 150 I, § 53 (de Accidia).
page 257 note 151 I, § 74 (de Luxuria).
page 258 note 152 I have preferred in this discussion to present at first hand the facts as they lie in Mr. Tupper's own sources, without referring to the work of others. But anyone who wishes a judgment that carries the weight of absolute authority may turn to the chapter on “Classification of Sins” in Lea's History of Auricular Confession and Indulgences in the Latin Church, Vol. ii, chap, xx, pp., 233–284 (especially pp. 238–44), for statements far stronger than mine regarding the labyrinth of the Sins. For there was not only the immeasurable complication of the branches, but the still further practical impossibility of laying down rules to determine whether a given fault was even Deadly Sin at all.
page 258 note 153 Publications, p. 105. Mr. Tupper has just been speaking of Chaucer's close adherence “to the strict categories of human errors recognized by all his contemporaries.”
page 259 note 154 Confessio Amantis, iii, 1331 ff.
page 259 note 155 iv, 77 ff.
page 259 note 156 v, 3247 ff.
page 259 note 157 See below, pp. 306 ff.
page 259 note 158 vii, 4754 ff.
page 259 note 159 v, 5231 ff.
page 259 note 160 v, 551 ff. In Purgatorio, xvii, 19 ff., Philomela (or Progne) is an example of Wrath.
page 259 note 161 iv, 731 ff.
page 259 note 162 iv, 147 ff.
page 259 note 163 vi, 467 ff.
page 259 note 164 v, 7195 ff.
page 259 note 165 iii, 143 ff.
page 259 note 166 ii, 2145 ff.
page 259 note 167 iv, 2927.
page 259 note 168 It is unnecessary to remark that Chaueer himself did not regard them as “Sins Tales.”
page 260 note 169 I hope I may not be thought so unfair to Mr. Tupper's argument as to imply that the case of the Legend stories is parallel at all points with the case, as he states it, for the Canterbury Tales in question. I am concerned, for the moment, solely with “the adequacy of … stories as exempla of the Sins” (Publications, p. 100).
page 260 note 170 The Exemplum in England (Columbia University Press, 1911), p. 126.
page 260 note 171 Publications, p. 111.
page 260 note 172 See, for example, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, viii, pp. 546–65.
page 260 note 173 See below, pp. 304–05.
page 261 note 1 Journal, pp. 553–565. Compare Publications, pp. 98, 105, 107–08, 115, 124.
page 261 note 2 See, for example, The Atlantic Monthly, lxxii, pp. 829 ff.
page 261 note 3 Publications, p. 115.
page 261 note 4 Publications, p. 124. In the article on “The Pardoner's Tavern” the conception of Gluttony is expanded to “Sins of the Tavern” (Journal, p. 559); there is “evidence of the strongest that the Pardoner is exemplifying only the vices of the tavern” (Journal, p. 558).
page 261 note 5 C, 409–11.
page 262 note 6 c, 453.
page 262 note 7 c, 435–37.
page 262 note 8 It may well have had this setting in Chaucer's source, as Mr. Tupper (following Miss Petersen, On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, pp. 98–100) hints (Publications, p. 98, n. 8). The headings which Miss Petersen quotes, however, do not include “de Gula.”
page 262 note 9 With this paragraph compare particularly the Summoner's Tale, D, 2043–78; see below, p. 281.
page 263 note 10 C, 895–99.
page 263 note 11 C, 904–05.
page 263 note 12 I need scarcely say that I have no quarrel with the view that Chaucer knew the Seven Deadly Sins and made superbly artistic use of the material that they afforded him. It is from a schematizing of them, which stands in sharp conflict with the facts and with itself, that I dissent.
page 263 note 13 Publications, pp. 114–15.
page 264 note 14 See below, pp. 264–67.
page 264 note 15 Publications, p. 105, n. 26.
page 264 note 16 Journal, p. 562. I shall consider the “but” and the “however” below.
page 265 note 17 C, 629 ff. The phrase “as olde bookes trete” is immediately followed by actual quotation from the Parson's Tale.
page 265 note 18 See Herrig's Archiv, lxxxvii, pp. 39–41 (and Skeat's notes) for the source of 11. 631–37, 648–50, and 472–75.
page 265 note 19 He names only Peraldus.
page 265 note 20 P. 30.
page 265 note 21 Petersen, p. 27.
page 265 note 22 Eilers, pp. 525–28.
page 265 note 23 L. 27736.
page 265 note 24 P. 12.
page 265 note 25 Pp. 94–95.
page 265 note 26 See on p. 100 the exemplum of the quarrelsome dicer and his blasphemy.
page 265 note 27 I, § 37: “But lat us go now to thilke horrible swering of adjuracioun and conjuracioun, as … in a shulder-boon of a sheep.” “Charmes for woundes or maladyes of men, or of bestes” is under belief in “divynailes” (§ 38). See C, 350–360, 361–71.
page 265 note 28 Publications, p. 124.
page 266 note 29 Tupper has apparently forgotten, when he makes his statement in the Journal (p. 562) that “it is interesting that the Parson, like Peraldus, includes … Great Oaths under Wrath,” that he has said in the Publications (p. 95): “Swearing or ‘Great Oaths’ is usually classed under the head of Wrath.”
page 266 note 30 Videlicet, “ Every man of the Midddle Ages.”
page 266 note 31 D, 2008–10. This is the beginning of “the hundred-line homily against Ire” (Publications, p. 113), and both Tupper and Skeat refer the lines to I, 564 f., 534: “Of this cursed sinne of Ire cometh eek … homicyde … And as wel comth Ire of Pryde.”
page 266 note 32 No. 3, on p. 113 (Publications).
page 266 note 33 C, 657.
page 267 note 34 C, 896, 899.
page 267 note 35 Journal, p. 562.
page 267 note 36 C, 956–57. He is far more angry than the Summoner, for he could speak. See D, 1665 ff.
page 267 note 37 The third is Lechery. The same dire necessities of Mr. Tupper's argument that exclude Wrath forbid also that Lechery should be treated as an independent Sin. It is one, of course, in the categories.
page 267 note 38 Journal, p. 560. They are commonly (but not “always”) associated with each other; they are by no means always, as we shall see, associated with Gluttony —which is all that counts.
page 268 note 39 Journal, p. 562.
page 268 note 40 C, 589–90. In the Pardoner's sermon Gluttony, Hazardry, and Blasphemy are co-ordinate heads (if clearly marked divisions mean anything). The last two are not (like Lechery) “annexed un-to glotonye.”
page 268 note 41 C, 591–94.
page 268 note 42 I, 793 (De Auaricia). See Herrig's Archiv, lxxxvii, p. 40. Mr. Tupper actually quotes this passage from the Parson's Tale (Journal, p. 562) as part of his justification of the assignment of Hazardry to Gluttony, without the slightest intimation of the fact that the Parson is discussing a branch of Avarice.
page 268 note 43 Publications, p. 116. On the preceding page Mr. Tupper tells us that “the conclusion is irresistible that such a borrowed treatment of each Sin is neither unconscious nor casual, but deliberately designed.”
page 269 note 44 Pp. 45–46.
page 269 note 45 The Ayenbite is one of Mr. Tupper's witnesses for Gluttony (Journal, p. 561). See below, p. 270.
page 269 note 46 Eilers, pp. 543, 548.
page 269 note 47 Pp. 134–35. “þe thredde fote brede wose in coueytise is foly pley; þat is, at þe tabelys & at þe dyse,” etc.
page 269 note 48 Ll. 18426–30.
page 269 note 49 Publications, p. 105, n. 26. This is introduced by the “but” referred to above (p. 264, n. 16). Compare Journal, pp. 561–62.
page 269 note 50 Ibid.
page 270 note 51 I suppose Mr. Tupper has in mind (he unfortunately gives no explicit reference) the “chaffare” in 11. 327–43. But on this see Englische Studien, v, p. 150. “Chaffare” (it may be remarked) is, as Mr. Chambers rightly points out, the eighth bough of Avarice in the Ayenbite (see Modern Language Review, v, p. 20). It is also included under Avarice in Jacob's Well (pp. 133–34) and Piers Plowman (B. xiii, 380). And as Brocage (with which, as Mr. Chambers notes, it is identical), it appears under Avarice in the Mirour (1. 6579). Compare especially Mirour, 11. 6283–85.
page 270 note 52 In none of his authorities is Hazardry a branch of Gluttony, as in five it is of Avarice.
page 271 note 53 Publications, p. 105, n. 26; Journal, p. 561 (“B, VI, 92” should read “B, II, 92”).
page 271 note 54 Ibid.
page 271 note 55 Journal, p. 561.
page 271 note 56 L. 28338.
page 271 note 57 L. 5779.
page 271 note 58 Ed. Arnold, iii, p. 145.
page 271 note 59 P. 105, 1. 13.
page 271 note 60 I, 580.
page 271 note 61 P. 100 (exemplum).
page 271 note 62 See above, p. 265.
page 271 note 63 P. 45.
page 271 note 64 B. xiii, 383.
page 271 note 65 Ll. 6433 ff.
page 271 note 66 Ll. 18176 ff.
page 271 note 67 P. 135. It is also included under Sins of the Tongue (Gluttony) on pp. 153, 156.
page 272 note 68 Ll. 27608–15.
page 272 note 69 Ll. 2437 ff.
page 272 note 70 Journal, pp. 560–62. He is illustrating the fact that Hazardry and Blasphemy “are always closely associated in mediæval literature.” Their association with each other (it must be said again) is a familiar commonplace—in life as in the categories (see, for instance, Romanic Review, ii, pp. 116–17). It is only examples of their association with Gluttony that are relevant to Mr. Tupper's argument.
page 272 note 71 P. 45.
page 272 note 72 Exces of watchynge doth players great damage
And in that space oft Venus doth them blynde …
Also this game troubleth oft theyr mynde
With wrath them makynge vnstable as the wynde …
A couetous herte by game is kept in fere
And styrred to yre euer when it can nat wyn …
And so the more that wrath doth hym inflame
The more backwarde and lewdly goeth his game (ii, 71).
Mr. Tupper's quotation is from the next stanza but one.
page 272 note 73 See ii, p. 130, stanzas 2–3.
page 273 note 74 See Journal, p. 562: “This arrangement, however [i. e., the Parson's interesting slip in his classification of Hazardry and Blasphemy], does not debar the poet, when fashioning the Pardoner, from combining Dicing and Swearing in the traditional conception of the Glutton as a lord of tavern revels and misrule rather than as a mere slave of food and drink.”
page 273 note 75 Journal, p. 557.
page 273 note 76 Journal, p. 559. Why Mr. Tupper does not say “In some accounts,” or even “In three accounts,” I do not know. Among his own authorities “Sins of the Tavern” are given explicit treatment as such in only the three which he names. And one of these (Jacob's Well) is in all probability a fifteenth-century document (ed. Brandeis, p. xiii).
page 274 note 77 Pp. 56–57.
page 274 note 78 P. 148.
page 274 note 79 Pp. 148–156. The provenience of the Sins of the Tongue is made even more explicit at the close of the enumeration. “Out of þis glotonye … springeth out at þe mowth ofte, in þe feendys scolehows of þe tauerne, a tre, þat is, euyl tunge … þe tre euyll tunge, þat springeth out of þe wose of glotonye, hath x. braunches, þat is, x. spyces, & iche of þo spyces hath many levis, þat is, many circumstauncys” (pp. 156–57).
page 275 note 80 Similarly, in the third example (Ship of Fools, i, 93) which Mr. Tupper gives (Journal, p. 560), Barclay (whose only direct reference to taverns in the whole passage is the line which Tupper quotes) adds to Gluttony and Lechery the following: Discord (p. 93), Murder, Theft (94), Wrath, Cruelty (95), Strife, Chiding, Blasphemy, Hazardry (96). The title of the section is “Of glotons and dronkardes.”
page 275 note 81 C. vii, 50; B. xiii, 304.
page 275 note 82 Ll. 6285, 6304.
page 275 note 83 Ed. Arnold, iii, p. 145.
page 275 note 84 P. 105—where the point at issue is the leaving of “þi paryschcherche & þi seruyse” for the tavern, precisely as in the case of Gluttony in Piers Plowman (B. v, 308–14).
page 275 note 85 Ll. 11618 ff.
page 275 note 86 Ll. 4573–74. The passage includes 11. 4371–4636.
page 276 note 87 In a racy passage in “The Pardoner's Tavern” Mr. Tupper insists (Journal, p. 564) that the pseudo-Chaucerian “Prologue of the Merry Adventure of the Pardoner with a Tapster at Canterbury” could not be derived from the Pardoner of the General Prologue, nor from “the hypocritical exponent of Avarice known to every reader,” but is, indeed, from “the gluttonous Pardoner of his prologue and tale, lickerish, lecherous, blasphemous”—and so on. This is trichotomy with a vengeance. Schematizing has now had its perfect work in the equation: Pardoner = General Prologue (neutral) + exponent of Avarice + exponent of Gluttony. What the Tale of Beryn does show is the fact that Chaucer's mediæval contemporaries took his Pardoner not as a schematic figure, but as a man.
page 277 note 88 C, 333–34, 425–26. And with the same text the Parson begins his sermon on the Vice (I, § 62).
page 277 note 89 See above, p. 263.
page 277 note 90 Journal, p. 562.
page 277 note 91 Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxv, p. 179. These are Mr. Tupper's own words regarding the members of the Bonn Seminar. I cannot but feel that, without in the least intending it, he has fallen into the same fallacy—against which, he remarks, “argument is impossible.”
page 277 note 92 With Mr. Tupper's statement about the Tale itself I should unreservedly agree, were it not for his “primarily”: “Nobody can doubt that the Pardoner's Tale is primarily an exemplum of Avarice” (Publications, p. 98, n. 8). So far as Chaucer is concerned, we have the Pardoner's text to guide us, and that is enough. But one could wish that Mr. Tupper had pointed out the fact that the story is not an exemplum of Avarice at all in a large number of its variants. It is not so even in the Buddhist analogue, the 48th Játaka, which contains the remark about Avarice. See the “moral lesson”—the recoil of the plot upon the plotter.—with which it concludes (Originals and Analogues, p. 422). The moral is the same in the third Arabian version (ibid., p. 430; cf. the moral of the second, p. 429), and in the analogues from the Libro di Novelle (“cosi paga Domenedio li traditori,” p. 133) and the Morlini Novellae (“Nouella indicat: nec esse de malo cogitandum: nam quod quis seminat, metit,” p. 134). Primarily, the story is an exemplum of “this even-handed justice [which] Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.” Its application to Avarice is secondary. Even the Pardoner does not make this application explicitly. It is implicit, however, not only in his text, but also in 11. 904–05. Incidentally, Mr. Tupper has incautiously followed Skeat's summary (Oxford Chaucer, iii, p. 439) of the version from Le Ciento Novelle Antike. In the original Christ does not “warn his disciples against the fatal effects of Avarice,” except by implication. See the text in Originals and Analogues, p. 131.
page 278 note 1 This touch of rhetorical exaggeration (for the sermon has eighty-five lines) is perhaps not very important, but it happens to have some bearing upon the point at issue.
page 279 note 2 Publications, p. 113.
page 279 note 3 D, 1874–76. Cf. 11. 1880, 1883, 1898–1900, 1907–08, etc.
page 279 note 4 D, 1915–17.
page 279 note 5 Notes, pp. 8–9. But see also Modem Language Notes, February, 1915, pp. 63–64.
page 279 note 6 Publications, pp. 112–13.
page 279 note 7 Notes, p. 9.
page 280 note 8 D, 1927–31.
page 280 note 9 Compare also with the friar's repeated emphasis on abstinence and prayer (e. g., 11. 1870–73, 1879, 1883–84, 1900, 1905, 1939) the Pardoner's statement (still under Gluttony):
… alle the sovereyn actes, dar I seye,
Of victories in th' olde testament,
Thurgh verray god that is omnipotent,
Were doon in abstinence and in preyere;
Loketh the Bible, and ther ye may it lere (C, 574–78).
The friar's sermon might well be an exposition of that text!
page 280 note 10 D, 1838–45. This is at least as valid for the argument as Tupper's “boar-like frenzy of the friar,” which is also in the Tale itself!
page 278 note 11 A, 626, 634–36, 649–51. The implications of his disease are patent to anyone who knows the significance in mediæval medicine of the remedies which Chaucer names.
page 281 note 12 Publications, p. 107. The Summoner's Gluttony and Lechery that are the very essence of the man certainly constitute as valid evidence (still assuming Mr. Tupper's point of view) as the natural outbreak of Wrath after the Friar has told his tale.
page 281 note 13 Irous Cambyses was eek dronkelewe …
A lord is lost, if he be vicious;
And dronkenesse is eek a foul record
Of any man, and namely in a lord …
For goddes love, drink more attemprely;
Wyn maketh man to lesen wrecchedly
His minde, and eek his limes everichon (2043–55).
With the last, compare the Pardoner on Gluttony:
A lecherous thing is wyn and dronkenesse
Is ful of stryving and of wrecchednesse …
Thou fallest, as it were a stiked swyn …
For dronkenesse is verray sepulture
Of mannes wit (C, 549–50, 556, 558–59).
page 282 note 14 Publications, pp. 112–13.
page 282 note 15 That does come in, and vividly enough, in the following lines about the nuns (153–65).
page 282 note 16 Publications, p. 113 top. But on p. 115 Mr. Tupper remarks that Chaucer “draws upon the Parson's discourse on Anger … for the exact motif of the Friar's tale of retribution.”
page 283 note 17 See below, p. 285, n. 27.
page 283 note 18 See the story as printed for the Percy Society, Vol. viii, pp. 70–71; Originals and Analogues, p. 106.
page 283 note 19 Cf. D, 1567–68: “Heer may ye see, myn owne dere brother, The carl spak oo thing, but he thoghte another.”
page 284 note 20 Ll. 3761–66. So in the Cursor Mundi (28563) “wreth þat scort and soden es” is among the “smale sinnes” of which it “es no nede Ilkan for to reken and rede.”
page 284 note 21 Once more, I am assuming Mr. Tupper's premises for the nonce. I do not believe that Chaucer was schematizing at all.
page 284 note 22 Ed. Arnold iii, pp. 166–67.
page 284 note 23 Compare also The English Works of Wyclif (ed. Matthew, E. E. T. S.), p. 35: “Lord, whi schulde curatis pronounsen here breþeren a cursed for nakid lettris of syche coueitous prelatis”; p. 75: “Also whanne þei cursen for here coueitise”; p. 95: “þes anticristis clerkis cursen men al day for money”; p. 150: “þei cursen here gostly children more for loue of worldly catel þan for brekynge of goddis hestis”; p. 214: “зit worldly clerkis cursen for dymes and offryngis”; p. 250: “þes smale curatis schullen haue letteris fro here ordynaries to summone & to curse pore men for nouзt but for coueitise of anticristis clerkis”; etc.
page 285 note 24 See, for example, D, 1344, 1348–54, 1434–40, 1530–34, 1576–80, 1598–1603, 1613–17.
page 285 note 25 “He wolde fecche a feyned mandement” (D, 1360). Cf. D, 1586, and Wyclif's “feyned sommenyng” above.
page 285 note 26 P. 39. Cf. p. 43, foot.
page 285 note 27 P. 129. Herolt's advocate too is “immisericors, avarus, faciens graves exactiones in sibi subditos.”
page 285 note 28 Ll. 20013–19. See the whole passage (which is in Gower's summary of contemporary social conditions, not in his account of the Sins), II. 20089 ff.
page 286 note 29 “зif þei [the friars] becomen pedderis berynge knyves, pursis, pynnys and girdlis and spices and sylk and precious pellure and forrouris for wymmen, and þerto smale gentil hondis, to gete loue of hem and to haue many grete зiftes for litil good ore nouзt; þei coueiten euyle here neiзeboris goodis” (Wyclif, ed. Matthew, p. 12).
page 286 note 30 See Jean de Meun passim; Wyclif passim (especially on “þese coveytouse foolis pat ben lymytoures,” ed. Arnold, iii, p. 376); Mirour de l'Omme, 21217 ff.; etc.
page 286 note 31 He scowls (D, 1266), and he tells the Summoner at one point that he lies (D, 1761), and that is all. For this is not the friar, of course, of whose “boar-like frenzy” Tupper speaks. Indeed, the irony which the theory demands is a little intricate in the Summoner's Tale (to return to it for a moment). For irony within the tale of course does not count in the argument. It is an incongruity between the practice of the teller and the precept of the tale that the theory requires. Now the “homily against Ire” is put into the mouth not of the wrathful Summoner himself, in propria persona, but of the representative of the very class against which he is inveighing. It may be that something in my spirit dulleth me, but that seems rather subtle.
page 287 note 32 Tupper, to be sure, declares that Chaucer “draws upon the Parson's discourse on Anger both for the exact motif of the Friar's tale of retribution and for the angry Summoner's morality against Ire” (Publications, p. 115). This is one of the passages where Mr. Tupper asserts that “the burden of proof certainly rests upon him who dares claim ” the contrary (cf. Journal, p. 558, top). I have already ventured to challenge the relation between “the exact motif of the Friar's tale” and the Parson's sermon. As for the Summoner's Tale I shall venture farther. The angry Summoner's “hundred line” morality against Ire draws on the discussion of the Sins in the Parson's Tale for just three lines, of which Tupper himself notes by implication two (D, 2009–10 = I, 564 f., 534. See above, p. 266. The third line is D, 2075 = I, 617, under Flattery). The flat statement that Chaucer“ draws upon the” Parson's discourse on Anger … for the angry Summoner's morality against Ire“ is scarcely calculated to convey to the reader an impression in very close accordance with the facts. Tupper's earlier statement (p. 113) is somewhat less inaccurate: ”This sermon is derived partly from the Parson's Tale, I, 534, 564 f. (Wrath), but chiefly from Seneca's De Ira.“
page 287 note 33 It is not without interest that what we really find, by scrupulous application of Mr. Tupper's own methods, is Wrath, Gluttony (Summoner's Tale), and Avarice (Friar's Tale)—the same triad that emerged from a similar study of the Pardoner's Tale. Consistently applied, the theory falls of its own weight,—as we shall have further opportunity to see.
page 288 note 1 See below, p. 302.
page 288 note 2 Publications, p. 112.
page 288 note 3 Publications, pp. 98, 106.
page 288 note 4 Publications, pp. 106–07; cf. p. 99, n. 10.
page 288 note 5 Publications, pp. 98–99, 106–07, 116, 123.
page 288 note 6 Publications, p. 111.
page 288 note 7 Publications, 107, 115.
page 288 note 8 Publications, p. 107.
page 288 note 9 See below n. 16.
page 289 note 10 Petersen, p. 62.
page 289 note 11 Eilers, p. 537.
page 289 note 12 Mirour, 11. 5485 ff.
page 289 note 13 Petersen, p. 27.
page 289 note 14 Pp. 106–07; cf. Ayenbite, p. 32.
page 289 note 15 Desperatio in Peraldus and Raymund of Pennaforte stands in the same position.
page 289 note 16 Chaucer is calling upon Mary as he calls upon the “cruel Furie” (T. and C., i, 8–11), Clio (ii, 8–10), Venus and Calliope (iii, 39–49), and the “Herines” (iv, 22–26) in the Troilus; the god of sleep (77–80), Cipris and Thought (518–28), and Apollo (109–93) in the House of Fame; and the Flower (94–96) in the B-Prologue to the Legend. Line 79 above (taken out of its context) looks a little like “Dilatio,” but Mr. Tupper has not included the next line in his reference:
This ilke storie subtilly to endyte, etc.
The parallel with the Invocation to the third book of the House of Fame (for example) is exact:
[thogh] that I do no diligence
To shewe craft, etc. (1099–1100).
page 289 note 17 Publications, p. 115.
page 290 note 18 Publications, p. 115, n. 45.
page 290 note 19 Publications, p. 111.
page 290 note 20 Notes, p. 11, n. 13; Publications, p. 111.
page 290 note 21 Ll. 23538 ff. The same passage also emphasizes their frowardness and vanity (23599, 23604), their pomp and pride (23611), and their gluttony (23641 ff.).
page 290 note 22 Publications, p. 111, n. 38.
page 290 note 23 Notes, p. 11, n. 13.
page 291 note 24 It is “the lyf of Seint Cecyle,” as Chaucer twice designates it himself (G, 554, Leg. B, 426 = A, 416). It is the “glorious lyf and passioun” of the “mayde and martir” that he does his “feithful bisinesse” to translate, and it is on her chastity and her martyrdom that the stress is laid (11. 270–83). Cf. also Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxvi, pp. 315–23; xxix, pp. 129–33. To the examples there given of the symbolic use of roses and lilies for martyrdom and virginity I can now add many others drawn entirely from the Latin hymns.
page 291 note 25 Publications, pp. 98–99.
page 291 note 26 Publications, p. 106; Notes, p. 11.
page 291 note 27 Publications, pp. 107, 123.
page 291 note 28 Ibid., p. 116.
page 291 note 29 G, 85–119.
page 292 note 30 For the Latin, see Originals and Analogues, p. 192.
page 292 note 31 I have counted (7) and (9), (6) and (10), each as one— although (6) and (10) are really distinct.
page 292 note 32 Publications, p. 99, n. 10.
page 292 note 33 G, 195–96; cf. 191–99. The bee is not found in the version of the Legend in the Ashmole ms. (Originals and Analogues, p. 210), or in the Northern English version (mss. Harl. 4196) printed by Horstmann (Altenglische Legenden, 1881, p. 161), or in Aelfric (ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S., ii, pp. 356 ff.). It is in Caxton (Originals and Analogues, p. 211), but Caxton is following Chaucer.
page 293 note 34 Originals and Analogues, p. 194.
page 293 note 35 I have not access to the older rituals. I am quoting from the Breviarium Romanum (Pars Autumnalis) in current use.
page 293 note 36 With the omission of the second “domine … bone.”
page 293 note 37 It is argumentosa, not “bisy,” which is traditional, it should be noted. See below, p. 295, n. 43.
page 294 note 38 On the entrance of the Legends as lectiones into the Office of the Church, see Horstmann's valuable introduction to his Altenglische Legenden, pp. xii ff. On their use in the homilies, see pp. xxiii ff.
page 294 note 39 Sermones Aurei (1760), ii, p. 361.
page 294 note 40 Ecclesiasticus, xi, 3.
page 294 note 41 The phrase is due, I suppose, to the four times repeated “exercitavit” below.
page 294 note 42 I have had to omit, of course, the still more detailed elaboration of the symbolism.
page 295 note 43 Chaucer's translation of “argumentosa” by “bisy” is itself inaccurate, and doubtless represents the “well-worn [convention] track.” Given “bee,” the chances are large in favor of “busy” as the epithet. Compare E, 2422 (in a very different context!): “for ay as bisy as bees Been they [women], us sely men for to deceyve.” In Jacobus (who also represents “tradition”) the bee is brevis, volatilis, mellifica, and argumentosa.
page 295 note 44 On the preceding page it is her “peculiar quality.”
page 295 note 45 Publications, p. 107.
page 295 note 48 See, for example, Crane, The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (Folk Lore Society), pp. lxxx ff.
page 295 note 47 See Crane, pp. xxxviii, lv, lx, lxiii-iv, lxviii, etc., and the Sermones Aurei, passim.
page 296 note 48 In the Sermones Aurei (ii, p. 246) St. Hippolytus and his comrades are compared to sparrows. Why? The text is from Psalm 124: “Anima nostra sicut passer erepta est de laqueo venantium.” And the sermon begins: “Ad honorem sancti Hippolyti et sociorum ejus iste versiculus in Missa decantatur. In Evangelio etiam hodierno in exemplum Sanctorum passeres introducuntur.” And so Jacobus sets himself cheerfully to his exegesis.
page 296 note 49 ii, p. 79: “Primo fuit mirabiliter confictus, quod patet quia de limo humilitatis profundae, et aqua compunctionis laehrymosae fuit confictus… Secundo istud vas fuit mirabiliter pictum, scilicet colore albo virginalis munditiae”—and so on through six parallels.
page 296 note 50 ii, p. 217: “Thesaurus … est autem aurum virginitas, argentum fides, lapides pretiosi opera pietatis,” etc.
page 296 note 51 ii, pp. 233–34: “Stella matutina est lucifer qui quidem est calidus, humidus, jucundus, et Solis nuncius. Sic B. Dominions fuit calidus per ferventem zelum … fuit humidus per lachramarum effusionem … fuit jucundus, et hoc in mente per conscientiae serenitatem [similarly, in facie, sermone, conversatione],” etc.
page 296 note 52 P. 234. I shall not rehearse his “quadruplicem plenitudinem ”!
page 296 note 53 P. 240.
page 296 note 54 Ibid. —with three reasons.
page 296 note 55 P. 241: “Dicitur aurum in quantum fuit Praelatus. Et in quantum fuit Martyr invictus. Et in quantum fuit Praedicator gloriosus”—and each of the three is worked out in unimaginable detail.
page 296 note 56 P. 243: “Notandum est, quod est quadruplex ignis, scilicet interior sive spiritualis, exterior sive materialis, superior sive caelestis, et inferior sive infernalis.” I omit the exposition!
page 296 note 57 P. 368: “Ager iste fuit animus Catherinae, in quo crevit, et floruit lilium puritatis, rosa charitatis, et viola humilitatis. In isto agro absconditus est thesaurus martyrii … et thesaurus divinae sapientiae, et virginalis munditiae, et caelestis gloriae,” etc.
page 297 note 58 The Virgin is compared to Amygdalus, Aquaeductus, Arbor Caelestis, Arca Dei, Arcus caelestis, Aurora, Balsamum, Candela, Cedrus, Caelum, Cinnamomum, Cypressus, Collum, Columba, Crater, Ebur, Elephas, Fons Dei, Gallina, Libanus, Lilium Dei, Luna, Lux, Mare, Myrrha, Nardus, Navis, Nubes, Oliva, Ovis Dei, Palma, Ros, Rosa, Speculum, Stella, Terra, Vellus, Virga, Vitis. See the tabula to the Sermones Aurei de Laudibus Deiparae Virginis. Each symbol represents the heading of a separate sermon.
page 297 note 59 I shall quote only the close of the paragraph on her “sweetness of spiritual devotion”: “Conservatur autem in vase solido, id est per patientiam, et perseverantiam firmam; alias enim spargitur si per impatientiam frangitur: Cor fatui quasi vas confractum, et omnem sapientiam non tenebit.” Quite apart from the allegorizing, it is to be observed that (according to the Parson) this is not Sloth at all. “Patience, that is another remedye agayns Ire” (I, § 50). See below, p. 315.
page 297 note 60 II, pp. 151–52. He is then compared to a lion (after the Bestiary), because the lion sleeps with its eyes open, wakens its young, and obliterates its tracks with its tail; then to honey, for two reasons. The text is Samson's riddle!
page 297 note 61 Sermones de Laudibus, etc., p. 7. The text is that of the sermon on St. Cecilia.
page 298 note 62 I waive the “argumentosa,” and accept Chaucer's “bisinesse” for “assiduam operationem.”
page 298 note 63 I have counted contemplation, sagacity (which appears three times), and teaching, each only once.
page 298 note 64 Publications, p. 98, n. 9.
page 298 note 65 See below, p. 327.
page 299 note 66 Ll. 7553 ff. See especially 11. 7553–69.
page 299 note 67 ii, pp. 90–91.
page 299 note 68 P. 166 (under “Prouesse”).
page 299 note 69 Compare the fourteenth-century exemplum cited by Herbert (Catalogue of Romances, iii, p. 632), under the heading “De fortitudine et partibus eius,” in which a bishop and his people take refuge from Attila in a church, and suffer martyrdom. Is the bishop to be regarded as an antitype of Sloth?
page 299 note 70 I have not access at the moment to the vast collections of the Analecta hymnica. I know that they are rich in hymns to St. Cecilia. It is possible that Mr. Tupper may find support for his contention there, if it is to be found anywhere. I recall no evidence for it from the hymns. But this point was not in my mind when I read them. At all events, I proffer the reference, which I should use myself, if I could.
page 300 note 71 Publications, pp. 106–07.
page 300 note 72 Ibid., p. 99, n. 10; cf. Notes, p. 11: “its … Invocation, full of the spiritual devotion that is ever the antidote of this Deadly Sin.”
page 300 note 73 Publications, pp. 115–16.
page 300 note 74 Incidentally it may be remarked that Devotion, Cecilia's “peculiar virtue” appears in the Mirour de l'Omme as the first branch of Humility, the antitype of Pride. It is there accompanied by Prayer, and Gower devotes 659 lines to it (11. 10177–10836). As an antitype of Sloth I know it only in Jacob's Well (pp. 283–84), where it manifests itself in weeping.
page 301 note 75 Notes, p. 10.
page 301 note 76 Ibid. He also shows (n. 6) that Barclay as well as Chaucer uses both Idleness Prologue and “an elaborate Invocation to the Virgin richer even than Chaucer's in liturgical phrases.”
page 301 note 77 Modern Philology, ix, pp. 1–4.
page 301 note 78 Notes, p. 10, n. 6.
page 301 note 79 Notes, p. 11. Mr. Tupper happens, when he says this, to be arguing for another thesis, which gives his testimony added weight.
page 302 note 80 Notes, pp. 10–11.
page 302 note 81 Publications, p. 99, n. 10.
page 302 note 82 Notes, p. 11.
page 302 note 83 Publications, p. 118.
page 303 note 84 Since we are on the subject of Sloth, it is necessary to call attention to a statement of Mr. Tupper's that is not immediately connected with the Second Nun's Tale. It is in his general discussion of the categories (Publications, p. 95). “From our point of view it is natural to protest against the inclusion of ‘the thief on the cross’ under Langland's head of Sloth, and yet, as R. W. Chambers points out, that dilatory sinner finds a place in every formal description of that vice.” Mr. Chambers does not point this out, and it is not the ease. What Chambers says (Modern Language Review, v, p. 5) is this: “Now Skeat pointed out long ago that the right place for the penitent thief is under Sloth, under the sub-heading Wanhope, which always belongs to Accidie.” (Even that is not quite true, for the Ayenbite, p. 29, and Jacob's Well, p. 85, put it among the Sins against the Holy Ghost, under Envy, and the Mirror of St. Edmund, p. 24, places “whanhope of þe blysse of heuene” under Lechery, as does also Raymund of Pennaforte; see Petersen, p. 27). That is a very different thing indeed from Mr. Tupper's statement. What Skeat says may be found in his edition of Piers Plowman, ii, p. 88, where he remarks that “his [the thief's] repentance was the stock example of an argument against Wanhope as resulting from Sloth.” On p. 97 he refers to the Parson's Tale, Handlyng Synne, 1. 5171, and the Ayenbite, p. 34. In point of fact, the penitent thief does not occur under Wanhope (or even Sloth) in the Cursor Mundi, Gaytryge's sermon or the Lay Folks' Catechism, Jacob's Well, the Pèlerinage, the Confessio Amantis, the Mirour de l'Omme —to name no more. Similarly, Mr. Tupper says (Publications, p. 103, n. 22): “Every mediœval account of Envy records these traits [its Satanic origin and serpent-like nature].” Many record one, many the other, some both—but the “serpent-like nature” is wanting, for instance, from the Parson's Tale itself. The statement that “the commonplaces [on ”gentilesse“] inevităly appear in all mediæval discourses upon Pride” (Publications, p. 100) is another case in point. See below, p. 343, n. 9. The statement (Journal, p. 557) that Barclay “devotes the largest space in his Ship to the tavern-revelers—drinkers, lechers, dicers, blasphemers,” is still another. Even granting Mr. Tupper his own wide latitude in the interpretation of “tavern-revelers,” less than a dozen at most, out of the one hundred and fifteen sections of the Ship of Fools, may be stretched to come under that head. These are, of course, merely offhand or insufficiently considered statements, but they are none the less somewhat damaging to an argument, when they are used as evidence.
page 304 note 1 With the exception to be noted below, p. 306.
page 304 note 2 See above, p. Did Grower use these stories because they were per se “ Sins tales,” or did they become, pro tempore, “ Sins tales” because he diverted them to his immediate purpose? The stories of Capaneus (Confessio, i, 1977 ff.), Socrates (iii, 639 ff.), Daphne (iii, 1685 ff.), Phaeton and Icarus (iv, 978 ff.), for example, are all told by Gower as exemplifying Sins. Suppose that Chaucer (who makes use of all these personages) had told their stories as separate Tales, without other indication of his purpose. Would the Middle Ages have interpreted them—“even though their title or tag were lacking” —as exemplifying Pride, Wrath (Cheste and Foolhaste) and Sloth respectively, any more than they so interpreted the stories of the Legend? Despite Mr. Tupper's words just quoted (Publications, p. 96), the application of the story must be made clear. He argues (rather inconsistently with his statement that tags were unnecessary) that the application is made clear in the Tales that follow, and that is what we have to see.
page 305 note 3 Publications, p. 116. “But” —Mr. Tupper proceeds—“this omission seems the less striking, when we remark the generous use of the section on Lechery in the so-called Marriage Group, particularly in the Merchant's Tale.” That is (once more), “if he have not seyd hem, leve brother, In o book, he hath seyd hem in another.” (The Merchant's Tale might have something to say for itself, too. See below, p. 365). Tupper's note on the same page is merely snatching at a straw, as the text makes clear.
page 305 note 4 Publications, pp. 110–11. Tupper, it will be observed, is creating a new category of the professions, as exemplifications of the Seven Deadly Sins. “The Gluttony of the Pardoner [is] a traditional trait of that tribe” (Publications, p. 117). Nuns exemplify Sloth. Physicians now stand for Lechery. We shall soon see that Lawyers and Merchants exemplify Envy, as well as Avarice. Five of the Seven Sins are accounted for. So far as the Physicians are concerned, Tupper's inferences from the facts he gives are gratuitous. And one of the facts is wrong. The long passage in the Confessio Amantis (VI, 1292–1358) which he cites (p. Ill, n. 37) deals with Sorcery and Witchcraft (specifically with Geomancy, Hydromancy, Pyromancy, Nigromancy, etc.), and has nothing to do with Physicians. And anyway, it is under Gluttony. See also the gloss opposite 11. 1261 ff.
page 306 note 5 Publications, p. 116. He refers to it elsewhere as “the Physician's version of Gower's theme of Lechery in the Confessio Amantis” (p. 97; cf. n. 7); as “another Gower story, that of Lechery” (p. 127); and states again that “in the Physician's Tale Chaucer, like Gower in his version of the theme, … is telling a story of Lechery, and of its antitype, Chastity” (Notes, p. 5).
page 306 note 6 The discussion of Chastity is in 11. 4215–5397; the story of Appius and Virginia in 11. 5131–5306. Lechery is the only one of the Sins to which Gower gives no categorical treatment. Each of the other Vices is specifically named (see Bk. I, 11. 580 ff., and the opening paragraphs of Books ii-vii); Book viii treats of the Laws of Marriage, and of one branch of Lechery, Incest. It is worth noting that Gower's specific treatment of Virginity is under Robbery, a branch of Avarice (see v, 6338 ff., and especially the heading and gloss to v, 6359 ff.).
page 306 note 7 See vii, 4209–14, 4239–56, 4308–12, 4351–60, 4446–58, 4546–73, 5124–30.
page 307 note 8 The last exemplum, that of Tobias, constitutes (as the gloss makes clear) a transition to the discussion of the Laws of Marriage in the next book.
page 307 note 9 vii, 5301–06.
page 307 note 10 Ed. Michel, i, p. 186.
page 307 note 11 Ibid., p. 189.
page 307 note 12 Tupper admits Hans Sachs (Publications, p. 98, n. 8) as a belated witness, and so may we.
page 307 note 13 Ed. von Keller, ii, pp. 19–20.
page 308 note 14 C, 277–286. Compare also 11. 267–76 for the real “leit-motif of the Doctor's story” (p. 116, n. 46), as Chaucer tells it.
page 308 note 15 Italics mine. Mr. Tupper is hard put to it here.
page 308 note 16 The “etc.” is Tupper's. He quotes but the two lines.
page 308 note 17 Publications, p. 104.
page 308 note 18 Publications, p. 127.
page 308 note 19 C, 288–91.
page 309 note 20 Journal, p. 553. Still another mediæval reader slipped up about the purport of the Tale—the scribe of the spurious Prologue to the Physician's Tale in the Lansdowne ms. (Oxford Chaucer, iii, p. 435): “As ye, worschipful Maister of Phisike, Tellith us somme tale that is a cronyke” —and on those terms the Physician complies. The scribe, who should have recognized the thing without a tag, somehow missed the point.
page 309 note 21 Notes, p. 7, n. 13. Mr. Tupper lays great stress on “Virginia's close resemblance to the ‘consecrated virgin’ ideal of patristic treatises” (Publications, p. 98, n. 7), especially as this ideal is elaborated in Ambrose's De Tirginibus (Publications, p. 104). This view is presented in detail in his latest article (Notes, pp. 5–7). I do not feel sure that Mr. Tupper's parallels demonstrate the borrowings from Ambrose, but for the purpose of this argument I am perfectly willing to grant the point. Virginia is a virgin, whereever Chaucer got the hints for his description of her. His omnivorous reading may well have led him to Ambrose's treatise, but the fact (if it be such) that he draws from it for Virginia has no real bearing upon Tupper's case. Is the Prioress unchaste, because the description of her table manners is taken from the account which a lecherous old woman gives of women's wiles? Is the first-night rapture of Troilus holy, because it finds expression in words drawn from the very Invocation to the Virgin which the Second Nun employs? Every student of Chaucer knows that the implications of his sources, as carried over to the use he makes of them, must be dealt with cautiously. It is probably a mere oversight that the example which Tupper cites from Jacques de Vitry (Publications, pp. 103–04) of “the mediæval moralizer turning him naturally to father and mother” is chosen from a sermon to boys and young men (Crane, p. xlvi).
page 310 note 1 Publications, p. 102.
page 310 note 2 Ibid., p. 118.
page 310 note 3 Journal, p. 565.
page 310 note 4 Journal, p. 555.
page 310 note 5 P. 41.
page 311 note 6 Journal, p. 555. This properly substitutes Chaucer's “wele” for the misleading “wealth” of Publications, p. 103. But the plural “phases” should have been used, as “traits” is properly employed in the earlier article. The two faults mentioned are separate phases of Envy in the categories.
page 311 note 7 Nation, p. 41. Compare “such a dominant phase of Envy,” above.
page 312 note 8 See also above, p. 257.
page 312 note 9 i, 1348–55.
page 312 note 10 Ll. 2313 ff., 2323 ff.
page 312 note 11 Handlyng Synne, 11. 3487–90 (under Pride).
page 312 note 12 Eilers, p. 519.
page 312 note 13 L. 28100.
page 312 note 14 P. 30.
page 312 note 15 P. 94. Cf. the sixth foot, “vnpacyence; þat is, whan þou grucchyst aзens resounable chastysing,” etc. (See Parson's Tale, I, 498: “Somtyme [grucching] springeth of inpacience,” etc.; Jacob's Well, pp. 91, 100).
page 313 note 16 P. 260.
page 313 note 17 Eilers, p. 525.
page 313 note 18 P. 34: “þe þridde is grochynge.”
page 313 note 19 P. 112: “þe thridde fote is grucchyng.”
page 313 note 20 Eilers, p. 535.
page 313 note 21 P. 43: “þe oþer is þe zenne of grochinge and of traysoun.”
page 313 note 22 Pp. 67–68.
page 313 note 23 See above, p. 274.
page 314 note 24 “Thou blamest Crist, and seyst ful bitterly, He misdeparteth riehesse temporal” (B, 106–07).
page 314 note 25 P. 155.
page 314 note 26 Petersen, pp. 47–48.
page 314 note 27 Eilers, pp. 518–19.
page 314 note 28 Parson and Peraldus.
page 314 note 29 Parson, Peraldus, and (as Inobedience) Frère Lorens.
page 314 note 30 Frère Lorens.
page 314 note 31 Parson.
page 314 note 32 Nation, p. 41.
page 314 note 33 Journal, p. 555. “Sorwe of other mannes wele” is, to be sure, a phase of Envy, but the lines in the Prologue on which Mr. Tupper relies for this branch (B, 106–12) belong, as we shall see (pp. 316–17 below) in another category.
page 315 note 34 I, 498. Compare “And wext þe grochinges … of inpacience” (Ayenbite, p. 67); “murmur Impacientie” (Peraldus; Petersen, p. 48); “et naist cist murmures … de inpacience” (Frère Lorens; Eilers, p. 519); etc.
page 315 note 35 Ll. 3953 ff.
page 315 note 36 P. 94. Cf. p. 98, 1. 31; p. 100, 1. 1.
page 315 note 37 Ll. 15691–98. Wrath's saw is forged out of iron that “callyd was ‘Inpacyence’ Wych was dolven out of helle, wher that blake ffendys dwelle.”
page 315 note 38 I, § 50–51.
page 315 note 39 iii, 612–713.
page 315 note 40 Ll. 13381–14100.
page 315 note 41 P. 312.
page 315 note 42 Compare Tale of Melibeus under Ire (B, 2317): “’He that is irous and wrooth,’ as seith Senek, ‘ne may nat speke but he blame thinges'; and with his viciouse wordes he stireth other folk to angre and to ire” (compare Tupper's own characterization [Publications, p. 103] of this stanza as “at once vehement and vindictive”); Parson's Tale, under Ire (I, 557): “Outrageous wratthe … spareth neither Crist, ne his swete mooder. And in his outrageous anger and Ire … ful many oon … feleth in his herte ful wikkedly, both of Crist and of alle hise halwes”; (I, 579): “Yet comen ther of Ire manye mo sinnes … as he that arretteth upon god, or blameth god”; and see especially above (p. 314) the quotation from Jacob's Well, p. 155.
page 316 note 43 Cf. I, 510: “Som tyme grucching comth of ire … Thanne comth eek bitternesse of herte.”
page 316 note 44 See the citations from Jacob's Well, p. 94 (p. 312 above) and p. 155 (p. 314 above).
page 316 note 45 See the whole section of the Parson's Tale on “Chydinge and reproche” under Wrath (I, § 42), especially the portion (I, 623 ff.) which deals with him “that repreveth his neighebor.”
page 316 note 46 B, 106–112.
page 316 note 47 Cf. Mirour de l'Omme (under Ire), 11. 3961 ff.: “L'Inpacient envers tres tous Est fel et trop contrarious … Et en response est despitous.”
page 316 note 48 Tupper does not point out that the chapter in the De Contemptu Mundi on which Chaucer here draws (Bk. I, cap. 14: “De miseria pauperis et diuitis”) is not from that part of the treatise which deals with the Sins, namely, the second book. On the contrary, he definitely brings the passage into association, in his readers' mind, with that discussion of the Sins. The fact that “Innocent's famous tract, … which gives so large a space to the Vices, supplied him with Deadly Sins material in the Pardoner's Prologue and Tale” is not of value “as an indication of his present purpose” (Publications, p. 103)—unless in drawing upon one part of a document Chaucer always meant to carry over into his specific borrowing the implications of every other portion of his source. Cf. also Publications, p. 118.
page 317 note 49 Compare the Parson's “accusinge” (with reference to “his neighebor”), under “grucching [that] comth of ire or prive hate” (I, 508).
page 317 note 50 Cf. “Thanne comth malignitee” (ibid.).
page 317 note 51 See above, p. 312.
page 317 note 52 I, e., “the Cursing phase of Wrath.”
page 317 note 53 The reference is wrong, even for Ellis's translation (Temple Classics, ii, p. 27), from which it is taken. It should be (for Ellis) 11. 8360 ff. The reference for the French is 11. 8712 ff. (ed. Michel, i, p. 265).
page 317 note 54 Nation, p. 41. This is chiefly Ellis. Jean de Meun has nothing about “the shamefaced spouse of misery.” The lines so translated (11. 8712–13; cf. Ellis, ii, p. 27) are: “Povreté maint à l'autre chief, Plaine de honte et de meschief.” He has nothing about “wedding a man to hate.” The lines so translated (11. 8738–39; cf. Ellis, ii, p. 28) are: “Povreté fait home despire, Et haïr et vivre à martire.”
page 317 note 55 Despite is incidentally mentioned under Envy in the Parson's Tale (I, 505); it is one of the stones of Wrath in the Pèlerinage (11. 15680 ff.); it is more commonly a branch of Pride (Parson's Tale, Mirour, Ayenbite, Jacob's Well).
page 318 note 56 Hate is a branch (commonly a main one) of Wrath in the Parson's Tale, the Mirour, the Confessio, the Ayenbite, Jacob's Well, Frère Lorens, and Peraldus. It is a branch of Envy in Raymund of Pennaforte (Petersen, p. 27).
page 318 note 57 Nation, p. 41. We have already seen the wide provenience of “grucching.”
page 318 note 58 Ll. 14763–15500.
page 318 note 59 See 11. 22741–46.
page 318 note 60 Ll. 2257–61.
page 318 note 61 Ll. 15691–98. There is still another direct association with Wrath. Compare the vivid account (11. 22747–50, 22754–56) of Impatient Poverty as “the comune ape Affore ffolke to pleye and Iape” with the Parson's account of the japeres (De Ira, I, 650), “the develes apes,” at whose “japerie” people laugh as “at the gaudes of an ape.” The other sin with which Impatient Poverty associates itself, in this same passage in the Pèlerinage, is not Envy, but Sloth: “I love no maner besynesse, But oonly slouthe and ydelnesse” (11. 22765–66). Compare the association of Impatience with Sloth in the Ayenbite (p. 33) and Jacob's Well (p. 112).
page 319 note 62 Regement of Princes (E. E. T. S.), p. 39 (Nation, p. 41). The passage “in Lydgate's version of Aesop” (for which no reference is given either) I have not found.
page 319 note 63 See above, p. 315.
page 319 note 64 Nation, p. 41.
page 319 note 65 Early English Dramatists (“Lost” Tudor Plays), ed. Parmer, p. 342.
page 319 note 66 P. 318.
page 319 note 67 P. 346.
page 320 note 68 P. 320.
page 320 note 69 See above, p. 267. It is perfectly easy to show that in the Interlude the tradition which has survived is that of Impatience. See, for example, pp. 316, 319, etc.
page 320 note 70 Compare Publications, 118: “Chaucer adheres to the ironical design … by making an envious man (the anonymous speaker of the Prologue, later identified with the Man of Law merely through the context) furnish in his narrative large evidence against Envy.” Compare Nation, p. 41: “The cry of Chaucer's envious man, ‘O riche marchaunts,‘” etc.
page 320 note 71 I shall not dwell on the difficulty (which Mr. Tupper takes lightly) involved in the “final assignment” (see also the parenthetical statement in the preceding note above) of “this derelict tale” (Tatlock, Development and Chronology, p. 188). As Mr. Tupper himself points out (Nation, Oct. 16, 1913, p. 355), “the tale of Constance … was inserted here, apparently, as an afterthought.” It should not be forgotten that the theory has already one “afterthought” to carry, in the Second Nun's Tale.
page 320 note 72 Publications, p. 110. Cf. Nation, p. 41, fifth paragraph, end.
page 321 note 73 “Thou blamest … thou wytest … ‘Parfay,‘ seistow ”—and so on.
page 321 note 74 This, of course, is Innocent's attitude too (“O miserabilis mendicantis conditio,” etc.).
page 321 note 75 Not only does it appear in most of the categories (see, for instance, Ayenbite, p. 40; Jacob's Well, p. 131; Handlyng Synne, p. 177; Mirour, 11. 6329 ff.; etc.), but it is of constant occurrence elsewhere. See Sermones Aurei, ii, p. 236: “Quadruplex est lex. Prima est lex cupiditatis, quae est Advocatorum”; Wyclif, ed. Arnold, iii, p. 153: “Bot men of lawe and marchauntis … synnen more in avarice þen done pore laboreres”; Roman de la Rose, 1. 5812 (ed. Michel, i, p. 170; cf. Chaucerian Frag.-B, 11. 5721–23), on advocates and physicians; etc. Avarice herself becomes an advocate in the Pèlerinage (11. 18244 ff.), and the long section in the Mirour (11. 24817–25176) on the “gens de loy” offers abundant evidence. These are merely representative examples.
page 321 note 76 Publications, p. 110, n. 35.
page 322 note 77 P. 102, 11. 2819–21: “Riзt as lop-webbys, flyes smale and gnattes taken, and suffre grete flyes go, ffor al þis worlde, lawe is now rewlyd so.”
page 322 note 78 For “lop-webbe” see Astrolabe, I, 21, 3: “The Riet of thyn Astrolabie with thy zodiak, shapen in maner of a net or of a loppewebbe.” For “loppe,” see I, 19, 3: “crokede strykes lyk to the clawes of a loppe”; I, 3, 4: “a webbe of a loppe.”
page 322 note 79 Ll. 17560 ff.: “And as an yreyne sowketh the flye,” etc. It is Avarice herself who is speaking, with reference to her treatment of the poor.
page 322 note 80 “Symonye and Cyuile” (B, ii, 62, 66, 71, 167, 168); “And preide Cyuile to se and Symonye to rede it” (70); “Bi siзte of sire Symonye and Cyules leve” (113); “Here-to assenteth Cyuile m ac Symonye ne wolde” (141). See Book ii, passim.
page 323 note 81 Publications, p. 101. “It is a chief phase of Pride to scorn the poor,” Tupper goes on (n. 16), and cites Langland's “poverte to despise” (B. ii, 79) in his support. To make assurance double sure, he repeats this slip in the Nation, p. 41. See below, p. 324.
page 324 note 82 Nation, p. 41.
page 324 note 83 See above, p. 323.
page 324 note 84 Impatient Poverty, pp. 314–15, 327–28.
page 324 note 85 I. e., “þo þridde part of þe chirche” (“þo laboreres,” “þo puple,” “pore men of þo comyne”). The subject of Wyclif's chapter is the causes of envy among the laity, as contrasted with priests and knights.
page 324 note 86 Rather, “commonalty, the commons, the laity.”
page 324 note 87 “Deceite bitwixe marchant and marchant” is under Avarice in the Parson's Tale (I, 776). Compare the whole section on “Chaffer” (under Avarice) in the Ayenbite (pp. 44–45); the section on “fals marchaundyse” (under Avarice) in Jacob's Well (pp. 133–34); Handlyng Synne, 11. 5945–50; etc.
page 324 note 88 Temple Classics, I, p. 177. For the text, see ed. Michel, i, p. 166, 11. 5703–07.
page 325 note 89 B-Fragment, 11. 5590–5600. Compare also Roman de la Rose, ed. Michel, i, p. 169 (11. 5792 ff.), where the connection with Avarice becomes still more explicit, and goes on to include (11. 5812 ff.) advocates, physicians, and preachers. See the B-Fragment, 11. 5697 ff.
page 325 note 90 For the Avarice of merchants, see above, p. 324, n. 87, and add Wyclif (ed. Arnold), iii, p. 153: “þo þridde part of þo Chirche … hafs mony partis smytted wiþ avarice, and specially marchaundis”; Vox Clamantis, Bk. v, chaps. xii-xiv; Mirour de l'Omme, 11. 25177–25980; Barclay, ii, p. 169 (foot); etc. But the point is too obvious to need illustration.
page 325 note 91 For this, see below, p. 326.
page 325 note 92 See above, p. 321.
page 325 note 93 See above, p. 311.
page 325 note 94 Publications, p. 116.
page 326 note 95 It is, of course, Detraction in love (see gloss to ii, 587 ff.). Mr. Tupper is mistaken, however, if he supposes that Detraction is a Merkmal of Envy alone. It is a “spyce” of Pride in Handlyng Synne (p. 122); the Parson includes it (as a phase of spiritual homicide) under Wrath (I, 565); and in Jacob's Well it is classed under Gluttony, as a Sin of the Tongue (p. 150; cf. Ayenbite, p. 62).
page 326 note 96 See especially Siefkin, Das geduldige Weib in der englischen Literatur bis auf Shakspere: Teil I: Der Konstanzetypus (Rathenow, 1903).
page 326 note 97 Publications, pp. 122–23. Cf. Nation, Oct. 16, 1913, p. 355.
page 327 note 98 Parson's Tale, I, 735—under Fortitude, the remedy for Sloth.
page 327 note 99 See above, p. 298. And compare Siefkin (pp. 23, 76), who links the two together.
page 327 note 100 Ll. 14317 ff.
page 327 note 101 Pp. 167–68.
page 327 note 102 Eilers, p. 570.
page 327 note 103 Petersen, p. 66, n. 1.
page 327 note 104 A vertu that is called Fortitudo or Strengthe“ (I, § 60). In the Ayenbite (pp. 161 ff.) Prowess is designated as ”þe yefþe of Strengþe.“
page 327 note 105 “Constaunce, that is, stableness of corage” (I, § 61); “Prowesse is huanne corage onworþeþ al þet ne is naзt in his pouer” (Ayenbite, p. 164); “Ac huanne god yefþ to þe manne þise grace … þet me clepeþ þe gost of strengþe, he hym yefþ ane newe herte ane noble herte and hardi … Hardyesse uor to þolie alle þe kueadnesse þet þe wordle may þreapni” (ibid., p. 162); “þis ground of strengthe or hardynesse” (Jacob's Well, p. 288).
page 328 note 106 “This vertu [Fortitudo] is so mighty and so vigorous, that it dar withstonde mightily,” etc. (I, § 60). Cf. Jacob's Well, p. 289: “þe зyfte of strengthe, whiche зyfte schal make þe strong and myзty to dure.”
page 328 note 107 Is not Tupper himself among those who see the light and know it not? Constance “achieves in the end the high reward of her strength and loyalty” (Nation, Oct. 16, 1913, p. 355); the Tale “exalts the loyalty and strength of the stately wife and mother” (Publications, p. 123).
page 328 note 108 “þe oþer poynt [of Sleuþe] is inpacience” (Ayenbite, p. 33); “þe secunde fote brede [of Accidia] is vnpacience” (Jacob's Well, p. 112). And “inpacience” is the fourteenth twig of Sloth in Frère Lorens (Eilers, p. 535).
page 328 note 109 I, 497.
page 328 note 110 Ayenbite, p. 167—under “þe uerþe stape of Prouesse.”
page 328 note 111 B, 530, 532.
page 329 note 112 B, 451–462. “O clere, o welful auter, holy croys,” etc.
page 329 note 113 Before Mr. Tupper's article was written I had collected the evidence for this statement, which I may some day print. The hymn which Skeat quotes (Oxford Chaucer, v, p. 155) is only one of several involved.
page 329 note 114 B, 841–54. “Moder” quod she, “and mayde bright, Marye … Thou haven of refut, brighte sterre of day,” etc.
page 329 note 115 B, 20–23, 32–34.
page 329 note 116 Publications, pp. 115–16.
page 329 note 117 A, 321–22.
page 329 note 118 B, 932–45 above.
page 329 note 119 I shall not take the trouble to shatter this creation of my own. “It is a pratty childe,” as Mak's wife says of the ci-devant sheep. So are they all—these changelings left of late with Chaucer by the Seven Deadly Sins.
page 330 note 1 Publications, p. 99, n. 12.
page 330 note 2 iii, between lines 416 and 417.
page 330 note 3 Opposite iii, 639 ff. See “strif” in 1. 650.
page 331 note 4 Opposite iii, 736 ff. The tale itself begins: “Yit cam ther nevere good of strif.”
page 331 note 5 Opposite iii, 783 ff.
page 331 note 6 Proloque, 1. 215.
page 331 note 7 v, 541.
page 331 note 8 See, for instance, C. i, 103–08.
page 331 note 9 Pp. 65–67 (Sins of the Tongue). Richard Morris also translates it Strife, in both his heading and his gloss (see p. 65).
page 331 note 10 Wyclif (cited by Murray) translates James, iv, 1 (“Unde bella et lites in vobis?”): “Wherof bateyles and cheestes, or chidinges, among зou?” The Parson (who does not include it under “Chydinge,” I, § 42) is somewhat ambigious: “Thanne stant the sinne of contumelie or stryf and cheeste” (I, 555).
page 331 note 11 iii, 424. Compare also the Latin verses at the head of the section.
page 331 note 12 iii, 433–34.
page 332 note 13 Gloss (iii, 783 ff.). See also the introductory lines, quoted below, p. 334, n. 23.
page 332 note 14 Publications, p. 102.
page 332 note 15 “Biwreying of conseil” immediately precedes (§ 47).
page 332 note 16 Publications, p. 102, n. 19. It is also interesting to compare the Manciple's lines on Jangling “with the Parson's words on the same theme” in I, 405: “Janglinge, is when men speken to muche biforn folk, and clappen as a mille, and taken no kepe what they seye.” But that is Pride. (Compare also Cursor Mundi, 11. 27620–22; Pèlerinage, 14414). It is still further interesting to compare what Gower himself says (Confessio, ii, 398, 425, 452–54) about jangling in affairs of love (the Manciple's own theme), especially the lover's conclusion:
I telle it noght to ten ne tuelve,
Therof I wol me wel avise,
To speke or jangle in eny wise
That toucheth to my ladi name (ii, 524–27).
But that is Envy. The interest grows when we compare Piers Plowman, B. ii, 93–94: “And alday to drynke at dyuerse tauernes, And there to iangle and to iape.” But that is Gluttony. See below, p. 341.
page 333 note 17 Publications, p. 116.
page 333 note 18 Publications of the Modern Language Association, xxvi, p. 236.
page 333 note 19 iii, 815–17.
page 333 note 20 iii, 828–30.
page 333 note 21 iii, 831–35.
page 334 note 22 See iii, 472–77, and cf. 443, 492, 534, 552, 565, 575, 580, 591.
page 334 note 23 See especially the correspondence with the second line of the introduction to the tale of Phœbus: “Hold conseil and descoevre it noght, For Cheste can no conseil hele, Or be it wo or be it wele: And tak a tale into thi mynde, The which of olde ensample I finde” (ii, 778–82) —and the “olde ensample” is the tale of the crow. See also the gloss, quoted above, p. 332. The moral of the next tale (the “tunges unteid”) has been given above.
page 334 note 24 The one (it may be observed) has five, the other fifty-three lines.
page 335 note 25 Publications, p. 119.
page 335 note 26 Publications, p. 102, n. 20.
page 335 note 27 In which Mr. Chambers anticipates Tupper. He comments (Modern Language Review, v, p. 19) on the lines above: “Chiding and chattering rightly come under Wrathe.”
page 335 note 28 B. v, 87–88.
page 335 note 29 Pp. 121–22, especially 11. 3515–16, 3525–26.
page 335 note 30 Pp. 221–22, especially 11. 6887 ff.
page 335 note 31 P. 145, 1. 10.
page 335 note 32 P. 19.
page 336 note 33 Met., ii, 540–41. Compare the emphasis throughout the story: “loquax” (1. 535), “garrula” (1. 547), and 11. 549–50.
page 336 note 34 Publications, p. 109.
page 336 note 35 Journal, p. 565.
page 337 note 36 I, 540.
page 337 note 37 H, 81.
page 337 note 38 H, 71–75.
page 337 note 39 A, 586.
page 338 note 40 H, 279–91.
page 338 note 41 Parson's Tale, Peraldus, Raymund of Pennaforte, Pèlerinage, Confessio, Mirour, Ayenbite, Jacob's Well.
page 338 note 42 iii, 1096 ff., 1751 ff., 1861 ff.
page 338 note 43 Ll. 4741 ff. Compare especially Chaucer's “unavysed” (1. 280) and Gower's “unavised” (Confessio, iii, 1098)—adding Spenser's “unadvized” (F. Q., i, iv, 34, 1. 3).
page 338 note 44 See B, 404–06; E, 2058–59; Bk. of Duchesse, 11. 636–41.
page 339 note 45 Publications, p. 125, n. 56.
page 339 note 46 Publications, p. 102. On p. 96, “Chiding, as a Sin of the Tongue, is sometimes found apart … from its category of Wrath.”
page 339 note 47 It is, of course, so classed in Chaucer. The Parson concludes his discourse on Ire as follows: “Thise been the sinnes that comen of the tonge, that comen of Ire and of othere sinnes mo” (I, 653). The Parson simply happens to include Sins of the Tongue under Wrath.
page 339 note 48 Publications, p. 102 (above).
page 339 note 49 Ibid., p. 125 (above).
page 339 note 50 Ibid., p. 125, n. 56: “Compare their place in Le Mireour du Monde and the Ayenbite.” That place Tupper himself states in “The Pardoner's Tavern”: “Dan Michel, in his Ayenbite of Inwit (pp. 56–57), following Le Mireour du Monde (pp. 170–171), discusses, under the head of Gluttony, ‘the zennes that byeth ydo ine the taverne‘” (Journal, p. 559). And in the Ayenbite, as Chambers remarks (Modern Language Review, v, p. 20): “Evil speaking of all kinds goes with gluttony as being a sin of the mouth (Ayenbite, p. 50).” The italics are Chambers's. Tupper's reference is scarcely happy as evidence for the place of Sins of the Tongue under Wrath.
page 340 note 51 Sins of the Tongue are classed with absolute explicitness (as “Sins of the Tavern”) under Gluttony in Jacob's Well. See the passage quoted above, p. 274. In the Ayenbite, Gluttony and Sins of the Tongue are classed together as Sin of the Mouth (p. 50).
page 340 note 52 Pp. 65, 69.
page 341 note 53 Publications, p. 105, n. 26; Journal, p. 561.
page 341 note 54 B. ii, 92–94.
page 342 note 1 Publications, p. 112.
page 342 note 2 Publications, p. 99.
page 342 note 3 The section has its own heading: “Murmur in aduersis ita concipit ille superbus, Pena quod ex bina sorte perurget eum, Obuia fortune cum spes in amore resistit, Non sine mentali murmure plangit amans” (i, before 1. 1343). The gloss reads: “Hic loquitur de Murmure et Planctu, qui super omnes alios Inobediencie secreciores vt ministri illi deseruiunt.” And Macaulay's page-heading for the section is “[Murmur and Complaint].”
page 342 note 4 i, 1343–55. Cf. 1363: “Yit wol thei grucche be som weie”; 1. 1378: “Of Murmur and Compleignte of love”; 1. 1385: “I grucche anon”; 1. 1389: “With many a Murmur, god it wot”; etc.
page 343 note 5 Nation, p. 41.
page 343 note 6 So again: “We must not be surprised to find that to Chaucer and his fellows … Murmuration or ‘Grucching’ against one's own wretched lot belongs as truly to Envy as does Detraction of one's neighbors” (Publications, p. 95).
page 343 note 7 With i, 1382–94 (the lover's description of his silent “grucching” against his lady) compare 11. 1781–94 of the tale.
page 343 note 8 Publications, pp. 100–101, 108–09.
page 343 note 9 Which (like Murmuration) Tupper twice interprets (it will be recalled) as Envy. When he says that “this excellent sermon is but an expansion of the commonplaces that inevitably appear in all mediæval discourses upon Pride” (Publications, p. 100), he is making a strong overstatement. He himself points out on the very next page (n. 15)—as we shall see below—that this is not the case in the Confessio Amantis. Nor is it in the Pèlerinage; and others might easily be added. He also greatly exaggerates, when he speaks (p. 115) of “the edifying commonplaces (on Gentilesse) with which, in much the same language, the Parson has preached against the first of the Vices” (compare also p. 101, n. 14). The test is perfectly easy to make, line by line. Mr. Tupper has forgotten, apparently, Jean de Meun, Boethius, and Dante (in the Purgatorio). The influence of the Convivio I have just pointed out. See below, p. 348, n. 23.
page 344 note 10 Publications, p. 101, n. 15.
page 344 note 11 See above, p. 298.
page 344 note 12 iv, 2015–16. The discussion of Prowess includes lines 2014–2362. Fortitude, Strength, Force, and Prowess are interchangeable in the categories. Cf. I, § 60: “Fortitudo or Strengthe” —which in Frère Lorens (Eilers, p. 570) is “Le don de force,” or “la vertu de proesce.” It is unnecessary to go through the others. See also p. 327 above.
page 345 note 13 iv, 2196–99.
page 345 note 14 Compare: “aschamed of þi poore freendys, pride of þi riche kyn, or of þi gentyl kyn,” in Jacob's Well (p. 294). And this is under Shrift (which brings “the зyfte of strengthe”) and Shrift is one part of the armor of Strength or Prowesse (p. 292).
page 345 note 15 iv, 2016–19.
page 345 note 16 Ed. Trojel, pp. 70 ff. I quote the heading from the Codex Parisinus.
page 345 note 17 The Knight speaks: “Sed in plebeia probitas ex solius animi innata virtute optima mentis dispositione procedit, et sic quasi naturale censetur. Tua igitur non possunt exempla procedere, unde merito dicendum credo, magis in plebeia quam in nobili probitatem esse laudandam” (p. 72). The woman objects: “Nam quum nobilis sanguine ac generosus inveniaris, patenter ipsi conaris nobilitati detrahere et contra ipsius placitare jura contendis,” etc. (p. 73). The knight replies: “Amor enim personam saepe degenerem et deformem tanquam nobilem et formosam repraesentat amanti et facit, eam plus quam omnes alias nobilem atque pulcherrimam deputari … Mirari ergo non debes, si te quamvis ignobilem genere omni tarnen decoris fulgore et morum probitate fulgentem tota contendo amare virtute,” etc. (p. 75). The whole chapter is worth reading in the present connection.
page 346 note 18 D, 1128–30.
page 346 note 19 It is interesting to observe, too, that the Gentilesse-Prowesse passage is linked in another way with the theme of the Tale. The key to the story, of course, is the question, four times repeated, “What thing is it that Wommen most desyren?” (D, 905, 1007), or, “What wommen loven moost” (D, 985, 921; cf. also D, 925 ff.). In Gower, “The wommen loven worthinesse Of manhode and of gentilesse, For the gentils ben most desired” (I, 2197–99). The knight in the Wife's Tale had found out one thing that women loved; he had not discovered all—and he is taught his lesson. Mr. Tupper insists on “the context of romantic love” (Journal, p. 555). The Lady's retort courteous is exquisitely pertinent to that.
page 347 note 20 Journal, p. 554.
page 347 note 21 In this connection Tupper has overlooked, I think, two rather important facts. The first is that “obedience in love” is (“strangely enough,” perhaps, but none the less truly) not the antitype of Pride (even of Inobedience) in the Parson's Tale (which Tupper has now quite abandoned) at all, nor is it in Frère Lorens (Eilers, p. 568). “Obedience in love” is part of the remedium against Lechery in the Parson's Tale (§ 80), and it is there considered at great length. Obedience is not necessarily the antitype of Inobedience, any more than Devotion is necessarily the antitype of Undevotion (see above, p. 300, n. 74). Even in Gower (Mirour, 11. 12109 ff.), where Obedience is one of the five daughters of Humility, it is not treated from Tupper's point of view, but in its religious aspects. The same is true of the discussion of “Boзsamnesse” in the Ayenbite (pp. 140–41). Obedience is also in the Parson's Tale part of the remedium of Wrath (I, 674). In Jacob's Well (pp. 268–72) Obedience is the “clene grounde” that appears when the gravel beneath the ooze of Wrath is removed; it is also (p. 254) part of the ground of Friendship underneath the ooze of Envy. I point all this out in the interest of a sympathetic attitude towards the mediæval reader, who was supposed to play his Sins unerringly. The second point is the fact that pride in birth or riches and contempt for the poor (the opposite of Gentilesse) have no immediate connection whatever with Inobedience. They belong to a different part of Pride's territory altogether. The homily on Gentilesse is not a harangue against the Wife's own (supposedly) particular type of Pride at all. Mr. Tupper adduces no evidence (nor is there any) that she had either pride of birth or riches, or contempt for the poor.
page 348 note 22 Ed. Michel, i, p. 68.
page 348 note 23 “Proesce” and “gentillèce” appear together in the long passage in Jean de Meun (ed. Michel, ii, pp. 251–61) on which Chaucer draws to some extent in the Loathly Lady's discourse. See especially pp. 251, 257, 258. In a paper (Modern Philology, May, 1915) which was in the printer's hands before this article was begun, I have presented evidence that in the Gentilesse passage in the Wife of Bath's Tale Chaucer is drawing largely on Dante's Convivio. And it is worth noting that in Dante's discussion of Gentilezza, too, this same virtue of Prowesse appears. “Il nobile uomo,” in his prime of life (between adolescence and old age) must manifest five virtues: “Lealtà, Cortesia, Amore, Fortezza e Temperanza” (Convivio, iv, 26, 143–44).
page 348 note 24 “Thou mayst ensample take of Keye.”
page 348 note 25 I have had for several years abundant proof of this statement, which I shall print when I have time to put the evidence together.
page 348 note 26 Tupper cites (Journal p. 554) the God's command against Pride. This command, however, has no bearing on the Lady's homily. Tupper has put a period after 1. 2249 in his quotation of the passage, where the text has a comma, thus changing materially the sense of the lines. If he had continued, we should have seen what the God of Love had in mind: “Shun pride—but dressing well is not pride”—
Cointerie n'est mie orguiex,
Qui cointes est, il en vaut miex:
Por quoi il soit d'orgoil vuidiés,
Qu'il ne soit fox n'outrecuidiés (11. 2147–50).
And then he goes on with his “costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.” He has already dealt (under “vilonnie”) with what Mr. Tupper has in mind.
page 349 note 27 T. & C., i, 1079–85. Cited in Journal, p. 555.
page 349 note 28 iv, 2298–2304. Tupper does not note, when he says that Troilus “divests himself utterly … of the Sin of Pride” that “his japes and his crueltee” are not Pride but Wrath, or that in another stanza Chaucer says of Troilus:
Thus wolde Love, y-heried be his grace,
That Pryde, Envye, Ire, and Avarice
He gan to flee, and every other vyce (iii, 1804–06).
But the idea is a commonplace in the Troilus —and elsewhere. See, for example, Andreas Capellanus: “Effectus autem amoris hic est, quia verus amator nulla posset avaritia offuscari, amor horridum et incultum omni facit formositate pollere, infimos natu etiam morum novit nobilitate ditare, superbos quoque solet humilitate beare,” etc. (pp. 9–10).
page 350 note 29 Journal, p. 555.
page 350 note 30 I do not wish the interpretation which I have just given of the Gentilesse passage to be regarded in quite the same light as my purely ad hoc construction, on the basis of Fortitudo, in the case of The Tale of Constance (see above, pp. 326 ff.) That the general association of Gentilesse and Prowesse (which seems to have been overlooked until Mr. Tupper's remark drew my attention to it) was in Chaucer's mind, there can be, I think, little doubt, in view of his mention of Prowesse in the passage. But I do not believe for a moment that Chaucer was thereby exemplifying Sloth! And my present purpose is chiefly to demonstrate that from the mediæval point of view (which Tupper has abandoned) Gentilesse as a phase of Prowesse (Sloth) fits the case far better than Gentilesse as an antitype of Pride.
page 350 note 31 Eilers, p. 535. “Unbuxomness” also appears under Avarice in Jacob's Well (p. 135).
page 350 note 32 D, 223.
page 351 note 33 I, 392.
page 351 note 34 Cf. D, 278–80.
page 351 note 35 I, 630–34.
page 351 note 36 Publications, p. 116. The Inobedient Wife appears under Pride (besides her appearance in the Mirour, which Tupper—Publications, p. 109—points out) in the Cursor Mundi, 11. 28152–55 (“I womman haue vn-buxum bene And tarid myn husband to tene, In many thyng þat i suld don, And noght queþer my lagh vndon”) and Jacob's Well, p. 72 (“ Also þou wyif, vnbuxom to þin husbonde vnleffully, þou servaunt vnbuxom to þi mayster,” etc.). In all these cases the reference is (like “grucching against poverty” under Envy) a single minor detail in a larger treatment.
page 352 note 37 D, 235–378.
page 352 note 38 D, 536–39.
page 353 note 39 D, 276–77.
page 353 note 40 D, 487–89.
page 353 note 41 D, 792–96.
page 353 note 42 That they were so read we know on the testimony of the one unimpeachable, first-hand witness that we have—the Clerk of Oxford. For the Clerk, at the close of his Tale, sets the Wife of Bath over against Griselda. And Griselda is the type of Patience, and Patience (still to keep the point of view demanded by the theory itself) is the antitype, not of Pride, but of Wrath. (It is so in the Parson's Tale, §§ 50–52, in the Mirour, 11. 13381–14100, and in the Confessio, iii, 612–713; cf. 1–18, 1098, etc.). And the matchless irony of the Clerk's Envoy is directed against the very Chiding to which the Wife herself has given the first place—“ the arwes of [hir] crabbed eloquence.” If we are to think in terms of the Sins at all, the verdict of the Clerk of Oxford is unequivocally for Wrath.
page 354 note 43 See, for example, 11. 46, 138, etc.
page 354 note 44 Ll. 604–26; and passim.
page 354 note 45 Publications, p. 108. He does, however, recognize her “desclaiming” of Virginity, in connection with his Saint Venus theory (Nation, Oct. 16, 1913, p. 355, col. 3). It furthers there; it hinders here.
page 354 note 46 D, 464–66. See the rest of the passage.
page 354 note 47 Publications, p. 108.
page 354 note 48 D, 553–55, 559. See 550–62, and cf. 337–61. “Now as of the outrageous array of wommen,” says the Parson, “… yet notifie they in hir array of atyr likerousnesse and pryde” (I, 429). For the same implications, compare the warnings against fine clothes (among them “curchefs crisp and bendes bright”) under Lechery, in the Cursor Mundi (11. 28018 ff., 28514 ff.), and cf. Deschamps, Miroir de Mariage, ch. xlii.
page 355 note 49 Publications, pp. 108–09.
page 355 note 50 Publications, p. 108.
page 355 note 51 Journal, p. 556.
page 355 note 52 ii, 5—second line from foot of page.
page 357 note 53 P. 10.
page 357 note 54 Beginning on p. 122 of his Publications article, Mr. Tupper proceeds to discuss the blending of the “Sins motif ” with the “love motif,” which he had earlier elaborated in the Nation, Oct. 16, 1913 (Vol. 97, No. 2520), pp. 354–56. Once more I plead guilty to welcoming at the outset what seemed to be new light, only to find, upon closer investigation, that (to me at least) the light was darkness. In spite of much that is suggestive in the first Nation article, its method is open to many of the same objections that lie against the treatment of the “Sins motif.” But this last theory stands or falls altogether independently of the first, and I do not wish to prolong a discussion that has exceeded bounds already. I shall therefore pass over this part of Mr. Tupper's argument.
page 358 note 1 Compare Croesus (B, 3917 ff.).
page 358 note 2 Compare Antiochus (B, 3789 ff.).
page 358 note 3 Compare Nero (B, 3717 ff.).
page 358 note 4 I, 470. Compare also the Ayenbite (p. 24) for the wheel of Fortune, and Pride; Jacob's Well (p. 78) for comments, under Pride, on the text: “Qui se exaltat, humiliabitur”; and in general compare Jacob's Well, p. 237; Pèlerinage, 11. 14233–42; Mirour, 11. 1274–96, 1828–31, 2596 ff.; etc.
page 359 note 5 Purg., xii, 25–27.
page 359 note 6 De Contemptu Mundi, ii, 31.
page 359 note 7 i, 3299 ff.
page 359 note 8 Ll. 1873 ff.
page 359 note 9 P. 16.
page 359 note 10 Ll. 14030 ff.
page 359 note 11 Ed. Matthew, pp. 2, 3, 123.
page 359 note 12 Story of Thebes and Troy-booh (see Serpent of Division, ed. MacCracken, pp. 5–6).
page 359 note 13 ii, 159, 163–65.
page 359 note 14 Ll. 14048 ff., 14435 ff.
page 359 note 15 i, 3303–04.
page 359 note 16 ii, 165.
page 359 note 17 ii, 32.
page 359 note 18 Ll. 14220 ff.
page 359 note 19 i, 2785 ff.
page 359 note 20 Ll. 1886 ff.
page 359 note 21 ii, 165.
page 359 note 22 ii, 32.
page 359 note 23 Purg., xii, 58–60.
page 359 note 24 ii, 162, 165.
page 359 note 25 ii, 32.
page 359 note 26 ii, 165.
page 359 note 27 Serpent of Division, pp. 50 (1. 3), 65 (1. 28). Caesar is also an exemplum, in the Serpent, of Fortune's mutability; see p. 65, 11. 21 ff.
page 360 note 28 B, 3951–54.
page 360 note 29 So “grete hors” are mentioned by Wyclif as one “ensaumple” of the pride of prelates (ed. Matthew, p. 30); compare the still fuller and more explicit statements on pp. 60, 92, 121. With the Monk's “grehoundes” (A, 190) compare the delight “yn horsys, haukys, or yn houndes ” (especially in the case of clerks) in Handlyng Synne (11. 3083–86). Tupper has used the General Prologue in his treatment of the Wife of Bath (Publications, p. 108), so it is open to us here. But in any case the theory allows for “afterthoughts.”
page 361 note 30 Ll. 3325 ff., 3429 ff., 3557 ff., 3587–88, 3647 ff., 3740, 3858–60, 3912–16.
page 361 note 31 Ll. 3191, 3566, 3591, 3635–36, 3709–10, 3746–47, 3773–74, 3823, 3851–52, 3868, 3876, 3884, 3924, 3927.
page 361 note 32 Ll. 3957–69.
page 361 note 33 Ll. 3970–77.
page 361 note 34 B, 4515–20. This follows the line: “So was he ravisshed with his flaterye.”
page 362 note 35 B, 4626–33. The “exemplum formula” becomes even more explicit in the closing prayer (11. 4634–36).
page 362 note 36 B, 4460. Incidentally, singing (Handlyng Synne, p. 107), or one's voice (Jacob's Well, p. 69), is one of the gifts which lead to Pride.
page 362 note 37 Ll. 14688–93.
page 362 note 38 P. 61.
page 362 note 39 P. 150.
page 362 note 40 And, I imagine, was present in Chaucer's mind—yet without Sin.
page 362 note 41 On the Sources of the N. P. T., p. 91.
page 363 note 42 And as in the Friar's Tale so here Chaucer “doubles the story's aptness” by making the fox's downfall the punishment of his Pride:
Lo, how fortune turneth sodeinly
The hope and pryde eek of hir enemy!—
and Chantecleer's counter-trick follows.
page 363 note 43 Ll. 1405–10.
page 363 note 44 P. 61.
page 363 note 45 P. 150.
page 363 note 46 Ayenbite, p. 61; cf. Jacob's Well, p. 150. In the Pèlerinage Pride's mantel of Hypocrisy is lined with fox-skin (11. 14590 ff.).
page 363 note 47 Ll. 14247–89.
page 363 note 48 Ll. 14275–76.
page 363 note 49 Ll. 14283–89.
page 363 note 50 Ll. 1369 ff.
page 363 note 51 Ll. 14645–14762.
page 363 note 52 P. 23.
page 363 note 53 Ll. 3501 ff.
page 363 note 54 Journal, p. 562.
page 363 note 55 See the last five lines of I, § 40.
page 363 note 56 Flattery is also among the Sins of the Tongue in the Ayenbite (p. 60) and Jacob's Well (p. 149). It is treated under the Points of Policy in the Confessio (vii, 2177–2694).
page 364 note 57 Publications, p. 110.
page 364 note 58 Ed. Arnold, iii, p. 281.
page 364 note 59 Ed. Matthew, p. 63.
page 364 note 60 Ibid., p. 274. Cf. pp. 237, 246, etc.; Mirour, II. 21250–21432. Compare also the Summoner's remark (D, 1294) about the “flateringe limitour.” As for the Nun's Priest, Professor Lawrence has pointed out—not, I hasten to add, in even remote connection with the present theme—that he “is subject to a lady who is his ecclesiastical superior” (Modern Philology, xi, p. 254). He was therefore at least in a position where flattery might “avaunce.” And we know that the Prioress loved “chere of court,” and “as forto speke [of] court real … there it [flaterie] is most special” (Confessio, vii, 2209–10). “This suggestion … is only a plausible conjecture.”
page 364 note 61 Petersen, p. 43.
page 365 note 62 P. 42.
page 365 note 63 Pp. 42–45.
page 365 note 64 Publications, p. 116.
page 365 note 65 Nation, Oct. 16, 1913, p. 355; Publications, p. 97. See Lawrence, Modern Philology, xi, pp. 256–57, for a fuller statement of the evidence.
page 365 note 66 Mirour, 1. 1045.
page 365 note 67 I, 857. Compare the masterly description in the Tale, E, 1842–54.
page 366 note 68 I, 904, 858; cf. Jacob's Well, p. 161; etc. It is unnecessary to rehearse the passages from the Tale.
page 366 note 69 Mr. Tupper's Tale of Lechery exemplifies (through its antitype, and through thwarted intent alone) only “that phase of Lechery” which consists in “birev[ing] a mayden of hir maydenhede” (Publications, p. 97, n. 7).
page 366 note 70 Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works, p. 202. See Herrig's Archiv, lxxxvii, pp. 35–36, 41–43; Modern Philology, viii, pp. 171–75.
page 366 note 71 Publications, p. 116.
page 366 note 72 Wyclif, ed. Matthew, p. 186.
page 367 note 1 Journal, p. 553.
page 368 note 2 Journal, p. 554.
page 368 note 3 Publications, p. 127. The same fallacy appears on the preceding page: “That the ‘ moralities’ are there, he who runs may read. That they are ‘ moralities’ of the Sins, no one can doubt who takes the trouble to compare them with Chaucer's own formal description of the Vices (Parson's Tale) or with the traditional traits of these evil passions in mediæval theology.” With the first sentence one may heartily concur, and I fear that the frequent proclamation of the “utter aimlessness and irrelevancy” of Chaucer's moralizing which Tupper deplores is “fantom and illusioun”—a ghost of his own raising. As for the second sentence, it was precisely the comparison which Tupper there suggests that changed the present writer's doubt to certainty, and led to this statement of the results of the comparison.
page 370 note 4 C, 427–28. Chaucer is no less unequivocal, for instance, in his matchless juxtaposition of practice and precept in the friar's suggestions for his dinner (D, 1838–47); etc.
page 370 note 5 Where this tenet (which follows) is found outside Mr. Tupper's own pages it would be interesting to know.
page 370 note 6 Publications, p. 127.
page 371 note 7 Publications, p. 126. Of course in Mr. Tupper's sentence the phrase which I have quoted is preceded by the words: “The objection to.”
page 371 note 8 Journal, p. 553.
page 371 note 9 Ibid., p. 554.