Part 22

This is a life-like portrait of a man tortured by inward pangs, and affecting an air of indifference while he did not dare to complain, from the consciousness that his greater offence would expose him to a crushing retort.]

And thrice had she been at Jerusalem; She hadde passed many a strange stream; At Rome she hadde been, and at Boulogne, In Galice at Saint Jame, and at Cologne.

The reputed tomb of Saint James was at Compostella, in Galicia, and was a favourite resort of pilgrims. The wife of Bath may be supposed to have joined these expeditions quite as much from a love of roving and novelty as from superstitious motives.]

I trow I loved him beste for that he Was of his love daungerous to me. We women have, if that I shall not lie, In this matter a queynte fantasy. Wayte, what thing we may not lightly have, Thereafter will we soonest cry and crave. Forbid us thing, and that desire we; Press on us fast, and thenne will we flee. With danger outen alle we our ware; Great press at market maketh dear chaffare.

"Daungerous" in the second line means sparing, and in the last line but one, "with danger" signifies with a scarcity. Then, says the wife of Bath, we must produce all our own wares to give in exchange. At the date of her fifth marriage she was forty and the bridegroom was only twenty. Everything is now reversed. Her first husbands had endowed her with all their property that they might buy a young wife in their old age. She, in turn, that she may procure a young husband, gives him

all the land and fee That ever was me give therebefore; But afterward repented me full sore.

Her aged mates had worshipped her, and she repaid them with disdain. In her mature years she is infatuated by a youth, and he, who has no relish for the homage of a matron of forty, slights her just as she had done her early husbands under similar circumstances.]

He some time was a clerk of Oxenford, And had left school, and went at home to board, With my gossib, duelling in our town: God have her soul, her name was Alisoun.

"My gossib" is my godmother, and the wife of Bath, whose christian name was also Alisoun, had been named after her. Pope, by turning "my gossip" into "a gossip," has done away with the special relationship, and employed the word in its modern sense of a lover of tittle-tattle.]

what wist I where my grace Was shapen for to be, or in what place?

In other words, as she explains shortly afterwards, she was in search of a lover who might succeed the fourth husband whenever he died.]

Now will I telle forth what happed me. I say that in the fieldes walked we Till truely we had such dalliance This clerk and I, that of my purveyance I spake to him, and saide how that he If I were widdow, shoulde wedde me. For certainly I say for no bobaunce, Yet was I never withouten purveyance Of mariage, ne or no thinges eke; I hold a mouse's heart not worth a leek, That hath but oon hole to sterte to, And if that faile then is all i-do.

The acknowledgment that while married to one man she is always engaged to a second, seems to the wife of Bath to have nothing discreditable in it, and she only fears lest she should expose herself to the charge of vanity in asserting that she can command a succession of admirers.]

He is now in his grave and in his chest.]

I followed ay my dames lore, As well of that as of other thinges more.]

When that my fourthe husband was on bier, I wept algate, and made a sorry cheer, As wives musten for it is usage; And with my kerchief covered my visage; But, for that I was purveyed of a mate, I wept but small, and that I undertake.

The hard-hearted selfishness which does not bestow a thought upon the dead, being solely intent upon enjoying existence with the living, comes out in a yet more odious light when she narrates her feelings at the funeral. Her mind is entirely taken up with the young clerk, and mainly with admiration of his figure:

When that I saw him go After the bier, methought he had a pair Of legges and of feet so clean and fair That all my heart I gave unto his hold.]

He had a book that gladly night and day, For his desport he woulde read alway.

After describing the contents of the book the wife of Bath adds,

And alle these were bound in one volume; And every night and day was his custume, When he had leisure and vacatioun From other worldes occupation, To reden in this book of wicked wives.

This portion of the narrative in Chaucer is exceedingly pleasant and natural. The wife says that she paid no regard to the clerk's Roman precedents, his quotations from Scripture, his old saws and proverbs.

Ne I would not of him corrected be; I hate him that my vices telleth me.

The contempt with which she treated his exhortations drove him utterly mad, and it was then that he betook himself to reading all the literature he could find that bore upon the vices and frailties of women. The evidence of their general perversity with which his studies supplied him consoled him for the ungovernable disposition of his own wife, and he used "to laugh away full fast" over the record of their obstinacy and evil doings. He had the sweeter satisfaction of revenge. His mirth galled his imperious, froward wife, and when he read aloud the endless detail of female iniquities, backed up by the authority of great names, she could restrain her rage no longer, and the storm burst forth under which the wretched clerk succumbed.]

And eke there was a clerk sometime in Rome A cardinal, that highten St. Jerome.--WARTON.]

Warton takes no account of the fact that Chaucer was only enumerating the authors which furnished arguments against women. Valerius is a tract by Walter Mapes, which bears the title "Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum." St. Jerome's denunciations of matrimony are in his treatise "Contra Jovinianum." Tertullian wrote strongly against second marriages; and severe animadversions upon female vices or weaknesses have a large place in his works. "Who is meant by Chrysippus," says Tyrwhitt, "I cannot guess." Ovid's Art of Love, and the Letters of Eloisa and Abelard are known by name to all the world.]

Who painted the lion, tell me, who?

and with an oath she adds,