Behold the woes of matrimonial life,
 And hear with rev'rence an experienced wife;
 To dear-bought wisdom[1] give the credit due,
 And think for once, a woman tells you true.
 In all these trials I have borne a part,5
 I was myself the scourge that caused the smart;
 For, since fifteen,[2] in triumph have I led
 Five captive husbands from the church to bed.
Christ saw a wedding once, the Scripture says,
 And saw but one, 'tis thought, in all his days;10
 Whence some infer, whose conscience is too nice,
 No pious Christian ought to marry twice.
But let them read, and solve me, if they can,
 The words addressed to the Samaritan:[3]
 Five times in lawful wedlock she was joined;15
 And sure the certain stint was ne'er defined.
"Encrease and multiply," was heav'n's command,
 And that's a text I clearly understand.
 This too, "Let men their sires and mothers leave,
 And to their dearer wives for ever cleave."20
 More wives than one by Solomon were tried,
 Or else the wisest of mankind's belied.
 I've had myself full many a merry fit;
 And trust in heav'n I may have many yet.
 For when my transitory spouse, unkind, }25
 Shall die, and leave his woeful wife behind, }
 I'll take the next good Christian I can find. }
Paul, knowing one could never serve our turn,
 Declared 'twas better far to wed than burn.
 There's danger in assembling fire and tow;30
 I grant 'em that, and what it means you know.
 The same apostle too has elsewhere owned,
 No precept for virginity he found:
 'Tis but a counsel, and we women still
 Take which we like, the counsel, or our will.35
I envy not their bliss, if he or she
 Think fit to live in perfect chastity;
 Pure let them be, and free from taint or vice;
 I, for a few slight spots, am not so nice.
 Heav'n calls us diff'rent ways, on these bestows40
 One proper gift, another grants to those:
 Not ev'ry man's obliged to sell his store,
 And give up all his substance to the poor;
 Such as are perfect, may, I can't deny;
 But, by your leaves, divines, so am not I.45
 Full many a saint, since first the world began,
 Lived an unspotted maid, in spite of man:
 Let such (a God's name) with fine wheat be fed,
 And let us honest wives eat barley bread.
 For me, I'll keep the post assigned by heav'n,50
 And use the copious talent it has giv'n:
 Let my good spouse pay tribute, do me right,
 And keep an equal reck'ning ev'ry night:
 His proper body is not his, but mine;
 For so said Paul, and Paul's a sound divine.[4]55
 Know then, of those five husbands I have had,
 Three were just tolerable, two were bad.[5]
 The three were old, but rich and fond beside,
 And toiled most piteously to please their bride:
 But since their wealth, the best they had, was mine,60
 The rest, without much loss, I could resign.
 Sure to be loved, I took no pains to please,[6]
 Yet had more pleasure far than they had ease.
 Presents flowed in apace: with show'rs of gold,
 They made their court, like Jupiter of old.65
 If I but smiled, a sudden youth they found,
 And a new palsy seized them when I frowned.
 Ye sov'reign wives! give ear, and understand,
 Thus shall ye speak, and exercise command.[7]
 For never was it giv'n to mortal man,70
 To lie so boldly as we women can:
 Forswear the fact, though seen with both his eyes,
 And call your maids to witness how he lies.
 Hark, old Sir Paul, 'twas thus I us'd to say,
 Whence is our neighbour's wife so rich and gay?75
 Treated, caressed, where'er she's pleased to roam—
 I sit in tatters, and immured at home.
 Why to her house dost thou so oft repair?
 Art thou so am'rous? and is she so fair?
 If I but see a cousin or a friend,80
 Lord! how you swell, and rage like any fiend!
 But you reel home, a drunken beastly bear,
 Then preach till midnight in your easy chair;
 Cry, wives are false, and ev'ry woman evil,
 And give up all that's female to the devil.85
 If poor, you say she drains her husband's purse;
 If rich, she keeps her priest, or something worse;
 If highly born, intolerably vain,
 Vapours and pride by turns possess her brain,
 Now gayly mad, now sourly splenetic,90
 Freakish when well, and fretful when she's sick.
 If fair, then chaste she cannot long abide,
 By pressing youth attacked on ev'ry side:
 If foul, her wealth the lusty lover lures,
 Or else her wit some fool-gallant procures,95
 Or else she dances with becoming grace,
 Or shape excuses the defects of face.
 There swims no goose so grey, but soon or late,
 She finds some honest gander for her mate.
 Horses, thou say'st, and asses men may try,100
 And ring suspected vessels ere they buy:
 But wives, a random choice, untried they take,
 They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake;
 Then, nor till then, the veil's removed away,
 And all the woman glares in open day.105
 You tell me, to preserve your wife's good grace,
 Your eyes must always languish on my face,
 Your tongue with constant flatt'ries feed my ear,
 And tag each sentence with, My life! my dear!
 If, by strange chance, a modest blush be raised,110
 Be sure my fine complexion must be praised.
 My garments always must be new and gay,
 And feasts still kept upon my wedding-day.
 Then must my nurse be pleased, and fav'rite maid:
 And endless treats, and endless visits paid,115
 To a long train of kindred, friends, allies;
 All this thou say'st, and all thou say'st, are lies.
 On Jenkin too you cast a squinting eye:
 What! can your 'prentice raise your jealousy?
 Fresh are his ruddy cheeks, his forehead fair;120
 And like the burnished gold his curling hair.
 But clear thy wrinkled brow, and quit thy sorrow,
 I'd scorn your 'prentice, should you die to-morrow.
 Why are thy chests all locked? on what design?
 Are not thy worldly goods and treasures mine?125
 Sir, I'm no fool; nor shall you, by St. John,
 Have goods and body to yourself alone.
 One you shall quit, in spite of both your eyes;
 I heed not, I, the bolts, the locks, the spies.
 If you had wit, you'd say, "Go where you will,130
 Dear spouse, I credit not the tales they tell;
 Take all the freedoms of a married life;
 I know thee for a virtuous, faithful wife."
 Lord! when you have enough, what need you care
 How merrily soever others fare?135
 Though all the day I give and take delight,
 Doubt not, sufficient will be left at night.
 'Tis but a just and rational desire,
 To light a taper at a neighbour's fire.
 There's danger too, you think, in rich array,140
 And none can long be modest that are gay:
 The cat, if you but singe her tabby skin,
 The chimney keeps, and sits content within;
 But once grown sleek, will from her corner run,
 Sport with her tail, and wanton in the sun;145
 She licks her fair round face, and frisks abroad,
 To show her fur, and to be catterwawed.[8]
 Lo thus, my friends, I wrought to my desires
 These three right ancient venerable sires.
 I told 'em, Thus you say, and thus you do,150
 And told 'em false, but Jenkin swore 'twas true.
 I, like a dog, could bite as well as whine,
 And first complained, whene'er the guilt was mine.[9]
 I taxed them oft with wenching and amours,
 When their weak legs scarce dragged 'em out of doors;155
 And swore the rambles that I took by night,
 Were all to spy what damsels they bedight.
 That colour brought me many hours of mirth;[10]
 For all this wit is given us from our birth;
 Heav'n gave to woman the peculiar grace,160
 To spin, to weep, and cully human race.
 By this nice conduct, and this prudent course,
 By murm'ring, wheedling, stratagem, and force,
 I still prevailed, and would be in the right,
 Or curtain lectures made a restless night.165
 If once my husband's arm was o'er my side,
 What! so familiar with your spouse? I cried:
 I levied first a tax upon his need:
 Then let him—'twas a nicety indeed!
 Let all mankind this certain maxim hold,170
 Marry who will, our sex is to be sold.
 With empty hands no tassels you can lure,[11]
 But fulsome love for gain we can endure;
 For gold we love the impotent and old,
 And heave, and pant, and kiss, and cling, for gold.175
 Yet with embraces, curses oft I've mixed,
 Then kissed again, and chid, and railed betwixt.
 Well, I may make my will in peace, and die,
 For not one word in man's arrears am I.
 To drop a dear dispute I was unable,180
 Ev'n though the Pope himself had sat at table.[12]
 But when my point was gained, then thus I spoke,
 "Billy, my dear, how sheepishly you look?
 Approach, my spouse, and let me kiss thy cheek;
 Thou should'st be always thus resigned and meek!185
 Of Job's great patience since so oft you preach,
 Well should you practise, who so well can teach.
 'Tis difficult to do, I must allow,
 But I, my dearest, will instruct you how.
 Great is the blessing of a prudent wife,190
 Who puts a period to domestic strife.
 One of us two must rule, and one obey; }
 And since in man right reason bears the sway, }
 Let that frail thing, weak woman, have her way. }
 The wives of all my family have ruled195
 Their tender husbands, and their passions cooled.
 Fye, 'tis unmanly thus to sigh and groan;
 What! would you have me to yourself alone?
 Why take me, love! take all and ev'ry part!
 Here's your revenge! you love it at your heart.200
 Would I vouchsafe to sell what nature gave,
 You little think what custom I could have.
 But see! I'm all your own—nay hold—for shame!
 What means my dear—indeed—you are to blame."
 Thus with my first three lords I passed my life;205
 A very woman, and a very wife.
 What sums from these old spouses I could raise,
 Procured young husbands in my riper days.
 Though past my bloom,[13] not yet decayed was I,
 Wanton and wild, and chattered like a pye.210
 In country dances still I bore the bell.
 And sung as sweet as ev'ning Philomel.
 To clear my quail-pipe, and refresh my soul,
 Full oft I drained the spicy nut-brown bowl;
 Rich luscious wines, that youthful blood improve,215
 And warm the swelling veins to feats of love:
 For 'tis as sure as cold ingenders hail,
 A liqu'rish mouth must have a lech'rous tail;
 Wine lets no lover unrewarded go,
 As all true gamesters by experience know.220
 But oh, good gods! whene'er a thought I cast
 On all the joys of youth and beauty past,
 To find in pleasures I have had my part,
 Still warms me to the bottom of my heart.
 This wicked world was once my dear delight;225
 Now all my conquests, all my charms, good night!
 The flour consumed, the best that now I can,
 Is e'en to make my market of the bran.[14]
 My fourth dear spouse was not exceeding true!
 He kept, 'twas thought, a private miss or two:230
 But all that score I paid—as how? you'll say,
 Not with my body, in a filthy way:
 But I so dressed, and danced, and drank, and dined;
 And viewed a friend, with eyes so very kind,
 As stung his heart, and made his marrow fry,[15]235
 With burning rage, and frantic jealousy.
 His soul, I hope, enjoys eternal glory,
 For here on earth I was his purgatory.
 Oft, when his shoe the most severely wrung,
 He put on careless airs, and sat and sung.240
 How sore I galled him, only heav'n could know,
 And he that felt, and I that caused the woe.
 He died, when last from pilgrimage I came,
 With other gossips, from Jerusalem;[16]
 And now lies buried underneath a rood,[17]245
 Fair to be seen, and reared of honest wood.
 A tomb indeed, with fewer sculptures graced,
 Than that Mausolus' pious widow placed,[18]
 Or where inshrined the great Darius lay;
 But cost on graves is merely thrown away.250
 The pit filled up, with turf we covered o'er;
 So bless the good man's soul, I say no more.
 Now for my fifth loved lord, the last and best;
 (Kind heav'n afford him everlasting rest)
 Full hearty was his love, and I can shew255
 The tokens on my ribs in black and blue;
 Yet, with a knack, my heart he could have won,
 While yet the smart was shooting in the bone.
 How quaint an appetite in woman reigns!
 Free gifts we scorn, and love what costs us pains:260
 Let men avoid us, and on them we leap;
 A glutted market makes provision cheap.[19]
 In pure good will I took this jovial spark,
 Of Oxford he, a most egregious clerk.
 He boarded with a widow in the town,[20]265
 A trusty gossip, one dame Alison.
 Full well the secrets of my soul she knew,
 Better than e'er our parish priest could do.
 To her I told whatever could befall:
 Had but my husband pissed against a wall,270
 Or done a thing that might have cost his life,
 She, and my niece, and one more worthy wife,
 Had known it all: what most he would conceal,
 To these I made no scruple to reveal.
 Oft has he blushed from ear to ear for shame,275
 That e'er he told a secret to his dame.
It so befel, in holy time of Lent,
 That oft a day I to this gossip went;
 (My husband, thank my stars, was out of town)
 From house to house we rambled up and down,280
 This clerk, myself, and my good neighbour Alse,
 To see, be seen, to tell, and gather tales.[21]
 Visits to ev'ry church we daily paid,
 And marched in every holy masquerade,
 The stations duly,[22] and the vigils kept;285
 Not much we fasted, but scarce ever slept.
 At sermons too I shone in scarlet gay, }
 The wasting moth ne'er spoiled my best array; }
 The cause was this, I wore it ev'ry day. }
'Twas when fresh May her early blossoms yields,290
 This clerk and I were walking in the fields.
 We grew so intimate, I can't tell how,[23]
 I pawned my honour, and engaged my vow,
 If e'er I laid my husband in his urn,[24]
 That he, and only he, should serve my turn.295
 We straight struck hands, the bargain was agreed;
 I still have shifts against a time of need:
 The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole,
 Can never be a mouse of any soul.
I vowed, I scarce could sleep since first I knew him,300
 And durst be sworn he had bewitched me to him;
 If e'er I slept, I dreamed of him alone, }
 And dreams foretell, as learned men have shown: }
 All this I said; but dreams, sirs, I had none: }
 I followed but my crafty crony's lore,305
 Who bid me tell this lie, and twenty more.[25]
Thus day by day, and month by month we passed;
 It pleased the Lord to take my spouse at last.
 I tore my gown, I soiled my locks with dust,
 And beat my breasts, as wretched widows must.[26]310
 Before my face my handkerchief I spread,
 To hide the flood of tears I did not shed.
 The good man's coffin to the church was borne;
 Around, the neighbours, and my clerk too, mourn.
 But as he marched, good gods! he showed a pair315
 Of legs and feet, so clean, so strong, so fair!
 Of twenty winters' age he seemed to be;
 I, to say truth, was twenty more than he;
 But vig'rous still, a lively buxom dame;
 And had a wond'rous gift to quench a flame.320
 A conj'ror once, that deeply could divine,
 Assured me, Mars in Taurus was my sign.
 As the stars ordered, such my life has been:
 Alas, alas, that ever love was sin!
 Fair Venus gave me fire, and sprightly grace,325
 And Mars assurance, and a dauntless face.
 By virtue of this pow'rful constellation,
 I followed, always, my own inclination.
But to my tale: A month scarce passed away,
 With dance and song, we kept the nuptial day.330
 All I possessed I gave to his command,
 My goods and chattels, money, house, and land:
 But oft repented, and repent it still;[27]
 He proved a rebel to my sov'reign will:
 Nay, once, by heav'n! he struck me on the face;335
 Hear but the fact, and judge, yourselves, the case.
Stubborn as any lioness was I,
 And knew full well to raise my voice on high;
 As true a rambler as I was before,
 And would be so, in spite of all he swore.340
 He, against this, right sagely would advise,
 And old examples set before my eyes;
 Tell, how the Roman matrons led their life,
 Of Gracchus' mother, and Duilius' wife;
 And close the sermon, as beseemed his wit,345
 With some grave sentence out of Holy Writ.[28]
 Oft would he say, who builds his house on sands,
 Pricks his blind horse across the fallow lands,
 Or lets his wife abroad with pilgrims roam,
 Deserves a fool's-cap, and long ears at home.350
 All this availed not; for, whoe'er he be
 That tells my faults, I hate him mortally:
 And so do numbers more, I'll boldly say,
 Men, women, clergy, regular and lay.
 My spouse, who was, you know, to learning bred,355
 A certain treatise, oft, at evening,[29] read,
 Where divers authors, whom the devil confound
 For all their lies, were in one volume bound.
 Valerius, whole; and of St. Jerome, part;[30]
 Chrysippus and Tertullian; Ovid's Art,360
 Solomon's Proverbs, Eloïsa's loves,[31]
 And many more than sure the church approves.[32]
 More legends were there, here, of wicked wives,
 Than good,[33] in all the Bible and saints' lives.
 Who drew the lion vanquished? 'Twas a man.[34]365
 But could we women write as scholars can,
 Men should stand marked with far more wickedness
 Than all the sons of Adam could redress.
 Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
 And Venus sets, ere Mercury can rise.[35]370
 Those play the scholars who can't play the men,
 And use that weapon which they have, their pen;
 When old and past the relish of delight,
 Then down they sit, and in their dotage write,
 That not one woman keeps her marriage vow.375
 This by the way, but to my purpose now.
 It chanced my husband, on a winter's night,
 Read in this book, aloud, with strange delight,
 How the first female, as the Scriptures show,
 Brought her own spouse and all his race to woe:[36]380
 How Sampson fell; and he, whom Dejanire
 Wrapp'd in th' envenomed shirt, and set on fire:
 How cursed Eryphile her lord betrayed,
 And the dire ambush Clytemnestra laid:[37]
 But what most pleased him was the Cretan dame,385
 And husband-bull—oh monstrous! fie for shame!
 He had by heart, the whole detail of woe,
 Xantippe made her good man undergo;
 How oft she scolded in a day, he knew,
 How many piss-pots on the sage she threw;390
 Who took it patiently, and wiped his head;
 "Rain follows thunder," that was all he said.
 He read how Arius to his friend complained,
 A fatal tree was growing in his land,
 On which three wives successively had twined395
 A sliding noose, and wavered in the wind.
 Where grows this plant, replied the friend, oh! where?
 For better fruit did never orchard bear;
 Give me some slip of this most blissful tree,
 And, in my garden, planted shall it be.400
 Then, how two wives their lords' destruction prove,
 Through hatred one, and one through too much love;
 That for her husband mixed a pois'nous draught,
 And this, for lust, an am'rous philtre bought:
 The nimble juice soon seized his giddy head,405
 Frantic at night, and in the morning dead.[38]
 How some, with swords, their sleeping lords have slain,
 And some have hammered nails into their brain,
 And some have drenched them with a deadly potion;
 All this he read, and read with great devotion.410
 Long time I heard, and swelled, and blushed,[39] and frowned;
 But when no end of these vile tales I found,
 When still he read, and laughed, and read again,
 And half the night was thus consumed in vain;
 Provoked to vengeance, three large leaves I tore,415
 And, with one buffet, felled him on the floor.
 With that, my husband in a fury rose,
 And down he settled me, with hearty blows.
 I groaned, and lay extended on my side;
 Oh! thou hast slain me for my wealth, I cried,[40]420
 Yet I forgive thee—take my last embrace—
 He wept, kind soul! and stooped to kiss my face;
 I took him such a box as turned him blue,
 Then sighed and cried, Adieu, my dear, adieu![41]
 But, after many a hearty struggle past,425
 I condescended to be pleased at last.
 Soon as he said, My mistress and my wife,
 Do what you list, the term of all your life,
 I took to heart the merits of the cause,
 And stood content to rule by wholesome laws;430
 Received the reins of absolute command, }
 With all the government of house and land, }
 And empire o'er his tongue, and o'er his hand. }
 As for the volume that reviled the dames,
 'Twas torn to fragments, and condemned to flames.435
 Now heav'n, on all my husbands gone, bestow
 Pleasures above, for tortures felt below:
 That rest they wished for, grant them in the grave,
 And bless those souls my conduct helped to save!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pope has departed at the outset from the conception of Chaucer. The purpose of the tale which the wife of Bath tells is to show that women love, above all things, to govern; and her personal history, which she relates in the prologue, is an account of the means by which she reduced her husbands to submission. It was not her own matrimonial woes, which had been slight enough, that she was about to set forth, but the miseries of those whom it is her boast to have worried into obedience to her will. As Pope correctly renders the original, she states that the pains referred to the smart she had inflicted on her husbands; and, far from alleging that "dear-bought wisdom" had taught her that matrimony to a woman was a life of suffering, she thanks God that she has been married five times already, and declares that directly her fifth mate is dead, she will marry a sixth.

When my husband is from the world i-gone,
 Some Christian man shall wedde me anon.

[2] "Twelve" in the original.

[3]

Beside a welle Jesus, God and man,
 Spake in reproof of the Samaritan:
 "Thou hast i-had five husbandes," quoth he,
 "And that ilk-man, which that now hath thee
 Is not thine husband." Thus he said certain;
 What that he meant thereby I cannot sayn,
 But that I axe why the fithe man
 Was not husband to the Samaritan?

The question is addressed to those who deny the validity of second marriages, and she asks them to explain upon their theory why the fifth man was not properly the husband of the Samaritan woman, when there is the authoritative declaration of Scripture that he was.

[4] Pope alone is responsible for the second half of this line, which in its present application has an unbecoming levity. There was a pardoner in the company, a person who got his living by selling indulgences, and by displaying the pretended relics of saints, who says that he was about to marry, but that he shall abandon his intention now that he learns what despotic authority wives exercise over husbands. The wife of Bath, unabashed, informs him that what she has told is nothing in comparison with that which is to follow:

Abide, quoth she, my tale is not begun.
 Nay, thou shalt drinke of another tun
 Ere that I go, shall savour worse than ale.
 And when that I have told thee forth my tale
 Of tribulation in marriage,
 Of which I am expert in all my age,
 That is to say, myself hath been the whip,
 Then might thou choose whether thou wilt sip
 Of thilke tunne that I shall abroach:
 Beware of it ere thou too nigh approach.

These dramatic touches omitted by Pope give life to the piece, and individuality to the characters.

[5] In the original,

I shall say sooth of husbands that I had,
 As three of them were good, and two were bad.

She meant that the two were rebellious in comparison with the three who were her slaves; for in speaking of the entire five, at the commencement of the prologue, she added,

And all were worthy men in their degree.

Pope has fallen into an inconsistency. He states that the three old husbands were those who "were just tolerable." Yet when he comes to describe the youngest of the two, whom he here calls "bad," he makes the wife of Bath exclaim,

Now for my fifth loved lord, the last and best,

In Chaucer she distinctly denies that he was the best, but says she loved him best, and proceeds to explain the reason, which is that women always value those most who treat them with harshness or indifference.

[6] This trait in the wife of Bath's character is brought out more distinctly by Chaucer:

Me needeth not no longer doon diligence
 To win their love, or do them reverence.
 They loved me so well, high God above!
 That I tolde no deynte of their love.
 A wise woman will busy her ever in one
 To gete her love, there she hath none.
 But synnes I had them wholly in my hand
 And synnes they had me given all their land,
 What should I take keep them for to please
 But it were for my profit or mine ease?

"I tolde no deynte of their love," means I set no store by it; "ever in one" is always; and "take keep" is take care.

[7] The wife of Bath's first lesson in the art of domestic government is a panegyric upon the advantages of sturdy lying, in which Pope has not gone beyond the original:

Ye wise wives that can understand
 Thus should ye speak, and bear them wrong in hand;
 For half so boldely can there no man
 Swere and lie as a woman can.

"To bear them wrong in hand" is to affirm wrongfully or falsely. The phrase "to bear in hand" for "to asseverate," was still frequently used in the reign of Charles II.

[8] The wife of Bath accuses her old husbands to their faces of having delivered this kind of railing lecture to her when they had come home at night "as drunk as mice." The drunkenness and the railing are alike inventions of her own, but she appeals to her niece, and Jenkin, the apprentice, to bear witness to the truth of her assertions. The version of Pope is not so vivid, so lively, or so close to nature as the original, and he has nearly passed over one of the most prominent characteristics of the speech. When the wife of Bath taunts her husband with the reproaches she pretended he had heaped upon her, she intersperses her repetition of his objurgations with abusive and disdainful names by way of comment upon his monstrous sentiments. Old caynard or villain, Sir old lecher, thou very knave, lorel or worthless fellow, old dotard schrewe or sinner, old barrel full of lies, Sir old fool, are some of the appellations by which she marks her opinion of the doctrines she fathers upon him. After reciting his alleged complaint, that women concealed their vices till they were married, she adds that the maxim is worthy of "a schrewe," or scoundrel. When she imputes to him the declaration that no man would wed who was wise, or who desired to go to heaven, she follows it up with the wish that thunder and lightning would break his wicked neck. When he is charged with having said that there were three things that troubled earth, and that a wife was one of them, she hopes that the life of such a villain will be cut short. When she taxes him with quoting the proverb that a house not water-tight, a smoky chimney, and a scolding wife drove men from home, she retorts upon him that he is himself a scold, and intimates that his years are an aggravation of the vice. This is not only natural as the sort of scurrilous language which the wife of Bath would have used if the drunken invectives had been real, but was part of her plan for bringing her husbands into subjection. Her indignant recriminations were intended to browbeat them into meekness.

[9] She enlarges in the original upon this device, which was one of her capital resources. She quotes the proverb, that he first grinds who comes first to the mill, and upon this principle, when she had done wrong, she began by attacking her husband;

Or elles I had often time been spilt.

The poor man thus suddenly assailed stood upon the defensive, endeavoured to vindicate his innocence, and was heartily glad to hold his tongue on condition of receiving forgiveness for faults he had never committed.

[10] By pretending that she went out to watch her husbands she got the opportunity for indulging in freaks and jollity with her youthful friends.

Under that colour had I many a mirth.
 For all such wit is given us of birth;
 Deceipt, weeping, spinning, God hath give
 To women kindely while they may live.
 And thus of one thing I avaunte me,
 At th' end I had the bet in each degree,
 By sleight or force, or of some maner thing,
 As by continual murmur or chiding.

"Kindely" is by nature.

[11] In the original,

With empty hand men may no hawkes lure.

When the falconer had let fly his hawks, and wanted them to return, he was commonly obliged to entice them by some bait. The tassel, or tercel, was the male of the peregrine falcon, and was noted for its docility and gentleness. It would seem as if this species would obey the summons of the trainer without any other inducement, for when Juliet calls after Romeo, and he does not instantly reappear, she says,

O for a falconer's voice
 To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

[12] In Chaucer she states that her husbands would grant all her demands to soothe her into good humour:

That made me that ever I would them chide.
 For though the pope had seten them beside,
 I nold not spare them at their owne board,
 For, by my troth, I quit them word for word.
 As help me very God omnipotent,
 Though I right now should make my testament,
 I owe them nought a word, that it nis quit;
 I brought it so aboute by my wit,
 That they must give it up, as for the best,
 Or elles had we never been in rest.
 For though he looked as a grim lion,
 Yet should he fail of his conclusion.

Pope has omitted the latter half of the lines and thus obliterated one of those nicer traits of nature with which the original abounds. Men put on the grimness of the lion, and think to prevail by strength, but women conquer by pertinacity. The majority of men grow weary of perpetual conflict, and purchase peace by concession; but women of the stamp of the wife of Bath wilt wrangle for ever, and prefer endless discord to the subjugation of self-will. Dryden, adding to Virgil's thought, has expressed the idea, Æn. v. 1024:

Ev'n Jove is thwarted by his haughty wife,
 Still vanquished yet she still renews the strife.

[13] Chaucer represents her as still youthful:

And I was young, and full of ragerie,
 Stubborn and strong and jolly as a pye.

[14]

The flour is gone, there nis no more to tell,
 The bran as I best can, now must I sell.

[15] In the original she does not say that she set his marrow frying, but that she fried him in his own grease, by stirring up in him the tormenting jealousy which his faithlessness had first engendered in herself.

I made him of the same wood a cross.
 Not of my body in no foul manere;
 But certainly I made folk such cheer,
 That in his owne grease I made him fry
 For anger and for very jealousy.
 By God, in earth I was his purgatory,
 For which I hope his soule be in glory.
 For God it wot, he sat full still and sung,
 When that his shoe full bitterly him wrung.
 There was no wight save God and he that wist
 In many wyse how sore I him twist.

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.

[16] In the character which Chaucer gives of the wife of Bath he says,

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.

[17] Chaucer says he was buried under the rood-beam, or as it is usually called the rood-loft, which was placed on the top of the screen that separated the chancel from the nave. The name was derived from the rood or cross that stood in the centre with the effigy of our crucified Lord, and having on one side an image of the Virgin, and on the other of the apostle John. Pope buries the deceased husband in the churchyard, and the root is a wooden cross which has been erected upon his grave.

[18] Artemisia, wife of Mausolus, king of Caria. On the death of her husband, 352 B.C., she erected a monument to him at Halicarnassus, which, from the beauty of its architecture and sculpture, was considered one of the seven wonders of the world. The Romans, says Pausanias, called all their most magnificent tombs mausolea after this monument to Mausolua, and hence our modern term mausoleum. There is no mention of the tomb of Mausolus in Chaucer.

[19]

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.

[20] It would seem from Chaucer that the youth was a native of Bath, and had returned there when he had completed his education at Oxford:

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.

[21] In Chaucer she adds a more powerful motive:

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.

[22] "To perform a station," says Richelet, in his French Dictionary, "consists in visiting with devotion one or several churches a certain number of days and times, and praying there in order to propitiate the wrath of God, and obtain some favour from his mercy." The wife of Bath in the original says, that she attended vigils, processions, preachings, miracle-plays, and marriages, besides making pilgrimages, but "stations" are not included in her list. The Roman Catholicism of Pope had rendered the word familiar to him.

[23] The expression "I can't tell how" implies that the intimacy on the part of the wife of Bath was accidental, whereas it appears from Pope's context, and still more from the original, that it was a deliberate design:

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.

[24] No Englishwoman would talk of laying her husband in his urn, not to mention that the phrase is a mixture of incongruous ideas, the "laid" being applicable to burial, and the "urn" to burning. When the wife of Bath speaks of her departed husband she says,

He is now in his grave and in his chest.

[25] This couplet is an exaggeration of the original:

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

[26] Tearing garments, and throwing dust upon the head was a custom with some ancient nations, but was not an English habit, and there is no allusion to it in the text of Chaucer:

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.

[27] She does not in the original profess "to repent it still," and for the excellent reason that, after a period of rebellion on the part of the clerk, he had become a puppet in her hands, and had rendered up both himself and his chattels to her undisputed management.

[28] The wife of Bath says she insisted upon going from house to house, according to her former custom, and the clerk set his face against the practice. His instances from Roman story were directed against this special failing, and were not general declamations on the virtue of Roman matrons and Gracchus' mother. The clerk told the gossiping, intriguing dame that Simplicius Gallus left his wife for ever, merely because he caught her looking out of the door with her head uncovered. He told her of another Roman that in the same manner deserted his wife because she one day went to see a game without his knowledge. His quotation from Holy Writ is not "some grave sentence," but the particular sentence of Ecclesiasticus which says, "Give the water no passage; neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad." When the context has been generalised the lines which follow have not the accumulative sting of the original, where they are an additional example of the evil consequences of suffering women to rove about. Pope has further weakened their force by supposing them to have no higher authority than the opinion of the clerk. In Chaucer they are given as a proverb, and the husband urges them with triumph because they convey the general experience of mankind. The language is stronger than in Pope. Instead of mildly pronouncing that the man who suffers his wife to visit "halwes" or the shrines of saints "deserves a fool's cap," the proverb declares that he "is worthy to be hanged on the galwes."

[29] The clerk in the original reads with greater assiduity than "oft at evening."

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.

[30] Pope has omitted a stroke of humour; for in the original, she naturally mistakes the rank and age of St. Jerome.

And eke there was a clerk sometime in Rome
 A cardinal, that highten St. Jerome.—Warton.

[31] This passage acquaints us with the writers who were popular in the days of Chaucer.—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.

[32] This line is not in Chaucer.

[33] If Pope intended to follow the original, "good" means "good legends."

[34] The wife of Bath, having laid down the maxim that it is impossible for any clerk to speak well of women, except it be of the saints, indignantly inquires,

Who painted the lion, tell me, who?

and with an oath she adds,

If women hadde written stories,
 As clerkes have within their oratories,
 They would have writ of men more wickedness,
 Than all the mark of Adam may redress.

"Than all the mark" is than all that bear the mark or image of Adam. Pope's version, in which the wife asks the question and tamely answers it, is flat in comparison with the scornful repetition of the emphatic "who?" Yet he has employed this reduplication of a predominant word at ver. 397, where it has much less effect. Judiciously used, there is force and beauty in the turn, as in the couplet from Addison's translation of Ovid:

Her sisters often, as 'tis said, would cry
 Fie, Salmacis, what always idle, fie:

[35] Pope, misapplying the original, has adopted an image which is astronomically false. Chaucer spoke the language of astrology, and said that each of these planets fell in the exaltation of the other; for a planet was in its exaltation when it was in the sign of the zodiac, where it was supposed to exercise its greatest influence, and fell, or was in its dejection, in the sign where it exercised the least. Mercury, the god of science, was in his exaltation in Virgo, where Venus, the goddess of love, had no sway. Venus was in her exaltation in Pisces, and there Mercury was in his dejection. A man could not be under the government of incompatible planetary powers, and since scholars served Mercury,

Therefore no woman is of clerkes praised.

[36] This line was followed by a poor couplet, which Pope afterwards omitted:

How Sampson's heart false Delilah did move,
 His strength, his sight, his life were lost for love.
 Then how Aleides died whom Dejanire, &c.

[37] Eryphile, bribed by a necklace, prevailed upon her husband Amphiaraus to join the expedition against Thebes, although he assured her it would be fatal to him. Clytemnestra lived in adultery during the absence of her husband, Agamemnon, at the siege of Troy, and, on his return, she and her paramour entrapped and murdered him.

[38] Some writers have pretended that Lucilia, the wife of Lucretius, the poet, gave him a love potion which drove him mad.

[39] Chaucer says nothing of the blushes of the wife of Bath, which were not at all in her character.

[40] Who, exclaims the wife of Bath, could imagine

The woe that in mine hearte was and pine?
 And when I saw he nolde never fine
 To reden on this cursed book all night,
 All suddenly three leaves have I plight
 Out of this booke that he had, and eke
 I with my fist so took him on the cheek,
 That in our fire he fell backward adown.
 And he upstert as doth a wood leoun,
 And with his fist he smote me on the head
 That in the floor I lay as I were dead.
 And when he saw so stille that I lay
 He was aghast, and would have fled away.
 Till atte last out of my swoon I braide;
 O hastow slain me, false thief I said,
 And for my land thus hastow murdered me?
 Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee.

"Pine" is pain; "fine" is cease; "plight" is plucked; "wood" is mad; and "braide" is awoke. Pope has dropped the natural circumstance of the clerk's terror when he fancies he has killed his wife. This alarm brings out more strongly the hypocrisy of his virulent dame in pretending that the blow he gave her on the head, after she had torn the leaves out of his book and knocked him backwards into the fire, was with the deliberate design of murdering her to get possession of her property.

[41] Pope's translation is mawkish, and his "adieu, my dear, adieu!" destroys the point of the story. The wife of Bath seconds the blow with reproaches instead of with terms of endearment, nor does she consent to be pacified until the clerk surrenders at discretion. Had she relaxed before her conquest was complete, she would have lost the opportunity of establishing her dominion. After the line, "Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee," Chaucer thus continues:

And near he came, and kneeleth fairadown,
 And saide, Deare sister Alisoun,
 As help me God, I shall thee never smite;
 That I have done it is thyself to wite;
 Forgive it me, and that I thee beseke;
 And yet oftsoon I hit him on the cheek,
 And saide, Thief thus muchel I me wreke
 Now will I die, I may no longer speak.
 But atte last, with muchel care and woe
 We fell accorded by ourselven two;
 He gave me all the bridle in mine hand
 To have the governance of house and land,
 And of his tongue, and of his hand also,
 And made him burn his book anon right tho.

"To wite" is to blame; "I me wreke" is "I revenge myself;" and "tho" is then. As soon as the poor clerk consented to have no will of his own, and to be governed like a school-boy by his master, the dame declares,

God help me so, I was to him as kind
 As any wife from Denmark unto Inde.

It must have been holiday time with him, notwithstanding, when the wife of Bath set out on one of her pilgrimages, and left him in peace at home.