her o'er and o'er,
Disturbed with doubts and jealousies no more:
Both, pleased and blessed, renewed their mutual vows, 815
A fruitful wife and a believing spouse.
Thus ends our tale, whose moral next to make,
Let all wise husbands hence example take;
And pray, to crown the pleasure of their lives,
To be so well deluded by their wives.[67] 820

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Pope in this particular has not followed Chaucer. The story
is told by the merchant, who announces in the prologue, that he has been
two months married, and that in this brief space he has endured more
misery from the fiendishness of his wife than a bachelor could undergo
in an entire lifetime from the enmity of the world. He lays it down for
a general maxim, that

We wedded men live in sorwe and care;
Assay it whoso will, and he shall find
That I say sooth, by Saint Thomas of Inde,
As for the more part; I say not all;
God shielde that it shoulde so befall.

The host begs that since the merchant knows so much of the trials of
matrimony, he will instruct the company in some of them.

Gladly, quoth he, but of mine owne sore
For sorry heart I telle may no more.

He accordingly relates the adventures of January and May in illustration
of the misfortunes of the wedded state, and commences with the panegyric
of January upon its unmixed blessings. The merchant then adds,

Thus said this olde knight that was so wise,

which is an ironical comment on what the narrator of the tale considers
a delusive dream, and a proof of the credulous folly of the speaker. The
idea of ascribing genuine sense and wisdom to the knight,
notwithstanding that he was weak enough, at the age of sixty, to marry a
girl, is confined to the version of Pope, and is not in itself
unnatural; but the character, upon the whole, is better preserved in
Chaucer, since the entire talk and conduct of January indicate a feeble
mind.]

[Footnote 2: "Courage" in the original is not used in the modern sense,
but signifies a hearty desire.]

[Footnote 3:

And when that he was passed sixty year,
Were it for holiness or for dotage,
I cannot say, but such a great courage
Hadde this knight to be a wedded man,
That day and night he doth all that he can
Taspye where that he might wedded be;
Praying our Lord to grante him that he
Might ones knowen of that bli