flattery. Chaucer has not committed the
extravagance. With him Placebo justifies his assentation on the ground
that lords are better informed than their inferiors.

A full great fool is any counsellor
That serveth any lord of high honour,
That dare presume, or once thinken it,
That his counsel should pass his lordes wit.
Nay lordes be no fooles by my fay.
Ye have yourself y-spoken here to-day
So high sentence, so holy, and so well,
That I consent, and confirm every dole
Your wordes all, and your opinion.]

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

[Footnote 18: Seneca.]

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

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

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

[Footnote 22: Chaucer is more particular in his description:

He portrayed in his heart, and in his thought
Her fresche beauty, and her age tender,
Her middle small, her armes long and slender,
Her wise governance, her gentilnesse
Her womanly bearing, and her sadnesse.--BOWLES.]

[Footnote 23:

For when that he himself concluded had,
He thought each other mannes wit so bad,
That impossible it were to replie
Against his choice; this was his fantasie.]

[Footnote 24: In seeking a wife for him.]

[Footnote 25:

Placebo came, and eke his friendes soon,
And althirfirst he bad them all a boon,
That none of them no argumentes make
Against the purpose which that he had take;
Which purpose was pleasaunt to God said he,
And very ground of his prosperite.]

[Footnote 26: "And may serve my turn" i