shall expire
unless she has some of the "small green pears" to eat, and then exclaims
anew,

I tell you well, a woman in my plight
May have to fruit so great an appetite,
That she may dyen, but she it have.]

[Footnote 67: The moral is Pope's own, and is in the dissolute spirit
which had descended from the reign of Charles II. The comment on the
story, in Chaucer, is put into the mouth of the host, who begs that he
may be preserved from such a wife, and inveighs against the craft and
misdoings of women.]

THE WIFE OF BATH.

HER PROLOGUE.

FROM CHAUCER.

The Wife of Bath is the other piece of Chaucer which Pope selected to
imitate. One cannot but wonder at his choice, which perhaps nothing but
his youth could excuse. Dryden, who is known not to be nicely
scrupulous, informs us, that he would not versify it on account of its
indecency. Pope, however, has omitted or softened the grosser and more
offensive passages. Chaucer afforded him many subjects of a more sublime
and serious species; and it were to be wished Pope had exercised his
pencil on the pathetic story of the patience of Griselda, or Troilus and
Cressida, or the complaint of the Black Knight; or, above all, on
Cambuscan and Canace. From the accidental circumstance of Dryden and
Pope having copied the gay and ludicrous parts of Chaucer, the common
notion seems to have arisen, that Chaucer's vein of poetry was chiefly
turned to the light and the ridiculous. But they who look into Chaucer
will soon be convinced of this prevailing prejudice, and will find his
comic vein, like that of Shakespeare, to be only like one of mercury,
imperceptibly mingled with a mine of gold. Mr. Hughes withdrew his
contributions to a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, published by Steele,
because this Prologue was to be inserted in it, which he thought too
obscene for the gravity of his character. "The extraordinary length,"
says Mr. Tyrwhitt, "of the Wife of Bath's Prologue, as well as the vein
of pleasantry that runs through it, is very suitable to the character of
the speaker. The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own
invention, though one may plainly see that he had been reading the
popular invectives against marriage, and women in general, such as the
Roman de la Rose, Valerius ad Rufinum de non ducenda uxore, and
particularly Hieronymus contra Jovinianum. The holy Father, by way of
recommending celibacy, has exerted all his learning and eloquence,