methought he had a pair
Of legges and of feet so clean and fair
That all my heart I gave unto his hold.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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."]

[Footnote 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