k" 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:]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote 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.]

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

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

[Footnote 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 fir