[123] Tyrwhitt. [124] Tyrwhitt; more forcible. [125] The first quarter of the artificial day: _i.e._ 9 o’clock. [126] Tyrwhitt. Morris has ‘nothing for to leere.’ [127] This verse means, ‘You shall hereafter understand this subject so well, as to be able to give lectures on it, as a professor in his chair;’ _chayer_ being the term for pulpit or professor’s chair; _conne_ part of the verb conne, to know or be able; and _rede_, to counsel. The evil one is sarcastic on the special wickedness of the Summoner. [128] Alluding to Eneas’ visit to infernal regions (6th book of ‘Eneid’) and Dante’s ‘Inferno.’ [129] The text has ‘Heit, Scot, heit, brok, what spare ye for the stones?’ and it is singular that ‘hayt’ is still the word used by waggoners in Norfolk to make their horses go on; while Scot remains one of the commonest names for a horse in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Reeve’s horse in the Prologue is called Scot also. Brock means a badger, hence applied to a grey horse. The carter presently calls this horse ‘myn oughne lyard (grey) boy.’ [130] The value of twelve pence may be estimated by the relative value of food and labour. _Bell_ says, “Twelve pence would have bought two dozen hens, or three gallons of red wine, or hired a _dozen_ common labourers for _twelve_ days,” but surely he means a _dozen_ labourers for _one_ day, or one labourer for twelve days. [131] There was then no means of conveyance for people who could not walk except horseback. [132] A libel, a copy of the information or indictment. A libel is still the expression in the ecclesiastical courts.--_Bell._ The abuses, we see, have led to another interpretation of the word libel--as _libellous_. [133] This singular (to us) term as applied to Christ, was of course borrowed from the popular notion of warfare, when each knight, inspired by some fair inciter, was the more valiant for her sake. The term is both picturesque and forcible as an appeal to the common understanding, in which the Friars were naturally adepts. [134] Tyrwhitt. [135] The Summoner’s Tale (omitted) follows here. [136] Students then entered the university at a far younger age than at the present day, almost indeed when boys now enter the public schools, so that the Clerk of Oxford may have been but a boy, which would account for his diffident demeanour: yet his education and knowledge might warrant mine host’s fear of his being too learned for them. [137] Table: a board upon trestles. [138] These are the lines on which the supposition is based that Petrarch and Chaucer had met. [139] “Joannes of Lignano, near Milan, a canonist and natural philosopher, who flourished about 1378.”--_B._ [140] Saluzzo, a marquisate near Mount Viso: Lat. Vesulus. [141] _Corage_ is used in several senses: impulse (as in the opening lines of the Prologue), feeling, or disposition may be implied. The word is derived from the Latin _cor_, the heart. [142] See note 144 below.