360. 'O serpent under the form of woman, like that Serpent that is bound in hell.' The allusion here is not a little curious. It clearly refers to the old belief that the serpent who tempted Eve appeared to her _with a woman's head_, and it is sometimes so represented. I observed it, for instance, in the chapter-house of Salisbury Cathedral; and see the woodcut at p. 73 of Wright's History of Caricature and Grotesque in Art. In Peter Comestor's Historia Libri Genesis, we read of Satan--'Elegit etiam quoddam genus serpentis (vt ait Beda) _virgineum vultum_ habens.' In the alliterative Troy Book, ed. Panton and Donaldson, p. 144, the Tempter is called Lyuyaton (i. e. Leviathan), and it is said of him that he 'Hade a face vne fourmet _as a fre maydon_'; l. 4451. And, again, in Piers the Plowman, B. xviii. 355, Satan is compared to a 'lusarde [lizard] _with a lady visage_.' In the Ancren Riwle, p. 207, we are gravely informed that a scorpion is a kind of serpent that has a face somewhat like that of a woman, and puts on a pleasant countenance. To remember this gives peculiar force to ll. 370, 371. See also note to l. 404. 367. _knowestow_ is a trisyllable; and _the olde_ is to be read _tholdè_. But in l. 371, the word _Makestow_, being differently placed in the line, is to be read with the _e_ slurred over, as a dissyllable. 380. _moste_, might. It is not always used like the modern _must_. 401. See Lucan's Pharsalia, iii. 79--'Perdidit o qualem uincendo plura triumphum!' But Chaucer's reference, evidently made at random, is unlucky. Lucan laments that he had no triumph to record. 404. The line is deficient at the beginning, the word _But_ standing by itself as a foot. So also in A. 294, G. 341, &c. See Ellis's Early English Pronunciation, pp. 333, 649. (This peculiarity was pointed out by me in 1866, in the Aldine edition of Chaucer, i. 174.) For the sense of _scorpioun_, see the reference to the Ancren Riwle, in note to l. 360, and compare the following extracts. 'Thes is the scorpioun, thet maketh uayr mid the heauede, and enuenymeth mid the tayle'; Ayenbite of Inwyt, ed. Morris, p. 62. 'The scorpion, the whiche enoynteth with his tongue, and prycketh sore with his taylle'; Caxton, Fables of Æsop; Lib. iv. fable 3. Chaucer repeats the idea, somewhat more fully, in the Marchaunts Tale, E. 2058-2060. So also _this wikked gost_ means this Evil Spirit, this Tempter.