(2) With regard to _vitream_. This may refer to a proverb, probably rather English than foreign, to which I have never yet seen a reference. But its existence is clear. To give a man 'a glazen hood' meant, in Old English, to mock, delude, cajole. It appears in Piers the Plowman, B. xx. 171, where a story is told of a man who, fearing to die, consulted the physicians, and gave them large sums of money, for which they gave him in return 'a glasen houve,' i. e. a _hood of glass_, a thing that was no defence at all. Still clearer is the allusion to the same proverb _in Chaucer_ himself, in a passage explained by no previous editor, in Troil. and Cres. v. 469, where Fortune is said to have an intention of deluding Troilus; or, as the poet says, 'Fortune his _howve_ entended bet _to glase_,' i. e. literally, Fortune intended _to glaze his hood_ still better for him, i. e. to make a still greater fool of him. In the Aldine edition, _howue_ is printed _howen_ in this passage, but _howue_ occurs elsewhere; Tyrwhitt has _hove_, a common variation of _howue_. If this note is unsatisfactory, I may yet claim to have explained in it at least _one_ long-standing difficulty; viz. this line in Troilus. Tyrwhitt long ago explained that, in Chaucer, the phrases _to set a man's hood_, and _to set a man's cap_, have a like meaning, viz. to delude him. Chaucer uses _verre_ for glass [238] in another passage of a similar character, viz. in Troil. and Cres. ii. 867, where we read-- 'And forthy, who that hath an hede of _verre_, Fro cast of stones war him in the werre.' 3564. _a distaf._ This is from Boccaccio's _other_ account, in the De Casibus Virorum. 'Haec nuper imperatoribus admiranda, nunc uenit miseranda plebeis. Haec nunc galeata concionari militibus assueta, nunc uelata cogitur muliercularum audire fabellas. Haec nuper Orienti praesidens sceptra gestabat, nunc Romae subiacens, colum, sicut ceterae, baiulat.' Zenobia survived her disgrace for some years, living at Rome as a private person on a small estate which was granted to her, and which, says Trebellius Pollio, 'hodie _Zenobia_ dicitur.' PETER, KING OF SPAIN. 3565. See vol. iii. p. 429, for the _order_ in which the parts of the Monk's Tale are arranged. I follow here the arrangement in the Harleian MS. Peter, king of Castile, born in 1334, is generally known as Pedro the Cruel. He reigned over Castile and Leon from 1350 to 1362, and his conduct was marked by numerous acts of unprincipled atrocity. After a destructive civil war, he fell into the hands of his brother, Don Enrique (Henry). A personal struggle took place between the brothers, in the course of which Enrique stabbed Pedro to the heart; March 23, 1369. See the ballad by Sir Walter Scott, entitled the Death of Don Pedro, in Lockhart's Spanish Ballads, commencing-- 'Henry and Don Pedro clasping Hold in straining arms each other; Tugging hard and closely grasping, Brother proves his strength with brother.'