[Footnote 32: Here followed a bad couplet, which Pope afterwards omitted: Expensive dainties load the plenteous boards, The best luxurious Italy affords.] [Footnote 33: Joab, the leader of the Israelites in battle, blew the trumpet, as is recorded in the Bible, to gather them together. Theodomas is thought by Tyrwhitt to be a character in some fictitious history which was popular in the days of Chaucer.] [Footnote 34: Chaucer says that the bed was blessed by the priest, and the form used on these occasions may be seen in the old Latin service books.] [Footnote 35: Dryden's Sigismonda and Guiscardo: What thoughts he had beseems me not to say.] [Footnote 36: A circumstance is added by Chaucer which brings vividly before the reader the advanced age of the knight: The slacke skin about his necke shaketh While that he sung.] [Footnote 37: Chaucer had previously mentioned that it was the usage for newly married wives to keep their chambers till the fourth day, and he repeats the fact here: As custom is unto these nobles all, A bride shall not eaten in the hall, Till dayes four, or three days atte least I-passed be; then let her go to the feast. The fourthe day complete from noon to noon, When that the highe masse was i-doon, In halle sit this January and May, As fresh as is the brighte summer's day.] [Footnote 38: In the original January passes a warm panegyric upon the excellent qualities of Damian, which is meant to display in broader contrast the treachery and infamy of the squire. The merchant in his own person denounces the villany of Damian's conduct, and prays that all persons may be protected from the machinations of those deceitful vipers, who, when fostered in a family, employ their opportunities to injure their benefactors. Pope has omitted every allusion of the kind, and has treated the baseness of the squire as if he regarded it in the light of a joke.] [Footnote 39: It was at first "speaking sigh," which was distinctive. "Heaving" is the accompaniment of all sighs, and, as the sigh of Damian was soft, did not mark his in an especial degree.] [Footnote 40: There is not a word, as may be supposed, in Chaucer of the squire asking for divine assistance in his wicked schemes.] [Footnote 41: May, on her return from the visit which, at her husband's desire, she paid to Damian in his chamber, that she might cheer him in his illness, read the billet that he had given her covertly, and the result is thus told by Chaucer in a passage which has not been versified by Pope: