[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 fire he fell backward adown. And he upstert as doth a wood leoun, And with his fist he smote me on the head That in the floor I lay as I were dead. And when he saw so stille that I lay He was aghast, and would have fled away. Till atte last out of my swoon I braide; O hastow slain me, false thief I said, And for my land thus hastow murdered me? Ere I be dead, yet will I kisse thee. "Pine" is pain; "fine" is cease; "plight" is plucked; "wood" is mad; and "braide" is awoke. Pope has dropped the natural circumstance of the clerk's terror when he fancies he has killed his wife. This alarm brings out more strongly the hypocrisy of his virulent dame in pretending that the blow he gave her on the head, after she had torn the leaves out of his book and knocked him backwards into the fire, was with the deliberate design of murdering her to get possession of her property.]