Note 1 — JANUARY AND MAY:
Reading edition
Pope in this particular has not followed Chaucer. The story is told by the merchant, who announces in the prologue, that he has been two months married, and that in this brief space he has endured more misery from the fiendishness of his wife than a bachelor could undergo in an entire lifetime from the enmity of the world. He lays it down for a general maxim, that
We wedded men live in sorwe and care; Assay it whoso will, and he shall find That I say sooth, by Saint Thomas of Inde, As for the more part; I say not all; God shielde that it shoulde so befall.
The host begs that since the merchant knows so much of the trials of matrimony, he will instruct the company in some of them.
Gladly, quoth he, but of mine owne sore For sorry heart I telle may no more.
He accordingly relates the adventures of January and May in illustration of the misfortunes of the wedded state, and commences with the panegyric of January upon its unmixed blessings. The merchant then adds,
Thus said this olde knight that was so wise,
which is an ironical comment on what the narrator of the tale considers a delusive dream, and a proof of the credulous folly of the speaker. The idea of ascribing genuine sense and wisdom to the knight, notwithstanding that he was weak enough, at the age of sixty, to marry a girl, is confined to the version of Pope, and is not in itself unnatural; but the character, upon the whole, is better preserved in Chaucer, since the entire talk and conduct of January indicate a feeble mind.