Note 23 — THE WIFE OF BATH.
Reading edition
The expression "I can't tell how" implies that the intimacy on the part of the wife of Bath was accidental, whereas it appears from Pope's context, and still more from the original, that it was a deliberate design:
Now will I telle forth what happed me. I say that in the fieldes walked we Till truely we had such dalliance This clerk and I, that of my purveyance I spake to him, and saide how that he If I were widdow, shoulde wedde me. For certainly I say for no bobaunce, Yet was I never withouten purveyance Of mariage, ne or no thinges eke; I hold a mouse's heart not worth a leek, That hath but oon hole to sterte to, And if that faile then is all i-do.
The acknowledgment that while married to one man she is always engaged to a second, seems to the wife of Bath to have nothing discreditable in it, and she only fears lest she should expose herself to the charge of vanity in asserting that she can command a succession of admirers.