386 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 81. 



Wltli these data we proceed to tlie following 

 comparison : 



A.M. 



Forenoon altitude 45°. 



Declin. 



8° 9'N. 

 13° 27',, 

 22° 34',, 

 Impossible. 



Hour, 



XI 



X 



IX 



VIII 



p. M. 



Afternoon altllnde 29^. 



Declin. 



3° 57' S. 



3° 16' N. 

 1.3° 26' „ 

 Impossible. 



[ A.M." and 



Hour 



II 



III 



IV 



V 



Here we immediately select ' 

 " IV p. M." as the only two items at all approach- 

 ing to similarity ; while, in these, tlie approach is 

 so near that they differ by only a single miniite of 

 a degree ! 



More conclusive evidence therefore could scarcely 

 exist that these wore the hours intended to be re- 

 corded by Ciiaucer, and that the sun's declination, 

 designed by him, was somewhere about thirteen 

 degrees and a half North. 



Strictly speaking, this declination would more 

 properly apply to the 17th of April, in Chaucer's 

 time, than to the 18th ; but since he does not pro- 

 fess to critical exactness, and since it is always 

 better to adhere to written authority, when it is 

 not grossly and obviously corrupt, such MSS- as 

 name the 18th of April ought to be respected; but 

 Tyrwhitt's "28th," which he states not only as 

 the result of his own conjecture but as authorised 

 by " the best MSS.," ought to be scouted at once. 



In the latest edition of the "Canterbury Tales" 

 (a literal reprint from one of the Ilarl. MSS., for 

 the Percy Societj'^, under the supervision of 

 Mr. Wright), the opening of the Prologue to 

 " The Man of Lawes Tale " does not materially 

 differ from Tyrwhitt's text, excepting in properly 

 assigning the day of the journey to " the eightetene 

 day of April;" and the confirmation of the fore- 

 noon altitude is as follows : 



" And sawe wel that the scliade of every tree 

 Was in the leiigthe the same quantite, 

 That was the body erecte that caused it." 



But the afternoon observation is thus related; 



" By that the Manciple had his tale endid, 

 The Sonne fro the southe line is descendld 

 So lowe that it nas nought to my sight, 

 Degrees nyne and twenty as in hight. 

 Ten on the clokke it was as I gesse, 

 For eleven footc, or litil more or lesse, 

 My scliadow was at tliilk time of the yere, 

 Of which feet as my lengthe parted were. 

 In sixe feet equal of proporcioun." 

 In a note to the line "Ten on the clokke" Mr. 

 Wright observes, 



" Ten. I have not ventured to change the reading of 

 the Harl. MS., which is partly supported by that 

 of the Lands. MS., than," 



If the sole object were to present an exact 

 counterpart of the MS., of course even its errors 

 were to be respected : but upon no other grounds 

 can I understand why a reading should be pre- 



served by which broad sunshine is attributed to 

 ten o'clock at night ! Nor can I believe that the 

 copyist of the MS. with whom the error must have 

 originated would have set down anything so gla- 

 ringly absurd, unless he had in his own mind some 

 means of reconciling it with probability. It may, 

 I believe, be explained in the circumstance that 

 " ten " and " four," in horary reckoning, were 

 convertible terms. The old Roman method of 

 naming the hours, wherein noon was the sixth, was 

 long preserved, especially in conventual establisli- 

 nients : and I have no doubt that the English 

 idiomatic phrase " o'clock" originated in the ne- 

 cessity for some distinguishing mark between hours 

 " of the clock" reckoned from midnight, and hours 

 of the day reckoned from sunrise, or more fre- 

 quently from six a.m. With such an understand- 

 ing, it is clear that teii might be called fou?; and 

 four ten, and yet the same identical hour be re- 

 ferred to; nor is it in the least difficult to imagine 

 that some monkish transcriber, ignorant perhaps 

 of the meaning of "o'clock," might fancy he was 

 correcting, rather than corrupting, Chaucer's text, 

 by changing "foure" into "ten." 



I have, I trust, now shown that all these cir- 

 cumstances related by Chaucer, so far from being 

 hopelessly incongruous, are, on the contrary, har- 

 moniously consistent ; — that they all tend to prove 

 that the day of the journey to Canterbury could 

 not have been later than the 18th of April; — that 

 the times of observation were certainly 10 a.m. and 

 4 p.m.; — that the " arke of his artificial day" is 

 to be understood as the horizontal or azimuthal 

 arch ; — and that the " halfe cours in the Ram " 

 alludes to the completion of the last twelve degrees 

 of that sign, about the end of the second week in 

 April. 



There yet remains to be examined the significa- 

 tion of those three very obscure lines which imme- 

 diately follow the description, already quoted, of 

 the afternoon observation : 



" Therewith tlie Mones exaltacioiin 

 In mciia Libra, alway gan ascende 

 As we were entryng at a townes end." 



It is the more mifortunate that we should not 

 be certain what it was that Chaucer really did 

 write, inasmuch as he probably intended to pre- 

 sent, in these lines, some means of identifying the 

 year, similar to those he had previously given with 

 respect to the day. 



When Tyrwhitt, therefore, remarks, "In what 

 year this happened Chaucer does not inform us" — 

 he was not astronomer enough to know tliat if 

 Chaucer had meant to leave, in these lines, a re- 

 cord of the moon's place on the day of the journey, 

 he could not have chosen a more certain method 

 of informing us in what year it occurred. 



But as the present illustration has already ex- 

 tended far enough for the limits of a single num- 

 ber of " Notes and Qxjekies," I shall defer the 



