1. If, as Mr. Furnivall supposes, the time of the telling of the Canterbury Tales be taken to be longer than one day, we may suppose the Man of Lawes Tale to begin the stories told on the second morning of the journey, April 18. Otherwise, we must suppose all the stories in Group A to precede it, which is not impossible, if we suppose the pilgrims to have started early in the morning.
Hoste. This is one of the words which are sometimes dissyllabic, and sometimes monosyllabic; it is here a dissyllable, as in l. 39. See note to line 1883 below.
sey, i. e. saw. The forms of 'saw' vary in the MSS. In this line we find saugh, sauh, segh, sauhe, sawh, none of which are Chaucer's own, but due to the scribes. The true form is determined by the rime, as in the Clerkes Tale, E. 667, where most of the MSS. have say. A still better spelling is sey, which may be found in the House of Fame, 1151, where it rimes with lay. The A. S. form is sēah.
2. The ark, &c. In Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe, pt. ii. ch. 7 (vol. iii. 194), is the proposition headed—'to knowe the arch of the day, that some folk callen the day artificial, from the sonne arysing til hit go to reste.' Thus, while the 'day natural' is twenty-four hours, the 'day artificial' is the time during which the sun is above the horizon. The 'arc' of this day merely means the extent or duration of it, as reckoned along the circular rim of an astrolabe; or, when measured along the horizon (as here), it means the arc extending from the point of sunrise to that of sunset. ronne, run, performed, completed.
3. The fourthe part. The true explanation of this passage, which Tyrwhitt failed to discover, is due to Mr. A. E. Brae, who first published it in May, 1851, and reprinted it at p. 68 of his edition of Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe. His conclusions were based upon actual calculation, and will be mentioned in due order. In re-editing the 'Astrolabe,' I took the opportunity of roughly checking his calculations by other methods, and am satisfied that he is quite correct, and that the day meant is not the 28th of April, as in the Ellesmere MS., nor the 13th of April, as in the Harleian MS., but the 18th, as in the Hengwrt MS. and most others. It is easily seen that xviii may be corrupted into xxviii by prefixing x, or into xiii by the omission of v; this may account for the variations.