"
Would that we knew as much of Adam of Cobsam as of our White-Rose king.
He must have been one of the Chaucer breed,[2] but more than this poem
tells of him I cannot learn.
_3, St George's Square, N.W.,
23 November, 1865._
P.S.--There are other Poems about Edward IV. in the volume, which will
be printed separately.[3] One on Women is given at the end of the
present text.
* * * * *
PP.S. 1869.--Mr C.H. Pearson, the historian of the Early and Middle Ages
of England, has supplied me with the immediate original of this story.
He says:
"The Wright's Chaste Wife is a reproduction of one of the _Gesta
Romanorum_, cap. 69, de Castitate, ed. Keller. The Latin story
begins 'Gallus regnavit prudens valde.' The Carpenter gets a shirt
with his wife, which is never to want washing unless one of them is
unfaithful. The lovers are three Knights (_milites_), and they are
merely kept on bread and water, not made to work; nor is any wife
introduced to see her lord's discomfiture. The English version,
therefore, is much quainter and fuller of incident than its
original. But the 'morality' of the Latin story is rich beyond
description. 'The wife is holy Mother Church,' 'the Carpenter is
the good Christian,' 'the shirt is our Faith, because, as the
apostle says, it is impossible to please God without faith.
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