the bow. To Arcite, released from prison on condition that he never again enter Theseus’ lands, banishment will be a worse fate than the purgatory of life imprisonment, for then even the sight of Emelye will be denied him:

“He seyde, ‘Allas that day that I was born!
Now is my prison worse than biforn;
Now is me shape eternally to dwelle
Noght in purgatorie, but in helle.’”[31]

The idea of purgatory, not as a place definitely located like Dante’s Mount of Purgatory, but rather as a period of punishment and probation, is expressed in these lines from The Parlement of Foules (78-84):

“‘But brekers of the lawe, soth to seyne,
And lecherous folk, after that they be dede,
Shul alwey whirle aboute therthe in peyne,
Til many a world be passed, out of drede,
And than, for-yeven alle hir wikked dede,
Than shul they come unto that blisful place,
To which to comen god thee sende his grace!’”

Chaucer uses the idea of paradise for poetical purposes quite as often as that of purgatory. He expresses the highest degree of earthly beauty or joy by comparing it with paradise. Criseyde’s face is said to be like the image of paradise.[32] Again, in extolling the married life, the poet says that its virtues are such

“‘That in this world it is a paradys.’”[33]

And later in the same tale, woman is spoken of as

“mannes help and his confort,
His paradys terrestre and his disport.”[34]

When Aeneas reaches Carthage he

“is come to Paradys
Out of the swolow of helle, and thus in Ioye
Remembreth him of his estat in Troye.”[35]

Chaucer mentions paradise several times in its literal sense as the abode of Adam and Eve before their fall. In the Monkes Tale we are told that Adam held sway over all paradise excepting one tree.[36] Again, the pardoner speaks of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise:

“Adam our fader, and his wyf also,
Fro Paradys to labour and to wo
Were driven for that vyce, it is no drede;
For whyl that Adam fasted, as I rede,
He was in Paradys; and whan that he
Eet of the fruyt defended on the tree,
Anon he was out-cast to we and peyne.”[37]

5. The Four Elements.

The idea of four elements[38] has its origin in the attempts of the early Greek cosmologists to discover the ultimate principle of reality in the universe.

Thales reached the conclusion that this principle was water, Anaximines, that it was air, and Heracleitus, fire, while Parmenides supposed two elements, fire or light, subtle and rarefied, and earth or night, dense and heavy. Empedocles of Agrigentum (about 450 B. C.) assumed as primary elements all four—fire, air, water, and earth—of which each of his predecessors had assumed only one or two. To explain the manifold phenomena of nature he supposed them to be produced by combinations of the elements in different proportions through the attractive and repulsive forces of ‘love’ and ‘discord.’ This arbitrary assumption of four elements, first made by Empedocles, persisted in the popular imagination throughout the Middle Ages and is, like other cosmological ideas of antiquity, sometimes reflected in the poetry of the time.

The elements in mediaeval cosmology were assigned to a definite region of the universe. Being mortal and imperfect they occupied four spheres below the moon, the elemental region or region of imperfection, as distinguished from the ethereal region above the moon. Immediately within the sphere of the moon came that of Fire, below this the Air, then Water, and lowest of all the solid sphere of Earth. Fire being the most ethereal of the elements constantly tends to rise upward, while Earth sinks towards the center of the universe. This contrast is a favorite idea with Dante, who says in the Paradiso i. 112-117:

“‘wherefore they move to diverse ports o’er the
great sea of being, and each one with
instinct given it to bear it on.
This beareth the fire toward the moon; this
is the mover in the hearts of things that die;
this doth draw the earth together and unite it.’”

Elsewhere Dante describes the lightning as fleeing its proper place when it strikes the earth:

“‘but lightning, fleeing its proper site, ne’er
darted as dost thou who art returning thither.’”[39]

And again:

“‘so from this course sometimes departeth the
creature that hath power, thus thrust, to swerve
to-ward some other part,
(even as fire may be seen to dart down from
the cloud) if its first rush be wrenched aside
to earth by false seeming pleasure.’”[40]

The same thought of the tendency of fire to rise and of earth to sink is found in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius:[41]

“Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporcionables, ... that the fyr, that is purest, ne flee nat over hye, ne that the hevinesse ne drawe nat adoun over-lowe the erthes that ben plounged in the wateres.”

Chaucer does not make specific mention of the spheres of the elements, but he tells us plainly that each element has been assigned its proper region from which it may not escape:

“For with that faire cheyne of love he bond
The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond
In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee;”