BUT MORAL VIRTUE, GROUNDED UPON TRUTH,
THAT WAS THE CAUSE I FIRST HAD ON YOU RUTH.

And gentle heart, and manhood that ye had,
And that ye had (as methought) in despite
Everything that tended unto bad,
As rudeness, and as popular appetite,
And that your reason bridled your delight,
'Twas these did make 'bove every creature,
That I was yours, and shall while I may 'dure.

And if true affection under the law still secured the sympathy of the
better-balanced part of society, so the vice of those who made war upon
female virtue, or the insolence of those who falsely boasted of their
conquests, still incurred its resentment. Among the companies which in
the "House of Fame" sought the favour of its mistress, Chaucer vigorously
satirises the would-be-lady-killers, who were content with the REPUTATION
of accomplished seducers; and in "Troilus and Cressid" a shrewd observer
exclaims with the utmost vivacity against

Such sort of folk,--what shall I clepe them? what?
That vaunt themselves of women, and by name,
That yet to them ne'er promised this or that,
Nor knew them more, in sooth, than mine old hat.

The same easy but sagacious philosopher (Pandarus) observes, that the harm
which is in this world springs as often from folly as from malice. But a
deeper feeling animates the lament of the "good Alceste," in the Prologue
to the "Legend of Good Women," that among men the betrayal of women is now
"held a game." So indisputably it was already often esteemed, in too