Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/603

 The Secret of Chaucer's Pardoner 599 a berde & not a woman; for a man is kyndly more hote than a woman. And therfore in a man ye smoke that is matere of heer encreasyth more than in a woman. And for kynde sumseth not to waste that smoke, he puttith and dryueth it out by two places, in the heed and in the berde. And therfore somtyme wymen hote and moyste of complexyon haue berdes. And in lyke wyse men of colde and drye complexyon haue lytyll berdes, and therefore in men yt ben gelded growe noo berdes. For they haue loste the hote membre that sholde brede the hote humour & smoke the matere of heer." 31 Surely Bartholomew knows his Physiognomy! And whatever may be said as to Chaucer's knowledge of physiognomy, certain it is that he is perfectly at home in the medical science of his time. His Pardoner is scientifically correct. Most of the authors cited above, it will be observed, give Polemon as the authority upon the subject of eunuchs. It may be well, therefore, to present here in full the original sketch from which later writers evidently drew their material. Pole- mon pretends to be describing a celebrated eunuch of his own time, whose name, he affirms, he does not know. One anony- mous author remarks, however, that "intelligitur autem de Favorino eum dicere." 32 That being the case, this may be Favorinus of Aries a contemporary and political opponent of Polemon whose infirmity is ridiculed in Lucian's Eunuchus and whose life is touched upon by Philostratus in his Lives of the Sophists. The whole passage 34 as it appears in the Arabic and Latin version of Polemon is as follows: Ubi oculus apertus est habetque coruscationem qualem marmor habet, acie acuta, parum pudicitiae indicat. Haec autem est natura quae in oculis virorum exstat qui ceteris viris similes non sunt, ut eunuchus qui tamen non castratus est, sed sine testiculis natus. Nescio autem an huius generis virum invenerim praeter unum. . . Libidinosus et dissolutus supra omnem modum erat; nam oculi eius e pessimorum hominum genere, nimirum illi description! similes erant. . . Praeditus erat inflata fronte. . . . cervix longa tenuis . . . Clamor eius mulieris clamor aequiparabat. . . Magnam sui ipsius 31 Op. cit., De Barba, Lib. V, Cap. XV. 32 Scrip, physiog. Foerster, Vol. II, p. 58. 33 Cf. Biographic Universelle, Michaud. Favorinus was still alive in the year 155 A.D., Scrip, physiog., Vol. I, LXXX ff. 34 Polemonis de physiognomonia liber Arabice et Latine, ed G. Hoffmann in Scrip, physiog., Foerster, Vol. I, pp. 160-4.