myself the fame verfes, which I had formerly applied to him:

Oftendunt terris hunc tantùm fata, nec ultrà
Effe finunt.

But to the joy not only of all good men, but of mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are ftill living to enjoy the bleffings and applaufe of all the good you have performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your long profperity; and that your power of doing generous and charitable actions may be as extended as your will; which is by none more zealously defired than by

Your GRACE'S

Moft humble,

Most obliged,

And moft obedient fervant,

JOHN DRYDEN.

PREFACE

PREFIXED TO THE

FABLE S.

IT is with a poet, as with a man who defigns to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in cafting up the coft before-hand; but, generally fpeaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons fhort in the expence he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. So has it happened to me: I have built a house, where I intended but a lodge; yet with better fuccefs than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had contrived.

From tranflating the firft of Homer's Iliads (which I intended as an effay to the whole work) I proceeded to the tranflation of the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphofes, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan war. Here I ought in reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulyffes lying next in my way, I could not baulk them. When I

had compaffed them, I was fo taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, (which is the mafter-piece of the whole Metamorphofes) that I enjoined inyfelf the pleafing talk of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to fwell into a little volume; which gave me an occafion of looking backward on fome beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natured ftory of Baucis and Philemon, with the reft, which I hope I have tranflated clofely enough, and given them the fame turn of verfe which they had in the original; and this, I may fay without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the beft verfifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenfer and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great mafters in our language, and who faw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical fon of Spenfer, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal defcents and clans as well as other families. Spenfer more than once infinuates, that the foul of Chaucer was transfufed into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his deceafe. Milton has acknowledged

to

me, that Spenfer was his original, and many befides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned into English by Mr. Fairfax.

But to return. Having done with Ovid for this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet, Chaucer, in many things refembled him, and that with no difadvantage on the fide of the modern author, as I fhall endeavour to prove when I compare them; and as I am, and always have been, studious to promote the honour of my native country, fo I foon refolved to put their merits to the trial, by turning fome of the Canterbury Tales into our language, as it is now refined; for by this means, both the poets being fet in the fame light, and dre red in the fame English habit, story to be compared with story, a certain judgment may be made betwixt them by the reader, without obtruding my opinion on him. Or if I feem partial to my countryman, and predeceffor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and befides many of the learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole fair fex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have affumed fomewhat more to myself than they allow me, because I have adventured to fum up the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and their privilege remains entire, to decide according to the merits of the caufe, or, if they please, to bring it to another hearing before fome other court. In the mean time, to follow the thread of my discourse, (as thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbes, have always fome connexion) fo from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but also pursued the fame ftudies; wrote novels in profe, and many works in verse: particularly is faid to have invented the octave rhyme, or ftanza of eight lines, which ever fince has been main

tained by the practice of all Italian writers, who are, or at least affume the title of, Heroic Poets: he and Chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they refined their mother tongues; but with this difference, that Dante* had begun to file their language, at leaft in verfe, before the time of Boccace, who likewife received no little help from his mafter Petrarch. But the reformation of their profe was wholly owing to Boccace himfelf, who is yet the standard of purity in the Italian tongue; though many of his phrafes are become obfolete, as in procefs of time it must needs happen. Chaucer, (as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr. Rymer) first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provencall, which was then the most polished of all the modern languages; but this fubject has becn copiously treated by that great critic, who deferves no little commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I refolved to join them in my prefent work; to which I have added fome original papers of my own; which, whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper judge, and therefore I leave them wholly to the mercy of the reader. I will hope the beft,

* Dante, in one of his profe works, has treated of different forts of style, which he has divided into three fpecies, the Sublime, the Middle, and Low; the firft, he fays, is proper for tragedy, the fecond for comedy, the third for elegy; and he meant by giving his Inferno the title of Comedia, to infinuate, that in this work he wrote in the middle ftyle. This feems to have been the reafon why he gave it this title, which it has been thought difficult to account for. Dr. J. WARTON.