fata, nec ultrà esse sinunt." But to the joy not only of all good men, but of mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are still living to enjoy the blessings and applause of all the good you have performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your long prosperity; 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 Most obedient servant, JOHN DRYDEN. PRE [13] PREFACE prefixed to the FABLES. IT is with a poet as with a man who designs to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in cafting up the cost beforehand; but, generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short 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 success than a certain nobleman, who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he had contriveď. From tranflating the first of Homer's Iliads (which I intended as an essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the tranflation of the twelfth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, 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 balk them. When I had compafied them, I was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book (which is the master-piece of the whole Metamorphoses), that I enjoined myfelf the pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume; which gave me an occafion of looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books: there occurred to me the hunting of the boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natured story of Baucis and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the fame turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet: he who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language; and who faw much farther into the beauties of our numbers, than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the poetical son of Spenfer, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax; for we have our lineal descents and clans, as well as other families: Spenfer more than once infinuates, that the foul of Chaucer was transfused into his body; and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spenser was his original; and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloign, 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 resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the fide of the modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare them: and as I am, and always have been, studious to promote the honour of my native country, so I soon 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 set in the fame light, and dressed in the same 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 seem partial to my countryman, and predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few: and besides many of the learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole fair fex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have affumed somewhat more to myself than they allow me: because I have adventured to sum up the evidence: but the readers are the jury; and their privilege remains entire to decide according to the merits of the cause, 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 some connexion) so from Chaucer I was led to think on Boccace, who was not only his contemparary, but also pursued the same studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works in verse; particularly is faid to have invented the octave rhyme, or stanza of eight lines, which ever since has been maintained by the practice of all Italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title of, Heroic Poets: he and Chaucer, among other 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 least in verse, before the time of Boccace, who likewife received no little help from his master Petrarch. But the reformation of their prose was wholly owing to Boccace himself, who is yet the standard of purity in the Italian tongue; though many of his phrafes are become obfolete, as in process 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 subject has been copioufly treated by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of time, and refemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I refolved to join them in my prefent work; to which I have added some 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 best, that they will not be condemned; but if they should, I have the excuse of an old gentleman, who, mounting on horseback before fome ladies, when I was present, got up fomewhat heavily, but defired of the fair spectators, that they would count fourscore and eight before they judged him. By the mercy of God, I am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are |