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the honour of my native country, so I foon refolved to put their merits to the trial, by turning some 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 dressed in the fame English habit, ftory to be compared with ftory, 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 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 difcourfe, (as thoughts, according to Mr. Hobbs, 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 verfe; particularly is faid to have invented the octave rhyme, or flanza of eight lines, which ever fince has been maintained 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 himself, who is yet the ftandard

of purity in the Italian tongue; though many of his phrafes are become obfolete, as in process of time it muft 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 been 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 present 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, that they will not be condemned; but if they fhould, I have the excufe of an old gentleman, who mounting on horseback before fome ladies, when I was prefent, got up fomewhat heavily, but defired of the fair fpectators, 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 in my mind, the reader must determine. I think myfelf as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my foul, excepting only my memory, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I lofe not more of it, I have no great reafon to complain. What judgment I had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, fuch as they are, come crowding in fo fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to chufe or to reject; to run them into verfe, or to give them the other harmony of profe. I have fo long ftudied and practifed both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar

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familiar to me. In short, though I may lawfully plead fome part of the old gentleman's excufe; yet I will reserve it till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but thofe which are given of course to human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortnefs of time in which I writ it, or the several intervals of fickness: they who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have coft them; and what other bufinefs of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the queftion, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thruft their indigested ftuff upon them, as if they deferved no better?

With this account of my prefent undertaking, I conclude the first part of this discourse: in the second part, as at a fecond fitting, though I alter not the draught, I must touch the fame features over again, and change the dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only fay, that I have written nothing which favours of immorality or profanenefs; at leaft, I am not conscious to myself of any fuch intention. If there happen to be found an irreverent expreffion, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verfes through my inadvertency; if the fearchers find any in the cargo, let them be ftaved or forfeited, like contraband goods; at least, let their authors be anfwerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. other fide, I have endeavoured to choose fuch fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them fome inftructive moral, which I could prove

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by induction, but the way is tedious; and they leap foremost into fight, without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could affirm with a fafe confcience, that I had taken the fame care in all my former writings; for it must be owned, that fuppofing verses are never so beautiful or pleafing, yet if they contain any thing which fhocks religion, or good manners, they are at best, what Horace fays of good numbers without good fenfe, Verfus inopes rerum, nugaque canoræ. Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right of selfdefence, where I have been wrongfully accufed, and my fenfe wire-drawn into blafphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer, in a late pleading against the ftage; in which he mixes truth with falfhood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating ftrongly, that fomething may remain.

I refume the thread of my difcourfe with the first of my tranflation, which was the firft Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to tranflate the whole Ilias; provided ftill that I meet with those encouragements from the public, which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with fome chearfulness. And this I dare affure the world before-hand, that I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil, (though I fay not the tranflation will be lefs laborious.) For the Grecian is more according to my genius, than the Latin poet. In the works of the two authors we may read their manners, and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. Virgil was of a quict, fedate temper; Homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words: Homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the li

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berties both of numbers, and of expreffions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined: fo that if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic poetry: for, nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the fame ftory: and the perfons already formed: the manners of Æneas are thofe of Hector fuperadded to those which Homer gave him. The Adventures of Ulyffes in the Odyffeis are imitated in the first Six Books of Virgil's Aneis: and though the accidents are not the fame, (which would have argued him of a fervile copying, and total barreanels of invention) yet the feas were the fame, in which both the heroes wandered; and Dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of Calypfo. The fix latter books of Virgil's poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted: a quarrel occafioned by a lady, a fingle combat, battles fought, and a town befieged. I fay not this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict, any thing which I have formerly faid in his juft praise for his Episodes are almost wholly of his own invention: and the form, which he has given to the telling, makes the tale his own, even though the original ftory had been the fame. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to defign: and if invention be the firft virtue of an Epic poet, then the Latin poem can only be allowed the fecond place. Mr. Hobbs, in the preface to his own bald tranflation of the Ilias, (ftudying poetry as he did mathematicks, when it was too late) Mr. Hobbs, I fay, begins the praise of Homer where he fhould have ended it. He tells us, that the firft beauty of an Epic poem confifts in diction, that is,

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