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Shakespeare, to be only like one of mercury, imperceptibly mingled with a mine of gold.

CHAUCER is highly extolled by Dryden, in the spirited and pleasing preface to his fables; for his prefaces, after all, are very pleasing, notwithstanding the opposite opinions they contain, because his prose is the most numerous and sweet, the most mellow and generous, of any our language has yet produced. His digressions and ramblings, which he himself says he learned of honest Montaigne, are interesting and amusing. In this preface is a passage worth particular notice, not only for the justness of the criticism, but because it contains a censure of Cowley. "Chaucer is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences; and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say, so he also knows where to leave off; a continence, which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit that came in his way; but swept, like a drag

a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweet-meats for boys and women; but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment: neither did he want that, in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets; but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and, perhaps, knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth." It is a circumstance of literary history worth mentioning, that Chaucer was more than 60 years old when he wrote Palamon and Arcite, as we know Dryden was 70 when he versified it. The lines of POPE, in the piece before us, are spirited and easy, and have properly enough, a free colloquial air. One passage I cannot forbear quoting, as it acquaints us with the writers who were popular in the time of Chaucer. The jocose old

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woman

woman says, that her husband frequently read to her out of a volume that contained,

Valerius whole; and of Saint Jerome part;
Chrysippus, and Tertullian, Ovid's Art,

Solomon's Proverbs, Eloisa's Loves;

With many more than sure the church approves.*

POPE has omitted a stroke of humour; for in the original, she naturally mistakes the rank and age of St. Jerome: the lines must be transcribed:

Yclepid Valerie and Theophrast,

At which boke he lough alwey full fast;
And eke there was a clerk sometime in Rome,
A cardinal, that hightin St. Jerome,
That made a boke agenst Jovinian,
In which boke there was eke Tertullian,
Chrysippus, Trotula, and Helowis,
That was an Abbess not ferr fro Paris;
And eke the Parables of Solomon,
Ovid' is art, and bokis many a one.†

In the library which Charles V. founded in France about the year thirteen hundred and seventy-six, among many books of devotion, astrology, chemistry, and romance, there was not

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* Ver. 359.

↑ Ver. 671.

one copy of Tully to be found; and no Latin poet, but Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius; some French translations of Livy, Valerius Maximus, and St. Austin's City of God. He placed these in one of the towers of the old Louvre, which was called the Tower of the Library. This was the foundation of the present magnificent Royal Library at Paris.

The tale to which this is the Prologue, has been versified by Dryden; and is supposed to have been of Chaucer's own contrivance as is also the elegant VISION of the Flower and the Leaf, which has received new graces from the spirited and harmonious Dryden. It is to his Fables, though wrote in his old age,* that Dryden will owe his immortality; and among them, particularly, to Palamon and Arcite, Sigismunda and Guiscardo, Theodore and Honoria; and,

above

*The falling off of his hair, said a man of wit, had no other consequence, than to make his laurels to be seen the more. A person who translated some pieces after Dryden, used to say,

Experto credite, quantus

In clypeum assurgat, quo turbine torqueat hastam.

Crebillon was ninety when he brought his Catiline on the stage.

above all, to his exquisite music ode. The warmth and melody of these pieces has never been excelled in our language; I mean in rhyme. As general and unexemplified criticism is always useless and absurd, I must beg leave to select a few passages from these three poems; and the reader must not think any observations on the character of Dryden, the constant pattern of POPE, unconnected with the main subject of this work. The picture of Arcite, in the absence of Emilia, is highly expressive of the deepest distress, and a complete image of anguish :

He rav'd with all the madness of despair;

He roar'd, he beat his breast, he tore his hair.
Dry sorrow in his stupid eyes appears;
For wanting nourishment, he wanted tears:
His eye-balls in their hollow sockets sink;
Bereft of sleep, he loaths his meat and drink;
He withers at his heart, and looks as wan
As the pale spectre of a murder'd man.

The image of the Suicide is equally picturesque and pathetic.

* Palamon and Arcite, Book I.

The

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