he latter. With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue;
from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of
the poets were not unlike: both of them were well bred, well natur'd,
amorous, and libertine, at least in their writings, it may be also in
their lives. Their studies were the same, philosophy and philology.
Both of them were knowing in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the
Roman feasts, and Chaucer's treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient
witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil,
Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and
clearness: neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the
Grecian fables; and most of Chaucer's stones were taken from his
Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors.[9] Boccace his
_Decameron_ was first publish'd; and from thence our Englishman has
borrow'd many of his _Canterbury Tales_; yet that of _Palamon and
Arcite_ was written in all probability by some Italian wit in a former
age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of Grizild was the invention
of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace; from whom it came to Chaucer.
_Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard author; but much
amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified; the genius
of our countrymen, in general, being rather to improve an invention,
than to invent themselves; as is evident not only in our poetry, but
in many of our manufactures. I find I have anticipated already, and
taken up from Boccace before I come to him; but there is so much
less behind; and I am of the temper of most kings, _who love to be
in debt_, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it
afterwards: besides, the nature of a preface is rambling; never wholly
out of the way, nor in it. This I have learn'd from the practice of
honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to Ovid and Chaucer, of
whom I have little more to say. Both of them built on the inventions
of other men; yet since Chaucer had something of his own, as _The Wife
of Bath's Tale, The Cock and the Fox_,[10] which I have translated,
and some others, I may justly give our countryman the precedence in
that part; since I can remember nothing of Ovid which was wholly his.
Both of them understood the manners, under which name I comprehend
the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descriptions of persons,
and their very habits; for an example, I see Baucis and Philemon as
perfectly before