ive years, yet at present a hundred
books are scarcely purchas'd once a twelvemonth for, as my last Lord
Rochester said, tho' somewhat profanely, "Not being of God, he could
not stand."

Chaucer follow'd Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond
her, and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and _aimis
poeta_,[14] if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest
behavior and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not
harmonious to us, but 'tis like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus
commends it was _auribus istius temporis accommodata_[15] they who
liv'd with him, and some time after him, thought it musical and it
continued so even in our judgment, if compar'd with the numbers of
Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries there is the rude sweetness of
a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, tho' not perfect.
'Tis true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of
him [16] for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and
that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine
but this opinion is not worth confuting, 'tis so gross and obvious an
error, that common sense (which is a rule in everything but matters
of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of
numbers in every verse which we call heroic was either not known,
or not always practic'd, in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to
produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half
a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can
make otherwise. We can only say, that he liv'd in the infancy of our
poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We
must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in
process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace;
even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax,
before Waller and Denham were in being: and our numbers were in their
nonage till these last appear'd. I need say little of his parentage,
life, and fortunes;[17] they are to be found at large in all the
editions of his works. He was employ'd abroad and favor'd by Edward
the Third, Richard the Second, and Henry the Fourth, and was poet, as
I suppose, to all three of them. In Richard's time, I doubt, he was
a little dipp'd in the rebellion of the commons, and being
brother-in-law to John of Ghant, it was no wonder if he follow'd the
fortunes of that family, and was well wi