d Rochester said, though somewhat
profanely, not being of God, he could not stand.

Chaucer followed nature everywhere; but was never so bold to go beyond
her: and there is a great difference of being _Poeta_ and _nimis Poeta_,
if we believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and
affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us;
but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was
_auribus istius temporis accommodata_. They who lived with him, and some
time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our
judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his
contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it,
which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect. It is true, I cannot
go so far as he who published the last edition of him; 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; it is so gross and obvious an error, that common sense
(which is a rule in every thing 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 practised 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 lived 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 appeared. I need say little
of his parentage, life and fortunes: they are to be found at large in
all the editions of his works. He was employed abroad and favoured 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 dipt in the rebellion of the commons; and being
brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, it was no wonder if he followed the
fortunes of that family; and was well with Henry the Fourth when he had
deposed his predecessor. Neither is it to be admired, that Henry, who
was a wise