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 learned
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_,
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 me as if some ancient painter
had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_, their
humours, their features, and their very dress, as distinctly as if I
had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. Yet even there,
too, the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better
light; which, though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the
reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts
and words remain to be considered in the comparison of the two poets,
and I have saved myself one-half of that labour by owning that Ovid
lived when the Roman tongue was in its meridian; Chaucer, in the
dawning of our language; therefore, that part of the comparison
stands not on an equal foot, any more than the diction of Ennius and
Ovid, or of Chaucer and our present English. The words are given up,
as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the
modern art of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and
they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they
flow more or less naturally from the persons described on such and
such occasions. The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all