opy, he contended
that the copy was to be preferred to a blank. If he had confined himself
simply to modernising his author there would have been little force in
his plea. The phraseology of Chaucer is readily mastered, and any
departure from his words destroys a large part of the charm. There is a
native simplicity in the mediaeval works of genius which pleases like the
artless manners of children, but which would be as ridiculous in a
modern dress as the manners of the child in a grown-up person. Nor must
we overlook the superior interest which attaches to the notions, usages,
and characters of our ancestors when the picture is painted by
themselves. A copy in which costumes and colouring have been completely
changed is but an adulterate representation. The antique peculiarities
and primitive freshness are gone. The real justification of Dryden's
undertaking was not that his version was a substitute for the original,
but that it was a glorious supplement. Little as he scrupled to assert
his own merits he could not press this argument to its full extent,
though he was evidently conscious of the truth. He states that as the
old poet was occasionally diffuse, and more often undignified, he had
curtailed the redundancies, and rejected the trivialities. He did not
stop at the easy office of omission. "I dare," he says, "to add that
what beauties I lose in some places I give to others which had them not
originally. If I have altered Chaucer anywhere for the better I must at
the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him.
_Facile est inventis addere_, is no great commendation, and I am not so
vain to think I have deserved a greater." In dramatic power and pathos,
which are Chaucer's strongest points, Dryden has not improved upon him;
but upon the whole he has narrated the tales in a higher strain of
poetry, in richer and more felicitous language, and with the addition of
many new and happy ideas. A few short examples will show the nature of
the changes he introduced into numerous passages in the process of
recasting them. The Wife of Bath's Tale commences with these lines:

In olde dayes of the King Arthour
Of which that Britains speken great honour,
All was this land fulfilled of fairie;
The elf-queen with her jolly company,
Danced full oft in many a greene mead;
This was the old opinion, as I read;
I speak of many hundred year ago;
But now can no man see none elves mo