tion to the Canterbury Tales,
published under the name of Betterton.--WARTON.

Dr. Warton thinks, "one cannot but wonder at Pope's choice from Chaucer
of these stories, when so many more are to be found in him more
poetical." His observation on Chaucer's poems is very just, but the fact
is, Pope by this very selection showed the bent of his mind,--that it
was rather turned to satire and ridicule, than to the more elevated
strains of poetry.--BOWLES.

The imitations of Chaucer's January and May, and Wife of Bath's
Prologue, are executed with a degree of freedom, ease, and spirit, and
at the same time with a judgment and delicacy which not only far exceeds
what might have been expected from so young a writer, but which leave
nothing to be wished for in the mind of the reader. The humour of
Chaucer is translated into the lines of Pope, almost without suffering
any evaporation.--ROSCOE.

Pope's version of the Prologue of the Wife of Bath first appeared in a
volume of Poetical Miscellanies, published by Steele, in 1714. The
portrait of this repulsive woman is drawn by Chaucer with a vigorous
hand. She is a wealthy cloth manufacturer, with a bold countenance, and
more than masculine freedom of speech. She dresses ostentatiously, rides
with spurs, and, glorying in her shame, openly boasts of the vices which
less impudent women would carefully conceal. Her two predominant
characteristics are an inordinate self-will which makes her resolve to
rule her husbands with an absolute despotism, and an inordinate
sensuality which has completely absorbed every finer sentiment. She not
only avows her propensities, but exults in the deceit, the tricks, and
the violence which she has employed to gratify them as so many
testimonies to her cleverness and power. She has no compunctious
visitings for the frauds she has practised, and the misery she has
inflicted upon her deceased husbands. She speaks of the dead as of the
living with brutal insensibility, and would think it a weakness to be
swayed by a human feeling. The impersonation of domineering, heartless
selfishness, her pride is to prevail by tyranny instead of by the gentle
graces of feminine tenderness, and her pleasure is to indulge in worldly
gaiety, and the gross gratifications of sense. Even her jovial good
humour is hardly a redeeming feature in her character, for it mainly
proceeds from her keen relish for physical enjoyments, and turns to
temper the instant she is thwarted. I