its scene is laid in remote ages, and
its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little
relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much
notice, but is turned silently over and seldom quoted or mentioned with
either praise or blame.--JOHNSON.

It was, to the Italians we owed anything that could be called poetry,
from whom Chaucer, imitated by Pope in this vision, copied largely, as
_they_ are said to have done from the bards of Provence. But whatever
Chaucer might copy from the Italians, yet the artful and entertaining
plan of his Canterbury Tales was purely original and his own. This
admirable piece, even exclusive of its poetry, is highly valuable, as it
preserves to us the liveliest and exactest picture of the manners,
customs, characters, and habits, of our forefathers, whom he has brought
before our eyes acting as on a stage, suitably to their different orders
and employments. With these portraits the driest antiquary must be
delighted. By this plan, he has more judiciously connected these stories
which the guests relate, than Boccace has done his novels, whom he has
imitated, if not excelled, in the variety of the subjects of his tales.
It is a common mistake, that Chaucer's excellence lay in his manner of
treating light and ridiculous subjects; for whoever will attentively
consider the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, will be convinced that he
equally excels in the pathetic and the sublime. The House of Fame, as
being merely descriptive, is of an inferior rank to those in Chaucer of
the narrative kind, and which paint life and manners. The design is
improved and heightened by the masterly hand of Pope. It is not
improbable that this subject was suggested to our author, not only by
Dryden's translations of Chaucer, of which Pope was so fond, but
likewise by that celebrated paper of Addison, in the Tatler, called the
Table of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced,
and seated according to their respective merits and characters, and
which was published some years before this poem was written. The six
persons Pope thought proper to select as worthy to be placed on the
highest seats of honour are Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Horace, Aristotle,
Tully. It is observable that our author has omitted the great dramatic
poets of Greece. Sophocles and Euripides deserved certainly an
honourable niche in the Temple of Fame, as much as Pindar and Horace.
But the truth is it