Dived here old woman, and rose there a maid.
  Our trusty doorkeepers of former time
  There strut and swagger in heroic rhyme.
  Tack but a copper-lace to drugget suit,
  And there's a hero made without dispute:
  And that, which was a capon's tail before,
  Becomes a plume for Indian emperor.
  But all his subjects, to express the care                           20
  Of imitation, go, like Indians, bare:
  Laced linen there would be a dangerous thing;
  It might perhaps a new rebellion bring;
  The Scot, who wore it, would be chosen king.
  But why should I these renegades describe,
  When you yourselves have seen a lewder tribe?
  Teague has been here, and, to this learned pit,
  With Irish action slander'd English wit:
  You have beheld such barbarous Macs appear,
  As merited a second massacre:                                       30
  Such as, like Cain, were branded with disgrace,
  And had their country stamp'd upon their face.
  When strollers durst presume to pick your purse,
  We humbly thought our broken troop not worse.
  How ill soe'er our action may deserve,
  Oxford's a place where wit can never starve.

XXXVIII.

PROLOGUE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

  Though actors cannot much of learning boast,
  Of all who want it, we admire it most:
  We love the praises of a learned pit,
  As we remotely are allied to wit.
  We speak our poet's wit, and trade in ore,
  Like those who touch upon the golden shore:
  Betwixt our judges can destinction make,
  Discern how much, and why, our poems take:
  Mark if the fools, or men of sense, rejoice;
  Whether the applause be only sound or voice.                        10
  When our fop gallants, or our city folly,
  Clap over-loud, it makes us melancholy:
  We doubt that scene which does their wonder raise,
  And, for their ignorance, contemn their praise.
  Judge then, if we who act, and they who write,
  Should not be proud of giving you delight.
  London likes grossly; but this nicer pit
  Examines, fathoms all the depths of wit;
  The ready finger lays on every blot;
  Knows what should justly please, and what should not.               20
  Nature herself lies open to your view;
  You judge by her, what draught of her is true,
  Where outlines false, and colours seem too faint,
  Where bunglers daub, and where true poets paint.
  But by the sacred genius of this place,
  By every Muse, by each domestic grace,
  Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
  And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
  Our poets hither for adoption come,
  As nations sued to be made free of Rome:                            30
  Not in the suffragating tribes to stand,
  But in your utmost, last, provincial band.
  If his ambition may those hopes pursue,
  Who with religion loves your arts and you,
  Oxford to him a dearer name shall be,
  Than his own mother university.
  Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage;
  He chooses Athens in his riper age.

XXXIX.

PROLOGUE TO "ALBION AND ALBANIUS."

  Full twenty years and more, our labouring stage
  Has lost on this incorrigible age:
  Our poets, the John Ketches of the nation,
  Have seem'd to lash ye, even to excoriation:
  But still no sign remains; which plainly notes,
  You bore like heroes, or you bribed like Oates.
  What can we do, when mimicking a fop,
  Like beating nut-trees, makes a larger crop?
  Faith, we'll e'en spare our pains! and, to content you,
  Will fairly leave you what your Maker meant you.                    10
  Satire was once your physic, wit your food:
  One nourish'd not, and t'other drew no blood:
  We now prescribe, like doctors in despair,
  The diet your weak appetites can bear.
  Since hearty beef and mutton will not do,
  Here's julep-dance, ptisan of song and show:
  Give you strong sense, the liquor is too heady:
  You're come to farce,--that's asses' milk,--already.
  Some hopeful youths there are, of callow wit,
  Who one day may be men, if Heaven think fit:                        20
  Sound may serve such, ere they to sense are grown,
  Like leading-strings till they can walk alone.
  But yet, to keep our friends in countenance, know,
  The wise Italians first invented show:
  Thence into France the noble pageant pass'd:
  'Tis England's credit to be cozen'd last.
  Freedom and zeal have choused you o'er and o'er:
  Pray give us leave to bubble you once more;
  You never were so cheaply fool'd before:

  We bring you change, to humour your disease;                        30
  Change for the worse has ever used to please:
  Then, 'tis the mode of France; without whose rules
  None must presume to set up here for fools.
  In France, the oldest man is always young,
  Sees operas daily, learns the tunes so long,
  Till foot, hand, head keep time with every song:
  Each sings his part, echoing from pit and box,
  With his hoarse voice, half harmony, half pox:
  _Le plus grand roi du monde_ is always ringing,
  They show themselves good subjects by their singing:                40
  On that condition, set up every throat:
  You Whigs may sing, for you have changed your note.
  Cits and citesses raise a joyful strain,
  'Tis a good omen to begin a reign:
  Voices may help your charter to restoring,
  And get by singing what you lost by roaring.

XL.

EPILOGUE TO "ALBION AND ALBANIUS."

  After our Æsop's fable shown to-day,
  I come to give the moral of the play.
  Feign'd Zeal, you saw, set out the speedier pace:
  But the last heat, Plain Dealing won the race:
  Plain Dealing for a jewel has been known;
  But ne'er till now the jewel of a crown.
  When Heaven made man, to show the work divine,
  Truth was His image stamp'd upon the coin:
  And when a king is to a god refined,
  On all he says and does he stamps his mind:                         10
  This proves a soul without alloy, and pure;
  Kings, like their gold, should every touch endure.
  To dare in fields is valour; but how few
  Dare be so thoroughly valiant,--to be true!
  The name of great let other kings affect:
  He's great indeed, the prince that is direct.
  His subjects know him now, and trust him more
  Than all their kings, and all their laws before.
  What safety could their public acts afford?
  Those he can break; but cannot break his word.                      20
  So great a trust to him alone was due;
  Well have they trusted whom so well they knew.
  The saint, who walk'd on waves, securely trod,
  While he believed the beckoning of his God:
  But when his faith no longer bore him out,
  Began to sink, as he began to doubt.
  Let us our native character maintain;
  'Tis of our growth to be sincerely plain.
  To excel in truth we loyally may strive,
  Set privilege against prerogative:                                  30
  He plights his faith, and we believe him just;
  His honour is to promise, ours to trust.
  Thus Britain's basis on a word is laid,
  As by a word the world itself was made.

XLI.

PROLOGUE TO "ARVIRGUS AND PHILICIA REVIVED."

BY LODOWICK CARLELL, ESQ., 1690.

SPOKEN BY MR HART.

  With sickly actors and an old house too,
  We're match'd with glorious theatres and new;
  And with our alehouse scenes, and clothes bare worn,
  Can neither raise old plays, nor new adorn.
  If all these ills could not undo us quite,
  A brisk French troop is grown your dear delight;
  Who with broad bloody bills call you each day
  To laugh and break your buttons at their play;
  Or see some serious piece, which we presume
  Is fallen from some incomparable plume;                             10
  And therefore, Messieurs, if you'll do us grace,
  Send lackeys early to preserve your place.
  We dare not on your privilege intrench,
  Or ask you why you like them? they are French.
  Therefore some go, with courtesy exceeding,
  Neither to hear nor see, but show their breeding:
  Each lady striving to out-laugh the rest;
  To make it seem they understood the jest.
  Their countrymen come in, and nothing pay,
  To teach us English where to clap the play:                         20
  Civil, egad! our hospitable land
  Bears all the charge, for them to understand:
  Mean time we languish and neglected lie,
  Like wives, while you keep better company;
  And wish for your own sakes, without a satire,
  You'd less good breeding, or had more good nature.

XLII.

PROLOGUE TO "DON SEBASTIAN."

SPOKEN BY A WOMAN.

  The judge removed, though he's no more my lord,
  May plead at bar, or at the council board:
  So may cast poets write; there's no pretension
  To argue loss of wit from loss of pension.
  Your looks are cheerful; and in all this place
  I see not one that wears a damning face.
  The British nation is too brave to show
  Ignoble vengeance on a vanquish'd foe.
  At last be civil to the wretch imploring;
  And lay your paws upon him without roaring.                         10
  Suppose our poet was your foe before,
  Yet now, the business of the field is o'er;
  'Tis time to let your civil wars alone,
  When troops are into winter quarters gone.
  Jove was alike to Latian and to Phrygian;
  And you well know, a play's of no religion.
  Take good advice, and please yourselves this day;
  No matter from what hands you have the play.
  Among good fellows every health will pass,
  That serves to carry round another glass:                           20
  When with full bowls of Burgundy you dine,
  Though at the mighty monarch you repine,
  You grant him still Most Christian in his wine.

    Thus far the poet; but his brains grow addle,
  And all the rest is purely from his noddle.
  You have seen young ladies at the senate door
  Prefer petitions, and your grace implore;
  However grave the legislators were,
  Their cause went ne'er the worse for being fair.
  Reasons as weak as theirs, perhaps, I bring;                        30
  But I could bribe you with as good a thing.
  I heard him make advances of good nature;
  That he, for once, would sheath his cutting satire.
  Sign but his peace, he vows he'll ne'er again
  The sacred names of fops and beaux profane.
  Strike up the bargain quickly; for I swear,
  As times go now, he offers very fair.
  Be not too hard on him with statutes neither;
  Be kind; and do not set your teeth together,
  To stretch the laws, as cobblers do their leather.                  40
  Horses by Papists are not to be ridden,
  But sure the Muses' horse was ne'er forbidden;
  For in no rate-book it was ever found
  That Pegasus was valued at five pound;
  Fine him to daily drudging and inditing:
  And let him pay his taxes out in writing.

XLIII.

PROLOGUE TO "THE PROPHETESS."[65]

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON. 1690.

  What Nostradame, with all his art, can guess
  The fate of our approaching Prophetess?
  A play which, like a pérspective set right,
  Presents our vast expenses close to sight;
  But turn the tube, and there we sadly view
  Our distant gains; and those uncertain too:
  A sweeping tax, which on ourselves we raise,
  And all, like you, in hopes of better days;
  When will our losses warn us to be wise?
  Our wealth decreases, and our charges rise.                         10
  Money, the sweet allurer of our hopes,
  Ebbs out in oceans, and comes in by drops;
  We raise new objects to provoke delight,
  But you grow sated ere the second sight.
  False men, e'en so you serve your mistresses:
  They rise three storeys in their towering dress;
  And, after all, you love not long enough
  To pay the rigging, ere you leave them off.
  Never content with what you had before,
  But true to change, and Englishmen all o'er.                        20
  Now honour calls you hence; and all your care
  Is to provide the horrid pomp of war.
  In plume and scarf, jack-boots, and Bilbo blade,
  Your silver goes, that should support our trade.
  Go, unkind heroes![66] leave our stage to mourn,
  Till rich from vanquished rebels you return;
  And the fat spoils of Teague in triumph draw,
  His firkin-butter, and his usquebaugh.
  Go, conquerors of your male and female foes!
  Men without hearts, and women without hose:                         30
  Each bring his love a Bogland captive home;
  Such proper pages will long trains become;
  With copper collars, and with brawny backs,
  Quite to put down the fashion of our blacks.
  Then shall the pious Muses pay their vows,
  And furnish all their laurels for your brows;
  Their tuneful voice shall raise for your delights;
  We want not poets fit to sing your flights.
  But you, bright beauties! for whose only sake
  Those doughty knights such dangers undertake,                       40
  When they with happy gales are gone away,
  With your propitious presence grace our play;
  And with a sigh their empty seats survey:
  Then think, on that bare bench my servant sat;
  I see him ogle still, and hear him chat;
  Selling facetious bargains, and propounding
  That witty recreation, call'd dumfounding.
  Their loss with patience we will try to bear;
  And would do more, to see you often here;
  That our dead stage, revived by your fair eyes,                     50
  Under a female regency may rise.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 65: This prologue was forbid by the Earl of Dorset, then Lord
Chamberlain, after the first day of its being spoken.]

[Footnote 66: King William was at this time prosecuting the war in
Ireland.]

XLIV.

PROLOGUE TO "THE MISTAKES."

BY JOSEPH HARRIS, COMEDIAN, 1690. (WRITTEN BY SOME OTHER.)

              _Enter Mr Bright._

 Gentlemen, we must beg your pardon; here's no Prologue to be had
 to-day; our new play is like to come on, without a frontispiece;
 as bald as one of you young beaux, without your periwig. I left
 our young poet, snivelling and sobbing behind the scenes, and
 cursing somebody that has deceived him.

               _Enter Mr Bowen._

   Hold your prating to the audience: here is honest Mr Williams,
 just come in, half mellow, from the Rose Tavern. He swears he is
 inspired with claret, and will come on, and that extempore too,
 either with a prologue of his own or something like one. Oh,
 here he comes to his trial, at all adventures: for my part I
 wish him a good deliverance.

                     [_Exeunt Mr Bright and Mr Bowen._

            _Enter Mr Williams._

    Save ye, sirs, save ye! I am in a hopeful way.
  I should speak something in rhyme, now, for the play:
  But the deuce take me, if I know what to say.
  I'll stick to my friend the author, that I can tell ye,
  To the last drop of claret in my belly.
  So far I'm sure 'tis rhyme--that needs no granting:
  And, if my verses' feet stumble--you see my own are wanting.
  Our young poet has brought a piece of work,
  In which, though much of art there does not lurk,
  It may hold out three days--and that's as long as Cork.             10
  But for this play (which till I have done, we show not)
  What may be its fortune--by the Lord! I know not.
  This I dare swear, no malice here is writ:
  'Tis innocent of all things--even of wit.
  He's no highflier--he makes no sky-rockets,
  His squibs are only levell'd at your pockets.
  And if his crackers light among your pelf,
  You are blown up; if not, then he's blown up himself.
  By this time, I'm something recover'd of my fluster'd madness:
  And now, a word or two in sober sadness.                            20
  Ours is a common play; and you pay down
  A common harlot's price--just half-a-crown.
  You'll say, I play the pimp, on my friend's score;
  But since 'tis for a friend your gibes give o'er:
  For many a mother has done that before.
  How's this? you cry; an actor write?--we know it;
  But Shakspeare was an actor, and a poet.
  Has not great Jonson's learning often fail'd?
  But Shakspeare's greater genius still prevail'd.
  Have not some writing actors, in this age,                          30
  Deserved and found success upon the stage?
  To tell the truth, when our old wits are tired,
  Not one of us but means to be inspired.
  Let your kind presence grace our homely cheer;
  Peace and the butt is all our business here:
  So much for that;--and the devil take small beer.

XLV.

PROLOGUE TO "KING ARTHUR."

SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON.

  Sure there's a dearth of wit in this dull town,
  When silly plays so savourily go down;
  As, when clipt money passes, 'tis a sign
  A nation is not over-stock'd with coin.
  Happy is he who, in his own defence,
  Can write just level to your humble sense;
  Who higher than your pitch can never go;
  And, doubtless, he must creep, who writes below.
  So have I seen, in hall of knight, or lord,
  A weak arm throw on a long shovel-board;                            10
  He barely lays his piece, bar rubs and knocks,
  Secured by weakness not to reach the box.
  A feeble poet will his business do,
  Who, straining all he can, comes up to you:
  For, if you like yourselves, you like him too.
  An ape his own dear image will embrace;
  An ugly beau adores a hatchet face:
  So, some of you, on pure instinct of nature,
  Are led, by kind, to admire your fellow-creature.
  In fear of which, our house has sent this day,                      20
  To insure our new-built vessel, call'd a play;
  No sooner named, than one cries out, These stagers
  Come in good time, to make more work for wagers.
  The town divides, if it will take or no:
  The courtiers bet, the cits, the merchants too;
  A sign they have but little else to do.
  Bets, at the first, were fool-traps; where the wise,
  Like spiders, lay in ambush for the flies:
  But now they're grown a common trade for all,
  And actions by the new book rise and fall;                          30
  Wits, cheats, and fops, are free of wager-hall.
  One policy as far as Lyons carries;
  Another, nearer home, sets up for Paris.
  Our bets, at last, would e'en to Rome extend,
  But that the pope has proved our trusty friend.
  Indeed, it were a bargain worth our money,
  Could we insure another Ottoboni.
  Among the rest there are a sharping set,
  That pray for us, and yet against us bet.
  Sure Heaven itself is at a loss to know                             40
  If these would have their prayers be heard, or no:
  For, in great stakes, we piously suppose,
  Men pray but very faintly they may lose.
  Leave off these wagers; for, in conscience speaking,
  The city needs not your new tricks for breaking:
  And if you gallants lose, to all appearing,
  You'll want an equipage for volunteering;
  While thus, no spark of honour left within ye,
  When you should draw the sword, you draw the guinea.

XLVI.

PROLOGUE TO "ALBUMAZAR."[67]

  To say, this comedy pleased long ago,
  Is not enough to make it pass you now.
  Yet, gentlemen, your ancestors had wit;
  When few men censured, and when fewer writ.
  And Jonson, of those few the best, chose this
  As the best model of his masterpiece.
  Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
  That Alchymist by this Astrologer;
  Here he was fashion'd, and we may suppose
  He liked the fashion well, who wore the clothes.                    10
  But Ben made nobly his what he did mould;
  What was another's lead becomes his gold:
  Like an unrighteous conqueror he reigns,
  Yet rules that well which he unjustly gains.
  By this our age such authors does afford,
  As make whole plays, and yet scarce write one word:
  Who, in his anarchy of wit, rob all,
  And what's their plunder, their possession call:
  Who, like bold padders, scorn by night to prey,
  But rob by sunshine, in the face of day:                            20
  Nay, scarce the common ceremony use
  Of, Stand, sir, and deliver up your Muse;
  But knock the Poet down, and, with a grace,
  Mount Pegasus before the owner's face.
  Faith, if you have such country Toms abroad,
  'Tis time for all true men to leave that road.
  Yet it were modest, could it but be said,
  They strip the living, but these rob the dead;
  Dare with the mummies of the Muses play,
  And make love to them the Egyptian way;                             30
  Or, as a rhyming author would have said,
  Join the dead living to the living dead.
  Such men in poetry may claim some part:
  They have the licence, though they want the art;
  And might, where theft was praised, for Laureates stand,--
  Poets, not of the head, but of the hand.
  They make the benefits of others' studying,
  Much like the meals of politic Jack-Pudding,
  Whose dish to challenge no man has the courage;
  'Tis all his own, when once he has spit in the porridge.            40
  But, gentlemen, you're all concern'd in this;
  You are in fault for what they do amiss:
  For they their thefts still undiscover'd think,
  And durst not steal unless you please to wink.
  Perhaps you may award, by your decree,
  They should refund; but that can never be.
  For should your letters of reprisal seal,
  These men write that which no man else would steal.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 67: An old play written by one Tomkins, four years, however,
after Jonson's "Alchymist," and resuscitated in 1668.]

XLVII.

AN EPILOGUE.

  You saw our wife was chaste, yet thoroughly tried,
  And, without doubt, ye are hugely edified;
  For, like our hero, whom we show'd to-day,
  You think no woman true, but in a play.
  Love once did make a pretty kind of show:
  Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
  But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
  Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
  Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation:
  In comedy your little selves you meet;                              10
  'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges Street.
  Smile on our author then, if he has shown
  A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
  Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
  Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
  The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
  She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
  Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
  To some new frisk of contrariety.
  You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run,                     20
  And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.
  Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
  Nothing of love beside the face was seen;
  But every inch of her you now uncase,
  And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
  For sins like these, the zealous of the land,
  With little hair, and little or no band,
  Declare how circulating pestilences
  Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.
  Saturn, even now, takes doctoral degrees;                           30
  He'll do your work this summer without fees.
  Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace,
  And, ah! preserve the eighteen-penny place!
  But for the pit confounders, let 'em go,
  And find as little mercy as they show:
  The Actors thus, and thus thy Poets pray;
  For every critic saved, thou damn'st a play.

XLVIII.

EPILOGUE TO "THE HUSBAND HIS OWN CUCKOLD."

BY MR JOHN DRYDEN, JUN., 1696.[68]

  Like some raw sophister that mounts the pulpit,
  So trembles a young Poet at a full pit.
  Unused to crowds, the parson quakes for fear,
  And wonders how the devil he durst come there;
  Wanting three talents needful for the place--
  Some beard, some learning, and some little grace.
  Nor is the puny Poet void of care;
  For authors, such as our new authors are,
  Have not much learning, nor much wit to spare:
  And as for grace, to tell the truth, there's scarce one             10
  But has as little as the very Parson:
  Both say, they preach and write for your instruction:
  But 'tis for a third day, and for induction.
  The difference is, that though you like the play,
  The Poet's gain is ne'er beyond his day.
  But with the Parson 'tis another case,
  He, without holiness, may rise to grace.
  The Poet has one disadvantage more,
  That if his play be dull, he's damn'd all o'er,
  Not only a damn'd blockhead, but damn'd poor.                       20
  But dulness well becomes the sable garment;
  I warrant that ne'er spoil'd a Priest's perferment:
  Wit's not his business, and as wit now goes,
  Sirs, 'tis not so much yours as you suppose,
  For you like nothing now but nauseous beaux.
  You laugh not, gallants, as by proof appears,
  At what his beauship says, but what he wears;
  So 'tis your eyes are tickled, not your ears.
  The tailor and the furrier find the stuff,
  The wit lies in the dress, and monstrous muff.                      30
  The truth on 't is, the payment of the pit
  Is like for like, clipt money for clipt wit.
  You cannot from our absent author hope
  He should equip the stage with such a fop:
  Fools change in England, and new fools arise,
  For though the immortal species never dies,
  Yet every year new maggots make new flies;
  But where he lives abroad, he scarce can find
  One fool for millions that he left behind.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 68: 'John Dryden, jun.': second son of the poet, who was at
Rome when this play was brought out.]

XLIX.

PROLOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

BY BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

REVIVED FOR OUR AUTHOR'S BENEFIT, ANNO 1700.

  How wretched is the fate of those who write!
  Brought muzzled to the stage, for fear they bite.
  Where, like Tom Dove, they stand the common foe;
  Lugg'd by the critic, baited by the beau.
  Yet worse, their brother poets damn the play,
  And roar the loudest, though they never pay.
  The fops are proud of scandal, for they cry,
  At every lewd, low character,--That's I.
  He who writes letters to himself would swear,
  The world forgot him, if he was not there.                          10
  What should a poet do? 'Tis hard for one
  To pleasure all the fools that would be shown:
  And yet not two in ten will pass the town.
  Most coxcombs are not of the laughing kind;
  More goes to make a fop, than fops can find.

    Quack Maurus,[69] though he never took degrees
  In either of our universities,
  Yet to be shown by some kind wit he looks,
  Because he play'd the fool, and writ three books.
  But, if he would be worth a Poet's pen,                             20
  He must be more a fool, and write again:
  For all the former fustian stuff he wrote
  Was dead-born doggerel, or is quite forgot:
  His man of Uz, stript of his Hebrew robe,
  Is just the proverb, and as poor as Job.
  One would have thought he could no longer jog;
  But Arthur was a level, Job's a bog.
  There, though he crept, yet still he kept in sight;
  But here, he founders in, and sinks down right,
  Had he prepared us, and been dull by rule,                          30
  Tobit had first been turn'd to ridicule:
  But our bold Briton, without fear or awe,
  O'erleaps at once the whole Apocrypha;
  Invades the Psalms with rhymes, and leaves no room
  For any Vandal Hopkins yet to come.

    But when if, after all, this godly gear
  Is not so senseless as it would appear;
  Our mountebank has laid a deeper train,
  His cant, like Merry-Andrew's noble vein,
  Cat-calls the sects to draw them in again.                          40
  At leisure hours, in epic song he deals,
  Writes to the rumbling of his coach's wheels,
  Prescribes in haste, and seldom kills by rule,
  But rides triumphant between stool and stool.

    Well, let him go; 'tis yet too early day,
  To get himself a place in farce or play.
  We know not by what name we should arraign him,
  For no one category can contain him;
  A pedant, canting preacher, and a quack,
  Are load enough to break one ass's back:                            50
  At last, grown wanton, he presumed to write,
  Traduced two kings, their kindness to requite;
  One made the doctor, and one dubb'd the knight.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: 'Quack Maurus:' Sir Richard Blackmore.]

L.

EPILOGUE TO "THE PILGRIM."

  Perhaps the parson[70] stretch'd a point too far,
  When with our Theatres he waged a war.
  He tells you, that this very moral age
  Received the first infection from the stage.
  But sure, a banish'd court, with lewdness fraught,
  The seeds of open vice, returning, brought.
  Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives)
  It first debauch'd the daughters and the wives.
  London, a fruitful soil, yet never bore
  So plentiful a crop of horns before.                                10
  The poets, who must live by courts, or starve,
  Were proud so good a government to serve:
  And, mixing with buffoons and pimps profane,
  Tainted the stage, for some small snip of gain.
  For they, like harlots under bawds profess'd,
  Took all the ungodly pains, and got the least.
  Thus did the thriving malady prevail:
  The court, its head, the poets but the tail.
  The sin was of our native growth, 'tis true;
  The scandal of the sin was wholly new.                              20
  Misses they were, but modestly conceal'd;
  Whitehall the naked Venus first reveal'd,
  Who, standing as at Cyprus, in her shrine,
  The strumpet was adored with rites divine.
  Ere this, if saints had any secret motion,
  'Twas chamber-practice all, and close devotion.
  I pass the peccadilloes of their time;
  Nothing but open lewdness was a crime.
  A monarch's blood was venial to the nation,
  Compared with one foul act of fornication.                          30
  Now, they would silence us, and shut the door,
  That let in all the barefaced vice before.
  As for reforming us, which some pretend,
  That work in England is without an end:
  Well may we change, but we shall never mend.
  Yet, if you can but bear the present Stage,
  We hope much better of the coming age.
  What would you say, if we should first begin
  To stop the trade of love behind the scene,
  Where actresses make bold with married men?                         40
  For while abroad so prodigal the dolt is,
  Poor spouse at home as ragged as a colt is.
  In short, we'll grow as moral as we can,
  Save here and there a woman or a man:
  But neither you, nor we, with all our pains,
  Can make clean work; there will be some remains,
  While you have still your Oates, and we our Haines.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 70: 'Parson:' Jeremy Collier.]

TALES FROM CHAUCER.

TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF ORMOND.

_Anno_ 1699.

My Lord,--Some estates are held in England by paying a fine at the
change of every lord: I have enjoyed the patronage of your family, from
the time of your excellent grandfather to this present day. I have
dedicated the translation of the "Lives of Plutarch" to the first Duke;
and have celebrated the memory of your heroic father. Though I am very
short of the age of Nestor, yet I have lived to a third generation of
your house; and by your Grace's favour am admitted still to hold from
you by the same tenure.

I am not vain enough to boast that I have deserved the value of so
illustrious a line; but my fortune is the greater, that for three
descents they have been pleased to distinguish my poems from those of
other men; and have accordingly made me their peculiar care. May it be
permitted me to say, that, as your grandfather and father were cherished
and adorned with honours by two successive monarchs, so I have been
esteemed and patronised by the grandfather, the father, and the son,
descended from one of the most ancient, most conspicuous, and most
deserving families in Europe?

It is true, that by delaying the payment of my last fine, when it was
due by your Grace's accession to the titles and patrimonies of your
house, I may seem, in rigour of law, to have made a forfeiture of my
claim; yet my heart has always been devoted to your service; and since
you have been graciously pleased, by your permission of this address, to
accept the tender of my duty, it is not yet too late to lay these poems
at your feet.

The world is sensible that you worthily succeed, not only to the honours
of your ancestors, but also to their virtues. The long chain of
magnanimity, courage, easiness of access, and desire of doing good even
to the prejudice of your fortune, is so far from being broken in your
Grace, that the precious metal yet runs pure to the newest link of it;
which I will not call the last, because I hope and pray it may descend
to late posterity: and your flourishing youth, and that of your
excellent Duchess, are happy omens of my wish. It is observed by Livy
and by others, that some of the noblest Roman families retained a
resemblance of their ancestry, not only in their shapes and features,
but also in their manners, their qualities, and the distinguishing
characters of their minds. Some lines were noted for a stern, rigid
virtue, savage, haughty, parsimonious, and unpopular: others were more
sweet and affable, made of a more pliant paste, humble, courteous, and
obliging, studious of doing charitable offices, and diffusive of the
goods which they enjoyed. The last of these is the proper and indelible
character of your Grace's family. God Almighty has endued you with a
softness, a beneficence, an attractive behaviour winning on the hearts
of others; and so sensible of their misery, that the wounds of fortune
seem not inflicted on them, but on yourself. You are so ready to
redress, that you almost prevent their wishes, and always exceed their
expectations; as if what was yours, was not your own, and not given you
to possess, but to bestow on wanting merit. But this is a topic which I
must cast in shades, lest I offend your modesty, which is so far from
being ostentatious of the good you do, that it blushes even to have it
known; and therefore I must leave you to the satisfaction and testimony
of your own conscience, which, though it be a silent panegyric, is yet
the best.

You are so easy of access, that Poplicola was not more, whose doors were
opened on the outside to save the people even the common civility of
asking entrance; where all were equally admitted--where nothing that was
reasonable was denied--where misfortune was a powerful recommendation,
and where (I can scarce forbear saying) that want itself was a powerful
mediator, and was next to merit.

The history of Peru assures us, that their Incas, above all their titles
esteemed that the highest which called them Lovers of the Poor--a name
more glorious than the Felix, Pius, and Augustus of the Roman emperors,
which were epithets of flattery, deserved by few of them, and not
running in a blood like the perpetual gentleness and inherent goodness
of the Ormond family.

Gold, as it is the purest, so it is the softest and most ductile of all
metals. Iron, which is the hardest, gathers rust, corrodes itself, and
is therefore subject to corruption; it was never intended for coins and
medals, or to bear the faces and inscriptions of the great. Indeed, it
is fit for armour, to bear off insults, and preserve the wearer in the
day of battle; but the danger once repelled, it is laid aside by the
brave, as a garment too rough for civil conversation; a necessary guard
in war, but too harsh and cumbersome in peace, and which keeps off the
embraces of a more humane life.

For this reason, my Lord, though you have courage in an heroical degree,
yet I ascribe it to you but as your second attribute: mercy,
beneficence, and compassion claim precedence, as they are first in the
Divine nature. An intrepid courage, which is inherent in your Grace, is
at best but a holiday kind of virtue, to be seldom exercised, and never
but in cases of necessity: affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word
which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue, I
mean good-nature, are of daily use: they are the bread of mankind, and
staff of life; neither sighs, nor tears, nor groans, nor curses of the
vanquished, follow acts of compassion and of charity, but a sincere
pleasure and serenity of mind, in him who performs an action of mercy,
which cannot suffer the misfortunes of another without redress, lest
they should bring a kind of contagion along with them, and pollute the
happiness which he enjoys.

Yet since the perverse tempers of mankind, since oppression on one side,
and ambition on the other, are sometimes the unavoidable occasions of
war; that courage, that magnanimity, and resolution, which is born with
you, cannot be too much commended. And here it grieves me that I am
scanted in the pleasure of dwelling on many of your actions; but [Greek:
aideomai Troas] is an expression which Tully often uses, when he would
do what he dares not, and fears the censure of the Romans.

I have sometimes been forced to amplify on others; but here, where the
subject is so fruitful that the harvest overcomes the reaper, I am
shortened by my chain, and can only see what is forbidden me to reach,
since it is not permitted me to commend you, according to the extent of
my wishes, and much less is it in my power to make my commendations
equal to your merits. Yet in this frugality of your praises there are
some things which I cannot omit without detracting from your character.
You have so formed your own education, as enables you to pay the debt
you owe your country; or, more properly speaking, both your countries,
because you were born, I may almost say, in purple, at the castle of
Dublin, when your grandfather was Lord-Lieutenant, and have since been
bred in the court of England.

If this address had been in verse, I might have called you, as Claudian
calls Mercury, _Numen commune, gemino faciens commercia mundo_. The
better to satisfy this double obligation, you have early cultivated the
genius you have to arms, that when the service of Britain or Ireland
shall require your courage and your conduct, you may exert them both to
the benefit of either country. You began in the Cabinet what you
afterwards practised in the Camp; and thus both Lucullas and Cæsar (to
omit a crowd of shining Romans) formed themselves to war by the study of
history, and by the examples of the greatest captains, both of Greece
and Italy, before their time. I name those two commanders in particular,
because they were better read in chronicle than any of the Roman
leaders; and that Lucullus, in particular, having only the theory of war
from books, was thought fit, without practice, to be sent into the field
against the most formidable enemy of Rome. Tully, indeed, was called the
learned consul in derision; but then he was not born a soldier--his head
was turned another way; when he read the Tactics, he was thinking on the
bar, which was his field of battle. The knowledge of warfare is thrown
away on a general who dares not make use of what he knows. I commend it
only in a man of courage and resolution: in him it will direct his
martial spirit, and teach him the way to the best victories,--which are
those which are least bloody, and which, though achieved by the hand,
are managed by the head. Science distinguishes a man of honour from one
of those athletic brutes whom undeservedly we call heroes. Cursed be the
poet who first honoured with that name a mere Ajax, a man-killing idiot!
The Ulysses of Ovid upbraids his ignorance, that he understood not the
shield for which he pleaded: there was engraven on it plans of cities
and maps of countries which Ajax could not comprehend, but looked on
them as stupidly as his fellow-beast, the lion. But on the other side,
your Grace has given yourself the education of his rival; you have
studied every spot of ground in Flanders, which for these ten years past
has been the scene of battles and of sieges. No wonder if you performed
your part with such applause on a theatre which you understood so well.

If I designed this for a poetical encomium, it were easy to enlarge on
so copious a subject; but, confining myself to the severity of truth,
and to what is becoming me to say, I must not only pass over many
instances of your military skill, but also those of your assiduous
diligence in the war, and of your personal bravery, attended with an
ardent thirst of honour--a long train of generosity--profuseness of
doing good--a soul unsatisfied with all it has done and an
unextinguished desire of doing more. But all this is matter for your own
historians; I am, as Virgil says, _Spatiis exclusus iniquis_.

Yet not to be wholly silent of all your charities, I must stay a little
on one action, which preferred the relief of others to the consideration
of yourself. When, in the battle of Landen, your heat of courage (a
fault only pardonable to your youth) had transported you so far before
your friends, that they were unable to follow, much less to succour you;
when you were not only dangerously, but in all appearance mortally
wounded; when in that desperate condition you were made prisoner and
carried to Namur, at that time in possession of the French: then it was,
my Lord, that you took a considerable part of what was remitted to you
of your own revenues, and, as a memorable instance of your heroic
charity, put it into the bands of Count Guiscard, who was governor of
the place, to be distributed among your fellow-prisoners. The French
commander, charmed with the greatness of your soul, accordingly
consigned it to the use for which it was intended by the donor; by which
means the lives of so many miserable men were saved, and a comfortable
provision made for their subsistence, who had otherwise perished, had
not you been the companion of their misfortune; or rather sent by
Providence, like another Joseph, to keep out famine from invading those
whom in humility you called your brethren. How happy was it for those
poor creatures that your Grace was made their fellow-sufferer! and how
glorious for you that you chose to want rather than not relieve the
wants of others! The heathen poet, in commending the charity of Dido to
the Trojans, spoke like a Christian: _Non ignara mali, miseris
succurrere disco_. All men, even those of a different interest, and
contrary principles, must praise this action as the most eminent for
piety, not only in this degenerate age, but almost in any of the former;
when men were made _de meliore luto_; when examples of charity were
frequent, and when there were in being, _Teucri pulcherrima proles,
magnanimi heroes nati melioribus annis_. No envy can detract from this:
it will shine in history, and, like swans, grow whiter the longer it
endures, and the name of ORMOND will be more celebrated in his captivity
than in his greatest triumphs.

But all actions of your Grace are of a piece, as waters keep the tenor
of their fountains: your compassion is general, and has the same effect
as well on enemies as friends. It is so much in your nature to do good,
that your life is but one continued act of placing benefits on many, as
the sun is always carrying his light to some part or other of the world;
and were it not that your reason guides you where to give, I might
almost say that you could not help bestowing more than is consisting
with the fortune of a private man or with the will of any but an
Alexander.

What wonder is it, then, that being born for a blessing to mankind, your
supposed death in that engagement was so generally lamented through the
nation! The concernment for it was as universal as the loss; and though
the gratitude might be counterfeit in some, yet the tears of all were
real: where every man deplored his private part in that calamity, and
even those who had not tasted of your favours, yet built so much on the
fame of your beneficence, that they bemoaned the loss of their
expectations.

This brought the untimely death of your great father into fresh
remembrance: as if the same decree had passed on two short successive
generations of the virtuous; and I repeated to myself the same verses
which I had formerly applied to him: _Ostendunt terris hunc tantùm fata,
nec ultrà esse sinunt_. But to the joy, not only of all good men, but of
mankind in general, the unhappy omen took not place. You are still
living to enjoy the blessings and applause of all the good you have
performed, the prayers of multitudes whom you have obliged, for your
long prosperity; and that your power of doing generous and charitable
actions may be as extended as your will; which is by none more zealously
desired than by your Grace's most humble, most obliged, and most
obedient servant,
                                                     JOHN DRYDEN.

PREFACE.

It is with a poet as with a man who designs to build, and is very exact,
as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; but, generally
speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short in the
expense he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds, and
will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought
when he began. So has it happened to me: I have built a house, where I
intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a certain nobleman,
who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he
had contrived.

From translating the first of Homer's Iliads (which I intended as an
essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the translation of the twelfth
book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, because it contains, among other things,
the causes, the beginning, and ending of the Trojan war. Here I ought in
reason to have stopped; but the speeches of Ajax and Ulysses lying next
in my way, I could not baulk them. When I had compassed them, I was so
taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, which is the
masterpiece of the whole Metamorphoses, that I enjoined myself the
pleasing task of rendering it into English. And now I found, by the
number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume;
which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some beauties of my
author, in his former books. There occurred to me the hunting of the
boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natured story of Baucis and Philemon,
with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given
them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I
may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has
arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best
versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name,
which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenser and
Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters
in our language; and who saw much farther into the beauties of our
numbers, than those who immediately followed them. Milton was the
poetical son of Spenser, and Mr Waller of Fairfax; for we have our
lineal descents and clans, as well as other families. Spenser more than
once insinuates, that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body;
and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease.
Milton has acknowledged to me, that Spenser was his original; and many
besides myself have heard our famous Waller own, that he derived the
harmony of his numbers from the Godfrey of Bulloigne, which was turned
into English by Mr Fairfax. But to return. Having done with Ovid for
this time, it came into my mind, that our old English poet Chaucer in
many things resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of
the modern author, as I shall endeavour to prove when I compare them.
And as I am, and always have been, studious to promote the honour of my
native country, so I soon resolved to put their merits to the trial, by
turning some of the Canterbury tales into our language, as it is now
refined; for by this means, both the poets being set in the same light,
and dressed in the same English habit, story to be compared with story,
a certain judgment may be made betwixt them, by the reader, without
obtruding my opinion on him. Or if I seem partial to my countryman, and
predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and
besides many of the learned, Ovid has almost all the beaux, and the
whole fair sex, his declared patrons. Perhaps I have assumed somewhat
more to myself than they allow me, because I have adventured to sum up
the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and their privilege remains
entire to decide according to the merits of the cause, or, if they
please, to bring it to another hearing, before some other court. In the
meantime, to follow the thread of my discourse (as thoughts, according
to Mr Hobbs, have always some connexion), so from Chaucer I was led to
think on Boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but also pursued
the same studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works in verse:
particularly is said to have invented the octave rhyme, or stanza of
eight lines, which ever since has been maintained by the practice of all
Italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title of, Heroic Poets.
He and Chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they
refined their mother tongues; but with this difference, that Dante had
begun to file their language, at least in verse, before the time of
Boccace, who likewise received no little help from his master Petrarch.
But the reformation of their prose was wholly owing to Boccace himself,
who is yet the standard of purity in the Italian tongue; though many of
his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs
happen. Chaucer, as you have formerly been told by our learned Mr Rymer,
first adorned and amplified our barren tongue from the Provençal, which
was then the most polished of all the modern languages; but this subject
has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves no little
commendation from us his countrymen. For these reasons of time, and
resemblance of genius in Chaucer and Boccace, I resolved to join them in
my present work; to which I have added some original papers of my own;
which, whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author
is the most improper judge; and therefore, I leave them wholly to the
mercy of the reader. I will hope the best, that they will not be
condemned; but if they should, I have the excuse of an old gentleman,
who, mounting on horseback before some ladies, when I was present, got
up somewhat heavily, but desired of the fair spectators that they would
count fourscore and eight before they judged him. By the mercy of God, I
am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my
limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine. I
think myself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my soul, excepting
only my memory, which is not impaired to any great degree; and if I lose
not more of it, I have no great reason to complain. What judgment I had,
increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come
crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to
reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of
prose. I have so long studied and practised both, that they are grown
into a habit, and become familiar to me; in short, though I may lawfully
plead some part of the old gentleman's excuse, yet I will reserve it
till I think I have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the
faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to
human frailty. I will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time
in which I writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. They who think
too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their prefaces
how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of
more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the
question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more
perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as
to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deserved no
better?

With this account of my present undertaking, I conclude the first part
of this discourse; in the second part, as at a second sitting, though I
alter not the draught, I must touch the same features over again, and
change the dead colouring of the whole. In general I will only say, that
I have written nothing which savours of immorality or profaneness; at
least, I am not conscious to myself of any such intention. If there
happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton,
they are crept into my verses through my inadvertency; if the searchers
find any in the cargo, let them be staved or forfeited, like contraband
goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but
imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. On the other side,
I have endeavoured to choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as
contain in each of them some instructive moral, which I could prove by
induction; but the way is tedious, and they leap foremost into sight,
without the reader's trouble of looking after them. I wish I could
affirm with a safe conscience, that I had taken the same care in all my
former writings; for it must be owned, that supposing verses are never
so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain anything which shocks
religion, or good manners, they are at best, what Horace says of good
numbers without good sense, _Versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae_.
Thus far, I hope, I am right in court, without renouncing my other right
of self-defence, where I have been wrongfully accused, and my sense
withdrawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious
lawyer, in a late pleading against the stage, in which he mixes truth
with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating
strongly, that something may remain.

I resume the thread of my discourse with the first of my translation,
which was the first Iliad of Homer. If it shall please God to give me
longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the
whole Ilias; provided still that I meet with those encouragements from
the public which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some
cheerfulness. And this I dare assure the world beforehand, that I have
found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil (though I say
not the translation will be less laborious); for the Grecian is more
according to my genius, than the Latin poet. In the works of the two
authors, we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are
wholly different. Virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; Homer was
violent, impetuous, and full of fire. The chief talent of Virgil was
propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; Homer was rapid in his
thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of
expressions, which his language, and the age in which he lived, allowed
him: Homer's invention was more copious, Virgil's more confined; so that
if Homer had not led the way, it was not in Virgil to have begun heroic
poetry; for nothing can be more evident, than that the Roman poem is but
the second part of the Ilias; a continuation of the same story, and the
persons already formed: the manners of Æneas are those of Hector
superadded to those which Homer gave him. The adventures of Ulysses in
the Odysseis are imitated in the first six books of Virgil's Æneas, and
though the accidents are not the same (which would have argued him of a
servile copying, and total barrenness of invention), yet the seas were
the same in which both the heroes wandered, and Dido cannot be denied to
be the poetical daughter of Calypso. The six latter books of Virgil's
poem are the four and twenty Iliads contracted; a quarrel occasioned by
a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieged. I say not
this in derogation to Virgil, neither do I contradict anything which I
have formerly said in his just praise, for his episodes are almost
wholly of his own invention; and the form which he has given to the
telling makes the tale his own, even though the original story had been
the same. But this proves, however, that Homer taught Virgil to design;
and if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the Latin
poem can only be allowed the second place. Mr Hobbs, in the preface to
his own bald translation of the Ilias (studying poetry as he did
mathematics, when it was too late), Mr Hobbs, I say, begins the praise
of Homer where he should have ended it. He tells us, that the first
beauty of an Epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of
words, and harmony of numbers. Now, the words are the colouring of the
work, which in the order of nature is last to be considered: the design,
the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it; where
any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in
the imitation of human life, which is in the very definition of a poem.
Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise,
and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures
ill-disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts
unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a
beautiful monster at the best. Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient
in any of the former beauties; but in this last, which is expression,
the Roman poet is at least equal to the Grecian, as I have said
elsewhere, supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and
by his diligence. But to return: our two great poets, being so different
in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and
melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is, that
each of them has followed his own natural inclination, as well in
forming the design, as in the execution of it. The very heroes show
their authors; Achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful--_impiger,
iracundus, inexorabilis, acer,_ &c.: Æneas patient, considerate, careful
of his people, and merciful to his enemies; ever submissive to the will
of Heaven--_quò fata trahunt, retrahuntque, sequamur_. I could please
myself with enlarging on this subject, but am forced to defer it to a
fitter time. From all I have said, I will only draw this inference, that
the action of Homer being more full of vigour than that of Virgil,
according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing
to the reader. One warms you by degrees; the other sets you on fire all
at once, and never intermits his heat. 'Tis the same difference which
Longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in Demosthenes and
Tully--one persuades; the other commands. You never cool while you read
Homer, even not in the second book (a graceful flattery to his
countrymen), but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book
till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine.
From thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it
in less compass than two months. This vehemence of his, I confess, is
more suitable to my temper; and therefore I have translated his first
book with greater pleasure than any part of Virgil. But it was not a
pleasure without pains; the continual agitations of the spirits must
needs be a weakening of any constitution, especially in age, and many
pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats, the Iliad of
itself being a third part longer than all Virgil's works together.

This is what I thought needful in this place to say of Homer. I proceed
to Ovid and Chaucer; considering the former only in relation to the
latter. With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue: from Chaucer
the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were
not unlike: both of them were well-bred, well-natured, amorous, and
libertine, at least in their writings--it may be also in their lives.
Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them were
known in astronomy, of which Ovid's books of the Roman feasts, and
Chaucer's treatise of the Astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses. But
Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and
Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither were
great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of
Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their
predecessors. Boccace's Decameron was first published; and from thence
our Englishman has borrowed many of his Canterbury tales; yet that of
Palamon and Arcite was written in all probability by some Italian wit,
in a former age; as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of Grizzild was
the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace; from whom it came to
Chaucer. Troilus and Cressida was also written by a Lombard author; but
much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified; the
genius of our countrymen in general being rather to 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 Montaign, 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 Chancer 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 the very dress, as distinctly
as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark: yet even there
too the figures in 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 nations, who call conceits and
jingles wit, who see Ovid full of them, and Chaucer altogether without
them, will think me little less than mad for preferring the Englishman
to the Roman; yet, with their leave, I must presume to say, that the
things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being
witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are
unnatural. Would any man, who is ready to die for love, describe his
passion like Narcissus? Would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_, and a
dozen more of such expressions, poured on the neck of one another, and
signifying all the same thing? If this were wit, was this a time to be
witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death? This is just John
Littlewit in Bartholomew Fair, who had a conceit (as he tells you) left
him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet
should endeavour to raise pity; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling
you to laugh. Virgil never made use of such machines, when he was moving
you to commiserate the death of Dido: he would not destroy what he was
building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the
pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more
reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had altered his
character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and
resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this occasion?
He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his deathbed. He had
complained he was farther off from possession by being so near, and a
thousand such boyisms, which Chaucer rejected as below the dignity of
the subject. They who think otherwise would, by the same reason, prefer
Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil, and Martial to all four of them. As
for the turn of words, in which Ovid particularly excels all poets, they
are sometimes a fault, and sometimes a beauty, as they are used properly
or improperly; but in strong passions always to be shunned, because
passions are serious, and will admit no playing. The French have a high
value for them; and I confess, they are often what they call delicate,
when they are introduced with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more
simplicity, and followed nature more closely, than to use them. I have
thus far, to the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt the
parties in competition, not meddling with the design nor the disposition
of it; because the design was not their own, and in the disposing of it
they were eqaal. It remains that I say somewhat of Chaucer in
particular.

In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him
in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the
Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all
sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what
to say, so he knows also when to leave off--a continence which is
practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting
Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is sunk in his
reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his
way; but swept like a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty
enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats,
for boys and women; but little of solid meat, for men. All this
proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment; neither did
he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets; but
only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and perhaps knew it was
a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason, though
he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good
writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many
successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased
once a twelvemonth: for, as my last Lord 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 as well as a valiant prince, who claimed by succession, and
was sensible that his title was not sound, but was rightfully in
Mortimer, who had married the heir of York; it was not to be admired, I
say, if that great politician should be pleased to have the greatest wit
of those times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises.
Augustus had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, who
recommended Virgil and Horace to him; whose praises helped to make him
popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious
to posterity. As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some
little bias towards the opinions of Wickliff, after John of Gaunt his
patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman: yet I
cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the
clergy in his age: their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their
avarice, their worldly interest, deserved the lashes which he gave them,
both in that, and in most of his Canterbury tales: neither has his
contemporary Boccace spared them. Yet both those poets lived in much
esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which is given
by particular priests, reflects not on the sacred function. Chaucer's
Monk, his Chanon, and his Fryer, took not from the character of his Good
Parson. A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests. We
are only to take care, that we involve not the innocent with the guilty
in the same condemnation. The good cannot be too much honoured, nor the
bad too coarsely used; for the corruption of the best becomes the worst.
When a clergyman is whipped, his gown is first taken off, by which the
dignity of his order is secured: if he be wrongfully accused, he has his
action of slander; and it is at the poet's peril, if he transgress the
law. But they will tell us, that all kind of satire, though never so
well deserved by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into
contempt. Is then the peerage of England anything dishonoured, when a
peer suffers for his treason? If he be libelled, or any way defamed, he
has his _Scandalum Magnatum_ to punish the offender. They who use this
kind of argument, seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat which
has deserved the poet's lash; and are less concerned for their public
capacity, than for their private; at least there is pride at the bottom
of their reasoning. If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged
among themselves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say
the honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can we
be sure that they will be impartial judges? How far I may be allowed to
speak my opinion in this case, I know not; but I am sure a dispute of
this nature caused mischief in abundance betwixt a king of England and
an archbishop of Canterbury; one standing up for the laws of his land,
and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's Church; which
ended in the murder of the prelate, and in the whipping of his majesty
from post to pillar for his penance. The learned and ingenious Dr Drake
has saved me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and reverence which
the priests have, had of old; and I would rather extend than diminish
any part of it; yet I must needs say, that when a priest provokes me
without any occasion given him, I have no reason, unless it be the
charity of a Christian, to forgive him. _Prior laesit_ is justification
sufficient in the civil law. If I answer him in his own language,
self-defence, I am sure, must be allowed me; and if I carry it farther,
even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged to human
frailty. Yet my resentment has not wrought as far, but that I have
followed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have enlarged on
that subject with some pleasure, reserving to myself the right, if I
shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of priests, such as
are more easily to be found than the Good Parson; such as have given the
last blow to Christianity in this age, by a practice so contrary to
their doctrine. But this will keep cold till another time. In the mean
while, I take up Chaucer where I left him. He must have been a man of a
most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly
observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury tales
the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole
English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All
his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only
in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons.
Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better, than by
the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their
tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different
edncations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper
in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are
distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are
such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as
are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious,
and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd,
and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is
different. The Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and
distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and
the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this: there
is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted
in my choice, and know not which to follow. 'Tis sufficient to say,
according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our
forefathers and great-granddames all before us, as they were in
Chaucer's days: their general characters are still remaining in mankind,
and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of
monks and friars, and chanons, and lady abbesses, and nuns: for mankind
is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though every thing is
altered. May I have leave to do myself the justice, (since my enemies
will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet, that
they will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man);
may I have leave, I say, to inform my reader, that I have confined my
choice to such tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty. If I had
desired more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the
Shipman, the Merchants, the Sumner, and above all the Wife of Bath, in
the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and
readers as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I
will no more offend against good manners. I am sensible, as I ought to
be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make what
reparation I am able by this public acknowledgment. If any thing of this
nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far from
defending it, that I disown it. _Totum hoc indicium volo._ Chaucer makes
another manner of apology for his broad-speaking, and Boccace makes the
like; but I will follow neither of them. Our countryman, in the end of
his characters, before the Canterbury tales, thus excuses the ribaldry,
which is very gross in many of his novels.

  "But first, I pray you of your courtesy,
  That ye ne arrettee it nought my villainy,
  Though that I plainly speak in this mattere,
  To tellen you her words, and eke her chere:
  Ne though I speak her words properly,
  For this ye knowen as well as I,
  Who shall tellen a tale after a man,
  He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can:
  Everich word of it been in his charge,
  All speke he, never so rudely, ne large.
  Or else he mote tellen his tale untrue,
  Or feine things, or find words new:
  He may not spare, although he were his brother,
  He mote as well say o word as another,
  Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ,
  And well I wote no villainy is it;
  Eke Plato saith, who so can him rede,
  the words mote been cousin to the dede."

Yet, if a man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer what need
they had of introducing such characters, where obscene words were proper
in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard,--I know not what answer
they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold by
me. You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so
obsolete, that his sense is scarce to be understood; and you have
likewise more than one example of his unequal numbers, which were
mentioned before. Yet many of his verses consist of ten syllables, and
the words not much behind our present English; as, for example, these
two lines in the description of the carpenter's young wife:

  "Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt,
  Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt."

I have almost done with Chaucer when I have answered some objections
relating to my present work. I find some people are offended that I have
turned these tales into modern English, because they think them unworthy
of my pains, and look on Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit not worth
reviving. I have often heard the late Earl of Leicester say that Mr
Cowley himself was of that opinion, who, having read him over at my
lord's request declared he had no taste of him. I dare not advance my
opinion against the judgment of so great an author, but I think it fair,
however, to leave the decision to the public. Mr Cowley was too modest
to set up for a dictator, and being shocked, perhaps, with his old
style, never examined into the depth of his good sense. Chaucer, I
confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere he shines.
I deny not, likewise, that, living in our early days of poetry, he
writes not always of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things with
those of greater moment. Sometimes also, though not often, he runs riot,
like Ovid, and knows not when he has said enough. But there are more
great wits besides Chaucer, whose fault is their excess of conceits, and
those ill sorted. An author is not to write all he can, but only all he
ought. Having observed this redundancy in Chaucer (as it is an easy
matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a fault in one of greater), I
have not tied myself to a literal translation, but have often omitted
what I judged unnecessary, or not of dignity enough to appear in the
company of better thoughts. I have presumed farther, in some places, and
added somewhat of my own where I thought my author was deficient, and
had not given his thoughts their true lustre, for want of words in the
beginning of our language. And to this I was the more emboldened,
because (if I may be permitted to say it of myself) I found I had a soul
congenial to his, and that I had been conversant in the same studies.
Another poet, in another age, may take the same liberty with my
writings, if, at least, they live long enough to deserve correction. It
was also necessary sometimes to restore the sense of Chaucer, which was
lost or mangled in the errors of the press. Let this example suffice at
present. In the story of Palamon and Arcite, where the temple of Diana
is described, you find these verses in all the editions of our author:--

  "There saw I Danè turned into a tree,
  I mean not the goddess Diane,
  But Venus' daughter, which that hight Danè:"

Which, after a little consideration, I knew was to be reformed into this
sense, that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turned into a tree. I
durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future Milbourn should
arise, and say I varied from my author because I understood him not.

But there are other judges who think I ought not to have translated
Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion. They suppose there
is a certain veneration due to his old language, and that it is little
less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of
opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this
transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be
lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this opinion
was that excellent person whom I mentioned, the late Earl of Leicester,
who valued Chaucer as much as Mr Cowley despised him. My lord dissuaded
me from this attempt (for I was thinking of it some years before his
death), and his authority prevailed so far with me, as to defer my
undertaking while he lived, in deference to him; yet my reason was not
convinced with what he urged against it. If the first end of a writer be
to be understood, then, as his language grows obsolete, his thoughts
must grow obscure: _multa renascentur quæ nunc cecidere, cadentque,
quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium
est et jus et norma loquendi._ When an ancient word for its sound and
significancy deserves to be revived, I have that reasonable veneration
for antiquity to restore it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are
not like landmarks, so sacred as never to be removed; customs are
changed, and even statutes are silently repealed, when the reason ceases
for which they were enacted. As for the other part of the argument,
that his thoughts will lose their original beauty by the innovation of
words; in the first place, not only their beauty, but their being is
lost, where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. I
grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all
translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost,
or at least be maimed, when it is scarce intelligible, and that but to a
few. How few are there who can read Chaucer, so as to understand him
perfectly! And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure.
'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these
pains with him: let them neglect my version, because they have no need
of it. I made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well
as they, when that poetry and sense is put into words which they
understand. I will go further, and dare to add, that what beauties I
lose in some places, I give to others which had them not originally; but
in this I may be partial to myself; let the reader judge, and I submit
to his decision. Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them,
who, because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of
their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do
their grandam, gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder others
from making use of it. In sum, I seriously protest that no man ever had,
or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer than myself. I have
translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate his
memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen. If I have altered
him 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. I will conclude what I have to say of him singly, with this one
remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence
with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been informed by them
that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspired like
her by the same god of poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer into
modern French; from which I gather that he has been formerly translated
into the old Provençal, (for how she should come to understand old
English I know not). But the matter of fact being true, it makes me
think that there is something in it like fatality; that, after certain
periods of time, the fame and memory of great wits should be renewed, as
Chaucer is both in France and England. If this be wholly chance, 'tis
extraordinary, and I dare not call it more for fear of being taxed with
superstition.

Boccace comes last to be considered, who, living in the same age with
Chaucer, had the same genius, and followed the same studies. Both writ
novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. But the greatest
resemblance of our two modern authors being in their familiar style, and
pleasing way of relating comical adventures, I may pass it over, because
I have translated nothing from Boccace of that nature. In the serious
part of poetry, the advantage is wholly on Chaucer's side; for though
the Englishman has borrowed many tales from the Italian, yet it appears
that those of Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken
from authors of former ages, and by him only modelled; so that what
there was of invention in either of them may be judged equal. But
Chaucer has refined on Boccace, and has mended the stories which he has
borrowed, in his way of telling; though prose allows more liberty of
thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfined by numbers.
Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage. I
desire not the reader should take my word, and, therefore, I will set
two of their discourses on the same subject, in the same light, for
every man to judge betwixt them. I translated Chaucer first, and,
amongst the rest, pitched on the Wife of Bath's tale, not daring, as I
have said, to adventure on her prologue, because it is too licentious.
There Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful
knight of noble blood was forced to marry, and consequently loathed her.
The crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his
aversion, endeavours to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good
word for herself, (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the
sullen bridegroom. She takes her topics from the benefits of poverty,
the advantages of old age and ugliness, the vanity of youth, and the
silly pride of ancestry and titles without inherent virtue, which is the
true nobility. When I had closed Chaucer I returned to Ovid and
translated some more of his fables, and by this time had so far
forgotten the Wife of Bath's tale, that, when I took up Boccace,
unawares I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of
blood and titles, in the story of Sigismunda, which I had certainly
avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not
failed me. Let the reader weigh them both, and if he thinks me partial
to Chaucer, it is in him to right Boccace.

I prefer in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the noble
poem of Palamon and Arcite, which is of the Epic kind, and perhaps not
much inferior to the Ilias, or the Æneis. The story is more pleasing
than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical,
the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as
artful,--only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven
years at least; but Aristotle has left undecided the duration of the
action, which, yet, is easily reduced into the compass of a year by a
narration of what preceded the return of Palamon to Athens. I had
thought, for the honour of our nation, and more particularly for his,
whose laurel, though unworthy, I have worn after him, that this story
was of English growth, and Chaucer's own; but I was undeceived by
Boccace, for, casually looking on the end of his seventh Giornata, I
found Dioneo (under which name he shadows himself) and Fiametta (who
represents his mistress, the natural daughter of Robert king of Naples)
of whom these words are spoken: _Dioneo e la Fiametta granpezza
contarono insieme d'Arcita e di Palamone_: by which it appears that this
story was written before the time of Boccace, but the name of its author
being wholly lost, Chaucer is now become an original, and I question not
but the poem has received many beauties by passing through his noble
hands. Besides this tale, there is another of his own invention, after
the manner of the Provençals, called "The Flower and the Leaf," with
which I was so particularly pleased, both for the invention and the
moral, that I cannot hinder myself from recommending it to the reader.

As a corollary to this preface, in which I have done justice to others,
I owe somewhat to myself: not that I think it worth my time to enter the
lists with one Milbourn, and one Blackmore, but barely to take notice,
that such men there are, who have written scurrilously against me
without any provocation. Milbourn, who is in orders, pretends, amongst
the rest, this quarrel to me, that I have fallen foul on priesthood. If
I have, I am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part
of the reparation will come to little. Let him be satisfied that he
shall not be able to force himself upon me for an adversary. I contemn
him too much to enter into competition with him. His own translations of
Virgil have answered his criticisms on mine. If (as they say he has
declared in print) he prefers the version of Ogilby to mine, the world
has made him the same compliment: for it is agreed on all hands that he
writes even below Ogilby: that, you will say, is not easily to be done;
but what cannot Milbourn bring about? I am satisfied, however, that
while he and I live together, I shall not be thought the worst poet of
the age. It looks as if I had desired him underhand to write so ill
against me; but upon my honest word I have not bribed him to do me this
service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 'Tis true, I should be
glad, if I could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write
such another critique on any thing of mine; for I find by experience he
has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to
make the world have a better opinion of them. He has taken some pains
with my poetry; but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his.
If I had taken to the church (as he affirms, but which was never in my
thoughts), I should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have
turned myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners.
But his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his
cavils and his poetry; and so I have done with him for ever.

As for the City Bard, or Knight Physician, I hear his quarrel to me is,
that I was the author of Absalom and Achitophel, which he thinks is a
little hard on his fanatic patrons in London.

But I will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill
is to be spoken of the dead; and therefore peace be to the manes of his
Arthurs! I will only say, that it was not for this noble knight that I
drew the plan of an Epic poem on King Arthur, in my preface to the
translation of Juvenal. The guardian angels of kingdoms were machines
too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as
Dares did the whirlbats of Eryx, when they were thrown before him by
Entellus. Yet from that preface he plainly took his hint; for he began
immediately upon the story, though he had the baseness not to
acknowledge his benefactor, but instead of it, to traduce me in a libel.

I shall say the less of Mr Collier, because in many things he has taxed
me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of
mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or
immorality; and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he
be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise,
he will be glad of my repentance. It becomes me not to draw my pen in
the defence of a bad cause, when I have so often drawn it for a good
one. Yet it were not difficult to prove, that in many places he has
perverted my meaning by his glosses; and interpreted my words into
blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty; besides that he is
too much given to horse-play in his raillery; and comes to battle like a
dictator from the plough. I will not say, the zeal of God's house has
eaten him up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his
good-manners and civility. It might also be doubted whether it were
altogether zeal which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding:
perhaps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of
ancient and modern plays: a divine might have employed his pains to
better purpose than in the nastiness of Plautus and Aristophanes; whose
examples, as they excuse not me, so it might be possibly supposed that
he read them not without some pleasure. They who have written
commentaries on those poets, or on Horace, Juvenal, and Martial, have
explained some vices, which without their interpretation had been
unknown to modern times. Neither has he judged impartially betwixt the
former age and us.

There is more bawdry in one play of Fletcher's, called "The Custom of
the Country," than in all ours together. Yet this has been often acted
on the stage in my remembrance. Are the times so much more reformed now,
than they were five-and-twenty years ago? If they are, I congratulate
the amendment of our morals. But I am not to prejudice the cause of my
fellow-poets, though I abandon my own defence. They have some of them
answered for themselves, and neither they nor I can think Mr Collier so
formidable an enemy that we should shun him. He has lost ground at the
latter end of the day, by pursuing his point too far, like the Prince of
Conde at the battle of Senneffe: from immoral plays, to no plays; _ab
abusu ad usum non valet consequentia_. But being a party, I am not to
erect myself into a judge. As for the rest of those who have written
against me, they are such scoundrels, that they deserve not the least
notice to be taken of them. Blackmore and Milbourn are only
distinguished from the crowd, by being remembered to their infamy.

 --Demetri, teque Tigelli
  Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.

TO HER GRACE THE DUCHESS OF ORMOND,[71]

WITH THE FOLLOWING POEM OF PALAMON AND ARCITE.

  MADAM,

  The bard who first adorn'd our native tongue,
  Tuned to his British lyre this ancient song:
  Which Homer might without a blush rehearse,
  And leaves a doubtful palm in Virgil's verse:
  He match'd their beauties, where they most excel;
  Of love sung better, and of arms as well.

    Vouchsafe, illustrious Ormond! to behold
  What power the charms of beauty had of old;
  Nor wonder if such deeds of arms were done,
  Inspired by two fair eyes that sparkled like your own.              10

    If Chaucer by the best idea wrought,
  And poets can divine each other's thought,
  The fairest nymph before his eyes he set;
  And then the fairest was Plantagenet;
  Who three contending princes made her prize,
  And ruled the rival nations with her eyes:
  Who left immortal trophies of her fame,
  And to the noblest order gave the name.

    Like her, of equal kindred to the throne,
  You keep her conquests, and extend your own:                        20
  As when the stars in their ethereal race,
  At length have roll'd around the liquid space,
  At certain periods they resume their place;
  From the same point of heaven their course advance,
  And move in measures of their former dance;
  Thus, after length of ages, she returns,
  Restored in you, and the same place adorns;
  Or you perform her office in the sphere,
  Born of her blood, and make a new Platonic year.
  O true Plantagenet! O race divine!                                  30
  (For beauty still is fatal to the line)
  Had Chaucer lived that angel-face to view,
  Sure he had drawn his Emily from you;
  Or had you lived to judge the doubtful right,
  Your noble Palamon had been the knight;
  And conquering Theseus from his side had sent
  Your generous lord, to guide the Theban government.
  Time shall accomplish that; and I shall see
  A Palamon in him, in you an Emily.
  Already have the Fates your path prepared,                          40
  And sure presage your future sway declared:
  When westward, like the sun, you took your way,
  And from benighted Britain bore the day,
  Blue Triton gave the signal from the shore,
  The ready Nereids heard, and swam before,
  To smooth the seas; a soft Etesian gale
  But just inspired, and gently swell'd the sail;
  Portunus took his turn, whose ample hand
  Heaved up his lighten'd keel, and sunk the sand,
  And steer'd the sacred vessel safe to land.                         50
  The land, if not restrain'd, had met your way,
  Projected out a neck, and jutted to the sea.
  Hibernia, prostrate at your feet, adored
  In you the pledge of her expected lord;
  Due to her isle; a venerable name;
  His father and his grandsire known to fame;
  Awed by that house, accustom'd to command,
  The sturdy kerns in due subjection stand;
  Nor bear the reins in any foreign hand.
  At your approach, they crowded to the port;                         60
  And scarcely landed, you create a court:
  As Ormond's harbinger, to you they run;
  For Venus is the promise of the sun.
  The waste of civil wars, their towns destroy'd,
  Pales unhonour'd, Ceres unemploy'd,
  Were all forgot; and one triumphant day
  Wiped all the tears of three campaigns away.
  Blood, rapines, massacres, were cheaply bought,
  So mighty recompence your beauty brought.
  As when the dove returning bore the mark                            70
  Of earth restored to the long labouring ark,
  The relics of mankind, secure of rest,
  Oped every window to receive the guest,
  And the fair bearer of the message bless'd;
  So, when you came, with loud repeated cries,
  The nation took an omen from your eyes,
  And God advanced his rainbow in the skies,
  To sign inviolable peace restored;
  The saints, with solemn shouts, proclaim'd the new accord.
  When at your second coming you appear,                              80
  (For I foretell that millenary year)
  The sharpen'd share shall vex the soil no more,
  But earth unbidden shall produce her store;
  The land shall laugh, the circling ocean smile,
  And Heaven's indulgence bless the holy isle.
  Heaven from all ages has reserved for you
  That happy clime, which venom never knew;
  Or if it had been there, your eyes alone
  Have power to chase all poison, but their own.

    Now in this interval, which Fate has cast                         90
  Betwixt your future glories, and your past,
  This pause of power, 'tis Ireland's hour to mourn;
  While England celebrates your safe return,
  By which you seem the seasons to command,
  And bring our summers back to their forsaken land.

    The vanquish'd isle our leisure must attend,
  Till the fair blessing we vouchsafe to send;
  Nor can we spare you long, though often we may lend.
  The dove was twice employ'd abroad, before
  The world was dried, and she return'd no more.                     100

    Nor dare we trust so soft a messenger,
  New from her sickness, to that northern air:
  Rest here a while, your lustre to restore,
  That they may see you as you shone before;
  For yet the eclipse not wholly past, you wade
  Through some remains, and dimness of a shade.

    A subject in his prince may claim a right,
  Nor suffer him with strength impair'd to fight;
  Till force returns, his ardour we restrain,
  And curb his warlike wish to cross the main.                       110

    Now past the danger, let the learn'd begin
  The inquiry where disease could enter in;
  How those malignant atoms forced their way;
  What in the faultless frame they found to make their prey,
  Where every element was weigh'd so well,
  That Heaven alone, who mix'd the mass, could tell
  Which of the four ingredients could rebel;
  And where, imprison'd in so sweet a cage,
  A soul might well be pleased to pass an age.

    And yet the fine materials made it weak:                         120
  Porcelain, by being pure, is apt to break:
  Even to your breast the sickness durst aspire;
  And, forced from that fair temple to retire,
  Profanely set the holy place on fire.
  In vain your lord, like young Vespasian, mourn'd
  When the fierce flames the sanctuary burn'd:
  And I prepared to pay in verses rude
  A most detested act of gratitude:
  Even this had been your elegy, which now
  Is offer'd for your health, the table of my vow.                   130

    Your angel sure our Morley's mind inspired,
  To find the remedy your ill required;
  As once the Macedon, by Jove's decree,
  Was taught to dream an herb for Ptolemy:
  Or Heaven, which had such over-cost bestow'd,
  As scarce it could afford to flesh and blood,
  So liked the frame, he would not work anew,
  To save the charges of another you.
  Or by his middle science did he steer,
  And saw some great contingent good appear,                         140
  Well worth a miracle to keep you here:
  And for that end preserved the precious mould,
  Which all the future Ormonds was to hold;
  And meditated in his better mind
  An heir from you, which may redeem the failing kind.

    Blest be the Power which has at once restored
  The hopes of lost succession to your lord!
  Joy to the first and last of each degree--
  Virtue to courts, and, what I long'd to see,
  To you the Graces, and the Muse to me!                             150
  O daughter of the rose! whose cheeks unite
  The differing titles of the red and white;
  Who Heaven's alternate beauty well display,
  The blush of morning, and the milky way;
  Whose face is Paradise, but fenced from sin:
  For God in either eye has placed a cherubin.

    All is your lord's alone; even absent, he
  Employs the care of chaste Penelope.
  For him you waste in tears your widow'd hours,
  For him your curious needle paints the flowers;                    160
  Such works of old imperial dames were taught;
  Such, for Ascanius, fair Eliza wrought.
  The soft recesses of your hours improve
  The three fair pledges of your happy love:
  All other parts of pious duty done,
  You owe your Ormond nothing but a son;
  To fill in future times his father's place,
  And wear the garter of his mother's race.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 71: 'Duchess of Ormond:' daughter of Duke of Bedford,
afterwards Lieutenant of Ireland, and who had recently visited it.]

PALAMON AND ARCITE:

OR, THE KNIGHT'S TALE.

BOOK I.

  In days of old, there lived, of mighty fame,
  A valiant prince, and Theseus was his name:
  A chief, who more in feats of arms excell'd,
  The rising nor the setting sun beheld.
  Of Athens he was lord; much land he won,
  And added foreign countries to his crown.
  In Scythia with the warrior queen he strove,
  Whom first by force he conquer'd, then by love;
  He brought in triumph back the beauteous dame,
  With whom her sister, fair Emilia, came.                            10
  With honour to his home let Theseus ride,
  With love to friend, and fortune for his guide,
  And his victorious army at his side.
  I pass their warlike pomp, their proud array,
  Their shouts, their songs, their welcome on the way.
  But, were it not too long, I would recite
  The feats of Amazons, the fatal fight
  Betwixt the hardy queen and hero knight;
  The town besieged, and how much blood it cost
  The female army, and the Athenian host;                             20
  The spousals of Hippolita the queen;
  What tilts and tourneys at the feast were seen;
  The storm at their return, the ladies' fear:
  But these, and other things, I must forbear.
  The field is spacious I design to sow,
  With oxen far unfit to draw the plough:
  The remnant of my tale is of a length
  To tire your patience, and to waste my strength;
  And trivial accidents shall be forborne,
  That others may have time to take their turn;                       30
  As was at first enjoin'd us by mine host:
  That he whose tale is best, and pleases most,
  Should win his supper at our common cost.

    And therefore where I left, I will pursue
  This ancient story, whether false or true,
  In hope it may be mended with a new.
  The prince I mention'd, full of high renown,
  In this array drew near the Athenian town;
  When in his pomp and utmost of his pride,
  Marching he chanced to cast his eye aside,                          40
  And saw a choir of mourning dames, who lay
  By two and two across the common way:
  At his approach they raised a rueful cry,
  And beat their breasts, and held their hands on high,
  Creeping and crying, till they seized at last
  His courser's bridle, and his feet embraced.
  Tell me, said Theseus, what and whence you are,
  And why this funeral pageant you prepare?
  Is this the welcome of my worthy deeds,
  To meet my triumph in ill-omen'd weeds?                             50
  Or envy you my praise, and would destroy
  With grief my pleasures, and pollute my joy?
  Or are you injured, and demand relief?
  Name your request, and I will ease your grief.

    The most in years of all the mourning train
  Began; but swooned first away for pain,
  Then scarce recover'd spoke: Nor envy we
  Thy great renown, nor grudge thy victory;
  'Tis thine, O king, the afflicted to redress,
  And fame has fill'd the world with thy success:                     60
  We wretched women sue for that alone,
  Which of thy goodness is refused to none;
  Let fall some drops of pity on our grief,
  If what we beg be just, and we deserve relief:
  For none of us, who now thy grace implore,
  But held the rank of sovereign queen before;
  Till, thanks to giddy chance, which never bears,
  That mortal bliss should last for length of years,
  She cast us headlong from our high estate,
  And here in hope of thy return we wait:                             70
  And long have waited in the temple nigh,
  Built to the gracious goddess Clemency.
  But reverence thou the Power whose name it bears,
  Relieve the oppress'd, and wipe the widow's tears.
  I, wretched I, have other fortune seen,
  The wife of Capaneus, and once a queen:
  At Thebes he fell; cursed be the fatal day!
  And all the rest thou seest in this array,
  To make their moan, their lords in battle lost
  Before that town besieged by our confederate host:                  80
  But Creon, old and impious, who commands
  The Theban city, and usurps the lands,
  Denies the rites of funeral fires to those
  Whose breathless bodies yet he calls his foes.
  Unburn'd, unburied, on a heap they lie;
  Such is their fate, and such his tyranny;
  No friend has leave to bear away the dead,
  But with their lifeless limbs his hounds are fed.
  At this she shriek'd aloud; the mournful train
  Echoed her grief, and grovelling on the plain,                      90
  With groans, and hands upheld, to move his mind,
  Besought his pity to their helpless kind!

    The prince was touch'd, his tears began to flow,
  And, as his tender heart would break in two,
  He sigh'd, and could not but their fate deplore,
  So wretched now, so fortunate before.
  Then lightly from his lofty steed he flew,
  And, raising one by one the suppliant crew,
  To comfort each full solemnly he swore,
  That by the faith which knights to knighthood bore,                100
  And whate'er else to chivalry belongs,
  He would not cease, till he revenged their wrongs:
  That Greece should see perform'd what he declared;
  And cruel Creon find his just reward.
  He said no more, but, shunning all delay,
  Rode on; nor enter'd Athens on his way:
  But left his sister and his queen behind,
  And waved his royal banner in the wind:
  Where in an argent field the god of war
  Was drawn triumphant on his iron car;                              110
  Red was his sword, and shield, and whole attire,
  And all the godhead seem'd to glow with fire;
  Even the ground glitter'd where the standard flew,
  And the green grass was dyed to sanguine hue.
  High on his pointed lance his pennon bore
  His Cretan fight, the conquer'd Minotaur:
  The soldiers shout around with generous rage,
  And in that victory their own presage.
  He praised their ardour: inly pleased to see
  His host the flower of Grecian chivalry,                           120
  All day he march'd, and all the ensuing night,
  And saw the city with returning light.
  The process of the war I need not tell,
  How Theseus conquer'd, and how Creon fell:
  Or after, how by storm the walls were won,
  Or how the victor sack'd and burn'd the town:
  How to the ladies he restored again
  The bodies of their lords in battle slain:
  And with what ancient rites they were interr'd;
  All these to fitter times shall be deferr'd.                       130
  I spare the widows' tears, their woeful cries,
  And howling at their husbands' obsequies;
  How Theseus at these funerals did assist,
  And with what gifts the mourning dames dismiss'd.

    Thus when the victor chief had Creon slain,
  And conquer'd Thebes, he pitch'd upon the plain
  His mighty camp, and, when the day return'd,
  The country wasted, and the hamlets burn'd,
  And left the pillagers, to rapine bred,
  Without control to strip and spoil the dead.                       140

    There, in a heap of slain, among the rest
  Two youthful knights they found beneath a load oppress'd
  Of slaughter'd foes, whom first to death they sent--
  The trophies of their strength, a bloody monument.
  Both fair, and both of royal blood they seem'd,
  Whom kinsmen to the crown the heralds deem'd;
  That day in equal arms they fought for fame;
  Their swords, their shields, their surcoats were the same.
  Close by each other laid, they press'd the ground,
  Their manly bosoms pierced with many a grisly wound;               150
  Nor well alive, nor wholly dead they were,
  But some faint signs of feeble life appear:
  The wandering breath was on the wing to part,
  Weak was the pulse, and hardly heaved the heart.
  These two were sisters' sons; and Arcite one
  Much famed in fields, with valiant Palamon.
  From these their costly arms the spoilers rent,
  And softly both convey'd to Theseus' tent:
  Whom, known of Creon's line, and cured with care,
  He to his city sent as prisoners of the war,                       160
  Hopeless of ransom, and condemn'd to lie
  In durance, doom'd a lingering death to die.
  This done, he march'd away with warlike sound,
  And to his Athens turn'd, with laurels crown'd,
  Where happy long he lived, much loved, and more renown'd.
  But in a tower, and never to be loosed,
  The woful captive kinsmen are enclosed.

    Thus year by year they pass, and day by day,
  Till once, 'twas on the morn of cheerful May,
  The young Emilia, fairer to be seen                                170
  Than the fair lily on the flowery green,
  More fresh than May herself in blossoms new,
  For with the rosy colour strove her hue,
  Waked, as her custom was, before the day,
  To do the observance due to sprightly May:
  For sprightly May commands our youth to keep
  The vigils of her night, and breaks their sluggard sleep;
  Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves;
  Inspires new flames, revives extinguish'd loves.
  In this remembrance, Emily, ere day,                               180
  Arose, and dress'd herself in rich array;
  Fresh as the month, and as the morning fair:
  Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair:
  A riband did the braided tresses bind,
  The rest was loose and wanton'd in the wind.
  Aurora had but newly chased the night,
  And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light,
  When to the garden walk she took her way,
  To sport and trip along in cool of day,
  And offer maiden vows in honour of the May.                        190

    At every turn, she made a little stand,
  And thrust among the thorns her lily hand
  To draw the rose, and every rose she drew
  She shook the stalk, and brush'd away the dew:
  Then party-colour'd flowers of white and red
  She wove, to make a garland for her head:
  This done, she sung and caroll'd out so clear,
  That men and angels might rejoice to hear:
  Even wondering Philomel forgot to sing;
  And learn'd from her to welcome in the spring.                     200
  The tower, of which before was mention made,
  Within whose keep the captive knights were laid,
  Built of a large extent, and strong withal,
  Was one partition of the palace wall;
  The garden was enclosed within the square
  Where young Emilia took the morning air.

    It happen'd Palamon, the prisoner knight,
  Restless for woe, arose before the light,
  And with his jailer's leave desired to breathe
  An air more wholesome than the damps beneath.                      210
  This granted, to the tower he took his way,
  Cheer'd with the promise of a glorious day:
  Then cast a languishing regard around,
  And saw, with hateful eyes, the temples crown'd
  With golden spires, and all the hostile ground.
  He sigh'd, and turn'd his eyes, because he knew
  'Twas but a larger jail he had in view:
  Then look'd below, and from the castle's height
  Beheld a nearer and more pleasing sight:
  The garden, which before he had not seen,                          220
  In spring's new livery clad of white and green,
  Fresh flowers in wide parterres, and shady walks between.
  This view'd, but not enjoy'd, with arms across
  He stood, reflecting on his country's loss;
  Himself an object of the public scorn,
  And often wish'd he never had been born.
  At last, for so his destiny required,
  With walking giddy, and with thinking tired,
  He through a little window cast his sight,
  Though thick of bars, that gave a scanty light:                    230
  But even that glimmering served him to descry
  The inevitable charms of Emily.

    Scarce had he seen, but seized with sudden smart,
  Stung to the quick, he felt it at his heart;
  Struck blind with overpowering light he stood,
  Then started back amazed, and cried aloud.

    Young Arcite heard; and up he ran with haste,
  To help his friend, and in his arms embraced;
  And ask'd him why he look'd so deadly wan,
  And whence and how his change of cheer began?                      240
  Or who had done the offence? But if, said he,
  Your grief alone is hard captivity;
  For love of Heaven, with patience undergo
  A cureless ill, since Fate will have it so:
  So stood our horoscope in chains to lie,
  And Saturn in the dungeon of the sky,
  Or other baleful aspect, ruled our birth,
  When all the friendly stars were under earth:
  Whate'er betides, by Destiny 'tis done;
  And better bear like men, than vainly seek to shun.                250
  Nor of my bonds, said Palamon again,
  Nor of unhappy planets I complain;
  But when my mortal anguish caused my cry,
  That moment I was hurt through either eye;
  Pierced with a random shaft, I faint away,
  And perish with insensible decay;
  A glance of some new goddess gave the wound,
  Whom, like Actaeon, unaware I found.
  Look how she walks along yon shady space!
  Not Juno moves with more majestic grace;                           260
  And all the Cyprian queen is in her face.
  If thou art Venus (for thy charms confess
  That face was form'd in heaven, nor art thou less
  Disguised in habit, undisguised in shape),
  Oh, help us captives from our chains to 'scape!
  But if our doom be past in bonds to lie
  For life, and in a loathsome dungeon die,
  Then be thy wrath appeased with our disgrace,
  And show compassion to the Theban race,
  Oppress'd by tyrant power! While yet he spoke,                     270
  Arcite on Emily had fix'd his look;
  The fatal dart a ready passage found,
  And deep within his heart infix'd the wound:
  So that if Palamon were wounded sore,
  Arcite was hurt as much as he, or more:
  Then from his inmost soul he sigh'd, and said,
  The beauty I behold has struck me dead:
  Unknowingly she strikes; and kills by chance;
  Poison is in her eyes, and death in every glance.
  Oh, I must ask; nor ask alone, but move                            280
  Her mind to mercy, or must die for love!
  Thus Arcite: and thus Palamon replies,
  (Eager his tone and ardent were his eyes):
  Speak'st thou in earnest, or in jesting vein?
  Jesting, said Arcite, suits but ill with pain.
  It suits far worse (said Palamon again,
  And bent his brows) with men who honour weigh,
  Their faith to break, their friendship to betray;
  But worst with thee, of noble lineage born,
  My kinsman, and in arms my brother sworn.                          290
  Have we not plighted each our holy oath,
  That one should be the common good of both;
  One soul should both inspire, and neither prove
  His fellow's hindrance in pursuit of love?
  To this before the gods we gave our hands,
  And nothing but our death can break the bands.
  This binds thee, then, to further my design,
  As I am bound by vow to further thine:
  Nor canst, nor dar'st thou, traitor, on the plain
  Appeach my honour, or thine own maintain,                          300
  Since thou art of my council, and the friend
  Whose faith I trust, and on whose care depend:
  And would'st thou court my lady's love, which I
  Much rather than release would choose to die?
  But thou, false Arcite, never shall obtain
  Thy bad pretence; I told thee first my pain;
  For first my love began ere thine was born:
  Thou as my council, and my brother sworn,
  Art bound to assist my eldership of right,
  Or justly to be deem'd a perjured knight.                          310

    Thus Palamon: but Arcite with disdain
  In haughty language thus replied again:
  Forsworn thyself: the traitor's odious name
  I first return, and then disprove thy claim.
  If love be passion, and that passion nursed
  With strong desires, I loved the lady first.
  Canst thou pretend desire, whom zeal inflamed
  To worship, and a power celestial named?
  Thine was devotion to the blest above,
  I saw the woman and desired her love;                              320
  First own'd my passion, and to thee commend
  The important secret, as my chosen friend.
  Suppose (which yet I grant not) thy desire
  A moment elder than my rival fire;
  Can chance of seeing first thy title prove?
  And know'st thou not, no law is made for love?
  Law is to things which to free choice relate;
  Love is not in our choice, but in our fate;
  Laws are but positive; love's power, we see,
  Is Nature's sanction, and her first decree.                        330
  Each day we break the bond of human laws
  For love, and vindicate the common cause.
  Laws for defence of civil rights are placed,
  Love throws the fences down, and makes a general waste;
  Maids, widows, wives, without distinction fall;
  The sweeping deluge, love, comes on, and covers all.
  If, then, the laws of friendship I transgress,
  I keep the greater, while I break the less;
  And both are mad alike, since neither can possess.
  Both hopeless to be ransom'd, never more                           340
  To see the sun, but as he passes o'er.

    Like Æsop's hounds contending for the bone,
  Each pleaded right, and would be lord alone:
  The fruitless fight continued all the day;
  A cur came by, and snatch'd the prize away.
  As courtiers, therefore, jostle for a grant,
  And when they break their friendship, plead their want;
  So thou, if fortune will thy suit advance,
  Love on, nor envy me my equal chance;
  For I must love, and am resolved to try                            350
  My fate, or, failing in the adventure, die.

    Great was their strife, which hourly was renew'd,
  Till each with mortal hate his rival view'd;
  Now friends no more, nor walking hand in hand;
  But when they met, they made a surly stand;
  And glared like angry lions as they pass'd,
  And wish'd that every look might be their last.

    It chanced at length, Pirithous came to attend
  This worthy Theseus, his familiar friend:
  Their love in early infancy began,                                 360
  And rose as childhood ripen'd into man.
  Companions of the war; and loved so well,
  That when one died, as ancient stories tell,
  His fellow to redeem him went to Hell.

    But to pursue my tale; to welcome home
  His warlike brother is Pirithous come:
  Arcite of Thebes was known in arms long since,
  And honour'd by this young Thessalian prince.
  Theseus, to gratify his friend and guest,
  Who made our Arcite's freedom his request,                         370
  Restored to liberty the captive knight,
  But on these hard conditions I recite:
  That if hereafter Arcite should be found
  Within the compass of Athenian ground,
  By day or night, or on whate'er pretence,
  His head should pay the forfeit of the offence.
  To this Pirithous for his friend agreed,
  And on his promise was the prisoner freed.

    Unpleased and pensive hence he takes his way,
  At his own peril; for his life must pay.                           380
  Who now but Arcite mourns his bitter fate,
  Finds his dear purchase, and repents too late?
  What have I gain'd, he said, in prison pent,
  If I but change my bonds for banishment?
  And banish'd from her sight, I suffer more
  In freedom than I felt in bonds before;
  Forced from her presence, and condemn'd to live:
  Unwelcome freedom, and unthank'd reprieve!
  Heaven is not, but where Emily abides,
  And where she's absent, all is hell besides.                       390
  Next to my day of birth, was that accursed,
  Which bound my friendship to Pirithous first:
  Had I not known that prince, I still had been
  In bondage, and had still Emilia seen:
  For though I never can her grace deserve,
  'Tis recompence enough to see and serve.
  O Palamon, my kinsman and my friend,
  How much more happy fates thy love attend!
  Thine is the adventure; thine the victory:
  Well has thy fortune turn'd the dice for thee:                     400
  Thou on that angel's face may'st feed thine eyes,
  In prison, no; but blissful paradise!
  Thou daily seest that sun of beauty shine,
  And lovest at least in love's extremest line.
  I mourn in absence, love's eternal night;
  And who can tell but since thou hast her sight,
  And art a comely, young, and valiant knight,
  Fortune (a various power) may cease to frown,
  And by some ways unknown thy wishes crown?
  But I, the most forlorn of human kind,                             410
  Nor help can hope, nor remedy can find;
  But doom'd to drag my loathsome life in care,
  For my reward, must end it in despair.
  Fire, water, air, and earth, and force of fates,
  That governs all, and Heaven that all creates,
  Nor art, nor nature's hand can ease my grief;
  Nothing but death, the wretch's last relief:
  Then farewell youth, and all the joys that dwell,
  With youth and life, and life itself farewell!

    But why, alas! do mortal men in vain                             420
  Of fortune, fate, or Providence complain?
  God gives us what he knows our wants require,
  And better things than those which we desire:
  Some pray for riches; riches they obtain;
  But, watch'd by robbers, for their wealth are slain:
  Some pray from prison to be freed; and come,
  When guilty of their vows, to fall at home;
  Murder'd by those they trusted with their life,
  A favour'd servant, or a bosom wife.
  Such dear-bought blessings happen every day,                       430
  Because we know not for what things to pray.
  Like drunken sots about the street we roam;
  Well knows the sot he has a certain home;
  Yet knows not how to find the uncertain place,
  And blunders on, and staggers every pace.
  Thus all seek happiness; but few can find.
  For far the greater part of men are blind.
  This is my case, who thought our utmost good
  Was in one word of freedom understood:
  The fatal blessing came: from prison free,                         440
  I starve abroad, and lose the sight of Emily.

    Thus Arcite; but if Arcite thus deplore
  His sufferings, Palamon yet suffers more.
  For when he knew his rival freed and gone,
  He swells with wrath; he makes outrageous moan:
  He frets, he fumes, he stares, he stamps the ground;
  The hollow tower with clamours rings around:
  With briny tears he bathed his fetter'd feet,
  And dropp'd all o'er with agony of sweat.
  Alas! he cried, I wretch in prison pine,                           450
  Too happy rival, while the fruit is thine:
  Thou livest at large, thou draw'st thy native air,
  Pleased with thy freedom, proud of my despair:
  Thou may'st, since thou hast youth and courage join'd,
  A sweet behaviour and a solid mind,
  Assemble ours, and all the Theban race,
  To vindicate on Athens thy disgrace;
  And after, by some treaty made, possess
  Fair Emily, the pledge of lasting peace.
  So thine shall be the beauteous prize, while I                     460
  Must languish in despair, in prison die.
  Thus all the advantage of the strife is thine,
  Thy portion double joys, and double sorrows mine.

    The rage of jealousy then fired his soul,
  And his face kindled like a burning coal:
  Now cold despair, succeeding in her stead,
  To livid paleness turns the glowing red.
  His blood, scarce liquid, creeps within his veins,
  Like water which the freezing wind constrains.
  Then thus he said: Eternal Deities,                                470
  Who rule the world with absolute decrees,
  And write whatever time shall bring to pass,
  With pens of adamant on plates of brass;
  What! is the race of human kind your care,
  Beyond what all his fellow-creatures are?
  He with the rest is liable to pain,
  And like the sheep, his brother-beast, is slain;
  Cold, hunger, prisons, ills without a cure,
  All these he must, and guiltless, oft endure.
  Or does your justice, power, or prescience fail,                   480
  When the good suffer, and the bad prevail?
  What worse to wretched virtue could befall,
  If fate or giddy fortune govern'd all?
  Nay, worse than other beasts is our estate;
  Them, to pursue their pleasures, you create;
  We, bound by harder laws, must curb our will,
  And your commands, not our desires, fulfil;
  Then when the creature is unjustly slain,
  Yet after death, at least, he feels no pain;
  But man, in life surcharged with woe before,                       490
  Not freed when dead, is doom'd to suffer more.
  A serpent shoots his sting at unaware;
  An ambush'd thief forelays a traveller:
  The man lies murder'd, while the thief and snake,
  One gains the thickets, and one threads the brake.
  This let divines decide; but well I know,
  Just, or unjust, I have my share of woe,
  Through Saturn seated in a luckless place,
  And Juno's wrath, that persecutes my race;
  Or Mars and Venus, in a quartile, move                             500
  My pangs of jealousy for Arcite's love.

    Let Palamon oppress'd in bondage mourn,
  While to his exiled rival we return.
  By this, the sun, declining from his height,
  The day had shorten'd to prolong the night;
  The lengthen'd night gave length of misery
  Both to the captive lover and the free.
  For Palamon in endless prison mourns,
  And Arcite forfeits life if he returns:
  The banish'd never hopes his love to see,                          510
  Nor hopes the captive lord his liberty.
  'Tis hard to say who suffers greater pains: