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them with so many natural strokes, with fuch quaintnefs in his reflections, and fuch a dryness and archness of humour, as cannot fail to excite laughter.

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OUR Prior has happily caught his manner, in many of his lighter tales; particularly in Hans Carvel, the invention of which, if its genealogy be worth tracing, is first due to Poggius. It is found in the hundred and thirty-third of his Facetia, where it is entitled Vifio Francifci Philelphi; from hence Rabelais inferted it, under another title, in his third book and twenty-eighth chapter; it was afterwards related in a book called the * HUNDRED NOVELS; Ariofto finishes his fifth fatire with it; Malefpini alfo made use of it; Fontaine who imagined Rabelais to be the in

de principum infelicitate, de moribus Indorum, FACETIARUM quoque librum unum. Ab adverfariis exagitatus orationes plerafque invectivas edidit. In epiftolis etiam laudatur. Cyropædiam, quam Xenophon ille fcripfit, latinam reddidit, atque Alphonfo regi dedicavit, pro qua a rege magnam mercedem accepit," Facius de viris illuftribus, Florentiæ, 1745.

*See Menagiana, Vol. I. p. 368.

ventor of it, was the fixth author who delivered it, as our Prior was the last; and perhaps not the least spirited.

RABELAIS was not the inventor of many of the burlesque tales he introduced into his principal ftory; the finest touches of which, it is to be feared, have undergone the usual and unavoidable fate of fatirical writings, that is, not to be tafted or understood, when the characters, the facts and the follies they ftigmatize, are perished and unknown. Gulliver in the next century, will be as obfcure as Garagantua; and Hudibras and the satire Menippe cannot be read, without voluminous commentaries.

THE WIFE OF BATH, is the other piece of Chaucer which POPE felected to imitate: One cannot but wonder at his choice, which perhaps nothing but his youth could excufe. Dryden, who is known not to be nicely fcrupulous, informs us that he would not verfify it on account of its inde

cency.

indecency. POPE however has omitted or foftened the groffer and more offenfive paffages. Chaucer afforded him many subjects of a more serious and fublime fpecies; and it were to be wished, POPE had exercised his pencil on the pathetic ftory of the patience of Grifilda, or Troilus and Creffida, or the complaint of the black knight; or, above all, on Cambuscan and Canace. From the accidental circumstance of Dryden and POPE's having copied the gay and ludicrous parts of Chaucer, the common notion feems to have arisen, that Chaucer's vein of poetry was chiefly turned to the light and the ridiculous *, In a word, they who look into Chaucer, will foon be convinced of this prevailing prejudice, and will find his comic vein to be only like one of mercury, imperceptibly mingled with a mine of gold.

*

Cowley is faid to have despised Chaucer. I am not furprized at this strange judgment. Cowley was indisputably a Genius, but his tafte was perverted and narrowed by a love of witticisms.

CHAUCER

CHAUCER is ftill more highly magnified by Dryden, in the fpirited and pleafing preface to his Fables; for his prefaces, after all, are very pleasing, notwithstanding the oppofite opinions they contain, because his profe is the most numerous and fweet, the most mellow and generous, of any our language has yet produced. His digreffions and ramblings, which he himself says he learned of honeft Montaigne, are interesting and amufing. In this preface is a paffage worth particular notice, not only for the juftness of the criticism, but because it contains a cenfure of Cowley. "Chaucer is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences; and therefore speaks properly on all fubjects: As he knew what to fay, fo he alfo knows where to leave off; a continence, which is practifed by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our laté great poets is funk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any Conceit that came in his way; but fwept, like a drag-net,

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great and small. There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-forted; whole pyramids of fweet-meats for boys and women; but little of folid meat, for men. All this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment; neither did he want that, ' in difcerning 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 reafon, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impreffions which his works have had in fo many fucceffive years, yet at prefent a hundred books are fcarcely purchafed once a twelvemonth." It is a circumftance of literary hiftory worth mentioning, that Chaucer was more than 60 years old when he wrote Palamon and Arcite, as we know Dryden was 70, when he verfified it. The lines of POPE, in the piece before us, are fpirited and eafy, and have, properly enough, a free colloquial air. One paffage,

I cannot

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