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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;