clearness:  neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables; and most of Chaucer’s stones were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors.[9] Boccace his Decameron was first publish’d; and from thence our Englishman has borrow’d 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 Grizild 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 learn’d from the practice of honest Montaigne, 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 Chaucer had something of his own, as The Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Cock and the Fox,[10] 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 humors, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supp’d with them at the Tabard in Southwark; yet even there too the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better light:  which tho’ 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 consider’d in the comparison of the two poets; and I have sav’d myself one half of that labor, by owning that Ovid liv’d 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 consider’d, and they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they flow more or less naturally from the persons describ’d, on such and such occasions.  The