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, learn’d 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 practic’d by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.  One of our late great poets[13] is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way, but swept like a dragnet, 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 indulg’d himself in the luxury of writing, and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hop’d the reader would not find it.  For this reason, tho’ he must always be thought a great poet he is no longer esteem’d 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 purchas’d once a twelvemonth for, as my last Lord Rochester said, tho’ somewhat profanely, “Not being of God, he could not stand.”

Chaucer follow’d Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her, and there is a great difference of being poeta and aimis poeta,[14] if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behavior and affectation.  The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, but ’tis like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends it was auribus istius temporis accommodata[15] they who liv’d with him, and some time after him, thought it musical and it continued so even in our judgment, if compar’d with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, tho’ not perfect.  ’Tis true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him [16] 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, ’tis so gross and obvious an error, that common sense (which is a rule in everything 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 practic’d, 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 liv’d 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