There saw I Dane turned unto a tree,
  I mean not the goddess Diane,
  But Venus daughter, which that hight Dane;

which after a little consideration I knew was to be reformed into this sense, that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turn’d into a tree.  I durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future Milbourne 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 mention’d, the late Earl of Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as Mr. Cowley despis’d him.  My lord dissuaded me from this attempt, (for I was thinking of it some years before his death,) and his authority prevail’d so far with me as to defer my undertaking while he liv’d, in deference to him:  yet my reason was not convinc’d with what he urg’d 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 quae nunc cecidere; cadentque,
  Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
  Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.[30]

When an ancient word for its sound and significance deserves to be reviv’d, 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 remov’d; customs are chang’d, and even statutes are silently repeal’d, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted.  As for the other part of the argument, that his thoughts will lose of 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 maim’d, 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 farther, 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;