let the reader judge, and I submit to his decision.  Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them, who, because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do their grandam gold, only to look on it themselves and hinder others from making use of it.  In sum, I seriously protest that no man ever had, or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer, than myself.  I have translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen.  If I have alter’d him anywhere for the better, I must at the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him:  facile est inventis addere,[31] is no great commendation; and I am not so vain to think I have deserv’d a greater.  I will conclude what I have to say of him singly, with this one remark:  a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been inform’d by them, that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspir’d like her by the same God of Poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer into modern French.  From which I gather that he has been formerly translated into the old Provencal (for how she should come to understand old English I know not).  But the matter of fact being true, it makes me think that there is something in it like fatality; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory of great wits should be renewed, as Chaucer is both in France and England.  If this be wholly chance, ’t is extraordinary, and I dare not call it more, for fear of being tax’d with superstition.

Boccace comes last to be consider’d, who living in the same age with Chaucer, had the same genius, and follow’d the same studies:  both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue.  But the greatest resemblance of our two modern authors being in their familiar style, and pleasing way of relating comical adventures, I may pass it over, because I have translated nothing from Boccace of that nature.  In the serious part of poetry, the advantage is wholly on Chaucer’s side; for tho’ the Englishman has borrow’d many tales from the Italian, yet it appears that those of Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from authors of former ages, and by him only model’d; so that what there was of invention in either of them may be judg’d equal.  But Chaucer has refin’d on Boccace, and has mended the stones which he has borrowed, in his way of telling; tho’ prose allows more liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfin’d by numbers.  Our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage.  I desire not the reader should take my word, and therefore I will set two of their discourses on the same subject, in the same light, for every man to judge betwixt them.  I translated Chaucer first, and, amongst the rest, pitch’d on The Wife of Bath’s Tale;