not daring, as I have said, to adventure on her prologue, because ’t is too licentious:  there Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble blood was forc’d to marry, and consequently loath’d her; the crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his aversion, endeavors to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good word for herself (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the sullen bridegroom.  She takes her topics from the benefits of poverty, the advantages of old age and ugliness, the vanity of youth, and the silly pride of ancestry and titles without inherent virtue, which is the true nobility.  When I had clos’d Chaucer, I returned to Ovid, and translated some more of his fables; and by this time had so far forgotten The Wife of Bath’s Tale, that, when I took up Boccace, unawares I fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of blood, and titles, in the story of Sigismonda; which I had certainly avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not fail’d me.  Let the reader weigh them both; and if he thinks me partial to Chaucer, ’t is in him to right Boccace.

I prefer in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, which is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the Ilias or the AEneis:  the story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful; only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least, but Aristotle has left undecided the duration of the action; which yet is easily reduc’d into the compass of a year, by a narration of what preceded the return of Palamon to Athens.  I had thought for the honor of our nation, and more particularly for his, whose laurel, tho’ unworthy, I have worn after him, that this story was of English growth, and Chaucer’s own; but I was undeceiv’d by Boccace; for, casually looking on the end of his seventh Giornata, I found Dionco (under which name he shadows himself) and Fiametta (who represents his mistress, the natural daughter of Robert, King of Naples), of whom these words are spoken:  Dionco e Fiametta gran pezza cantarono insieme d’Arcita, e di Palamone:[32] by which it appears that this story was written before the time of Boccace; but, the name of its author being wholly lost, Chaucer is now become an original; and I question not but the poem has receiv’d many beauties by passing thro’ his noble hands.  Besides this tale, there is another of his own invention, after the manner of the Provencals, call’d The Flower and the Leaf,[33] with which I was so particularly pleas’d, both for the invention and the moral, that I cannot hinder myself from recommending it to the reader.