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 vulgar judges,
which are nine parts in ten of all nations, who call conceits and
jingles wit, who see Ovid full of them, and Chaucer altogether
without them, will think me little less than mad, for preferring the
Englishman to the Roman: yet, with their leave, I must presume to say
that the things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far
from being witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because
they are unnatural. Would any man who is ready to die for love
describe his passion like Narcissus? Would he think of _inopem me
copia fecit_,[11] and a dozen more of such expressions, pour'd on the
neck of one another, and signifying all the same thing? If this were
wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the
agony of death? This is just John Littlewit in _Bartholomew Fair_,[12]
who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a
miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet should endeavor to
raise pity; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh. Virgil
never made use of such machines, when he was moving you to commiserate
the death of Dido: he would not destroy what he was building. Chaucer
makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet
when he came to die, he made him think more reasonably: he repents not
of his love, for that had alter'd his c