so suited to their different
educations, humors, and callings, that each of them would be improper
in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are
distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are
such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such
as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are
vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearn'd, or (as Chaucer
calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. Even the ribaldry of the
low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are
several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing
Lady Prioress and the broad-speaking gap-tooth'd Wife of Bath. But
enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before
me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow.
'Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's
plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grandames all before us,
as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still
remaining in mankind, and even in England, tho' they are call'd by
other names than those of Monks and Friars, and Canons, and Lady
Abbesses, and Nuns: for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out
of nature, tho' everything is alter'd. May I have leave to do myself
the justice--since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from
granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow me so much as
to be a Christian, or a moral man--may I have leave, I say, to inform
my reader that I have confin'd my choice to such tales of Chaucer as
savor nothing of immodesty. If I had desir'd more to please than
to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the
Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to her tale,
would have procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaux
and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will no more offend against
good manners: I am sensible, as I ought to be, of the scandal I have
given by my loose writings; and make what reparation I am able,
by this public acknowledgment. If anything of this nature, or of
profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far from defending it,
that I disown it. _Totum hoc indictum volo._[25] Chaucer makes another
manner of apology for his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like;
but I will follow neither of them. Our countryman, in the end of his
characters, before the _Canterbury Tales_, thus ex