ve said, to adventure on her prologue, because it is too licentious.
There Chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful
knight of noble blood was forced to marry, and consequently loathed her.
The crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his
aversion, endeavours 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 closed 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 Sigismunda, which I had certainly
avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not
failed me. Let the reader weigh them both, and if he thinks me partial
to Chaucer, it 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 reduced into the compass of a year by a
narration of what preceded the return of Palamon to Athens. I had
thought, for the honour of our nation, and more particularly for his,
whose laurel, though unworthy, I have worn after him, that this story
was of English growth, and Chaucer's own; but I was undeceived by
Boccace, for, casually looking on the end of his seventh Giornata, I
found Dioneo (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: _Dioneo e la Fiametta granpezza
contarono insieme d'Arcita e di Palamone_: 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 qu