int, which is scarcely more than if the speaker had said in
plain prose, "I have no faith in dreams, for they are wild visions which
never come true," is transformed by Dryden into this exquisite passage:

Dreams are but interludes, which fancy makes;
When monarch-reason sleeps this mimic wakes;
Compounds a medley of disjointed things,
A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:
Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad;
Both are the reasonable soul run mad;
And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,
That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.
Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind;
The nurse's legends are for truths received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed.
Sometimes we but rehearse a former play; }
The night restores our actions done by day, }
As hounds in sleep will open for their prey. }

Among the characteristics of the "poor parson" Chaucer mentions that

He was a shepherd, and no mercenary,

which is the only warrant the text afforded for these beautiful lines in
the paraphrase of Dryden:

The prelate for his holy life he prized;
The worldly pomp of prelacy despised.
His Saviour came not with a gaudy show,
Nor was his kingdom of the world below.
Patience in want, and poverty of mind, }
These marks of church and churchmen he designed, }
And living taught, and dying left behind. }
The crown he wore was of the pointed thorn;
In purple he was crucified, not born.
They who contend for place and high degree,
Are not his sons, but those of Zebedee.

Having gained so much from the masculine and buoyant genius of Dryden,
the newly fashioned tales took their rank as independent works, and were
rather valued for their want of resemblance to Chaucer than because they
were a true reflection of him. There are defects in the modern version.
The language is sometimes too colloquial, and there are many careless
lines; but in the main the verse bounds and dances along with equal
strength, facility, and grace, exhibiting one of the most wonderful
specimens in literature of the power, spirit, and abundance of the
simplest English when moulded by a master. The Flower and the Leaf,
which might have been written in the fairy land it describes, is
pre-eminent above the rest for its bright unceasing flow of delicious
poetry, f