nious,
elegant poetry. The refinement in the form is not a compensation for the
sacrifices in the substance, especially when the antique form is itself
essential to teach us how our forefathers spoke, thought, and acted five
hundred years ago. Every touch which renders the picture more modern,
makes it less true. The translation of Pope is skilfully executed, but
it is inferior in raciness and interest to an original which can be read
by any educated Englishman. A few gratuitous defects have been imported
into the modernised January and May. "Chaucer," says Dryden, "followed
nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her." Pope has
sometimes overstepped the limits. He has here and there exaggerated his
original, and the truth and keeping of the characters are invariably
injured by the change.

"I have confined my choice," said Dryden, "to such tales of Chaucer as
savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired 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 beaus and ladies
of pleasure in 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." Both the pieces which Pope selected were among the
number which Dryden put under a ban, and the younger poet, perhaps,
considered that when he had purified them from part of their coarseness,
the objection would no longer apply. The apology which Chaucer urged for
his plain speaking was that in telling a tale he must repeat it
correctly, and not surrender truth to delicacy. "Yet if a man," replies
Dryden, "should have enquired of him what need he had of introducing
such characters where obscene words were proper in their mouths, but
very indecent to be heard, I know not what answer he could have made."
None was possible. The offence, nevertheless, was not what Dryden
assumes. The same Chaucer who, in his carefulness to keep to nature,
will have all his _dramatis personae_ talk according to their rank and
callings, assuredly did not violate nature when he represented the
religious and refined prioress, together with the other high-bred and
decorous members of the party, as willing auditors of the broad and
uncompromising language of their ruder companions. The