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549.]
The same keenness of appreciation is found in Dryden's estimate of
other writers who might have seemed to lie beyond the field of his
immediate vision. Of Milton he is recorded to have said: "He cuts us
all out, and the ancients too". [Footnote: The anecdote is recorded
by Richardson, who says the above words were written on the copy of
_Paradise Lost_ sent by Dorset to Milton. Dryden, _Poetic Works_, p.
161. Comp. _Dramatic Works_, i. 590; _Discourse on Satire_, p. 386.]
On Chaucer he is yet more explicit. "As he is the father of English
poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians
held Homer, or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good
sense; learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all
subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off,
a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any
of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace ... Chaucer followed
nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her." [Footnote:
See _Preface to Fables_, below.


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