_
Thus doing, your soul shall be placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Virgil's
Anchises. But if (fie of such a but) you be born so near the dull
making Cataphract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music
of poetry, if you have so earth-creeping a mind, that it cannot lift
itself up, to look to the sky of poetry: or rather, by a certain
rustical disdain, will become such a mome [Footnote: scorner.], as to
be a _momus_ of poetry: then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's
ears of Midas, nor to be driven by a poet's verses (as Bubonax was)
to hang himself, nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in
Ireland: yet thus much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all
poets, that, while you live, you live in love, and never get favour,
for lacking skill of a sonnet: and when you die, your memory die from
the earth, for want of an epitaph.
JOHN DRYDEN.
(1631-1700)
II. PREFACE TO THE FABLES.
The following _Preface_ belongs to the last few months of Dryden's
life (1700), and introduces the collection, mainly of translations and
adaptations, to which he gave the title of _Fables_ Apart from
_Alexander's Feast_ (written in 1697), the most notable pieces in this
collection were the versions of Chaucer's _Knightes Tale_ and _Nonne
Prestes Tale_, and of three stories to be found in Boccaccio _Sigismunda
and Guiscardo_, _Cymon and Iphigenia_, _Theodore and Honoria_.
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