The
Preface is memorable for its critical judgments on Homer, Virgil, and
Ovid, still more memorable for its glowing praise of Chaucer. It closes
as it was fitting that the last work of Dryden should close, with an
apology, full of manliness and dignity, for the licentiousness of his
comedies. For his short-comings in this matter he had lately been
attacked by Collier, and in his reply he more than wins back any esteem
that he may have lost by his transgression.
It is with a poet, as with a man who designs to build, and is very
exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand; but, generally
speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short in the
expense he first intended. He alters his mind as the work proceeds,
and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought
when he began. So has it happened to me. I have built a house, where
I intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a certain nobleman,
who, beginning with a dog-kennel, never lived to finish the palace he
had contrived.
From translating the first of Homer's _Iliads_ (which I intended as
an essay to the whole work) I proceeded to the translation of the
twelfth book of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, because it contains, among
other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the Trojan
war.
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