I find I have anticipated already, and taken up from Boccace before
I come to him; but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper
of most kings, who love to be in debt, are all for present money, no
matter how they pay it afterwards; besides, the nature of a preface
is rambling, never wholly out of the way, nor in it. This I have learned
from the practice of honest Montaigne, and return at my pleasure to
Ovid and Chaucer, of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built
on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something of his
own, as the _Wife of Bath's Tale, The Cock and the Fox_, which I have
translated, and some others, I may justly give our countryman the
precedence in that part, since I can remember nothing of Ovid which
was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners, under which name
I comprehend the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descriptions
of persons, and their very habits; for an example, I see Baucis and
Philemon as perfectly before me, as if some ancient painter had drawn
them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, their humours,
their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped
with them at the Tabard in Southwark; yet even there too the figures
in Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better light: which
though I have not time to prove, yet I appeal to the reader, and am
sure he will clear me from partiality.
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