Some of his
persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as
Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of
the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook
are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the
mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed wife of Bath.
But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before
me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow.
'Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's
plenty. We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us,
as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still
remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by
other names than those of Monks and Friars and Canons, and Lady Abbesses
and Nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature,
though everything is altered.
May I have leave to do myself the justice (since my enemies will do
me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet that they
will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man), may
I have leave, I say, to inform my reader that I have confined my choice
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 Summoner, 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 beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town.
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