I durst not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future Milbourn
should arise, and say, I varied from my author, because I understood
him not.
But there are other judges who think I ought not to have translated
Chaucer into English, out of a quite contrary notion: they suppose
there is a certain veneration due to his old language; and that it is
a little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are
farther of opinion, that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in
this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly
be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this
opinion was that excellent person, whom I mentioned, the late Earl of
Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as Mr. Cowley despised him. My
lord dissuaded me from this attempt (for I was thinking of it some
years before his death), and his authority prevailed so far with me,
as to defer my undertaking while he lived, in deference to him: yet
my reason was not convinced with what he urged against it. If the first
end of a writer be to be understood, then as his language grows
obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: _multa renascentur quae nunc
cecidere; cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus,
quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi_.
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