"With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not unlike: both of them were well bred, well natured, amorous, and libertine, at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives. Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman Feasts_, and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_, are sufficient witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were Virgil, Horace, Persius, and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables, and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries, or their predecessors--Boccace his 'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and Arcite_ was written, in all probability, by some Italian wit, in a former age, as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace, from whom it came to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard author, but much amplified by our English translator, as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to improve an invention than to invent themselves, as is evident not only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures. 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 their very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard, in Southwark. Yet even there, too, the figures of Chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better