Dryden's rendering of Chaucer is a totally distinct operation from his Englishing of Virgil--Homer--Lucretius--Juvenal--Ovid. And you are satisfied that it should be so. He could not transfer these poets, accomplished in art, and using their language in an age of its perfection, with _too_ close a likeness of themselves. He translates because the language is unknown to his presumed reader. This is but half his motive with Chaucer. The language would be more easily got over; but the mind is of another age, and that is less accessible--more distant from us than the obsolete dialect. We are contented to have the style of that day translated into the style of our own. Is this a dereliction of poetical principle? Hardly. The spirited and splendid verse and language of Dryden have given us a new poem. Why should our literature have forborne from so enriching herself? Hear Dryden himself. "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 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 as 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 writer be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete his thoughts must grow obscure. '_Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere; cadentque Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi!_