Dryden's poetical power appears most of all, perhaps, in his translations; and his translation of the most vulgar renown is that which unites his name to that of the great Roman epopeist; but it is not his greatest achievement. The tales modernized and paraphrased from Chaucer, and those filled up into poetical telling from Boccacio, as they are the works of Dryden's which the most fasten themselves with interest upon a mind open to poetry and free from preconceived literary opinion, so do they seem to us to be, after all, those which a versed critic must distinguish as stamped, beyond the others, with the skilled ease, the flow as of original composition, the sustained spirit, and force, and fervour--in short, by the mastery, and by the keen zest of Writing. They are the works of his more than matured mind--of his waning life; and they show a rare instance of a talent so steadfastly and perseveringly self-improved, as that, in life's seventh decennium, the growth of Art overweighed the detriment of Time. But, in good truth, no detriment of time is here perceptible; youthful fire and accomplished skill have the air of being met in these remarkable pieces. Chaucer, in his last and greatest labour, the _Canterbury Tales_, first effectually creating his own style, and his translator, Dryden, at about the same years, excelling himself to infuse renovated life into the _Canterbury Tales_--are brought singularly together. The age of Chaucer was widely and variously different from that of Dryden. Knowledge, taste, art, had advanced with strides between the two dates; and the bleak and stormy English political atmosphere of the fourteenth century had changed, notwithstanding the commotion of the later civil war, into a far milder and more settled element when the seventeenth drew towards close. Genius, likewise, in the two poets, was distinguished by marked differences. Strength, simplicity, earnestness, human affection, characterize Chaucer. Dryden has plenty of strength, too, but it shows itself differently. The strength of Chaucer is called out by the requisition of the subject, and is measured to the call. Dryden bounds and exults in his nervous vigour, like a strong steed broke loose. Exuberant power and rejoicing freedom mark Dryden versifying--a smooth flow, a prompt fertility, a prodigal splendour of words and images. Old Chaucer, therefore, having passed through the hands of Dryden, is no longer old Chaucer--no longer Chaucer. But the well-chosen, and well-disposed, and well-told tale, full of masculine sense, lively with humour, made present with painting--for all this Chaucer brings to Dryden--becomes, by nothing more than the disantiquating and the different hand, a new poem.