But first, I pray you of your courtesie, That ye ne arrette it nought my villanie, Though that I plainly speak in this matere To tellen yon her words, and eke her chere: Ne though I speak her wordes properly, For this ye knowen al so well as I, Who-so shall tell a tale after a man, He mote rehearse as nye as ever he can Everich a word, if it be in his charge, All speke he never so rudely and large. Or elles he mot telle his tale untrue. Or feine things, or finde wordes new: He may not spare, although he were his brother, He mot as well say o word as another, Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ, And well ye wot no villany is it. Eke Plato saith, who so that can him rede, The wordes mote be cousin to the dede. Yet if a man should have inquired of Boccace or of Chaucer, what need they had of introducing such characters where obscene words were proper in their mouths, but very indecent to be heard; I know not what answer they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold by me. You have here a specimen of Chaucer's language, which is so obsolete, that his sense is scarce to be understood; and you have likewise more than one example of his unequal numbers, [Footnote: The lines have been corrected in the text, and may easily be seen to be perfectly metrical.] which were mentioned before. Yet many of his verses consist of ten syllables, and the words not much behind our present English: as, for example, these two lines, in the description of the carpenter's young wife:-- Wincing she was, as is a jolly colt, Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.