Little as he scrupled to assert his own merits he could not press this argument to its full extent, though he was evidently conscious of the truth. He states that as the old poet was occasionally diffuse, and more often undignified, he had curtailed the redundancies, and rejected the trivialities. He did not stop at the easy office of omission. "I dare," he says, "to add that what beauties I lose in some places I give to others which had them not originally. If I have altered Chaucer anywhere for the better I must at the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him. _Facile est inventis addere_, is no great commendation, and I am not so vain to think I have deserved a greater." In dramatic power and pathos, which are Chaucer's strongest points, Dryden has not improved upon him; but upon the whole he has narrated the tales in a higher strain of poetry, in richer and more felicitous language, and with the addition of many new and happy ideas. A few short examples will show the nature of the changes he introduced into numerous passages in the process of recasting them. The Wife of Bath's Tale commences with these lines: In olde dayes of the King Arthour Of which that Britains speken great honour, All was this land fulfillèd of fairie; The elf-queen with her jolly company, Dancèd full oft in many a greene mead; This was the old opinion, as I read; I speak of many hundred year ago; But now can no man see none elves mo. For now the greate charity and prayers Of limitours, and other holy freres, That seeken every land, and every stream, As thick as motes in the sunne-beam, Blessing halls, chambers, kitchenes, and bowers, Cities, and boroughs, castles high, and towers, Thorpes and barnes, sheepnes, and daieries, That maketh that there be no faieries. This is one of the prettiest pieces of verse in the Canterbury Tales. Dryden has expanded and excelled it.