than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Sumner, and, above all, the Wife of Bath, in the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will no more offend against good manners. I am sensible, as I ought to be, of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make what reparation I am able, by this public acknowledgment. If any thing of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, I am so far from defending it, that I disown it, _totum hoc indictum volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them. Our countryman, in the end of his characters, before the "Canterbury Tales," thus excuses the ribaldry, which is very gross in many of his novels: But firste, I praie you of your curtesie, That ye ne arette it not my vilanie, Though that I plainly speke in this matere, To tellen you hir wordes, and hir chere: Ne though I speke hir wordes proprely, For this ye knowen al so well as I, Who so shall telle a tale after a man, He moste reherse as neighe as ever he can; Everich word, if it be in his charge, All speke he, never so rudely and so large: Or elles he moste tellen his tale untrewe, Or feinen thinges, or finden wordes newe: He may not spare, although he were his brother, He moste as wel sayn o word as an other. Crist spake himself ful brode in holy writ, And wel ye wote no vilanie is it, Eke Plato sayeth, who so can him rede, The wordes moste ben cosin 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, 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: Winsing she was, as is a jolly colt, Long as a mast, and upright as a bolt.