Study Edition · Essay 17
Chaucer (from the Preface to the Fables)
Source: Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700), the section on Chaucer, from C. E. Vaughan (ed.), English Literary Criticism, Project Gutenberg #6320 (editor's footnotes omitted). Obvious misprints silently corrected. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
In his last book, Dryden retold several of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in modern verse, and in the preface he explains why. Along the way he names Chaucer “the father of English poetry,” praises his gallery of pilgrims as “God's plenty,” settles some scores with his critics, and makes one of the earliest arguments in English for translating old literature into the living language. Dryden's own prose is modernized as usual. The passage of Chaucer's Middle English is deliberately left as Chaucer wrote it, because Dryden quotes it to show how hard old English had become. It is glossed instead.
100 sentences: 14 simple, 40 moderate, 46 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- venerationdeep respect; reverence
- continenceself-restraint
- conceita far-fetched witty idea or comparison
- impressiona printing of a book
- affectationshowy, unnatural behaviour
- numbersmetre; rhythm in verse
- confuteto prove wrong
- nonagechildhood; immaturity
- inveighto attack bitterly in words
- physiognomya person's face and features
- humourstemperaments; characters
- lewd(Middle English) uneducated; ignorant
- ribaldrycoarse, vulgar humour
- mincingaffectedly dainty
- reparationmaking amends
- erebefore
- congenialkindred; similar in spirit
- transfusionpouring from one vessel to another; translation
- obsoleteno longer in use
- sacrilegeviolation of something sacred
The Essay
In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer or the Romans Virgil: he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects; as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.1 One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way, but swept like a drag net great and small.2 There was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men: all this did not proceed from any want of knowledge, but of judgment; neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing, and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hoped the reader would not find it.3 For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, “Not being of God, he could not stand”.4
Chaucer followed nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her; and there is a great difference of being poeta and nimis poeta, if we believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and affectation.5 The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us, but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was auribus istius temporis accommodata: they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries; there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.6 It is true I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine, but this opinion is not worth confuting, it is so gross and obvious an error that common sense (which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse, which we call Heroic, was either not known, or not always practised in Chaucer's age.7 It would be an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise.8 We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first.9 We must be children before we grow men.10 There was an Ennius, and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared.11 I need say little of his parentage, life, and fortunes: they are to be found at large in all the editions of his works.12 He was employed abroad, and favoured by Edward the Third, Richard the Second, and Henry the Fourth, and was poet, as I suppose, to all three of them.13 In Richard's time, I doubt, he was a little dipt in the rebellion of the commons, and being brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, it was no wonder if he followed the fortunes of that family, and was well with Henry the Fourth when he had deposed his predecessor.14 Neither is it to be admired that Henry, who was a wise as well as a valiant prince, who claimed by succession, and was sensible that his title was not sound, but was rightfully in Mortimer, who had married the heir of York; it was not to be admired, I say, if that great politician should be pleased to have the greatest wit of those times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises.15 Augustus had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, who recommended Virgil and Horace to him, whose praises helped to make him popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to posterity.16 As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of Wickliff, after John of Gaunt his patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman: yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest deserved the lashes which he gave them, both in that and in most of his Canterbury tales: neither has his contemporary Boccace spared them.17 Yet both these poets lived in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which is given by particular priests, does not reflect on the sacred function.18 Chaucer's Monk, his Canon, and his Friar did not take from the character of his Good Parson.19 A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.20 We are only to take care that we do not involve the innocent with the guilty in the same condemnation.21 The good cannot be too much honoured, nor the bad too coarsely used; for the corruption of the best becomes the worst.22 When a clergyman is whipped his gown is first taken off, by which the dignity of his order is secured; if he is wrongfully accused, he has his action of slander; and it is at the poet's peril if he transgresses the law.23 But they will tell us that all kinds of satire, though never so well-deserved by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into contempt.24 Is, then, the peerage of England anything dishonoured when a peer suffers for his treason?25 If he is libelled, or any way defamed, he has his Scandalum Magnatum to punish the offender.26 They who use this kind of argument seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat which has deserved the poet's lash, and are less concerned for their public capacity than for their private; at least there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning.27 If the faults of men in orders are only to be judged among themselves, they are all in some sort parties; for, since they say the honour of their order is concerned in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial judges?28 How far I may be allowed to speak my opinion in this case I do not know, but I am sure a dispute of this nature caused mischief in abundance betwixt a King of England and an Archbishop of Canterbury, one standing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honour (as he called it) of God's Church, which ended in the murder of the prelate, and in the whipping of his majesty from post to pillar for his penance.29 The learned and ingenious Dr. Drake has saved me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old; and I would rather extend than diminish any part of it: yet I must needs say, that when a priest provokes me without any occasion given him, I have no reason, unless it is the charity of a Christian, to forgive him.30 Prior laesit is justification sufficient in the Civil Law.31 If I answer him in his own language, self-defence, I am sure, must be allowed me; and if I carry it farther, even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulged to human frailty.32 Yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that I have followed Chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have enlarged on that subject with some pleasure, reserving to myself the right, if I shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of priests, such as are more easily to be found than the good parson; such as have given the last blow to Christianity in this age, by a practice so contrary to their doctrine.33 But this will keep cold till another time.34 In the meanwhile, I take up Chaucer where I left him.35 He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age.36 Not a single character has escaped him.37 All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons.38 Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them.39 The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.40 Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only.41 Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned.42 Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-toothed wife of Bath.43 But enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and do not know which to follow.44 'Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.45 We have our forefathers and great-grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of Monks and Friars and Canons, and Lady Abbesses and Nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.46
May I have leave to do myself the justice (since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet that they will not allow me so much as to be a Christian, or a moral man), may I have leave, I say, to inform my reader that I have confined my choice to such tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty?47 If I had desired more to please than to instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Summoner, 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.48 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.49 If anything of this nature, or of profaneness, has crept into these poems, I am so far from defending it that I disown it.50 Totum hoc indictum volo.51 Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking, and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them.52 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.53
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 you her words, and eke her chere:
Ne though I speak her wordes properly,
For this ye knowen al so well as I,54
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,55
Christ spake himself full broad in holy writ,
And well ye wot no villany is it.56
Eke Plato saith, who so that can him rede,
The wordes mote be cousin to the dede.57
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 do not know what answer they could have made; for that reason, such tale shall be left untold by me.58 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.59 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.60 I have almost done with Chaucer, when I have answered some objections relating to my present work.61 I find some people are offended that I have turned these tales into modern English; because they think them unworthy of my pains, and look on Chaucer as a dry, old-fashioned wit, not worth reviving.62 I have often heard the late Earl of Leicester say, that Mr. Cowley himself was of that opinion; who, having read him over at my lord's request, declared he had no taste of him.63 I dare not advance my opinion against the judgment of so great an author: but I think it fair, however, to leave the decision to the public.64 Mr. Cowley was too modest to set up for a dictator; and being shocked perhaps with his old style, never examined into the depth of his good sense.65 Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere he shines.66 I do not deny, likewise, that, living in our early times he does not always write of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things with those of greater moment.67 Sometimes also, though not often, he runs riot, like Ovid, and does not know when he has said enough.68 But there are more great wits besides Chaucer, whose fault is their excess of conceits, and those ill sorted.69 An author is not to write all he can, but only all he ought.70 Having observed this redundancy in Chaucer (as it is an easy matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a fault in one of greater), I have not tied myself to a literal translation; but have often omitted what I judged unnecessary, or not of dignity enough to appear in the company of better thoughts.71 I have presumed farther, in some places, and added somewhat of my own where I thought my author was deficient, and had not given his thoughts their true lustre, for want of words in the beginning of our language.72 And to this I was the more emboldened, because (if I may be permitted to say it of myself) I found I had a soul congenial to his, and that I had been conversant in the same studies.73 Another poet, in another age, may take the same liberty with my writings; if at least they live long enough to deserve correction.74 It was also necessary sometimes to restore the sense of Chaucer, which was lost or mangled in the errors of the press: let this example suffice at present; in the story of Palamon and Arcite, where the temple of Diana is described, you find these verses, in all the editions of our author:
There saw I Dane turned into a tree,
I mean not the goddess Diane,
But Venus daughter, which that hight Dane:75 Which, after a little consideration, I knew was to be reformed into this sense, that Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was turned into a tree.76 I dared not make thus bold with Ovid, lest some future Milbourn should arise, and say, I varied from my author, because I did not understand him.77
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 a little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it.78 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.79 Of this opinion was that excellent person, whom I mentioned, the late Earl of Leicester, who valued Chaucer as much as Mr. Cowley despised him.80 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.81 If the first end of a writer is to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: multa renascentur quae nunc cecidere; cadentque, quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.82 When an ancient word for its sound and significancy deserves to be revived, I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity, to restore it.83 All beyond this is superstition.84 Words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never to be removed; customs are changed, and even statutes are silently repealed, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted.85 As for the other part of the argument, that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty, by the innovation of words; in the first place, not only their beauty but their being is lost where they are no longer understood, which is the present case.86 I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maimed, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few.87 How few are there who can read Chaucer, so as to understand him perfectly!88 And if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure.89 'Tis not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him: let them neglect my version because they have no need of it.90 I made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they, when that poetry and sense is put into words which they understand.91 I will go farther, and dare to add, that what beauties I lose in some places, I give to others which did not have them originally; but in this I may be partial to myself; let the reader judge, and I submit to his decision.92 Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them, who, because they understand Chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do their grandam gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder others from making use of it.93 In sum, I seriously protest, that no man ever had, or can have, a greater veneration for Chaucer, than myself.94 I have translated some part of his works, only that I might perpetuate his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen.95 If I have altered him 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.96 I will conclude what I have to say of him singly, with this one remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in France, has been informed by them that Mademoiselle de Scudery, who is as old as Sibyl, and inspired like her by the same god of poetry, is at this time translating Chaucer into modern French.97 From which I gather that he has been formerly translated into the old Provencal (for how she should come to understand old English I do not know).98 But the matter of fact being true, it makes me think that there is something in it like fatality; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory of great wits should be renewed, as Chaucer is both in France and England.99 If this is wholly chance, 'tis extraordinary, and I dare not call it more for fear of being taxed with superstition.100
Sentence Notes
In plain English: First, since Chaucer is the father of English poetry, I revere him as the Greeks revered Homer and the Romans Virgil. He is an endless source of good sense, learned in every field, and so writes well on every subject. He knew what to say and also when to stop, a restraint few writers have, and almost none of the ancients except Virgil and Horace.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The title Chaucer still carries today was given here.
Reference & context: Literary: Dryden's phrase “the father of English poetry” stuck, and Chaucer has been called that ever since.
In plain English: One of our recent great poets has fallen in reputation, because he could never resist any clever idea that occurred to him, but scooped them all up, big and small, like a fishing net.
Reference & context: Literary: Dryden means Abraham Cowley, author of “Of Avarice” (No. 16 in this series).
In plain English: There was plenty of food, but badly arranged: towers of sweets for boys and women, and little real meat for men. This came not from lack of knowledge but lack of judgement; and he didn't lack judgement about other poets, he simply indulged himself in the luxury of writing, perhaps knowing it was a fault but hoping readers wouldn't notice.
Reference & context: The extended dinner-table metaphor compares a book to a badly planned banquet.
Modernized: proceeded not → did not proceed
In plain English: So although he'll always be considered a great poet, he is no longer thought a good writer. His works went through ten printings in ten years, but now barely a hundred copies sell in a year. As the late Lord Rochester said, rather irreverently, “Not being of God, he could not stand.”
Reference & context: Historical: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647–1680), witty and scandalous court poet. Biblical: his joke twists Acts 5:38–39, where Gamaliel says a movement “of men” will fail but one “of God” cannot be overthrown.
In plain English: Chaucer always followed nature but never dared to go beyond it. As Catullus says, there's a big difference between being a poet and being too much of a poet, as big as the difference between modesty and showing off.
Reference & context: Latin: poeta = a poet; nimis poeta = too much a poet.
In plain English: I admit Chaucer's verse doesn't sound smooth to us, but, as Tacitus said of a certain orator, it was “suited to the ears of its time.” His contemporaries and the next generation thought it musical, and it still seems so compared with the verse of Lydgate and Gower, who wrote at the same time. It has the rough sweetness of a Scottish folk tune: natural and pleasant, though not perfect.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A beautifully judged comparison: rough but genuinely sweet, like folk music beside concert music.
Reference & context: Literary: Tacitus, Dialogue on Orators. John Lydgate and John Gower were English poets of Chaucer's era.
In plain English: I can't agree with the editor of the latest edition of Chaucer, who wants us to believe the problem is our ears, and that lines we count as nine syllables really have ten. That view isn't worth arguing against; it is so obviously wrong that common sense (our guide in everything except religious faith) must convince the reader that regular ten-syllable lines, which we call “heroic” verse, were either unknown or not always used in Chaucer's time.
Reference & context: Historical: the editor was Thomas Speght (editions of 1598 and 1602). Irony: Speght was right and Dryden wrong. Chaucer pronounced the final “-e” in words like sweete, which had fallen silent by 1700. Read with Middle English pronunciation, his lines are regular.
In plain English: It would be easy to point to thousands of his lines that limp because they lack half a metrical foot, sometimes a whole one, and no way of pronouncing them can fix that.
Reference & context: Metre: a “foot” is a unit of rhythm, e.g. an iamb (da-DUM). A pentameter line has five.
Modernized: were → would be
In plain English: All we can say is that he lived when English poetry was in its infancy, and nothing is perfect at the start.
In plain English: We have to be children before we become adults.
In plain English: In Rome, Ennius came first, then Lucilius and Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace. In England, after Chaucer came Spenser, Harington and Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were born; and English verse was still immature until these last two appeared.
Reference & context: Literary: Dryden credited Edmund Waller and John Denham with perfecting the smooth heroic couplet that he himself used.
In plain English: I needn't say much about his family, life and fortunes; they are described in detail in every edition of his works.
In plain English: He served on missions abroad, enjoyed the favour of three kings, Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV, and was, I believe, court poet to all three.
Reference & context: Historical: Chaucer worked as a diplomat (including missions to Italy), a customs official and a royal servant.
In plain English: In Richard II's reign, I suspect, he was slightly involved in the Peasants' Revolt; and since he was John of Gaunt's brother-in-law, it's no surprise that he followed that family's fortunes and was in favour with Henry IV after Henry overthrew Richard.
Reference & context: Historical: there is no evidence that Chaucer took part in the Peasants' Revolt (1381). He was linked to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, because Gaunt married Katherine Swynford, sister of Chaucer's wife Philippa. Gaunt's son became Henry IV in 1399.
In plain English: Nor is it surprising that Henry, a wise and brave king who claimed the throne by inheritance but knew his claim was weak (the rightful heir was a Mortimer), should be glad, as a shrewd politician, to have the greatest writer of the age on his side, trumpeting his praises.
Reference & context: Historical: the Mortimer family had a stronger claim to the throne than Henry IV. Note: “admire” here keeps its Latin sense, “to wonder at.”
In plain English: The emperor Augustus had set the example: on Maecenas's advice he took up Virgil and Horace, whose praise made him popular in life and has made him admired ever since.
Reference & context: Historical: Dryden himself had been Poet Laureate to Charles II and James II, so he knew the arrangement from the inside.
In plain English: As for Chaucer's religion, he seems to have leaned slightly toward the views of John Wycliffe, like his patron John of Gaunt, as appears partly in the tale of Piers Plowman. But I can't blame him for attacking the clergy's sins so fiercely: their pride, ambition, pomp, greed and worldliness deserved the whipping he gave them there and in most of the Canterbury Tales. His contemporary Boccaccio didn't spare them either.
Reference & context: Historical: John Wycliffe (c.1328–1384), early reformer, protected by John of Gaunt. The “Plowman's Tale” was printed in old Chaucer editions but was not by Chaucer. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) wrote the Decameron.
In plain English: Yet both poets were highly respected by good, holy clergymen, because scandal caused by individual priests doesn't discredit the priesthood itself.
Modernized: reflects not → does not reflect
In plain English: Chaucer's corrupt Monk, Canon and Friar didn't detract from his portrait of the Good Parson.
Reference & context: Literary: in the General Prologue, the poor, devout Parson is one of the few wholly admirable pilgrims.
Modernized: took not → did not take
In plain English: The satirical poet is how ordinary people keep bad priests in check.
In plain English: We just have to be careful not to condemn the innocent along with the guilty.
Modernized: involve not → do not involve
In plain English: Good priests can't be honoured too much, nor bad ones treated too harshly, because when the best things go bad they become the worst.
Reference & context: Latin proverb: corruptio optimi pessima, “the corruption of the best is the worst.”
In plain English: When a clergyman is publicly whipped, his robe is removed first, so the dignity of the priesthood is protected. If he's wrongly accused, he can sue for slander, and the poet who breaks the law does so at his own risk.
Modernized: be → is; transgress → transgresses
In plain English: But they will tell us that any satire, however much individual priests deserve it, brings the whole clergy into contempt.
In plain English: Then is the whole English nobility disgraced when one lord is executed for treason?
In plain English: If a lord is libelled or slandered, he has the law of Scandalum Magnatum to punish the offender.
Reference & context: Law: Scandalum Magnatum (“slander of great men”) was a special offence protecting peers and high officials.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: People who argue this way seem to know they've done something that deserves the poet's whip; they care less about their office than about themselves. At the very least, their argument is rooted in pride.
In plain English: If only clergymen may judge clergymen, they are all interested parties; since they claim the honour of the whole priesthood is at stake in each member, how can we trust them to be impartial?
In plain English: I don't know how freely I may give my opinion here, but I know a dispute like this caused great trouble between an English king and an Archbishop of Canterbury, one defending the laws of the land, the other the “honour” of the Church. It ended with the archbishop murdered and the king whipped from one post to the next as penance.
Reference & context: Historical: Henry II and Thomas Becket quarrelled over whether clergy could be tried in royal courts. Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, and in 1174 Henry did public penance there, being flogged by the monks. Becket's shrine is where Chaucer's pilgrims are travelling.
Modernized: know not → do not know
In plain English: Dr. Drake has spared me the effort of researching how much respect priests enjoyed in the past, and I'd rather increase that respect than reduce it. Still, I must say that when a priest attacks me without provocation, I have no reason to forgive him except Christian charity.
Reference & context: Historical: in 1698 the clergyman Jeremy Collier attacked Dryden by name in A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. James Drake published a reply. The “priest” who provoked Dryden is Collier.
Modernized: unless it be → unless it is
In plain English: “He struck first” is a sufficient defence in Roman law.
Reference & context: Law: the “Civil Law” means Roman law, the basis of European legal systems.
In plain English: If I reply in his own terms, surely I'm allowed self-defence; and if I go further, even to a sharp counter-attack, some allowance can be made for human weakness.
In plain English: Still, my resentment hasn't gone so far that I've refused to follow Chaucer's portrait of a holy priest; I've expanded it with pleasure. But I reserve the right, if I choose, to describe another kind of priest, much easier to find than the Good Parson: the kind who has dealt Christianity its final blow in our time by living so contrary to what they preach.
Reference & context: Literary: Dryden's Fables includes “The Character of a Good Parson,” expanded from Chaucer's General Prologue.
In plain English: But that can wait for another day.
Reference & context: Idiom: like a dish that can be served cold later. Compare “revenge is a dish best served cold.”
In plain English: Meanwhile, back to Chaucer.
In plain English: He must have had an extraordinarily all-embracing mind, because, as people rightly say, his Canterbury Tales take in the varied manners and characters of the whole English nation of his day.
In plain English: He left out no type of person.
In plain English: Each of his pilgrims is distinct from the others, not only in personality but in their faces and bodies.
In plain English: Even Della Porta couldn't have described their characters better than Chaucer does through their physical features.
Reference & context: Historical: Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615) wrote a famous treatise on reading character from the face (physiognomy).
In plain English: What each pilgrim says, and how they say it, fits their education, temperament and profession so well that no tale would suit any other teller.
In plain English: Even the serious characters are serious in different ways; their speech fits their age, profession and upbringing, and suits only them.
In plain English: Some of his characters are wicked and some good; some are uneducated (“lewd,” as Chaucer says) and some learned.
Reference & context: Language: “lewd” originally meant “lay, not clergy,” then “ignorant,” and only later “indecent.” A good example of a word's meaning drifting.
In plain English: Even the vulgar humour of the lower characters varies: the Reeve, the Miller and the Cook are each quite different men, as different as the prim Prioress is from the outspoken, gap-toothed Wife of Bath.
Reference & context: Literary: a Reeve was an estate manager. In medieval lore, a gap between the front teeth was a sign of a lusty nature, fitting the five-times-married Wife of Bath.
In plain English: But enough. There's so much game springing up in front of me that I can't decide which to chase.
Reference & context: Image: hunting, where birds and animals are flushed out of cover.
Modernized: know not → do not know
In plain English: It's enough to say, as the proverb goes, that here is God's plenty.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Dryden's famous verdict on the Canterbury Tales, now quoted constantly: the abundance of creation itself.
In plain English: Our ancestors stand before us just as they were in Chaucer's time, and the same types still exist among people, even in England, though we call them by names other than monks, friars, canons, abbesses and nuns. Human nature is always the same, and nothing is lost from it, though everything has changed.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A paradox that explains why old literature still speaks to us: everything changes, yet nothing essential is lost.
In plain English: May I do myself justice, since my enemies won't (they deny not only that I'm a good poet but even that I'm a Christian or a decent man), and tell the reader that I've chosen only those tales of Chaucer that have nothing indecent about them?
In plain English: If I'd wanted to entertain rather than teach, the bawdy tales of the Reeve, Miller, Shipman, Merchant and Summoner, and above all the Wife of Bath's prologue, would have won me as many fans as there are fashionable men and loose women in London.
In plain English: But I won't offend good manners any more. I'm aware, as I should be, of the scandal my immoral writings have caused, and I make what amends I can by admitting it publicly.
Reference & context: Context: this is Dryden's partial answer to Collier's attack on the indecency of Restoration plays, including his own.
In plain English: If anything indecent or irreverent has slipped into these poems, far from defending it, I disown it.
Modernized: be → has
In plain English: “I wish all of this unsaid.”
In plain English: Chaucer apologises for his crude language in a different way, and Boccaccio does the same, but I won't follow either of them.
In plain English: At the end of his character sketches, before the tales begin, Chaucer excuses the vulgarity that is very gross in many of his stories as follows.
Reference & context: Literary: the passage below is from the end of the General Prologue (lines 725–742).
In plain English: But first I beg you, kindly, not to think it's my own bad manners if I speak plainly here, reporting the pilgrims' words and behaviour, or if I repeat their words exactly; for you know as well as I do that…
Reference & context: Middle English is kept exactly as Dryden printed it. Tips: “ye ne arrette it nought” is a double negative (“don't attribute it”); “her” means “their.”
In plain English: whoever retells another man's story must repeat every word as closely as he can, if that's his job, however crude and coarse the original. Otherwise he'll tell it falsely, or make things up, or find new words. He can't spare anyone, even his own brother; he has to say one word as readily as another.
Reference & context: Chaucer's defence is the reporter's: he is only quoting the pilgrims faithfully.
In plain English: Christ himself spoke very plainly in the Bible, and you know well there is nothing shameful in that.
In plain English: And Plato says, for anyone who can read him, that words must be cousins to the deeds they describe.
Reference & context: Philosophy: Plato, Timaeus 29b, which Chaucer knew through Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy: words should be related to the things they describe.
In plain English: But if anyone had asked Boccaccio or Chaucer why they needed characters who would naturally use obscene language that is very improper to hear, I don't know what they could have answered. So I'll leave such tales untold.
Modernized: know not → do not know
In plain English: Here you have a sample of Chaucer's language, so out of date that his meaning can barely be understood; and you also have several examples of the uneven metre I mentioned earlier.
In plain English: Still, many of his lines do have ten syllables, in words not far from modern English, like these two describing the carpenter's young wife: “She was as skittish as a frisky colt, tall as a mast and straight as an arrow.”
Reference & context: Literary: Alison, the young wife in “The Miller's Tale.”
In plain English: I'm nearly finished with Chaucer once I've answered some objections to this book.
In plain English: Some people are annoyed that I've put these tales into modern English, because they think them not worth my effort, and regard Chaucer as a dull, outdated writer not worth bringing back.
In plain English: I've often heard the late Earl of Leicester say that Cowley thought so too; having read Chaucer at the Earl's request, he said he had no taste for him.
Reference & context: Cross-reference: Cowley wrote “Of Avarice” (No. 16 in this series).
In plain English: I don't dare set my opinion against so great a writer's judgement, but I think it fair to let the public decide.
In plain English: Cowley was too modest to lay down the law; and perhaps, put off by Chaucer's old-fashioned language, he never looked into how deep his good sense went.
In plain English: Chaucer, I admit, is a rough diamond who needs polishing before he shines.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Dryden's justification for his whole project in one image; “a rough diamond” is still an everyday phrase.
In plain English: I also don't deny that, writing in our language's early days, he isn't always consistent, and sometimes mixes trivial things with important ones.
Modernized: I deny not → I do not deny; writes not always → does not always write
In plain English: Sometimes, though not often, he gets carried away like Ovid and doesn't know when to stop.
Modernized: knows not → does not know
In plain English: But Chaucer is not the only great writer whose fault is too many clever ideas, badly arranged.
Reference & context: A second dig at Cowley.
In plain English: A writer shouldn't write everything he can, only everything he should.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Perhaps the best one-line advice on editing ever written.
In plain English: Having noticed this excess in Chaucer (and it's easy for an ordinary talent to spot faults in a greater one), I haven't stuck to a literal translation, but have often left out what seemed unnecessary or not dignified enough to sit beside his better ideas.
In plain English: In some places I've gone further and added something of my own where I thought Chaucer fell short and hadn't given his ideas their full brilliance, because the language was still young and lacked words.
In plain English: I felt bolder doing this because, if I may say so, I found I had a soul like his, and had studied the same things.
In plain English: Some future poet may take the same liberties with my work, if it survives long enough to deserve improving.
In plain English: Sometimes I also had to restore Chaucer's meaning where printers' mistakes had lost or mangled it. One example will do: in the story of Palamon and Arcite, describing Diana's temple, every edition has these lines: “There I saw Dane turned into a tree — I don't mean the goddess Diana, but Venus's daughter, called Dane.”
Reference & context: Literary: “Palamon and Arcite” is Dryden's version of “The Knight's Tale.”
In plain English: After a little thought, I realised it should be corrected to say that Daphne, daughter of the river-god Peneus, was turned into a tree.
Reference & context: Mythology: Ovid, Metamorphoses Book I. Daphne, fleeing Apollo, was turned into a laurel tree.
In plain English: I wouldn't dare take such liberties with Ovid, in case some future Milbourne popped up to claim I'd strayed from the original because I didn't understand it.
Reference & context: Historical: the clergyman Luke Milbourne savagely attacked Dryden's translation of Virgil in 1698.
Modernized: durst not → dared not; understood him not → did not understand him
In plain English: Other critics think I shouldn't have modernized Chaucer for the opposite reason: they think his old language deserves reverence, and that changing it is close to desecration.
In plain English: They also think some of his good sense will be damaged in this transfer, and much of the beauty of his ideas will certainly be lost, since they look more graceful in their old dress.
Reference & context: Image: “transfusion” is pouring liquid from one vessel to another, and it may spill.
In plain English: That was the view of the excellent Earl of Leicester, whom I mentioned, who valued Chaucer as highly as Cowley despised him.
In plain English: He talked me out of the project (I'd been considering it for years before he died), and out of respect I put it off while he lived; but his arguments never convinced my reason.
In plain English: If a writer's first aim is to be understood, then as his language becomes outdated, his ideas must become unclear. As Horace says: “Many words that have fallen will be reborn, and many now in honour will fall, if usage wills it, for usage holds the judgement, law and rule of speech.”
Reference & context: Literary: Horace, Ars Poetica 70–72, the classic statement that language is governed by usage.
Modernized: be → is
In plain English: When an old word deserves reviving for its sound and meaning, I respect the past enough to bring it back.
In plain English: Anything more than that is superstition.
In plain English: Words aren't like boundary stones, too sacred ever to be moved. Customs change, and even laws are quietly dropped once the reason for them is gone.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A founding principle of modern translation and of living language: words serve meaning, not the other way round.
Reference & context: Biblical: Deuteronomy 19:14 and Proverbs 22:28, “Remove not the ancient landmark.” Boundary stones marking property were sacred.
In plain English: As for the claim that his ideas will lose their beauty through new words: first, where they're no longer understood, they lose not just their beauty but their very existence, and that's the situation now.
In plain English: I admit something is lost in every translation; but the meaning survives, which would otherwise be lost, or at least crippled, when it's barely understandable, and then only to a few.
In plain English: How few people can read Chaucer and fully understand him!
In plain English: And reading him imperfectly gives less benefit and no pleasure.
In plain English: I haven't done this for a few old scholars of early English; they can ignore my version, since they don't need it.
Reference & context: Cross-reference: compare Earle's “Antiquary” (No. 8 in this series).
In plain English: I made it for people who appreciate meaning and poetry just as well as those scholars, once they're put into words they understand.
In plain English: I'll go further: whatever beauties I lose in some places, I add to others that didn't have them. But I may be biased; the reader can judge, and I'll accept his verdict.
Modernized: had them not → did not have them
In plain English: But I have good reason to complain about those who, because they can read Chaucer, would deny that pleasure to most of their countrymen, hoarding him like misers with their grandmother's gold, keeping it only to look at and stopping anyone else from using it.
Reference & context: Cross-reference: the miser who hoards without using is the subject of Cowley's “Of Avarice” (No. 16).
In plain English: In short, I solemnly declare that no one has ever had, or could have, more reverence for Chaucer than I do.
Reference & context: The source misprints “In sum” as “In some.”
In plain English: I translated some of his works only to keep his memory alive, or at least refresh it, among English readers.
In plain English: If I've improved him anywhere, I must also admit I could have done nothing without him. “It is easy to add to what has already been invented” is no great compliment, and I'm not vain enough to think I deserve a bigger one.
In plain English: I'll end my remarks on Chaucer with one point. A lady I know, who corresponds with some women writers in France, has heard from them that Mademoiselle de Scudéry, as old as the Sibyl and inspired like her by Apollo, is now translating Chaucer into modern French.
Reference & context: Historical: Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701), French novelist, was over ninety. Mythology: the Sibyl of Cumae asked Apollo for long life and lived for centuries.
In plain English: I gather from this that he must once have been translated into old Provençal, because I can't imagine how she would understand Old English.
Reference & context: Dryden's guess is almost certainly wrong. It's a joke at the expense of the very elderly translator.
Modernized: know not → do not know
In plain English: But if it's true, it makes me think there's something like destiny in it: that after certain periods, the fame of great writers is renewed, as Chaucer's is now in both France and England.
In plain English: If it's pure chance, it's remarkable; and I won't call it anything more, for fear of being accused of superstition.
Modernized: be → is
Fun Fact
Dryden was wrong about Chaucer's “lame” verses, and the editor he mocked was right. In Chaucer's English the final -e of words like sweete and olde was pronounced; by 1700 it had gone silent, so the lines seemed a syllable short. Read aloud the medieval way, they scan beautifully. Dryden didn't live to be corrected: Fables appeared in March 1700, and he died that May. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in what became Poets' Corner, near the very poet he had just called the father of English poetry.