ADVERTISEMENT. THE hint of the following piece was taken fpom Chaucer's House of Fame. The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed without this acknowledgment. The reader who would compare this with Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their title: wherever any hint is taken from him, the passage itself is set down in the marginal notes. P. The following note was prefixed to the first edition of this poem : "Some modern critics, from a pretended refinement of taste, have declared themselves unable to relish allegorical poems. It is not easy to penetrate into the meaning of this criticism; for if fable be allowed one of the chief beauties, or, as Aristotle calls it, the very soul of poetry, it is hard to comprehend how that fable should be the less valuable for having a moral. The ancients constantly made use of allegories. My Lord Bacon has composed an express treatise in proof of this, entitled, The Wisdom of the Ancients; where the reader may see several particular fictions exemplified and explained with great clearness, judgment, and learning. The incidents, indeed, by which the allegory is conveyed, must be varied according to the different genius or manners of different times; and they should never be spun too long, or too much clogged with trivial circumstances, or little particularities. We find an uncommon charm in truth, when it is conveyed by this sideway to our understanding: and it is observable, that even in the most ignorant ages this way of writing has found reception. Almost all the poems in the old Provençal had this turn; and from these it was that Petrarch took the idea of his poetry. We have his Trionfi in this kind; and Boccace pursued in the same track. Soon after, Chaucer introduced it here, whose Romaunt of the Rose, Court of Love, Flower of the Leaf, House of Fame, and some others of his writings, are master-pieces of this sort. In epic poetry, it is true, too nice and exact a pursuit of the allegory is justly esteemed a fault; and Chaucer had the discernment to avoid it in his Knight's Tale, which was an attempt towards an epic poem. Ariosto, with less judgment, gave entirely into it in his Orlando; which, though carried to an excess, had yet so much reputation in Italy, that Tasso (who reduced heroic poetry to the juster standard of the ancients) was forced to prefix to his work a scrupulous explanation of the allegory of it, to which the fable itself could scarce have directed his readers. Our countryman, Spenser, followed, whose poem is almost entirely allegorical, and imitates the manner of Ariosto rather than that of Tasso. Upon the whole, one may observe this sort of writing (however discontinued of late) was in all times so far from being rejected by the best poets, that some of them have rather erred by insisting on it too closely, and carrying it too far; and that to infer from thence that the allegory itself is vicious, is a presumptuous contradiction to the judgment and practice of the greatest geniuses, both ancient and modern " It was to the Italians we owed any thing that could be called poetry; from whom Chaucer, imitated by Pope in this vision, copied largely, as they are said to have done from the bards of Provence, and to which Italians he is perpetually owning his obligations, particularly to Boccace and Petrarch. But Petrarch had greater advantages, which Chaucer wanted, not only in the friendship and advices of Boccace, but still more in having found such a predecessor as Dante. In the year 1359, Boccace sent to Petrarch, who, it seems, was jealous of Dante, and in the answer speaks coldly of his merits. This circumstance, unobserved by the generality of writers, and even by Fontanini, Crescembini, and Muratori, is brought forward, and related at large in the third volume (p. 507.) of the very entertaining Memoirs of the Life of Petrarch. In the year 1363, Boccace, driven from Florence by the plague, visited Petrarch at Venice, and carried with him Leontius Pilatus, of Thessalonica, a man of genius, but of haughty, rough, and brutal manners. From this singular man, who perished in a voyage from Constantinople to Venice 1365, Petrarch received a Latin translation of the Iliad and Odyssey. Muratori, in his first book, Della Perfetta Poesia, p. 18. relates, that a very few years after the death of Dante, 1321, a most curious work on the Italian poetry was written by a M.A. di Tempo, of which he had seen a manuscript in the great library at Milan, of the year 1332, and of which this is the title: Incipit Summa Artis Ritmici vulgaris dictaminis. The chapters are thus divided: Ritmorum vulgarium Septem sunt genera; 1. Est Sonetus; 2. Ballata; 3. Cantio extensa; 4. Rotundellus; 5. Mandrialis; 6. Serventesius; 7. Molus Confectus. But whatever Chaucer might copy from the Italians, yet the artful and entertaining plan of his Canterbury Tales was purely original and his own. This admirable piece, even exclusive of its poetry, is highly valuable, as it preserves to us the liveliest and exactest picture of the manners, customs, characters, and habits, of our forefathers, whom he has brought before our eyes acting as on a stage, suitably to their different orders and employments. With these portraits the driest antiquary must be delighted. By this plan, he has more judiciously connected these stories which the guests relate, than Boccace has done his novels: whom he has imitated, if not excelled, in the variety of the subjects of his tales. It is a common mistake, that Chaucer's excellence lay in his manner of treating light and ridiculous subjects; for whoever will attentively consider the noble poem of Palamon and Arcite, will be convinced that he equally excels in the pathetic and the sublime. It has been but lately proved, that the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer, is taken from the Teseide of Boccace, a poem which has been, till within a few years past, strangely neglected and unknown, and of which Mr. Tyrwhitt has given a curious and exact summary, in his Dissertation on the Canterbury Tales, vol. iv. p. 135. I cannot forbear expressing my surprize, that the circumstance of Chaucer's borrowing this tale, should have remained so long unobserved, when it is so plainly and positively mentioned in a book so very common as the Memoirs of Niceron ; who says, t. xxxiii. p. 44. after giving an abstract of the story of Palamon and Arcite, G. Chaucer, l'Homere de son pays, a mis l'ouvrage de Boccace en vers Anglois. This book was published by Niceron 1736. He also mentions a French translation of the Teseide, published at Paris, MDCC. 1597, in 12mo. The late Mr. Hans Stanley, who was as accurately skilled in modern as in |