As for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them, B---- and M---- are only distinguish'd from the crowd by being remember'd to their infamy: -- Demetri, teque Tigelli[37] Discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.
[Footnote A: John Dryden (1631-1700), the great dramatic and satirical poet of the later seventeenth century, whose translation of Virgil's "AEneid" appears in another volume of the Harvard Classics, deserves hardly less distinction as a prose writer than as a poet.

The present essay, prefixed to a volume of narrative poems, is largely concerned with Chaucer, and in its genial and penetrating criticism, expressed with characteristic clearness and vigor, can be seen the ground for naming Dryden the first of English literary critics, and the founder of modern prose style.] [Footnote 1: Scott suggests that the allusion is to the Duke of Buckingham, who was often satirized for the slow progress of his great mansion at Chefden.] [Footnote 2: Boccaccio did not invent this stanza, which had been used in both French and Italian before his day, but he did constitute it the Italian form for heroic verse.] [Footnote 3: Rymer misled Dryden.

There is no trace of Provencal influence on Chaucer.] [Footnote 4: The foundation layer of color in a painting.] [Footnote 5: "Verses without content, melodious trifles."-- _Ars Poet_.
322.] [Footnote 6: Jeremy Collier, in his _Short View of the Immortality and Profaneness of the Stage_, 1698.] [Footnote 7: "Energetic, irascible, unyielding, vehement."-- Horace, _Ars Poet._121.] [Footnote 8: "Whithersoever the fates drag us to and fro, let us follow."-- Virgil, _AEneid_, v.

709.] [Footnote 9: The statements that follow as to Chaucer's sources are mostly not in accord with the results of modern scholarship.] [Footnote 10: The plot of neither of these poems was original with Chaucer.] [Footnote 11: "Plenty has made me poor."-- _Meta._ iii, 466.] [Footnote 12: By Ben Jonson.] [Footnote 13: Cowley] [Footnote 14: 'Too much a poet'-- Martial iii 44 (not Catullus)] [Footnote 15: Suited to the ears of that time] [Footnote 16: Speght, whom modern scholarship has shown to be right in this matter.] [Footnote 17: What follows on Chaucer's life is full of errors.] [Footnote 18: Wondered at] [Footnote 19: A spurious "Plowman's Tale" was included in the older editions of Chaucer.] [Footnote 20: A law term for slander of a man of high rank, involving more severe punishment than ordinary slander.] [Footnote 21: Henry II.

and Thomas a Becket.] [Footnote 22: Dr.James Drake wrote a reply to Jeremy Collier's _Short View_.] [Footnote 23: "He did the first injury"] [Footnote 24: A Neapolitan physician who wrote on physiognomy.] [Footnote 25: "I wish all this unsaid."] [Footnote 26: Reckon.] [Footnote 27: Their.] [Footnote 28: Must.] [Footnote 29: The corrupt state of the text of this passage is enough to explain why Dryden found Chaucer rough.] [Footnote 30: "Many words which have now fallen out of use shall be born again; and others which are now in honor shall fall, if custom wills it, in the force of which lie the judgement and law and rules of speech."-- Horace _Ars Poet._ 70-72.] [Footnote 31: "It is easy to add to what is already invented."] [Footnote 32: Dionco and Fiametta sang together a long time of Arcite and Palamon.] [Footnote 33: Not by Chaucer.] [Footnote 34: Rev.Luke Milbourne, who had attacked Dryden's Virgil.] [Footnote 35: Sir Richard Blackmore, who had censured Dryden for the indecency of his writings.] [Footnote 36: "The argument from abuse to use is not valid."] [Footnote 37: "You, Demetrius and Tigellius, I bid lament among the chairs of your scholars." Blackmore had once been a schoolmaster .-- Noyes.].