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THE following Tranflations were selected from many others done by the Author in his Youth; for the most part indeed but a fort of Exercifes, while he was improving himself in the Languages, and carried by his early bent to Poetry to perform them rather in Verse than Profe. Mr. Dryden's Fables came out about that time, which occafioned the Tranflations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in Miscellanies by J. Tonfon and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the Quarto Edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which follow, were done as early, some of them at fourteen or fifteen years old.

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THE hint of the following piece was taken from 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 fuffer 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 anfwers to their title: wherever any hint is taken from him, the paffage itself is fet down in the marginal notes.

The Poem is introduced in the manner of the Provençal Poets, whofe works were for the most part Vifions, or pieces of imagination, and conftantly defcriptive. From thefe, Petrarch and Chaucer frequently borrowed the idea of their poems. See the Trionfi of the former, and the Dream, Flower and the Leaf, &c. of the latter. The Author of this therefore chofe the fame fort of Exordium.

IN

Call forth the greens, and wake the rifing flowers; When opening buds falute the welcome day,

And earth relenting feels the genial ray;

As balmy fleep had charm'd my cares to reft,
And love itself was banish'd from my breast,
(What time the morn mysterious vifions brings,
While purer flumbers fpread their golden wings)
A train of phantoms in wild order rose,

And, join'd, this intellectual scene compofe.

I ftood, methought, betwixt earth, feas, and skies; The whole creation open to my eyes:

IMITATION.

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In

Ver. 11, &c.] Thefe verfes are hinted from the fol

lowing of Chaucer, Book ii.

Though beheld I fields and plains,

Now hills, and now mountains,

Now valeis, and now foreftes,
And now unneth great bestes,
Now rivers, now citees,
Now towns, now great trees,
Now fhippes fayling in the fee.

In air felf-balanc'd hung the globe below,
Where mountains rife, and circling oceans flow;
Here naked rocks, and empty waftes were feen
There towery cities, and the forests green :
Here failing fhips delight the wandering eyes;
There trees and intermingled temples rise;
Now a clear fun the shining scene displays,
The tranfient landscape now in clouds decays.
O'er the wide profpect as I gaz'd around,
Sudden I heard a wild promifcuous found,
Like broken thunders that at distance roar,
Or billows murmuring on the hollow shore :
Then gazing up, a glorious pile beheld,

Whofe towering fummit ambient clouds conceal'd.
High on a rock of Ice the structure lay,
Steep its afcent, and flippery was the way;

The wonderous rock like Parian marble fhone,
And feem'd, to distant fight, of solid stone.

IMITATION.

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Inscriptions

Ver. 27. High on a rock of ice, &c.] Chaucer's third book of Fame.

It stood upon fo high a rock,

Higher ftandeth none in Spayne-
What manner ftone this rock was,

For it was like a lymed glass,
But that it fhone full more clere;
But of what congeled matere
It was, I nifte redily;
But at the laft efpied I,

And found that it was every dele,
A rock of ice, and not of ftele.