Fables, Ancient and Modern

Fables, Ancient and Modern is a collection of translations of classical and medieval poetry by John Dryden interspersed with some of his own works. Published in March 1700, it was his last and one of his greatest works.

• I have found, by trial, Homer a more pleasing task than Virgil, though I say not the translation will be less laborious; for the Grecian is more according to my genius than the Latin poet.
  • Preface

• Chaucer followed nature every where, but was never so bold to go beyond her.
  • Preface

• A satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests.
  • Preface

• 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?
  • Preface

• It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. 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 every thing is altered.
  • Preface

Chaucer, The Knight's Tale

• Fool, not to know, that love endures no tie,
  And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.
  • Bk. II, l. 758

• His promise Palamon accepts; but prayed
  To keep it better than the first he made.
  • Bk. II

• Since every man, who lives, is born to die,
  And none can boast sincere felicity,
  With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,
  Nor joy, nor grieve too much, for things beyond our care.
  Like pilgrims, to the appointed place we tend;
  The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.
  • Bk. III

• Pity is heaven's and your's; nor can she find
  A throne so soft as in a woman's mind.
  • Bk. III
  • Variant, 'Mercy is Heaven's own gift', quoted by William Sidney Walker, Letter to Margaret from Eton College, 6 July 1814, in Poetical Works, ed. J. Moultrie (1852), p. xxvii

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. VIII

• And new-laid eggs, which Baucis' busy care
  Turned by a gentle fire, and roasted rare.
  • l. 97

Homer, Iliad, Bk. I

• The wrath of Peleus' son, O Muse, resound;
  Whose dire effects the Grecian army found,
  And many a hero, king, and hardy knight,
  Were sent, in early youth, to shades of night.
  • ll. 1–4

Chaucer, The Nun's Priest's Tale

• 'Twas now the month in which the world began
  (If March beheld the first created man;)
  And since the vernal equinox, the sun
  In Aries twelve degrees, or more, had run;
  When casting up his eyes against the light,
  Both month, and day, and hour, he measured right,
  And told more truly than the Ephemeris;
  For art may err, but nature cannot miss.
  Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
  His second crowing the third hour confessed.
  • ll. 445–457

From Boccace

• And that one hunting, which the Devil designed
  For one fair female, lost him half the kind.
  • l. 227

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. XIII

• The less had been our shame,
  The less his counselled crime, which brands the Grecian name.
  • l. 61

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bk. XV

• Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
  As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
  • ll. 155–156

From Boccace

• Old as I am, for ladies love unfit,
  The power of beauty I remember yet.
  • ll. 1–2

• When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
  • ll. 41

• He trudged along, unknowing what he sought,
  And whistled as he went, for want of thought.
  • ll. 84–85

• The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes,
  And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.
  • l. 107

• Love taught him shame, and shame, with love at strife,
  Soon taught the sweet civilities of life.
  • l. 133

• She hugged the offender, and forgave the offense,
  Sex to the last.
  • ll. 367–368

• And raw in fields the rude militia swarms;
  Mouths without hands; maintained at vast expense,
  In peace a charge, in war a weak defence;
  Stout once a month they march, a blustering band,
  And ever, but in times of need, at hand.
  • l. 400

• Of seeming arms to make a short essay,
  Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.
  • ll. 407–408

• Walter Scott (ed.) The Works of John Dryden (1808), vols. 11 and 12