Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/14

 for modern and young readers:) and, lastly, I hoped to excite in you an ambition to read these same stories in their original poetical dress, when you shall have become so far acquainted with your own language, as to understand, without much difficulty, the old, and now almost forgotten terms.

I can promise those among you, who possess an ear for the harmony of verse, that when you come to read the compositions of this great poet, you will then feel how much they have lost, by being reduced to my dull prose:—although I have laboured to render my narratives as much like poetical prose as I was able; and, more particularly, to give them the air of ancient writing, newly dressed up. And I believe I may say, that I have in no instance omitted to introduce a beautiful or natural thought, when I could do so with ease and propriety, and without interfering with the quick progress of the story.

In the original Tales are many long