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very phyfiognomies and perfons. Baptifta Porta could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are fo fuited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and ferious characters are diftinguished by their several forts of gravity; their difcourfes are fuch as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding, fuch as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his perfons are vicious, and fome vertuous; fome are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and fome are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and diftinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Priorefs and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath.

From Mr. Hayly's Effay of Epick Poetry.
SEE, on a party-colour'd steed of fire,
With Humour at his fide, his trufty fquire,
Gay Chaucer leads-in form a knight of old,
And his ftrong armour is of steel and gold,
But o'er it age a cruel ruft has spread,
And made the brilliant metals dark as lead.
End of Teftimonies.

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