pomp of his funeral attested his great popularity. His body lay in state
for several days and then with a great procession was borne, on the 13th
of May, to the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. The last years of his
life had been spent in fond study of the work of Chaucer, and so it
happened that just three hundred years after the death of elder bard
Dryden was laid to rest by the side of his great master.


PALAMON AND ARCITE


The _Fables_, in which this poem appears, were published in 1700. The
word fable as here used by Dryden holds its original meaning of story or
tale. Besides the _Palamon and Arcite_, he paraphrased from Chaucer the
_Cock and the Fox_, the _Flower and the Leaf_, the _Wife of Bath's
Tale_, the _Character of the Good Parson_. From Boccaccio he gave us
_Sigismonda and Guiscardo, Theodore and Honoria_, and _Cymon and
Iphigenia_, while he completed the volume with the first book of the
_Iliad_, certain of Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, the _Epistle to John Driden,
Alexander's Feast_, and an _Epitaph_. The _Fables_ were dedicated to the
Duke of Ormond, whose father and grandfather Dryden had previously
honored in a prose epistle, full of the rather excessive compliment then
in vogue. _Palamon and Arcite_ is itself preceded by a dedication in
verse to the Duchess of Ormond. In the graceful flattery of this
inscription Dryden excelled himself, and he was easily grand master of
the art in that age of superlative gallantry. The Duke acknowledged the
compliment by a gift of five hundred pounds. The preface to the volume
is one of Dryden's best efforts in prose. It is mainly concerned with
critical comment on Chaucer and Boccaccio; and, though it lacks the
accuracy of modern scholarship, it is full of a keen appreciation of his