The following Translations were selected from many others done by the
author in his youth; for the most part indeed but a sort of exercises,
while he was improving himself in the languages, and carried by his
early bent to poetry to perform them rather in verse than prose. Mr.
Dryden's Fables came out about that time,[1] which occasioned the
translations from Chaucer. They were first separately printed in
Miscellanies by J. Tonson and B. Lintot, and afterwards collected in the
quarto edition of 1717. The Imitations of English Authors, which are
added at the end, were done as early; some of them at fourteen or
fifteen years old; but having also got into Miscellanies, we have put
them here together to complete this juvenile volume.[2]