In his long Preface to the Fables, Dryden not only compares the authors of the stories he translates for the collection, but also discusses their sources. What he says about the first of the tales is very interesting in this respect. After giving the ‘Noble Poem’ of Palamon and Arcite an epic status ‘perhaps not much inferiour’ to that of the Iliad and the Aeneid, Dryden maintains that he had thought this story to be ‘of English Growth, and Chaucer's own’. But, he adds,

It is rather strange that, having made the connection between Boccaccio, the author of the Decameron, and Dioneo, one of the characters in the Decameron's frame who is said to have ‘sung’ of Arcite and Palamon, Dryden should not suspect that the story had been first written by Boccaccio himself.