congenerous

As with Ovid, the congenerous nature of the poets meant that Dryden understood Chaucer's faults as well as his strengths, and he concludes his discussion of what he understood to be Chaucer's imperfect meter with the empathetic conviction that "We can only say, that he liv'd in the Infancy of our Poetry, and that nothing is brought to Perfection at the first.