ome who
despaired of the French language altogether, who thought it naturally
incapable of the fulness and elegance of Greek and Latin--cette elegance
et copie qui est en la langue Grecque et Romaine--that science could be
adequately discussed, and poetry nobly written, only in the dead
languages. "Those who speak thus," says Du Bellay, "make me think of
those relics which one may only see through a little pane of glass, and
must not touch with one's hands. That is what these people do with all
branches of culture, which they keep shut up in Greek and Latin books,
not permitting one to see them otherwise, or transport them out of dead
words into those which are alive, and wing their way daily through the
months of men." "Languages," he says again, "are not born like plants
and trees, some naturally feeble and sickly, others healthy and strong
and apter to bear the weight of men's conceptions, but all their virtue
is generated in the world of choice and men's freewill concerning them.
Therefore, I cannot blame too strongly the rashness of some of our
countrymen, who being anything rather than Greeks or Latins, depreciate
and reject with more than stoical disdain everything written in French;
nor can I express my surprise at the odd opinion of some learned men who
think that our vulgar tongue is wholly incapable of erudition and good
literature."

It was an age of translations. Du Bellay himself translated two books of
the Aeneid, and other poetry, old and new, and there were some who
thought that the translation of the classical literature was the true
means of ennobling the French language:--strangers are ever favourites
with us--nous favorisons toujours les etrangers. Du Bellay moderates
their expectations. "I do not believe that one can learn the right use
of them"--he is speaking of figures and ornament in language--"from
translations, because it is impossible to reproduce them with the same
grace with which the original author used them. For each language has, I
know not what peculiarity of its own; and if you force yourself to
express the naturalness (le naif) of this, in another language,
observing the law of translation, which is, not to expatiate beyond the
limits of the author himself; your words will be constrained, cold and
ungraceful." Then he fixes the test of all good translation:--"To prove
this, read me Demosthenes and Homer in Latin, Cicero and Virgil in
French, and see whether they produce in you the s