"
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,--not to expatiate beyond the
limits of the author himself, your words will be constrained,
[163] 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 same affections which you experience in reading those
authors in the original."
In this effort to ennoble the French language, to give it grace,
number, perfection, and as painters do to their pictures, that last,
so desirable, touch--cette derniere main que nous desirons-what
Du Bellay is really pleading for is his mother-tongue, the
language, that is, in which one will have the utmost degree of
what is moving and passionate.
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