xxxv
"That is a home of plenty well repleat:
That is a storehouse riche, a learning seat,
An Ocean hudge, both lacking shore and ground,
Of heauenly eloquence a spring profound.
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Let not your art so rare then be defylde,
In singing Venus, and her fethered chylde."[1]
But his fame must have been greatly increased by the influence of James, who was one of his earliest admirers in Scotland or England. The first portion of his masterpiece, La Semaine, ou Creation du Monde (Paris, 1579), was presented to James by his former nurse within a year or two of its issue,[2] and in 1584 we find him discussing the possibility of an adequate translation. The following passage is from the Epistle Dedicatorie of Thomas Hudson's translation of Judith:[3]—
"As your Maiestie, Sir, after your accustomed and vertuous manner was sometime discoursing at Table with such your Domestiques as chaunced to be attendants; It pleased your Highnesse not only to esteeme the peerless stile of the Greeke Homer, and the Latin Virgil to be inimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted): But also to alledge (partly throu delite your Majesty tooke in the Hautie stile of those most famous Writers, and partly to sounde the opinion of others) that also the loftie Phrase, the grave incitement, the facound termes of the French Salust (for the like resemblance) could not be followed, nor sufficiently expressed in our rude and unpolished english language, . . . whereupon, it pleased your Maiestie (among the rest of his workes) to assign me, The Historie of Judith, as an agreeable Subject to your Highnesse, to be turned by me into English verse."
During his stay in Scotland, Du Bartas and the King
