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 mouths 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 free-will 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 Æneid, and other poetry old and new, and there were some who thought that the translation of classical literature was the true means of ennobling the French language—nous favorisons toujours les étrangers. Du Bellay moderates their expectations. 'I do not believe that one can learn the right use of them,'—he is speaking of figures and ornaments in language—'from trans-
