E GLORIOUS ENTERTAINMENTS THAT GRACED THE HAPPY
NUPTIALS."]

Two years! immediately retorts the publisher of the other translation;
we can do better than that: the author of the work that we publish is
Mademoiselle Genevieve Chappelain, and what guarantees does she not
offer! "She has the honour to have lived more than seven years at the
court of the King of Great Britain, in the suite of the Countess of
Salisbury, who esteemed her as no ordinary young girl, but as a very
well-bred demoiselle who had been presented to her with good
credentials, and who was descended from a race that has given us great
men: verily, and women, too, that the muses have deigned to favour."
This is a little like the argument of Scudery, boasting, ten years
later, of his noble birth in order to prove to poor Pierre Corneille
that he is the better poet of the two, and that the "Cid" is worth
nothing.

But something better still follows, and here the worthy publisher
somewhat betrays himself: "If she has not been able to learn the
language of the country in which she has lived for more than seven
years, and nearly always with great ladies: how, I beg of you, could
those who have only lived there two years, and among the common people,
know the language? I do not wish to offend any one by this notice, which
I thought it necessary to make only to defend a young lady _who is my
near relation_."

Baudoin maintains his statement, and defies his rivals to translate
Sidney's verse, and he enumerates the precautions he himself has taken,
precautions which certainly ought to satisfy the reader as regards his
accuracy. Not only did he live for two years in England, but, he says,
"I secured the assistance of a French gentleman of merit and learning,
who has been good enough to explain to me the whole of the first book. I
have acted in such a way as to procure two different versions of it in
order to produce one good one." And he has done even something more: "I
have always had near me one of my friends to whom this tongue was as
familiar as our own; he has taken the trouble to elucidate for me any
doubts I may have had." In truth, he could hardly have surrounded
himself with more light, but then, what an arduous task to translate
from English!

Baudoin's adversaries were in no way intimidated by this display;
firstly, they had had the assistance of exactly the same gentleman; it
appears that a second equally learned was not to be found; secondly,
Md