ng which _obliges me to believe that they contain not at least as
much good as bad_, both for their own matter and the form which I have
given to them." The notion he entertained of his translations was their
closeness; he was not aware of his own spiritless style; and he imagined
that poetry only consisted in the thoughts, not in grace and harmony of
verse. He insisted that by giving the public his numerous translations,
he was not vainly multiplying books, because he neither diminished nor
increased their ideas in his faithful versions. He had a curious notion
that some were more scrupulous than they ought to be respecting
translations of authors who, living so many ages past, are rarely read
from the difficulty of understanding them; and why should they imagine
that a translation is injurious to them, or would occasion the utter
neglect of the originals? "We do not think so highly of our own works,"
says the indefatigable and modest abbe; "but neither do I despair that
they may he useful even to these scrupulous persons. I will not suppress
the truth, while I am noticing these ungrateful labours; if they have
given me much pain by my assiduity, they have repaid me by the fine
things they have taught me, and by the opinion which I have conceived
that posterity, more just than the present times, will award a more
favourable judgment." Thus a miserable translator terminates his long
labours, by drawing his bill of fame on posterity, which his
contemporaries will not pay; but in these cases, as the bill is
certainly lost before it reaches acceptance, why should we deprive the
drawers of pleasing themselves with the ideal capital?

Let us not, however, imagine that the Abbe de Marolles was nothing but
the man he appears in the character of a voluminous translator; though
occupied all his life on these miserable labours, he was evidently an
ingenious and nobly-minded man, whose days were consecrated to literary
pursuits, and who was among the primitive collectors in Europe of fine
and curious prints. One of his works is a "Catalogue des Livres
d'Estampes et de Figures en Taille-douce." Paris, 1666, in 8vo. In the
preface our author declares, that he had collected one hundred and
twenty-three thousand four hundred prints, of six thousand masters, in
four hundred large volumes, and one hundred and twenty small ones. This
magnificent collection, formed by so much care and skill, he presented
to the king; whether gratuitously g