he declares, "why I writ not always in the proper terms of navigation,
land-service, or in the cant of any profession. I will only say that
Virgil has avoided those properties, because he writ not to mariners,
soldiers, astronomers, gardeners, peasants, etc., but to all in general,
and in particular to men and ladies of the first quality, who have been
better bred than to be too nicely knowing in such things."[379]

Another element in theory which displays the strength and weakness of
the time is the treatment of the work of other countries and other
periods. A changed attitude towards the achievements of foreign
translators becomes evident early in the seventeenth century. In the
prefaces to an edition of the works of Du Bartas in English there are
signs of a growing satisfaction with the English language as a medium
and an increasing conviction that England can surpass the rest of Europe
in the work of translation. Thomas Hudson, in an address to James VI of
Scotland, attached to his translation of _The History of Judith_, quotes
an interesting conversation which he held on one occasion with that
pedantic monarch. "It pleased your Highness," he recalls, "not only to
esteem the peerless style of the Greek Homer and the Latin Virgil to be
inimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted), but also to
allege (partly through delight your majesty took in the haughty style of
those most famous writers, and partly to sound the opinion of others)
that also the lofty phrases, the grave inditement, the facund terms of
the French Salust (for the like resemblance) could not be followed nor
sufficiently expressed in our rough and unpolished English
language."[380] It was to prove that he could reproduce the French poet
"succinctly and sensibly in our vulgar speech" that Hudson undertook the
_Judith_. According to the complimentary verses addressed to the famous
Sylvester on his translations from the same author, the English tongue
has responded nobly to the demands put upon it. Sylvester has shown

... that French tongue's plenty to be such.
And yet that ours can utter full as much.[381]

John Davies of Hereford, writing of another of Sylvester's translations,
describes English as acquitting itself well when it competes with
French, and continues

If French to English were so strictly bound
It would but passing lamely strive with it;
And soon be forc'd to lose both grace and ground,
Although t