Edinburgh Revieia, vol. XLII, n" 83, p

2. Wordsworth. Literary Criticism. Ed. Nowell C. Smith. Londres, 1906, p. 176. Essay supplementary to Préface (i8i5).

3. Hallam, Hist. de la Lift, de l'Europe, 1889, p. 2i5 (Traduction française).

queness, in imag-ination, and in faculty of descriptive power. Thestately and^orgeous abundance of the vocabulary vvith whicli the Hellenising-andLatinising innovation of tiie Pléiade enrichcd tlie French lano-uao-e supplied him with colours and material to work with and his own ^enius did the rest. His attempt to naturaliseGreekcompoundssuch as « aime-lyre, donne-ame», and the rest, has done him more harm than anythin^ else : but his combination of classical learning- with the varied colour and vivid imag-ination of the middle âges and the Renaissance often results in extraordinarily striking- expressions. Ail that was wanting to make Du Bartas a poet of the first rank was some faculty of self-criticism ; of natural « verve » and imag-ination as well as of érudition he had no lack but in critical faculty he seems to hâve been totally déficient. His beauties^ rare in kind, and not small in amount, are alloyed with vast quantities of dull absurdity » (i). Parlant plus particulièrement de Sylvester il dit ailleurs (2) : « Joshua Sylvester is one of those men of letters whom accident rather than property seems to hâve made absurd. He has existed in Eng-Iish literature chiefly as an Englisher of the Frenchman Du Bartas, whom an even g-reater ignorance has chosen to regard as something- grotesque. Du Bartas is one of the grandest, if also one of the most unequal, poets of Europe and Josuah Sylvester his translater succee-

1. Saintsbury, A Short Hi.tt . cf French Lit., 5e éd., Clarendon Press, 1897, in-8, p. i83.