FullReads

I have elsewhere shortly noticed the Abbe de Marolles in the character of “a literary sinner;” but the extent of his sins never struck me so forcibly as when I observed his delinquencies counted up in chronological order in Niceron’s “Hommes Illustres.” It is extremely amusing to detect the swarming fecundity of his pen; from year to year, with author after author, was this translator wearying others, but remained himself unwearied. Sometimes two or three classical victims in a season were dragged into his slaughter-house. Of about seventy works, fifty were versions of the classical writers of antiquity, accompanied with notes. But some odd circumstances happened to our extraordinary translator in the course of his life. De l’Etang, a critic of that day, in his “Regles de bien traduire,” drew all his examples of bad translation from our abbe, who was more angry than usual, and among his circle the cries of our Marsyas resounded. De l’Etang, who had done this not out of malice, but from urgent necessity to illustrate his principles, seemed very sorry, and was desirous of appeasing the angried translator. One day in Easter, finding the abbe in church at prayers, the critic fell on his knees by the side of the translator: it was an extraordinary moment, and a singular situation to terminate a literary quarrel. “You are angry with me,” said De l’Etang, “and I think you have reason; but this is a season of mercy, and I now ask your pardon.”–“In the manner,” replied the abbe, “which you have chosen, I can no longer defend myself. Go, sir! I pardon you.” Some days after, the abbe again meeting De l’Etang, reproached him with duping him out of a pardon, which he had no desire to have bestowed on him. The last reply of the critic was caustic: “Do not be so difficult; when one stands in need of a general pardon, one ought surely to grant a particular one.” De Marolles was subject to encounter critics who were never so kind as to kneel by him on an Easter Sunday. Besides these fifty translations, of which the notes are often curious, and even the sense may be useful to consult, his love of writing produced many odd works. His volumes were richly bound, and freely distributed, but they found no readers! In a “Discours pour servir de Preface sur les Poetes, traduits par Michel de Marolles,” he has given an imposing list of “illustrious persons and contemporary authors who were his friends,” and has preserved many singular facts concerning them. He was indeed for so long a time convinced that he had struck off the true spirit of his fine originals, that I find he at several times printed some critical treatise to back his last, or usher in his new version; giving the world reasons why the versions which had been given of that particular author, “soit en prose, soit en vers, ont ete si pen approuvees jusqu’ici.” Among these numerous translations he was the first who ventured on the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus, which still bears an excessive price. He entitles his work, “Les quinze Livres de Deipnosophists d’Athenee, Ouvrage delicieux, agreablement diversifie et rempli de Narrations, scavantes sur toutes Sortes de Matieres et de Sujets.” He has prefixed various preliminary dissertations; yet, not satisfied with having performed this great labour, it was followed by a small quarto of forty pages, which might now be considered curious; “Analyse, en Description succincte des Choses contenues dans les quinzes Livres de Deipnosophistes.” He wrote, “Quatrains sur les Personnes de la Cour et les Gens de Lettres,” which the curious would now be glad to find. After having plundered the classical geniuses of antiquity by his barbarous style, when he had nothing more left to do, he committed sacrilege in translating the Bible; but, in the midst of printing, he was suddenly stopped by authority, for having inserted in his notes the reveries of the Pre-Adamite Isaac Peyrere. He had already revelled on the New Testament, to his version of which he had prefixed so sensible an introduction, that it was afterwards translated into Latin. Translation was the mania of the Abbe de Marolles. I doubt whether he ever fairly awoke out of the heavy dream of the felicity of his translations; for late in life I find him observing, “I have employed much time in study, and I have translated many books; considering this rather as an innocent amusement which I have chosen for my private life, than as things very necessary, although they are not entirely useless. Some have valued them, and others have cared little about them; but however it may be, I see nothing 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?