In Italian
Very Often The Natural Harmony Of The Language And The Music Of The Sound
Conceal The Poverty Of
The thought; besides Italian poetry has innumerable
licenses which make it easy to figure in the Tuscan Parnassus, and where
Anyone who can string together rime or versi sciolti is dignified with
the appellation of a poet; whereas from French poetry, a mediocrity is and
must be of necessity banished. Neither is it sufficient for an author to
have sublime ideas; these must be filed and pruned. Inspiration can make a
poet of a German, an Italian or an Englishman, because he may revel in
unbounded license of metre and language, but in French poetry inspiration
is by no means sufficient; severe study and constant practise are as
indispensable as poetic verve to constitute a French poet. The French poets
are sensible of this and on this account they prefer imitating the
ancients, polishing their rough marble and fitting it to the national
taste, to striking out a new path.
The Abbe Delille, the best poet of our day that France has produced, has
gone further; he had read and admired the best English poets such as
Milton, Pope, Collins and Goldsmith, and has not disdained to imitate them;
yet he has imitated them with such elegance and judgment that he has left
nothing to regret on the part of those of his countrymen who are not
acquainted with English, and he has rendered their beauties with such a
force that a foreigner Versed in both languages who did not previously know
which was the original, and which the translation, might take up passages
in Pope, Thomson, Collins and Goldsmith and read parallel passages in
Delille and be extremely puzzled to distinguish the original:
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