that I have sought to keep as close to the original text
as English would permit. I have been careful to
avoid poeticisms of my own invention, and have only
introduced a modern idea where I judged that Ron-
sard's sixteenth-century cast of thought required
modification to be intelligible. I have sought to
render all his adjectives, and not to add to them, and
I have tried (though often at expense of great pains)
never to omit any proper name that he used, I have
striven my utmost to understand him, but I shall not
be surprised to be told by better scholars than myself
that I have on occasion made ' howlers \ But that
was a risk which I envisaged when I undertook this
ambitious task, and I must abide the results of my
own foolhardiness.

I would conclude by saying that George Moore
always maintained that it was impossible to render
the verse of one language into another without either
writing rubbish or losing the original fragrance and
values* I did not agree with him then* I do not
agree with him now. And if I have failed I shall still
stubbornly maintain that the fault is mine and not
inherent in the process itself.

HUMBERT WOLFE

xxviii