" 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.
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