Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/272

 government and the ecclesiastical policy of his country. Such is the studied obscurity of this satire, that but a very few of the most learned and acute among his own countrymen have professed to understand Rabelais in the original. The history of the English translation of this work, is in itself a proof of its very high merit. The three first books were translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart, but only two of them were published in his lifetime. Mr Motteux, a Frenchman by birth, but whose long residence in England had given him an equal command of both languages, republished the work of Urquhart, and added the remaining three books translated by himself. In this publication he allows the excellence of