Page:The Golden Ass of Apuleius.djvu/30

 Howbeit, he did not 'so exactly pass through the author, as to point every sentence according as it is in Latine': for so, he adds, 'the French and Spanish translators have not done. Nor is there any doubt that he attempted to amend his ignorance of Latin by the aid of a French version. It is some proof of the early popularity of The Golden Ass that Spain, Italy, and France had each its translation into the vulgar tongue, before Adlington undertook the work. In 1522 there appeared a tiny quarto bearing this legend upon its title-page: 'Lucius Apuleius de Lasne dore ... On les vend a Paris en la grand rue St. Jacques, Par Philippe le noir. It was by one Guillaume Michel; and though before the English translation was a-making there had appeared another version by Georges de la Bouthiere (Lyons, 1553), adorned with cuts in the manner of Bernard Salmon, the earlier book was a guide, and too often a blind guide, unto Adlington's footsteps. 'The Frenchman, indeed, was the riper scholar, but not only did he indulge the tiresome habit of commenting by the way, and without warning, upon his text, but he was also guilty of the most ingenious blunders, which Adlington, as though his own errors were not sufficient, too readily followed. A comparison of the versions sets the matter beyond uncertainty. If again and again the same inaccuracy glares in English and French, it is obvious that the one was borrowed from the other. At the very outset there is a clear clue. Guillaume Michel, according to his habit of expansion, paraphrases hac me suadente in half a dozen lines; and Adlington, turning his invigilant eye from the Latin, is