La sorcière : the witch of the Middle Ages / from the French of J. Michelet by L.J. Trotter.

  • Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: La sorcière : the witch of the Middle Ages / from the French of J. Michelet by L.J. Trotter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/424
    PEE FACE. In this translation of a work rich in the raciest beauties and defects of an author long since made known to the British public, the present writer has striven to recast the trenchant humour, the scornful eloquence, the epigrammatic dash of Mr. Michelet, in language not all unworthy of such a word-master. How far he has succeeded others may be left to judge. In one point only is he aware of having been less true to his original than in theory he was bound to be. He has slurred or slightly altered a few' of those passages which French readers take as a thing of course, but English ones, because of their different training, are supposed to eschew. A Frenchman, in short, wrrites for men, an Englishman rather for drawing-room ladies, who tolerate, grossness only in the theatres and the columns of the newspapers. Mr. Michelet's subject, and his late researches, lead him into details, moral and physical, which among ourselves are seldom mixed up with themes of general talk. The coarsest of these have been pruned away, but enough perhaps remain to startle readers of especial prudery. The translator.