OF FRENCH TRANSLATION: OR EXTRACTS FROM THE BEST ENGLISH AUTHORS AND ALSO PASSAGES TRANSLATED FROM CONTEMPORARY FRENCH WRITERS ARRANGED PROGRESSIVELY, WITH IDIOMATIC NOTES. BY ALPHONSE MARIETTE, FELLOW AND EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF FRENCH LITERATURE LATE FRENCH TUTOR TO THEIR ROYAL HIGHNESSES TWELFTH EDITION. ENLARGED AND IMPROVED. LIBRAIRIE HACHETTE ET CIE., 1894. (All rights reserved.) PREFACE. THE success of this work has exceeded my most sanguine expectations. Eleven large editions, rapidly disposed of, have fairly established the claim of these Half-hours to be considered a popular manual of the English student in his arduous task of mastering the principal difficulties and niceties of French composition. After all, let the French classics be brought out in this country in ever so many tempting forms, with ever so effective a display, under some pretext or other, of second-hand philological lore, which is, I fear, sadly wasted upon the great mass of school-boys-what the English learner wants is not simply to read French, but to write it out of materials in his own language, and eventually out of his own head. Translating French into English is, too often, mere guess-work, unsatisfactory alike in its character as regards that cardinal object of all study mental discipline, and in its practical results as regards proficiency in the language; and a long experience has satisfied me that English pupils can never learn thoroughly how to write French except through a steady and fairly graduated course of translation from English into French. * |