Ainsi Talicot d’une fesse
Savoit tailler avec addresse
Nez tous neufs, qui ne risquoient rien
Tant que le cul se portoit bien;
Mais si le cul perdoit la vie,
Le nez tomboit par sympathie.
In one circumstance of this passage no translation can come up to the original: it is in that additional pleasantry which results from the structure of the verses, the first line ending most unexpectedly with a preposition, and the third with a pronoun, both which are the rhyming syllables in the two couplets:
So learned Taliacotius from, &c.
Cut supplemental noses, which, &c.
It was perhaps impossible to imitate this in a translation; but setting this circumstance aside, the merit of the latter French version seems to me to approach very near to that of the original.