Pour ne pas mourir de faim.”
The spectre points out that the prospect of having to do so is no mere dream and urges him to sell “tous tes auteurs fameux,” pointing out that he could live on the “divine” Homer for at least a day or two, while on the “pensif” Rousseau he could exist a long time. He could count on his precious Virgil for the rent, while the translation “de Delille” should yield his old gardener’s wages. Among the many works mentioned in indiscriminate order are Plutarch, La Fontaine, Don Quichotte, Anacreon, Newton, Milton, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Boccaccio, Erasmus, Montesquieu, Boileau, Corneille, Voltaire, Racine, Favart, Molière, Plato, Dorat, Seneca, and a set of the British Drama!
It should be noted, by the way, that Despréaux had some knowledge of English and had paid occasional visits to London with his wife, who was rather a favourite of the then Duchess of Devonshire, and in one of his poems he gives an amusingly bitter “Tableau de Londres,” in which he complains of—
“Cette atmosphère de cendre
Qui ne cesse de descendre,”
speaks of the lower classes as “insolent” and chaffs the English taste for beer and the eternal “roast-biff” (sic); while as to the English Sunday, the stanza must really be given in full:
“Deux cents dimanches anglais,
N’en valent pas un français,
Ce jour, si joyeux en France,