I cannot but think that M. Brunetière[167] has been rather unjust in upbraiding Du Bellay with the use of this word. He does use it: but he explains it. He wishes the ancients to be imitated in their processes, not merely in their results. His is no Ciceronianism; no “Bembism”; none of that frank advice to “convey” which Vida had given before him, and to which, unluckily, his master Ronsard condescended later. “How,” he asks, “did Greek and Latin become such great literary languages?” Were they always so? Not at all. It was due to culture, to care, to (in the case of Latin at least) ingenious grafting of fresh branches from Greek. So is French to graft from Greek, from Latin, from Italian, from Spanish even—so is the essence of the classics and the other tongues to be converted into the blood and nourishment of French.[168] ----- Footnote 164: For a poet of such eminence and a book of such importance, Du Bellay and the _Défense_ are curiously difficult of access. M. Marty-Laveaux' ed. of the Works, with the Pléiade generally (Paris, 1876), is very scarce and dear. M. Becq de Fouquières’ _Selections_ are, it is said, out of print, though they can be obtained. A Versailles reprint I know only through the British Museum Catalogue. It is odd how, in almost all languages, reprinting, like a more agreeable, if less troublesome, process, seems to “go by favour.” Footnote 165: That quoted _supra_, at i. 316. Footnote 166: Of course in an earlier stage you _do_ get much more. English, for instance, profited almost infinitely by translation from French and from Latin prose in the late fourteenth century, and throughout the fifteenth. But French was past this stage, or nearly past it, when Du Bellay wrote. Footnote 167: _L’Evolution des genres_ (Paris, 1890), p. 43 _sq._ Footnote 168: M. Brunetière quotes this famous and striking expression, but complains that we are not told how it is to be done. Our English supplies a sufficient reply to this in famous words, “by reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting.” -----