At the same time, two things must be guarded against. The French tongue cannot be improved by merely translating the classic and Italian tongues. Translation has its value in popularizing ideas; but by mere translation no language or literature can hope to attain perfection. Nor is a mere bald imitation sufficient; but, in Du Bellay's oft-cited phrase, the beauties of these foreign tongues "must be converted into blood and nourishment."[318] The classics have "blood, nerves, and bones," while the older French writers have merely "skin and color."[319] The modern French writer should therefore dismiss with contempt the older poets of France, and set about to imitate the Greeks, Latins, and Italians. He should leave off composing rondeaux, ballades, virelays, and such _epiceries_, which corrupt the taste of the French language, and serve only to show its ignorance and poverty; and in their stead he should employ the epigram, which mingles, in Horace's words, the profitable with the pleasant, the tearful elegy, in imitation of Ovid and Tibullus, the ode, one of the sublimest forms of poetry, the eclogue, in imitation of Theocritus, Virgil, and Sannazaro, and the beautiful sonnet, an Italian invention no less learned than pleasing.[320] Instead of the morality and the farce, the poet should write tragedies and comedies; he should attempt another _Iliad_ or _AEneid_ for the glory and honor of France. This is the gist of Du Bellay's argument in so far as it deals in general terms with the French language and literature. The six or seven concluding chapters treat of more minute and detailed questions of language and versification. Du Bellay advises the adoption of classical words as a means of enriching the French tongue, and speaks with favor of the use of rhymeless verse in imitation of the classics. The _Defense_ ends with an appeal to the reader not to fear to go and despoil Greece and Rome of their treasures for the benefit of French poetry.[321]