Another element in theory which displays the strength and weakness of the time is the treatment of the work of other countries and other periods. A changed attitude towards the achievements of foreign translators becomes evident early in the seventeenth century. In the prefaces to an edition of the works of Du Bartas in English there are signs of a growing satisfaction with the English language as a medium and an increasing conviction that England can surpass the rest of Europe in the work of translation. Thomas Hudson, in an address to James VI of Scotland, attached to his translation of _The History of Judith_, quotes an interesting conversation which he held on one occasion with that pedantic monarch. "It pleased your Highness," he recalls, "not only to esteem the peerless style of the Greek Homer and the Latin Virgil to be inimitable to us (whose tongue is barbarous and corrupted), but also to allege (partly through delight your majesty took in the haughty style of those most famous writers, and partly to sound the opinion of others) that also the lofty phrases, the grave inditement, the facund terms of the French Salust (for the like resemblance) could not be followed nor sufficiently expressed in our rough and unpolished English language."[380] It was to prove that he could reproduce the French poet "succinctly and sensibly in our vulgar speech" that Hudson undertook the _Judith_. According to the complimentary verses addressed to the famous Sylvester on his translations from the same author, the English tongue has responded nobly to the demands put upon it. Sylvester has shown ... that French tongue's plenty to be such. And yet that ours can utter full as much.[381] John Davies of Hereford, writing of another of Sylvester's translations, describes English as acquitting itself well when it competes with French, and continues If French to English were so strictly bound It would but passing lamely strive with it; And soon be forc'd to lose both grace and ground, Although they strove with equal skill and wit.[382] An opinion characteristic of the latter part of the century is that of the Earl of Roscommon, who, after praising the work of the earlier French translators, says, From hence our generous emulation came, We undertook, and we performed the same: But now we show the world another way, And in translated verse do more than they.[383]