A Song of the Canibals, out of Montaign's Essays done into English Verse paraphras'd, "Stay Lovely viper, hast not on . . . ", MS F-H 283, p. 40; MS Folger, pp. 3-4. See Annotated Chronology No. 5. See also An Annotated Bibliography: Primary and Secondary Sources for all Finch's translations (paraphrases), imitations and adaptations.

In both the MS Finch-Hatton and MS Folger, "The French" has been copied out so that the reader can compare the original French prose and Finch's English poem. As near as I can make out the lines (which are crowded in above the English), they appear in the manuscript thus:

Coleuvre arest toy, arest toy Coleuvre, afin que ma seur tire sur le patron de ta peinture, le facon est l'ouvrage d'un rich cordon, que je puisse donner a ma Mie ainsi, soit en tout temps ta beauté, est ta disposition preferez a toutes les autre Serpents.

Since Reynold misprints the text as it appears in the MS Folger (where the first line begins with "Stay"), I reprint the original text which ought to have been preferred in the MS F-H 283:

Stay lovely Viper, hast not on,
Nor curl in various fold's along,
Till from that figur'd coat of thine,
Which ev'ry motion, makes more fine,
I take, as neer as art can doo,
A draught, of what I wondring view
Which, in a bracelet for my Love,
Shall be, with carefull mixtures wove,
So, may'st thou finde thy beauty's Last,
As thou dost now retard thy hast.

So may'st thou, above all the Snakes
That harbour in the neighbouring brakes,
Be honour'd, and where thou dost pass,
The shades be close, and fresh the grass.

Finally, for comparison, here are the lines from the modern standard text, Montaigne, "Des Cannibals," Les Essais, ed. P. Villey (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), p. 213:

Couleuvre, arrest toy; arrest toy, couleuvre, afin que ma soeur tire sur le patron de ta peinture la façon et l'ouvrage d'n riche cordon que je puisse donner à m'amie: soit en tout temps ta beauté, et ta disposition preferée à tous les autres serpens.