  Du Bos’s prose is often execrable. Voltaire wrote, with reference to Du Bos and the Critical Reflections, that, “the judgement is good, the style bad. It is necessary to read him, but re-reading him would be tiresome” (Voltaire Correspondence, letter 3917). Only one English translation of the Critical Reflections has been published. Thomas Nugent translated the book as Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music (Du Bos 1748). Unfortunately, this translation is inaccurate and preserves all of the problems of the original French. All of the translations in this article have been made by the authors from the sixth edition (Du Bos 1755).