Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/343

 già predicatore famoso del Sant' Euangelo in più cità d'Italia et in Londra.’ ‘Apologia … scritta contro un heretico,’ 1557, is also attributed to him. After the accession of Queen Mary, the elder Florio, according to Wood, took his family to the continent again, and there John received his early education.

We know that John Florio resided in his youth at Oxford, and about 1576 became tutor in foreign languages to Emanuel, son of Robert Barnes, bishop of Durham, who was a commoner of Magdalen College. Florio matriculated at Magdalen in 1581, ‘and was a teacher and instructor of certain scholars in the university.’ He dedicated his ‘First Fruites’ to Leicester in 1578, from ‘his lodgings in Worcester Place,’ Oxford. He similarly dated from Oxford a translation from the Italian of Ramuzio, dedicated to Edmund Bray, high sheriff of Oxfordshire, 25 June 1580; and inscribed to Sir Edward Dyer a manuscript collection of Italian proverbs, also from Oxford, 12 Nov. 1582. In his ‘Second Frutes,’ 1591, he writes that his first patron, Leicester, whom ‘every miscreant does strike, being dead,’ had been succeeded by one Nicholas Saunders of Ewell. In the same place he makes highly appreciative reference to Spenser, ‘the sweetest singer of all our western shepherds,’ who, he says, had heralded Leicester's virtues. A few years later Florio was, according to his own account, taken into ‘the pay and patronage’ of the Earl of Southampton, in which he ‘lived some years’ (The Worlde of Wordes, 1598 dedication), and to the Earl of Pembroke he was soon under heavy obligations.

At the close of the sixteenth century Florio was living in London on intimate terms with all the chief literary men and their patrons. In 1598 he dedicated his great Italian-English dictionary to Roger, earl of Rutland, Henry, earl of Southampton, and Lucy, countess of Rutland. He there calls himself ‘Resolute John Florio,’ and venomously attacks one ‘H. S.’ who had insulted the sonnets of one of his friends. Hunter suggests that ‘H. S.’ may be Henry Salisbury, author of a Welsh dictionary, and a protégé of the Earl of Pembroke. Florio's admirable translation of Montaigne's ‘Essays’ was licensed to Edward Blount in 1599, but was not published till 1603. Each of the three books is separately dedicated—the first to Lucy, countess of Bedford, and Anne, lady Harington; the second to Elizabeth, countess of Bedford, and Penelope, lady Rich; the third to Elizabeth, lady Grey, and Mary, lady Nevill. To the countess of Bedford's exhortations and to Sir Edward Wotton's advice Florio attributes his preparation of the work and acknowledges assistance from Theodore Diodati [see ] and his ‘sympathising friend, Maister Doctor Gwinne’ [see, M.D.]. The latter is doubtless author of the many pieces of commendatory verse contributed to this and other of Florio's works under the title of ‘Il Candido.’ Sir [q. v.], writing of a recent translation of Montaigne in his ‘Essayes,’ (1600), says: ‘Montaigne speaks now good English. It is done by a fellow less beholding to nature for his fortunes than wit, yet lesser for his face than his fortune. The truth is he looks more like a good fellow than a wise man, and yet he is wise beyond either his fortune or education.’ This is undoubtedly a reference to Florio. Cornwallis obviously saw in manuscript Florio's translation, which was entered at Stationers' Hall four years before its publication.

Farmer and Warburton have argued that Shakespeare ridiculed Florio in Holofernes in ‘Love's Labour's Lost.’ They chiefly rely on the bombastic prefaces to the ‘Worlde of Wordes’ and to Montaigne. But there is really nothing there to justify the suggestion. Florio writes more in the vein of Armado than of Holofernes, and beyond the fact that he was a teacher of languages in London he bears no resemblance whatever to the latter, a village schoolmaster. Florio as the protégé of Lords Southampton and Pembroke doubtless met Shakespeare, but this is pure conjecture. We are on safer ground in tracing the original of Gonzago's description of an ideal state in the ‘Tempest’ to Florio's translation of Montaigne's essay. One copy of the 1603 edition of the Montaigne at the British Museum contains an autograph signature said to be by Shakespeare himself. It was purchased as a genuine autograph for 140l. in 1838, having been in the possession of the Rev. Edward Patteson of East Sheen, Surrey, whose father, Edward Patteson, minister of Smethwick, Staffordshire, had had it in his possession at least as early as 1780. Sir Frederick Madden, in a letter originally addressed to the Society of Antiquaries (26 Jan. 1837), and afterwards republished from the ‘Archæologia’ as a separate pamphlet, vouched for the authenticity of the autograph. But later investigation has left little doubt that it is an eighteenth-century forgery. Another copy of the same date in the same collection bears a signature alleged to be that of Ben Jonson. This is doubtless genuine.

In 1603 Florio became reader in Italian to Queen Anne at a salary of 100l. a year, and on 5 Aug. 1604 was appointed by the king gentleman-extraordinary and groom of the privy chamber. In 1610 John Healey