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 pompous pedant of Love’s Labour’s Lost, but it is much more likely, especially as he was one of the earl of Southampton’s protégés, that he was among the personal friends of the dramatist, who may well have gained his knowledge of Italian and French from him. He had married the sister of the poet Daniel, and had friendly relations with many writers of his day. Ben Jonson sent him a copy of Volpone with the inscription, “To his loving father and worthy friend Master John Florio, Ben Jonson seals this testimony of his friendship and love.” He is characterized by Wood, in Athenae Oxonienses, as a very useful man in his profession, zealous for his religion, and deeply attached to his adopted country. He died at Fulham, London, in the autumn of 1625.

FLORIS, FRANS, or more correctly , called (1520–1570), Flemish painter, was one of a large family trained to the study of art in Flanders. Son of a stonecutter, Cornelis de Vriendt, who died at Antwerp in 1538, he began life as a student of sculpture, but afterwards gave up carving for painting. At the age of twenty he went to Liége and took lessons from Lambert Lombard, a pupil of Mabuse, whose travels in Italy had transformed a style truly Flemish into that of a mongrel Leonardesque. Following in the footsteps of Mabuse, Lambert Lombard had visited Florence, and caught the manner of Salviati and other pupils of Michelangelo and Del Sarto. It was about the time when Schoreel, Coxcie and Heemskerk, after migrating to Rome and imitating the masterpieces of Raphael and Buonarroti, came home to execute Dutch-Italian works beneath the level of those produced in the peninsula itself by Leonardo da Pistoia, Nanaccio and Rinaldo of Mantua. Fired by these examples, Floris in his turn wandered across the Alps, and appropriated without assimilation the various mannerisms of the schools of Lombardy, Florence and Rome. Bold, quick and resolute, he saw how easy it would be to earn a livelihood and acquire a name by drawing for engravers and painting on a large scale after the fashion of Vasari. He came home, joined the gild of Antwerp in 1540, and quickly opened a school from which 120 disciples are stated to have issued. Floris painted strings of large pictures for the country houses of Spanish nobles and the villas of Antwerp patricians. He is known to have illustrated the fable of Hercules in ten compositions, and the liberal arts in seven, for Claes Jongeling, a merchant of Antwerp, and adorned the duke of Arschot’s palace of Beaumont with fourteen colossal panels. Comparatively few of his works have descended to us, partly because they came to be contemned for their inherent defects, and so were suffered to perish, partly because they were soon judged by a different standard from that of the Flemings of the 16th century. The earliest extant canvas by Floris is the “Mars and Venus ensnared by Vulcan” in the Berlin Museum (1547), the latest a “Last Judgment” (1566) in the Brussels gallery. Neither these nor any of the intermediate works at Alost, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Dresden, Florence, Léau, Madrid, St Petersburg and Vienna display any charm of originality in composition or in form. Whatever boldness and force they may possess, or whatever principles they may embody, they are mere appropriations of Italian models spoiled in translation or adaptation. Their technical execution reveals a rapid hand, but none of the lustre of bright colouring; and Floris owed much of his repute to the cleverness with which his works were transferred to copper by Jerome Cock and Theodore de Galle. Whilst Floris was engaged on a Crucifixion of 27 ft., and a Resurrection of equal size, for the grand prior of Spain, he was seized with illness, and died on the 1st of October 1570 at Antwerp.

FLORUS, Roman historian, flourished in the time of Trajan and Hadrian. He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus (25 ). The work, which is called Epitome de T. Livio Bellorum omnium annorum DCC Libri duo, is written in a bombastic and rhetorical style, and is rather a panegyric of the greatness of Rome, whose life is divided into the four periods of infancy, youth, manhood and old age. It is often wrong in geographical and chronological details; but, in spite of its faults, the book was much used in the middle ages. In the MSS. the writer is variously given as Julius Florus, Lucius Anneus Florus, or simply Annaeus Florus. From certain similarities of style he has been identified with Publius Annius Florus, poet, rhetorician and friend of Hadrian, author of a dialogue on the question whether Virgil was an orator or poet, of which the introduction has been preserved.

FLORUS, JULIUS, poet, orator, and jurist of the Augustan age. His name has been immortalized by Horace, who dedicated to him two of his Epistles (i. 3; ii. 2), from which it would appear that he composed lyrics of a light, agreeable kind. The statement of Porphyrion, the old commentator on Horace, that Florus himself wrote satires, is probably erroneous, but he may have edited selections from the earlier satirists (Ennius, Lucilius, Varro). Nothing is definitely known of his personality, except that he was one of the young men who accompanied Tiberius on his mission to settle the affairs of Armenia. He has been variously identified with Julius Florus, a distinguished orator and uncle of Julius Secundus, an intimate friend of Quintilian (Instit. x. 3, 13); with the leader of an insurrection of the Treviri (Tacitus, Ann. iii. 40); with the Postumus of Horace (Odes, ii. 14) and even with the historian Florus.

FLORUS, PUBLIUS ANNIUS, Roman poet and rhetorician, identified by some authorities with the historian (q.v.). The introduction to a dialogue called Virgilius orator an poëta is extant, in which the author (whose name is given as Publius Annius Florus) states that he was born in Africa, and at an early age took part in the literary contests on the Capitol instituted by Domitian. Having been refused a prize owing to the prejudice against African provincials, he left Rome in disgust, and after travelling for some time set up at Tarraco as a teacher of rhetoric. Here he was persuaded by an acquaintance to return to Rome, for it is generally agreed that he is the Florus who wrote the well-known lines quoted together with Hadrian’s answer by Aelius Spartianus (Hadrian 16). Twenty-six trochaic tetrameters, De qualitate vitae, and five graceful hexameters, De rosis, are also attributed to him. Florus is important as being the first in order of a number of 2nd–century African writers who exercised a considerable influence on Latin literature, and also the first of the poëtae neoterici or novelli (new-fashioned poets) of Hadrian’s reign, whose special characteristic was the use of lighter and graceful metres (anapaestic and iambic dimeters), which had hitherto found little favour.

FLOTOW, FRIEDRICH FERDINAND ADOLF VON, (1812–1883), German composer, was born on his father’s estate at Teutendorf, in Mecklenburg, on the 27th of April 1812. Destined originally for the diplomatic profession, his passion for music induced his father to send him to Paris to study under Reicha. But the outbreak of the revolution in 1830 caused his return home, where he busied himself writing chamber-music and operetta until he was able to return to Paris. There he produced Pierre et Cathérine, Rob Roy, La Duchesse de Guise, but made his first real success with Le Naufrage de la Méduse at the Renaissance Théâtre in 1838. Greater, however, was the success which attended Stradella (1844) and Martha (1847), which made the tour of the world. In 1848 Flotow was again driven home by the Revolution, and in the course of a few years he produced Die Grossfürstin (1850), Indra (1853), Rübezahl (1854), Hilda (1855) and Albin (1856). From 1856 to 1863 he was director (Intendant) of the Schwerin opera, but in the latter year he returned to Paris, where in 1869 he produced L’Ombre. From that time to the date of his death he lived in Paris or on his estate near Vienna. He died on the 24th of