Page:The Book of the Courtier.djvu/500

 rapports avec l'œuvre du Castiglione," (, C. iv, pp. 75 and 313, and C. v, p. 60). The earliest English translator, Thomas Hoby, (born 1530; died 1566), was the son of William and Katherine (Forden) Hoby of Herefordshire. Having studied at Cambridge, he visited France, Italy and other foreign countries. In 1565-6 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and sent as ambassador to France, where he soon died, leaving several children and a widow. This lady was the third of Sir Anthony Cooke's five learned daughters, of whom the eldest married Sir William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh), while the second became the mother of Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. Interesting details of Hoby's life and of the manners of the time are given in his unpublished diary, preserved in the British Museum. His version of The Courtier was carefully made, and although rough to our ears and occasionally obscure, it became very popular and was several times republished. A beautiful reprint of the original edition has recently been issued (1900), in a scholarly introduction to which Professor Walter Raleigh traces the influence of the book upon Elizabethan writers. The Courtier, and especially Hoby's translation of it, are the subject of a very interesting study by Mary Augusta Scott, Ph.D., printed in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xvi (1901), no. 4. In 1570 Roger Ascham wrote in his "Schoolmaster:" "To join learning with comely exercises, Count Baldesar Castiglione in his book doth trimly teach: which book, advisedly read and diligently followed but one year at home in England, would do a young gentleman more good, I wis, than three years' travel abroad in Italy. And I marvel this book is not more read in the Court than it is, seeing it is so well translated into English by a worthy gentleman, Sir Thomas Hobbie, who was many ways well furnished with learning, and very expert in knowledge of divers tongues."

Of the first German translator,, little more is known than that he was an officer of customs at Burckhausen, in Bavaria, from 1565 to 1588, and that he speaks of having devoted to letters the ample leisure which his duties permitted. Although said to be meritorious, his work can hardly have gained wide currency, as both Noyse (whose German translation of was published at Dilingen in 1593) and a third German translator (whose version was issued at Frankfort in 1684 under the initials "J. C. L. L. J.") seem to have regarded themselves each as the earliest in the field.

The first Latin translator,, (born 1550; died 1602), was a Doctor Juris, and became burgomaster of his native town of Lössnitz, near Leipsic. Besides The Courtier, he translated several of Machiavelli's works into Latin.