(Henry V, IV.i.233–36)
5. Methinks that considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should not so soon as we come into the world allot so great a share thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding idleness, and slow-learning prentissage. (1.57)
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to.
(Hamlet, III.i.64–65)
6. Nature willeth that in all things alike there be also like relation. (2.12)
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
(All’s Well That Ends Well, I.i.205–6)
7. Truly, when I consider man all naked (yea, be it in that sex which seemeth to have and challenge the greatest share of eye-pleasing beauty) and view his defects, his natural subjection, and manifold imperfections, I find we have had much more reason to hide and cover our nakedness than any creature else. We may be excused for borrowing those which nature had therein favored more than us with their beauties, to adorn us and under their spoils of wool, of hair, of feathers, and of silk to shroud us. (2.12)
Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, that cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! come unbutton here.
(King Lear, III.iv.95–101)
8. When I religiously confess myself unto myself, I find the best good I have hath some vicious taint. And I fear that Plato in his purest virtue (I that am as sincere and loyal an esteemer thereof, and of the virtues of such a stamp, as any other can possibly be), if he had nearly listened unto it (and sure he listened very near), he would therein have heard some harsh tune of human mixture, but an obscure tune, and only sensible unto himself. Man all in all is but a botching and parti-coloured work. (2.20)
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.
(All’s Well That Ends Well, IV.iii.69–72)
Bid the dishonest man mend himself: if he mend, he is no longer dishonest; if he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything that’s mended is but patched. Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin, and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.
(Twelfth Night, I.v.38–45)
9. Quintilian reporteth to have seen comedians so far engaged in a sorrowful part that they wept after being come to their lodgings; and of himself, that having undertaken to move a certain passion in another, he had found himself surprised, not only with shedding of tears but with a paleness of countenance and behaviour of a man truly dejected with grief. (3.4)
Seems, madam? Nay, it is. I know not “seems.”
’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good-mother,
Nor customary suits of solemn black,
Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. These indeed “seem,”
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that within which passeth show—
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.
(I.ii.76–86)
10. And I wot not whether some cheverell judge or other will be avenged of them for his [foolishness]. It is manifestly seen in this, which now is discovered. As also in diverse other things of like quality, exceeding our knowledge, I am of opinion that we uphold our judgement as well to reject as to receive. (3.11)
A sentence is but a cheverel glove to a good wit, how quickly the wrong side may be turned outward.
(Twelfth Night, III.i.10–12)
Notes
Abbreviations Used
Céard: Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais.
Cotgrave: Randle Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongves.
Essayes: Michel de Montaigne, The Essayes or Morall, Politike and Millitarie Discourses of Lo[rd]: Michaell de Montaigne.
Frame: Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne.
OED: Oxford English Dictionary.
QAWW: John Florio, Qveen Anna’s New World of Words, Or Dictionarie of the Italian and English tongues, Collected, and newly much augmented by Iohn Florio, Reader of the Italian vnto the Soueraigne Maiestie of ANNA, Crowned Queene of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, &c....
Screech: Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
WW: John Florio, A Worlde of Wordes, Or Most copious, and exact Dictionarie in Italian and English, collected by Iohn Florio.
DEDICATORY POEM
1. In the version of the poem in the 1613 edition of the Essayes, the dedication reads: “To my deare brother and friend M. IOHN FLORIO, one of the Gentlemen of hir Maiesties most Royall Priuie Chamber.” There is a similar dedication to a poem in Cotgrave: “To my deare friend and brother M. Iohn Florio, one of the Gentlemen of hir Maiesties most Royall Priuy-chamber.” In addition to confirming Florio’s status at court, these dedications reveal—in the minds of many critics—the recognition that Florio was married to Daniel’s sister, hence not only “friend” but also “brother.”
2. Amass of humors a collection of moods, spirits, styles. Grounded in the system of the second-century AD Greek physician Galen, humoral theory sought to explain human personality by means of four humors or bodily fluids that had corresponding traits: blood (sanguine), phlegm (phlegmatic), yellow bile (choleric), and black bile (melancholic). The healthy person had all four humors in balance.
3. Conceit central metaphor, design, plan.
4. Shadowed in leaves represented, albeit murkily, in the pages of books.
5. And wherein...this doubtful center of the right In this difficult set of lines, Daniel seems to suggest that very few books help the questing soul approach the truth. Montaigne’s book is one that, though reaching truth is still “doubtful,” helps get the reader closer to the target or bull’s-eye (“center of the right”) than most. Thanks to Will Hamlin for help with this gloss.
6. Up until this point of the stanza, “his” has referred to Montaigne. Now Daniel is praising Florio for “his studious care” in making Montaigne’s “transpassage” into English (“our speech”) so smooth that the Essayes seem “as if born here.”
7. Free native, enfranchised.
8. B’invassal’d to be envassaled—that is, reduced to subjection, servitude, or subservience.
9. Commercement business or social dealings.
10. Daniel—in alluding to the form of the essay as “a troubled frame confus’dly set”—seems to understand what Montaigne said about the genre in “Of Friendship” (1.27 in Florio): “And what are these my compositions in truth, other than antique works, and monstrous bodies, patched and huddled-up together of diverse members, without any certain or well-ordered figure, having neither order, dependency, or proportion but casual and framed by chance?”
11. H’is he is.
12. Might spare to tax th’unapt conveyances Daniel warns critics not to find fault with the vehicles (“unapt conveyances”) that bring us Montaigne’s important ideas (“rich pieces and extracts of man”). These “conveyances” could be Florio’s translations but probably allude instead to Montaigne’s complicated form, his “troubled frame confus’dly set.” Thanks to Will Hamlin for help with this gloss.
13. Both work and frame both Montaigne and Florio.
14. In Plutarch’s Alcibiades, Alcibiades asks his schoolmaster for a copy of Homer. When the schoolmaster says he does not have one, Alcibiades hits him for his lack of such an important book. In his own time, Daniel suggests, “they unblest who letters do
profess / And have him [Montaigne] not” deserve even greater disapprobation, even “more sound blows.”
TO THE COURTEOUS READER
1. Freehold right, entitlement.
2. Because vernacular translations would undermine humanist classical education; because the translators were largely Protestant and thus a threat to the medieval scholasticism of the universities; and because of the fear that pagan writings, spread through the vernacular, would undermine Christian teachings. See Yates, John Florio, 223.
3. Impeach or empaire hindrance or impairment.
4. Nolano “The Nolan” was Giordano Bruno’s nickname for himself. The philosopher and polymath came from the town of Nola, near Naples. He was a friend of Florio, and the two spent time together at the French ambassador’s house in London from 1583 to 1585.
5. In this section, Florio is entertaining imagined questions (“Why,...”) and answering them (“Yea,” “Nay”). He addresses a claim that there are some things that should not be known and that translators thus should not be making available through translation. His response is that no matter what translators do, human knowledge is limited; only God knows all things.
6. Best best translators.
7. Ficinus Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) translated many of the classic texts of the ancient world from Greek to Latin.
8. Altiloquence high speech. Interestingly, the OED’s first recorded use of this word is 1731.
9. Featness elegance, shapeliness, fitness.
10. Terence the Roman playwright (ca. 195–ca. 159 BC) put into Latin many of the Greek comedies of Menander (ca. 342–ca. 291 BC), most of whose plays are now lost.
11. My peerless dear-dearest and never sufficiently commended friend A reference to Matthew Gwinne, a Welsh doctor who, Florio tells us in the “Epistle Dedicatorie” to volume I of the Essayes, tracked down (and probably translated) the “Latin Prose” and “Greek, Latin, Italian, or French poesie [that] should cross my way.”
12. Ferdillant, legier “Ferdillant” is probably a typo for “fretillant” (see Cotgrave: “Fretiller. To move, wag, stir often, stand on no ground; to wriggle, frig, tickle, itch, lust to be at it”); “legier” means, like “léger,” light, airy, playful.
13. If anyone complains that the Essayes have a “disjointed, broken, and gadding style; and that many times they answer not his titles and have no coherence together,” Florio sends him or her to “the ninth chapter of the third book, folio 596” (“Of Vanitie”) of his edition for Montaigne’s answer: “Forsomuch as the often breaking of my chapters I so much used in the beginning of my book seemed to interrupt attention before it be conceived, disdaining for so little a while to collect and there seat itself, I have betaken myself to frame them longer, as requiring proposition and assigned leisure. In such an occupation he to whom you will not grant one hour, you will allow him nothing. And you do nought for him for whom you do but in doing some other thing. Sithence peradventure I am particularly tied and precisely vowed to speak by halves, to speak confusedly, to speak discrepantly” (III.ix.596).
14. Eftsoones moreover, again.
15. Capital in sense mistaking fatally wrong, in error.
16. Florio is describing the multiple versions of Montaigne’s Essais that he consulted in making his translation and claiming that they are at least partly to blame for the errors in his 1603 edition. According to Will Hamlin, whose Montaigne’s English Journey (Oxford University Press, 2013) breaks new ground in accounting for the production and reception of Florio’s book, a table of errata is indeed at the back of “about three quarters” of the copies of the Essayes’ first printing.
17. Littletonians Claudius Hollyband’s French Littleton was a book of grammar and dialogues published in 1566.
THAT TO PHILOSOPHIZE IS TO LEARN HOW TO DIE
1. See Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, I.xxx.74–I.xxxi.75.
2. Severally separately, individually.
3. Apprentisage apprenticeship, beginning, trial run.
4. In fine in the end, ultimately.
5. Give ear unto him listen to him.
6. Seneca, Epistulae morales, 117.30.
7. Person...personate role...play.
8. In this difficult passage—made more so by Florio—Montaigne is arguing for a virtuous pleasure or “voluptuousness” that is more long-lasting, substantial, and indeed pleasurable than the “baser sensuality” that we usually connect to the term.
9. Incommodities disadvantages.
10. Jouissance enjoyment.
11. It virtue.
12. Montaigne continues the argument that—in spite of what some may claim—the pursuit of virtue is itself pleasurable.
13. Lot-pot an urn from which lots are shaken or drawn (OED); Florio’s is the first entry.
14. Aye ever.
15. Horace, Odes, II.iii.25.
16. Starting-hole hiding place for a hunted animal.
17. Cicero, De finibus, I.xviii.60.
18. Horace, Odes, III.i.18–21.
19. Claudian, In Rufinum, II.137.
20. Cariere highway, road.
21. Lucretius, De rerum natura, IV.472.
22. Periphrasis circumlocution.
23. Until the sixteenth century in France—and the eighteenth century in England—the new year dated from around Easter (March 25 in England). Dating the year from January 1 started in France in 1567, in England not until 1752 (though Scotland partially shifted to the so-called Gregorian calendar in 1600).
24. Montaigne lived only twenty years more, dying in 1592 at fifty-nine.
25. Bedrell bedridden.
26. Mathusalem Methuselah, the oldest person mentioned in the Old Testament. Montaigne suggests that people delude themselves into thinking they can live longer lives by thinking about Methuselah.
27. Twenty years another twenty years.
28. Seely foolish, simple, silly.
29. Renoune renown, fame.
30. Register them make a list of them.
31. Horace, Odes, II.xiii.13–14.
32. Whilome formerly, once.
33. Chocke violent knock, shock.
34. Henry II was killed in a tournament in 1559; his ancestor Philip, who never ruled, was killed by a pig.
35. Eschilus Aeschylus, Greek playwright of fifth century BC.
36. Captain Saint Martin Montaigne’s younger brother Arnaud—lord of Saint-Martin—was born in 1541 and died in this freakish fashion at twenty-seven (not twenty-three).
37. Horace, Epistles, II.ii.126–28.
38. Horace, Odes, III.ii.14–17.
39. Cuirace cuirass, steel piece of armor.
40. Propertius, Elegies, IV.xviii.25.
41. Shapen misshapen.
42. Horace, Epistles, I.iv.13–14.
43. Catullus, Epigrams, LXVIII.16.
44. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.915.
45. She death.
46. Seneca, Epistulae morales, XCI.16.
47. Horace, Odes, II.xvi.17–18.
48. Accrease increase.
49. Ta’ne taken.
50. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.898–99.
51. Hie hasten, go quickly. Virgil, Aeneid, IV.88–89.
52. Ovid, Amores, II.x.36.
53. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.900–1.
54. O’re o’er, over.
55. Silius Italicus, The Punic War, XI.li–liv.
56. Moiety half.
57. Pseudo-Gallus, Elegies, I.16.
58. Dost thou think to be alive then? in other words, “Do you consider yourself alive now?”; see Seneca, Epistula morales, LXXVII.18. The Roman emperor was Caligula.
59. Horace, Odes, III.iii.3–6.
60. She the soul.
61. Gyves shackles, especially for the leg.
62. Horace, Epistles, I.xvi.76–79.
63. Moaned regretted, lamented.
64. Cark to have burdens, pains, anxiety.
65. What follows—until page 33—should be considered a speec
h of Nature, based on Nature’s soliloquy in Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.
66. Lucretius, De rerum natura, II.76, 79.
67. Seneca, Hercules furens, III.874–75.
68. Manilius, Astronomica, IV.xvi.
69. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.938.
70. Ibid., III.941–42.
71. See Shakespeare, Hamlet: “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (II.ii.244–45).
72. Manilius, Astronomica, I.522–23.
73. Florio has “commoditie” but Montaigne has “comedie,” and the theatrical metaphor is clear here.
74. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.1080.
75. Virgil, Georgics, II.402.
76. Lucretius, De rerum natura, III.944–45.
77. Ibid., III.1090–91.
78. Ibid., III.885–87.
79. Ibid., III.919, 922.
80. Ibid., III.926–27.
81. Ibid., III.972–73.
82. Ibid., III.968.
83. Ibid., II.578–80.
84. Ell a measurement based on the length of the arm; see Latin, ulna.
85. He your last day.
86. Behold here...mother nature This marks the end of Nature’s speech and the return of Montaigne’s narrative.
87. She death.
88. Seely foolish, simple, silly.
89. Equipage a group of attendants—in this case, mourners.
IT IS FOLLY TO REFER TRUTH OR FALSEHOOD TO OUR SUFFICIENCY
1. Cicero, Academica, II.xii.38.
2. Gudgeons those who will take and swallow any bait; thus, credulous, gullible people.
3. Sottish foolish.
4. Horace, Epistles, II.ii.208–9.
5. Seely foolish, simple, silly.
6. That is, my limited knowledge is not a result of an absence of curiosity.
7. Science knowledge.
8. Lucretius, De rerum natura, II.1037–38, 1033–36.
9. Ibid., VI.674–77.
10. Cicero, De natura deorum, II.xxxviii.96.
11. Leave them in suspense suspend disbelief.
12. That which is against the course of nature according to Christian theology, a miracle.
13. Froysard Jean Froissard (ca. 1337–ca. 1405), a medieval French writer of chronicles; see Screech, 202n7.