Giovanni Florio. Par Longworth Chambrun. (Paris : Payot. 20 francs.)--M.
Chambrun's attractive and well-documented study of Florio, who is known for his translation of Montaigne's Essays and for his Italian-English dictionaries or manuals of conversation, is well worth reading. Florio, the son of an Italian exile, was born in London in 1553 and taught languages at Oxford. He was for a time in the service of Lord Southamp- ton, the friend of Essex and the patron, of Shakespeare, and he was afterwards tutor to Prince Henry and reader to Queen Anne of Denmark, wife of James the First. M. Chambrun devotes special attention to Florio's possible connexion with Shakespeare and quotes, of course, Elizabeth's famous saying, when Southampton and Essex had caused Shakespeare's company to play Richard the Second for forty days on end : " Mark me well. I am Richard the Second ! " If the dramatist was caricaturing Florio as Holofernes the pedant in Love's Labour's Lost, as X Chambrun thinks, it was a friendly jest. But Florio, the author contends, took the matter seriously and attacked Shakespeare indirectly in his lengthy prefaces, which M. Cham- brim reprints in full. The book is illustrated with several Portraits.
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