Florio

“ Florio meant to include our poet, we may, without scruple, infer. To an actor, to a rising dramatic writer, to one who had placed the first fruits of his genius under his protection, and who was still contending with the difficulties incident to his situation, the taste, the generosity, and the feeling of Lord Southampton, would naturally be attracted; and the donation which, in all probability, followed the dedication of Venus and Adonis, we have reason, from the voice of tradition, to conclude, was succeeded by many, and still more important, proofs of His Lordship's favour. ”

“ Florio wanders into various countries to seek her; they go through a variety of disasters, which end in their happy marriage; and, the birth of Biancafiore being discovered, they are converted to the Christian {Pg 123} faith. The story is long drawn out and very unreadable; though interspersed by traits of genius peculiar to Boccaccio, natural touches of genuine feeling, and charming descriptions. Florio, during his erratic travels in search of Biancafiore, arrives at Naples: the author introduces him into the company of his lady and himself, under the names of Fiammetta and Caleone. ”

“ Florio undoubtedly indicated this meaning to his own name in entitling his earliest publication First Fruites and a later publication Second Fruites. In a sonnet addressed to him by some friend of his who signs himself "Ignoto," his name is also referred to in this sense. In his Italian-English dictionary, published in 1598, he does not include the word Florio. In the edition of 1611, however, he includes it, but states that it means, "A kind of bird." In using the word "columbine" Shakespeare gives the double meaning of a flower and also a bird. ”

“ Of Rose Daniel's marriage with the "Resolute John Florio" there is no manner of question. It is recorded by Anthony á Wood in his "Athenæ Oxonienses," acknowledged by Samuel Daniel in the commendatory verses prefixed to Florio's "World of Words," and she is affectionately remembered in Florio's will as his "beloved wife, Rose." [5] Thus, if not Spenser's Rosalinde, she was undoubtedly a Rosalinde to John Florio. ”

“ In the earlier stages of Shakespeare's observation of Florio he appears to have been more amused than angered, but as the years pass his dislike grows, as he sees more clearly into the cold selfishness of a character, obscured to his earlier and more casual view by the interesting personality and frank and humorous worldly wisdom of the man. ”

“ The second part is concerned with Florio's adventures. [66] He travels unknown under the name of Filocolo, [218] that is to say Fatica d' Amore. With his companions he voyages first towards Italy, and, blown by a tempest to Partenope (Naples) , meets there in a garden the beautiful Fiammetta and her lover Galeone amid a joyful and numerous company, each member of which recounts an amorous adventure, and closes the narrative with a demand for the solution of the Questione d' Amore which arises out of it. ”

“ If Armado's letters to Jaquenetta and to the King be compared with Florio's dedication of his Second Fruites—which was published in 1591, several months preceding the original composition of Love's Labour's Lost—and also with his "Address to the Reader," a similitude will be found that certainly passes coincidence. A comparison of Parolles' and Falstaff's opportunist and materialistic [Pg 207] philosophy with Florio's outlook on life as we find it unconsciously exhibited in his Second Fruites, reveals a characteristic unity that plainly displays intentional parody on Shakespeare's part. ”

“ 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 is done by a fellow less beholding to nature for his fortune than wit, yet lesser for his face than 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."
Between the year 1598 (when Florio dedicated his World of Wordes to the Earl of Southampton) and 1603, when Southampton was released from the Tower upon the accession of James I., we have no record of Florio's connection with that nobleman. ”

“ The revelations of the present volume regarding the enmity between Florio and Shakespeare, and Shakespeare's dramatic characterisations of Florio, have never been anticipated, though the possibility that they may have come at odds has been apprehended. The Rev. J.H. Halpin suggested in 1856 that the "H.S." attacked by Florio in his Worlde of Wordes in 1590 may have been directed at Shakespeare, but advanced no evidence to support his theory, which has since been relegated by the critics to the limbo of fanciful conjecture. ”

“ Florio's works are: 1. ‘His First Fruits, which yield familiar speech, merry proverbs, witty sentences, and golden sayings,’ London, 1578, with which is bound up ‘Perfect Induction to the Italian and English Tongues,’ both dedicated to Robert, earl of Leicester. The ‘First Fruits’ consist mainly of simple dialogues in English and Italian. The British Museum has only an imperfect copy. 2. ‘A Short and Briefe Narration of the Two Navigations and Discoueries to the North-weast Partes called New Fraunce. First translated out of French into Italian by that famous learned Man, Geo. ”

“ The handsome street is an endless chain of moving vehicles of every description. Here a spanking team of blooded bays with silver-mounted harness draws the smart London trap of a young Florio; there a rickety old barouche, guiltless of varnish for many a long year, so crowded with a stout family party of six that its rheumatic springs creak, and the wind-broken old hack who pulls it feels his waning powers severely taxed. A splendid young Arab, full of blood and pride, pulling a new victoria, follows a ducal cart and precedes another overflow meeting, this time a stag party. ”

“ Didactic literature seldom presents the real character and workaday opinions and beliefs of a writer. The teacher generally speaks from a height transcending his ordinary levels of thought and action. In Florio's Second Fruites his intention is didactic only in relation to imparting a colloquial knowledge of Italian. ”

“ To his London years belong, among books too numerous to mention, his edition of Florio's Montaigne and the spade-work on the now standard edition of Hazlitt in thirteen volumes, in which he collaborated with his fried the Arnold Glover. ”

“ When Shakespeare, through the utterances of the prince, characterises Falstaff by suggestion upon his first appearance in the play in the following lines:
"Thou art so fat-witted, with drinking of old sack and unbuttoning thee after supper and sleeping upon benches after noon, that thou hast forgotten to demand that truly which thou would'st truly know,"
for the benefit of his initiated friends he links up and continues Florio's characterisation as Parolles and Falstaff, and in the remainder of the passage,
"What a devil hast thou to do with the time of the day? ”

“ There is a breathing of the arts in the very air of Florence, whose galleries are crowded with the choicest collections of paintings and statuary in the world. Here have ever congregated the talent and beauty of every clime. With the painter, the poet, the sculptor, here sleep, in the city of the silent, Michael Angelo, Alfieri, and like spirits, rendering it hallowed ground to the lovers of art. Proud and lovely city, with thy sylvan Casino spreading its riches of green sward and noble trees along the banks of the silvery Arno, well may a Florentine be proud of his birthplace! ”

“ What city is so delightful as Florence on the afternoon of a lovely day in early spring, when the sun glows above from an unclouded sky, and the Arno flows on through the midst of the city, amid its magnificent palaces, beneath its lovely bridges. Then beauty reigns everywhere. The Lung' Arno, the Casino, the Via Calziolajo are thronged with carriages, with horsemen and footmen, with offices and soldiers, men, women and children. Beautiful flower girls carry around their bouquets and bestow them on the stranger, expecting but never asking some little doucer in return. ”

“ Florence was at the moment of its all too brief spring, in which painting and sculpture were to grow almost like flowers at every street corner, with a delicate beauty that is characteristic of wild flowers, which yet are hardy enough in reality. Reality, it is just that which is so touching in the work of this naïve, observant painter, whose work has much of the beauty of a folk-song, one of those rispetti which on every Tuscan hill you may hear any summer day above the song of the cicale. ”

“ It is in Florence, this very paradise of art, that our tale opens. Here the poor scholar or artist, who seeks to perfect himself by viewing the glorious works of the old masters, may live like a prince on the most moderate and frugal means, in a bright and sunny land, where the heart's blood leaps most swiftly to the promptings of imagination; where the female form earliest attains its wonted beauty, and longest holds its sway over the heart; where art and nature both combine to entrance the soul in admiration; in that land of the sun-genial Italy ”

“ One should never forget, in any gallery of Florence, to look out of the windows. There is always a courtyard, a street, or a spire against the sky; and at the Uffizi there are the river and bridges and mountains. From the loggia of the Palazzo Vecchio I once saw a woman with some twenty or thirty city pigeons on the table of her little room, feeding them with maize. ”

“ The wealth, beauty and royalty of Florence are seen on the fashionable driveway. The Cascine is to Florence what the Pincio is to Rome. There, in the late afternoon, society drives back and forth along the bank of the Arno, listening to the music of a military band.
It is of little consequence how the artist 84 gives expression to his dream—whether by pencil, pen, brush, chisel or voice, in marble, painting, song or story—Florence is the home of them all. ”

“ In the midst of this lovely place, a queen over all around, lay Florence, the dearest and most charming city of the south-Florence, whose past glows with the brilliancy of splendid achievements in arms, arts and song, whose present state captivates the soul of every traveller, and binds around him a potent spell, making him linger long in dreamy pleasure by the gentle flow of the Arno's waters. ”

“ She was, however, immensely interested in the beauty and romance of Florence. The street crowds, so vivacious, so good-humored, the vivid Florentine faces, enchanted her. More astonishing than storied buildings, or even imperishable art, were the figures that moved across the red-and-gold background of the city's history,—figures like Dante, Lorenzo the Magnificent, and that great prior of San Marco whose "soul went out in fire." ”

“ After a long silence, Vivian Bell extended her hand toward the horizon.
“Darling, I do not know how to say what I wish. But look, darling, look again. What you see there is unique in the world. Nature is nowhere else so subtle, elegant, and fine. The god who made the hills of Florence was an artist. Oh, he was a jeweller, an engraver, a sculptor, a bronze-founder, and a painter; he was a Florentine. He did nothing else in the world, darling. ”

“ Florence owes its reputation for beauty more to its beautiful surroundings and its charming environs than to any beauties of its own, being in the centre of a sort of pretty valley, as it were, with gentle elevations surrounding it, and the picturesque peaks of the Apennines rising in the distance. From the hill of Fiesole the visitor gets a most charming view of hill, valley, mountain, and plain, and of the city beneath, with the Arno twisting its silver thread through it. ”

“ It was noonday in Florence, and a group of artists were wending their way from the grand gallery to their midday meal. It was a motley sight to look upon them as they gaily chatted together-for among them were men of different countries. There was the rough, hearty Englishman, the light, witty Frenchman, the intelligent and manly-looking American, the dark, swarthy Spaniard side by side with the dark Italian-fit companions, both in outward hue and their native character-and many others, forming a group of peculiar interest to the beholder. ”

“ Florence is the scene and background of this delicate picture. When Beatrice dies, "How doth the city sit solitary!" are the words that burst from the mourner's lips. And in the graver and greater poem of his mature life, Florence is the key-note of every strain. Heaven and hell, and the hopeful sadness of the green slopes between, are all crowded with Florentines. There is talk of the city in the highest circles of heaven, where blessed spirits, with the sound of tears in their voice, denounce her for very love of her, rather than leave in silence her beloved name. ”