much space, but a fair example may be found toward the close of the third chapter of the first Book, where in one sentence, that about Diomedon, Florio inserts the words ‘ruthless,’ ‘exemplar,’ ‘cruelly,’ ‘bloody,’ ‘I say,’ ‘earnestly,’ ‘revenge’; translates faict by ‘success’ instead of ‘action,’ making the sense unintelligible; translates paisable by ‘plausible’ (probably a misprint, but one that Mr. Henry Morley, as editor, accepts); and translates descouvrir (here meaning ‘to lay bare’) by ‘exasperate,’ again obscuring the meaning. The character — the quality — of the writing is thus changed throughout.… The passage, a part of which was just quoted above in the original, Florio translates as follows: ‘All this galiemafry which I huddle up here is but a register of my live-essayes, which in regard of the internal health are sufficiently exemplary to take the instruction against the hair.’ It could hardly be guessed that Montaigne’s meaning, paraphrased, is that the reader may profit by the author’s example if he reverse it.”[1]
The Cotton translation, while in some respects much more faithful to the original, is marred by not infrequent, unexplained omissions, generally of obscure or puzzling passages.
For ten years following the publication of the Riverside Florio, the need, or desirability, of a new translation was always present at the back of the present writer’s mind, coupled with what seemed a hopeless ambition to undertake it. But finally, some twelve years ago, at the suggestion of Miss Grace Norton of Cambridge, who has been well known for many years, in France no less favorably than at home, as a devoted student of Montaigne, he set out upon the enterprise which is at last approaching completion.
It must be said that the work was done throughout with the continued unfailing encouragement and assistance of Miss Norton, without which it could hardly have been carried to an end. Every page of the first draft of the man-
- ↑ Grace Norton, Studies in Montaigne (1904), p. 256, note.
