This was published in 1568, and two years later appeared "The Morall Philosophie of Doni,"[1] and in 1579 came his most important work, the translation of Plutarch, after the vigorous French of Amyot. This was one of the most popular books of the period, running through eight editions within the century after its first appearance. Most of us know it, or know of it, as the source of Shakespeare's picture of the Roman world.
Yet, if recent research is to be trusted, North's first book, the translation of Guevara, which he called The Dial of Princes, had almost as much influence as his Plutarch. For Dr. Landmann in an ingenious essay (Der Euphuismus, Giessen, 1881) has attempted to trace Euphuism to the influence of Guevara. It is true Mr. S. L. Lee interprets this to mean that Euphuism had for
- ↑ As we are on biographies, a word or two may be spared to the Doni, who forms part of the title of our book. He was a real person—Antonio Francesco Doni—flourishing in Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century (b. 1513, d. 1574) as a kind of journalist at Florence, his birthplace; Venice, where he wrote the Moral Philosophia in 1552; Ancona, whither he retired from fear of the Inquisition; and at Montselice, where he died. He was a novelist as well as a fabulist, and in the former capacity appears in Roscoe's Italian Novelists, where eight of his novels are translated.
