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"Both, marm," said the captain, with a coolness that would have done credit to Aristabulus, for he had been fairly badgered into impudence, profiting by the occasion to knock the ashes off his cigar; "all incline to the first opinion, and most to the last." "What finesse!" murmured one. "How delicate!" whispered a second. "A dignified reserve!" ejaculated a third. "So English!" exclaimed Florio.
"Plutarch's Lives," were translated by Sir Thomas North and his book was "a household book for the whole of the seventeenth century." Montaigne's Essays had been "done into English" by John Florio, and to some of them at least Thomas Dudley was not likely to take exception.
Of a verity we may say that John Florio was sadly exercised when he penned this pungent paragraph. He then falls foul of the players, who to use the technical phrase of the day "staged" him with no small success.
One gave him grape leave cups and baskets woven of perfumed grasses, another filled them with honey and fruit, while all laughed to see what appeared to them the enormous quantities necessary for one so large. "Florio, you have done well to obey me," said the same sweet voice he had heard in the daytime.
Florio had a noticeable visage, very dark of tone, eyes which at one time seemed to glow with noble emotion, and at another betrayed excessive shrewdness; heavy eyebrows and long black lashes; a nose of classical Perfection; large mouth with thick and very red lips.
"Don't you remember me, Mr. Florio?" she asked, in an uncertain voice. "Oh indeed perfectly," was the stammered reply. He took her fingers with the most delicate respectfulness, again bowing deeply; then drew back a little, his eyes travelling rapidly to the faces of the others, as if seeking an explanation.
And do they not amount to a moral demonstration, that, in assigning the character and adventures of Mirabella and Rosalinde to the sister of Samuel Daniel, the wife of John Florio, we have given no unfaithful account of the first fickle mistress of Edmund Spenser? We shall next ascertain the name and history of his wife from the internal evidence left behind him in his works.
11: About various allusions and satirical hints in this scene later on. 12: Florio, 21; Montaigne, I. ii. 13: Essay III. i. 14: Isaiah, ch. iii. v. 16. 15: The word 'ecstasy, which is often used in the new quarto, is wanting in the first edition where only madness, lunacy, frenzy the highest degrees of madness are spoken of. 17: Essay I. 40. 19: Essay II. 27, p. 142. 20: Essay III. 4, p. 384.
No frost seemed to touch them, no drought withered them, for Florella was true to her promise of reward, and in addition to giving Florio a home, gave him also health and wealth and fame.
Then Florio, ashamed, miserable, and unhappy, would creep off to a corner and weep as if his little heart would break. It was after one of these dreadful occurrences one day that Florio, hiding in the woods, heard a strange rustling among the bushes.
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