with the education of his son, who was afterwards known to hiftory as Philippe le Bel.  It was whilst occupied with this royal youth that the thought of composing or compiling—­and the terms were in practice interchangeable in those days—­occurred, and the result was the treatise “De regimine Principum libri iii.”  Philippe le Hardi, if not an educated man himself—­and there are doubts as to whether he could write his own name—­was laudably anxious that his heir should have the best instruction that could be obtained.  It cannot well be claimed that the able, handsome, and unscrupulous Philippe was any great credit to his preceptor.  The despotic and perfidious character of the king probably owed more to the influence of Nogaret and other defenders of the “right divine of kings to govern wrong,” than to the soberer precepts of Colonna.  That Philippe had some tincture of literary feeling may be inferred from his employment of Jehan de Meung to translate the military treatise of Vegetius Flavius Renatus, a compilation of the second century of the present era, which was so popular in the middle ages that it was translated by Caxton into English.  Still better evidence is the translation made for the king by the same poet of Boethius, whose stoical philosophy must have had a special appropriateness for those times of political storm and stress, when the fickleness of fortune must have been a matter of only too common repute.  Guido Colonna was elected by his admiring brethren the general of the order in 1292, and took up his residence at Bourges, its metropolitan seat.

In this honourable office he continued his literary labours, and to this period are assigned the greater part of his numerous works.  He died at Avignon in 1316.  His body was translated to Paris, where his effigy in black marble, with his epitaph, remained until the French revolution.[19] It would be superfluous to enumerate his philosophical writings, for they would have no interest in the present day.  His commentary on Aristotle “De Anima,” it may be observed, was dedicated to Edward I. His name is now chiefly remembered because his work on the rule of princes formed the basis of the treatise in which Jacques de Cessoles moralized the fashionable game of the chess.

One interesting instance of the popularity of Colonna’s work is the translation of it made into English verse by Thomas Occleve.[20] He wrote it in 1411 or 1412, and its object was to obtain the payment of an annuity from the exchequer which had been granted to him, but the payment of which was very irregular.  The book was dedicated to the Prince of Wales.  After mentioning his purpose to translate from the (apocryphal) letter of Aristotle to Alexander and “Gyles of Regement of Prynces,” he proceeds:—­

   “There is a booke, Jacob de Cessoles,
    Of the ordre of Prechours, made, a worthy man,

    That the Chesse moralisede clepede is,
    In whiche I purpose eke to labour ywis
    And here and there, as that my litelle witte
    Afforthe may, I thynke translate it.