to praise the purity of his style, as well as the depth of his learning and judgment.  But, although Amyot had “a true imagination” of his author, he was not always exact in giving his meaning.  The learned Dr. Guy Patin says:  “On dit que M. de Meziriac avoit corrige dans son Amyot huit mille fautes, et qu’Amyot n’avoit pas de bons exemplaires, ou qu’il n’avoit pas bien entendu le Grec de Plutarque."[C]

[Footnote B:  Essays, Book II. 4.]

[Footnote C:  Patiniana.]

Amyot’s eight thousand errors were not diminished in passing into Sir Thomas North’s English; but their number mattered little to the readers of those days, who found in the thick folio enough of interest to spare them from making inquiry as to the exactness of its rendering of the meaning of Plutarch.  From the time of its first publication, for more than a hundred years, it was one of the most popular books of the period, as was proved by the appearance of six successive editions in folio.[D] Some of these clumsy volumes may, no doubt, have been put to uses as ignoble as that which Chrysale, in “Les Femmes Savantes,” suggests for his sister’s similar copy of Amyot:—­

  “Vos livres eternels ne me contentent pas;
  Et, hors un gros Plutarque a mettre mes rabats,
  Vous devriez bruler tout ce meuble inutile";—­

but duller books of the same size, of which there were many in those days of patient readers, would have had an equal value for such economical purposes as this, and “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans by that Grave Learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarch” were too entertaining to young and old to be left for any length of time quietly upon the shelf.  They were the familiar reading of boys who were to become the actors in the great drama of the Rebellion and the Commonwealth, or who a little later were to frequent the dissolute court of Charles, presenting in their own lives, whether in camp or court, as patriots or as traitors, parallels to those which they had read in the weighty pages of the old biographer.

[Footnote D:  In 1579, 1595, 1602, 1631, 1657, 1676.  Mr. Hooper, in his Introduction to Chapman’s Homer, London, 1857, says, that “the edition of 1657 was published under the superintendence of the illustrious Selden.”  We do not know his authority for this statement.  The fact, if it be one, is very remarkable, as Selden’s death took place in 1654.]

Nor in more recent times has North’s version failed of admirers.  Godwin declared, that, till this book fell into his hands, he had no genuine feeling of Plutarch’s merits, or knowledge of what sort of a writer he was.  But the chief interest of this translation at the present day, except what it possesses as a storehouse of good mother-English, comes from the fact that it was one of the books of Shakespeare’s moderate library, and one which he had thoroughly read, as is manifest from the use that he made of