Background
John Florio was born in London, about 1553. He was the son of an Italian Protestant minister.
John Florio was born in London, about 1553. He was the son of an Italian Protestant minister.
Florio studied at the University of Tübingen.
Florio, his First Fruits, a collection of Italian-English dialogues, appeared in 1578, and Second Fruits in 1591. Florio taught French and Italian privately at Oxford and London, and was employed by two French ambassadors, by the Earl of Southampton, and by Anne, wife of James I.
His Italian-English dictionary, A World of Words (1598), was enlarged as Queen Anna's New World of Words (1611). Florio's chief work was his translation of Montaigne's Essays (1603), a free, imaginative, and vigorous rendering into Elizabethan English.
Quotations:
A good husband makes a good wife.
Praise the sea; on shore remain.
Patience is the best medicine.
Wisdom sails with wind and time.
England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of horses.
Who will not suffer labor in this world, let him not be born.