Sir William Cornwallis's Use of Montaigne

Abstract

Students of Elizabethan literature are well acquainted with the fact that Sir William Cornwallis had part of Montaigne's essays available in translation before the composition of the first volume of his own essays, which was published in 1600, and probably written soon after he returned from Ireland where he had been knighted by Essex on August 5, 1599. Unfortunately, no one has been able to determine whether or not the translation which Cornwallis saw was Florio's. While Florio's Montaigne was not published until 1603, a large part of it may have been completed much earlier, and Cornwallis may have seen all or part of Florio's work; but it is just as possible that he saw a translation which is not now extant. Florio, himself, says, “Seven or eight of great wit and worth have assayed, but found these Essayes no attempt for French apprentises or Littletonians.” Cornwallis does not help us to decide the question. Although he is frequently indebted to Montaigne, I can find no passage which approaches a quotation closely enough to make comparison with Florio's version illuminating. Neither is Cornwallis's tribute to Montaigne's translator very helpful.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 14 citations exist upstream.