INTRODUCTION
described as 'full of worldly wisdom'. It was a favourite book of Montaigne's father,[1] though he himself disliked the euphuistic style of Guevara, as well probably as his absurd matter. The Golden Book and the Diall had so great a vogue in the sixteenth century (being more often translated than any book except the Holy Scriptures) that they created in the reading public an entirely erroneous judgement of Marcus' character and especially of his relations with Faustina. Only gradually, in the seventeenth century, as the Meditations became known, and the public taste altered, was this romantic judgement corrected. A curious problem is suggested by Guevara's two books. When he says that he had translated a Greek original in Florence, had he some hazy knowledge of the existence in the Laurentian library of a manuscript of extracts from the Meditations? It is impossible to know, but apparently he was ignorant of Greek, on his own confession, and vehement protests were made, in his lifetime, against his romancing.[2]
It looks as if even the learned were, at this date, unfamiliar with the Meditations themselves, although they were aware of the existence of the book and some few possessed copies of extracts from the work. This comparative oblivion is also shown by five references to the actual book in the middle of the sixteenth century, just before the issue of the editio princeps. In his Bibliotheca Univer-
- ↑ (Mon père) 'si mesloit son langage de quelque ornement des livres vulgaires, sur tout espagnols: et entre les Espagnols, luy estoit ordinaire celuy qu'ils nommoient Marc Aurele' Essais, ii. 2. For his own opinion, see Essais, i. 48.
- ↑ K. N. Colvile says: 'In his own century the learned Rhua protested against his unscholarly romancing and his latest Spanish editor admits that he has mingled true and false quotations and ascriptions beyond all unravelling' The Diall of Princes, 1919, p. xxx. He refers to Pedro de Rhua, Cartas sobre las obras del . . . obispo de Mondoñedo, 1549, and to M. Martinez de Burgos. There is not the smallest trace of the narratives in the Hist. Aug. or other true sources, much less of the Meditations either in Berners's book or in North's Dial, in which I have read Guevara.
1534; The Diall of Princes, Th. North, 1557. In Christ's Geschichte der griech. Litt. 1924, p. 832, Berners's translation is cited as evidence that the Meditations 'were very much read in England'.
