But though Plutarch’s ideas seem from one point of view to enter into their predestined habitation, this does not alter the fact that they lose something of their distinctive character in accommodating themselves to their new surroundings. It is easy to exaggerate their affinity with the vernacular words, as it is easy to exaggerate the correspondence between author and translator. Thus Ampère, half in jest, pleases himself with drawing on behalf of the two men a parallel such as is appended to each particular brace of Lives. Both of them lovers of virtue, he points out, for example, that both had a veneration for the past, of which the one strove to preserve the memories even then beginning to fade, and the other to rediscover and gather up the shattered fragments. Both experienced sad and troublous times without having their tranquillity disturbed, the one by the crimes of Domitian or the other by the furies of St. Bartholomew’s. Both belonged to the hierarchy, the one as priest of Apollo, the other as Bishop of Auxerre.
But it is not hard to turn such parallels into so many contrasts. The past with which Plutarch was busy was in a manner the familiar past of his native country or at least of his own civilisation; but Amyot loved the past of that remote and alien world in which for ages men had neglected their heritage and taken small concern. The sequestered life of the provincial under the Roman Empire, a privacy whence he emerges to whatever civil offices were within his reach, is very different from the dislike and refusal of public activity that characterises the Frenchman in his own land at a time when learning was recognised as passport to high position in the State. The priest of a heathen cult which he could accept only when explained away by a rationalistic idealism, and which was by no means incompatible with his family instincts, was very different from the celibate churchman who ended by submitting to the terms imposed by the intolerance of the Holy League. The analogies are there, and imply perhaps a strain of intellectual kinship, but the contrasts are not less obvious, and refute the idea of a perfect unison.
Now, it is much the same if we turn from the writers to their writings. All translation is a compromise between the foreign material and the native intelligence, but in Amyot the latter factor counts most. Classical life is very completely assimilated to the contemporary life that he knew, but such contemporary life was in some ways quite unlike that which he was reproducing. There is an illusory sameness in the effects produced as there is an illusion of coincidence in the characters and careers of the men who produce them, and this may have its cause in real contact at certain points. But the gaps that separate them are also real, though at the time they were seldom detected. “Both by the details and the general tone of his version,” says M. Lanson, “[Amyot] modernises the Graeco-Roman world, and by this involuntary travesty he tends to check the awakening of the sense for the differences, that is, the historic sense. As he invites Shakespeare to recognise the English Mob in the Plebs Romana, so he authorises Corneille and Racine and even Mademoiselle Scudéry to portray under ancient names the human nature they saw in France.”
And this tendency was carried further in Amyot’s English translator.
3. NORTH
Of Sir Thomas North, the most recent and direct of the authorities who transmitted to Shakespeare his classical material, much less is known than of either of his predecessors. Plutarch, partly because as original author he has the opportunity of expressing his own personality, partly because he uses this opportunity to the full in frank advocacy of his views and gossip about himself, may be pictured with fair vividness and in some detail. Such information fails in regard to Amyot, since he was above all the mouthpiece for other men; but his high dignities placed him in the gaze of contemporaries, and his reputation as pioneer in classical translation and nursing-father of modern French ensured a certain interest in his career. But North, like him a translator, had not equal prominence either from his position or from his achievement. Such honours and appointments as he obtained were not of the kind to attract regard. He was a mere unit in the Elizabethan crowd of literary importers, and belonged to the lower class who never steered their course “to the classic coast.” He had no such share as Amyot in shaping the traditions of the language, but was one writer in an age that produced many others, some of them greater masters than he. Yet to us, as the immediate interpreter of Plutarch to Shakespeare, he is the most important of the three, the most famous and the most alive. Sainte Beuve, talking of Amyot, quotes a phrase from Leopardi in reference to the Italians who have associated themselves forever with the Classics they unveiled: “Oh, how fair a fate! to be exempt from death except in company with an Immortal!” This fair fate is North’s in double portion. He is linked with a great Immortal by descent, and with a greater by ancestry.
Thomas North, second son of the first Baron North of Kirtling, was born about 1535, to live his life, as it would seem, in straitened circumstances and unassuming work. Yet we might have anticipated for him a prosperous and eminent career. He had high connections and powerful patrons; his father made provision for him, his brother helped him once and again, a royal favourite interested himself on his behalf. His ability and industry are evident from his works; his honesty and courage are vouched for by those in a position to know; the efficiency of his public services received recognition from his fellow-citizens and his sovereign. But with all these advantages and qualifications he was even in middle age hampered by lack of means, and he never had much share in the pelf and pomp of life. Perhaps his occupation with larger concerns than personal aggrandisement may have interfered with his material success. At any rate, in his narrower sphere he showed himself a man of public interest and public spirit, and the authors with whom he busies himself are all such as commend ideal rather than tangible possessions as the real objects of desire. And we know besides that he was an unaggressive man, inclined to claim less than his due; for in one of his books he professes to get the material only from a French translation, when it is proved that he must have had recourse to the Spanish original as well.
This was his maiden effort, The Diall of Princes, published in 1557, when North was barely of age and had just been entered a student of Lincoln’s Inn; and with this year the vague and scanty data for his history really begin. He dedicates his book to Queen Mary, who had shown favour to his father, pardoning him for his support of Lady Jane Grey, raising him to the peerage, and distinguishing him in other ways. But on the death of Mary, Lord North retained the goodwill of Elizabeth, who twice kept her court at his mansion, and appointed him Lord Lieutenant of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely. The family had thus considerable local influence, and it was not diminished when, on the old man’s death in 1564, Roger, the first son, succeeded to the title. Before long the new Lord North was made successively an alderman of Cambridge, Lord Lieutenant of the County, and High Steward; while Thomas, who had benefited under his father’s will, was presented to the freedom of the town. All through, the career of the junior appears as a sort of humble pendant to that of the senior, and he picks up his dole of the largesses that Fortune showers on the head of the house. What he had been doing in the intervening years we do not know, but he cannot have abandoned his literary pursuits, for in 1568, when he received this civic courtesy, he issued a new edition of the Diall, corrected and enlarged; and he followed it up in 1570 with a version of Doni’s Morale Filosofia.
Meanwhile the elder brother was advancing on his brilliant course. He had been sent to Vienna to invest the Emperor Maximilian with the Order of the Garter; he had been commissioned to present the Queen on his return with the portrait of her suitor, the Archduke Charles; he had held various offices at home, and in 1574 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to congratulate Henry III. of France on his accession, and to procure if possible toleration for the Huguenots and a renewal of the Treaty of Blois. On this important legation he was accompanied by Thomas, who would thus have an opportunity of seeing or hearing something of Amyot, the great Bishop and Grand Almoner who was soon to be recipient of new honours from his royal pupil and patron, and who had recently been drawing new attention on himself by his third edition of the Lives and his first edition of the Morals.[117] It may well be that this visit suggested to Thomas North his own masterpiece, which he seems to have set about soon after he came home in the end of November. At least it was to appear in January, 1579, before another lustre was out; and a translation even from French of the entire Lives, not only unabridged but augmented (for biographies of Hannibal and Scipio are added from the versions of Charles de l’Escluse),[118] is a task of years rather than of months.
The embassage, despite many difficulties to be overcome, had been a success, and Lord North returned to receive the thanks and favours he deserved. He stood high in the Queen’s regard, and in 1578 she honoured him with a visit for a night. He was lavish in his welcome, building, we are told, new kitchens for the occasion; filling them with provisions of all kinds, the oysters alone amounting to one cart load and two horse loads; rifling the cellars of their stores, seventy-four hogsheads of beer being reinforced with corresponding supplies of ale, claret, white wine, sack, and hippocras; presenting her at her departure with a jewel worth £120 in the money of the time. In such magnificent doings he was by no means unmindful of his brother, to whom shortly before he had made over the lease of a house and household stuff. Yet precisely at this date, when Thomas North was completing or had completed his first edition of the Lives, his circumstances seem to have been specially embarrassed. Soon after the book appeared Leicester writes on his behalf to Burleigh, stating that he “is a very honest gentleman and hath many good parts in him which are drowned only by poverty.” There is perhaps a certain incongruity between these words and the accounts of the profusion at Kirtling in the preceding year.