Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian humanist and poet, whose sonnets were widely imitated by French and Italian poets during the Renaissance.
Dante (1265-1321). The author of the “Divine Comedy” was not very well known to Elizabethan readers. There was no English translation of his poem attempted till that of Rogers in 1782, and no version worthy of the name was produced till H. F. Cary’s in 1814.
Aretine. The name of Pietro Aretino (1492-1556), an Italian satirist who called himself “the scourge of princes,” was well known in England, but there was no translation of his works.
Machiavel. Nicolo Machiavelli (1468-1527), a Florentine statesman, whose name had an odious association because of the supposedly diabolical policy of government set forth in his “Prince.” But this work was not translated till 1640. His “Art of War” had been rendered into English in 1560 and his “Florentine History” in 1595.
Castiglione, Baldassare (1478-1529). “Il Cortegiano,” setting forth the idea of a gentleman, was translated as “The Courtier” by Thomas Hoby in 1561 and was very influential in English life.
Ronsard, Pierre de (1524-1585), the chief French lyric poet of the sixteenth century, whose sonnets had considerable vogue in England.
Du Bartas, Guillaume de Saluste (1544-1590), author of “La Semaine, ou la Création du Monde” (1578), “La Seconde Semaine” (1584), translated as the “Divine Weeks and Works” (1592 ff.) by Joshua Sylvester.
[P. 13.] Fortunate fields. “Paradise Lost,” III, 568.
Prospero’s Enchanted Island. Eden’s “History of Travayle,” 1577, is now given as the probable source of Setebos, etc.
Right well I wote. “Faërie Queene,” II, Introduction, 1-3.