." Its style is
rather robust than elegant, partaking of the manly vigor of the language
of its time, and now and then exhibiting something of that charm of
quaint simplicity which belongs to its original, Montaigne's favorite
Amyot. "Of all our French writers," says the incomparable essayist,
"I give, with justice, I think, the palm to Jacques Amyot";[B] and
thereupon he goes on to praise the purity of his style, as well as the
depth of his learning and judgment. But, although Amyot had "a true
imagination" of his author, he was not always exact in giving his
meaning. The learned Dr. Guy Patin says: "On dit que M. de Meziriac
avoit corrige dans son Amyot huit mille fautes, et qu'Amyot n'avoit
pas de bons exemplaires, ou qu'il n'avoit pas bien entendu le Grec de
Plutarque."[C]

[Footnote B: _Essays_, Book II. 4.]

[Footnote C: _Patiniana_.]

Amyot's eight thousand errors were not diminished in passing into Sir
Thomas North's English; but their number mattered little to the readers
of those days, who found in the thick folio enough of interest to spare
them from making inquiry as to the exactness of its rendering of the
meaning of Plutarch. From the time of its first publication, for more
than a hundred years, it was one of the most popular books of the
period, as was proved by the appearance of six successive editions in
folio.[D] Some of these clumsy volumes may, no doubt, have been put
to uses as ignoble as that which Chrysale, in "Les Femmes Savantes,"
suggests for his sister's similar copy of Amyot:--

"Vos livres eternels ne me contentent pas;
Et, hors un gros Plutarque a mettre mes rabats,
Vous devriez bruler tout ce meuble inutile";--

but duller books of the same size, of which there were many in those
days of patient readers, would have had an equal value for such
economical purposes as this, and "The Lives of the Noble Grecians and
Romans by that Grave Learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarch"
were too entertaining to young and old to be left for any length of time
quietly upon the shelf. They were the familiar reading of boys who
were to become the actors in the great drama of the Rebellion and the
Commonwealth, or who a little later were to frequent the dissolute court
of Charles, presenting in their own lives, whether in camp or court, as
patriots or as traitors, parallels to those which they had read in the
weighty pages of the old biographer.

[Footnote D: In 1579, 1595, 1602, 1631, 16