--and the terms were in practice
interchangeable in those days--occurred, and the result was the treatise
"De regimine Principum libri iii." Philippe le Hardi, if not an educated
man himself--and there are doubts as to whether he could write his own
name--was laudably anxious that his heir should have the best
instruction that could be obtained. It cannot well be claimed that the
able, handsome, and unscrupulous Philippe was any great credit to his
preceptor. The despotic and perfidious character of the king probably
owed more to the influence of Nogaret and other defenders of the "right
divine of kings to govern wrong," than to the soberer precepts of
Colonna. That Philippe had some tincture of literary feeling may be
inferred from his employment of Jehan de Meung to translate the military
treatise of Vegetius Flavius Renatus, a compilation of the second
century of the present era, which was so popular in the middle ages that
it was translated by Caxton into English. Still better evidence is the
translation made for the king by the same poet of Boethius, whose
stoical philosophy must have had a special appropriateness for those
times of political storm and stress, when the fickleness of fortune must
have been a matter of only too common repute. Guido Colonna was elected
by his admiring brethren the general of the order in 1292, and took up
his residence at Bourges, its metropolitan seat.

In this honourable office he continued his literary labours, and to this
period are assigned the greater part of his numerous works. He died at
Avignon in 1316. His body was translated to Paris, where his effigy in
black marble, with his epitaph, remained until the French
revolution.[19] It would be superfluous to enumerate his philosophical
writings, for they would have no interest in the present day. His
commentary on Aristotle "De Anima," it may be observed, was dedicated to
Edward I. His name is now chiefly remembered because his work on the
rule of princes formed the basis of the treatise in which Jacques de
Cessoles moralized the fashionable game of the chess.

One interesting instance of the popularity of Colonna's work is the
translation of it made into English verse by Thomas Occleve.[20] He
wrote it in 1411 or 1412, and its object was to obtain the payment of an
annuity from the exchequer which had been granted to him, but the
payment of which was very irregular. The book was dedicated to the
Prince of Wales. After mentioni