liEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 495 



annotator lias added " whose name was Manors." This remark 

 seemed necessary, because at the end of the poem there is a play upon 

 the family name — 



" By ancient manners stood the Roman State ; 

 From th' ancient stock yong Manors England graceth." 



The fly-leaves, which usually bear the names of former possessors, 

 have been wholly removed from my Florio ; otherwise the book is in 

 good condition, retaining the appearance which it wore in 1598, 

 having its original binding of stout brown calf, rudely stamped and 

 tooled. The title-page shows a beautifully designed wood-cut frame, 

 consisting of two pillars sustaining a circular-headed arch, covered all 

 over with ornament, fantastic and grotesque, but graceful. Within 

 the frame is the following title : " A Worlde of Wordes, or Most 

 Copious and Exacte Dictionarie in Italian and English, collected by 

 John Florio. Printed at London by Arnold Hatfield, for Edward 

 Blount. 1598." Below is the printer's or publisher's device: a 

 dragon lying on its back ; an otter or other animal biting its throat ; 

 in the background a landscape and city ; above, a riband with the 

 motto, Non vi sed virtute." It was to this very work that Shaks- 

 peare alluded when he said of Holofemes, "the high fantastical," 

 in " Love's Labour's Loste," that he seemed like a man " who had 

 been at a great feast of languages and had stolen the scraps ;" for in 

 the character of Holofernes it is supposed that Shakspeare had a little 

 fling at Florio. The name Holofernes itself has been conjectured to 

 be an intentionally bad anagram of Joh-nes Floreo. The Worlde of 

 Wordes is dedicated to Henry, Earl of Southampton, Shakspeare's 

 friend, conjointly with Roger, Earl of Rutland, and Lucie, Countess 

 of Bedford. With these, it is probable, as well as with Shakspeare 

 and others, Florio, from a certain pomposity of phrase and manner, 

 would occasionally be the occasion of good-humoured merriment. In 

 Ms Address to the Reader, prefixed to the Worlde of Wordes, Florio 

 ilikens himself to Socrates brought on the stage by Aristophanes. 

 " Let Aristophanes and his Comedians make plaies," he says, " and 

 scowre their mouths on Socrates : those very mouthes they make to 

 vilifie shall be the means to amplify his vertue." He gives H. S. as 

 the initials of a special oflfender in this respect. This may have been 

 H. Sawell, a friend of Thomas Lodge, an actor and dramatist of the 

 'day. At the beginning of the same Address, he tells us that the same 

 H. S., " lighting upon a good sonnet of a gentleman, a friend of mine, 



