PLUTARCH'S LIVES, North's Transla tion of. Sir Thomas North was a soldier and public official rather than a man of letters, but he shared with other Elizabethans that striking versatility which enabled so many of them to attain distinction in more than one field of activity. His literary works were all translations, the most important being his Plutarch. Various other translations of the 'Lives of the Ancient Grecians and Romans' have appeared since North's, but none has sup planted his in interest for the general reader. The scholar will not be satisfied by North's version, for North translated not from the Greek original, but from the French version of Bishop Amyot. His purpose was not to pro duce a literally faithful translation, but one which would put the spirit of Plutarch into an Elizabethan body. His ulterior aim was to provide a series of "noble men's which should serve as models of conduct to his own contemporaries, for he thought wisdom might be acquired better in this way than by reading about it "in philosophers' writings." His knowl edge of men and affairs made him peculiarly ap preciative of the elements of character, and none of the flavor of Plutarch's Grecians and Romans has evaporated in their transition through French into English. Amyot's French version, though fairly close to the original, was written in a somewhat formal, Ciceronian style, but North chose to write in a more familiar and realistically contemporary manner.
His style is, therefore, more pointed, more concrete and picturesque than either the Greek of Plutarch or the French of Amyot. By means of a word or synonym added here and there, by phrases slightly altered, he increased greatly the vividness of the narrative. Where Amyot was dignified, North frequently substituted homely and familiar images and phrasing. Thus where Amyot translates °Ne s'etoit jamais party de sa maison," North gives a more concrete turn to the passage in his enever went from the smoke of his chimney.' An infinitude of slight variations of this kind makes of North's Plutarch a much more lively, more intimate and entertaining work than the French version upon which it was based. In the end they constitute rather an interpretation than a trans lation of Plutarch. The supreme test of North's ability to seize upon and express vividly the essentials of a character is to be found in the fact that Shakespeare in his Roman plays fre quently took over bodily North's phrasing, often with only such slight modifications in word order as were necessary to change North's prose into blank verse.