Of the Italians in England during Elizabeth's reign the most familiar to us is Florio, whose father had been preacher to the Protestant Italians in London. Florio had been at Oxford, from which university he dedicated his "First Fruites" to Leicester in 1578, so that he was already well known as a scholar when Bruno came to England and made his acquaintance. This may have occurred through Sidney; or _vice versa_, Sidney's attention may have been called to Bruno by Florio. The latter was described by Cornwallis as one who looked "more like a good fellow than a wise man," yet was "wise beyond his fortune or his education." It was long after Bruno's departure that Florio devoted himself to the charming translation of Montaigne (published in 1603), of which a copy has been found bearing Shakespeare's name, while to Shakespeare is attributed a sonnet in praise of Florio. Curiously, we find him in his translation acknowledging assistance from one with whom Bruno also has casually connected him in the _Cena_, viz. Matthew Gwinne. Of Bruno's more intimate acquaintance in England we know little: there are two whose names occur in the dialogues, "Smith" in the _Cena_, and Dicson in the _Causa_, both sympathetic listeners and adherents of _Theophilo_, who is Bruno's representative. The former it is naturally difficult to place: he may however have been the poet William Smith, a disciple of Spenser, who published a pastoral poem "Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd." Of Dicson,--"learned, honourable, lovable, well-born faithful friend Alexander Dicson, whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes,"[61] a little more can be told. He was the author of a _De Umbra Rationis_, (1583), obviously inspired by Bruno's _De Umbris Idearum_, and on the same basis of Neoplatonism. The work is extremely sketchy, occasionally diffuse, and of little value even were there anything of value in the Art of Memory which it teaches. But it seems from a reply it called forth (_Antidicsonus_) to have had some vogue, and to have been backed by a vigorous and aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined in condemnation with Dicson, may have had a place.[62] The poet Thomas Watson has also connected Bruno with Dicson in his _Compendium Memoriæ Localis_, published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also published a translation of Tasso's _Aminta_, in Latin hexameters,--in 1585, _i.e._ in the year following the appearance of Bruno's _Spaccio_, with its satire on Tasso's _Age of Gold_.[63] Watson had been in Paris in 1581, when he met Walsingham, and he may of course have met Bruno also: he was a scholarly poet, although his work lay more in the direction of translation and imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original verse, but during his lifetime he ranked as the equal of Spenser and Sidney. The _Compendium of Local Memory_ is in clear, simple, classical Latin, in strong contrast with the corresponding works of Dicson and of