The earliest Spanish translator, BOSCAN, (born at Barcelona about 1493; died in France about 1542), was of gentle birth. Early becoming a soldier, he served with credit in Charles V's Italian campaigns, and thus acquired familiarity with the language and literature of Italy. He is said to have known Castiglione personally. Having been for some time tutor to the young prince who was later known as the Duke of Alva, he married and devoted the rest of his short life to letters. As a writer he is best known as the founder of the Italian poetical school in Spain. Ticknor says that Boscan’s version of THE COURTIER hardly professes to be literal, but that perhaps nothing in Castilian prose of an earlier date is written in so classical and finished a style. It has been often reprinted (as recently as 1873), and was found useful by the present translator in doubtful passages. The earliest French translator, COLIN, (died 1547), was a native of Auxerre and enjoyed the favour of Francis I, whom he served as reader and almoner, and who bestowed upon him the abbotship of St. Ambrose at Tours, as well as other ecclesiastical offices. In his prosperity he showed much kindness to his less fortunate brother authors, but he was too free of speech to be permanently successful as a courtier, and lost his preferments. His translation of THE COURTIER, which some writers erroneously ascribe to Jean Chaperon, is little esteemed, was soon issued with corrections by another hand, and then followed by another French version. He translated also parts of Homer and Ovid, and composed original verse in Latin and French. For an account of Castiglione’s influence upon French literature and of his many French imitators, consult Pietro Toldo’s “Le Courtisan dans la littérature française et ses rapports avec l'œuvre du Castiglione,” (Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Litteraturen, C. iv, pp. 75 and 313, and C. v, p. 60).