Floriation

A detail that tickled me in Sarah Bakewell's Montaigne book: her comment on the style of Montaigne's early English translator John Florio.

Where Montaigne writes, ‘Our Germans, drowned in wine’ (nos Allemans, noyez dan le vin), Florio has ‘our carowsing tospot German souldiers, when they are most plunged in their cups, and as drunke as Rats’. A phrase which the modern translator Donald Frame renders calmly as ‘werewolves, goblins, and chimeras’ emerges from Floriation as ‘Larves, Hobgoblins, Robbin-good-fellowes, and other such Bug-beares and Chimeraes’ – a piece of pure Midsummer Night’s Dream.