North's Plutarch and Henry Neville's Advice to King James

Topic: North's Plutarch and Henry Neville's Advice to King James

1. Verified Sourced Facts

• The Neville letters corpus contains a document with the attributes:
• id="document_neville_advice"
• filename="Neville_Advice.txt"
• title="Neville Advice to the King"
• date_ns="1613-01-01"

• Paragraph 5 of that XML document contains an anecdote naming:
• Antigonus
• Demetrius

• Thomas North's 1579 Plutarch in the EEBO corpus is:
• TCP A09802
• The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes compared together

• In that North text, the life of Demetrius includes:
• Antigonus “geuing audience to certain ambassadors”
• Demetrius coming “from hunting”
• Demetrius sitting by his father with “his dartes in his hande”
• Antigonus making the ambassadors witness “how we liue one with an other”

• The local Work in Parliament packet identifies two printed source paths for Henry Neville's parliamentary Advice material:
• James Spedding, ed., The Works of Francis Bacon: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon, vol. 11
• Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons)

2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information

• A Ken Feinstein tweet dated 20 Nov. 2020 states:

“Coincidentally, here is Henry Neville quoting Plutarch in 1612.”

• A Ken Feinstein tweet dated 1 Dec. 2020 states:

“By funny coincidence, Henry Neville also read Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives. And coincidentally he references here Demetrius and Antigonus.”

• A Ken Feinstein tweet dated 14 Jan. 2021 states:

“Look how closely Henry Neville follows North's translation of Plutarch in 1612.”

• A Ken Feinstein tweet dated 28 Jan. 2021 states:

“The next few months you'll hear a lot about Shakespeare quoting Thomas North. Here is Henry Neville (1612) directly quoting Thomas North's Plutarch.”

• A Ken Feinstein tweet dated 30 May 2021 states:

“As I have said, it is a fact of history that Henry Neville read North's translation of Plutarch and quoted from it almost verbatim. Here is one of the manuscript copies of this "Advice" (not Neville's handwriting).”

3. Quoted Source Text

Neville Letters Corpus v8, document_neville_advice, paragraph 5

• “And to this purpose I remember a story of Antigonus, one of the immediate and mightiest successors of Alexander who, being solemnly set in great state to give audience to some other prince’s ambassadors ... his son Demetrius came in from hunting ...”
• “Antigonus called them again and willed them to report one thing more to their masters, namely, in what fashion they had seen him and his son converse together ...”
• “If this were true in that case between the father and the son how much more is it verified between the prince and the people.”

Thomas North's Plutarch, A09802

• “... one day as he came home from hunting he went vnto his father Antigonus, geuing audience to certain ambassadors ...”
• “... he sate downe by him euen as he came from hunting, hauing his dartes in his hande ...”
• “My lords, sayd he, you shall carie home this reporte of my sonne and me, be witnesses I pray you how we liue one with an other ...”

Comparison Notes

• Neville: “being solemnly set in great state to give audience to some other prince’s ambassadors”

North: “geuing audience to certain ambassadors”

• Neville: “his son Demetrius came in from hunting”

North: “one day as he came home from hunting”

• Neville: “with his darts in his hands”

North: “hauing his dartes in his hande”

• Neville: “report one thing more to their masters”

North: “you shall carie home this reporte”

• Neville: “how ... they had seen him and his son converse together”

North: “be witnesses ... how we liue one with an other”

• Neville: “confidence and concord”

North: “the agreement betwext the father and the sonne together”

Ken Feinstein tweets

• “Coincidentally, here is Henry Neville quoting Plutarch in 1612.”
• “By funny coincidence, Henry Neville also read Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives. And coincidentally he references here Demetrius and Antigonus.”
• “Look how closely Henry Neville follows North's translation of Plutarch in 1612. Coincidentally, William Shakespeare owned the same book and did the same thing in his late plays.”
• “The next few months you'll hear a lot about Shakespeare quoting Thomas North. Here is Henry Neville (1612) directly quoting Thomas North's Plutarch. This is not supposition. This an undeniable historical fact.”
• “As I have said, it is a fact of history that Henry Neville read North's translation of Plutarch and quoted from it almost verbatim. Here is one of the manuscript copies of this "Advice" (not Neville's handwriting). This is a fact.”

4. Citations

• Neville_Letters_Corpus_v8.xml, document_neville_advice, paragraph 5, local XML witness.
• North, Thomas, translator. The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes compared together by that graue learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chæronea. 1579. TCP A09802. Local EEBO witness in earlyprint.db and earlyprint_fts_lemma_word.db.
• north_plutarch_antigonus_demetrius_A09802.txt, local extracted witness text for the Demetrius passage in A09802.
• work_in_parliament.md, existing packet preserving the source trail for the Advice dispute and the Bacon / 1614 parliamentary references.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Coincidentally, here is Henry Neville quoting Plutarch in 1612.” X, 20 Nov. 2020, https://twitter.com/user/status/1329662515802820608. Local archive trail: Books_Read.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “By funny coincidence, Henry Neville also read Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives. And coincidentally he references here Demetrius and Antigonus.” X, 1 Dec. 2020, https://twitter.com/user/status/1333834062499176449. Local archive trail: Books_Read.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “Look how closely Henry Neville follows North's translation of Plutarch in 1612. Coincidentally, William Shakespeare owned the same book and did the same thing in his late plays.” X, 14 Jan. 2021, https://twitter.com/user/status/1349598533230346240. Local archive trail: Books_Read.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “The next few months you'll hear a lot about Shakespeare quoting Thomas North. Here is Henry Neville (1612) directly quoting Thomas North's Plutarch. This is not supposition. This an undeniable historical fact.” X, 28 Jan. 2021, https://twitter.com/user/status/1354670049282334720. Local archive trail: Books_Read.md.
• Feinstein, Ken. “As I have said, it is a fact of history that Henry Neville read North's translation of Plutarch and quoted from it almost verbatim. Here is one of the manuscript copies of this "Advice" (not Neville's handwriting). This is a fact.” X, 30 May 2021, https://twitter.com/user/status/1398881439622467584. Local archive trail: Books_Read.md.
• “Work in Parliament.” Henry Neville Research Wiki, 11 Oct. 2019, http://nevilleresearch.com/index.php?title=Work_in_Parliament. Local preservation: wiki_parliament.md.
• Spedding, James, editor. The Works of Francis Bacon: The Letters and the Life of Francis Bacon. Vol. 11. Longmans, 1868. Google Books path preserved in work_in_parliament.md.
• Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons). Google Books path preserved in work_in_parliament.md.

5. Evidence Images

6. Notes on Access

• This packet is now anchored to the direct XML witness for document_neville_advice in the Neville letters corpus.
• The packet now also preserves the direct EEBO/TCP witness path for North's 1579 Plutarch, A09802.
• The Ken Feinstein tweet/image trail remains useful because it preserves comparison images and the original local research trail that identified this match.
• The packet now includes a direct motif-by-motif comparison between the Neville Advice passage and the North excerpt.
• Unlike several other source-book packets, this one is no longer only a tweet-led lead: the core comparison is now carried by the XML and EEBO witnesses themselves.