Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/571

 STAUNTON. 567 unsavorly in our language, being, in truth, not al togeather the toothsomest in the Latine.” The second is in elegiac verse, or English hexameter or pentameter. The third is a short specimen of the asclepiac verse; thus, “Lord, my dirye foes, why do they multiply.” The fourth is in sapphics, with a prayer to the Trinity in the same measure. Then follow, “certayne poetical conceites,” in Latin and English: and after these some epitaphs. The English throughout is in Roman measures. The preface, in which he assigns his reasons for translating after Phaer, is a curious specimen of quaintness and pedantry. Speaking of Stanyhurst Mr. Warton says, “With all his foolish pedantry Stanyhurst was certainly a scholar. But in this translation” he calls Choroebus, one of the Trojan chiefs, a Bedlamite; he says, that old Priam girded on his sword Morglay, the name of a sword in the Gothic romances: that Dido would have been glad to have been brought to bed, even of a cockney, a Dandi prat hop-thumb; and that Jupiter, in kissing her daughter, bust h i s pretty prating parrot.” Stanyhurst i s styled b y Camden, “ Eruditissimus ille nobilis Richardus Stani hurstus.” Stanyhurst had a son William, born a t Brussels i n 1601. He became a Jesuit, and a writer o f reputation among persons o f his communion. He died i n 1663. Sotwell has given a list o f his works, o f which we shall mention only “Album Marianum, i n quo prosa e t carmine Dei i n Austriacos beneficia, e t Austriacorum erga Deum obsequia recensentur,” Louvaine, 1641, folio. - SIR GEORGE-LEONARD STAUNTON, Secretary and historian o f a n embassy t o China, was son o f a gentleman o f small fortune i n Galway, i n Ireland, and was sent early t o study physic a t Montpelier, where h e proceeded M. D. On his return t o London, h e trans Virgil's AEmeid.