Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/149

 10 Oct., the seventh on 7 Dec. 1557. Each book occupied him, on the average, about twenty days. In 1558 there appeared, with a dedication to Queen Mary, ‘The seven first bookes of the Eneidos of Virgill converted into Englishe meter by Thomas Phaer, esquier, sollicitour to the king and quenes maiesties [i.e. Philip and Mary], attending their honorable counsaile in the marchies of Wales, anno 1558, 28 Maij,’ London (by John Kingston), 1558, 4to. At the conclusion of the fifth book (4 May 1556), he noted that he had escaped ‘periculum Karmerdini’—an apparent reference to some accident that he sustained at Carmarthen. He completed two more books (eighth and ninth) by 3 April 1560, and had begun the tenth when he injured his hand.

Phaer died at Kilgerran in August 1560, before resuming his labours on Virgil. His will is dated 12 Aug. He directed that he should be buried in Kilgerran parish church, and requested his friend George Ferrers to write his epitaph. A direction to his wife to apply 5l. of his estate after his death to an unspecified purpose, on which his wife and he had come to an understanding in his lifetime, is believed to refer to the commemorative rites of the Roman catholic church, and is held to prove, in the presence of Phaer's loyal dedication of his ‘Æneid’ to Queen Mary, that he adhered to the old faith. His wife Ann was residuary legatee, and he made provision for three daughters: Eleanor (who had married Gruffyth ap Eynon), Mary, and Elizabeth. A eulogistic ‘epytaphe of maister Thomas Phayre’ appeared in Barnabe Googe's ‘Eglogs,’ 1563.

In 1562 Phaer's nine completed books of his translation of Virgil were edited by William Wightman, ‘receptour of Wales.’ The volume, which was dedicated to Sir Nicholas Bacon, was entitled ‘The nyne fyrst bookes of the Eneidos of Virgil converted into Englishe vearse by Tho. Phaer, doctour of phisike, with so muche of tenthe booke as since his death (1560) coulde be founde in unperfit papers at his house in Kilgaran Forest in Pembrokeshire,’ London (by Rowland Hall for Nicholas England), 1562, 4to.

In 1584 Thomas Twine completed the translation of the ‘Æneid,’ and issued what he called ‘the thirteen bookes of Æneidos,’ with a dedication to Robert Sackville, son of Lord Buckhurst; the thirteenth book was the supplement of Maphæus Vegius.

Phaer's translation is in fourteen-syllable rhyming ballad metre, is often spirited, and fairly faithful. Although Gawin Douglas [q. v.] was the earliest translator of Virgil (1553) in Great Britain, and the Earl of Surrey's translation of two books appeared in 1557, Phaer was the first Englishman to attempt a translation of the whole work. His achievement was long gratefully remembered. Arthur Hall [q. v.], when dedicating his Homer to Sir Thomas Cecil in 1581, laments the inferiority of his efforts to Phaer's ‘Virgilian English.’ Stanihurst's clumsy version of the ‘Æneid’ (1586) was derided by Nash as of small account beside Phaer's efforts (pref. to Menaphon, 1587). Puttenham, in his ‘English Poesie,’ bestows similar commendation on Phaer.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 316; J. R. Phillips's Hist. of Cilgerran, pp. 98–102; Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Hunter's MS. Chorus Vatum, in Addit. MS. 24490, f. 77; Fuller's Worthies; George Owen's History of Pembrokeshire, 1892; Fenton's Tour in Pembrokeshire, 1811; Shakespeare Society's Papers, 1849, iv. 1–5; Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections.] 

PHALERIUS, GULLIELMUS (d. 1678), divine. [See .]

PHAYRE, ARTHUR PURVES (1812–1885), first commissioner of British Burma, born at Shrewsbury on 7 May 1812, was son of Richard Phayre, esq., of Shrewsbury, by his wife, daughter of Mr. Ridgway, publisher, of 169 Piccadilly. Colonel Phayre of Killoughram Forest, co. Wexford, was his grandfather. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, and became a cadet in the Bengal army in 1828. He was transferred to Maulmain in 1834, was promoted lieutenant in 1838, and accompanied the expedition against the Wa-lien tribe in 1841. He was nominated in 1846 principal assistant to the commissioner of the Tenasserim provinces of Lower Burma, and thus formed his first connection with that country, with which his later life was mainly associated. He rejoined his regiment, and accompanied it to the Punjab in 1848; but in 1849 he returned to Burma as captain and commissioner of Arakan, and as assistant to Captain (afterwards Sir Archibald) Bogle. In Arakan he was well trained in the details of civil administration, and his spare time was employed in acquiring an intimate knowledge of the Burmese language. He was transferred in 1852 to the commissionership of Pegu (in Lower Burma) on its annexation after the second Burmese war. The province flourished under his rule, and his success was emphatically acknowledged by Lord Canning in 1856. During his tenure of this office in 1854 he accompanied as interpreter the mission sent by the king of Burma to the governor-general of India, and in 1857 was sent to Amarapúra in charge of a mission