Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 54.djvu/86

 writers of verse. Her brother was William Hammond [q. v.], and through her grandmother, Elizabeth Aucher of Bishopsbourne, Kent, she was cousin to the poet Richard Lovelace [q. v.] William Fairfax, son of Edward Fairfax, the translator of Tasso, directed his early education in his father's house, and he soon became not merely an excellent classical scholar, but an enthusiastic student of French, Spanish, and Italian poetry. On 22 June 1639, at the age of thirteen, he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a gentleman commoner (College Reg.), matriculating 13 Dec. He graduated M.A. in 1641, and is said to have joined the University of Oxford on 14 July 1640. An early and prosperous marriage did not interrupt his devotion to study. After some years spent in foreign travel (mainly in France), he retired, towards the close of the civil war, to lodgings in the Middle Temple, and engaged in literary work. He cultivated literary society, and his wealth enabled him to aid many less fortunate men of letters. His closest literary friends were Sir Edward Sherburne [q. v.], John Hall (1627–1656) [q. v.] of Durham, and James Shirley [q. v.], the dramatist, all of whom he relieved in their necessity. Sherburne dedicated to him his ‘Salmacis’ (1651). To him and Sherburne conjointly, Edward Phillips (1630–1696?) [q. v.] dedicated his ‘Theatrum Poetarum’ (1675). Hall dedicated to him as ‘his dearest friend’ his ‘Poems’ in 1646, and inserted in the volume three pieces addressed to his friend and patron. Other intimate associates were his mother's brother William Hammond [q. v.], and his cousins Richard Lovelace [q. v.] and Dudley Posthumus Lovelace, the latter's brother; Hammond and Richard Lovelace each wrote a poem in honour of his wedding, while another appeared in Jordan's ‘Forest of Fancie’ (cf., Second Book of Ayres, 1659).

Stanley's linguistic faculty and lyric gifts were shown to advantage in his initial volume, ‘Poems’ by Thomas Stanley, esq., 1647, dedicated to Love. Many of the verses celebrate Chariessa, Celia, Doris, and other imaginary mistresses. Succeeding pieces eulogise Hammond, Shirley the dramatist, and Sir Edward Sherburne. Among the foreign writers, translations of whose verse were included in the volume, are Guarini, Marino, Tasso, Lope de Vega, and Petrarch. One poem (p. 42) is in the metre of Tennyson's ‘In Memoriam.’ There followed in 1649 another volume of translations, entitled ‘Europa: Cupid Crucified [by Ausonius]: Venus Vigils’ (London, by W. W., for Humphrey Moseley, 1649). At the same date there appeared in yet a third volume two translations in prose interspersed with verse: ‘Aurora, Ismenia, and the Prince,’ by Don Juan Perez de Montalvan, and ‘Oronta, the Cyprian Virgin,’ by Signor Girolamo Preti; a second edition, with additions, was dated 1650. Finally, in 1651, Stanley reissued, in a fourth volume, all his previously published verse, with the addition of his classical rendering of Anacreon's odes and other translations. This charming volume was divided into five sections, each introduced by a new title-page. It opens with the title ‘Poems, by Thomas Stanley, esq.: printed in the year 1651’—a reprint of the volume of 1647. The second title-page runs: ‘Anacreon; Bion; Moschus; Kisses by Johannes Secundus; Cupid Crucified by Ausonius; Venus' Vigil Incerto Authore.’ The third title-page introduces ‘Excitations,’ a learned appendix of notes, chiefly textual, on the preceding translations, which Stanley avers ‘were never further intended but as private exercises of the languages from which they are deduced.’ The fourth title-page runs: ‘Sylvia's Park, by Theophil; Acanthus Complaint by Tristran; Oronta by Preti; Echo by Marino; Love's Embassy by Boscan; The Solitude by Gongara.’ The fifth and last title-page introduces ‘A Platonick Discourse upon Love written in Italian by John Picus Mirandola in explanation of a Sonnet by Hieronimo Benivieni.’ To some copies is appended a sixth title-page, introducing the prose novel of Montalvan which had been already published with Preti's ‘Oronta’ in 1649 and 1650.

Stanley subsequently wrote verses which were set to music by John Gamble (d. 1687), and published by him in his ‘Ayres and Dialogues’ (1656). A commendatory poem by Richard Lovelace was there inscribed to ‘My noble kinsman, Thomas Stanley, esq., on his lyrick poems,’ and another poem by Dudley Lovelace, Richard's youngest brother, ‘to my much honoured cozen Mr. Stanley.’ A song by Stanley, ‘O turn away those cruel eyes,’ figures in ‘The Second Book of Ayres’ by Henry Lawes, 1665. In 1657 Stanley prepared for publication extracts from the Eikōn Basilikē under the title of ‘Psalterium Carolinum: the Devotions of his Sacred Majestie in his Solitude and Sufferings, rendered in Verse.’

Stanley's original poems and translations from the Latin and Greek were collected and edited by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges in two volumes, published respectively in 1814 and 1815. His translations of ‘Venus' Vigil’ and Johannes Secundus's ‘Kisses’