Thomas Stanley (author)
Encyclopedia
Sir Thomas Stanley was an English
author and translator.
, the son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow, Hertfordshire
and his wife, Mary Hammond. Mary was the cousin of Richard Lovelace
, and Stanley was educated in company with the son of Edward Fairfax
, the translator of Tasso
. He proceeded to Cambridge in 1637, in his thirteenth year, as a gentleman commoner of Pembroke Hall. In 1641 he took his M.A. degree, but seems by that time to have proceeded to Oxford. He subsequently embarked on a legal career.
He was wealthy, married early, and travelled much on the Continent
. He was the friend and companion, and at need the helper, of many poets, and was himself both a writer and a translator of verse. His portrait was painted by Sir Peter Lely
and by Sir Godfrey Kneller
; in all he was painted at least fifteen times.
and Denham
, he rejected their reforms, and was the last to cling to the old prosody and forms of fancy. He is the frankest of all English poets in his preference of decadent and Alexandrine
schools of imagination; among the ancients he admired Moschus
, Ausonius
, and the Pervigilium Veneris
; among the moderns, Joannes Secundus, Gongora
and Marino
. The English metaphysical school closes in Stanley, in whom it finds its most delicate and autumnal exponent, who went on weaving his fantastic conceits in elaborately artificial measures far into the days of Dryden
and Butler
.
Stanley's most serious work was his The History of Philosophy, which appeared in three successive volumes between 1655 and 1661. A fourth volume (1662), bearing the title of The History of Chaldaick Philosophy, was translated into Latin by Jean Le Clerc
(Amsterdam, 1690). The three earlier volumes were published in an enlarged Latin version by Godfrey Olearius (Leipzig, 1711). In 1664 Stanley published in folio a monumental edition of the text of Aeschylus
.
His The History of Philosophy was long the principal authority on the progress of thought in ancient Greece
. It took the form of a series of critical biographies of the philosophers, beginning with Thales
; what Stanley aimed at was the providing of necessary information concerning all "those on whom the attribute of Wise was conferred." He is particularly full on the great Attic
masters, and introduces, "not as a comical divertisement for the reader, but as a necessary supplement to the life of Socrates
," a blank verse translation of The Clouds of Aristophanes. Richard Bentley
is said to have had a very high appreciation of his scholarship, and to have made use of the poet's copious notes, still in manuscript (in the British Museum
, now the British Library
), on Callimachus
.
After Dorothy's death, he remarried to Catherine Killigrew, with no issue
He died at his lodgings in Suffolk Street, Strand, London
on 12 April 1678, and was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields
.
His widow died in Cumberlow in 1689.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author and translator.
Life
He was born in Cumberlow, HertfordshireHertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
, the son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow, Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...
and his wife, Mary Hammond. Mary was the cousin of Richard Lovelace
Richard Lovelace
Richard Lovelace was an English poet in the seventeenth century. He was a cavalier poet who fought on behalf of the king during the Civil war. His best known works are To Althea, from Prison, and To Lucasta, Going to the Warres....
, and Stanley was educated in company with the son of Edward Fairfax
Edward Fairfax
Edward Fairfax was a translator, the natural son of Sir Thomas Fairfax the elder, of Denton in Yorkshire, and thus a half-brother of Sir Thomas Fairfax.Fairfax lived at New Hall, Fewston...
, the translator of Tasso
Tasso
-People:*Torquato Tasso, the famous Italian 16th-century poet, author of Gerusalemme liberata**Tasso, Lament and Triumph, a symphonic poem by Franz Liszt based on the poet*Bernardo Tasso, his father, also a poet...
. He proceeded to Cambridge in 1637, in his thirteenth year, as a gentleman commoner of Pembroke Hall. In 1641 he took his M.A. degree, but seems by that time to have proceeded to Oxford. He subsequently embarked on a legal career.
He was wealthy, married early, and travelled much on the Continent
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. He was the friend and companion, and at need the helper, of many poets, and was himself both a writer and a translator of verse. His portrait was painted by Sir Peter Lely
Peter Lely
Sir Peter Lely was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.-Life:...
and by Sir Godfrey Kneller
Godfrey Kneller
Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1st Baronet was the leading portrait painter in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and was court painter to British monarchs from Charles II to George I...
; in all he was painted at least fifteen times.
Writing
Stanley is a transitional figure in English literature. Born into a later generation than that of WallerEdmund Waller
Edmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679.- Early life :...
and Denham
John Denham (poet)
Sir John Denham was an English poet and courtier. He served as Surveyor of the King's Works and is buried in Westminster Abbey....
, he rejected their reforms, and was the last to cling to the old prosody and forms of fancy. He is the frankest of all English poets in his preference of decadent and Alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
schools of imagination; among the ancients he admired Moschus
Moschus
Moschus , ancient Greek bucolic poet and student of the Alexandrian grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, was born at Syracuse and flourished about 150 BC...
, Ausonius
Ausonius
Decimius Magnus Ausonius was a Latin poet and rhetorician, born at Burdigala .-Biography:Decimius Magnus Ausonius was born in Bordeaux in ca. 310. His father was a noted physician of Greek ancestry and his mother was descended on both sides from long-established aristocratic Gallo-Roman families...
, and the Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a Latin poem, probably written in the 4th century. It is generally thought to have been by the poet Tiberianus, due to strong similarities with the latter’s poem Amnis ibat. It was written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three-nights'...
; among the moderns, Joannes Secundus, Gongora
Gongora
Gongora, abbreviated Gga in horticultural trade, is a member of the Orchid family . It consists of 65 species known from Central America, Trinidad, and tropical South America, with most species found in Colombia...
and Marino
Marino
Marino, Mariño or Maryino may refer to:In places:* Marino, Lazio, a town in the province of Rome, Italy* Marino, South Australia, a suburb of Adelaide* Marino, County Down in Northern Ireland...
. The English metaphysical school closes in Stanley, in whom it finds its most delicate and autumnal exponent, who went on weaving his fantastic conceits in elaborately artificial measures far into the days of Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
and Butler
Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler may refer to:*Samuel Butler , author of Hudibras*Samuel Butler , classical scholar, schoolmaster at Shrewsbury, Bishop of Lichfield...
.
Stanley's most serious work was his The History of Philosophy, which appeared in three successive volumes between 1655 and 1661. A fourth volume (1662), bearing the title of The History of Chaldaick Philosophy, was translated into Latin by Jean Le Clerc
Jean Leclerc (theologian)
Jean Le Clerc, also Johannes Clericus was a Swiss theologian and biblical scholar. He was famous for promoting exegesis, or critical interpretation of the Bible, and was a radical of his age...
(Amsterdam, 1690). The three earlier volumes were published in an enlarged Latin version by Godfrey Olearius (Leipzig, 1711). In 1664 Stanley published in folio a monumental edition of the text of Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
.
His The History of Philosophy was long the principal authority on the progress of thought in ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
. It took the form of a series of critical biographies of the philosophers, beginning with Thales
Thales
Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...
; what Stanley aimed at was the providing of necessary information concerning all "those on whom the attribute of Wise was conferred." He is particularly full on the great Attic
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
masters, and introduces, "not as a comical divertisement for the reader, but as a necessary supplement to the life of Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
," a blank verse translation of The Clouds of Aristophanes. Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley
Richard Bentley was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge....
is said to have had a very high appreciation of his scholarship, and to have made use of the poet's copious notes, still in manuscript (in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, now the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
), on Callimachus
Callimachus
Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Ptolemy III Euergetes...
.
Works
- Poems (1647)
- Aurora and the Prince, from the Spanish of Juan Pérez de MontalbánJuan Pérez de MontalbánJuan Pérez de Montalbán , Spanish Catholic priest, dramatist, poet and novelist, was born at Madrid.At the age of eighteen he became a licentiate in theology, was ordained priest in 1625 and appointed notary to the Inquisition...
; with Oronta, the Cyprian Virgin, from the Italian of Girolamo Preti (1647) - Europa, Cupid Crucified, Venus Vigils (1649)
- AnacreonAnacreonAnacreon was a Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.- Life :...
; Bion; Moschus; Kisses by Secundus..., a volume of translations (1651) - The History of Philosophy (LondonLondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Humphrey MoseleyHumphrey MoseleyHumphrey Moseley was a prominent London publisher and bookseller in the middle seventeenth century.Possibly a son of publisher Samuel Moseley, Humphrey Moseley became a "freeman" of the Stationers Company, the guild of London booksellers, on 7 May 1627; he was selected a Warden of the Company on...
and Thomas DringThomas DringThomas Dring was a London publisher and bookseller of the middle seventeenth century. He was in business from 1649 on; his shop was located "at the sign of the George in Fleet Street, near St...
) in 1655, three volumes, (1655, 1656, 1660); a fourth was published in 1662 - Poems (1814) edited by Samuel Egerton BrydgesSamuel Egerton BrydgesSir Samuel Egerton Brydges, 1st Baronet was an English bibliographer and genealogist. He was also Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1812 to 1818....
- Anacreon (1883) translation, edited by A. H. Bullen (with Greek original)
Family
His first wife was Dorothy Emyon, daughter and coheir of Sir James Emyon, of Flower, Northamptonshire, with issue:- Thomas Stanley (1650-d. unknown)
After Dorothy's death, he remarried to Catherine Killigrew, with no issue
He died at his lodgings in Suffolk Street, Strand, London
Strand, London
Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...
on 12 April 1678, and was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields
St Martin-in-the-Fields is an Anglican church at the north-east corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. Its patron is Saint Martin of Tours.-Roman era:Excavations at the site in 2006 led to the discovery of a grave dated about 410...
.
His widow died in Cumberlow in 1689.