and Poictiers, who had been one of Farnaby's ushers. On the death of Aleyn in 1640, his pupil, being intended for the army, was sent to complete his education abroad, and had travelled in France and part of Italy, when his father's illness obliged him to return. After his father's death in 1641, he succeeded to the clerkship of his majesty's ordnance, the reversion of which had been procured for him in 1638; but the rebellion prevented his retaining it long. Being a Roman catholic, and firmly attached to the king, he was ejected by a warrant of the house of Lords in April or May, 1642, and harassed by a long and expensive confinement in the custody of the usher of the black rod.

On his release, he determined to follow the fortunes of his royal master, who made him commissary general of the artillery, in which post he witnessed the battle of Edge-hill, and afterwards attended the king at Oxford, where he was created master of Arts, December 20, 1642. Here he took such opportunities as his office permitted of pursuing his studies, and did not leave Oxford until June, 1646, when it was surrendered to the parliamentary forces. He then went to London, and was entertained by a near relation, John Povey, esq. at his chambers in the Middle Temple. Being plundered of all his property, and what is ever most dear to a man of learning, his ample library, he would probably have sunk under his accumulated sufferings, had he not met with his kinsman, Thomas Stanley esq.* who was a sufferer in the same cause, and secreted near the same place. But some degree of toleration must have been extended to him soon after, as in 1648 he published his translation of Seneca's Medea, and in the same year Seneca's answer to Lucilius' question, "Why good men

Father of the learned Thomas Stanley, esq. Phillips dedicated his Theatrum Poetarum to Stanley and Sherburne. C.

LIFE OF SHERBURNE.

277

suffer misfortunes, seeing there is a Divine Providence?" In 1651, he published his Poems and Translations, with a Latin dedication to Mr. Stanley ; and when sir George Savile, afterwards Marquis of Halifax, returned from his travels about that time, he appointed Mr. Sherburne superintendant of his affairs, and by the recommendation of his mother, lady Savile, he was afterwards made travelling tutor to her nephew, sir John Coventry. With this gentleman he visited various parts of the continent, from March, 1654, to October, 1659. On the Restoration, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterwards lord Shaftesbury, put another into his place in the ordnance; but on Mr. Sherburne's application to the house of peers, it was restored to him, although its emoluments were soon greatly retrenched.

The peace of the country being now re-established, he appears to have applied himself to a studious life, and replenished his library, which, according to Wood, was esteemed one of the most considerable belonging to any gentleman in or near London. In 1675, he published "The Sphere of Marcus Manilius, made an English poem with Annotations, and an Astronomical Index," which was honoured by the very particular and liberal approbation of the royal society and in 1679, he published a translation of Seneca's Troades; or the Royal Captives, and he left in manuscript a translation of Hippolitus, which two, with the Medea before mentioned, he endeavoured to prove were all that Seneca wrote.

Collier, whose dictionary is in less reputation than it deserves, and which contains many curious facts not easily to be found elsewhere, ascertains Sherburne's death from an epitaph which he wrote for himself. He died in Nov. 4, 1702, and was interred on the 8th in the chapel belonging to the Tower of London.

In Sherburne's poems considerable genius may be discovered, but impeded by the prevailing taste of his age for strained metaphors and allusions. Poetical lovers then thought no compliments too extravagant, and ransacked the remotest and apparently most barren sources for what were considered as striking thoughts, but which appear to us unnatural, if not ridiculous. He appears to have derived most of his reputation from his translations. He was a man of classical learning and a critic, and frequently conveys the sense of his author with considerable spirit.

SIR EDWARD SHERBURNE.

TRANSLATIONS.

SALMACIS.

BY SIGNEUR GIROLAMO PRETI.

OUT OF ITALIAN.

WHERE clear Pactolus glides through Phrygian

lands

'Tween banks of emeralds, on golden sands,
And in his course does Lydia's confines trace
With humid feet, and with a slippery pace,
The bed-rid earth, to ease herself (opprest
With her own weight, and crampt with her long rest)
Her vaster limbs first stretches to a plain,
Then to a mountain lifts her head again;

A mountain; such for height, as, if ’midst those
Which to scale Heaven by the bold giants chose
(Pelion, Olympus, Ossa) plac'd it were,
Would like a cedar 'mongst low shrubs appear.

So far above the clouds his head doth rise,
That his green locks no summer dripping spies
With rain, his face no winter does behold
Mask'd with a snowy muffler 'gainst the cold.
The proud usurper seems as if he meant,
Scorning his low and baser element,
To make the airy region his own,
And plant for Juno an imperial throne.
Or like some new Briareus he stands,

[hands,

Arm'd with more large-spread oaks than he with And menaces the stars; his sides and back,

Woods which ne'er shade, fields which ne'er verdure lack,

With a green mantle cloth, whose fringed base
A hundred brooks with streams of silver lace.
At foot of this tall rock, a cave disclos'd
It self; a cave, shady and dark : suppos'd
The sole design of Nature, as th' effect,

Where she both workman play'd, and architect.
Over whose gaping mouth, her hand had hewn
Out of the living rock a lip of stone

Cut like a bending arch; whence for more grace
(As 'twere the native porter of the place)
Green ivy wreath'd in many a subtle knot
Hung dangling: fore the entry of the grot
With streams of liquid pearl, (the humid son
Of some large torrent) a small brook does run,
Which, on the pebbles as it purling plays,
Does so harmonious a murmur raise,
Tun'd to so just a pitch, as dares defy

The birds' sweet notes, and with the lute may vie,
I' th' midst of this vast cave, (which seems to prop
With its arch'd back th' whole mountain) tow'rd
the top