William Browne of Tavistock, born about 1588 and traditionally thought to have died about 1650, is one of the most attractive and elusive figures in early seventeenth-century English poetry. He was not a major public presence on the scale of Ben Jonson, John Donne, or George Wither, nor did he leave behind the unusually full documentary record that allows historians to reconstruct the lives of some contemporaries. Ye…
“You have given such a maintenance to that repute which your former deportment had begotten that it will need no other livelihood than a chronicle.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Love Poets, Nature Poets, Renaissance Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Joy, Longing
Thomas Stanley, born on 3 September 1625 and dead on 12 April 1678, was one of the most cultivated English writers of the seventeenth century: a lyric poet of the Cavalier age, a translator of Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish literature, an editor of Aeschylus, a patron and friend of writers, and the author of the first substantial history of philosophy written in English. His name has never carried the imm…
“When advanced to such height wee look down to the bottom from which philosophy first took her rise, and see how great a progresse she hath made.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
