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…
“What is most particular, by its nearer affinity with us, hath greatest influence upon us.”
Neighbourhood:
Cavalier Poets, Love Poets, Metaphysical Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Despair
In the vast and glittering tapestry of Renaissance music, where names like Palestrina, Byrd, and Dowland shimmer with canonical brilliance, there strides a figure less polished by posterity, yet no less compelling — Tobias Hume. Born in 1579, likely in the shadowed alleys of London or perhaps the rolling countryside of northern England, Hume emerges not as a cloistered churchman or courtly favorite, but as a man of t…
“My studies are far from servile imitations, I robbe no others inventions... These are mine own Phansies expressed by my proper Genius, which if thou dost dislike, let me see thine.”
Neighbourhood:
Elizabethan Poets, Lute-Song Composers
Emotional landscape: Irony, Joy, Sensuality
