Thomas Stanley

Sir Thomas Stanley (1625 – 12 April 1678) was an English author and translator. Life He was born in Cumberlow, Hertfordshire, the son of Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow 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, entering the Middle Temple in 1664 to study law. He was wealthy, married early, and travelled much in Europe. 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. Writing Stanley is the last of the metaphysical poets; born into a later generation than that of Edmund Waller and John Denham, he rejected their influence in prosody and forms of fancy. He admired Moschus, Ausonius, and the Pervigilium Veneris; among the moderns, Joannes Secundus, Góngora and Giambattista Marino.