John Polwhele's Horatian Translations

Abstract

The poems and translations of John Polwhele ( c.1606–1672) are preserved in a single autograph manuscript, Bodleian MS English poetry f. 16. Some have received intermittent scholarly attention in recent times, often on account of Polwhele's admiration for and emulation of Ben Jonson. As well as other classical translations, Polwhele's manuscript includes eleven poems and passages from Horace, nearly all of them versions of odes and epodes. A handful have been printed or partially printed before. The purpose of this contribution is to provide transcribed texts of the complete set in a uniform way in a single document. As well as the Jonsonian connections of Polwhele's Horatian writings, they are of scholarly interest because they use Horace as a vehicle for comment on the translator's own times, including events of the English civil war period such as the regicide of 1649.