JOSHUA

See also:

• SYLVESTER, JAMES
• JOSHUA SYLVESTER (1563–1618)

SYLVESTER (1563–1618)  , English poet, the son of a Kentish clothier, was born in 1563 . In his tenth year he was sent to school at Southampton, where he gained a knowledge of Frencn . After about three years at school he appears to have been put to business, and in 1591 the title-page of his Yvry states that he was in the service of the Merchant Adventurers' Company . He was for a short time a land steward, and in 16o6 Prince Henry gave him a small pension as a kind of court poet . In 1613 he obtained a position as secretary to the Merchant Adventurers . He was stationed at Middelburg, in the Low Countries, where he died on the 28th of September 1618 . He translated into English heroic couplets the scriptural epic of Guillaume du Bartas . His Essay of the Second Week was published in 1598; and in 1604 The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth . The ornate style of the original offered no difficulty to Sylvester, who was himself a disciple of the Euphuists and added many adornments of his own invention . The Sepmaines of Du Bartas appealed most to his English and German co-religionists, and the translation was immensely popular . It has often been suggested that Milton owed something in the conception of Paradise Lost to Sylvester's translation . His popularity ceased with the Restoration, and Dryden called his verse " abominable fustian." His works were reprinted by Dr A .

B .

Grosart (188o) in the Chertsey Worthies Library." See also C . Dunster's Considerations on Milton's early Reading ("Boo) .