Thomas Flatman

an eminent Poet of his time, was born in Aldersgate street in the Suburb of London, educated in Grammar learning in Wykehams school near Winchester, elected Fellow of New Coll. in 1654, left it before he took a degree, retired to the Inner Temple, of which he became a Barrester and equally ingenious in the two noble faculties of Poetry and Painting or Limning, as several choice pieces shew, the titles of the former of which are these.

A Pindariqu’ Ode on the death of the truly valiant and loyal George Duke of Albemarle late General of his Majesties Forces, &c. Lond. 1670. in 3 sh. in fol. reprinted in his Poems and Songs following.

Poems and Songs. Lond. 1674. oct. there again with additions and amendments, 1676. oct. and lastly with more additions in oct. 1682, with his picture before them.

A Pindariqu’ Ode on the death of Thomas Earl of Ossory. Lond. 1681. in 2 sh. in fol. Which Earl (the eldest son of James Duke of Ormonde) died at Westminster to the great grief of many, at about 7 of the clock in the evening of the 30 of Jul. 1680. This Poem, that pleased the author best, as it did the generality, was printed in the last edition of his Songs and Poems. Soon after the publication of the said Ode, it was read and perused by the said Duke, who being in an high manner pleased with it, he sent to the author a mourning Ring, with a Diamond in it, worth a 100 l, as a reward for his labour and ingenuity.

On the death of K. Ch. 2. a Pindariqu’ Ode. Lond. 1685. in two sh. in fol. At the latter end of which are Gratulatory Verses on K. Jam. 2. In the year 1660 came out under the two letters of T. F. a book called—Virtus rediviva. A Panegyrick on the late King Charles the first of ever blessed memory, attended with several ingenious pieces from the same pen. Whether Thom. Flatman was th [•] author of these Poems I cannot justly tell, because they are not among his Songs and Poems. In the next year was published a piece in prose, intit. Don Juan Lamberto: or, a comical history of the late times, with a wooden cut before it containing the pictures of Giant Desborough with a great club in his right hand and of Lambert, both leading, under the arms, the meek Knight, i. e. Richard Cromwell; which book vending very fast, a second part was added by the same hand, with the Giant Husonio before it, and printed with the second impression of the first part. Lond. 1661. qu. To both which parts (very witty and satyrical) tho the disguis’d name of Montelion Knight of the Oracle, &c. is set to them, yet the acquaintance and contemporaries of Th. Flatman always confidently aver’d that he the said Flatman was the author of them. He also translated from Lat. into English, The Epistle of Laodomia to Protesilaus; which is in Ovids Epistles translated from Lat. into Engl. by several hands.—Lond. 1681. oct. sec. edit. At length, he having lived to the age of 53 or thereabouts, gave way to fate in his house in Fleetstreet, Lond. on the eighth day of Decemb. in sixteen hundred eighty and eight,1688. and was three days after buried in the Church of S. Bride alias Bridget, near to the rails of the Communion-table, under a gravestone with inscription and verses thereon, which he had sometime before caused to be laid on his son, there buried. This person (whose father, a Clerk in the Chancery, was then living in the 80 year of his age or more) was in his younger days much against marriage, to the dislike of his said father, and made a song describing the cumbrances of it, beginning thus:

Like a dog with a bottle ty’d close to his tail,

Like a Tory in a bog, or a thief in a jayle, &c.