Sir Richard Fanshawe was an extraordinarily accomplished linguist, known chiefly for his translations from Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish and to and from Latin. His models were Horace, Virgil, and Edmund Spenser, the last particularly influential in his translation (1655) of Luiz de Camões's Os Lusíadas (1572). An ardent Royalist, Fanshawe alternated periods of intense service to a beleaguered monarchy with years of imprisonment, dislocation, and forced idleness, during which he produced the translations for which he is best known. His small collection of English poems places him in the Caroline courtly tradition; largely political in content, the poems were intended for the ear of Charles I and the young Prince of Wales (later Charles II), whom he served during the Civil War as mentor and minister. Fanshawe's loyalty was rewarded after the Restoration when he was appointed ambassador to Portugal and Spain and admitted to the...