Historian, literary translator, poet, physician, devotional writer, and diplomat Richard Stanihurst began his career in print in 1570 with a work on Aristotelian logic, Harmonia seu catena dialectica, in Porphyrianas institutiones, summam difficiliorum quaestionum et solutionum breviter et perspicuè complectens, ex optimis autoribus undecunque conflata (Harmony, or A Series of Dialectics on Porphyry's Institutiones, Including a Brief and Clear Summary of the More Difficult Questions and Solutions, Conflated from All of the Best Authors). His scholarly achievements were admired almost universally by his contemporaries. Even a hostile witness, Barnaby Rich, was compelled to admit that Irish people held Stanihurst in "great esteem for his learning and for his wisdom" and that "they do equal him to the seven sages of Greece, and do think him worthy to be called the eighth wise man." Described by King Philip II of Spain as "a man of many secrets and endowed...