Thomas Phaer's achievements are of three distinct kinds: legal, medical, and literary. As a poet Phaer collaborated on the first edition of A Mirror for Magistrates; he also translated more of Virgil's Aeneid than any Englishman before him, publishing seven books in 1558, and completing two more books and part of the tenth before his death in 1560. Although the complete Scots Aeneid of Gavin Douglas appeared in 1553 and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey's translation of books 2 and 4 in 1557, Phaer's Seven First Books of the Aeneid (1558) and his Nine First Books of the Aeneid (1562) marked the most complete English versions of Virgil's poem by a single hand until John Vicars's Twelve Aeneids of Virgil (1632). Phaer also translated notable medical and legal works, including a guide to the compilation of briefs or writs known as the Natura Brevium (On the Nature of Writs) (1530") and The Regiment of Life (1543"), a popular handbook...