SOURCE: Spencer, Christopher. “Short Poems and Translations of Ovid and Juvenal” and “A Poem upon Tea.” In Nahum Tate, pp. 41-53; 141-45. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1972.

In the following essay, Spencer discusses the two editions of Tate's Poems and his translations of Latin classics, which the critic says show that Tate was not particularly creative or original but had considerable talent for collaboration. The critic then examines Tate's mock-heroic poem, A Poem upon Tea, and offers a brief assessment of the author's place in English literary history.

Short Poems and Translations of Ovid and Juvenal

Of the sixty-nine pieces in the first edition of Tate's Poems (1677), about half belong to the tradition of melancholy verse that reaches back to the early years of the seventeenth century and forward to the period of Tate's laureateship around 1700, a time whose “widespread fondness for melancholy subjects in literature” and for funeral...