{{Short description|English poet (1563–1618)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} thumb|right|200px|Josuah Sylvester '''Josuah Sylvester''' (1563 – 28 September 1618) was an English poet.

==Biography==

Sylvester was the son of a Kentish clothier. In his tenth year he was sent to school at King Edward VI School, Southampton, where he gained a knowledge of French. After about three years at school, he appears to have been put to business, and in 1591 the title-page of his ''Yvry'' states that he was in the service of the Merchant Adventurers' Company.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

He was for a short time a land steward, and in 1606 Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales gave him a small pension as a kind of court poet. In 1613 he obtained a position as secretary to the Merchant Adventurers. He was stationed at Middelburg, in the Low Countries, where he died.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

==Works==

He translated into English heroic couplets the scriptural epic of Guillaume du Bartas.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

{{cquote|''Our bisexed Parents, free from sin,<br /> In Eden did their double birth begin.''|||''Du Bartas his divine weekes and workes'' (1608)<ref>''Du Bartas his divine weekes and workes'' (1608) 267</ref>}} His ''Essay of the Second Week'' was published in 1598; and in 1604 ''The Divine Weeks of the World's Birth''. The ornate style of the original offered no difficulty to Sylvester, who was himself a disciple of the Euphuists and added many adornments of his own invention. The ''Sepmaines'' of Du Bartas appealed most to his English and German co-religionists, and the translation was immensely popular. It has often been suggested that John Milton owed something in the conception of ''Paradise Lost'' to Sylvester's translation. His popularity ceased with the Restoration, and John Dryden called his verse "abominable fustian."{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

His works were reprinted by A. B. Grosart (1880) in the ''Chertsey Worthies Library''. See also Charles Dunster, ''Considerations on Milton's early Reading'' (1800).{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}

==References== {{Reflist}} *{{EB1911|wstitle=Sylvester, Joshua|volume=26|page=284}}

==External links== {{Commons}} {{wikisource|works=or}} {{Wikiquote}} *[https://archive.org/details/JoshuaSlyesterWorkes1621 Digitized copy of Josuah Sylvester's Workes, 1621] by John Geraghty

{{Authority control}}

{{EB1911 article with no significant updates}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sylvester, Josuah}} Category:Date of birth missing Category:1563 births Category:1618 deaths Category:16th-century English male writers Category:16th-century English poets Category:16th-century English translators Category:17th-century English male writers Category:17th-century English poets Category:17th-century English translators Category:English male poets Category:People from Lambourn Category:People from Middelburg, Zeeland Category:People educated at King Edward VI School, Southampton Category:Writers from Berkshire Category:Writers from Kent