published a fine edition of Waller, with notes which Johnson considers even too copious. He died in August 1730, according to some accounts of gout, but in fact, Pope tells Broome, of want of exercise. He had translated the first book of Oppian, but the version appears to be lost, and had begun a tragedy on the subject of Dion, in which he had made little progress. Pope wrote his epitaph with point and feeling, but borrowed the first couplet from Crashaw.
Fenton is styled by Johnson ‘an excellent versifier and a good poet.’ He had, indeed, caught the trick of Pope's versification with such success that it has never been possible to distinguish his share of the version of the ‘Odyssey’ from Pope's by internal evidence. It is questionable whether he deserves the appellation of poet. His most considerable pieces, the ‘Hymn to the Sun,’ the ode to Lord Gower, the elegy on Lord Blandford, the ‘Epistles,’ are at most agreeable exercises in metre, and his general good taste does not preserve him from some rather ludicrous lapses. Perhaps his most memorable couplet is one in which he completely inverts the conclusions of modern science respecting the origin of the human species:—
Foes to the tribe from which they trace their clan
As monkeys draw their pedigree from man.
His tragedy exhibits considerable ability, but rather that of a playwright than of a poet. Mariamne's fate had already been the subject of one of Calderon's greatest plays, of which Fenton probably never heard. His lighter pieces are not deficient in sprightliness, but the humour is far inferior to that of his model Prior. On the whole he must be classed with those to whom poetry has been rather an amusement than an inspiration or an art. The testimony to his character is very high and uniform. ‘He was never,’ says his pupil Orrery, ‘named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree amiable and excellent.’ In face of this evidence, which is amply confirmed by particular anecdotes, the assertion that he spoke ungratefully of Pope may be dismissed as groundless. He seems to have had no fault except the indolence which shortened his life.
[Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Pope's Correspondence; Chalmers's Dict.]
FENTON, Sir GEOFFREY (1539?–1608), translator and statesman, was son of Henry Fenton of Fenton in Nottinghamshire, and of Cecily, daughter of John Beaumont of Coleorton in Leicestershire. The details of his early life are unknown, but he must have received a very good education, obtaining a good mastery of the French and Latin languages, probably also of the Italian and Spanish. He also seems to have been connected in some way with the families of Lord Burghley and the Earl of Leicester. In 1567 he was residing in Paris, whence he dedicates to Lady Mary Sydney a collection of novels translated from Boaisteau and Belleforest's ‘Histoires Tragiques, extraictes des œuvres Italiennes de Bandel,’ and published by Fenton under the title of ‘Certaine Tragicall Discourses written oute of Frenche and Latine by Geffraie Fenton no lesse profitable than pleasaunt, and of like necessitye to al degrees that take pleasure in antiquityes or forraine reportes.’ This seems to have been his earliest work, and was a noteworthy contribution to the literature of the day. Warton styled it ‘perhaps the most capital miscellany of this kind.’ A reissue, edited by R. Langton Douglas, came out in 1898. Other translations from the French followed, viz. ‘A Discourse of the Civile Warres and late Troubles in France,’ 1570; ‘Actes of Conference in Religion, or Disputations holden at Paris betweene two Papistes of Sorbon and two godly Ministers of the Church,’ 1571; ‘Monophylo, a Philosophical Discourse and Division of Love,’ 1572; ‘A Forme of Christian Pollicie, gathered out of French,’ 1574; ‘Golden Epistles, gathered as well out of the Remaynder of Guevaraes workes as other authours, Latine, Frenche, and Italian,’ 1575, a kind of supplement to Hellowes' translation into English of the ‘Epistles of Guevara,’ already published in 1574; ‘An Epistle or Godly Admonition, sent to the Pastors of the Flemish Church in Antwerp, exhorting them to concord with other ministers, written by Antony de Carro,’ 1578. In 1579 he published his last and most monumental work in the translation from the French of Guicciardini's ‘History of the Wars of Italy.’ This was an undertaking of immense labour, and had great vogue in its time. It is probably the work alluded to by Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's friend, in one of his letters, where he says, ‘Even Guicciardine's silver Historie and Ariosto's golden Cantes growe out of request’ (Warton, loc. cit.) This work Fenton dedicated to Queen Elizabeth.
In 1580 Fenton quitted the sphere of literature for that of politics, and followed his elder brother, Edward Fenton [q. v.], a captain in Sir William Pelham's campaign in Munster, into Ireland. It is possible that he also served under Pelham, as the latter writes to Walsingham on 16 Feb. 1580–1 to recommend Fenton as secretary to the new lord deputy, Arthur, lord Grey de Wilton, and on 22 July Fenton writes from Limerick to
