Godolphin, Sidney

(1610-1643)

   Born into a wealthy family in Breage, Cornwall, he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford (1624-27) and at one of the Inns of Court, London. He was a member of Parliament several times, serving in both the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640. During the first Civil War he joined the Royalist forces of Sir Ralph Hopton and was killed in action while advancing into Devon. He was buried in the chancel of Okehampton Church. The Passion of Dido for Aeneas, a translation from Virgil's fourth book of the Aeneid, apparently unfinished at his death, was completed and published by his co-author Edmund Waller (see entry) in 1658, and was included in the fourth volume of Dryden's Miscellany Poems (1716). Thomas Hobbes eulogized him in Leviathan (1660). Some of his other poems: "A Dialogue Between a Lover and His Mistress," "Chloris, It Is Not Thy Disdain," "Elegy on John Donne," Epitaph Upon the Lady Rich," "Hymn" (for Christmas), "On Ben Jonson," "Song: Or Love Me Less, or Love Me More," "Song: No More Unto My Thoughts Appear."

   Sources: Ben Jonson and the Cavalier Poets. Hugh MacLaen, ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1974. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: A Poetic Record from Chaucer to Yeats. David Hopkins, ed. Routledge, 1990. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse 1509-1659. David Norbrook, ed. Penguin Books, 1992. The Poems of Sidney Godolphin. William Dighton, ed. Clarendon Press, 1931.