Thomas Forrest (translator)

Thomas Forrest (fl. 1580) was an English author and translator. He translated three orations of Isocrates in A Perfite Looking Glasse for all Estates, imprinted at London by Thomas Purfoote in 1580.

Works

Thomas Forrest was author of A Perfite Looking Glasse for all Estates: most excellently and eloquently set forth by the famous and learned Oratour Isocrates, as contained in three Orations of Morall Instructions, written in the Greeke tongue, of late yeeres: Translated into Latine by … Hieronimus Wolfius. And nowe Englished … with sundrie examples of pithy sentences, both of Princes and Philosophers, gathered and collected out of divers writers, Coted in the margent, approbating the Author's intent. … Imprinted in Newgate Market, within the new Rents, at the Signe of the Lucrece, 1580. The volume is a quarto of forty-six leaves, and is dedicated by the translator, Tho. Forrest, to Sir Thomas Bromley. There are also prefixed:

• "An Epistle to the Reader";
• "The Author's Enchomion upon Sir Thomas Bromley";
• "J. D. in Commendation of the Author";
• "In Praise of the Author, S. Norreis";
• "The Booke to the Reader".

The volume is probably 'certen orations of Isocrates' found in the Stationers' Register under date 4 January 1580. Ritson puts Forrest among the English poets because of the "Enchomion" above mentioned.

Sources

• Ritson, Joseph (1802). Bibliographia Poetica: A Catalogue of Engleish Poets. London: C. Roworth, for G. and W. Nicol. p. 209.
• Botley, P. (2004). "Forrest, Thomas (fl. 1580), translator". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9890. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Forrest, Thomas (1580). A Perfite Looking Glasse for all Estates. London: Thomas Purfoote.

Attribution:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bayne, Ronald (1889). "Forrest, Thomas (fl.1580)". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 20. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 3.

Further reading

• Ames, Joseph (1786). Herbert, William (ed.). Typographical Antiquities. Vol. 2. London: Printed for the Editor. p. 997.
• Arber, Edward, ed. (1875). A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640, A.D. Vol. 2. London: Privately Printed. pp. 165, 363.
• Hunter, Joseph. Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum. Vol. 3. p. 296. (Add. MS. 24489).
• Lathrop, Henry Burrowes (1967). Translations from the Classics into English from Caxton to Chapman, 1477–1620. New York, NY: Octagon Books, Inc. pp. 206–7.