Horace Keats echoed the opening of Horace's "Epodes" 14 in the opening lines of "Ode to a Nightingale". The Roman poet was presented in the nineteenth century as an honorary English gentleman. William Thackeray produced a version of "Odes" in which Horace's questionable 'boy' became 'Lucy', and Gerard Manley Hopkins translated the boy innocently as 'child'. Horace was translated by Sir Theodore Martin (biographer of Prince Albert) but minus some ungentlemanly verses, such as the erotic "Odes" and "Epodes" 8 and 12. Lord Lytton produced a popular translation and William Gladstone also wrote translations during his last days as Prime Minister.
Thomas Watson (poet) Thomas Watson (poet) Thomas Watson (1555–1592) was an English poet and translator, and the pioneer of the English madrigal. His lyrics aside, he wrote largely in Latin, being the first to translate Sophocles' "Antigone" from the Greek. His incorporation of Italianate forms into English lyric verse influenced a generation of English writers, including Shakespeare, who was referred to in 1595 by William Covell as "Watson's heyre" [heir]. He wrote both English and Latin compositions, and was particularly admired for the ones in Latin. His unusual 18-line sonnets were influential, although the form was not generally imitated. Thomas Watson was born