Robert Codrington (translator)


Robert Codrington was an English author, known as a translator.

Life

From a Gloucestershire family, Codrington was elected a demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, 29 July 1619, at the age of 17, and took the degree of M.A. in 1626. After travelling, he returned home, married, and settled in Norfolk. In May 1641 he was imprisoned by the House of Commons for publishing an elegy on the Earl of Strafford.
In later life Codrington lived in London. According to Anthony Wood, he died in the Great Plague of 1665.

Works

Codrington was a prolific writer and translator. His best known work was the Life and Death of Robert, Earl of Essex, London 1646, reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany; Anthony Wood regarded it as a partisan parliamentarian work. It was compiled using contemporary pamphlets. He wrote also the following works:
Translated from French:
Translated from Latin:
He was also the author of the Life of Aesop in French and Latin, prefixed to Thomas Philipot's Aesop's Fables, and translated The Troublesome and Hard Adventures in Love, attributed to Miguel de Cervantes.
Codrington's English works were:
The Happy Mind, or a compendious direction to attain to the same, London, 1640, is attributed to him, and the following poems: Seneca's Book of Consolation to Marcia, translated into an English poem, 1635 ; An Elegy to the Memory of Margaret, Lady Smith ; and An Elegy to the Memory of Elizabeth, Lady Ducey.