Born at Whitchurch, in Dorsetshire, educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, became secretary to Sir Thomas Randolph, ambassador at the Court of Russia, and lived into the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. He published in 1567 two translations—one of “The Heroical Epistles of Ovid,” six of them translated into blank verse, and the others into four-lined stanzas; the other of the Latin “Eclogues of Mantuan,” an Italian poet, who had died in 1516. In 1570 there appeared a volume of his own poems, as “Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs, and Sonets; with a Discourse of the friendly Affections of Tymetes to Pindara his Ladie.” Turbervile takes a pleasant place among the elder Elizabethan poets. He wrote also books of Falconrie and Hunting, and made versions from the Italian, notably ten “Tragical Tales translated by Turbervile, in Time of his Troubles, out of sundrie Italians, with the Argument and L’Envoye to each Tale,” published in 1576.

  Broken the ice for our quainter poets that now write.

  Occasional felicity of diction, a display of classical allusion, and imagery taken from the amusements and customs of the age, are not wanting; but the warmth, the energy, and the enthusiasm of poetry are sought for in vain.

  Certainly the best poet of the time (always excepting Sackville) next to Gascoigne, and perhaps Gascoigne’s equal.

  He himself writes with becoming diffidence of his poetical pretensions in the epilogue to his “Epitaphs and Sonets,” where he describes himself as paddling along the banks of the stream of Helicon, like a sculler against the tide, for fear of the deep stream and the “mighty hulkes” that adventured out so far. His fondness for the octave stanza would probably recommend him to the majority of modern readers, and there is something decidedly enlivening (if not seldom crude and incongruous) in the blithe and ballad-like lilt of his verse. He did good service to our literature in familiarising the employment of Italian models, he himself showing a wide knowledge of the literature of the Latin speech, and of the Greek Anthology; and also as a pioneer in the use of blank verse and in the record of impressions of travel.