John Healey (died 1610) was an English translator. Among scanty biographical facts, according to a statement by his friend the printer

Thomas Thorpe Thomas Thorpe ( 1569 – 1625) was an English publisher, most famous for publishing Shakespeare's sonnets and several works by Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson. His publication of the sonnets has long been controversial. Nineteenth-century ...

, Healey was ill in 1609 and was dead in the following year.

Works

To three of his translations,

, the printer of Shakespeare's sonnets, prefixed dedications. His works are: * ‘Philip Mornay, Lord of Plessis, his Teares. For the death of his Sonne. Unto his Wife, Charlotte Baliste. Englished by John Healey. London (G. Eld),’ 1609. Healey dedicates this tract to ‘my most honoured and constant friend, Maister John Coventry,’ with whom he has ‘thus long sayled in a deepe darke sea of misfortune.’ * ‘The Discovery of a Newe World, or a Descripcon of the South Indyes hitherto unknowne. By an English Mercury. London, for Ed. Blount and W. Barrett,’ n.d. This was entered to Thomas Thorpe in the ‘Stationers' Register’ on 18 January 1609. It is a humorous version in English of Joseph Hall's satire '' Mundus Alter et Idem''. *‘Epictetus his Manuall And Cebes his Table. Out of the Greeke Originall by Jo. Healey. Printed for Th. Thorpe,’ 1610, 24mo. This contains a dedication by ‘Th. Th.’ (Thomas Thorpe) to

John Florio Giovanni Florio (1552–1625), known as John Florio, was an English linguist, poet, writer, translator, lexicographer, and royal language tutor at the Court of James I. He is recognised as the most important Renaissance humanist in England. F ...

, who is said to have ‘procured an impregnable protection’ for Healey's ‘apprentises essay.’ A second edition appeared in 1616 (printed by George Purslowe for Edward Blount), to which a version of

Theophrastus Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...

's ‘Characters,’ separately paged, was added. A dedication by Thorpe to the

Earl of Pembroke Earl of Pembroke is a title in the Peerage of England that was first created in the 12th century by King Stephen of England. The title, which is associated with Pembroke, Pembrokeshire in West Wales, has been recreated ten times from its origin ...

takes the place of the dedication to Florio. * ‘St. Augustine of the Citie of God: with the learned Commentarie of Jo. Lod. Vives. Englished by J. H.,’ London (George Eld), 1610, folio. The dedication by Thorpe to William, earl of Pembroke, speaks of Healey as dead, and apologises for consequent imperfections in the translation. A second edition, revised, was issued in 1620, with a new dedication by

William Crashaw William Crashaw or Butt (1572–1626) was an English cleric, academic, and poet. Life The son of Richard Crashaw of Handsworth, South Yorkshire, by his wife, Helen, daughter of John Routh of Waleswood, he was born at Handsworth, and baptised the ...

(the father of the poet) to Pembroke and his brother Philip. Healey followed the elaborate edition of

Juan Luis Vives Juan Luis Vives March ( la, Joannes Lodovicus Vives, lit=Juan Luis Vives; ca, Joan Lluís Vives i March; nl, Jan Ludovicus Vives; 6 March 6 May 1540) was a Spanish ( Valencian) scholar and Renaissance humanist wh ...

, translating his commentary, and turning into English verse the numerous quotations by St. Augustine and by Vives from Greek and Latin poets. It was the only English translation of ''

The City of God ''On the City of God Against the Pagans'' ( la, De civitate Dei contra paganos), often called ''The City of God'', is a book of Christian philosophy written in Latin by Augustine of Hippo in the early 5th century AD. The book was in response ...

'' until the appearance in 1871 and following years of a translation of all Augustine's works under the editorship of Dr. Marcus Dods. Dods, in his preface to the ‘De Civitate Dei,’ speaks of Healey's translation as ‘exceptionally bad.’ The ‘Epictetus’ is terse and clear, and the cumbrous periods of the ‘City of God’ are typical Elizabethan prose. A reprint of the 1610 edition of the ‘City of God,’ without the commentary of Vives, was published in the ‘Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature’ (2 vols. 1890).

References

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Healey, John Year of birth missing 16th-century births 1610 deaths 17th-century English translators 17th-century English male writers English male non-fiction writers