Flatman, Thomas

Responding in formal and deferential terms to the Duke's "generous approbation" to his elegy on Ormonde's son, the Earl of Ossory, with a further grandiloquent tribute to him ("...the Glory, & the Delight of the English Nation..."), 1 page, 4to ( 195 x 155 mm), integral address leaf with fine red wax seal impression, London, 29 May 1681, endorsed in Ormonde's hand; seal tear, repaired, remains of former mounting. Red cloth folder.

Butler family, Dukes and later Marquesses of Ormonde — Sotheby's, 19 July 1994, lot 271 ("Sold By Order of the Trustees of the Ormonde Settled Estates"). acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

"...I ought withal, to acknowledg that it was neither Nature, nor Art in me, but the greatness of the Subject that enforc'd that Poem..."

Thomas Flatman (1635-1688) was a poet and a miniature painter, an early member of the Royal Society, and a lawyer. He was a friend of Abraham Cowley and imitated the Pindaric form developed by Cowley. The subject of one of his Pindaric odes was Thomas Butler, Earl of Ossory, who died on 30 July 1680. The ode was published in London and Dublin and is said to have pleased Ormonde so greatly that he presented its author with a diamond ring — possibly the occasion of the present letter. We have no record of any other letter by Flatman ever having appeared for sale at auction.