FLETCHER, Phineas, an English poet who enjoyed considerable popularity in his own day, but regarding whom few particulars have descended to posterity. He was the
son of Dr. Giles Fletcher, who, on account of his abilities, was entrusted by Queen Elizabeth with several important missions, especially one to Russia, in which he negotiated a treaty highly advantageous to England. He published an account of The Russe Commonwealth, which was at first suppressed, but afterwards reprinted in 1643. Phineas, his eldest son, was educated at Eton, and in 1600 was elected to King's College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of bachelor and master of arts. Having entered into holy orders, he received the living of Hilgay in Norfolk in the year 1621. It appears from Blomefield's Norfolk, that he continued to officiate in his clerical capacity for twenty-nine years, and it is probable that he died here. These are all the facts known regarding Phineas Fletcher, a poet who was styled "the Spenser of his age," but whose fame is scarcely equal to his merit. He wrote Sieclides, a piscatory drama, which was printed anonymously in 1631. In the year following he printed at Cambridge a work entitled De literatis antiquæ Britanniae, præsertim quæ doctrina claruerunt, quique collegia Cantabrigiæ fundaverunt, 12mo. In the year following he printed, in one vol. 4to, his Purple Island, Piscatory Eclogues, and Miscellanies. These poems have all been reprinted, but not frequently. They are, however, to be found in Anderson's British Poets.
The character of Phineas Fletcher appears to have been mild and amiable, and his contemporaries passed liberal encomiums upon him for his learning and piety. As a poet he possesses more merit than posterity seems disposed to attribute to him. The Purple Island is his longest and his best production. It is an allegorical poem, of which man is the subject. The first five cantos may be entitled the anatomy of the human body in rhyme. In the remainder of the poem the poet quits the dissecting-room for the academic grove of intellectual philosophy, and the learning of the schools. Although the design is bad, and the reader sickens over anatomical details and abstract subtleties, it is impossible not to admire the ingenuity with which the writer has invested them with the flowers of fancy and of poetry. There is a profusion of images; and although, as might have been expected, many of his allegorical personations are too elaborately drawn and too highly coloured, some of them are distinguished by a boldness of outline, a majesty of manner, a brilliancy of tint, a propriety of attribute, and an air of life, which are rarely met with in modern productions, and rival the best things of the kind even in Spencer, the author from whom he caught his inspiration. Too often, indeed, his conceptions are incongruous, and his conceits fantastical; but many beautiful thoughts are interspersed throughout, and the whole is enriched with a vein of genuine poetry.