STERNHOLD, THOMAS, was born in Hampshire towards the latter half of the fifteenth century. He had his education at Oxford, was chosen groom of the robes to Henry VIII. and retained the same office under his successor, and died in August 1549.
Sternhold's only claim to distinction is his having executed part of an English metrical version of the Psalms usually attached to the Book of Common Prayer, and characterized by all the bad taste and vulgar bathos of a street-ballad. His version of fifty-one of the Psalms was published after his death in 1549, and bore the title of, All such Psalm of David as Thomas Sternholde did in his Lyfe drance into English Metre, 8vo, London. Sternhold was likewise the author of Certain Chapters of the Proverbs of Solomon drawn into metre, 8vo, London, 1549. Sternhold found even a ruder hand than his own to continue the metrical labour which he had begun. The edition of Sternhold and Hopkins appeared in 1562 with the title of The whole Booke of Psalmes, collected into English metre. As Campbell observes, in his Specimens of English Poetry, these men, "with the best intentions and the worst taste, degraded the spirit of Hebrew Psalmody by flat and homely phraseology, and, mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, turned into bathos what they found sublime." (See also Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii., edition of 1840.)
STESICHORUS (Στεσίχορος), a famous Greek poet, said to have been born in Himera in Sicily B.C. 632. He was accordingly a contemporary of Sappho, Alcaeus, Pittacus, and Phalaris. His father was probably a native of Mauraus, which would go far to explain the tradition of his being sprung from Hesiod, for it is well known that in that district there lived a race of epic poets who claimed kindred with the most ancient singer of Greece. The name which this poet is said first to have received was Tisias, and afterwards it was converted into Stesichorus, from his first having established a chorus for singing to the harp. Like all great poets his birth is said to have been accompanied by an omen. A nightingale is said to have sat upon the babe's lips and sung. Little is known regarding his life with certainty. The myths of Suidas unfortunately render the authentic portion of his narrative quite untrustworthy. Stesichorus probably died at Catanna sometime between 560 B.C. and 552 B.C., at the age of eighty, or, probably, eighty-five. He was one of the nine great lyric poets recognised by the ancients. His choral odes contained all the essential elements of perfect choral poetry. He was the first to break the monotony of the strophe and antistrophe, by the introduction of the epode. Kleine, who has furnished by far the most useful edition of the fragments of Stesichorus (Berolini, 1828), has classified his extant poems into mythical poems, hymns, erotic poems, pastoral poems, fables, and elegies. The fragments of Stesichorus were first printed together with the works of Pindar in 1560. Among recent editions are those of Suchfort, Schneidewin, Bergk, Blomfield, and Gaisford.