Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Thorie, John
THORIE or THORIUS, JOHN (fl. 1590–1611), translator, son of John Thorie, M.D. of Bailleul, Flanders, was born in 1568 in London. He matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 1 Oct. 1586, having previously supplicated for the degree of B.A. on 15 April. ‘He was a person well skilled in certain tongues, and a noted poet of his time’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 624). Before 1593 he had formed a friendship with Gabriel Harvey [q. v.], who in that year dedicated to Thorie, Barnabe Barnes, and Anthony Chewt, his ‘Pierce's Supererogation,’ a reply to ‘Strange News’—an attack on him by Thomas Nash (1567–1601) [q. v.] Thorie has in it five sonnets and two commendatory letters (dated Oxford, 10 July and 3 Aug. 1593) to Harvey. He consequently came under the notice of Nash; the latter's sarcasms drove him to abandon Harvey, and in ‘Have with you to Saffron Walden’ (1596) Nashe wrote: ‘Of this John Thorius more sparingly will I speake, because he hath made his peace with me’ (Harvey, Works, ed. Grosart, vol. ii. passim; Nashe, Works, ed. Grosart, iii. 155, 200).
Thorie translated from the Spanish:
- ‘The Counseller by B. Philip,’ London, 1589, 4to, dedicated to John Fortescue, master of the queen's wardrobe (Brit. Mus.).
- ‘Corro's Spanish Grammar, with a Dictionarie adioyned vnto it,’ London, 1590, 4to.
- ‘The Sergeant-Major, by F. de Valdes,’ London, 1590, 4to, dedicated by Thorius to Sir John Norris [q. v.] He also has verses in Florio's ‘Queen Anna's New World of Words,’ 1611.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; Clark's Reg. of the Univ. of Oxford, II. ii. 154, iii. 138; Hazlitt's Handbook and Collections.]