15 Facts About Nahum Tate

Nahum Tate was an Anglo-Irish poet, hymnist, and lyricist, who became Poet Laureate in 1692.

Nahum Tate wrote the lyrics to a Christmas carol, "While shepherds watched their flocks".

Nahum Tate was born in Dublin and came from a family of Puritan clerics.

Nahum Tate was the son of Faithful Teate, an Irish cleric whose father, Faithful, had been rector of Castleterra, Ballyhaise, until his house was burnt and his family attacked during the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

Nahum Tate was the incumbent at East Greenwich around 1650, and "preacher of the gospel" at Sudbury from 1654 to 1658.

Nahum Tate published a poem on the Trinity entitled Ter Tria, as well as some sermons, two of which he dedicated to Oliver and Henry Cromwell.

Nahum Tate Teate followed his father to Trinity College Dublin in 1668, and graduated BM in 1672.

Nahum Tate published a volume of poems in London in 1677, and became a regular writer for the stage.

Nahum Tate then turned to making a series of adaptations of Elizabethan dramas.

In 1682, Nahum Tate collaborated with John Dryden to complete the second half of his epic poem Absalom and Achitophel.

Nahum Tate wrote the libretto for Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas; its first known performance was in 1689.

Nahum Tate wrote the text for Purcell's Birthday Ode Come Ye Sons of Art in 1694.

Nahum Tate translated Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus, Girolamo Fracastoro's Latin pastoral poem on the subject of the disease of syphilis, into English heroic couplets.

Nahum Tate's name is connected with New Version of the Psalms of David, for which he collaborated with Nicholas Brady.

Nahum Tate's poems were sharply criticised by Alexander Pope in The Dunciad.