Sir John Denham (1614/15–1669) was a poet, translator, and courtier. He was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, though he seems to have left without taking a degree. He then studied common law at Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1639. His earliest surviving work is a translation from Virgil's Aeneid (books II to VI, with gaps) undertaken in 1636. This survives in the commonplace book of Lucy Hutchinson (Denham had been a student at Lincoln's Inn alongside Hutchinson's brother, Allen Apsley, in the 1630s), and formed the basis for his later translations from Virgil. In 1641 Denham was called as a witness for the defence at the trial of Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford, and wrote an elegy following Strafford's execution. The version now commonly printed was evidently revised after the Restoration, as it refers to the 1661 reversal of Strafford's attainder, but an earlier version survives.

John Dryden (1631–1700) was a poet and translator whose most significant achievements were his translations from Greek and Latin poetry. He was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and a prominent supporter of the Stuart dynasty.