Sir John Harington, an English poet, born at Kelston, near Bath, in 1561, died in London in 1612. His mother was an illegitimate daughter of Henry VIII., his father an officer of the court, and Queen Elizabeth was his godmother. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. In 1591 he published a translation of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," which gained him considerable reputation. In 1599 he accompanied the earl of Essex to Ireland, and attended him also in his precipitate return to England. While he was in Ireland, Essex knighted him on the field, to the great displeasure of Elizabeth; but James I. made him a knight of the bath in 1603. He wrote a satiric poem called the "Metamorphosis of Ajax" (1596), after the manner of Rabelais, in which he embellished a trivial subject with a vast store of learning, wit, and humor. The author was refused a license to print it, and was punished for its publication by exclusion from the court. In the same year he published an "Apologie" for the "Metamorphosis." "The Englishman's Doctor, or the Schoole of Salerne," a poem, appeared in 1608 or 1609. A collection of his " Most Elegant and Wittie Epigrams " was appended to an edition of his "Orlando Furioso" in 1633; and a miscellany of original papers in prose and verse by Harington and others of his time, under the title of Nugoe Antiquoe, was published in 1769-'79. A new edition with a life of Harington was edited by Thomas Park (London, 1804).