ALABASTER or ARBLASTIER, WILLIAM 164o), English Latin poet and scholar, was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, and was educated at Westminster school and Trinity college, Cambridge. Alabaster served with the expedition of Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, to Cadiz in 1596, and embraced the Roman Catholic faith while he was in Spain. He was im prisoned in the Tower for his religious opinions in 1598 and 1599. His mystical writings brought him into conflict with the Inquisi tion, and he was imprisoned in Rome for a short time. He escaped, returned to England, abjured Catholicism and received a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral, which he held until his death in April 164o.
Alabaster's Latin tragedy, Roxana, written while he was at Cam bridge, is modelled on La -Dalida of Luigi Groto, and was first published in 1632. Samuel Johnson praised it as the only Latin verse worthy of note written in England before Milton's Elegies. One book of an epic poem in praise of Elizabeth, entitled Elisaeis, apotheosis poetica, is preserved at Emmanuel college, Cambridge. It was admired by Edmund Spenser. "Who lives that can match that heroic song?" he says in "Colin Clout's come home againe." Other works by Alabaster are mystical in charac ter and owe much to his study of the Kabbala. They include Apparatus in revelationem Jesu Christi (Antwerp, 16°7), Ecce Sponsus venit (1633), Lexicon Pentaglotton (1637) and mystical commentaries on Revelations and the Pentateuch.
See T. Fuller, Worthies of England (ii. 343) ; Pierre Bayle, Diction ary, Historical and Critical (I734) ; J. P. Collier, Bibl. and Crit. Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language (vol. i. 1865) ; also the Athenaeum (Dec. 26, 1903), where Mr. Bertram Dobell describes a ms. in his possession containing 43 sonnets by Alabaster.