an English poet and diplomat. Stepney had a full and accurate knowledge of German affairs, and was a great letter-writer. Among his correspondents was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with whom he was on friendly terms. Much of his official and other correspondence is preserved in the letters and papers of Sir John Ellis, and others are available in the record office. He contributed a version of the eighth satire of Juvenal to the translation (1693) of the satires by John Dryden and others. Samuel Johnson, who included him in his Lives of the Poets, called him a very licentious translator, and remarked that he did not recompense his neglect of the author by beauties of his own.
