Born in England; went to Oxford in 1589; traveled in the east, 1610–12, and published in 1615 an account of his travels in a work entitled a “Relation of a Journey in Four Books, containing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Egypt, of the Holy Land, etc.” In 1621 he removed to America, succeeding his brother as treasurer to the English colony of Virginia. He was much interested in the welfare of the colony, establishing iron-works and introducing ship-building. The Virginia company broke up in 1624, and he returned to England. He published translations of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” the first translation of a classic to appear in America; also poetical versions of the Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, etc.

Personal

	SACRED
	TO THE MEMORY
	OF
	GEORGE SANDYS, ESQ.
	EMINENT AS A TRAVELLER, A DIVINE POET, AND A GOOD MAN,
	WHO DIED MARCH IV. MDCXLIII AT BOXLEY ABBEY,
	AGED LXVI,
	AND LIES BURIED IN THE CHANCEL OF THIS CHURCH.
	HIS LIFE
	WAS THROUGHOUT BLAMELESS, AND NEVER UNUSEFUL:
	ITS EARLIER PART WAS SOMETIMES PASS’D IN OBSERVING HIS
	FELLOW MEN IN FOREIGN LANDS; AND
	ITS LATTER AT HOME
	IN CELEBRATING THE PRAISES OF HIS GOD
	AND ATTUNING THE “SONGS OF ZION”
	TO THE BRITISH LYRE.
	“Thou brought’st me home in safety; that this earth
	Might bury me, which fed me from my birth.
	Blest with a healthful age; a quiet mind,
	Content with little; to this work design’d,
	Which I at length have finish’d by Thy aid;
	And now my vows have at Thy altar paid.”
	ERECTED MDCCCXLVIII:
	By an admirer of talents, piety, and virtue,
	His humble emulator in his latter task.

  He lived to be a very aged man, whom I saw in the Savoy, anno 1641, having a youthful soul in a decayed body; and I believe he dyed soon after.

  I happened to speake with his niece, my lady Wyat, at whose howse, viz. at Boxley abbey, he dyed. She saies he told her a little before he dyed that he was about 63. He lies buried in the chancel neer the dore of the south side, but without any rememberance of stone—which is pitty so sweet a swan should lye so ingloriously. He had something in divinity ready for the presse, which my lady lost in the warres—the title of it shee does not remember.

  The Author upon his return in 1612 or after, being improved in several respects by this his large journey, became an accomplish’d Gent. as being Master of several Languages, of a fluent and ready discourse and excellent Comportment. He had also naturally a poetical fancy, and a zealous inclination to all human learning, which made his Company desir’d, and acceptable to most virtuous Men and Scholars of his time…. Was buried in the Chancel of the Parish Church there, near to the Door, on the South side, but hath no remembrance at all over his Grave, nor anything at that place, only this which stands in the common Register belonging to the said Church. Georgius Sandys Poetarum Anglorum sui sæculi facile princeps, sepultus fuit Martii 7 stilo Anglic. an. dom. 1643.

  It would be injurious to the memory of Sandys, to dismiss his life without informing the reader that the worthy author stood high in the opinion of that most accomplished young nobleman the lord Viscount Falkland, by whom to be praised, is the highest compliment that can be paid to merit; his lordship addresses a copy of verses to Grotius, occasioned by his “Christus Patiens,” in which he introduces Mr. Sandys, and says of him, that he had seen as much as Grotius had read; he bestows upon him likewise the epithet of a fine gentleman, and observes, that though he had travelled to foreign countries to read life, and acquire knowledge, yet he was worthy, like another Livy, of having men of eminence from every country come to visit him.

A Relation of a Journey, 1615

  He studied the genius, the tempers, the religion, and the governing principles of the people he visited.

  That judicious traveller.

  Sandys was an accomplished gentleman, well prepared by previous study for his travels, which are distinguished by erudition, sagacity, and a love of truth, and are written in a pleasant style.

  Like Sir John Mandeville, the first English prose writer, Sandys was a distinguished traveller, and his book on the countries of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land enjoyed great popularity. It is said that Addison, in the history of his Italian tour took Sandys as his model. Sandys seems to have been one of the first to quote the allusions of the ancient poets to the places through which he passed, a plan so successfully adopted by Dodwell in his Classical Tour through Greece, and by Eustace in his Classical Tour through Italy.

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 1621–26

  It needeth more than a single denization, being a double stranger. Sprung from the stock of ancients Romanes, but bred in the New World, of the sadness whereof it can but participate; especially having wars and tumult to bring it to light instead of the Muses;… snatcht from the howers of night and repose, for the day was not mine, but dedicated to the service of your Great Father, and yourselfe.

	Dainty Sands, that hath to English done
	Smooth-sliding Ovid, and hath made him run
	With so much sweetness and unusual grace,
	As though the neatness of the English pace
	Should tell the jetting Latin that it came
	But slowly after, as though stiff and lame.

  He most elegantly translated “Ovid’s Metamorphoses” into English verse; so that, as the soul of Aristotle was said to have transmigrated into Thomas Aquinas (because rendring his sense so naturally), Ovid’s genius may seem to have passed into Master Sandys. He was a servant, but no slave, to his subject; well knowing that a Translatour is a person in Free Custody; Custody, being bound to give the true sense of the Author he translated; Free, left at liberty to cloath it in his own expression…. Indeed some men are better Nurses then Mothers of a Poem; good only to feed and foster the Fancies of others; whereas Master Sandys was altogether as dexterous at inventing as translating; and his own Poems as spritefull, vigorous, and masculine.

  ’Twas a wonderfull helpe to my phansie, my reading of Ovid’s “Metamorphy” in English by Sandys, which made me understand the Latin the better.

  And no better has Ovid been served by the so-much admired Sandys. This is at least the idea which I have remaining of his translation; for I never read him since I was a boy. They who take him upon content, from the praises which their fathers gave him, may inform their judgment by reading him again, and see (if they understand the original) what is become of Ovid’s poetry in his version; whether it be not all, or the greatest part of it, evaporated. But this proceeded from the wrong judgment of the age in which he lived. They neither knew good verse, nor loved it; they were scholars, it is true, but they were pedants; and for a just reward of their pedantic pains, all their translations want to be translated into English.

  One of the earliest literary productions of the English colonists in America, of which we have any notice.

  This production, handed down to us in stately form through two centuries and a half, is the very first expression of elaborate poetry, it is the first utterance of the conscious literary spirit, articulated in America. The writings which preceded this book in our literary history—the writings of Captain John Smith, of Percy, of Strachey, of Whitaker, of Poey—were all produced for some immediate practical purpose, and not with any avowed literary intentions. This book may well have for us a sort of sacredness, as being the first monument of English poetry, of classical scholarship, and of deliberate literary art, reared on these shores. And when we open the book, and examine it with reference to its merits, first, as a faithful rendering of the Latin text, and second, as a specimen of fluent, idiomatic, and musical English poetry, we find that in both particulars it is a work that we may be proud to claim as in some sense our own, and to honor as the morning-star at once of poetry and of scholarship in the new world.

  Rendering of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” has chiefly preserved his name in literary circles. A writer in “Wits Recreations” (1640) congratulated Ovid on “the sumptous bravery of that rich attire” in which Sandys had clad the Latin poet’s work. He followed his text closely, and managed to compress his rendering into the same number of lines as the original—a feat involving some injury to the poetic quality and intelligibility of the English. But Sandys possessed exceptional metrical dexterity, and the refinement with which he handled the couplet entitles him to a place beside Denham and Waller. In a larger measure than either of them, he probably helped to develop the capacity of heroic rhyme. He was almost the first writer to vary the cæsura efficiently, and, by adroitly balancing one couplet against another, he anticipated some of the effects which Dryden and Pope brought to perfection. Both Dryden and Pope read Sandys’s Ovid in boyhood.

Divine Poems and Psalms, 1636–38–40

	Nor may you fear the poet’s common lot,
	Read and commended, and then quite forgot.
	The brazen mines and marble rocks shall waste,
	When your foundation will unshaken last.
	’Tis Fame’s best pay, that you your labours see
	By their immortal subject crownéd be.
	For ne’er was author in oblivion hid,
	Who firm’d his name on such a pyramid.

	Say, sacred bard, what could bestow
	Courage on thee to soar so high?
	Tell me, brave friend, what help’d thee so
	To shake off all mortality?
	To light this torch thou hast climb’d higher
	Than he who stole celestial fire.

	Others translate, but you the beams collect
	Of your inspiréd authors, and reflect
	Those heavenly rays with new and strong effect.
	Yet human language only can restore
	What human language had impair’d before,
	And, when that once is done, can give no more.
	Sir, I forbear to add to what is said,
	Lest to your burnish’d gold I bring my lead,
	And with what is immortal mix the dead.

	Such is the verse thou writ’st, that who reads thine
	Can never be content to suffer mine;
	Such is the verse I write, that, reading mine,
	I hardly can believe I have read thine;
	And wonder that, their excellence once known,
	I nor correct nor yet conceal mine own.
	Yet though I danger fear than censure less,
	Nor apprehend a breach like to a press,
	Thy merits, now the second time, inflame
	To sacrifice the remnant of my shame.

	I presse not to the quire, nor dare I greet
	The holy Place with my unhallowed feet;
	My unwasht Muse pollutes not things divine,
	Nor mingles her prophaner notes with thine:
	Here humbly at the Porch she listning stayes,
	And with glad eares sucks in thy Sacred Layes.

  Infinitely superior [“Psalms”] to any other both for fidelity, music, and strength of versification.

  When Sir Philip Sidney was about twenty-three years old, George Sandys was born; and about fifty years after Sidney’s early death, Sandys’ version of the Psalms was published. It is difficult to believe that so brief a period separated the versions of the two men. Sidney’s rhymes are for the most part rough and halting, while Sandys’ verse, masculine and careful in construction, glides smoothly along and delights the ear with its music.

General

  This Play [“Christ’s Passion”] is translated from the Latin Original writ by Hugo Grotius. This Subject was handled before in Greek, by that Venerable Person, Apollinarius of Laodicea, Bishop of Hierapolis; and after him Gregory Nazianzen: tho’ this of Hugo Grotius, (in our Author’s Opinion) transcends all on this Argument. As to the Translator, I doubt not but he will be allow’d an Excellent Artist, by Learned Judges; and as he has follow’d Horace’s Advice of Avoiding a servile Translation,

Nec verbum verbó curabis reddere fidus Interpres:

So he comes so near the Sence of the Author, that nothing is lost, no Spirits evaporate in the decanting of it into English; and if there be any Sediment, it is left behind.

  Sandys’ “Metamorphoses of Ovid,” and his “Metrical Translations from Scripture,” are poetically pleasing: and they have a merit in diction and versification which has been acknowledged thankfully by later poets.

  Sandys was happily taken away before his friend Lord Falkland fell, and he was spared the miseries of the civil troubles which culminated in the murder of his much-loved master. Of his private character no more need be said than that he seems to have been universally reverenced and beloved. As a poet, he has been too much overlooked, probably from his giving us so few original poems; but I trust that the republication of his works will show that his Paraphrases are not mere servile translations, but have all the freedom of original composition, are singularly sweet and harmonious in versification, and for richness and grandeur of language and imagery, and for true devotional spirit, may justly be ranked amongst the choicest specimens of sacred poetry.

  His classical translations are not equal to his scriptural paraphrases, and if he had finished the Æneid Dryden would have left it alone. Like Dryden he did his best work late: he was fifty-nine when he published the Psalms. It does not do to compare Sandys with the authorised version of the Bible. Wherever the original is peculiarly striking he is disappointing: he gives his reader no such compensation for his temerity as Sternhold’s version of the Theophany in the 18th Psalm or the close of the 24th, or as Watts’s equally well-known paraphrase of the 90th. Even Tate and Brady at their best, as in the 139th Psalm, come very near to Sandys’ highest level; but he is much more equable; he never subsides, like Sternhold and Hopkins, into doggerel; he never subsides, like Tate and Brady, into diffuse platitudes. He always grasps the meaning for himself; he seems to work, if not always from the Hebrew, from an ancient version, and he sometimes exhibits a really masterly power of condensation, as in the 119th and the 150th Psalms. Apart from the strictly relative praise due to the versification, the paraphrase on Job is appallingly tame.

  In 1620, when Waller was but fourteen, “the learned and ingenious Mr. Sandys” had written lines which, if we modernize the spelling, we might easily pass off upon the unwary reader as Pope’s heroics. And in spite of Pope’s obligations to the large genius of Dryden, it is to his early delight in Sandys’s translation of the Metamorphoses that he owed that ease and harmony of numbers which was his from first to last.