Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/304

 design that of 1626, is new; it was the work of Francis Clein, and was engraved by Salomon Savery. Each of the fifteen books, as well as the ‘Life of Ovid,’ is preceded by a full-page engraving. The first book of the ‘Æneid’ is alone attempted. The copy in the Bodleian Library, which lacks the engraved title, was the gift of Sandys. Later editions are dated 1640, fol., and 1656, 12mo—‘the fourth edition.’

Soon after returning from Virginia Sandys became a gentleman of the privy chamber to his patron Charles I. At court he first seems to have met Lucius Cary, second viscount Falkland, who held a similar post. Sandys soon joined the circle of Falkland's friends at Great Tew (, Lives in Letters from the Bodleian, ii. 349). Sandys often stayed at no great distance from Tew, at Carswell, near Witney, the residence of Sir Francis Wenman, who had married Sandys's niece Anne, daughter of Sir Samuel Sandys. But Sandys's latest years were mainly spent at Boxley Abbey, near Maidstone, the residence of another niece, Margaret, widow of Sir Francis Wyatt. There Sandys engaged in an interesting series of poetic paraphrases of the scriptures. When Richard Baxter visited Boxley Abbey ‘it did him good,’ he wrote, ‘.... to see upon the old stone wall in the garden a summer-house with this inscription in great golden letters, that in this place Mr. G. Sandys, after his travaile over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations.’ Sandys's ‘Paraphrase upon the Psalmes and upon the Hymnes dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments’ was licensed for the press on 28 Nov. 1635. On 2 Dec. 1635 a grant of exclusive rights in the volume for fourteen years was issued to Sandys, provided ‘the book be first licensed.’ It was published in a small octavo in 1636 with a verse dedication to the king and queen and a long commendatory poem by his friend Falkland, and a shorter eulogy by Dudley Digges. The work reappeared in folio in 1638 (printed by Matthew Camidge) as ‘A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems,’ with the same dedication. In this edition not only Falkland and Digges, but also Henry King, Sidney Godolphin, Thomas Carew, Francis Wyatt, and ‘Edward’ (i.e. Edmund) Waller, with two others, supplied commendatory verse. Music was added by Henry Lawes [q. v.], and the volume concluded with Sandys's fine original poem, which he entitled ‘Deo opt. Max.’ Some portions of Sandys's version of the psalms were reissued in 1648 in ‘Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices,’ a volume to which Henry Lawes and his brother William were the chief musical contributors. Sandys's ‘Psalms’ was popular with cultured readers. In 1644 the Rev. D. Whitby, in a printed sermon (Oxford, 1644, p. 26), expressed regret that his version ‘should lie by,’ owing to the popularity of Sternhold and Hopkins's version. Sandys's ‘Psalms’ was one of the three books which occupied Charles I while he was in confinement at Carisbrooke.

In 1640 Sandys published—with yet another dedication to the king—‘Christ's Passion, a Tragedy with Annotations [in prose].’ It is a translation in heroic verse from the Latin of Grotius. An edition of 1687 is embellished with plates. Sandys's final work, ‘A Paraphrase of the Song of Solomon,’ in eight-syllable couplets, appeared in 1641, with the author's customary dedication to the king.

Meanwhile, in 1638, Sandys had resumed his political connection with Virginia by accepting from the legislative assembly the office of its agent in London. Misunderstanding his instructions, he petitioned the House of Commons in 1642 for a restoration of the old London company with the old privileges of government, only reserving to the crown the right of appointing the governor of the colony. The legislative assembly, on 1 April 1642, passed a solemn declaration deprecating a revival of the company, and on 5 July following Charles I assured the assembly that he had no intention of sanctioning the company's re-establishment (, Virginia Carolorum, Albany, N. Y., 1886).

In 1641 Fuller saw Sandys in the Savoy, ‘a very aged man with a youthful soul in a decayed body.’ He died, unmarried, at Boxley in the spring of 1644. The register of Boxley church records his burial in the chancel there, and describes him as ‘Poetarum Anglorum sui sæculi facile princeps.’ Matthew Montagu in 1848 placed a marble tablet to his memory, with a laudatory inscription. An elegy appeared in Thomas Philpot's ‘Poems’ (1646).

Sandys's rendering of Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses’ has chiefly preserved his name in literary circles. A writer in ‘Wits Recreations’ (1640) congratulated Ovid on ‘the sumptuous 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