Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/305

 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. Dryden in later life, on the ground that Sandys's literal method of translation obscured his meaning, designed a new translation of the ‘Metamorphoses,’ which Sir Samuel Garth completed and published in 1717. Pope, who liked Sandys's Ovid ‘extremely’ (, Anecdotes, p. 276), in very early life tried his hand on the same theme (, Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, i. 104), but subsequently ridiculed Garth's efforts to supersede the older translator in a ballad called ‘Sandys's Ghost, or the proper New Ballad on the New Ovid's “Metamorphoses”’ (ib. iv. 486).

‘Selections from the Metrical Paraphrases’ of Sandys appeared, with a memoir by Henry John Todd, in 1839. ‘The Poetical Works of George Sandys, now first collected,’ by the Rev. Richard Hooper, was published in Russell Smith's ‘Library of Old Authors’ in 1872. The translation of Ovid is not included.

A fine portrait of Sandys, showing a handsome, thoughtful face, is preserved at Ombersley, and has been engraved.

A prose work attacking the Roman catholic faith, entitled ‘Sacræ Heptades, or Seaven Problems concerning Anti-Christ, by G. S.,’ 1626, is very doubtfully assigned to Sandys. It is dedicated ‘To all kings, princes, and potentates, especially to King Charles and to the King and Queen of Bohemia, professing the fayth.’

[Wood's Athenæ; Hunter's manuscript Chorus Vatum in Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 24489, p. 214; Brown's Genesis of the United States, with portrait, p. 820; Hooper's Memoir in Sandys's Collected Poetical Works, 1872.]

 SANDYS, SAMUEL, first of Ombersley (1695?–1770), born about 1695, was the elder son of Edwin Sandys, M.P. for Worcestershire, by his wife Alice, daughter of Sir James Rushout, bart., of Northwick in the parish of Blockley, Worcestershire. He was a grandson of Samuel Sandys of Ombersley in the same county, and a lineal descendant of Edwin Sandys, archbishop of York, who resided at Ombersley in Queen Elizabeth's reign. He matriculated at Oxford University from New College at the age of sixteen on 28 April 1711, but did not graduate. He subsequently went abroad, and at a by-election in March 1718 was returned to the House of Commons for the city of Worcester, which he continued to represent until his promotion to the upper house. On 16 Feb. 1730 Sandys moved for leave to bring in a bill to disable all persons from sitting in the House of Commons who had any pensions or offices held in trust for them from the crown (Parl. Hist. viii. 789). Though this measure, which was popularly known as the Pension Bill, passed through the commons, it was thrown out in the House of Lords. It was reintroduced by Sandys in several subsequent sessions, but it always met with the same fate at the hands of the peers. On the rejection of this bill by the House of Lords in the following session, Sandys unsuccessfully moved for the appointment of a committee to inquire whether any member of the existing House of Commons had, directly or indirectly, any pensions or offices under the crown (ib. viii. 857). On 26 Feb. 1733 he opposed Walpole's motion for taking half a million from the sinking fund (ib. viii. 1216–1218). He was a strenuous opponent also of the Excise Bill, and supported the petition of the city against it (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 1884, i. 197–9). On 13 Feb. 1734 he moved an address to the king on the removal of the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham from their regiments, but was easily defeated by the government (Parl. Hist. ix. 324–5). In the same month his bill for securing the freedom of parliament by limiting the number of civil and military officers in the house, popularly known as the Place Bill, was thrown out by 230 votes against 191 (ib. ix. 366, 367, 370–4, 392). On 2 Feb. 1736 Sandys called attention to the increase of the national debt, and protested against ‘loading posterity with new debts in order to give a little ease to the present generation’ (ib. ix. 1016–18). On 6 Feb. 1739 his two motions for the production of further papers relating to the convention with Spain were defeated by majorities of seventy and eighty votes respectively (ib. x. 962–5, 975, 999–1001). In the same month he unsuccessfully urged that the petitioners against the convention should be heard by their counsel (ib. x. 1082–90). While supporting Pulteney's bill for the encouragement of seamen on 16 Nov. 1739, Sandys is said to have declared that ‘of late years parliaments have shown a much greater respect to the ministers of the crown than was usual in former ages, and I am under some apprehensions that, by continuing to show the same respect for a few years longer, we shall at last lose all that respect which the people of this kingdom ought to have for their parliaments’ (ib. xi. 102–10). On 29 Jan. 1740 he again attempted to introduce his Place Bill,