[In the following essay, Davis asserts that Sandys's experiences of the life and landscape of North America strongly influenced his translation of Ovid.]

I.

The translation of the fifteen books of Ovid's Metamorphoses by George Sandys has been called “the first utterance of the conscious literary spirit articulated in America.”¹ The circumstances of its production provides the basis for this assertion. Sandys, treasurer and director of industry at Jamestown from 1621 until late in 1625,² probably brought his translation of five books of the Metamorphoses with him to Virginia and translated the remaining ten during his hours of recreation on the voyage and in the colony.³ At any rate, in 1626, a few months after his return to England, the first edition⁴ appeared.

Though America has been proud to claim a share in this work, the exact extent and nature of the share have been a real question. In a recent interesting and valuable monograph on “The Literature of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,”⁵ Professor Howard Mumford Jones gives reasons for denying it a place in genuine American literature:

The first five books of Ovid Sandys seems to have translated before he came to Virginia, but an indefinite⁶ amount of the rest of the work was done in Jamestown. However, neither the life nor the landscape of North America seems to have left any trace on the poem, which does not properly belong to American literature.⁷ Almost the sole evidence of Sandys' Jamestown experiences (and he survived the massacre of 1622!) lurks in the dedication to Charles I, wherein the author apologizes for a poem ‘bred in the New-World, of the rudenesse whereof it cannot but participate, especially having Warres and Tumults to bring it to light in stead of the Muses.’

The matter of definition as to what consitutes colonial American literature is of course involved in this statement. Surely, one might argue on the contrary, the Ovid is as much American, from the mere fact that most of it was done in Virginia, as is the majority of the poetry of the seventeenth-century colonies. Its verse forms are no more un-American, of course, than those of Edward Taylor or Ann Bradstreet. Nor is its subject matter less our own than is that of the translations of Longfellow, Bryant, or Bayard Taylor. Ovid needs no more naturalization than Dante, Homer, or Goethe.

Actually there is more of American life and landscape in Sandys' work than Professor Jones' summary indicates. It does not appear in the 1626 edition,⁸ to which he refers, but in the large “complete edition” of 1632. Sandys said in his “Address to the Reader” written for the earlier edition (p. [327]) that he had intended to polish his verse and include commentaries or explanations of each book, but that an unexpected want of leisure⁹ prevented. In 1632, while he was a member of King Charles' special commission for Virginia,¹⁰ he published a new edition, a beautiful large folio with elaborate engravings for each book and the frontispiece, and detailed commentaries occupying as much page space as the Ovid text itself. These commentaries or explanations, based on Sandys' enormous reading¹¹ and personal experiences, made the 1632 edition and its reprint in 1640¹² one of the well-known and influential¹³ books of the century. And in these explanations are found frequent reminders that the work and its translator were intimately connected with the New World. These references are of two kinds, those to Florida, Mexico, and the West Indies were the product of his reading, and those to Virginia stem directly from his personal experiences.¹⁴

II.

Sandys had evidently read several of the Latin and perhaps other commentaries¹⁵ on the West Indies, Mexico and Florida. His first mention of tropical America occurs in Book IV,¹⁶ where he has been explaining Ovid's story of Hermaphroditus:

… There are many [hermaphrodites] this day in Aegypt, but most frequent in Florida; who are so hated by the rest of the Indians, that they use them as beasts to carry their burdens: to suck their wounds, and to attend on the diseased.¹⁷

In Book VI¹⁸ he compares the offering of human sacrifice in classical mythology and ancient Israel with the practice among “the salvages of Florida.” Then, in Book VII,¹⁹ in commenting on Medea's potions to make the old young, he mentions with scorn a now famous American myth:

I have read in the histories of the West Indies of a ridiculous Spaniard,²⁰ who with much cost and labour, travelled in quest of a fountaine, famous for rendring youth unto age; which is rightly ranked among incurable Diseases.

In Book XI,²¹ in pointing out the lesson to be derived from the story of King Midas, Sandys says:

… Covetousness is Idolatry; and of this divine verity the barbarous Indians had a naturall notion; who imagined that gold was the God of the Spaniards, in that they hunted after it so greedily.

Even in a discussion²² of the centaurs the poet finds an American example, for he points out how the Mexicans thought the men and horses “to be but one creature”²³ when Hernando Cortez invaded their empire. And in a story of mortals who deserve deification, Sandys thinks²⁴ of one of those who have made the New World known:

… and Columbus by his glorious discoveries more justly deserved a place for his ships among the Southerne Constellations, then ever the Argonautes did for their so celebrated Argo.

In Book XIV the West Indies was evidently on the poet's mind, for he makes three references to happenings there.²⁵ In the first²⁶ he is commenting on the Cyclops and cannibalism:

For injustice, armed with power, is most outragious and bloudy. Such Polyphemus, who feasts himselfe with the flesh of his guests; more salvage then are the West-Indians at this day, who onely eat their enemies, whom they have taken in the warres; whose slighting of death and patient sufferance is remarkable; receiving the deadly blow, without distemper, or appearance of sorrow; their fellowes looking on, and heartily feeding on the meate which is given them; yet know how they are to supply the shambles perhaps the day following. The heads of men they account among their delicates, which are onely to be eaten by the great ones, boyling oft times not so few as a dousen together, as hath beene seene by some of our Country-men.

Then, in discussing²⁷ the magic properties of a certain herb, Sandys draws from one of the floating oral tales of the strange new world:

And I knew a fellow, who sixe or seven yeares had beene a slave to the Spaniard in the West-Indies, who with desperate oathes would averre, how such an hearb was common in those countries; insomuch as the shackles would often unbolt, and fall from the feet of the horses, as they fed in the pastures; and how himself therewith had often opened a passage in the stuffing of his emptie belly. Whether true or no, no doubt but he believed himselfe in telling it so often. …

Even in the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a wolf, Sandys was reminded²⁸ of an American incident:

But why not might a Wolfe give them suck, as a Bitch gave suck unto Cyrus; being both one creature, & differing in nothing but the tamenesse of the one & wildnes of the other? For those fierce Mastives carried by the Spaniard into the West-Indies, to hunt and worry the Natives: turning after wild, became Wolves, and preyed upon the Cattle of their rejected masters.²⁹

III.

The majority of Sandys' references to Spanish North America were products of his reading, but in speaking of Virginia he gives some insight into his personal interests and experiences while he lived on the banks of the James. His first reference shows that he had learned something of the Indians' religion and superstition. He had been commenting on Ovid's account of Deucalion's flood:³⁰ “There is no nation so barbarous, no not the salvage Virginians, but have some notion of so great a ruine. …” In his next two comments the fauna of the country concern him. In telling of the base yokels metamorphosed into frogs, he says³¹ of the latter:

… these depopulated a City in France, and now not a little infest Virginia in Summer: called Pohatans hounds by the English, of their continuall yelping. And as they croake and ride one upon another in shallow plashes: so Pesants baule and gamball at their meetings; soused in liquor, as frogs in the water. It is worth the observation, that a frog, though she have her heart and liver puld out, will skip up and down notwithstanding.

Then, in speaking of weasels (Galanthis was turned into one), Sandys was reminded³² of Virginia animals:

I have seene a Beast, which the Indians call a Possoun, that hath two flaps beneath her belly, which she can shut and open at pleasure: within which, when affrighted, she receives her broode, and runnes away with them: whereupon, by a like mistake, it was supposed at first by some of the English that they reenter'd her belly.

Finally, in the margin of the text in Book XV,³³ the poet indicated the way his thoughts were running:

Where once was solid land, Seas have I seene And solid land, where once deepe Seas have beene. ^gShels, far from Seas, like quarries in the ground; And anchors have on mountaine tops beene found.

^gSuch have I seene in America.

Even in his hurried first edition of this work sprung from the stock of the ancient Romans, the poet had claimed its breeding in the New World. In his definitive edition of 1632, in commentaries and notes based on his reading and personal experience, American life and landscape appear several times. Whether the Metamorphoses is colonial American literature must remain a matter of definition, but no reader can peruse its pages without being frequently reminded of its American associations. Strange men, fantastic creatures, marvelous lands, these were stimuli which quite clearly had urged Sandys to the translation of Ovid. And strange men, fantastic creatures, and marvelous new lands he and his fellows had found in America. His stay in Virginia had enabled him to translate the fantasies of an old world while he was surrounded by the marvels of a new, and in the act of translation he brought to a creative focus the parallel interests of literature and colonization. These comments scattered through the work are but graphic indications of his consciousness of the America which he had known. If American literature is a fusion of European intellect and American environment, Sandys' Ovid may well be included in it.

Notes

1. Moses Coit Tyler, History of American Literature during the Colonial Time. (New York, 1897), I, 54.

2. For details of Sandys' activities and time spent in the colony see Susan Myra Kingsbury, Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, D.C., 1906, 1935, 1936); and Henry R. McIlwaine, Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia (Richmond, 1924.)

3. See Drayton's well-known lines, in which he urges Sandys to continue as he had begun in the first five books in J. W. Hebel, ed., The Works of Michael Drayton (Oxford, 1931-1941), III, 206-207, lines 37ff. For Sandys' statement that he translated two books on the voyage see his letter to Samuel Wrote, Kingsbury, IV, 64-68. Also see Richard B. Davis, “The Early Editions of George Sandys's Ovid: the Circumstances of Production,” in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXV (1941), 258ff. Here the matter of the Ovid's “firstness” is discussed.

4. See Davis, 268-270. The title page reads: OVID'S / METAMORPHOSIS / Englished / by / G. S. / [ornament] / Imprinted at / LONDON / MDCXXVI / Cum Priuilegio /. This is a small folio.

5. In Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Science, XIX, Part 2 (1946), 3 note.

6. See note 3 above for Sandys' statement that he wrote two books during the voyage. Professor Jones' quotation from the Dedication given below shows, of course, that the poet claimed his work as a product of America. In the earlier part of the Dedication not quoted by Professor Jones, we have even more evidence of this: “… Your Gracious acceptance of the first fruites of my Trauels [i.e., A Relation of a Iourney …, 1615], when You were our Hope, as now our Happinesse; hath actuated both Will and Power to the finishing of this Peece; being limn'd by that unperfect light which was snatcht from the houres of night and repose. For the day was not mine, but dedicated to the service of your Great Father, and your Selfe: which, had it proved as fortunate as faithfull, in me, and others more worthy; we had hoped, ere many yeares had turned about, to haue presented you with a rich and wel-peopled Kingdome, from whence now, with myselfe, I onely bring this Composure:

   Inter victrices Hederam tibi serpere Laurus.

   It needeth more then a single denization, being a double Stranger. Sprung from the Stocke of the ancient Romanes; but bred in the New-World, of the rudenesse whereof it cannot but participate. …”

7. Italics those of the author of this paper.

8. Although Sandys seems to have had his voyage to America in mind in at least one translation namely when he describes the storm at sea in Book XI, lines 483 ff. See Davis, 274.

9. Sandys' lack of leisure was most probably occasioned by Virginia business. He was reappointed a member of the Virginia governing council while he was in England, in 1626 and 1628. See W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1514-1660 (London, 1860), 77, and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XVI (1908), 125. During this period he remained actively interested in the colony, corresponded with persons there, and for a time at least evidently intended to return.

10. He was appointed to the commission on June 17, 1631, along with Sir Francis Wyatt, Governor of Virginia, 1621-1625. See Kingsbury, I, 111, note d. He remained a member of the King's sub-committee on colonial affairs through the rest of the decade. See W. L. Grant and James Munro, eds., Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series (Hereford, 1907), I, 263-264; and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, XI (1904), 46-47, and XIII (1905-1906), 375.

11. Professor Douglas Bush, in Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (Minneapolis, 1932), 243, has called this edition of Sandys' Ovid “the greatest repository of allegorized myth in English.”

12. This edition used the same engraved plates and text and the large folio sheet, but was printed in double instead of single columns. Other smaller editions usually direct the reader to this one. The edition of 1640 is used in all textual references in this paper.

13. It was this version which Milton used. See Davis Harding, Milton and the Renaissance Ovid (Urbana, Illinois, 1946), 59, 62, 63, and 73. Professor Harding also quotes from a schoolmaster of the 1630's, who said that Sandys' Ovid was one of five books which should be deposited in all school libraries to be used in the proper (moralized) teaching of mythology (p. 31). Keats used it, too. See Claude L. Finney, The Evolution of Keats' Poetry (Cambridge, 1936).

14. There are also several references to the Indians of South America, particularly of Peru (Book IX, 175, 182; Book XI, 212). Sandys quotes “Acosta” as the source for some of these Indian references. He evidently refers to José de Acosta, who first published two books of his Natural History of the Indies in 1588. Sandys may have used this version, or the Spanish version, Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias (Seville, 1590), or one of the French versions (Paris, 1598, 1600, 1616, 1617). Accessible was Edward Grimston's translation into English (1604). It is most probable that Sandys used the Latin version, as he did of most commentaries, even with English editions available. All references to Acosta in this paper are to Grimston's 1604 translation, edited by Clements G. Markham (London, 1880), under the title The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, by Father Joseph de Acosta.

15. Sandys himself mentions only “Linscot” (Book VII, 144 [134]) and “Acosta” (Book IX, 182; Book XI, 212), but his habit had always been to use more sources than he cited. See Edmund de Beer, “George Sandys's Account of Compania,” The Library, XVII (1937), 458-465. Linscot, John Huighen Van Linschoten, his discours of Voyages into the Easte and West Indies. … (London, [1598] and earlier European versions), contained only a brief and general account of parts of America.

16. Page 79 of the 1640 edition.

17. Hermaphrodites are mentioned in René Laudonnière, L'Histoire Notable de la Florida. … (Paris, 1596); English edition, R. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages. … (reprint in Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, 1904, VIII, 453, and IX, 16). The best known reference, which Sandys surely knew, is Plate XVII and the accompanying legend in Theodore de Bry's Brevis Narratio Eorum Quae in Florida Provincia Gallis. … (Frankfort, 1591). This engraving of “Hermaphroditum officia” shows the Indians at their labor of carrying the wounded or slain. It is a combination of Laudonnière's text and Le Moyne's drawing. A modern reprint appears in Stefan Lorant, The New World (New York, 1946), 69. Sandys' references may have been based in part, of course, on the tales carried by English and Spanish sailors.

18. Page 118. He later returns to his topic, and again mentions “these bloudy Ceremonies among the salvage Americans” (Book X, 196), though he may be thinking of Virginia Indians here. Almost all commentators spend some detail on Indian sacrifices. See note 26 below.

19. Page 146 [actually 136].

20. Ponce de Leon. The ultimate source was probably Peter Martyr D'Anghera, whose De Orbe Novo had appeared in 1516. There were many Latin versions and the English translation of Richard Eden (1577, 1612, or 1625) available to Sandys. I have used the translation by Francis Augustus MacNutt, under the title, The Eight Decades … (New York, 1912). The Fountain of Youth is referred to in the Second Decade, I, 274, with Martyr taking Sandys' attitude towards it. There are of course other versions of the tale. Antonio de Herrara, Historia de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierra firma …, Madrid, 1601-1615, gives a detailed account (See English ed. of 1725-26, The General History of the Vast Continent and Island of America …, London, II, 37).

21. Page 213. See Acosta, I, 190-193 (original Lib. IV, Ch. II) or almost any other book on Spanish America for evidence of Spanish greed. The Renaissance Englishman naturally always made all he could of this.

22. Book XII, 231.

23. Peter Martyr, II, 34 (“The Fourth Decade”). Sandys' words are a close paraphrase of the Latin.

24. Book XIII, 252. Sandys mentions Columbus in one other place (Book VII, 144 [134]), telling the story of the use of knowledge of an eclipse to overawe the Indians (his source was probably Antonio de Herrara, The General History, I, 294).

25. The terms “West Indies,” “Florida,” and “Peru” were used by the Renaissance European to refer to much larger regions than they now do. Sometimes “West Indies” appears to refer to Spanish America generally. Sandys uses all three terms, however, and seemingly distinctly.

26. Page 263. Acosta, II, 320, 346-50 (original Lib. V, Chapters IX and XX) for the first part of this account. Much of it is also in the first three decades of Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo, but an exact source for the details of the last two sentences has not been located. Sandys may be suggesting that the story came to him orally. Probably most detailed account of cannibalism and human sacrifice occurs in … Purchas his Pilgrimes, 1625 ed. (Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, XVI [1906], 431-440), from “A Treatise on Brazil, written by a Portugall which had lived there. …”

27. Page 266.

28. Page 269.

29. See Acosta, I, 272 (original Lib. IV, Ch. XXXIII). Sandys follows the source closely, apparently.

30. Book I, 18. Sandys may also have learned that the West Indies had stories of a similar deluge. See Acosta, I, 70 (original Lib. I, Ch. XXIV).

31. Book VI, 117.

32. Book IX, 179.

33. Page 273. The 1632 form (see Davis, 272-273) differs only in position on the page and the numbering of the footnote, from this 1640 form.