SOURCE: Davis, Richard Beale. “Courtier and Sacred Poet.” In George Sandys, Poet-Adventurer: A Study in Anglo-American Culture in the Seventeenth Century. London: The Bodley Head, 1955, 320 p.

[In the following excerpt, Davis examines Sandys's paraphrases and original poems and finds that the author's weaknesses and strengths were both the result of the fact that he was a scholar as well as a poet.]

Sandys' life from the publication of the 1626 Ovid to his death at the outbreak of the Civil War was apparently busy and happy. Not too much direct evidence as to his personal actions remains. But the surviving details pieced together with the knowledge of what his court circle was doing indicate congenial companionship and continued intellectual activity.

He had probably … become a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber soon after his return from Virginia, between 1626 and 1628. The duties of the Household were apparently not too arduous nor too confining, and there was usually in Charles I's time a comfortable annual income of £200 connected with the position. Presumably Sandys performed official duties for three months of the year and had the remaining nine to himself. Naturally the group of courtiers centred in Lord Falkland became his intimates, for they were those most interested in verse and scholarship. He probably witnessed the swearing in, as fellow-Gentlemen of the Chamber, of his friends Wintoure Graunt in 1628, Thomas Carew in 1630, and Sidney Godolphin in 1631. They, with Falkland, Waller, Henry King, Sir Henry Rainsford, Sir Thomas Bludder, and his kinsmen Sir Dudley Digges, Sir Francis Wyatt, and Sir Francis Wenman, were apparently his most frequent associates.¹

Probably even in the first years of his return from “exile,” Sandys spent a portion of his time in Kent among his many maternal and several paternal relations, for Sir Francis Wyatt and Sir Edwin Sandys lived there, and Sandys before 1620 had been listed as a resident of Canterbury. Also at some time after his brother Sir Edwin's death in 1629 he was guardian for the latter's younger children, and was occupied in business for them which must have required his presence in Kent. Sir Edwin, who had left nothing more to each of his brothers than a forty-shilling gold ring,² had not included George among the supervisors of his will. On 1 January 1637/8, however, George entered suit³ against Sir Edwin's eldest son Henry on behalf of the latter's younger brothers and sisters, who felt that the terms of Sir Edwin's will had not been lived up to.⁴ George Sandys is referred to as “of London gent guardian.”⁵

Despite these ties, it is probable that before 1638 he spent much more of his time in the Midlands than in Kent. There were at least three major attractions in Oxfordshire and the neighbouring counties. One of Sandys' nieces, Lady Ann Wenman, daughter of Sir Samuel Sandys, had as husband an accomplished gentleman and scholar, Sir Francis Wenman of Carswell near Witney, Oxfordshire. Though Wenman is said to have lacked the health and ambition to play a prominent part in public affairs, no man of his quality in England was more esteemed at court. A neighbour and close friend of Lord Falkland, he was one of the influential members of the group⁶ attracted to that noble man. A good Latin scholar, something of a poet, a sharp wit and keen reasoner, Wenman would naturally have attracted Sandys for himself alone. But Carswell lay only a few miles from Burford, the one of Falkland's Oxfordshire estates at which first gathered a group of congenial spirits. And neither Burford nor Carswell was too far from Clifford in Gloucestershire, the home of another courtier and friend, Sir Henry Rainsford.

In fact, the earliest proof of Sandys' direct association with a member of the Falkland circle shows him intimate with Rainsford. The latter, son of Drayton's friend Sir Henry Rainsford⁷ and Drayton's “Idea,” the former Ann Goodere, himself entertained Drayton, and perhaps Sandys also, in 1631.⁸ Though Rainsford's commendatory poem on Sandys' Paraphrases proves the intimacy of the two in 1638, there is proof that they were friends and companions as early as 1627. It begins with a letter written by a former official of the Virginia Company, Nicholas Ferrar, begging George Sandys' assistance on behalf of his younger brother, Richard. Among other things, the letter indicates Sandys' London residence and perhaps a position at court which might influence the Master of the Savoy, another courtier:⁹

3 Decemb. 1627.¹⁰

Noble S^r.

I neither know what the nature of the thing is in it selfe, nor of what weight it may bee as a Courtezy from you And Yet the Necessity and Importunity of a brother enforceth mee humbly to request your fauor, towards the obtayning of the masters of the Sauoy, that my Brother Richard may bee protected safe from Arrest for some twoe months tyme in the Libertys of the Sauoy—the reason of this desyre is His wyfe being greate w^th child and ready to Ly downe And there being noe conveniency where she now liues for such an occasion shee hath hyred certayne Lodgings in the Sauoy I would not motion such a matter uppon a Lighter ground nor at all yf soe bee I thought it might not stand with iustice or were altogether unusuall but I am enformed that it is often doñ and for the person himselfe I assure you there cañ bee none more capable of such fauor yf any bee For hee hath at present nothing at all to satisfy his Creditors and his imprisonement would but hynder it for heerafter S^r I dare not press you w^th many words because I am not sure of the matter & most sure of y^r friendly loue use it bee fit in it selfe and for you to do¹¹

And to which I recommend it and my selfe to y^r good grace

Your faithfull serv … XI

N.F.

A few days later Richard Ferrar wrote to Nicholas asking for “word of M^r George Sandys' lodgings.”¹² A second letter from Richard to Nicholas shows Sandys' Rainsford connection:

Good Brother:¹³

I thank you for y^e letter w^ch you wrote to M^r Sandys; but as yett it is of noe use to me for I was yesternight—at his lodgings and hee was gonne out of Towne In y^e morning w^th S^r Henery Raynsford whether or when to returne They knowe not. The M^r of the Savoy is In Towne and will e[?] this 3 weekes … for it is his wayting month. …

He goes on to say that Mr. Sandys cannot be of much assistance, he understands, but perhaps can vouch for his inability to pay his debts and otherwise intercede with the Master of the Savoy in his behalf. Evidently it was not Sandys' waiting month.

If one may judge by praise in verse, Sandys' most admiring friend in the court society was that ideal cavalier, Lord Falkland. Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (c. 1610-43) had inherited his Oxfordshire estates of Burford and Tew from his maternal grandfather in 1625, married against his father's will at the age of twenty-one, and succeeded to his father's title in 1633.¹⁴ Apparently his coterie of poets and scholars gathered at Burford only after 1631 and at Great Tew after 1633,¹⁵ but it is most probable that the nucleus of his circle lay in the Sons of Ben¹⁶ of whom Falkland was avowedly one, or in the loosely-knit group of courtier-men-of-letters who seasonally frequented London. Sandys and the youthful Sir Lucius may have become acquainted even before the latter's marriage in 1631.¹⁷ In any event, Sandys was almost surely a frequent visitor or a seasonal resident of the Midlands before the famous gatherings of scholars, poets, wits, theologians, statesmen, and courtiers began at Great Tew.

Even the buildings of Great Tew have now passed away, but within its high-walled gardens and spacious library during the 1630's gathered one of the last great societies of England's golden age. Their host was, according to sophisticated courtier or pious cleric, one of the remarkable characters of the period. Falkland died at thirty-three and left no real body of writing behind him. Like the later Dr. Johnson, he is remembered more for what he was than for what he wrote. Candid and courageous, charitable and affable, tactful and mirthful, generous, wealthy, and scholarly, he attracted to himself and usually to his house and board a rare assemblage. A genius such as Ben Jonson,¹⁸ sober scholars and theologians of the University such as William Chillingworth and Dr. John Earle, gentleman scholars and statesmen like Edward Hyde and Sir Francis Wenman, and poet-courtiers such as Sandys, Rainsford, Waller, Godolphin, and a dozen others were among them.¹⁹ These men rode the miles from Oxford or Carswell or even London for study and refreshing rural atmosphere. The study was sometimes among the books, but was more often in stimulating conversation. It is said that Falkland, scholar though he was, read no book during his guests' stay, for he loved company, and above all he enjoyed drawing from even the most retiring of his visitors all the power of intellect and imagination that was in him. Some of his great intellects may have needed no drawing forth, perhaps the reverse, but Falkland's ready wit was apparently equal to every situation of his symposium.

In the earlier seventeenth century in England pedant, poet, and patron formed a close-knit literary society.²⁰ The Great Tew circle included all these normal elements, but in many varieties. Hyde and Waller and Wenman might discourse on government, monarchical and parliamentary. Sandys might broaden their discussions by observations on the problems of colonial administration at home and abroad, for he was now a member of the Privy Council's sub-committee on the plantations, and could see both sides of the matter. The London courtiers and Oxford dons must have debated both learnedly and lightly on the beauties of the classical in contrast to their own writings. And perhaps all listened respectfully or impatiently to the Sons of Ben among them on the place and nature of English verse in the world of letters.

In all these matters and many others Sandys would have taken delight, but in two particularly he was vitally interested. Verse and religion were of fundamental concern to him throughout his life.

A study²¹ … has already indicated the literary significance of Sandys and certain members of this group who contributed commendatory verses to the 1636 and 1638 editions of Sandys' poems. Though probably not all of these men visited Great Tew in Sandys' time,²² it was almost certainly from the stimuli of the minds of this circle upon one another, whether in London or in Oxfordshire, that much of the metre and rhetorical forms of their couplet derived. Waller, who paid his tribute with the rest and may have owed more to Sandys' verse than is generally admitted, almost surely owed a great deal to the prosodic ideas and practice of this group²³—especially to their characteristic balance and antithesis in the couplet.

But at least in the later years the absorbing interest of Falkland personally,²⁴ several of the Oxford scholars, and perhaps some of the London gentlemen, was theology. Sandys himself, as we shall see, was deeply concerned with it. This was a time when thinking men should be interested in the queen of the sciences, a time when theological extremists on two sides were racking the very foundations of the English governmental and social structure. But consideration of theological problems was for this Falkland group more than a duty and a necessity. It was stimulating intellectual exercise.

The two opposite poles of extreme Puritanism and the type of Arminianism being forced upon the English church by Archbishop Laud were bound to clash. Most patriotic Englishmen were conscious of this, and took sides according to conscientious conviction or mercenary motive. Falkland, after years of study of church history ancient and modern, and earnest conversation with or even tutelage from scholars like Dr. John Hales or his friend William Chillingworth, had taken his stand in the middle. In other words, the dogmatists of either persuasion seemed to him mistaken and dangerous. Theological doctrine and church government were to be determined by reason, and reason only. Therefore he became, in the 1633-9 period, a champion of religious tolerance and intellectual freedom.

Falkland's rational theology never became a petrified thing. All during the period at Great Tew he and his friends debated, during the long summer evenings in the gardens or far into the night during the more austere seasons, the pressing problem. Apparently all the group believed the national church was Christ's church, and all distrusted the narrowness of the “sects,” which included the Roman as well as the Puritan. To them the Anglican church in doctrine and government was based on reason, the rational test of Christianity. Much they undoubtedly owed to the Socinians,²⁵ and perhaps much more to the Dutch Arminians like Grotius, who had visited England in his earlier life.²⁶ Then and later Falkland disliked Laud and his Anglican-church-as-institution ambitions, though he must have been conscious that in matters of doctrine the prelate was one of the most tolerant churchmen of his time.²⁷ Falkland himself, and perhaps others of the group, developed from a mildly Calvinistic position in the early 1630's to one essentially Arminian,²⁸ and towards a belief with Grotius that the English church should recognize and in some respects join with certain other Protestant churches of northern Europe.

From the Great Tew discussions grew an interesting body of theological prose. Partially under the influence of Chillingworth, Falkland himself composed a few tracts, the most notable of them an argument against the infallibility of the church of Rome.²⁹ Chillingworth produced the most famous of their treatises, his rationalistic argument, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation.³⁰ And there were others.

Sandys in the commentaries on the 1632 Metamorphosis had shown his familiarity with the church fathers and many of the Renaissance theologians,³¹ Roman and Protestant, studied by the Falkland group. The crown of all his authorities, one recalls, was the rationalist Francis Bacon.³² And the essence of Sandys' process of interpretation, the liberalism from reasoning within prescribed limits, is also the essence of the Great Tew brand of theological exposition.

Sandys is characteristic of this circle again in the choice of subject for his later poems and translations to be discussed below. But the last and crowning evidence of the essential kinship of his interests to those of Falkland is revealed in a brief account of Sandys by the antiquarian Aubrey. Sandys' niece Lady Wyatt told Aubrey, that at the time of the poet's death “he had something in divinity ready for the presse, which my lady lost in the warres—the title of it shee does not remember.”³³ It would be more than interesting to know content as well as title, but one may be sure, in the light of his friends' expressed opinions of him in verse and of their own ideas in verse and prose, of his own paraphrases, and of his translation of Grotius, that it had much in common with the work of the other sojourners in the gardens of Oxfordshire. Evidently at the very last what another sojourner, Sir John Suckling, had earlier said of Falkland could with some justice be applied to Sandys:

He was of late so gone with divinity,
That he almost forgot his poetry(34)

But when the Great Tew circle was most active, between 1635 and 1638, Sandys had by no means forgotten his poetry, though by now it went hand in hand with divinity. On 3 December 1635 the King's Signet Office recorded his Majesty's grant of privilege for fourteen years to George Sandys, Esq., “for the sole printing publishing and selling … in England and Ireland of a Paraphrase by him written on the Psalmes of David & other hymnes dispersed through the old and new Testament,”³⁵ provided the same be first licensed. The licence was obtained, for the modest little octavo appeared within a few months:

A / PARAPHRASE / VPON / THE PSALMES / OF DAVID / And / VPON THE HYMNES / Dispersed throughout / THE OLD AND NEW / TESTAMENTS. / By G.S. / LONDON / At the Bell in St. Pauls / Church-yard. / cis.isc.xxxvi. / Cum Priuilegio Regiæ Majestatis.³⁶

The now customary dedicatory poems to the King and Queen preface the paraphrases. In the verses to Charles, the poet points out his new role as sacred lyrist:

Ovr graver Muse from her long Dreame awakes,
Peneian Groves, and Cirrha's Cares forsakes,
Inspir'd with zeale, she climes th' Æthereall Hills

This little work is, he continues, an oblation

To God: and Tribute to a god-like King.

The first of what is to be a series of commendatory poems by Falkland also appears among the preliminaries of this work. “To my Noble Frend, M^rGeorge Sandys / upon his excellent Paraphrase on the Psalmes /,” begins

Had I no Blushes left, but were of those,
Who Praise in Verse, what they Despise in Prose:
Had I this Vice from Vanity or Youth;
Yet such a Subject would have taught me Truth:

Falkland summarizes Sandys' literary career, praising first his travels,

Teaching the frailety of all Humane things;

the terrible state of Christian churches in the East, the threat of the Turk, the disunion of Christendom. Then he mentions the Ovid, produced amid the wars and tumults of the New World, yet

The Happy Off-spring of so sweet a Muse:

The commentaries, the first book of Vergil, and even the “panegyricke” to the Queen and King receive comment. Though always the poet's muse was “Ethnically chaste,” now Sandys has

Diverted to a Purer Path thy Quill;
And chang'd Parnassus Mount to Sions Hill:

In verses of great sweetness, Sandys has made clear the “darkest Texts;” and above all, he has properly ornamented the sacred. Falkland anticipates and refutes certain criticism of this last quality by asking

Yet, as the Church with Ornaments is Fraught,
Why may not that be too, which There is Taught?

Actually, such polishing may bring to the Heavenly Kingdom some of those souls who

Refuse a Cordial, when not brought in Gold.

So concludes the rationalist.

The little book, small and insignificant in format³⁷ in contrast with the great 1632 Ovid which preceded it, contains paraphrases of 150 psalms, and hymns from Exodus, XV, Deuteronomy XXXII, Judges V, I Samuel II, II Samuel I, II Samuel VII, Isaiah V, Isaiah XXVI, Isaiah XXXVIII, Jonah II, Habakkuk III, Luke I (2 excerpts), and Luke II. Between the Psalms and the dispersed hymns is printed for the first time Sandys' finest original poem, his “Deo Opt. Max.,” ninety lines in his favourite decasyllabic couplet. This second hymn to his Redeemer echoes Renaissance humanism and Ovidean rhetoric, and sums up the varied experiences of the poet-adventurer's life. It is a conscious swan-song, with a dignity, even a sublimity, which make us wish for more from the poet's original genius. The creation of Earth and Man, the coming of Sin and Sorrow and Death, and above all God's Mercy:

My gratefull Verse thy Goodness shall display,
O Thou who went'st along in all my way:
To Where the Morning with perfumed wings
From the high Mountaines of Panchæa springs,
To that New-found-out World, where sober Night
Takes from th' Antipodes her silent flight;
To those dark Seas, where horrid Winter reignes,
And binds the stubborne Flouds in Icie chaines:
To Libyan Wastes …

God's mercy and glory he has met everywhere. He lists his own narrow escapes from Simoan strife, Arab thievery, the “false Sidonian wolfe,” the bloody massacre of faithless Indians, and barbarous pirates, from fever and tainted air and towering tempest. He thanks his God that he has brought him home in safety

                                                            that this Earth
Might bury me, which fed me from my Birth:
Blest with a healthfull Age; a quiet Mind,
Content with little. …

But this envoi was somewhat premature. There was yet more music in the poet, not to mention some further worldly experience. On 1 September the printer-publisher Andrew Hebb³⁸ entered in the Stationers' Register, “for his Copie … a booke called A Paraphrase upon Job. The Psalmes. Ecclesiastes, and the Lamentacions of Jeremiah by George Sandes Esquire. …”³⁹ By the beginning of the next year⁴⁰ this new enlarged edition, in a small but elegant folio, was on sale among the booksellers. Its title-page is less specific than that of 1636:

A / PARAPHRASE / VPON THE / DIVINE POEMS. / BY / George Sandys. / [rule] / [ornament] / [rule] / LONDON, / At the Bell in S^t. Pauls Church-yard. / cis. isc. xxxviii.

This time the brief dedicatory poem is replaced by a full page prose dedication and a poem. The elaborate dedicatory words refer to Charles, among his other styles, as “Lord of the Foure Seas; of Virginia, the Vast Territories Adioyneng, and Dispersed Islands of the Westerne Ocean,” another reminder of Sandys' own labours. And the verses following remind the King that Sandys' muse, which “from your Influence tooke her Birth,” after wanderings and diverse singing,

Now Old, hath her last Voyage made; and brought
To Royall Harbor this her Sacred Fraught:

The subsequent octosyllabic verses “To the Queene” apparently refer to the dark times which have fallen upon the Court, for her Majesty has a cheerful “Ray” which

Can turne the Saddest Night to Day:

This same note of comforting appears in certain additional dedicatory poems present in some copies of this edition.⁴¹ Two brief poems “To the Queene of Bohemia,” Charles's sister, the first in decasyllabic and the second in octosyllabic couplets, are tactful courtier-verses of personal praise.⁴² Yet they reflect Elizabeth's own mounting troubles and indirectly those of her family in England. The beginning of the first of the two,

Crowns are the sport of Fortune

was certainly prophetic. Another poem “To his Grace of Canterbury” may be merely a courtier's gesture towards Charles's favourite churchman, or it may indicate, as it appears to, a genuine respect and affection for Laud that Sandys' friend Falkland certainly did not share. Whatever the motives for its composition, this poem also reflects those troublous times, for Laud is the pilot.

Who through such Rocks and Gulphes, on either side,
So steadily the Sacred Vessel guide:(43)

This 1638 volume is rich in commendatory verses from many of Sandys' friends. The dedicatory poems are followed immediately by two new eulogies in decasyllabic couplets from the pen of Falkland. The first praises the additions made to this edition of the Paraphrases and the second intimates, as Sandys had done, that these are the “last accents of a Dying muse,” but insists on their immortality as art.

Henry King, later a bishop and paraphraser of the Psalms himself, proclaims the immortality of Sandys' verse in lines “To my much honoured friend,” congratulating himself that he is like the poet a “Prelates Sonne.” He praises Sir Edwin's Europæ Speculum as well as George's previous work:

And scarcely have Two Brothers farther borne
A Fathers Name, or with more Value worne
Their Owne, then Two of you: whose Pens, and Feet
Have made the distant Points of Heav'n to meet:
Hee by exact discoveries of the West,
Your Selfe by painfull Travels in the East.

Sidney Godolphin's encomium in decasyllabic triplets follows King's lines, and mentions that Sandys has not printed the Canticles because his paraphrase of them preserves too much of the author's “Strength and Light.” Carew's decasyllabic couplets confess the unworthiness of his “unhallow'd feet” and “unwasht Muse” to pollute these things Divine, but Sandys' verse persuades him to turn to sacred themes. Dudly Digges,⁴⁴ scholar and traveller himself as well as merchant prince, honours his “worthy Kinsman M^r. George Sandys.” as does Sir Francis Wyatt. Briefer pieces by Sir Henry Rainsford, “Edward” Waller, and Wintoure Grant, Sandys' fellow-courtiers, complete the parade of praises which reflects the seriousness and dignity with which this last⁴⁵ of Sandys' larger poetic undertakings was received.

The paraphrases of the Psalms and the songs from the Old and New Testaments which made up the 1636 volume remained essentially unchanged in text in the 1638. In all these English versions Sandys was working from a Latin original. He probably used Biblia Interprete Sebastiano Castalione Una Cum Eiusdem Annotationibus Totum Opus Recognouit Ipse. …⁴⁶ This text by Castalio, the first independent version of the Bible, with learned notes referring to Ovid, would have appealed to the Protestant humanist. And it is actually mentioned in the 1638 Paraphrase in a note on one of Falkland's commendatory poems.⁴⁷ It has been suggested that Sandys may also have used Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra Sive Libri Canonici Priscæ Ivdæorum … Scholiis illustrati ab Immanuele Tremellio & Francisco Iunio,⁴⁸ though a comparison of a few selections only from Job, the Psalms, and the Song of Solomon⁴⁹ would indicate that the English verse in sense is much closer to Castalio's than to the Tremellius-Junius version.⁵⁰ But he might have used either or both.

For these paraphrases Sandys did not adhere to the heroic couplet, but used a number of metres. Thirty-five of the Psalms and four of the songs appear in varied combinations of octosyllabic lines,⁵¹ including nine Psalms and one song in triplets. Twenty-nine Psalms and three songs are in octosyllabic couplets, and sixteen Psalms and one song in heptasyllabic couplets. Twenty-one Psalms and two songs are in the decasyllabic couplet, including two Psalms divided into quatrains. Thirty-six Psalms and four songs appear in stanzas composed of combinations of octosyllabic lines with lines of four or six syllables. Seven Psalms appear in stanzas each composed of a quatrain of six-syllable and a quatrain of four-syllable verse. The remaining six Psalms are in six-syllable couplets. The additions to the 1638 volume—the Job, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations of Jeremiah—are in decasyllabic couplets. Thus the three long pieces, twenty-one Psalms, and two songs, show that the heroic couplet was his favourite metre here as it had been the only metre of the Ovid.

In paraphrasing the Scriptures Sandys was making his entry into the already crowded literary field of the “divine poem.” For before him the Renaissance Englishman, like his Continental contemporary, had already tried his hand many times at versifying portions of the Bible or singing original hymns to his Creator. It was as natural a direction for the Tudor or Caroline poet to take as those which led him to compose the love lyric or erotic verse narrative, to travel in the Ancient World or to explore the New.⁵² The religious poems were varied in form and subject, ranging from highly original verses to faithful translations of Biblical poetry, from sonnets to long narratives. The paraphrase of the obviously lyrical portions of the Scriptures was perhaps the favourite mode and matter of expression, for it offered certain freedom from exact translation and yet did not compel original conception. Before Sandys there were almost countless paraphrases of the Psalms especially, varying from small groups of only a few Psalms to the complete Psalter. Even his brother Sir Edwin had tried his hand.⁵³

But of the earlier and contemporary versions of the Psalms only a few appear to have been intended for general or private parochial use. Sternhold and Hopkins, Archbishop Parker, Sir Philip Sidney and his sister the Countess of Pembroke, Sir Francis Bacon, and John Milton more or less ambitiously undertook to produce volumes of English Psalms for private devotion or public worship.⁵⁴ That Sandys intended his at least for private devotion is evident in the new title-page for the Psalms portion of the 1638 edition. It includes the lines:

Set to new Tunes for private Devotion:
                    And a thorow Base, for Voice,
                                                  or Instrument.
                                                                      by
          Henry Lawes Gentleman of His
                    Majesties Chappell Royall.

Henry Lawes was already a distinguished musician-composer. Only the year before under his own name he had published the music and libretto for a masque. Since the verse was by a young unknown named John Milton, the poet's name did not appear.⁵⁵ In the case of Sandys', however, the composer was glad to increase his own prestige by having his name appear under a more famous one.

As the words of the title suggest, Lawes' music was primarily suited for private devotionals⁵⁶ and intended to please the King.⁵⁷ Sandys' dedicatory poem to Archbishop Laud may have been a bid for consideration of the volume for more general use, but there is no other indication of such an ambition. At any rate, Lawes liked Sandys' Psalms sufficiently to make new musical setting for thirty⁵⁸ of them before 1648, and print them in his Choice Psalms Put Into Musick For Three Voices …,⁵⁹ a book mentioning Sandys only in the dedication to the King but prized today especially because it contains a commendatory sonnet “To My Friend M^r. Henry Lawes” by John Milton himself. Later in the century appeared The Psalms of George Sandys set to Music for Two Voices …⁶⁰ by Walter Porter, like Lawes a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal under Charles I.

Actually Sandys' paraphrases have received more direct praise from at least fairly discriminating critics than the Ovid has.⁶¹ In his own time Cowley, though he did not feel that Sandys had recreated the Psalms in a spirit equal to that of the originals, admitted the pre-eminence of the translation among metrical versions of the scriptures.⁶² Richard Baxter in the next generation also gave these divine poems top ranking, singling out the Job as having restored the glory of the original, and lamenting that the Psalms had not been fitted to the usual tunes.⁶³ Pope thought highly of the Job especially.⁶⁴ In the early nineteenth century a Quarterly reviewer called Sandys' the most poetic translation of the Psalms,⁶⁵ and H. J. Todd, an authority on English psalmody, agreed, regretting that it is actually “too poetical for the comprehension of common Congregations, into which it has therefore never found its way.”⁶⁶ In his observations on the development of the Psalter in English, Todd quotes Sandys' versions of Psalms XCI, CXXXIX, and CXLVIII. Catterwole, a contemporary of Todd, states that no other version presents “the combination of poetry with terse and correct versification, and a strict adherence to the original,”⁶⁷ that Sandys' does. Late in the nineteenth century, G. A. Simcox cites Sandys' paraphrases as maintaining the highest level of those in English, though he thinks the Job “appallingly tame.”⁶⁸ In the last fifty years critics have generally been less enthusiastic concerning the intrinsic beauties of the paraphrases, but have given more attention to the form of their decasyllabic couplet and its possible significance. Actually they conclude little, but do point out such interesting things as that the heroic couplet of Job and the Psalms shows more run-on lines and run-on couplets than the Ovid,⁶⁹ a finding which bears out an earlier analysis of the Ovid showing a steady increase in run-on lines through the course of that poem.⁷⁰

In the end, A Paraphrase remains far less interesting to the modern reader than the Metamorphosis. The influence of the couplet of these religious poems on later writers is not so evident. Though there is variety of metre, some of it, particularly the four and six-syllable lines, Sandys never fully mastered. The poet's early habit of condensation is still here, and on the whole his metre is more regular than in the Ovid. But perhaps primarily because of the difference in the originals from which he worked, the paraphrases lack the skip of joy of the Ovid and yet never quite recapture the glow of divine fervour of the scriptural source with which to replace the pagan exuberance. The paraphrases do show the influence of the Ovidean rhetoric. But most of us prefer the Metamorphosis, simply as poetry, to the sacred verses.

Yet Sandys is not to be judged as a sacred poet entirely by A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems. As we have indicated, the swan-song implications of dedications and commendatory verses in the 1638 volume were somewhat premature. In 1640 appeared a small octavo with the title,

CHRISTS / PASSION. / A / TRAGEDIE. / WITH / ANNOTATIONS. / / LONDON, / Printed by Iohn Legatt. / M. D. C. XL.⁷¹

This was Sandys' translation of Hugo Grotius' Christus Patiens, which had been originally published in Latin in 1608.⁷² The original had been lauded by Casaubon, and was called a perfect tragedy in the classical tradition.⁷³ Already inclined to scriptural themes and as a member of the Great Tew circle sympathetic with Grotius' brand⁷⁴ of Protestantism, Sandys found its subject appealing.

The dedication to the King takes cognizance of the monarch's spiritual and mental cares, for it alludes to Grotius' troubles which led the Dutch poet to such a theme.⁷⁵ And it concludes with a reflection on Sandys himself in relation to the times:

Thus in the Shadow of your Absence, dismist
from Arms by an Act of Time, have I, in what I
was able, continued to serve you.(76)
                                                  The humblest of your
                                                            Majesties Servants,
                                                            George Sandys.

Falkland's verses “To the Author” which follow are a double tribute to Grotius and Sandys, the “great pair.” They begin with Grotius:

Our age's wonder; by thy birth the fame
Of Belgia, by thy banishment the shame;

Falkland sketches Grotius' career as scholar, theologian, and statesman. Then he asks what England can do to match the great career of the author.

All that we can, we do: a Pen divine,
And differing only in the Tongue from thine,
Doth thy choice labours with success reherse,
And to another world transplant thy verse,
At the same heighth to which before they rose,
When they forc'd wonder from unwilling foes:
Now Thames with Ganges may thy labours praise,
Which there(77) breed Faith, and here devotion raise.
Though your acquaintance all of worth pursue,
And count it honour to be known to you,
I dare affirme your Catalogue does grace
No one who better doth deserve a place:
None hath a larger heart, a fuller head,
For he hath seen as much as you have read:
The neerer Countries past, his stepts have prest
The new found World, and trod the Sacred East,
Where his brows due the loftie Palmes doe rise,
Where the proud Pyramids invade the skies;
And, as all think who his rare friendship own,
Deserves no lesse a journey to be known.
Vlysses, if we trust the Grecian song,
Travel'd not farre, but was a prisoner long,
To that by Tempest forc'd; nor did his voice
Relate his Fate: His travels were his choice,
And all those numerous Realmes, returnd agen,
Anew, he travl'd over with his Pen,
And, Homer to himselfe, doth entertaine
With truths more usefull, then his Muse could faine.
Next Ovids Transformations he translates
With so rare Art, that those which he relates
Yeeld to this transmutation, and the change
Of men to Birds and Trees appeares not strange:
Next the Poetick parts of Scripture, on
His loome he weaves, and Iob and Solomon(78)
His Pen restores with all that heavenly Quire;
And shakes the dust from Davids solemn Lyre:
For which from all with just consent he wan
The title of the English Buchanan.
Now to you both, great Paire. …

The outline-structure of a classical five-act play, with chorus and a minimum of characters, Sandys found in his Latin original and followed faithfully in his translation. The English version is written in decasyllabic and octosyllabic couplets, the dialogue of the individual dramatis personae⁷⁹ usually appearing in the former and the Chorus of Jewish Women and characters' response to the Chorus in the latter, though there is variation. Sometimes Sandys stays close to the original as he had done in his other translations, but any attempt at compression is not so evident. In Act II, for example, Grotius has 272 lines, Sandys 334. Though perfect smoothness is not always achieved, as in the paraphrases the metre is regular. And as in the paraphrases, his rhymes are less emphatic than in the earlier Ovid.

The merit of the work as translation has been discussed at length elsewhere.⁸⁰ Sandys is in this work as much paraphraser as translator, even in the Elizabethan sense of the latter term. Though the Latin original certainly influenced the form of the English work, mere suggestion in the Latin is expanded in robust and picturesque language.

Grotius himself knew early of Sandys' translation. On 29 November 1639, presumably before the 1640 edition was published, he wrote to his brother William:

… Produit in Anglia Tragoedia nostra Christus Patiens, optimis in ea lingua expressa. Vir Illustrissimus elogium proposuit cuius initum sic me aloquitur:

Our Ages Wonder, by thy birth te [sic] Fame
Oft [sic] Belgia, by thy banissement [sic] the shame.

Id quid sit, Anglus tibi aliquis inter praetabitur Liber Regi dedicatus est. Addidit interpres Notas eruditas.⁸¹

The notas eruditas, as Grotius remarks, are Sandys' own. Unlike the Ovid commentaries, they are actually numbered-verse annotations, explaining the meaning or origin of geographical or proper names, giving mythological backgrounds for an allusion, sketching secular or religious history, or interpreting Biblical custom. They contain the same sort of translations from the classics as the Metamorphosis, and allusions to such authors as Ovid, Seneca, Horace, Vergil, Cicero, Eusebius, St. Jerome, Martial, Lucretius, Statius, and Prudentius. Though brief compared with the Ovid commentaries, they have the classical-humanistic flavour, even though the text they explicate is of the very essence of the Christian religion.

Christ's Passion has been called “the least pleasing of all Sandys' works,”⁸² because of its artificial form and ornate rhetoric. Yet it offers further proof of the poet's continued ability in the heroic couplet, of his basic religious interests,⁸³ and of his broad erudition. Perhaps the limitations of the original kept it from equalling the Ovid or even the paraphrases as poetry, for the Latin author in this case at least was not a great poet. Grotius properly was pleased by the translation, for it is better poetry than his own.⁸⁴

Even Christ's Passion was not Sandys' final publication of religious poetry. A year after its appearance another slim volume bore his initials:

A / PARAPHRASE / VPON / THE SONG OF / SOLOMON. / BY G.S. / Cum Privilegio Regiae Majestatis. / LONDON, / Printed by Iohn Legatt. / 1641.

This was almost surely a second-thought printing of a work which had been composed at about the same time as A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems. It is to be remembered that in the 1638 Paraphrase Sidney Godolphin referred to the fact that the Canticles were not printed, giving what is probably the real reason why they were withheld—that Sandys had preserved too much of the Biblical author's “Strength and Light.”

But you so crush those odors, so dispense
Those rich perfumes, you make them too intense
And such (alas) as too much please our Sense.(85)

Further proof that the Song of Solomon was circulated in manuscript perhaps lies in the considerable number of manuscript copies surviving, one of which gives 1637 as the date of composition.⁸⁶ Some of them survive in separate sheets,⁸⁷ but at least three⁸⁸ appear in copies of the 1638 edition of A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems. Of course it is possible that these latter were inserted after the printed Song of Solomon appeared, but it seems more likely that they were written in between 1638 and 1641 so that the owners might have the poet's paraphrases “complete.” At any rate, all these copies indicate that A Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon was highly popular.

Sandys wrote for this little work his last dedication⁸⁹ to his royal master, pointing out that the Song of Solomon was a most fitting tribute to a perfect marriage such as was Charles's, and noting again the end of his own career.

TO THE KING

Sir,

I presume to invite you to these Sacred Nuptials: the Epithalamium sung by a crowned muse. Never was there paire of so divine a Beautie, nor united in such harmonious Affections: and infinitely he deserved her love; redeemed at so dear a Price, and enriched with so invaluable a Dowry.

Sir, Let me finde your Pardon for thus long continuing to make my Allay currant by the impression of your Name. Directed by your propitious Aspect, have I safely steered between so many Rocks; and now, arrived at my last Harbor, have broken up my ruinous Vessel.

The humblest of your

Majesties Servants

George Sandys.⁹⁰

Whatever earlier moral or religious scruples regarding publication of the work the old poet may have had, the graceful tact of this dedication appears to indicate that he had overcome or dissipated them. That Godolphin was right in considering these love lyrics the most sensuous, if not sensual, of Sandys' verse is obvious in their first lines. As in Christ's Passion, Sandys was affected greatly by his desire to recreate the spirit of his original and yet at the same time show his own poetic faculty. Here his source was one of the great love poems of all literature. The result is more successful than in the Grotius drama or the other scriptural poems.

The octosyllabic couplets of A Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon are in rhetoric and spirit much closer to the Elizabethan lyrics than to the heroic verses the poet had shaped elsewhere. They seem nearer to Marlowe than to Dryden or Pope. Keats should have enjoyed this verse as much as or more than the Ovid he so extensively used. One can imagine his delight in these lines on love in spring:

Lo, the sharp Winter now is gone,
The threatning Tempests over-blown;
Harke, how the Aires Musicians sing,
And carrol to the floury Spring,
Chast Turtles, hous'd in shady Groves,
Now murmur to their faithfull Loves:
Green figs on sprouting trees appear,
And Vines Sweet smelling Blosomes bear.
Arise my Love, my Faire one Rise,
O Come! delay our Ioy envies.(91)

Or these,

My Love, by mutuall vous assur'd,
A Garden is with strength immur'd:
A Christall Fountain, a cleare Spring
Shut up and sealed with my Ring:
An Orchard stor'd with pleasant Fruits;
Pomgranat Trees, there spread their roots,
Where sweetly smelling Camphire blows,
And never dying Spiknard grows;
Sweet Spiknard, Crocus newly blown,
Sweet Calamus and Cinamon:
Those Trees which sacred Incense shed,
The Teares of Myrrh, and Aloes bled
From bitter wounds; with all the rare
Productions which perfume the Aire.(92)

With the publication of such verse a literary career of almost thirty years was concluded. The author's A Relation had by 1642 gone through five editions, the Metamorphosis through six,⁹³ and the various sacred paraphrases and translations were with the earlier works to appear again several times in the course of the century. Sandys might well break up his ruinous vessel with the comfortable knowledge that in his own century at least his fame was secure. Dryden's judgment of him—“the best versifier of the former age”—perhaps summarizes the later seventeenth century's feeling about Sandys. In other words, he was the ablest poet between Ben Jonson and Dryden and Milton.

Succeeding generations have hardly agreed with this verdict. When considered at all, Sandys has been placed rightly below some of his contemporaries and wrongly below others. He is by no means a major writer. But when his accomplishments are added up the result is impressive. (1) A sophisticated, accurate, and basically entertaining travel account in a distinctive prose style. (2) A translation of a Roman classic in language and tone somewhere between the Elizabethan Golding and the Augustan Pope, in a closed and balanced yet flexible couplet⁹⁴ in itself a genuine contribution to the development of the heroic metre. This work in rhetoric and metre directly influenced Dryden, Milton, Pope, and Keats. In its prose commentaries the Metamorphosis was a mine of materials on a romantic stimulus to many literary generations. (3) A paraphrase of the Scriptures and a translation of a Renaissance Christian poem, renderings distinguished for regularity of form and felicity of phrase among the many others of the genre of their time, and in some places really fine poetry. (4) And finally, a handful of original poems, many of them dedicatory verses, but in some instances, as in the “Hymn to the Redeemer” and “Deo. Opt. Max.,” deeply sincere expressions of religious feeling, the dignity of man, and the magnificent adventure which was life in the English Renaissance. With all these works goes a consistently straight-forward and intelligible style, at times strongly colloquial. These are no trivial accomplishments.

Sandys preserved much of the ebullient imagination of the Elizabethans in the very forms in which he prepared the way for the neoclassical age. He is clearly not of the school of Donne or Herbert, nor of his friends Carew and Lovelace,⁹⁵ though with them all he shares many qualities. He is more the scholar-poet than any of them. Perhaps this phrase “scholar-poet” is the key to his weakness and his strength.

Notes

1. All of these save Bludder and Wenman wrote commendatory verses included in one or more of Sandys' later works. For further evidence of the intimacy of this group and Sandys, see below. Sir Thomas Bludder, himself a Gentleman of the Chamber, had in his library two editions of Ovid in English, both presumably by Sandys (see John L. Lievsay and R. B. Davis, “A Cavalier Library—1643,” Studies in Bibliography, VI [1953-4], 141-60), one of which had been presented to him by the poet.

2. See the Will, Somerset House, Probate Section, 84 Ridley, 20 August 1629. The rings were only of twenty-shilling value, according to the abstract of the will in the Virginia Magazine, XXIX (April 1921), 240-2.

3. P.R.O., C. 2/Ch. I/S125/29. The suit continued in later courts or resulted in further litigation. See P.R.O., C. 2/Ch. I; S13/45; C. 2/Ch. I/58/27 and especially C. 2/Ch. I/L49/32 dated 25 January 1643/4.

4. It was stated that Henry had withheld the portions of the younger girls, had not endowed the metaphysical lectures at Oxford as stipulated, and otherwise had failed to live up to the terms of the will.

5. It is barely possible that another George Sandys is referred to, but the poet's close relationship, legal training, residence in London, etc., almost ensure that he is the guardian named.

6. For a good sketch of Wenman, see Clarendon (Edward Hyde), Characters of Eminent Men in the Reigns of Charles I and II (London, 1793), pp. 186-7. Wenman was an M. P. for the University of Oxford in the Parliament of 1639-40, when his friend Falkland was also a member. He died about 1642. He is not to be confused with his cousin Sir Ferdinando Wenman. For more of Wenman, see Neill, Virginia Vetusta, p. 75; Brown, First Republic, p. 393; K. B. Murdock, The Sun at Noon (New York, 1939), p. 151; Nash, Collections for the History of Worcestershire (2 vols., London, 1782), II, opp. p. 220; Weber, Falkland, pp. 74-5, 82, etc. Wenman is named in Suckling's “A Session of the Poets” (W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., The Poems, Plays, and Other Remains of Sir John Suckling [2 vols., London, 1892], I, 6) as one of the literary men of his time.

7. See Drayton's “Upon the Death of His Incomparable Friend, Sir Henry Raynsford of Clifford” (Hebel, et al, edd. The Works of Michael Drayton, III, 232-4).

8. The younger Sir Henry married Eleanor Boswell, was M.P. for Anderson, Hants, and apparently died in 1641 (see Nicholas Ransford, “British Settlers in America,” N & Q April 4, 1925, Vol. 148, No. 14, and W. P. Phillimore and George S. Fry, edd., Inquisitiones Post Mortem, Gloucestershire, Reign King Charles I [London, British Record Society, 1895-], Pt. II, 12-18 Charles I, 1637-42, pp. 163-4.)

9. The Savoy, earlier a royal palace, had become in 1505 the Hospital of the Savoy, with the Chapel which had escaped earlier destruction. The mastership was apparently a court appointment. At this time it is possible that Walter Balcanqual, later vicar of Sandys' own parish church of Boxley, and by 1617 King's Chaplain, was Master of the Savoy. He certainly held the position for some years between 1617 and 1640. See Cave-Browne, History of Boxley Parish, p. 93.

10. The surviving MS. is a copy, evidently in Nicholas Ferrar's own hand, of the original and is now among the Ferrar Papers, Magdalene College, Cambridge. The letter has been reproduced in B. Blackstone, The Ferrar Papers … (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 248-9, with a few minor changes in punctuation.

11. As Mr. Blackstone remarks, this sentence is difficult to decipher. I have followed Blackstone's reading here, which is essentially my own also.

12. Ferrar Papers, No. 580, December 1627.

13. Ibid., No. 579, December 1627.

14. For accounts of Falkland see Kurt Weber; Murdock; J. A. R. Marriott, The Life and Times of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland (London, 1907); John Tulloch, Rational Theology in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., London, 1872), I, 76-169.

15. Tulloch, I, 92, says about 1632.

16. For Falkland's relation to Jonson and his circle, see Weber, pp. 63-5, etc.

17. Falkland mentions Sandys and his Ovid in verses addressed to Ben Jonson before 4 February 1631/2. See Weber, p. 284.

18. There is no direct evidence that Jonson ever visited Falkland in the country, though biographers of the latter have sometimes taken it for granted that he did, since the two were great friends.

19. Professor Kurt Weber, who has made the most recent and thorough study of the Falkland circle, lists the following (p. 82, alphabetical order only) as certainly visitors at Tew or Burford, though surely not all in any one season or year: Thomas Barlow, William Chillingworth, John Duncon, John Earle, George Eglionby, Charles Gataker, Sidney Godolphin, Henry Hammond, Edward Hyde, George Morley, Sir Henry Rainsford, Dr. Walter Raleigh, George Sandys, Gilbert Sheldon, Thomas Triplet, Edmund Waller, Sir Francis Wenman, and Patrick Young. Among those listed with less certainty are Abraham Cowley, Robert Cresswell, Hugh Cressy, Sir Kenelm Digby, John Hales, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Sanderson, John Selden, John Vaughan, and perhaps Endymion Porter. Professor Weber (pp. 82-156) devotes considerable space to a discussion of the interests of each of these men, interests which probably supplied topics of conversation at Tew. Chillingworth is considered in a special chapter. John Aubrey (Brief Lives [2 vols., Oxford, 1898], I, 151), who knew personally many of the former guests at Tew, lists Rainsford, Wenman, Jonson, Waller, Hobbes, and Sandys as among them. Tulloch (I, 95) feels that Falkland's friends were in two groups chronologically, first the poets, and then scholars and theologians later. Sandys, of course, could have been a bridge between the two. That the two groups were distinct, however, is not supported by real evidence. The idea is probably based on the fact that Falkland himself did turn from poetry to theology, though even this “change” must be qualified.

20. See Murdock, p. 79.

21. Ruth Wallerstein, “The Development of the Rhetoric and meter of the Heroic Couplet,” p. 166-209.

22. Of these versifiers (Falkland, Henry King, Dudly Digges, Thomas Carew, Francis Wyatt, Henry Rainsford, Wintoure Grant, “Edward” Waller, and Sidney Godolphin), there is little indication that Digges, Wyatt, or Grant were members of the Great Tew circle. Sandys' kinsmen Digges and Wyatt, however, probably visited Sir Francis Wenman and therefore Tew in this period. Grant was a fellow-Gentleman of the Privy Chamber with Sandys and Falkland. Actually all may have written their verses after reading the manuscripts of the Paraphrases at Great Tew. See below.

23. See Wallerstein, pp. 186-99. Also see J. W. Hebel and H. H. Hudson, Poetry of the English Renaissance (New York, 1929), p. 1034, for the observation that “Waller, himself, claimed ‘he derived’ the harmony of his numbers from Fairfax …, but it is interesting to note that George Sandys presented Waller with a copy—of the first edition of his Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems.” See Book-Auction Records, XXIII, p. 285, for author's presentation copy to “E. Waller.”

24. Professor Murdock, pp. 98-9, gives evidence that Falkland “turned” from interest in verse to interest in theology. That the two continued hand in hand is evidenced in Falkland's relation to Sandys. Even a worldly poet like John Suckling wrote at least one religious treatise, “An Account of Religion by Reason” (1637). (See Tulloch, I, 112).

25. The name as an epithet was often applied to the group, though Falkland may have been shocked to be called one. See Weber, pp. 197-205.

26. See H. Vreeland, Hugo Grotius, Father of the Modern Science of International Law (New York, 1917), p. 64. Falkland was opposed to Laud and in agreement with Grotius on a union between the Anglican church and other Protestant groups on the Continent (Tulloch, I, 155).

27. E.g., see Weber, pp. 189. It should be recalled that Laud's godson the rationalist theologian Chillingworth was a principal member of the Great Tew group and influenced Falkland tremendously (cf. Weber, Chapter V, 157-212). I do not mean to imply that the Great Tew group presented a united front of theological and political opinion. Actually they differed in interpretation and detail. Some were much closer to Laud than Falkland was.

28. At least in such essentials as the interpretation of the doctrine of predestination (Weber, pp. 193-4). In 1651 (see note 33 below) Falkland stated that in the matter of free will he had rather be called Pelagian than Calvinist.

29. Of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome … (Oxford, 1645). For later editions see Weber, p. 334. For discussion see Tulloch, I, 157 ff.

30. First edition, Oxford, Leonard Litchfield, 1638 [1637]. Note that the publisher is the son of the same man who printed Sandys' 1632 Ovid. See R. B. Davis, “George Sandys v. William Stansby,” pp. 204, 207.

31. E.g., Vives. Compare with Falkland's reference to them in a selection from his Reply (quoted by Weber, p. 195).

32. Of course Bacon proclaimed the divorce between philosophy and theology and would not apply philosophical reasoning to the investigation of Christian truth. See Tulloch, II, 19, and Grace Hunter.

33. John Aubrey, Brief Lives, II, 212.

34. W. Carew Hazlitt, ed., The Poetical Works of Sir John Suckling (2 vols., London, 1892), I, 10. Hazlitt dates the poem about 1637.

35. P.R.O., Signet Office Docquets, Index 6810, through “the Archbishop of Canterbury … by M^r Secretary Windebank.” Rymer, Foedera, XIX, 708-10 gives the date as 4 December; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1635, lists 2 December. The patent is in P.R.O., Patent Rolls, C. 66/2694.

36. The licensing by the Archbishop of Canterbury, “Summa Approbationis. Perlegi hoc Poema Paraphrasticum in Psalmos Davidis, et alios Hymnos sacros, in quo nihil reperio S. Paginae contrarium, quo minus cum utilitate, ut et summa lectorum voluptate imprimatur,” is dated 28 November 1635 in the printed form. Probably a lag between granting of the Priuilegio and its recording accounts for the discrepancy in dates.

37. The type is small and irregular and printers' errors are fairly frequent. See Bowers and Davis, pp. 39-40.

38. A man Sandys trusted. See R. B. Davis, “George Sandys v. William Stansby,” pp. 198 n., 200 n. Evidently Hebb was merely Sandys' representative here.

39. Arber, Transcript of the S.R., IV, 366.

40. The title-page bears the 1638 date, but the colophon, “London,/printed by Iohn Legatt./1637.” would indicate its early printing. Also the license from the Archbishop of Canterbury is dated 7 November 1637.

41. Actually brief lines “To the Prince” appearing in all copies do not show this “overcast spirit.”

42. For texts of the two, see R. B. Davis, “Two New Manuscripts Items for a George Sandys Bibliography,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXVII (Third Quarter 1943), 220; and “George Sandys and Two ‘Uncollected’ Poems,” Huntington Library Quarterly, XII (November 1948), 107-8. The Folger Shakespeare Library has the only known copy of the 1638 edition containing the two poems to Elizabeth of Bohemia.

43. See Davis, “Two New Manuscript Items,” p. 221. This poem survives, apparently, only in a manuscript with a copy of the first of the verses to Elizabeth of Bohemia, in a blank leaf of a 1638 Paraphrase now in the Library Company of Philadelphia. Since the companion piece to Elizabeth does appear elsewhere in print, it appears likely that this did also.

44. His grandfather Leonard Digges married the sister of George Sandys' mother. See Br. Mus. Add. MSS. No. 33, 896, “Rev'd T. Streatfield, Collections Relating to Kent”; and Brown, Genesis, II, 879.

45. For a discussion of the metrical forms used in these commendatory poems, see Ruth Wallerstein, pp. 194-9.

46. Basilæ. I compared the 1551 and 1556 editions. The first edition was in 1551.

47. Falkland alludes to a translation of the Bible into Latin which was done to give the truth to the “polite-pagan-Christians.”

48. London, 1580, was the edition examined. There are many others. Hooper, Works, I, lxxxvii, notes that Sandys may have used Castalio but finds him very close to the London, 1593, edition of Tremellius-Junius.

49. See discussion below.

50. Especially is this true of A Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon.

51. Of these, several are in the stanza Tennyson was to make famous in In Memoriam.

52. The interest of the many-sided Elizabethan in religious poetry has frequently been pointed out. E.g., J. J. Jusserand, A Literary History of the English People (3 vols., New York, 1909), II, 415-17 and note.

53. Sacred Hymns, Consisting of Fifti Select Psalms of David and Others, Paraphrastically turned into English Verse, and by Robert Tailour, set to be sung … (London, 1615). Among others than those mentioned above who tried their hands in the earlier seventeenth century were Carew, Denham, Joseph Hall, George Herbert, King James, Henry King, and George Wither. Wyatt and Surrey in Britain and Marot in France had also earlier paraphrased Psalms in the vernacular.

54. See the anonymous article, “Psalmody,” The Quarterly Review, XXXVIII (July 1828), 16-53, for a survey of these early versions of the Psalms.

55. See Willa McC. Evans, Henry Lawes, Musician and Friend of Poets (New York, 1941), pp. 138-41.

56. Ibid., p. 143. See this reference for a discussion of Lawes' music in relation to the verse text.

57. Apparently Charles did use and enjoy it. Sir Thomas Herbert, Memoirs of the Last Two Years of the Reign of King Charles I (London, 1839 [orig. ed. 1702]), p. 61, notes that it was one of the books Charles delighted “to read” in when he was a prisoner in the Isle of Wight.

58. Eight of these had been originally printed as airs in 1638 and were now reconstructed as part-songs; sixteen of the earlier tunes were omitted, and twenty-two were completely new (Evans, p. 183). Lawes also used Sandys' paraphrases of at least four Psalms in Select Psalmes Of A New Translation, To be Sung in Verse and Chorus of five parts, with Symphonies of Violins, Organ, and other Instruments, November 22, 1655. Composed by Henry Lawes, Servant to His late Majesty (Evans, p. 211 n).

59. London, 1648, in quarto. The four parts are found in many instances bound separately (as Br. Mus. [Music] c. 110 and Br. Mus. K. 3 h. 18; Bodleian Music Sch. E. 513 and 516, Bodleian Art. 40 p. 17 BS). For a bibliographical description of this book in its variant and divided states, see Emma V. Unger and William A. Jackson, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, English Literature, 1475-1700 (3 vols., New York, 1940), II, 607-9.

60. Circa 1670. I have not located a copy. It is mentioned in Allibone's Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, II, p. 1648. Porter, the composer, also published books of airs and madrigals in 1632 and 1639, and of motets in 1657.

61. Of course these critics are in certain cases specialists on psalmody or hymnology who did not even know the Metamorphosis.

62. Abraham Cowley, Complete Works …, ed. by A. B. Grosart (2 vols. [Edinburgh], 1881), II, 4.

63. Baxter says Herbert's and Sandys' translations are the scripture poems pleasing him best (Poetical Fragments … [London, 1681], p. A8). Sandys' are “an elegant and excellent paraphrase.”

64. See William Lisle Bowles, ed., The Works of Alexander Pope (10 vols., London, 1806), VI, 217, for Warton's note that “The Job of Sandys does not seem to be admired and known, in a degree equal to its merits. Harte told me how highly Pope thought of it. …”

65. Anonymous, “Psalmody,” Quarterly Review, XXXVIII (July 1828), 27.

66. Observations upon the Metrical Versions of the Psalms … (London, 1822), pp. 70-2, 83.

67. R. Catterwole, Sacred Poetry of the Seventeenth Century, Vol. I (London, 1835), pp. 47-8. He reprints Psalms XIII, XX, XXVI, XXXV, XLII, LXVI, LXXXVIII, XCII, C, and CXXXVII, one of the songs, and two of Sandys' original poems.

68. “Sandys, Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughn” in Thomas H. Ward, The English Poets, Selections with Critical Introductions by Various Writers (5 vols., London, 1880-1918), II, 192-3.

69. Felix Schelling, “Ben Jonson and the Classical School,” pp. 237-8, compares Sandys' use of run-on lines and other devices with those of Spenser, Marlowe, Drayton, and Chapman. He finds Sandys closer to the earliest poet, Spenser, than to the others. To make this comparison Professor Schelling used 100 lines from Psalm LXXIII and Job and compared them with 100 lines from each of the other poets. Professor Wallerstein, pp. 187-8 agrees more or less tacitly as to the run-on lines, but points out that Professor Schelling's conclusion that Sandys also shows fewer rhetorical lines must be qualified.

70. H. Wood, pp. 74-5, shows the steady increase in unstopt lines from Books I-XV. See Chapter VIII above. Wood's explanation is that Sandys “reverted” (to earlier Renaissance freedom) as he grew farther away in time from first hand contact with the French developers of the couplet in the 1610-20 period, or from the time when he was “fresh from theoretical studies of poetics.”

71. For variant forms of this title and a bibliographical description of the volume and of later editions, see Bowers and Davis, pp. 47-52. The work had been entered in the Stationers' Register on 9 October 1639 as the copy of Master Legatt. See Arber, S.R., IV, 483.

72. Hamilton Vreeland, Hugo Grotius, p. 34.

73. Ibid. It was perhaps well-nigh perfect as a neoclassic imitation, but imitation it distinctly is.

74. Grotius (1583-1645) himself had been in England in 1613 as Dutch representative in a freedom-of-the-seas dispute. While there he became a friend of Isaac Casaubon. Later, imprisoned in his own land in theologico-political disputes, escaping, and living abroad, he was one of the champions of learning, the enquiring mind, and Protestantism in his age. At the time of Sandys' translation he was Sweden's ambassador in France. He had for a long time influenced certain groups of religious thinkers, including the Great Tew circle (see Weber, pp. 187 ff. for a discussion of Grotius' ideas as they are related to those of Falkland and Chillingworth). A new annotated bibliography of Grotius' works is now being prepared by Dr. Jacob ter Meulen at the Hague.

75. In both the dedication and in a brief address to the Reader Sandys mentions that Apollinaris of Laodicea and Gregory Nazianzen had previously written on the same subject. W. S. M. Knight (The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius … [London, 1925], p. 117) denies any similarity between the work of Grotius and that of St. Gregory beyond an inevitable similarity in the names of the dramatis personae. He feels that the drama is remarkably indebted to Aeschylus and Euripides.

76. Hooper, Works, I, xlvi, suggests that this may refer to Sandys' inability, on account of age, to join the army against the Scots.

77. Falkland's or Sandys' own footnote says this refers to De Veritate Religionis Christianæ, Grotius' work intended to convert the Indians.

78. See below. …

79. The “Persons” consist of Jesus, Chorus of Jewish Women, Peter, Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, the Jews, first Nuncius, Second Nuncius, Chorus of Roman Soldiers, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, John, and Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

80. Gunther Hans Grüninger, George Sandys als Übersetzer des “Christus Patiens” von Hugo Grotius (Tauberbischofsheim, 1927). This brief study (a doctoral dissertation) does little more than compare Latin and English lines as to poetic technique in the two. The “notes” (i.e., commentaries) are not considered.

81. Hvgonis Grotii … Epistolae Quotquot repiriri potuerunt … (Amstelodami … MDCLXXXVII), letter 473, p. 889. In another letter of 30 November 1639 to Gerardo Iounni Vossio, Grotius states: “Nescio an videris Christum patientem nostrum versum à Sandescio Anglicé, & Regi Magnae Britanniae dedicatum. Magno favore is liberi receptus est; & deliberatur de vertendis nostris illis de jure belli ac pacis. Non dubito quin omnia nostra ibi multos sint lectores inventura.”

82. J. M. Attenborough, “George Sandys, Traveller and Poet,” Westminster Review, CLXIII (June 1905), 643-5.

83. It has been suggested that Grotius put his own strong Protestant doctrine in certain places into the mouths of his characters. Protestant or not, the subject had interested Sandys at least from the time of his visit to the Holy Sepulchre in 1611.

84. Cf. Grüninger, p. 70, who agrees. My own comparison of Sandys, 1640 edition, was made with Hugonis Grotii Christus Patiens … (Gorlicii, 1685). Curiously Sandys, on the basis of this one work, is given a place among the English dramatic poets. See Edward Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (London, 1675), ii, 56; Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691), pp. 436-8; [Charles Gildon], The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatic Poets (London, 1698), p. 121. T. R. Nash (Collections for the History of Worcestershire, 1782 ed., II, 223) and J. Nichols (A Select Collection of Poems … [8 vols., London, 1782], VIII, 238-40) speak of Lauder's charge of plagiarism against Milton as being based partly on Sandys' Christ's Passion.

85. A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems, p. (**2). That the Solomon existed in 1640 is of course borne out by Falkland's allusion to it in the Christ's Passion commendatory poem quoted above.

86. The University of Cincinnati 1638 Paraphrase (PR 2338, A 68 1638, an 8-leaf MS.) contains a manuscript Solomon with a handwritten title-page “A PARAPHRASE / VPON THE SONG / OF SOLOMON / By George Sandys / Anno / 1637.”

87. (1) Bodleian MSS. Ashmole 47 folio 113-14; (2) Bodleian MSS. e. Museo. 201 (S.C. 3707); (3) Br. Mus. MSS. Sloane 1009 ff. 376^b-85; (4) [This has the autograph of Charles Cheyney, 1643] Lansdowne 489. ff. 121. Arthur Clifford (Tixall Poetry [Edinburgh, 1813], pp. 335-6) says “I have in my possession a manuscript copy of this [Song of Solomon] … transcribed in the year 1638, which I have great reason to believe has never been faithfully printed.”

88. One of these appears in an “Ex dono auctoris” copy of the 1638, a book now in the Library Company of Philadelphia, the same volume in which appear manuscript dedicatory poems to Elizabeth of Bohemia and Archbishop Laud. See. R. B. Davis, “Two New Manuscript Items for a George Sandys Bibliography.” The other two appear in the William A. Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles (PR 2338. p. 21, a 6-leaf MS.), and in the University of Cincinnati Library (see note 90 above).

89. W. Carew Hazlitt, Handbook of the Popular … Literature of Great Britain … (London, 1867), p. 533, describes an edition, A Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon. Written by G. S. and Dedicated to the Queenes Majesty. Oxford, 1641. “4 to,” but no copy has been located. There is, however, a 1642 London edition dedicated “to the Queenes Majesty,” with a text differing slightly from that of the London 1641 (perhaps because it is based on the lost Oxford 1641 edition). The Song of Solomon is not included in the collected A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems until the 1676 edition. See Bowers and Davis, pp. 45-8.

90. A poetic dedication “To the Queene” appears neither in the London 1641 nor in the 1642 London edition “Dedicated to the Queen's Majesty.” The words “To the Queene” appear in the MS. Cincinnati copy in the proper position after the title, but the space for the poem is left blank. The poem to the queen does appear in the two MS. versions in the British Museum, and both the prose dedication to the King and the Poetic dedication to the queen appear with the Paraphrase upon the Song of Solomon in the 1676 edition of A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems. It may be presumed that the poetic dedication to the Queen appeared in the unlocated Oxford edition of 1641 of the Song of Solomon.

91. “Sponsa,” pp. 8-9, 1641 London ed.

92. “Sponsus,” p. 16.

93. Including the 1621 edition of the first five books and the unauthorized 1628 edition.

94. See A. H. Thompson, “Writers of the Couplet,” Cambridge History of English Literature (15 vols., New York, 1907-33), VII, 59.

95. Though in at least one instance he writes in their tradition. In addition to his published original poems mentioned in the chapters above, another original poem almost surely is his:—“A Dreame,” reprinted for the first time in R. B. Davis, “George Sandys and Two Uncollected Poems,” Huntington Library Quarterly, XII (November 1948), 109-11, from a Folger MS. commonplace book. It is a light, erotic, court-circle poem, much inferior in quality to “Deo. Opt. Max.” or the “Hymn to the Redeemer.”