George Sandys--praised in his own century for his verse translation of and commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses , his metrical paraphrases of Old Testament psalms and songs, and his travel accounts--is in the twentieth century known best to scholars of English prosody, translation, and mythography. His poetry is still read by students of the heroic couplet, who see in Sandys an anticipation of the mature "closed" form achieved by Restoration poets such as John Dryden. Some of his biblical paraphrases live on in hymnals, set to the music of Henry Lawes and others. His encyclopedic commentary on the text of the Metamorphoses remains of interest to historians of mythography, the tradition of interpreting ancient myths for later, disbelieving readers.

In a broader cultural sense, Sandys's claim that part of his translation of Ovid was "bred in the New-World" (composed in Jamestown, where he served as treasurer of the Virginia Company...