SOURCE: Hooper, Richard. Introduction to The Poetical Works, Vol. 1, by George Sandys, edited by Richard Hooper, pp. ix-lv. 1968. Reprint. London: John Russell Smith, 1872.

In the following essay, Hooper notes the high esteem in which prominent men of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries held Sandys, offers biographical information taken from contemporary accounts, discusses the publication and reception of various editions of Sandys's works, and concludes that Sandys has been overlooked as a poet.

Such has been the growing taste for Sacred Poetry during the past forty years that little apology is needed for re-introducing to the public the works of George Sandys. The name of John Keble and his “Christian Year” are household words; and the impulse given by that beautiful work has doubtless awakened an interest in many a forgotten writer on divine themes. The revival, too, of more earnest religious thought has, perhaps, contributed towards the...