SOURCE: Attenborough, J. M. “George Sandys, Traveler and Poet.” Westminster Review CLXIII (January-June 1905): 643-55.

In the following essay, Attenborough provides an overview of Sandys's life and works.

All frequenters of the second-hand book-shop must be familiar with the noble seventeenth-century folio volumes which bear on their backs the joined names of Ovid and George Sandys. Those who have had the curiosity to reach one down from its place have been well rewarded by the sight of its strange and magnificent illustrations. The few who have borne away a copy cannot fail to have been delighted by the once-praised but now-forgotten verses which fill its long columns. The verse, apart from its own intrinsic charms, has a twofold historic interest. It stands at the head of the “smooth versification” tradition, and gained for its author the description from Dryden of “the best versifier of the former age”; and it...