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...