SANDYS, GEORGE, an elegant English poet, the youngest son of Dr Edwin Sandys (Sandes or Sands he also wrote it), archbishop of York, was born at the palace of Bishopthorpe in 1577. In 1589, the year after his father's death, he entered St Mary Hall, Oxford, and afterwards, as Wood supposes, he became a member of Corpus Christi, where his elder brother Edwin was educated under Dr Hooker. Izaak Walton, in his life of Hooker, tells us that "this Edwin was afterwards Sir Edwin Sandys, and as famous for his Speculum Europæ as his brother George for making posterity beholden to his pen by a learned relation and comment on his dangerous and remarkable Travels, and for his harmonious translation of the Psalms of David, the Book of Job, and other poetical parts of Holy Writ, into most high and elegant verse." His Travels, which were published in 1615, were dedicated to Charles, Prince of Wales, and bore the title of A Relation of a Journey begun in 1610, in Four Books, containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Egypt, of the Holy Land, and of the remote parts of Italy and Islands adjoining. Sandys appears to have succeeded his brother as treasurer to the English colony of Virginia, where he prepared his translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid. In 1636-8 appeared his poetical version of the books of Psalms, Job, Ecclesiastes, &c.; and in 1639 his Christ's Passion, a tragedy by Grotius. His last work, the poetical translation of the Song of Solomon, was published in 1642. He died at Braxley Abbey in Kent, in March 1643-4.
The merits of George Sandys as a poetical translator stand very high. Although now fallen considerably into neglect, he seems to have been duly appreciated by the more discerning of his contemporaries. Waller describes him as having enriched our vulgar tongue; and Dryden, the best judge of his day in matters relating to poetry, pronounced him "the best versifier of the former age." This judgment has been recently confirmed by Warton and Lisle Bowles. Selections from Sandys's Metrical Paraphrases have been published, with a Life of the Poet by the Rev. H. J. Todd, London, 1839.