Page:Our Hymns.djvu/47

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 27

Sir Edwin Sandys, author of " Speculum Europao." The young poet studied at Oxford, at St. Mary s Hall, and afterwards, it is believed, at Corpus Christi College. At the age of thirty-three, he went on an extensive tour in Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land. Of these travels he gave a poetic description in his piece entitled, " The Traveller s Thanksgiving." And he pub lished, in 1615, a prose account entitled, " A relation of a journey begun in 1610, in 44 books, containing a description of the Turkish empire, of Egypt, of the Holy Land, and of the remote parts of Italy, and the islands adjoining." At the temple of Christ s Sepulchre, at Jerusalem, he had dedicated to the Eedeemer his hymn, beginning, " Saviour of Mankind, Man, Emmanuel." After his travels in the East, he became treasurer of the English colony of Virginia, in America. During his residence there, he completed his translation of the " Metamor phosis of Ovid." This is claimed as one of the earliest American books. On returning to England, he was appointed one of the gentlemen to the privy chamber to the King, Charles I. In 1636, he published a " Paraphrase upon the Psalms of Daviu, and upon the Hymns dispersed throughout the Old and New Testaments." Sir Thomas Herbert, in his " Memoirs of King Charles I.," says that this paraphrase was one of the books the King often read while confined at Carisbrooke Castle. At a later period he pub lished paraphrases of several parts of the Old Testament. In 1639, he made a translation of Grotius tragedy of " Christ s Passion." His last work was a poetical version of the " Song of Solomon," published in 1642. He died unmarried, March, 1643, at Bexley Abbey, Kent.

In the preface to his "Poetical Fragments," 1681, Baxter says, " It did me good when Mrs. Wyat invited me to see Bexley Abbey, in Kent, to see upon the old stone wall in the garden a summer-house, with this inscription in great golden letters, that, In that place, Mr. Gr. Sandys, after his travels over the world, retired himself for his poetry and contemplations."

The two hymns given in the "New Congregational," Nos. 91 and

�� �