Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[9] sudden horrors of the James River massacre (March, 1622), and the stress of the troubled days which followed. Yet when Sandys returned to England in 1625, he brought with him the ten books which completed his version of the “Metamorphoses.” This translation lived to be much admired by Dryden and Pope, and, what is more important, undoubtedly had great influence upon their method of versification. The not altogether admirable distinction, therefore, belongs to Sandys of having laid the foundation for the form of heroic couplet which became a blight upon English poetry in the eighteenth century. At all events, the accident of his having lived for a time in America gives us a very shadowy claim upon him as an American writer.

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Anne Bradstreet.

Even from the point of view of the literary historian, the work of Sandys is of little significance. It does not appear that he influenced later American writing, good or bad. The situation is very different with Anne Bradstreet, who, indeed, represents a second step toward a type of writing which should be in some sense American in quality as well as in birthplace. Though born in England, she became absolutely