"
Strachey voices the current belief that the Bermudas were harassed by
tempests, devils, wicked spirits, and other fearful objects. Shakespeare
has Ferdinand with fewer words intensify Strachey's picture:--
"Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here."
The possibility that incidents arising out of Virginian colonization may
have turned Shakespeare's attention to "the still vex'd Bermoothes" and
given him suggestions for one of his great plays lends added interest to
Strachey's True Repertory. But, aside from Shakespeare, this has an
interest of its own. It has the Anglo-Saxon touch in depicting the wrath of
the sea, and it shows the character of the early American colonists who
braved a wrath like this.
[Illustration: GEORGE SANDYS]
POETRY IN THE VIRGINIA COLONY.--GEORGE SANDYS (1577-1644), during his
stay in the colony as its treasurer, translated ten books of Ovid's
_Metamorphoses_, sometimes working by the light of a pine knot. This work
is rescued from the class of mere translation by its literary art and
imaginative interpretation, and it possesses for us an additional interest
because of its nativity amid such surroundings.
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