ABSTRACT
Whoever can write anything which shall give a true and sufficient idea of John Donne, such an idea as will make the general reader of poetry understand why he is regarded as a poet of surpassing genius, may deem himself no longer an apprentice in the art of criticism. Donne is the most baffling of the minor poets; Whipple and Lowell, Gosse and Dowden, and a number of lesser men, have tried their hands, and yet no lover of Donne feels that anything adequate has been said, and those who know the poet still remain an elect number.
