ABSTRACT
Melton avows a long devotion to Donne, fostered and informed by mentors in America, which had brought him at last to the discovery of Donne’s secret, the peculiar rhetorical principles on which Donne’s verse is organized. In his view, Donne’s reputation fluctuated as critics sensed this principle or failed to grasp it.]
The third chapter deals with a yet practically untouched aspect of the criticism of English verse. The revelation of Donne’s ‘secret’ came to me suddenly after three years of daily, almost hourly, entreating, caressing, and wheedling of each line of his poetry. At first the thing seemed improbable; but, at the same time, it was so real and so plain as to give one that uncanny feeling experienced by those who dare to meddle with the affairs of ‘some old lover’s ghost’.
