ABSTRACT
There have been poets who have written more lyrically than Donne, more fervently about certain amorous emotions, but no one who has formulated so rational a philosophy of love as a whole, who has seen all the facts so clearly and judged of them so soundly. Donne laid down no literary theory. His followers took from him all that was relatively unimportant-the harshness, itself a protest against Spenserian facility, the conceits, the sensuality tempered by mysticismbut the important and original quality of Donne’s work, the psychological realism, they could not, through sheer incapacity, transfer into their own poetry. Donne’s immediate influence was on the whole bad. Any influence for good he may have had has been on poets of a much later date.
