ABSTRACT
Bacon holds a commanding place in seventeenth century thought, but he can hardly be called typical of the century. He did not share its characteristic melancholy; his imagination is always subordinated to thought, whereas the characteristic mood of the century is one of dreamy or mystical contemplation, in which imagination always takes thé lead of abstract thinking; and finally he does not pass, as the typical seventeenth century writers so frequently do, from moods of earthly passion to moods of religious ecstasy. In all these respects the spirit of the time is better represented by a man whose youth fell, like Bacon’s, in the high tide of the Elizabethan era, but who, from the first, stood apart, prophesying, both in his matter and his manner, of the age of James and Charles,—John Donne (1573-1631).
