ABSTRACT
The Second Progress is the most sustained and elevated of all Donne’s poems, as the first Progress is the most bright and subtle.
[She is evidently in two minds about Donne. She quotes De Quincey on Donne’s extraordinary combination of sublime dialectical subtlety with impassioned majesty, only to draw back at once from De Quincey’s judgement]
The epithets ‘majesty’ and ‘sublimity’ appear to us altogether out of place in a criticism of Donne. On any level below these no praise can be too extensive to be true; but in naming these qualities De Quincey has only reminded us of exactly what is wanting in Donne’s poetry and in the man.
