ABSTRACT
By collecting these poems from the work of a generation more often named than read, and more often read than profitably studied, Professor Grierson has rendered a service of some importance…we think that he was right in including so many poems of Donne, elsewhere (though not in many editions) accessible, as documents in the case of ‘metaphysical poetry’. The phrase has long done duty as a term of abuse, or as the label of a quaint and pleasant taste…. Not only is it extremely difficult to define metaphysical poetry, but difficult to decide what poets practise it and in which of their verses. The poetry of Donne (to whom Marveil and Bishop King are sometimes nearer than any of the other authors) is late Elizabethan, its feeling often very close to that of Chapman….
