ABSTRACT
Of Ben Jonson and of Donne it may seem unpardonable not to have spoken earlier in any account of the Elizabethan lyrical poets, but the fact is that both Donne and Jonson fall outside the true Elizabethan tradition. Both were rebels as much against the pastoral vogue, with its smooth, long-winded Italian stanzas, as against the supposed artlessness of the Shakespearian song; and they sought their effects, the one by a Horatian brevity and choiceness of phrase, the other in the utmost realism of poetic imagery….
