ABSTRACT
Donne was at the head of a particular class or school of poetry, which had many imitators; but it has been well observed that his life is more interesting than his poetry; that his name rather than his works may be said to survive; and that he left English poetry worse than he found it. The Editor is free to confess, along with many others, that Donne as a writer of poetry is no favourite of his. When he considers the pedantry, obscurity and metaphysical conceits introduced into his lighter poetry, the rugged and discordant diction, and inharmonious versification of his Satires, and the dulness and utter want of sensibility in his Elegies and religious Poems, as compared with the beauty, the tenderness and graceful simplicity of many of the writers of his own age, he is immediately struck with the contrast they exhibit, and is filled with wonder and surprise that he should have found so many imitators in his own style.
