ABSTRACT
Distinct from both the SPENSERIANS and the SOCIAL POETS was a group of metrical writers whom it is easier to enumerate than to describe by a common name. The peculiarity by which they are associated is that they seemed to regard verse less as a vehicle for pure matter of imagination, or for social allusion and invective, than as a means of doctrinal exposition or abstruse and quaint discourse on any topic whatsoever. According to the nature of the topics on which they wrote, they might be distributed into sub-varieties. Collectively they may be described as THE POETS OF METRICAL EXPOSITION AND METRICAL INTELLECTION. The double form of the name is useful. There is such a thing as exposition in metre,—i.e. Verse, on account of its own charms, or because it impresses matter on the memory more surely than prose, may be used as a vehicle for ideas already thought out or acquired by the writer in any department of science or speculation. Different from this, though likely to run into it, is intellection in metre,—i.e. the use of the stimulus of verse, its nimble and subtle action upon the thought, to generate ideas or supplementary ideas that were not in the mind before, lead to ingenious trains of thinking, and suggest odd analogies and combinations. It was mainly for poets practising this process of metrical intellection, though with some inclusion also of poets of metrical exposition, that Dr Johnson invented, or adopted from Dryden, the designation METAPHYSICAL POETS. That, however, was a singularly unhappy choice of a name, vitiating as it did the true and specific meaning of the word ‘metaphysical’, and pandering to the vulgar Georgian use of the word, which made it an adjective for anything whatever that seemed hard, abstract, or bewildering.
