ABSTRACT
Ben Jonson addressed two very encomiastic epigrams to Donne, as well as one commending a manuscript of his Satires to the Countess of Bedford, and John Donne, who never condescended to praise any other contemporary poet, contributed some very flattering Latin verses to the quarto edition of Jonson’s Vol-pone. Jonson’s lyrics, in comparison with typical Elizabethan lyrics, are organic and untransposable, but they are seldom so rigorously logical, so capable of prose-analysis, as Donne’s, Donne’s dialectical method here introducing what almost amounts to a difference in kind. And although, in comparison with the anonymity of the typical Elizabethan lyric, Jonson’s lyrics are personal and individual, they are so rather in the way in which Horace’s Odes are so than in the way in which Donne’s poems are.
