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Poems of John Donne: Critical Commentary

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From: Monarch Notes
Date: 19630101
Author:Donne, John

Donne, John
Monarch Notes
01-01-1963
Critical Commentary

Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries:

Formal criticism of the metaphysical poets may be said to begin with
Samuel Johnson, and his famous condemnation contained in the Life of Cowley
(1779):

Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man,
has its changes and fashions, and a different times takes different forms.
About the beginning of the seventeenth century, appeared a race of writers
that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the
works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some ...

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