Phineas Fletcher was a distinct literary presence in the first half of the seventeenth century: "This learned person, Son and Brother to two ingenious Poets [Giles Fletcher the elder and the younger] himself the third, not second to either...," wrote William Winstanley in The Lives of the most Famous English Poets (1687), where he devoted more space to "Phineas Fletcher ... poet and philosopher" than to John Milton, George Herbert, or John Donne. Further evidence of Fletcher's reputation and influence comes from many sources in the seventeenth century: Izaak Walton complimented him highly; Francis Quarles described him as "The Spencer [sic] of this age"; Thomas Fuller included a biography of him in The History of the Worthies of England (1662). Influenced by Edmund Spenser, Phineas Fletcher, the nucleus of "The School of the Fletchers," wrote both prolifically and diversely, influencing in his own century not only Milton but also Quarles, Walton...