SOURCE: Swinburne, A. C. “John Day.” In Contemporaries of Shakespeare, pp. 213-32. London: William Heinemann, 1919.

In the excerpt below, Swinburne evaluates Day's talent as reflected in his poems and plays, concluding that Day's moderate genius was likely better suited to light verse than drama.

One of the very greatest poets that ever glorified the world has left on record his wish that Beaumont and Fletcher had written poems instead of plays; and his wish has been echoed by one of the finest and surest critics of poetry, himself an admirable and memorable poet, unequalled in his own line of terse and pathetic narrative or allegory. I am reluctant if not ashamed, and sorry if not afraid, to differ from Coleridge and Leigh Hunt; yet I cannot but think that it would have been a pity, a mistake, and a grievous loss to poetic or creative literature if the...