SOURCE: Banks, Theodore Howard. “Introduction.” In The Poetical Works of Sir John Denham, edited by Theodore Howard Banks, second edition, pp. 1-57. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1969.

In the following essay, taken from the revised edition of a collection that was originally published in 1928, Banks provides a broad overview of Denham's life, works, and reputation. The critic characterizes Denham's work as “didactic”; the poet, he asserts, “has little imagination, little emotion, little beauty of phrase; his strength lies in his thought, in his neatly turned expressions of ethical and moral truisms.”

A famous poet, a renowned wit, a prominent courtier in the eyes of his own and succeeding generations, Sir John Denham has become for us a curiously indistinct figure. We know the main outline of the events of his life, but little that brings his individuality before us. Few personal letters or manuscripts remain; his wit, save for...