SOURCE: “Carew Redivivus,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Spring, 1971, pp. 17-28.

In the following essay, Rauber examines the qualities that distinguish Carew from the other Cavalier poets, calling him “the most purely intellectual poet of the early seventeenth century.”

Among the small mysteries of seventeenth-century poetry is the curiously checkered reputation of Thomas Carew. While modern critics have frequently separated him from Pope's “mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,” he has never secured a proper niche of his own. After a brief flurry of attention, he falls back into the mob again. It is possible, of course, that Carew is not quite good enough a poet to assert a position of individual importance, but the uncertainty of critical opinion concerning him justifies a fresh examination.

The mixed feelings of the critics toward Carew appear initially in the writings of Sir Herbert Grierson...