SOURCE: “‘Deare Ben,’ ‘Great DONNE,’ and ‘my Celia,’: The Wit of Carew's Poetry,” in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Winter, 1978, pp. 75-94.

In the following essay, Long and MacLean summarize Carew's verse in order to evaluate his wit and poetic talent.

Thomas Carew's literary reputation has undergone some reassessment in recent years. For a long time Clarendon's estimate provided the pattern for critical opinions of the man and his work: Carew “was a Person of a pleasant and facetious Wit, and made many Poems (especially in the amorous Way) which for the Sharpness of the Fancy, and the Elegancy of the Language, in which that Fancy was spread, were at least equal, if not superior to any of that Time.”¹ Often cited by students of Carew's verse, the passage anticipates Rhodes Dunlap's comment that, “unlike Donne's, Carew's wit does not usually spring from the establishment...