THE METAPHYSICAL POETS.  This name—­which was given by Dr. Johnson in derision, because of the fantastic form of Donne’s poetry—­is often applied to all minor poets of the Puritan Age.  We use the term here in a narrower sense, excluding the followers of Daniel and that later group known as the Cavalier poets.  It includes Donne, Herbert, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Vaughan, Davenant, Marvell, and Crashaw.  The advanced student finds them all worthy of study, not only for their occasional excellent poetry, but because of their influence on later literature.  Thus Richard Crashaw (1613?-1649), the Catholic mystic, is interesting because his troubled life is singularly like Donne’s, and his poetry is at times like Herbert’s set on fire.[160] Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), who blossomed young and who, at twenty-five, was proclaimed the greatest poet in England, is now scarcely known even by name, but his “Pindaric Odes"[161] set an example which influenced English poetry throughout the eighteenth century.  Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) is worthy of study because he is in some respects the forerunner of Wordsworth;[162] and Andrew Marvell (1621-1678), because of his loyal friendship with Milton, and because his poetry shows the conflict between the two schools of Spenser and Donne.  Edmund Waller (1606-1687) stands between the Puritan Age and the Restoration.  He was the first to use consistently the “closed” couplet which dominated our poetry for the next century.  By this, and especially by his influence over Dryden, the greatest figure of the Restoration, he occupies a larger place in our literature than a reading of his rather tiresome poetry would seem to warrant.

Of all these poets, each of whom has his special claim, we can consider here only Donne and Herbert, who in different ways are the types of revolt against earlier forms and standards of poetry.  In feeling and imagery both are poets of a high order, but in style and expression they are the leaders of the fantastic school whose influence largely dominated poetry during the half century of the Puritan period.

JOHN DONNE (1573-1631)

LIFE.  The briefest outline of Donne’s life shows its intense human interest.  He was born in London, the son of a rich iron merchant, at the time when the merchants of England were creating a new and higher kind of princes.  On his father’s side he came from an old Welsh family, and on his mother’s side from the Heywoods and Sir Thomas More’s family.  Both families were Catholic, and in his early life persecution was brought near; for his brother died in prison for harboring a proscribed priest, and his own education could not be continued in Oxford and Cambridge because of his religion.  Such an experience generally sets a man’s religious standards for life; but presently Donne, as he studied law at Lincoln’s Inn, was investigating the philosophic grounds of all faith.  Gradually he left the church in which he was born, renounced all