W HO ARE the metaphysical poets? A definitive answer would
help establish the nature of their art. But judgments and cate-
gories vary widely. Believing that most great poets are metaphys-
ical, some critics take much the same view as Whitehead does
in respect to philosophy: "All reasoning, apart from some meta-
physical reference, is vicious." ¹ This begs the question and abuses
the term in its application to poetry. As immediate successors to
Donne and Ben Jonson, six poets were designated by Samuel
Johnson: ² Suckling, Waller, Denham, Cowley, Cleveland, Milton.
David Masson also felt Milton to be metaphysical in the philo-
sophical sense, and was inclined for the same reason to add Fulke
Greville and Sir John Davies. The roll calls of Grierson (with
twenty-six names), Genevieve Taggard, and Spencer differ sig-
nificantly. This confusion comes from the initial difficulty of defi-
nition. If we accept John Donne's poetry as the archetype of the
metaphysical method and attitude, we shall find it hard to define
the modern equivalent. An embarrassing assortment and number
of poets suggest Donne in some quality or technique: Emily Dick-
inson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden, Eliot, MacLeish,
Crane, Wallace Stevens, Allen Tate, Elinor Wylie.

In contemplating the whole production of poets of this order,
one finds much of it quite disparate; the metaphysical element
must be some common denominator among them. What attrac-
tion exists among Lucretius, Catullus, Aquinas, Dante, Chapman,
Donne, Webster, Carew, Marvell, Goethe, Hopkins, Dickinson,
Eliot, Auden, Crane? What common ground is there for modern
symbolists, imagists, and Fugitives? Somewhere among the fol-

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