imaginative passion made him extremely attractive to the
younger generation of poets, who saw that he had broken through the old
tradition, and were ready to follow him implicitly into new fields. In
the 18th century his reputation almost disappeared, to return, with many
vicissitudes in the course of the 19th. It is, indeed, singularly
difficult to pronounce a judicious opinion on the writings of Donne.
They were excessively admired by his own and the next generation,
praised by Dryden, paraphrased by Pope, and then entirely neglected for
a whole century. The first impression of an unbiassed reader who dips
into the poems of Donne is unfavourable. He is repulsed by the
intolerably harsh and crabbed versification, by the recondite choice of
theme and expression, and by the oddity of the thought. In time,
however, he perceives that behind the fantastic garb of language there
is an earnest and vigorous mind, an imagination that harbours fire
within its cloudy folds, and an insight into the mysteries of spiritual
life which is often startling. Donne excels in brief flashes of wit and
beauty, and in sudden daring phrases that have the full perfume of
poetry in them. Some of his lyrics and one or two of his elegies
excepted, the _Satires_ are his most important contribution to
literature. They are probably the earliest poems of their kind in the
language, and they are full of force and picturesqueness. Their obscure
and knotty language only serves to give peculiar brilliancy to the not
uncommon passages of noble perspicacity. To the odd terminology of
Donne's poetic philosophy Dryden gave the name of "metaphysics," and
Johnson, borrowing the suggestion, invented the title of the
"metaphysical school" to describe, not Donne only, but all the amorous
and philosophical poets who succeeded him, and who employed a similarly
fantastic language, and who affected odd figurative inversions.

Izaak Walton's _Life_, first published in 1640, and entirely recast in
1659, has been constantly reprinted. The best edition of Donne's
_Poems_ was edited by E. K. Chambers in 1896. His prose works have not
been collected. In 1899 Edmund Gosse published in two volumes _The
Life and Letters of John Donne_, for the first time revised and
collected. (E. G.)

DONNYBROOK, a part of Dublin, Ireland, in the south-east of the city.
The former village of the name was famous for a fair held under licence
from King John in 1204. It gaine