st named were indeed, like the other poetical works of their
marvellously gifted writer, not published till many years after; but
universal tradition ascribes the whole of Donne's profane poems to his
early youth, and one document exists which distinctly dates "John Donne,
his Satires," as early as 1593. We shall therefore deal with them, as with
the other closely connected work of their author, here and in this chapter.
But there has to be mentioned first the feebler but chronologically more
certain work of Thomas Lodge, _A Fig for Momus_, which fulfils both the
requirements of known date and of composition in couplets. It appeared in
1595, two years before Hall, and is of the latest and weakest of Lodge's
verse work. It was written or at least produced when he was just abandoning
his literary and adventurous career and settling down as a quiet physician
with no more wild oats to sow, except, perhaps, some participation in
popish conspiracy. The style did not lend itself to the display of any of
Lodge's strongest gifts--romantic fancy, tenderness and sweetness of
feeling, or elaborate embroidery of precious language. He follows Horace
pretty closely and with no particular vigour. Nor does the book appear to
have attracted much attention, so that it is just possible that Hall may
not have heard of it. If, however, he had not, it is certainly a curious
coincidence that he, with Donne and Lodge, should all have hit on the
couplet as their form, obvious as its advantages are when it is once tried.
For the rhyme points the satirical hits, while the comparatively brief
space of each distich prevents that air of wandering which naturally
accompanies satire in longer stanzas. At any rate after the work (in so
many ways remarkable) of Donne, Hall, and Marston, there could hardly be
any more doubt about the matter, though part of the method which these
writers, especially Donne and Marston, took to give individuality and
"bite" to their work was as faulty as it now seems to us peculiar.

Ben Jonson, the least gushing of critics to his contemporaries, said of
John Donne that he was "the first poet of the world in some things," and I
own that without going through the long catalogue of singularly
contradictory criticisms which have been passed on Donne, I feel disposed
to fall back on and adopt this earliest, simplest, and highest encomium.
Possibly Ben might not have meant the same things that I mean, but that
does not matter. It i