Metaphysical
Poetry.
Donne is a 'metaphysical' poet. The term was perhaps first applied by Dryden, from whom Johnson borrowed it: 'He' (Donne) 'affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.' Essay on Satire. 'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.' Johnson, Life of Cowley. The parade of learning, and a philosophical or abstract treatment of love had been a strain in mediaeval poetry from the outset, manifesting itself most fully in the Tuscan poets of the 'dolce stil nuovo', but never altogether absent from mediaeval love-poetry. The Italian poet Testi (1593-1646), describing his choice of classical in preference to Italian models (he is thinking specially of Marino), says: 'poichè lasciando quei concetti metafisici ed ideali di cui sono piene le poesie italiane, mi sono provato di spiegare cose più domestiche, e di maneggiarle con effetti più famigliari a imitazione d'Ovidio, di Tibullo, di Properzio, e degli altri migliori.' Donne's love-poetry is often classical in spirit; his conceits are the 'concetti metafisici' of mediaeval poetry given a character due to his own individuality and the scientific interests of his age.
A metaphysical poet in the full sense of the word is a poet who finds his inspiration in learning; not in the world as his own and common sense reveal it, but in the world as science and philosophy report of it. The two greatest metaphysical poets of Europe are Lucretius and Dante. What the philosophy of Epicurus was to Lucretius, that of Thomas Aquinas was to Dante. Their poetry is the product of their learning, transfigured by the imagination, and it is not to be understood without some study of their thought and knowledge.
Donne is not a metaphysical poet of the compass of Lucretius and Dante. He sets forth in his poetry no ordered system of the universe. The ordered system which Dante had set forth was breaking in pieces while Donne lived, under the criticism of Copernicus, Galileo, and others, and no poet was so conscious as Donne of the effect on the imagination of that disintegration. In the two Anniversaries mystical religion is made an escape from scientific scepticism. Moreover, Donne's use of metaphysics is often frivolous and flippant, at best simply poetical. But he is a learned poet, and he is a philosophical poet, and without some attention to the philosophy and science underlying his conceits and his graver thought it is impossible to understand or appreciate either aright. Failure to do so has led occasionally to the corruption of his text.
Donne's
Learning.
Walton tells us that Donne's learning, in his eleventh year when he went to Oxford, 'made one then give this censure of him, "That this age had brought forth another Picus Mirandula; of whom story says that he was rather born than made wise by study."' 'In the most unsettled days of his youth', the same authority reports, 'his bed was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took great liberty after it.' 'He left the resultances of 1,400 authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' The lists of authors prefixed to his prose treatises and the allusions and definite references in the sermons corroborate Walton's statement regarding the range of Donne's theological and controversial reading.
Classical
Literature.
Confining attention here to Donne's poetry, and the spontaneous evidence of learning which it affords, one would gather that his reading was less literary and poetic in character than was Milton's during the years spent at Horton. It is clear that he knew the classical poets, but there are few specific allusions. Ovid, Horace, and Juvenal one can trace, not any other with certainty, nor in his sermons do references to Virgil, Horace, or other poets abound.
Italian.
Like Milton, Donne had doubtless read the Italian romances. One reference to Angelica and an incident in the Orlando Furioso occur in the Satyres, and from the same source as well as from an unpublished letter we learn that he had read Dante. Aretino is the only other Italian to whom he makes explicit reference.