Johnson's assessment of "metaphysical poetry" was not at all flattering: Metaphysical poets in the Church of England Lutheran scholasticism during Lutheran orthodoxy Second scholasticism of the Jesuits and the Dominicans Probably the only writer before Dryden to speak of the new style of poetry was Drummond of Hawthornden, who in an undated letter from the 1630s made the charge that "some men of late, transformers of everything, consulted upon her reformation, and endeavoured to abstract her to metaphysical ideas and scholastical quiddities, denuding her of her own habits, and those ornaments with which she hath amused the world some thousand years". He 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 nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softnesses of love. This does not necessarily imply that he intended "metaphysical" to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably referring to a witticism of John Dryden, who said of John Donne: In the chapter on Abraham Cowley in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81), Samuel Johnson refers to the beginning of the 17th century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". Once the Metaphysical style was established, however, it was occasionally adopted by other and especially younger poets to fit appropriate circumstances. Given the lack of coherence as a movement, and the diversity of style among poets, it has been suggested that calling them Baroque poets after their era might be more useful. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance. The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. The poet Abraham Cowley, in whose biography Samuel Johnson first named and described Metaphysical poetry Term used to describe a loose group of British lyric poets of the 17th century
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