'If a man is to write A Panegyrick, he may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to write A Life, he must represent it really as it was.' In the last of

This volume provides essays by twenty-nine leading scholars and critics on the best English poets from Chaucer to Larkin.

Offers new interpretations of poems by Milton, Jonson, Herrick, and Lovelace, and looks at five themes in seventeenth century English poetry.