Like high-hanging grapes, some people can't find it in them to love or understand complex wit. John Dryden thus wrote the above critique of John Donne, my favorite poet, in the dedication to his book of the enormous title, The satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis translated into English verse by Mr. Dryden and several other eminent hands ; together with the satires of Aulus Persius Flaccus, made English by Mr. Dryden ; with explanatory notes at the end of each satire ; to which is prefix'd a discourse concerning the original and progress of satire, p. iii (London: Jacob Tonson, 1693). (The dedication was written to Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset.)
When Dryden speaks of translating Donne into numbers, he means a regular poetic meter. When he speaks of translating Donne into English, your guess is as good as mine. But when he speaks of metaphysics, I can only hope that someone would say the same about me, and that someone like Janel Mueller would still appreciate my writing for what it is, because being clear and heartfelt is awesome, but being able to wrench a metaphor from the city gates and carry it to the top of a hill like Samson is clearly more awesome still. (See Mueller, Women among the Metaphysicals: A Case, Mostly, of Being Donne for. Modern Philology 87.2 [Nov 1989] p. 142.)
If you still have no idea what this is about, read the last sentence of the quote. The female mind should be given more credit than that.
