John Donne died in 1631 and, although his poetry did not quite die with him, it took more than 250 years for a full-scale resurrection. 

 

Then in 1899, that inspirational Cornishman and critic Arthur Symons, a friend of Toulouse-Lautrec and W B Yeats, sounded the first real trumpet: “Donne’s quality of passion is unique in English poetry”, he wrote. “It is a rapture in which the mind is supreme, a reasonable rapture . . . This lover loves with his whole nature”. 

 

If that didn’t tip the nation back to loving Donne, T S Eliot’s stirring essay on The Metaphysical Poets in 1919 certainly did: “A thought to Donne was an experience”, said Eliot. “It modified his sensibility”. 

 

Suddenly there was a bridge linking reason and passion. People could feel befriended by Donne in their life’s confusions, and Donne’s own standing has endured ever since as one of England’s greatest national poetic treasures.