Page:New Poems by James I.djvu/74

 have remarked of the Instructions to Preachers, printed at his desire in 1622. Donne's paraphrase of the five opening chapters of the Lamentations of Jeremiah belongs to an unfortunate type of poetry, the fashion of which was encouraged by the example of the King ; and it may not be rash to suggest that the smoother rhythm which Mr. Gosse notes in his poems after 1615, — the "abandonment of the harsh and eccentric inversions of his earlier manner, so marked as to be in itself an indication of the period when a poem was composed," — was in some degree a concession to the orthodox taste of his friends at court and his royal master.