The line of wit, I would contend, includes Spenser as well as Donne. But that statement is meaningless until some sort of significance is attached to the word 'wit’ that would make it apply to poets now felt to be very different. I do not propose to summarize Rosemond Tuve's Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery, or repeat in brief her attempt to show that the Elizabethan and metaphysical poets were operating under the same poetic theory. Rather, I should like to take a little semantic excursion to find what uses of the word 'wit’ make it as applicable to Spenser as to Donne. It is curious that the metaphysical poets, even inferior ones such as Cleveland and Cowley, may still be described as witty. To the extent that we apply this word to poets who may be singularly unamusing but who are ingenious, we have accepted its seventeenth-century use. But Spenser witty? No, indeed. Yet in his own day his reputation for ‘fine Poeticall inuention, and most exquisit wit’ was unrivaled.

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