the poet who finally broke down the tradition of Platonic love. I believe
that, so far is this from being the case, he is the supreme example of a
Platonic lover among the English poets. He was usually Platonic under
protest, but at other times exultantly so. Whether he finally overcame the
more consistent Platonism of his mistress by the impassioned logic of _The
Ecstasy_ we have no means of knowing. If he did, it would be difficult to
resist the conclusion that the lady who wished to continue to be his
passionate friend and to ignore the physical side of love was Anne More,
whom he afterwards married. If not, we may look for her where we will,
whether in Magdalen Herbert (already a young widow who had borne ten
children when he first met her) or in the Countess of Bedford or in
another. The name is not important, and one is not concerned to know it,
especially when one remembers Donne's alarming curse on:

Whoever guesses, thinks, or dreams he knows
Who is my mistress.

One sort of readers will go on speculating, hoping to discover real people
in the shadows, as they speculate about Swift's Stella and Vanessa, and
his relations to them. It is enough for us to feel, however, that these
poems railing at or glorying in Platonic love are no mere goldsmith's
compliments, like the rhymed letters to Mrs. Herbert and Lady Bedford.
Miracles of this sort are not wrought save by the heart. We do not find in
them the underground and sardonic element that appears in so much of
Donne's merely amorous work. We no longer picture him as a sort of Vulcan
hammering out the poetry of base love, raucous, powerful, mocking. He
becomes in them a child Apollo, as far as his temperament will allow him.
He makes music of so grave and stately a beauty that one begins to wonder
at all the critics who have found fault with his rhythms--from Ben Jonson,
who said that "for not keeping accent, Donne deserved hanging," down to