Douglas Bush

"It was Jack Donne that first made poetry rough and difficult to be understood; only strong lines were in request and approved. Wherefore the only persons that now read poetry are poets, or else those fastidious Inns of Court men that have appointed themselves to sit as Minoses on the life and death of works. They loll in taverns over their sack and, as they say, "explicate" poems to each other; for they delight in ink-horn terms wherewith to astound the vulgar. After the fifth cup they will tell you that all ages were happy up till this present, but that now is the age of anxiety, wherein miserable man can do naught but cling to despair."