Metaphysical poets Flecknoe" and Joseph Addison, in quoting him, singled out the poetry of George Herbert as providing a flagrant example. There is no scholarly consensus regarding which English poets or poems fit within the Metaphysical genre. In his initial use of the term, Johnson quoted just three poets: Abraham Cowley, John Donne, and John Cleveland. Colin Burrow, writing for the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", singles out John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, and Richard Crashaw as 'central figures', while naming many more, all or part of whose work has been identified as sharing its characteristics. Herbert Grierson’s "Metaphysical
Metaphysical poets poem has been cited as manifesting “the extremes of the metaphysical style”, but in this it sits well with others there that are like it: John Denham’s “Elegy on the death of Henry Lord Hastings”, for example, or Marvell's rather smoother “Upon the death of the Lord Hastings”. The several correspondences among the poems there are sometimes explained as the result of the book's making a covert Royalist statement. In the political circumstances following the recent beheading of the king, it was wise to dissemble grief for him while mourning another under the obscure and closely wrought arguments typical of