Paul Verlaine with Verlaine, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Paul Valéry, Albert Samain and many others began to be referred to as "Symbolists." These poets would often share themes that parallel Schopenhauer's aesthetics and notions of will, fatality and unconscious forces, and used themes of sex (such as prostitutes), the city, irrational phenomena (delirium, dreams, narcotics, alcohol), and sometimes a vaguely medieval setting. In poetry, the symbolist procedure—as typified by Verlaine—was to use subtle suggestion instead of precise statement (rhetoric was banned) and to evoke moods and feelings through the magic of words and repeated sounds and the cadence of verse (musicality) and metrical innovation.
Thomas Bancroft (poet) a neighbour and fellow-poet, appears to have visited and been visited by him. On the evidence of one of his own epigrams and Sir Aston Cockayne's commendatory lines, in 1658 he was living in retirement at Bradley, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. He continued there until his death, recorded in the church register there. It was said that Bancroft was 'small of stature', and that he published sermons. He was referred to as 'the small poet,' partly in reference to his stature, and partly in allusion to his "small" poems. Bancroft's first publication was "The Glvtton's Feaver" (1633), a narrative poem in