Metaphysical poets was established, however, it was occasionally adopted by other and especially younger poets to fit appropriate circumstances. In the chapter on Abraham Cowley in his "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets" (1779–81), Samuel Johnson refers to the beginning of the seventeenth century in which there "appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". This does not necessarily imply that he intended "metaphysical" to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably referring to a witticism of John Dryden, who said of John Donne: He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires,
Rival Poet and Richard Barnfield have been proposed as identities for the Rival Poet. Chapman was a prominent poet and translator of Homer. Scholars speculate that Shakespeare was familiar with his work, having read part of his translation of the "Iliad" for his own "Troilus and Cressida", a dramatic reworking of Chaucer's epic poem. Chapman wrote "Ovid's Banquet Of Sense", a metaphysical poem seen as a response to the erotic "Venus and Adonis," which incidentally features Shakespeare's most quoted poet, Ovid. In "Shakespeare and the Rival Poet", Acheson conjectures that Chapman's erotic poems were written with a view to gaining Southampton's patronage.