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,
Metaphysical poets the start of the 20th century. Edward Taylor, who is now counted as the outstanding English-language poet of North America, was only discovered in 1937. Grierson attempted to characterise the main traits of Metaphysical poetry in the introduction to his anthology. For him it begins with a break with the formerly artificial style of their antecedents to one free from poetic diction or conventions. Johnson acknowledged as much in pointing out that their style was not to be achieved “by descriptions copied from descriptions, by imitations borrowed from imitations, by traditional imagery and hereditary similes”. Another characteristic singled out by