Metaphysical poets English poetry. Colin Burrow's opinion, on the other hand, is that the term 'Metaphysical poets' still retains some value. For one thing, Donne's poetry had considerable influence on subsequent poets, who emulated his style. And there are several instances in which 17th-century poets used the word 'metaphysical' in their work, meaning that Samuel Johnson's description has some foundation in the usage of the previous century. However, the term does isolate English poets from those who shared similar stylistic traits in Europe and America. Since the 1960s, therefore, it has been argued that gathering all of these under the heading of
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.