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 was a fellow student at Christ's College, Cambridge, on whom the influence of the Metaphysical style was more lasting. In Milton's case, there is an understandable difference in the way he matched his style to his subjects. For the ‘Nativity Ode’ and commendatory poem on Shakespeare he deployed Baroque conceits, while his two poems on the carrier Thomas Hobson were a succession of high-spirited paradoxes. What was then titled “An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare” was included anonymously among the poems prefacing the second folio publication of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. The poems on Thomas Hobson were