Metaphysical poets still young, introducing into it a string of Metaphysical conceits in the lines beginning “Most souls, ‘tis true, but peep out once an age” which in part echo a passage from Donne's “Second Anniversary”. By the time Pope wrote this, the vogue for the Metaphysical style was over and a new orthodoxy had taken its place, of which the rewriting of Donne's satires was one expression. Nevertheless, Johnson's dismissal of the ‘school’ was still in the future and at the start of the 18th century allusions to their work struck an answering chord in readers. During the course of the
Samuel Humphreys (poet) Crébillon and La Fontaine. Samuel Humphreys (poet) Samuel Humphreys (c.1697–1738) was an English poet, librettist and translator. He is known for the words he wrote for Handel's oratorios "Esther" (1732), "Deborah" (1733), and "Athalia" (1733). Humphreys was an educated man, who wrote as a poet from around 1728 to 1732, a period during which he also worked for George Frideric Handel. He took up work as a translator, too. These employments followed some personal reverses. He died in Canonbury, where he had rooms, on 11 January 1738. He was buried in Islington churchyard. Humphreys was known as the author of