Richard Crashaw (1612/13-49) was revived early in the twentieth century as a 'Metaphysical' poet and as a member of the 'School of Donne'. In some ways that classification was advantageous to his status, because he gained a degree of recognition by riding on Donne's coat-tails in the great wave of popularity inspired by H. J. C. Grierson, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, I. A. Richards, William Empson, A. Alvarez, George Williamson, Frank Kermode, and scores of other famous advocates of metaphysical poetry as a kind of forerunner of our modern sensibility. The great disadvantage of being placed this way, however, was that Crashaw was vigorously assailed, by Leavis, Empson, Robert M. Adams and others, for not being just like Donne. Indeed, mid-twentieth-century criticism is full of violent (and often very funny) attacks on Crashaw's poetry as, among other things, neurotic, perverted, feminine, infantile, 'foreign', extravagant, tasteless, Catholic, and even cannibalistic. Some central quality in his poetry has consistently outraged critical tempers, inspiring otherwise moderate writers to reach for their purplest prose. One's first reaction to this phenomenon is that a poet who elicits such strong opposition - yet who continues to be reprinted, read, enjoyed, and argued about - cannot be all that bad. He must still have something important to tell us.