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have remarked of the Instructions to Preachers, printed at his desire in 1622.[1] Donne's paraphrase of the five opening chapters of the Lamentations of Jeremiah belongs to an unfortunate type of poetry, the fashion of which was encouraged by the example of the King ; and it may not be rash to suggest that the smoother rhythm which Mr. Gosse notes in his poems after 1615, — the "abandonment of the harsh and eccentric inversions of his earlier manner, so marked as to be in itself an indication of the period when a poem was composed,"[2] — was in some degree a concession to the orthodox taste of his friends at court and his royal master.