Edmund William Gosse

“ Cowley embalmed his memory in an elegy that ranks among the very finest in our language, in which he, a Protestant, well expressed the feeling left on the minds of contemporaries by the character of the young Catholic poet:—
The poetry of Crashaw will be best appreciated by those who can with most success free themselves from the bondage of a traditional sense of the dignity of language. The custom of his age permitted the use of images and phrases which we now justly condemn as incongruous and unseemly, and the fervent fancy of Crashaw carried this licence to excess. ”

“ There is no religious poetry in English so full at once of gross and awkward images and imaginative touches of the most ethereal beauty. The temper of his intellect seems to have been delicate and weak, fiery and uncertain ”

“ Among the secular poems of Crashaw the best are Music’s Duel, which deals with that strife between the musician and the nightingale which has inspired so many poets, and Wishes to his supposed Mistress. ”