To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle, brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm, of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the professional armies serving in the Low Countries. For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire, 'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's _Satyres_. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers accepts this and when referring to Jonson, _Epigram 98_, on Roe the ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe.' Who this uncle was they do not tell us, but Hunter in the _Chorus Vatum_ notes that, if Gifford's conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.