In 1917 Albert Einstein published a paper on cosmology—indeed the first significant modern paper on the subject—that was sufficiently implausible that he felt compelled at one point to write, “In the present paragraph I shall conduct the reader over the road I have myself traveled, rather a rough and winding road, because otherwise I cannot hope that he will take much interest in the result at the end of the journey.” When it comes to the principal subject of this essay, Sir Edmund Gosse, I know what he meant, and for this reason I shall conduct the “reader over the road” that led me to that rather unlikely figure. In 1983 I was sent for review Daniel Boorstin’s Discoverers —a book that gave a kaleidoscopic and not always accurate tour of the entire history of scientific discovery in 745 pages. On page 316, I came across the following laconic sentence: “In 1619, when Donne visited the Continent, he took the trouble to visit Kepler in the remote Austrian town of Linz.” That was it. No explanation was offered. No discussion was presented of what Johannes Kepler and John Donne could possibly have found to say to each other. Indeed, how did such an incredibly implausible meeting ever take place? Were there any consequences? On all of this Boorstin was mute, and, worse, he did not even give a reference, so that one had no idea where to follow this up.

That was in 1983. For the next thirteen