Robert Chamberlain compiled The Harmony of the Muses in 1654 as a tribute to the witty English verse of the early seventeenth century. The unique surviving copy (in the Huntington Library) includes poems of extraordinary quality and importance by many of the greatest poets of the English Renaissance: eight by John Donne (including the earliest publication of three of his finest elegies), seven by Thomas Carew, five by William Strode, and two by Ben Jonson, among many others. The poems indeed make good Chamberlain's promise of 'transcendent wit' as their authors bring 'Learning and Invention' to their treatment of 'the passionate Affections either of men or women.