"Poetic Lives," this series calls itself, although poetic is never the initial adjective you'd apply to John Donne's existence: a muddle of lust and love, a scrabble for worldly preferment and heavenly redemption, with too many childen round his understocked table and a cellar overflowing with damp. The book is pamphlet format – a fine idea, especially as it shows off the handsome typography for the selection of poems included – but therefore needs the tone of a John Aubrey to carry off its brevity; a tone lighter, sharper and far more prejudiced one way and another than the voice Robins has adopted. He could probably do Aubreyesque – he works for the Globe theatre – and comes alive when making the odd connections between Donne and his rather aged son-in-law, the actor-manager Edward Alleyn; or in his description of Donne performing sermons, with "a most particular grace", author and actor all at once, in the great outdoor pulpit at St Paul's, which he made a stage for the divine.