Adopted in God's family, and so
My old coat lost, into new arms I go.
The cross my seal in baptism spread below,
Does by that form into an anchor grow.

Crosses grow anchors; bear as thou shouldst do
Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too.
But He that makes our crosses anchors thus,
Is Christ, who there is crucified for us.
Yet with this I may my first serpents hold
(God gives new blessings, and yet leaves the old);
The serpent may, as wise, my pattern be;
My poison, as he feeds on dust, that's me.
And, as he rounds the earth to murder, sure
He is my death; but on the cross my cure.
Crucify nature then; and then implore
All grace from Him, crucified there before.
When all is cross, and that cross anchor grown,
This seal's a catechism, not a seal alone.

Under that little seal great gifts I send,

Both works and pray'rs, pawns, and fruits of a friend.
may that saint that rides on our great seal,

O

To you that bear His name large bounty deal.

Herbert replied in Latin and English verse.

JOHN DONNE."

These exercises, perhaps, belong to the month of January, but during his last illness, and indeed only eight days before his death, Donne composed the latest, and far from the least fascinating, of his poems

"A HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.1
MARCH 23, 1631.

"Since I am coming to that holy room,

Where, with Thy Choir of Saints, for evermore

I shall be made Thy music, as I come

I tune my instrument here at the door,

And, what I must do then, think here before.

1 On a copy of these stanzas preserved among the papers of Sir Julius Cæsar, they are said to have been written in the Dean's "great sickness in December 1623"; the copyist having confounded them with the “Hymn to God the Father," which belongs to that period.

\

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die.

I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me? As west and east
In all flat maps-and I am one-are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are
The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem ?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar ?

All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,

Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown;
And as to others' souls I preach'd Thy word,

Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,

Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.""

The evidence of the vigour of Donne's dying brain supplied by these verses is amazing. He had never, in the hey-day of his youth and genius, expressed himself with a more complete originality or more fully in accordance with the peculiarities of his intellectual temperament than in this his farewell to mortality.

A little earlier than this, but during the latest month of Donne's life, that extraordinary incident took place which illustrates for us, in the highest degree, the morbid and fantastic character of his genius. Simeon Foxe, perceiving that the end of his illustrious patient was approaching, entreated him not to leave the world without having made some preparation for a monument to himself in his Cathedral. The Dean easily yielded to these persuasions, but

stipulated that Dr. Foxe should not interfere in any way whatever with the character or form of the memorial. In fact, as will presently be related, it was executed at the commission of the executors, and probably paid for either out of Donne's personal estate or at the expense of the Chapter. Of what followed, Walton has preserved an inimitable account:

"A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and to bring with it a board, of the just height of his body. These being got, then without delay a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth :-Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor, Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that church; and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these words were to be affixed to it as an epitaph: