F J IN DONNE. JOHN DONNE was born in London in 1573, of a Catholic family; through his mother, he was related to Sir Thomas More and Hey. wood the epigrammatist. He was educated partly at Oxford and partly at Cambridge, and was designed for the law, but relinquished the study in his nineteenth year. About this period of his life, having carefully considered the controversies between the Catholics and Protestants, he became a member of the established church. The great abilities and amiable character of Donne were early appreciated. The Earl of Essex, the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and Sir Robert Drury, successively befriended and employed him; and it was a saying of Lord Ellesmere's, that Donne was fitter to serve a king than a subject. Having been appointed to the office of secretary to the lord chancellor, Donne gained the affections of his lordship's niece daughter of Sir George Moore, lord-lieutenant of the Tower, and a private marriage was the result. Sir George was so indignant that he induced Lord Ellesmere to dismiss Donne from his service, and the unfortunate bridegroom was also for a time confined in prison. All parties, however, were afterwards reconciled. At the age of fortytwo, Donne was ordained, and became so celebrated as a preacher, that he is said to have had the offer of fourteen different livings in the first year of his ministry. In 1621, King James appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. Izaak Walton describes his friend the dean as 'a preacher in earnest; weeping sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them; always preaching to himself like an angel from a cloud, but in none.' He died in 1631, and was honourably interred in Old St. Paul's. The works of Donne consist of satires, elegies, religious poems, complimentary verses, and epigrams: they were collected and published after his death, in 1650, by his son. An earlier but imperfect collection was printed in 1633. His reputation as a poet, great in his own day, low during the latter part of the seventeenth and the whole of the eighteenth centuries, has latterly revived. In its days of ab sement, critics spoke of his harsh and rugged versification, and his leaving nature for conceit. It seems to be now acknowledged that, amidst much bad taste, there is much real poetry, and that of a high order, in Donne. He is described by a recent critic as imbued to saturation with the learning of his age,' endowed with a most active and piercing intellect-an imagination, if not grasping and comprehensive, most subtile and far-darting- a fancy, rich, vivid, and pictursque--a mode of expression terse, simple, and condensed-and a wit admirable, as well for its caustic severity, as for its playful quickness and as only wanting sufficient sensibility and taste to preserve him from the vices of style which seem to have beset him.' To give an idea of these conceits: Donne writes a poem on a broken heart. He does not advert to the miseries or distractions which are presumed to be the causes of the calamity, but runs off into a play on the expression broken heart' He entered a room, he says, where his mistress was present, and Love, alas! At one first blow did shiver it [his heart] as glass. Then, forcing on his mind to discover by what means the idea of a Those pieces still, though they do not unite: A hundred lesser faces, So My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore, There is here, certainly, analogy, but then it is an analogy which altogether fails to please or move: it is a mere conceit. This peculiarity, however, does not characterise the bulk of the writings of Donne and his followers. They are often direct, natural, and truly poetical-abounding in rich thought and melody. Donne is usually considered as the first writer of satire, in rhyming couplets, such as Dryden, Young, and Pope carried to perfection. A copy of his first three satires is in the British Museum, among the Harleian manuscripts, and bears date 1593. The fourth was transcribed by Drummond in 1594, three years before the appearance of Hall's satires. Acting upon a hint thrown out by Dryden, Pope modernised some of Donne's satires. Address to Bishop Valentine, on the Day of the Marriage of the Elector Palatine to the Princess Elizabeth. Hail, Bishop Valentine! whose day this is; And all the chirping choristers And other birds are thy parishioners: Thou marryest, every year, The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove; The sparrow that neglects his life for love, The household bird wich his red stomacher; As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon; This day which might inflame thyself, old Valentine! Valediction-Forbidding Mourning. As virtuous men pass mildly away, So let us melt, and make no noise, To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and Men reckon what it did, and meant: Dull, sublunary lovers' love- But we're by love so much refined, Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss. Our two souls, therefore-which are one A breach, but an expansion, If they be two, they are two so And though it in the centre sit, Such wilt thou be to me, who must The Will. Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe, Thou. Love, hast taught me heretofore, By making me serve her who had twenty more, That I should give to none but such as had too much before. My constancy I to the planets give; My truth to them who at the court do live; Mine ingenuity and openness To Jesuits; to buffoons my pensiveness; My money to a Capuchin. Thou, Love, taught'st ine, by appointing me My faith I give to Roman Catholics; All my good works unto the schismatics And courtship to an university; My modesty I give to soldiers bare; My patience let gamesters share; Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me Love her that holds my love disparity, Only to give to those that count my gifts indignity. I give my reputation to those Which were my friends: mine industry to foes; To schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulness; My sickness to physicians, or excess: To nature all that I in rhyme have writ! And to my company my wit: Thou, Love, by making me adore Her who begot this love in me before, Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but restore. To him for whom the passing bell next tolls I give my physic books; my written rolls Of moral counsels I to Bedlam give; My brazen medals unto them which live In want of bread; to them which pass among Thou, Love, by making me love one For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion. Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo Then all your beauties will be no more worth Than gold in mines where none doth draw it forth: Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me To invent and practise this one way to annihilate all three. Character of a Bore. - From Donne's Satires. Towards me did run A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sun One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry: His clothes were strange, though coarse-and black, though bare; Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been Velvet, but 'twas now-so much ground was seen Become tuff-taffaty; and our children shall See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all. The thing hath travelled, and saith, speaks all tongues; And only knoweth what to all states belongs. Made of the accents and best phrase of all these, He speaks one language. If strange meats displease, Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste; For the best linguist ?' And I sillily Said, that I thought, Calepine's Dictionary. Nay, but of men, most sweet sir ?'-Beza then, Some Jesuists, and two reverend men Of our two academies. I named. Here He stopt me, and said: "Nay, your apostles were That I was fain to say: 'If you had lived, sir, To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.' To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste He, like to a high-stretched lute-string, squeaked: 'O sir, Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, From king to king, and all their kin can walk! Your ears shall hear nought but kings-your eyes meet He smacked, and cried: He's base, mechanic, coarse, Mine?-as you see, I have but one, sir-look, he follows me. Certes, they are neatly clothed. I of this mind am, 'Not so. sir. I have more. Under this pitch He would not fly. I chafed him. But as itch He to another key his style doth dress, And asks: What news?' I tell him of new plays; A semibreve 'twixt each drop, he (niggardly, As loath to enrich me so) tells many a lie More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stows Of trivial household trash he knows. He knows When the queen frowned or smiled, and he knows what A subtle statesman may gather from that. He knows who loves; whom, and who by poison Hastes to an office's reversion. He knows who hath sold his land, and now doth beg A license, old iron, boots, shoes, and egg Shells to transport. Shortly boys shall not play At spancounter, or blow-point, but shall pay Toll to some courtier. And-wiser than all us- He knows what lady is not painted. Thus One of the earliest poetic allusions to the Copernican system occurs in Donne: As new Philosophy arrests the sun, The following is a simile often copied by later poets: When goodly, like a ship in her full trim, And with his archéd neck this poor fish catched; |