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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

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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

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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
heart broken to pieces, like glass, can be turned to account in mak-
ing out something that will strike the reader's imagination, he adds :
Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all

Those pieces still, though they do not unite:
And now, as broken glasses shew

A hundred lesser faces, So

My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love can love no more.

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;
All the air is thy diocese,

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;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon

As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon;
This day more cheerfully than ever shine;

This day which might inflame thyself, old Valentine!

Valediction-Forbidding Mourning.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go;
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breath goes now-and some say, no;

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods' nor sigh-tempests move;
Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and
fears,

Men reckon what it did, and meant:
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull, sublunary lovers' love-
Whose soul is sense-cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which alimented it.

But we're by love so much refined,
That ourselves know not what it is:
Inter-assured of the mind,

Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls, therefore-which are one
Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes 1.0 show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
'And grows erect as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circles just,
And makes me end where I begun.

The Will.

Before I sigh my last gasp, let me breathe,
Great Love, some legacies: I here bequeath
Mine eyes to Argus, if mine eyes can see;
If they be blind, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to fame; to ambassadors mine ears;
To women, or the sea, my tears;

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 silence to any who abroad have been;

My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught'st ine, by appointing me
To love there, where no love received can be,
Only to give to such as have no good capacity.

My faith I give to Roman Catholics;

All my good works unto the schismatics
Of Amsterdam; my best civility

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
All foreigners, my English tongue.

Thou, Love, by making me love one
Who thinks her friendship a fit portion

For younger lovers, dost my gifts thus disproportion.

Therefore I'll give no more, but I'll undo
The world by dying, because love dies too.

Then all your beauties will be no more worth

Than gold in mines where none doth draw it forth:
And all your graces no more use shall have
Than a sun-dial in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making me
Love her who doth neglect both me and thee,

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
E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark came;
A thing which would have posed Adam to name.
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies-
Than Afric's monsters-Guiana's rarities-
Stranger than strangers. One who for a Dane
In the Danes' massacre had sure been slain,
If he had lived then; and without help dies
When next the 'prentices 'gainst strangers rise.
One whom the watch at noon scarce lets go by:

One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry:
'Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are?'

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;
But pedants' motley tongue, soldiers' bombast,
Mountebanks' drug tongue, nor the terms of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw
Me to bear this. Yet I must be content
With his tongue, in his tongue called compliment.
He names me, and comes to me. I whisper, God
How have I sinned, that thy wrath's furious rod
(This fellow) chooseth me? He saith: Sir,
I love your judgment-whom do you prefer

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
Pretty good linguists, and so Panurge was;
Yet a poor gentleman all these may pass
By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold
His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders told,

That I was fain to say: 'If you had lived, sir,
Time enough to have been interpreter

To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.'
He adds: If of court-life you knew the good,
You would leave loneness.' I said: 'Not alone
My loneness is, but Spartans' fashion.

To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste
Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts-though there be few
Better pictures of vice-teach me virtue.'

He, like to a high-stretched lute-string, squeaked: 'O sir,
"Tis sweet to talk of kings! At Westminster,'
Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs,
And, for his price, doth, with whoever comes,

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
Kings only-the way to it is King's street.'

He smacked, and cried: He's base, mechanic, coarse,
So are all your Englishmen in their discourse.
Are not your Frenchmen neat?

Mine?-as you see,

I have but one, sir-look, he follows me.

Certes, they are neatly clothed. I of this mind am,
Your only wearing is your grogoram.'

'Not so. sir. I have more. Under this pitch

He would not fly. I chafed him. But as itch
Scratched into smart-and as blunt iron ground
Into an edge hurts worse-so I (fool!) found
Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullenness,

He to another key his style doth dress,

And asks: What news?' I tell him of new plays;
He takes my hands, and as a still which stays

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
He with home-meats cloys me.

One of the earliest poetic allusions to the Copernican system occurs in Donne:

As new Philosophy arrests the sun,
And bids the passive earth about it run.

The following is a simile often copied by later poets:

When goodly, like a ship in her full trim,
A swan, so white that you may unto him
Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,
Glided along, and as he glided watched,

And with his archéd neck this poor fish catched;
It moved with state, as if to look upon
Low things it scorned.

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