from their censures, and it may be that sacred calling from a dishonour.* And, besides, whereas it is determined by the best "There is not the least reason to suppose," writes Dr. Zouch, "that Mr. Donne ever disgraced his character by any act of immorality. He probably mixed more in the world than he thought consistent with the profession of a clergyman: he had not given that valediction to the pleasures and amusements of life which he deemed requisite. When he devoted his time to the study of poetry, he chose subjects for his pen, which at a later period of his life appeared to him too trifling and ludicrous." So much, indeed, is learned from the text: "It is a truth," writes Walton, "that in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been loosely (God knows, too loosely) scattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived, that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals." And ever careful to separate his secular life from that of his sacerdotal,-separated as it had been by an interval of strict discipline in deep study,--the same sentiments are conveyed in a letter to Sir Robert Karre, (earl of Ankeram,) with the manuscript of his Biathanatos, (“in which had been observed a false thread, though not easily to be found,"): "Keep it, I pray you," he writes; "and let any that your discretion admits to the sight, know the date of it, and that it is a book written by Jack Donne, and not by Dr. Donne."-Letters, p. 20. For such of his poems as may be thought "too trifling and ludicrous," it will, perhaps, be a sufficient apology to suggest, that Mr. Donne "had once been young," and, like some other students of the Inns of Court, had "heard the chimes at midnight." Charles Cotton refers to his early life, in some triplets addressed to "his old and most worthy friend, Mr. Izaak Walton," on the biographical productions of his pen : - your's, and the whole world's beloved Donne, Led on by vanities, error and youth, Was long ere he did find the way to truth. Related to John Heywood, of epigrammatic celebrity, and flattered by Ben Jonson, there can be no question that much of Donne's early poetry partook of the qualities that distinguished the wits of the age in which he wrote. His published poems, (1650,) are introduced to the reader by the following Hexastichon Bibliopola : : I see in his last preach't and printed booke His picture in a sheete; in Paul's I looke And see his statue in a sheet of stone; And sure his body in the grave hath one. Those sheets present him dead; these, if you buy, And the stanza is accompanied by these replicatory lines, conveying a gentle and INCERTI. In thy impression of Donne's Poems rare, of casuists, that God's glory should be the first end, and a maintenance the second motive to embrace that calling; and though each man may propose to himself both together, yet the first may not be put last without a violation of conscience, which he that searches the heart will judge. And truly my present condition is such, that if I ask my own conscience, whether it be reconcileable to that rule, it is at this time so perplexed about it, that I can neither give myself nor you an answer. You know, Sir, who says, 'Happy is that man whose conscience doth not accuse him for that thing which he does."* To these I might add other reasons that dissuade me; but I crave your favour that I may forbear to express them, and thankfully decline your offer." This was his present resolution; but the heart of man is not in his own keeping, and he was destined to this sacred service by a higher hand; a hand so powerful, as at last forced him to a compliance;† of which I shall give the reader an account before I shall give a rest to my pen. Mr. Donne and his wife continued with Sir Francis Wolly till his death: a little before which time, Sir Francis was so happy as to make a perfect reconciliation betwixt Sir George and his Print but his Sermons; and if those we buy, He, we, and thou shalt live t' eternity! Sir Richard Baker, who calls him "my old acquaintance," writes: "Mr. John Donne, on leaving Oxford, lived at the Inns of Court, not dissolute, but very neat; a great visitor of ladies, a great frequenter of plays, a great writer of conceited [i. e. fanciful, witty,] verses; until such time as king James, taking notice of the pregnancy of bis wit, was a means that he betook him to the study of divinity; and thereupon, proceeding Doctor, was made Dean of Paul's; and became so rare a preacher, that he was not only commended, but even admired by all who heard him."-Chron. p. 47. * Rom. xiv., 22. The modern translation is: "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that which he doeth."-2. + In a letter to the lord Hay, he writes: "I have brought all my distractions together; and find them in a resolution of making divinity my profession, that I may try whether my poor studies, which have profitted me nothing, may profit others in that course; in which also a fortune may either be better made, or at least better missed, than in any other."-Sir T. Mathews' Coll., p. 322. Sir Francis Wolley died in 1610; but see the following note. On his decease the manor of Pyrford passed, under settlement, to Sir Arthur Mainwaring, son of Sir George Mainwaring and Anne, daughter of Sir William More; and ultimately, by purchase, to the family of the earl of Onslow. forsaken son and daughter; Sir George conditioning by bond, to pay to Mr. Donne 8001. at a certain day, as a portion with his wife, or 201. quarterly for their maintenance, as the interest for it, till the said portion was paid. Most of those years that he lived with Sir Francis, he studied the Civil and Cunon Laws; in which he acquired such a perfection, as was judged to hold proportion with many who had made that study the employment of their whole life. Sir Francis being dead, and that happy family dissolved, Mr. Donne took for himself a house in Mitcham,--near to Croydon, in Surrey, a place noted for good air and choice company: there his wife and children remained; and for himself he took lodgings in London, near to Whitehall, whither his friends and occasions drew him very often, and where he was as often visited by many of the nobility and others of this nation, who used him in their councils of greatest consideration, and with some rewards for his better subsistence. Circumstances induce to the belief, that although Pyrford may have been the earliest refuge of Donne and his wife, in 1602, and he may have still continued the recipient of Sir Francis Wolley's favors; yet that his removal to the neighbourhood of London had been earlier than supposed by the text. A letter in Sir Tobie Mathews' Collection appears to have been addressed to him at Pyrford, at the period of the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh, (Nov., 1603); and one written apparently not long afterwards, strongly recommends him to repair to court, for that "places of attendance, grow daily dearer, and are so like to do,-the king's hand being neither so full nor so open as it hath been."-pp. 279–283. He was probably at Peckham, with his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Grymes, in 1605, when his son George was baptised at Camberwell. The baptism of a son (Francis) occurs in the Mitcham register, the 8th January, 1607; and several of his letters are dated thence in that year. In one, of the 11th July, to the lady Magdalene Herbert, enclosing "a Hymn of St. Mary Magdalene," and other verses, Donne writes : "Your favours to me are every where. I use them and have them. I enjoy them at London, and leave them there; and yet I find them at Mitcham. Such riddles as these become things inexplicable; and such is your goodness. I was almost sorry to find your servant here this day, because I was loth to have any witness of my not coming home last night, and indeed of my coming this morning; but my not coming was excusable, because earnest business detained me; and my coming this day is by the example of your St. Mary Magdalene, who rose early upon Sunday, to seek that which she loved most; and so do I. And from her and myself I return such thanks as are due to one to whom we owe all the good opinion that they whom we need must have of us."-Donne's Poems, 1650. Nor did our own nobility only value and favour him, but his acquaintance and friendship was sought for by most ambassadors of foreign nations, and by many other strangers, whose learning or business occasioned their stay in this nation. 66 He was much importuned by many friends to make his constant residence in London; but he still denied it, having settled his dear wife and children at Mitcham, and near some friends that were bountiful to them and him;* for they, God knows, needed it: and that you may the better now judge of the then present condition of his mind and fortune, I shall present you with an extract collected out of some few of his many letters :— And the reason why I did not send an answer to your last week's letter, was, because it then found me under too great a sadness; and at present 'tis thus with me: There is not one person, but myself, well of my family: I have already lost half a child, and, with that mischance of her's, my wife has fallen into such a discomposure, as would afflict her too extremely, but that the sickness of all her other children stupifies her; of one of which, in good faith, I have not much hope: and these meet with a fortune so ill-provided for physic, and such relief, that if God should ease us with burials, I know not how to perforin even that: but I flatter myself with this hope, that I am dying too; for I cannot waste' faster than by such griefs. As for, Aug. 10. From my hospital at Mitcham, JOHN DONNE."t * His friend, the good and charitable Sir Julius Cæsar, resided at Mitcham; and in the neighbourhood were the Carews, of Beddington, who, about the year 1612, added to their estate the manor and advowson of Mitcham. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton Carew, married Mary, daughter of Sir George More, of Loseley, sister of Donne's wife. He was younger son of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, and bis wife Anne, daughter of Sir Nicholas Carew, of Beddington, and took his mother's name with the Beddington estate; his elder brother, Sir Arthur Throckmorton, succeeding to the paternal estate of Pauler's Perry.—See Life of Sir Henry Wotton. + In another, of somewhat earlier date, he writes: "This letter hath more merit than one of more diligence, for I write it in bed, and with much pain. I have occasion to sit late some nights in my study (which your books make a pretty library), and now I find that that room hath a wholesome emblematic use; for, having under it a vault, I make that promise me that I shall die reading, since my book and a grave are so near. But it hath another as unwholesome, that by raw vapours rising from thence (for I can impute it to nothing else) I have contracted a sickness which I cannot name nor describe. . . . . But it will not kill me yet. I shall be in this world like a porter in a great house, ever nearest the door but seldom 66 Thus he did bemoan himself: and thus in other letters: For we hardly discover a sin, when it is but an omission of some good, and no accusing act with this or the former I have often suspected myself to be overtaken; which is, with an over-earnest desire of the next life: and, though I know it is not merely a weariness of this, because I had the same desire when I went with the tide, and enjoyed fairer hopes than I now do; yet I doubt worldly troubles have increased it: 'tis now spring, and all the pleasures of it displease me; every other tree blossoms, and I wither: I grow older, and not better; my strength diminisheth, and my load grows heavier; and yet I would fain be or do something; but that I cannot tell what, is no wonder in this time of my sadness; for to choose is to do; but to be no part of any body, is as to be nothing: And so I am, and shall so judge myself, unless I could be so incorporated into a part of the world, as by business to contribute some sustentation to the whole. This I made account; I began early, when I understood the study of our laws; but was diverted by leaving that, and embracing the worst voluptuousness, an hydroptique immoderate desire of human learning and languages:* beautiful ornaments indeed to men of great fortunes; but mine was grown so low as to need an occupation; which I thought I entered well into, when I subjected myself to such a service as I thought might exercise my poor abilities: and there I stumbled and fell too; and now I am become so little, or such a nothing, that I am not a subject good enough for one of my own letters.—Sir, I fear my present discontent does not proceed from a good root, that I am so well content to be nothing, that is, dead. But, Sir, though my fortune hath made me such, as that I am rather a sickness or a disease of the world, than any part of it, and therefore neither love it, nor life; yet I would gladly live to become some such thing as you should not repent loving me: Sir, your own soul cannot be more zealous for your good, than I am; aud God, who loves that zeal in me, will not suffer you to doubt it: You would pity me now, if you saw me write, abroad: I shall have many things to make me weary, and yet get not leave to be gone. If I go, I will provide by my best means that you suffer not for me in my bonds......" And in another : "It hath pleased God to add thus much to my affliction, that my wife hath now confessed herself to be extremely sick : she hath held out thus long to divert me, but is now contemned; and here we be in two beds or graves, so that God hath marked out a great many of us, but taken none yet. I have passed ten days without taking anything, so that no one can live more thriftly ....' * In one of his poems, Donne describes the desire of knowledge as "The sacred hunger of Science :' دو Is not thy sacred hunger of Science Yet satisfied? Is not thy brain's rich hive |