John Donne Sometime Dean of St. Paul's A. D. 1621-1631

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\AA5U , 7

Harvard College
Library

FROM THE ESTATE OF ^

ARTEMAS ward'

OF NEW YORK

Ti

SeaberB oL Religion

Edited by H. C; Beeching, M.A.

JOHK DONNE

Seabevs of "gleUQion

Edited bt H. G. Beechino, M.A.

Grown 8vo, cloth extraj with Portrait^ 35. Qd,

Under the above title Messrs. Methtjen are publishing a series
of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious life
and thought. The following are ready ; —

CARDINAL NEWMAN

JOHN WESLEY

BISHOP WILBERFORCE

CHARLES SIMEON

CARDINAL MANNING

THOMAS CHALMERS

LANCELOT ANDREWES

WILLIAM LAUD

JOHN KEBLE

AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY

JOHN KNOX

JOHN HOWE

THOMAS KEN

GEORGE FOX

JOHN DONNE

JR. H, ffittton.
J, H, Overton.
G, W. Daniell,
H. a G. Moule.

A, W, Hviton,
Mrs, Oliphant,

B. L, Ottley,
W, H. HvMon.
W, Lock,

E, L, CvMs,
FlorcTice A, MacCurm,
M, F. Horton,

F, A, Clarke,
Thomas Hodgkin,
Aiigustus Jessqpp,

In Preparation.

MARTIN LUTHER
THOMAS CRANMER
HUGH LATIMER
JOHN CALVIN
JOSEPH BUTLER
FRANgOIS f6n£lON
C. H. SPURGEON

Otoen Edwards,
A, J, Mason,
A, J, CarlyU,
W, A, B, Goolidge,
H. Bashdall.
Viscount St, Gyres,
J, Gilford,

Other volumes will lie annonnced In due course.

Tnit U-ns isr i'outn. Ssxij^i^.m-rl^. aneCunt ihaxTTme
l^^t csunr^neir Biuiun jfif, Sut fu/as not tHi'nt . ■

^."T ^eu^''Tirej^mrcS,er wif.at my purr mind

gf^r C^^f"'-. ,n"tf/? J^Ft.r^t iDcya.^

i

i

o

JOHN DONNE

SOMETIME DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S

A.D. 162I-1631

BY

AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.

RECTOR OP SCARNING

WITH TWO PORTRAITS

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.

LONDON

1897

IH-H-^^.1

V
"j •'V

TO
MY OIFTED AND MUCH VALUED FBIEKD

HENRY WILLETT

I OFFER THIS LITTLE VOLUME

A TRIBUTE OF LOYALTY AND

HIGH REGARD

PREFACE

It is fifty years since, as an undergraduate at Cam-
bridge, I projected and began to make collections for
a complete edition of the works of Dr. Donna

In those days there was a great revival of the
study of our seventeenth-century divinity, the result
of the great Oxford Movement. Young men were
told that the great teachers of that period were the
safest and the wisest guides to follow. Certainly we
knew none better. The Textual Criticism of the New
Testament was then in its infancy, and the New
Theology was not yet born.

Perhaps it was just a^ well that publishers shrank
from embarking in so ambitious a venture as I had
contemplated; and soon circumstances intervened
which took from me " the dream of doing and the
other dream of done."

In 1855, however, I issued a reprint of Donne's
little-known Essays in Divinity, with a brief account
of the author's life. The critics said that the volume
was absurdly overloaded with foolish notes and an
unnecessary display of learning. I think the critics
were right. When young men are in the happy

vii

vm PREFACE

twenties, they are apt to "show off," especially if
they are solitary students ; and I confess that to this
day, when I have occasion to look into the small pages
of that little bantling of mine, I feel as Mr. Pen-
dennis felt when recurring to one of his early reviews
— nothing astonished him so much as the erudition
which he found he had amassed in his first attempts
in criticism.

Since those days I have never quite given up my
old interest in the life and works of Dr. Donne. The
design of publishing a complete edition has long since
been abandoned ; but the hope of issuing the Uf e and
letters of the great Dean I still clung to, till the con-
viction forced itself upon me that there was one who
was better qualified for such a task than I could ever
hope to be.

I have never been able to feel much enthusiasm for
Donne as a poet; and it is as a poet that Donne's
fame has chiefly come down to us. Who was I that
I should undertake to deal with the life of the man
whose poetry I had not the power of appreciating at
its worth ? There must be some deficiency, some
obUquity, in my own mind. It was only slowly and
reluctantly that I was brought to see that such a
work as I had hoped to do, only Mr. Edmund Gosse
was fitted to undertake. There is no man in England
who has written so exquisitely on Donne as he, or
shown such subtile sympathy with his poetic genius.
It is to him, accordingly, that I resign that delightful

PREFACE IX

and honourable task which I once hoped to accomplish
myself. It is from him that any adequate and elabor-
ate biography is to be looked for.

In the meantime, and while we are waiting for some-
thing better, I have been glad to draw up the following
sketch, which I hope will be found trustworthy as far
as it goes. I have dealt with Donne as one of the
great leaders of religion in his time ; it is from this
point of view that the volume should be read.

There are two biographies in literature that can
never be superseded : the Ufe of Agrkoh, by Tacitus
is one, Izaak Walton's Life of Donne is the other.
Every incident which Tacitus mentions in the Agricola
is probably narrated with strict accuracy : the same
cannot be said of Walton's work. Tacitus was by
nature and training a historian ; Walton was a hero-
worshipper, who could not help idealising his heroes.
The age in which he lived was comparatively careless
about unadorned historic fact. Devout people had not
yet left off reading the lives of the saints for edification,
and still expected a certain measure of panegyric at
the hands of biographers. It is not to be wondered
at if Walton's Donne should be full of mistakes in
matters of detail. But it is a matchless work of art,
which if you try to mend you can only spoil. To
retouch it, to correct it, to edit it (as the phrase is),
would be to smother it with learned dust and ashes.
In our time we have substituted photography for

X PEEFACE

portraiture ; and so much more is known of Donne's
life now than could have been known to Walton, that
a new life, setting forth the results of recent research,
seems to be required.

If no authorities are cited for the new facts that
have been brought forward, that is no fault of mine.
I am told — and I suspect it is true — that the gener-
ality of readers would rather be without them. In
literature as in the ordinary affairs of life we must
be content to trust one another. If a man tries to
cheat his neighbours by imposing upon their credulity,
he will not long escape being found out. Of course,
to err is human ; but, for myself, I would not, for all
that this world could give, pass into that other world —
the world of spirits blest — fearing to meet my great
teacher and master and friend. Dr. John Donne, as I
should fear to meet him if consciously I had borne
false witness here — against him or for him.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAP.

?Aei

Inteoditction ...... 1

I. Eably Life

■

8

Appendix— Marriage Letters

•

29

IL NOSOITUR A Sociis

.

89

in. Steps to the Altar .

1

59

IV. A Bundle op Letters

1

92

V. Lincoln's Inn Days

109

VI. The Dean

. 131

VII. Donne at St. Dunstan's

153

VIII. A Year of Gloom

183

IX. Life's Evening and the Sunset

. 196

Appendix A— Pedigree

. 223

Appendix B—Donnb's Children

. 224

Appendix C— Donne's Will .

. 226

Index ....

283

THE LIFE OF JOHlf DOME

INTRODUCTION

When it is said that " great men are the product of
their age," what is meant to be conveyed by the
phrase is that every man who plays a conspicuous
part in the history of his own country or of the
world — whether it be in politics, literature, or religion
— must needs be influenced by his environment.

But this is more or less true of every man, and
not only of the most gifted and the most famous.
We cannot hope to estimate rightly the life-story of
either the obscure or the most eminent in their genera-
tion, till we know something of the days in which
they lived, the events in which they took part, the
people with whom they were brought into contact,
or the influences that were exercised upon them
during their career.

It is especially necessary that we should know
something of these factors when we are setting our-
selves to the serious study of a life which has come
down to us as an exemplar life from an age and a state
of society that has passed away. For in every age
the greatest are they who assimilate most readily and
most largely all those elements of intellectual and

2 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

spiritual nutrition which contribute towards the
growth and building up of noble characters, but
which lower natures take little heed of, neglect and
run their dull course without regarding. Small men
remain small in the best times or the worst; the
great leaders of mankind more than keep pace with
the resistless wheels of the chariot of progress, because
they themselves are the charioteers.

All this is exemplified with curious emphasis in
the life of the man of genius who has been called the
Poet Preacher, Dr. John Donne, the great Dean of
St. Paul's.

On his father's side he was sprung from an ancient
Welsh stock, — a " Knightly Family," as the old writers
designated such landowners as could boast of a
succession of belted knights among their ancestors, —
the Dwnns of Dwynn in Eadnorshire. Of this house,
John Donne the elder appears to have been a
yoimger son, and, according to the very common
practice of those times, he was early sent to London,
apprenticed to a London merchant, and in due course
was admitted to the freedom of the city, and enrolled
in the ancient Guild of Ironmongers. He exhibited
a great capacity for business, rapidly succeeded as a
merchant, and had already realised a considerable
fortune, when he died, while still young, in January
1576.

On his mother's side. Dr. Donne was descended
from the family of Sir Thomas More, whose judicial
murder, when he was Lord Chancellor of England, is
only too well known to us alL

1. He died for conscience' sake upon the scaffold
in 1536.

INTRODUCTION 3

2. Elizabeth, a sister of Sir Thomas More, had
married John Eajstall, one of our early printers and
a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. He too suflfered much
for his vehement opposition to the Reformation ; he
is said to have witnessed the barbarous execution of
his brother-in-law, and he himself appears to have
died in prison that same year. He too a sufferer for
conscience' sake.

3. Margaret Griggs, another inmate of the house
of Sir Thomas More, and a kinswoman and adopted
daughter of the illustrious Chancellor, became the
wife of Dr. John Clement about the year 1530. She
died an exile for her faith, at Malines in 1570, and
her husband, also an exile for conscience' sake, survived
her two years, he too dying in the foreign land a
confessor for the faith for which he suffered.

4. Winifred, the daughter of these two last-named
persons, married William Eastall, the son of John
Rastall mentioned above, who was Sir Thomas More's
brother-in-law. William Eastall became one of the
Judges of the Common Pleas. He too, under the
pressure of the Elizabethan laws enforcing conformity
upon all, abjured the realm for the second time in
1563. He ended his days at Louvain in 1565, and
was buried there beside Winifred, his wife, who had
died there ten years before. They were both exiles
in the foreign land for conscience' sake, as so many of
their kindred had been before them and after them.

5. Elizabeth, the daughter of William Rastall, the
judge, and Winifred, his wife, married John Heywood,
the epigrammatist. John Heywood narrowly escaped
being hung by Henry viii., was high in favour under
Queen Mary, but at the accession of Queen Elizabeth

4 * LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

he felt himself compelled to retire to Malines, where
he too died an exile. There was no place for men of
his opinions in his native land.

6. John Heywood had by his wife Elizabeth
(Sastall) three children — two sons and a daughter.
The sons were Jasper and Ellis Heywood, two of the
most staimch and aggressive supporters of the Boman
creed and ritual of their time, and two of the first
Englishmen admitted to the Society of Jesus. They
too were banished the realm and died in exile. Let
us not grudge them, too, the credit of having died far
away from home for conscience' sake.

7. The sister of these two eminent brothers was
the mother of Dr. Donne. She was notorious as a
" stubborn Papist " all her life. She is said to have
been seriously despoiled of her substance for her non-
conformity, though she lived long enough to see the
cruel laws of the previous reign greatly relaxed by
the more tolerant lenity of James i. But as she had
lived, so she died in conscientious communion with
the Church of Bome.

8. To this long and miserable catalogue of sufferers
for their faith, sufierers to whom we cannot deny the
merit of sincerity and a certain measure of heroism
— though their beliefs were not as ours are, and
though we may assert with firm insistence that they
were on the wrong side, the side of error — one more
name must be added.

In May 1593 a Boman priest named William
Harrington was arrested in Thavies Inn — one of the
Inns of Law in Holborn — at the chambers of Donne's
younger brother, Henry, who thereupon was com-
mitted to the Clink Prison for the crime of concealing

INTRODUCTION 6

the proscribed Seminarist. A few weeks later young
Henry Donne (he was hardly nineteen) caught jail
fever, and died in the prison.

Thus it appears that, during four generations, at
least five blood relations of Donne had suffered
cruelly in their persons or their estates for what
they believed to be the true faith of a Christian.
Well might he say, in his preface to the Pseudo
Martyr y written in 1610, " No family (which is not of
far larger extent and greater branches) hath endured
and suflfered more in their persons and fortunes for
obeying the teachers of Eoman doctrine." ..." I had
a larger work to do than many other men," he
adds, " for I was first to blot out certain impressions
of the Eoman religion and to wrestle both against the
examples and against the reasons, by which some
hold was taken, and some anticipations early laid
upon my conscience, both by persons who by nature
had a power and superiority over my will, and others
who, by their learning and good life, seemed to me
justly to claim an interest, for the guiding and
rectifying of mine understanding in these matters."

Three years before John Donne was born, the Bull
of Pope Pius v., proclaiming the excommunication of
Queen Elizabeth, was nailed to the door of the Bishop
of London's Palace during the night of the 15th
May 1570. Next year the Legislature answered
this challenge by making it penal for any priest of the
Eoman communion to absolve or reconcile any of Her
Majesty's subjects, or exercise any priestly functions
in the realm. On the face of these enactments, it
was no longer possible for any subjects of the Queen
to halt between two opinions in matters of religion.

6 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Everybody's hand was forced, so to speak; everyone
had to take his stand on the pope's side as a
"Catholic," or on the queen's side as a "Heretic,"
or Anglican, which in those days was declared to
mean the same thing. Eeligious toleration in the
sixteenth century was hardly dreamt of as a political
possibility, and the tactics of the popes and their
more fiery and zealous advisers all went in the
direction of making freedom of thought and freedom
of opinion impossible. People had not yet learnt to
think for themselves ; for generations they had been
kept in leading strings ; and during the first twenty
years of EUzabeth's r;ign the ^eat majority of
educated Englishmen were accustomed to and were
more or less attached to the ancient ritual, and
would have been glad to see it restored with its old
pomp and splendour.

Meanwhile, the course of events at home, and
more especially abroad, were very powerfully in-
fluencing the feelings and opinions and prejudices of
the great bulk of the nation, arousing in men's minds
a sturdier and more passionate patriotism, an in-
creasing hatred of French cruelty, Spanish ferocity,
Italian guile ; awakening a spirit of adventure and a
desire to travel into distant lands, while the growth of
our trade and commerce had made the lust of wealth
become more absorbing and restless than it had been
among us probably since the fourteenth century.

We have only to remember that in the year 1572
the Dutch Eepublic was founded. Sir Francis Drake
sailed to Panama, and then first "stared at the
Pacific." In that year, too, the atrocious Massacre of
St. Bartholomew's Day shocked and horrified the world.

INTRODUCTION 7

and the only remaining English duke, Thomas Howard,
suffered upon the scaffold for what was commonly
believed to be an attempt at rebellion — fomented by
the pope, and suggested by the King of Spain. It
was an Annus Mirabilis indeed, the year before John
Donne was born.

CHAPTER I

EAELY LIFE

John Donne was born in the parish of St. Nicholas
Olave, London, some time in the year 1573.

His father, John Donne the elder, served his
apprenticeship to Mr. James Harvey, afterwards Sir
James, and Alderman of London. Mr. Donne was
himself admitted to the freedom of the City some time
in the reign of Queen Mary, and in 1559 he was
managing the business of a rich widow, Mrs. Anne or
Agnes Lewen, being at that time a member of the
Ironmongers' Company. Her husband, Thomas Lewen,
had died in 1557, and died childless. By his will,
dated 20th April 1555, he bequeathed all his property
in London and Bucks, which was very considerable,
to his widow for her life, and after her death he
directed that it should pass to the Master, Warden,
and Company of " the mystery or occupation " of the
Ironmongers of the city of London and their successors,
to hold the same until such time as a new mondstery
he erected at Sawtrey, in the county of Huntingdon^
of the same order of monks as were then in the old
monastery before its suppression, charged with the
maintenance of a mass priest in the Church of St.
Nicholas aforesaid, to pray and preach therein, and
prepare other services as set out. . . . The said

8

EARLY LIFE 9

master and wardens are further enjoined to pay
yearly to the Friars Observants within the realm of,
England the sum of five pounds ; and a like sum to -
two poor scholars, one to be of Oxford and the •
other at Cambridge, towards their maintenance. . . .
Immediately after the rebuilding of a monastery at
Sawtrey, the said master and wardens are to pay to
the abbot or prior the money previously devoted to
the mass priest . . . and shall cause a mass daily to
be said, and four sermons yearly to be preached,
within the said monastery for the good of his soul.

As far as I know, this is the first and last
important bequest made after the plunder of the
monasteries by Henry viii. for the restoration of a
suppressed religious house; and as the widow did
not die till- the 26th October 1562, when Queen
Elizabeth had been on the throne nearly four years.
Alderman Lewen's intentions, so far as the rebuilding
of this Cistercian abbey was concerned, were never
carried into efifect, and the bulk of the property is
still held, I believe, by the Ironmongers' Company,
subject only to the charges for maintaining the two
scholars at Oxford and Cambridge down to the
present time.

Mrs. Lewen made her own will in Januaryl559-60,
appointing her servant, John Donne, now free of the said
company, " one of her executors," and she bequeathed
to him some very substantial legacies, including the
" great messuage, with a garden attached," in which he
resided at the time of his death, and where it appears
that all his children were born. The house was
destroyed during the fire of London in 1666.

Mr. Donne served the office of warden to the Com-

10 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

pany in 1574 ; but while still in the prime of life he
died early in 1576, leaving his widow with a large
fortune, and an ample provision for each of his six
children. Three of these children died in infancy.
The shares of these three thereupon went to increase
the portions of the two surviving brothers. A sister,
who received her portion, lived on till the year 1616,
as we shall hear later on.

By the untimely death of yoimg Henry Donne, a
few weeks before he came of age, all the accumulated
wealth intended to be divided among five devolved
upon the surviving son, John, before he had completed
his twenty-third year.

The two boys were brought up under a private
tutor in their mother's house, and were educated with
great care ; but they were strictly trained according
to the proscribed tenets of the Church of Eome. As
children it was inevitable that they should be greatly
influenced by their uncle, Jasper Heywood, the Jesuit
Father, who, from 1581 till 1584, "was esteemed
the Provincial of the English Jesuits," and gave him-
self the airs of a legate from the apostolic see, even
going so far as to summon a Provincial Council, which
resulted in working much mischief, and eventually
occasioned the banishment of Father Heywood him-
self, together with that of some seventy other priests,
whom it was not thought advisable to deal with
according to the full rigour of the law. Father Hey-
wood was a prisoner in the Tower of London during
the greater part of 1584, and by some special favour,
which remains unexplained, " he was permitted to
receive visits from his sister, who was able to bestow
upon him some care and nursing." That sister was

EARLY LIFE 11

Donne's mother, and it is fair to conjecture that during
some of those visits she may have been attended by
her son, already then a boy of conspicuous promise,
" with a good command both of the French and Latin
tongue." It was probably, too, at the suggestion and
advice of their astute and very learned uncle (himself
at one time a Fellow of All Souls College) that the
two brothers, John and Henry Donne, the one in his
twelfth, the other in his eleventh year, were entered
at Hart Hall, in the University of Oxford, on the 23rd
October 1584 — two or three months before Father
Hey wood was sent out of the country, never to return.

It seems to have been part of Jasper Heywood's
policy to induce the Catholic gentry to send their
sons to the English universities as early as possible,
that is, as soon as they could be* admitted to matri-
culate. The object was to give the lads the advantage
of a university training and familiarity with English
academic life before the oath of allegiance could be
administered to them. That oath had been worded
so as to be especially offensive to the Eomanists ; but
it was not exacted from any before the age of sixteen.
Accordingly, between 1581 and 1584, eighteen of
these boys under fourteen were matriculated at
Oxford, and among them were the two brothers with
whom we are concerned.

Six months before Donne came into residence, Sir
Henry Wotton, then a youth of fifteen, had come up
from Winchester, and entered at New College ; but,
either because there was no room for him there, or
because he preferred the society elsewhere, he removed
to Hart Hall, and thus the lifelong friendship between
him and Donne began. Neither Wotton nor Donne

12 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

appear to have taken a degree at Oxford. Wotton
certainly, and Donne almost as certainly, left Oxford,
and spent the next few years in foreign travel, each
probably with the view of acquiring that knowledge of
foreign languages in which they became proficient,
and so fitting themselves for the diplomatic service
(as we should say nowadays) of which Wotton became
a distinguished ornament, and in which Donne again
and again endeavoured, but fruitlessly, to find a career.

During these years of travel he disappears from our
view, but turns up again in 1592, when on the 6th
May he entered at Lincoln's Inn, occupying the same
chambers with Christopher Brooke — a prominent
member of a remarkable band of poets and men of
letters, the intellectual leaders of this brilliant period
of English literature.

It seems that a select society, which numbered
among its members almost all the most gifted mts who
were the ornaments of Queen Elizabeth's court, used
to assemble at the Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street,
on the first Friday in every month, to enjoy a con-
vivial meeting. The gatherings continued to be held
for several years, and there are frequent allusions to
the proceedings of this famous club in the light litera-
ture of the time. At the Mermaid there were wont
to assemble such men as John Selden, Inigo Jones,
Michael Drayton, John Hoskins, Ben Jonson, and
many another, illustrious as poets, artists, or scholars,
and others who rose to eminence as lawyers, or played
no mean part in the politics of the country. Shake-
speare himself was a member of the club, and fre-
quently attended the meetings ; there Donne appears
to have formed some of the friendships which lasted

EARLY LIFE 13

through his life. In Francis Beaumont's well-known
letter to Ben Jonson, the poet writes as follows of
these meetings :—

"What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been
So nimble and, so full of subtle flame,
As if that everyone from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life ; then when there hath been thrown
Wit able enough to justify the town
For three days past ; with that might warrant be
For the whole city to talk foolishly
Till that were cancelled."

Fuller's famous description of the " wit combats "
between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson^ need hardly
be quoted here.

Donne soon gained for himself a wide reputation,
and, while pursuing his legal studies at Lincohi's Inn,
he became a literary celebrity in London. His grace-
ful person,^ vivacity of conversation, and many accom-
plishments secured for him the entr^ at the houses of
the nobility and a recognised position among the cele-
brities of Queen Elizabeth's court. He was conspicu-
ous as a young man of fortune who spent his money
freely, and mixed on equal terms with the courtiers,
and probably had the character of being richer than
he was.

The tragical end of his brother Henry could not

1 Worthies of Wartmckshire tmder Shakespeare,

2 ** Dr. Donne, ... a laureate wit ; neither was it impossible that
a vulgar soul should dweU in such promising features." — Hacket's
Life of the Lord Keeper Williams, § 74.

14 LIFE OP JOHN DONNE

but have been a great shock to him, but even that
calamity resulted in a material addition to his
patrimony. On the other hand, his close connection
with the proscribed Recusants acted to some extent
to his discredit, and we know that at the time of his
marriage he lay under some suspicion of being still
tainted with sympathy with the Romanists and of
being less than loyal towards the Anglican creed and
ritual. He himself strongly protested against these
insinuations, but they were repeated nevertheless, and
doubtless they stood in the way of his advancement
at this period.

Walton says that " about his nineteenth year " Donne
" began seriously to survey and consider the body of
divinity as it was then controverted between the
Reformed and the Roman Church. . . . Being to
undertake this search, he believed the Cardinal
Bellarmine to be the best defender of the Roman
cause, and therefore betook himself to the examina-
tion of his reasons. The cause was weighty; and
wilful delays had been inexcusable both towards God
and his own conscience; he therefore proceeded in
this search with all moderate haste, and about the
twentieth year of his age did show the Dean of
Gloucester (Dr. Anthony Rudde) all the Cardinal's
works marked with many weighty observations under
his own hand ; which works were bequeathed by him
at his death, as a legacy to a i^t dear friend." ^
• ••...

The disastrous termination of the last expedition

^ Walton was careless in his chronology, and he has antedated this
period of study by at least two years. It is certain that Donne's study
of Bellarmine extended no further, at this time, than to the reading of

EARLY LIFE 16

to the West Indies and the Spanish Main in 1595,
under Drake and Hawkins, and the continued
rumours of plots against the queen's life, which were
believed to have had their origin at the court of
Philip n., led to the conviction, which was very
widely prevalent in England, that some blow should
be struck at Spain, which might cripple her commerce,
and be delivered nearer home than on the other side
of the Atlantic. A secret expedition on a large scale
was organised accordingly ; and a fleet of a hundred
and fifty sail, with twenty-two Dutch ships and seven
thousand soldiers, set out in June 1596, with Lord
Howard of Efl&ngham as Lord High Admiral, and
Eobert, Earl of Essex, then in his twenty-ninth year,
as General of the land forces. The admiral's flag
was hoisted on board the Ark. Sir George Carew
commanded the Mary Rose, Sir Francis Vere the
BairiboWy Sir Walter Ealeigh the Warsjpite, Sir
Eobert Southwell the Idon.

Not since the coming of the "Great Armada,"
eight years before, had such enthusiasm been aroused
among the nobility, or so splendid a gathering been
seen of young men of family eager to gain experi-
ence in war, and, if it might be so, distinction in
fighting the Spaniard. The Lord Admiral was the
veteran hero who had commanded the fleet in 1588.
He was sailing in the very ship on board which he

the famous three yolumes entitled IHspiUationes de controversiis Jidei
adversus hujus temporis ffoBreticos^, which were published in Lyons in
1593, and it is probable that he was moved to throw himself into the
study of controversial divinity, not only by the appearance of this
memorable work, which created a great sensation over all Europe, but
by the profound impression which his brother's death must have
produced upon his mind.

f

16 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

had dsished into the middle of the Armada off
Portland on the 22nd July: he was now sixty years old.
Sir Eobert Southwell had married a daughter of Lord
Howard of Effingham, and had been rear-admiral under
his father-in-law in the memorable year of victory.
George Carew had served for years in Ireland, and was
now lieut-General of the Ordnance. Sir Francis
Vere had fought under Leicester in the Low Countries,
though his chief laurels were yet to win. Sir Walter
Ealeigh, twelve years before, had crossed the Atlantic,
and founded the settlement of Virginia ; he too had
been one of the heroes of the '88 ; but his ship,
the Warspite — a vessel of eight hundred tons — ^had
been launched only three months before this new
expedition set sail. Under leaders such as these, it
was no wonder that every youth of spirit was burning
with the desire to take part in the adventure.
Knights and gentlemen, with their followers amount-
ing to nine hundred in number, were glad to serve as
volunteers, and among the first who offered himself
was young Donne. We are told that "he waited
upon the Earl of Essex," and was at once accepted. It
may be that he had already received an introduction to
the great man, whose younger brother, Walter Devereux,
had entered at Christ Church a term before he
himself had matriculated at Hart Hall, and who
probably had been among his Oxford friends.

Among the other chivalrous spirits on board the
admiral's ship in the Cadiz expedition, not the least
conspicuous of Donne's shipmates were young Thomas
Egerton and Francis Wooley of Pyrford in Surrey,
respectively the son and stepson of Sir Thomas
Egerton, afterwards Lord EUesmere, who had been

\

>

f

EARLY LIFE 17

■ inade Keeper of the Great Seal and Lord High
. fchancellor a month before the fleet set sail. Between
' fihese young men and Donne it was inevitable that a
M Iriendship should spring up which stood the latter in
:ood stead.

1

The Cadiz voyage had so brilliant a termination

that it led to the fitting out of another expedition

ext year, which proved a disastrous failure. Donne,

•we are told, "was an eye-witness of those happy

nd unhappy employments"; he does not appear to

have distinguished himself in the fighting, but the

i I Lord Keeper's son was among those who were knighted

f I for their gallantry. The fleet got back in October

1597, and immediately on his return to England

\ j Donne was appointed secretary to the Lord Keeper,

)f"hj the favour which your good son's love to me

obtained," he says, when writing to his patron four

years later. The secretaryship to the most exalted

functionary in the realm was a position which any

young man might have been proud to attain to in his

twenty-third year, and a position, too, which afiforded a

prospect of " some more weighty employment in the

state; for which his lordship did often protest he

thought him very fit."

Donne's foot was now upon the ladder; a great
career was before him. Living "in that fierce light
which beats about a throne," he was brought into close
relations with the most illustrious personages in the
realm, — admitted to familiar and confidential inter-
course with the great ones who were making history, —
and winning the notice and admiration of people of
wealth and high station, who proved themselves in the
af tertime ready and eager to promote his advancement.

18 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

The young man, among his other gifts, had the grea
advantage of being able to do with very little slee
He could read all night and be gay and wakeful an
alert all day. He threw himself into the amusemen
and frivolities of the court with all the glee of yout
but never so as to interfere with his duties. Th
favourite of fortune, he was too the favourite of th
fortunate — the envy of some, he was the darling oij
more. Those of his contemporaries who knew hi
intimately speak of him at all times as if there wa
none like him ; the charm of his person and manner
were irresistible. He must have had much love to givej
or he could never have had so much bestowed upon him.

During these four years Donne's reputation as a^
poet and wit was steadily increasing. In the later
years of Elizabeth's reign there was a great deal of
literary activity, which was rather in danger of de-
generating into frivolity and affectation than rising to
seriousness. People were happy and gay, and their
gaiety expressed itself in playfulness of style — in
songs and epigrams, in eccentricities of manner, in
far-fetched metaphors and odd fancies. There was a
continual striving for effect — a taste for the fantastic,
which by no means discouraged obscurity in diction,
when the substance was often subordinated to the form,

: and the thought wrapped up in verbiage, which some-
times rather concealed than expressed it in harmonious
language. Donne, in his earlier writings, may be said

v^ have fallen into the sins of his time. He wrote
much in verse — sonnets, lyrics, love-songs, elegies,
and satires. In prose he threw off what he called his
"paradoxes" and problems — short essays, each con-
taining some odd fancy or whimsical theory ; as, " That

EARLY LIFE 19

Nature is our worst Guide," "That all things kill
Themselves," " Why doth not Gold soil the Fingers ? "
or " Why do Women delight much in Feathers ? "
Ben Jonson, though he admired his cleverness, was
more than ordinarily severe upon him for his rugged-
ness. Why should subtlety of thought excuse neglect
of rhythm ? Nevertheless, the young poet became
the rage, and his writings were widely circulated.
It was not the fashion to print such trifles ; they were
handed about in manuscript, discussed at the ordinaries,
read out in clubs and coteries — the writers looking for
their reward in the shape of favours from those to
whom they were first presented or addressed, and not
infrequently in the shape of actual pecuniary honor-
arium. Very few of Donne's poems of this period
were published during his lifetime, and many which
are attributed to him and were issued under his name
never came from his hand. The carelessness with
which they were tossed into the lap of the public by
his unworthy son has rendered it almost a hopeless
task to distinguish between what is spurious and what
is genuine. Taking them, however, as we find thenl^
— if we except some few exquisite passages, which
will be remembered and quoted as long as our
language and literature live, — ^it is difficult to believe'
that these earlier poems were not loved for the poet's '
sake rather than the poet for the sake of his verse. ^ '^
Meanwhile, though Donne was giving out a great
deal, he was taking in a great deal more. He him-
self confesses to " an hydroptic immoderate desire of
human-learning," which, in one of his poems, he calls
the "sacred hunger of science." He was so large
a buyer of books that their cost made no inconsider-

20 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

able drain upon his estate ; and his reading embraced
an extraordinary range of learning, which his com-
mand of foreign languages and his great versatility
tempted him to widen. He read with his pen in his
hand; annotating, digesting, commenting. Nothing
came amiss: scholastic theology and casuistry, civil
and common law, history, poetry, philosophy, even
medicine ; and all these subjects studied not only in
the language of the learned, but in the vernacular of
France, Italy, and Spain.

About the time that Donne had set sail on the
Cadiz voyage in 1596, the Lord Keeper Egerton had
married, as his second wife, Elizabeth, the widow of
Sir John Wooley of Pyrford in Surrey, a sister of Sir
George More of Losely, in the same county. Sir
George was lieutenant of the town — a proud and
ambitious man, pompous, choleric, and fond of making
speeches, which he did very badly. He had at this
time an unmarried daughter, a young lady now in her
sixteenth year, whom it appears her aunt, Lady Eger-
ton, on removing to York House, took with her as a
companion. Her son, Francis Wooley, seems also to
have resided with his stepfather, and the two young
people may reasonably be supposed to have been
intended for one another, according to the match-
making custom of the time. But it seems they grew
up rather as brother and sister ; and however desir-
able an alliance between the heir of Pyrford and the
daughter of Sir George More might have appeared
to the latter, such an arrangement was probably never
seriously entertained by the young man himself.
Meanwhile, Ann More and Donne were necessarily
thrown much together. The young lady developed

EARLY LIFE 21

rapidly, and in her budding womanhood she had
constantly at her side the poet secretary, just ten
years her senior, in the bloom and beauty of his
youth, the peerless universal genius, whom to look at
and to Ksten to was to love. What else could follow
but that between the two an absorbing passion should
spring up ? which soon got the mastery of both one
and the other, till considerations of prudence, even of
duty, exercised over them no restraining force. How^
ever much Sir George More may have expected that
Sir Francis Wooley would sooner or later marry his
daughter, — though the marriage of first cousins was at
this time looked upon as almost more than undesir-
able, — yet, as I have said, the young man had no
thought of marriage. He went up to Oxford and
took his degree in the spring of 1599; set up an
establishment at Pyrford shortly after ; and in October
1601, young as he was, he entered Parliament as
member for the borough of Haslemere. He died un-
wedded in 1610.

Meanwhile, a great sorrow fell upon the Lord
Keeper's family. Donne's other close friend in the
Cadiz voyage. Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper's
eldest son, was killed in Ireland in August 1599;
and five months later, January 1600, Lady Egerton
herself was carried to her grave. Over the great
house a gloom had come. From one passage in an
early letter of Donne's to Sir George More, it looks
as if his daughter Ann still continued for a while to
reside at York House, probably till the Lord Keeper
married his third wife, at the close of the year 1601.
If this were so. Sir George had really no one to
blame so much as himself for the culpable imprudence

22 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

of leaving a young girl — by this time a young woman
of eighteen — ^in daily and hourly communication with
a susceptible young man of extraordinary personal
attraction and many great gifts, and occupying a
position which quite justified him in dreaming of a
noble alliance. But when rumours and whisperings
of what was going on came to Sir George's ears —
all too late — the fond and ambitious father was
greatly incensed. He appears to have behaved with
insulting contempt to young Donne, treating the pro-
posal of any marriage between the lovers as a thing
not to be heard of. He sent for his daughter to
Losely, and forbade all intercourse between the two.
Things, however, had gone too far. It was impossible
to prevent all intercourse between the young people.
The secretary must be in constant attendance upon
the Lord Keeper, the Chancellor of the Garter could
not keep his daughter away from all court entertain-
ments. The lovers, even without intending it, would
be thrown together from time to time ; and in more
than one of his poems, Donne makes mention of their
secret interviews. If we may take the fourth elegy
as a recital of facts, we must infer that Sir George
More had distinctly refused to sanction any marriage,
and that he had threatened to disinherit his daughter
if she and young Donne were seen together.

When the Parliament met in October 1601, Sir
George was compelled to be much in London, and his
daughter was with him. The dissolution took place
on the 19th December; and in the natural course of
things such meetings as had been contrived would
come to an end when Sir George and his family
returned for the winter to Losely. The lovers could

EARLY LIFE 23

bear it no longer. First, they plighted their troth to
one another in a solemn contract, and, as it seems, in
the presence of witnesses; and almost immediately
afterwards they were married. Then they separated,
the bride returning to her father's house.

Perhaps what helped to precipitate matters was the
fear lest the young lady might be compelled against
her will to marry some more eligible suitor. Such
an arrangement was not uncommon at this time, when
a daughter's hand was assumed to be almost absolutely
at the disposal of her father, who could give her to
whom he pleased.

The clandestine marriage could not be kept secret
for long. Where it was celebrated we are not told.
Only two witnesses are known to have been present :
Christopher Brooke, the rising young barrister, who
shared Donne's chambers with him in Lincohi's Inn,
gave the bride away, and his brother Samuel Brooke,
destined to become eventually Master of Trinity
College, Cambridge, performed the marriage ceremony.

A double offence had been committed by the parties
concerned. First, an offence against the Canon Law
in marrying a girl without the consent of her father ;
and secondly, the civil offence against the Common
Law.^ It was a very serious business. It became
plain that a disclosure must be made ; the only
question remaining was — who should act as mediator
between the bridegroom and his father-in-law ?

On the last day of January or on the first of
February 1602, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumber-
land, one of the wealthiest and most powerful noblemen

* See TrecUise on the Laws relating to Infants, by W. Macpherson
of the Inner Temple, London, 1847.

24 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

in England, undertook the delicate office ; the tidings
brought immeasurable provocation and dismay to Sir
George More ; he was furious, there were no bounds
to his expressions of indignation ; he would never be
reconciled to his daughter, never forgive the perfidious
husband who had beguiled her ; he would set the law
in its utmost rigour to bring down vengeance upon all
concerned in the nefarious business, nor would he hear
of excuse, palliation, or pardon. On the 2nd February,
Donne, who seems to have been suffering from
one of his serious attacks of illness, addressed a letter
to Sir George from his chambers in the Savoy, giving
a full account of the business, making a very humble
confession of his fault, but beseeching his father-in-
law " so to deal in it as ihe persuasions of nature,
reason, wisdom, and Christianity shall inform you, and
to accept the words of one whom you may now raise
or scatter, which are, that as my love is directed un-
changeably upon her, so all my labours shall concur
to her contentment and to show my humble obedience
to youself."

So far from this letter producing any good effect,
nothing would serve but that the law should be set
in motion without delay. Donne was committed to
the Fleet Prison, Christopher Brooke was sent to the
Marshalsea, and his brother to some other place of
confinement. But what was worst of all was, that
Sir George had peremptorily demanded that the Lord
Keeper should dismiss his secretary; and dismissed he
was. Meanwhile, the yoimg bride was kept in strict
confinement in her father's house at Losely, suflfering
acutely from anxiety and grief ; her husband, who was
now lying very ill in his chambers, was forbidden to

EARLY LIFE 26

communicate with her, and she was not spared the
hearing of certain abominable stories circulated and
repeated to her husband's discredit. Matters mended
very slowly. The pair were kept separate till the
High Commission Court should adjudicate upon the
cause that had been brought before it, and in the
meanwhile Donne was thrown entirely upon his own
resources and put to a great deal of expense in various
ways. Little by little, however. Sir George More got
to see the necessity of making the best of a bad
business. He began to relent when he found that
his son-in-law was not a mere adventurer in debt and
with little or no fortune, as he had been represented
to be. But such was the state of the law at this
time, so complicated by precedents and entanglements,
that it was not till the 27th April 1602 that the
marriage was confirmed by the Ecclesiastical Court,
and the pair were allowed to come together. By this
time Sir George More had repented of his folly and
obstinacy, and had got to see that Donne was not so
unworthy of his daughter's hand as he had assumed
him to be, in the first violence of his exasperation ;
and he even went so far as to ask the Lord Keeper
to reinstate his late secretary in his office. It was,
however, one thing for the Lord Keeper to dismiss
his secretary at the instance of his importunate and
choleric brother-in-law, and quite another to reappoint
him when that brother-in-law had come to his senses
and to a better mind. Lord Egerton replied with
much dignity that he had " parted with a friend and
such a secretary as was fitter to serve a king than a
subject, yet that, though he was unfeignedly sorry for
what he had done, it was inconsistent with his place

26 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

and credit to discharge and readmit servants at the
request of passionate petitioners."

Donne had won his wife, but the question now was
how he should maintain her? Sir George, though
professing to be reconciled to the marriage, still refused
to give his daughter any marriage portion, or make
any settlement upon her; and it seems that he
continued obdurate for a year or so, probably till the
birth of the first child, early in 1603. Then he
agreed to make an allowance equivalent to about
£500 a year of our money. With this, and the
remains of Donne's own fortune, which evidently was
by no means all spent, the young couple could hardly
be considered in very straitened circumstances, even
though they had been brought up in affluence. At
this point, however, a friend intervened with sub-
stantial assistance. As the Lord Keeper's son had
been the means of introducing Donne to his father
and of getting for him his place as secretary, so now
his stepson came forward nobly and showed his
regard for his former companion-in-arms. Mr. Francis
Wooley was not only the Lord Chancellor's stepson,
but he was the nephew of Sir George More. Mr.
Wooley had inherited at the death of his father, Sir
John, Latin Secretary to Queen Elizabeth and one of the
Privy Council, a splendid estate at Pyrford in Surrey,
about six miles from Guildford. The mansion was a
very magnificent one, surrounded by a large park well
stocked with deer, and twice during her reign Queen
Elizabeth had been sumptuously entertained there.
Young Francis Wooley was still under age at the time
of Donne's marriage, but, on the decree being pro-
nounced, and the bride having been restored to her

EARLY LIFE 27

husband, Mr. Wooley at once oflfered the young couple
an asylum at Pyrford, and here they were invited to
make their home. The invitation was accepted, and
at Pyrford, Donne, his wife, and at least one child,
remained for the next year or two. It is almost
certain that they were living here at the death of
Queen Elizabeth, on the 24th March 1603, and that
they were still residing with Sir Francis (who was
knighted at the Charter House on the 11th May)
when James L paid a state visit to his mansion on
the 10 th August, passing on next day to Sir George
More's famous seat at Losely. At the new court
there were many changes going on, and a new chance
of a career was ofifered to an accomplished young man
with many friends ; but it was absolutely necessary
that an aspirant for court favour should be in constant
attendance, and Donne's friends strongly urged upon
him the advisability of removing to London. He saw
the prudence of the advice, and early in 1605 he hired
a house at Micham in Surrey, then a favourite place of
residence for Londoners of large means and position.
Sir Nicholas Throckmorton Carew, who had married
another daughter of Sir George More, was Lord of
the Manor of Micham ; Sir Thomas Grymes, another
brother-in-law, lived hard by at Camberwell; and
Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls, and a great
friend of Donne's, had a splendid house in the parish,
where Queen Elizabeth had been entertained in
September 1598. Thus Donne was among his friends
and connections. At Micham he continued to reside
for at least five years ; during which time five of his
children were bom, four of whose names are to be
found in the register of baptisms of the parish. Mean-

28 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

while, he had taken a lodging for himself in the
Strand that he might be near Whitehall. He was
warmly welcomed by his old friends and by many of
the nobility and people of influence and position, who
hoped to further the young man's interest, while, as
the fashion was, they acted the part of patrons by
giving him from time to time substantial assistance.
But as for any preferment, none came.

"He waited, and learned waiting . . .
Spending youth in splendid lacquey work,
And famished with the emptiness of hope."

APPENDIX TO CHAPTEK I

MARRIAGE LETTERS

In no department of literature is the diversity of
the style and language of the writers of the nineteenth
and of the seventeenth century more strongly marked
than in the letters of courtesy and friendship of the
two periods respectively. Even the most cordial
and affectionate letters of the earlier time appear to
us so stilted and artificial that we find it hard to
believe the writers were sincere in their expressions,
or were not playing a part. The obscurity and the
pedantry, as they appear to us, are irritating to
modem readers. We cannot understand why men
should have wrapped up their meaning in such
involved sentences, or been content to say what they
had to say in language so obscure and so unrhythmi-
caL Yet, long before Donne had made for himself
a reputation as a theologian and preacher, he had got
to be regarded as one of the great letter-writers of his
time. There is, even now, a curious fascination about
his letters for those who have once become in touch
and sympathy with the writer; but, as Donne can
never be the poet of the many, so as a letter- writer, I
think, he can be attractive cut first reading only to the
few. Nevertheless, I think' it only fair to him, at
this point in his biography, to give the reader some

29

30 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

example of his epistolary style, and in doing so I
have thought fit to furnish a brief selection from such
of his letters as are more or less autobiographical, and
the rather, because several of these are known but to
few, and are only accessible in volumes which are
scarce or rarely met with in private libraries.

The earliest letters of Donne's which have come
down to us are those which give us some curious
information regarding his marriage. The first was
evidently the letter which gave the earliest intelligence
to Sir George More of what had happened six weeks
before, and was not improbably delivered by the Earl
of Northumberland. Donne seems to have been very
ill at the time he sent the letter, but this did not
prevent his being at once thrown into the Fleet
Prison. From thence he was removed to the Marshal-
sea a fortnight later, and set at liberty upon his own
recognisances a few days later. These letters were
first published in 1835, and have never been reprinted
till now.

I.

[John Donne to Sir George More of Losely
House, Surrey, 27id February 1602.]

" Sir, — If a very respective fear of your displeasure,
and a doubt that my lord (whom I know, out of
your worthiness, to love you much) would be so
compassionate with you as to add his anger to yours,
did not so much increase my sickness as that I
cannot stir, I had taken the boldness to have done
the office of this letter by waiting upon you myself
to have given you truth and clearness of this matter

MARRIAGE LETTERS 31

between your daughter and me, and to show you
plainly the limits of our fault, by which I know you
will proportion the punishment.

"So long since as her being at York House this
had foundation, and so much then of promise and
contract built upon it as, without violence to con-
science, might not be shaken.

"At her lying in town this Parliament, I found
means to see her twice or thrice. We both knew
the obligation that lay upon us, and we adventured
equally ; and about three weeks before Christmas we
married. And as at the doing there were not used
above five persons, of which I protest to you by my
salvation, there was not one that had any dependence
or relation to you, so in all the passage of it did I
forbear to use any such person, who by furtherance
of it might violate any trust or duty towards you.

" The reasons why I did not foreacquaint you with
it (to deal with the same plainness I have used) were
these : — I knew my present estate less than fit for
her. I knew (yet 1 knew not why) that I stood
not right in your opinion. I knew that to have
given any intimation of it had been to impossibilitate
the whole matter. And then, having these honest
purposes in our hearts and these fetters in our
consciences, methinks we should be pardoned, if our
fault be but this, that we did not, by forerevealing of
it, consent to our hindrance and torment.

" Sir, I acknowledge my fault to be so great, as I
dare scarce offer any other prayer to you in mine
own behalf than this, to believe that I neither had
dishonest end nor means. [ But for her, whom I
tender much more than my* fortunes or life (else I

32 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

would, I might neither joy in this life nor enjoy the
next), I humbly beg of you that she may Mt, to her
danger, feel the terror of your sudden anger^

" I know this letter shall find you full of passion ;
but I know no passion can alter your reason and
wisdom, to which I adventure to commend these
particulars ; that it is irremediably done ; that if you
incense, my lord, you destroy her and me ; that it is
easy to give us happiness, and that my endeavours
and industry, if it please you to prosper them, may
soon make me somewhat worthier of her.

"If any take the advantage of your displeasure
against me, and fill you with ill thoughts of me, my
comfort is that you know that faith and thanks are
due to them only that speak when their informations
might do good. . . .

" Sir, I have truly told you this matter, and I
humbly beseech you so to deal in it as the persuasions
of nature, reason, wisdom, and Christianity shall
inform you ; and to accept the vows of one whom you
may now raise or scatter — which are, that as my
love is directed unchangeably upon her, so all my
labours shall concur to her contentment, and to
show my humble obedience to yourself.

" Yours in all duty and humbleness,

"J. Donne.

" From my lodging hy the Savoy,
2nd February 1601-2.

" To the Right Worshipful Sir George More, Kt."

[The next letter, it will be observed, was written
ten days later from the Fleet Prison, into which

MARRIAGE LETTERS 33

Donne was thrown, immediately after the secret of
the marriage was disclosed.]

II.

[John Donne to the Lord Keeper,
Sir Thomas Egerton.]

" To excuse my offence, or so much to resist the
just punishment for it, as to move your lordship to
withdraw it, I thought till now were to aggravate my
fault. But since it hath pleased God to join with you
in punishing thereof with increasing my sickness, and
yet that He gives me now audience by prayer, it
emboldeneth me also to address my humble request
to your lordship, that you would admit into your
favourable consideration how far my intentions
were from doing dishonour to youi* lordship's house,
and how unable I am to escape utter and present
destruction, if your lordship judge only of effect and
deed.

" My services never had so much worth in them as
to deserve the favours wherewith they were paid ; but
they had always so much honesty as that only this
hath stained them. Your justice hath been merciful
in making me know my offence, and it hath much
profited me that I am dejected, since then I am so
entirely yours that even your disfavours have wrought
good upon me. I humbly beseech you that all my
good may proceed from your lordship, and that since
Sir George More, whom I leave no humble way
unsought to regain, refers all to your lordship, you
would be pleased to lessen that correction which your
just wisdom hath destined for me, and so to pity my

3

34 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

sickness and other misery as shall best agree with
your honourable disposition.

" Almighty God accompany all your lordship's pur-
poses, and bless you and yours with many good days.

" Your lordship's most dejected and poor servant,

"John Donne.

"Fleet, 12 Felr. 1601-2."

The following letter has only very recently come
into my hands, and has never yet been printed. It
shows that Donne at the date on which it was written
quite expected that his offence would be condoned,
and that his dismissal from the secretaryship would
be revoked. Lord EUesmere's refusal to reconsider
the sentence he had passed evidently burst upon
Donne as a thimderclap. On the 23rd of February
he was evidently in high spirits, and believed that he
would be reinstated in his office. Before a week had
passed he quite realised that he was a ruined man.

This letter has been long in the possession of Miss
Alicia Donne, of Chester. It bears the evidence of
having been carelessly copied by some sixteenth-century
scribe, who was not very familiar with Donne's hand.
I copy it with all its errors, retaining the spelling.
It was evidently addressed to Sir Henry Goodere of
Polesworth : —

III.

" Sir, — Of myselfe (who, if honesty were precious,
were worth the talking of) let me say a little. The
Commissioners by Imprisoning the witnesses and ex-
communicating all us have implicitie \sic\ instified our
Marriage. Sir George will, as I heare, keepe her till

MARRIAGE LETTERS 36

I send for her : and let her remayne there yett, his
good nature and her Sorrow will worke somethinge.
I have liberty to ride abrode and feele not much of
an Imprisonment. For my retome to my L : and Sir
George his pacification, you know my meanes, and
therefore my hopes. Of Ostend, it is said there
hath been a new blow given . losses of men somwhat
equall, but the Enemy hath recovered a trench which
Sir Fr [Vere] : had held out of the Towne. The states
have honored him by publishing an Edict with sharpe
punishment to any that speke dishonorably of his
party with the Arch D : If the Emperor were dead
before you went, perchance he is buryed by this time.
I hope sombody els hath had the yll luck to tell you
first, that the yonge Bedford is dead. The K: of
Spaine intends to spend this Somer in Italy. And
there I thinke by that tyme wil be our Lords of Pem-
broke, Wylloughby, and Worster. The Lo : Deputy
hath cut off some of Tyrrels now lately but no greate
number. I send this Letter to aske the way to Poles-
worth : If I heare it finde it [sic], I shall cost you halfe
an houre a weeke to reade the rest. I heare nothing
of your Warrant from Mr. Andrew Lee. Take my love
and honesty into the good opinion, and comend my
poore unworthie thanks and service to your good Lady :

"23^ Febr: 1601[-2]: from my chamber at Mr.
Haines his house by the Savoye (for this Language
your supBcriptions use).

" Tour true certeyne frind, Jo : Donne : "

Just a week after this letter was despatched, the
outlook had entirely changed. Hitherto Donne had

36 LIFE OP JOHN DONNE

hardly realised the seriousness of the crisis, but the
Lord Keeper strongly resented the outrage done by
his secretary in entering into an engagement to
marry Sir George More's daughter whilst she was
actually an inmate at York House. Sir George was
prepared to make the best of the business. The
Lord Keeper would not condone it. He was in-
exorable, and Donne was dismissed with disgrace
from a position which he was eminently qualified
to fill, and was turned loose upon the world, to
begin life anew with a stain upon his name. The
following pathetic letter of remonstrance produced
no effect. It shows that the writer understood only
too well that his career was spoilt, and that he
had nothing to do but to submit to the inevitable
consequences of his serious misconduct.

IV.

[Donne to Sir Thomas Egerton.]

"That offence, which was to God in this matter,
His mercy hath assured my conscience is pardoned.

" The Commissioners who minister His anger and
mercy incline also to remit it.^

" Sir George More, of whose learning and wisdom I
have good knowledge, and therefore good hope of his
moderation, hath said upon his last going that he was
so far from being any cause or mover of any punish-
ment or disgrace, that if it fitted his reputation he
would be a suitor to your lordship for my restoring.

^ The allusion is to the special Commissioners who were appointed
to report and adjudicate upon the validity of the marriage, and the
offence committed by the parties concerned.

MARRIAGE LETTERS 3*7

All these irons are knocked off, yet I perish in as
heavy fetters as ever whilst I languish under your
lordship's anger.

" How soon my history is despatched ! I was care-
fully and honestly bred; enjoyed an indifferent fortune;
I had (and I had understanding enough to value it) the
sweetness and security of a freedom and independency,
without marking out to my hopes any place of profit.
I had a desire to be your lordship's servant, by the
favour which your good son's love to me obtained. I
was four years your lordship's secretary, not dishonest
nor greedy. The sickness of which I died is that I
began in your lordship's house this love. When I
shall be buried I know not. It is late now for me
... to begin that course which some years past I
purposed to travel,^ though I could now do it not
much disadvantageously. But I have some bridle
upon me now more than then by my marriage of
this gentlewoman ; in providing for whom I can and
will show myself very honest, though not so fortunate.

" To seek preferment here with any but your lord-
ship were a madness. Every great man to whom I
shall address any such suit will silently dispute the
case, and say, * Would any Lord Keeper so disgraciously
have imprisoned him and flung him away if he had
not done some other great fault of which we hear
not?' So that to the burden of my true weaknesses
I shall have this addition of a very prejudicial sus-
picion that I am worse than I hope your lordship
doth think me, or would that the world should think.
I have therefore no way before me, but must turn

^ Referring to his earlier intention of adopting the profession of the
law.

38 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

back to your lordship, — who knows that redemption
was no less a work than creation.

" I know my fault so well, and so will acknowledge
it, that I protest I have not so much as inwardly
grudged or startled at the punishment. I know your
lordship's disposition so well, as though in course
of justice it be of proof against clamours of offenders,
yet it is not strong enough to resist itself, and I
know itself naturally inclines it to pity. I know
mine own necessity, out of which I humbly beg
your lordship will so much intender your heart
towards me, as to give me leave to come into your
presence. Affliction, misery, and destruction are not
there ; and everywhere else where I am they are.

"Your lordship's most poor and most penitent
servant,

"J. Donne.

"1 Martii 1601t-2].

" To the Eight Honourable my very good Lord and
Master, Sir Thojias Egerton, Knight, Lord
Keeper of the Great Seal of England."

CHAPTER II

NOSCITUR A SOCIIS
DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS

We have seen that the messenger who undertook to
carry the news of Donne's marriage to Sir George
More was the Earl of Northumberland, at that time
one of the most conspicuous noblemen in England.
The earl was a very munificent personage and a
liberal patron of men of genius, especially such as
shared his own enthusiasm for mathematical studies.
Indeed, from his constant companionship with John
Dee, the mathematician and visionary, and Thomas
Efarriott, the astronomer, the earl got to be known by
the name of Harry the Wizard, and he was believed
by the multitude to be a practiser of the black art.
How this imfortimate nobleman became accused of
complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, how he was cruelly
plundered, heavily fined, and kept a prisoner for more
than fifteen years in the Tower, while Sir Walter
Ealeigh was suffering from his long imprisonment in
another part of the same grim fortress, and "taking
exercise upon the leads," may be read in our ordinary
handbooks of English history. During their long
incarceration, these two illustrious victims of shameful
oppression were allowed in each case to receive visitors

40 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

pretty freely, and the earl still managed to keep up
some little hospitality, and was surrounded by scholars
and men of bright intellect, who interested him in the
inquiries and discoveries that were going on outside.
That young John Donne was one of those who found
his way into the presence of his noble friend during
his captivity we cannot doubt. At anyrate, some
months after his release from the Tower in 1621, we
find Donne dining with him at Sion House, where
Northumberland then resided. It would be difficult
to believe that the friendly intercourse which had
been so close in 1600 would have been renewed after
twenty years, unless cordial relations had been kept
up between the two friends in the meantime.

In October 1600 — less than a year after the death
of his second wife, who it will be remembered was Sir
George More's sister — the Lord Keeper took to himself
a third wife ; and this time the alliance was a splendid
one. The lady whom he married was Alice, daughter
of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, widow of Ferdinand,
fifth Earl of Derby, to whom she had borne three
daughters, co-heiresses to a great inheritance. These
daughters became members of the Lord Keeper's
family, and took up their residence at York House.
The second, Frances, was promptly married to the
Lord Keeper's son, subsequently Earl of Bridgewater ;
the eldest, Ann, became the wife of Grey Brydges,
fifth Baron Chandos of Sudely, celebrated even in
that prodigal age for the profuseness of his hospitali-
ties, and called the "King of the Cotswolds"; the third,
Elizabeth, three weeks after Donne's marriage, and
before the secret had been made known, became the
wife of Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huutingdou,

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 41

neither bride nor bridegroom having yet completed their
fifteenth year. It is significant that, so far from
Donne's relations with the Countess of Derby and her
daughters having become in any way weakened, or their
affection and admiration for him forfeited by his
marriage, they all continued among his devoted friends
to the end of their respective lives. Lady Huntingdon
especially being a frequent correspondent, and always
delighting in his society.

Lady Huntingdon grew to be one of the leaders of
fashion at the court of James i., and her salons were
frequented by men of letters and conversationalists,
who always found a cordial welcome.

There were many others among the nobility and
courtiers with whom Donne's duties as secretary to
the Lord Keeper brought him from .time to time into
confidential intimacy. When Eichard Herbert, Esq.,
of Montgomery Castle, died in 1596, leaving Edward
Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, as his
heir, Sir George More managed to procure for himself
the guardianship of the precocious lad, then a gentle-
man commoner at University College, Oxford, and in
his fifteenth year. In 1599 he married. A Uttle
later his mother, Magdalen Herbert, took a house in
Oxford, and settled there with her large young family.
During this period Donne was apparently sent down
by the Lord Keeper on some matters of business,
probably connected with Sir George More's guardian-
ship. It was Donne's first introduction to Mrs.
Herbert, and his first introduction, too, to her son,
George Herbert, who at this time was a boy of seven
or eight years old. The visit was the beginning of a
lifelong friendship with the Herberts— a friendship

■i

42 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

which grew and strengthened and continued till the
end of Donne's life. He corresponded frequently
with Lord Herbert of Cherbury, bequeathed a ring
with one of the famous anchor seals to George Herbert,
then in residence at Bemerton; and in 1627 he
preached what may perhaps be called his most
pathetic and most eloquent sermon at the funeral of
Magdalen Herbert, who, by her second marriage, had
become Lady Danvers. It was probably through Sir
Edward Herbert that Donne became acquainted with
Sir Thomas Lucy, grandson of Shakespeare's Justice
Shallow, a gentleman of literary tastes and possessing
a large library. To him Donne addressed, as early as
1607, one of his most thoughtful and elaborate letters.
Donne's great patron and admirer at this earlier
period of his life, however, was Lucy, Countess of
Bedford, whom her contemporaries called " The
friend of the Muses." She was the daughter of Sir
John Harrington of Exton, the most considerable
magnate in the county of Eutland. Sir John claimed
descent from the Bruces, and the claim was allowed
by James i., who was never slow to receive into favour
those whom he considered to have royal blood in
their veins. His daughter Lucy was married in
1594 to Edward Eussell, third Earl of Bedford; the
bride was in her teens, the bridegroom in his twentieth
year. He had succeeded to the earldom at the death
of his grandfather in 1585, and appears to have been
a man of no particular force of character ; he was of
weakly constitution and retired habits, was paralysed
before he was thirty, and was quite content that his
countess should play her part in the gaieties of the
court, while he lived retired £^t Moor Park or Chenies,

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 43

The Countess of Bedford was one of the most lovely
and gifted ladies of her time. Her ambition, above
all things, was to be considered a patron of literature
and literary men. The gardens at her house at
Twickenham, where she kept up her hospitalities on
a sumptuous scale, were famous for the assemblies of
poets, wits, and whoever else happened to be the
intellectual celebrities of the hour. She herself
wrote verses — sometimes exchanging her own effusions
with those of her guests who had presented her with
a song or a sonnet. She exacted from her favourites
the frequent homage of their offerings in letters and
poems. She delighted in startling subjects of con-
versation, which others might take part in; her
entertainments were veritable intellectual feasts, at
which she presided as mistress of the board. Grace-
ful and highly cultured, rich and lavish in her bounty,
with a refined taste in art and literature, and always
on the watch to attract men of genius to her side, it
was not long before Donne found himself among the
r^ular attendants at her court, — for at Twickenham
the semblance of a court was kept up as if the
Countess of Bedford had been a royal personage.

Lady Bedford appears to have taken up young
Donne before his marriage, — how soon it is impossible to
say. Her father's sister was the wife of Francis, Lord
Hastings, and it was their son Henry, Earl of Hunt-
ingdon, who married Elizabeth, the Lord Keeper's step-
daughter and ward, of whom we have already spoken.
Thus Lady Huntingdon and Lady Bedford were first
cousins. This may perhaps have brought the young
secretary under the personal notice of her ladyship; but
^fadiiondhk a man of letters as Donne had by this time

,1

44 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

become was not likely to escape the fascinations of the
great lady, with her enthusiasm for literature, her
eagerness to excel, her love of patronising notorieties,
and her craving for admiration from those whose
homage redounded to her glory. Donne soon became
a constant guest at Twickenham, and, more than that,
a dear friend and frequent correspondent of Lady
Bedford. Unhappily, when the collection of Donne's
letters was published by his worthless son in 1654,
her ladyship had been dead more than twenty years ;
and her representatives were not likely to surrender
to a profligate like the younger Donne the familiar
and playful notes which had been addressed to the
great lady in the gay and happy springtime of her
married life. But as two of these early letters are
good specimens of the epistolary style of the times, —
so unlike our modern manner of expressing our senti-
ments, and so free from the slovenliness and careless
hurry of our nineteenth-century correspondence, — I
give them here as I find them. They were both
written from Micham in 1607 or 1608.

To the Countess of Bedford.

"Madam, — Amongst many other dignities which
this letter hath by being received and seen by you, it
is not the least, that it was prophesied of before it was
bom ; for your brother told you in his letter, that I
had written: he did me much honour both in advancing
my truth so far as to call a promise an act already
done; and to provide me a means of doing him a
service in this act, which is but doing right to myself:
for by this performance of mine own word I have also

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 46

justified that part of bis letter which concerned me :
and it had been a double guiltiness in me to have made
him guilty towards you. It makes no difference that
this came not the same day, nor bears the same date
as his : for though in inheritances and worldly posses-
sions we consider the dates of evidences, yet in letters,
by which we deliver over our affections and assurances
of friendship, and the best faculties of our souls, times
and days cannot have interest nor be considerable,
because that which passes by them is eternal, and out
of the measure of time.

" Because therefore it is the office of this letter to
convey my best wishes and all the effects of a noble
love unto you (which are the best fruits that so poor
a soil, as my poor soul is, mhi produce), you may be
pleased to allow the lette](thus much of the soul's
privilege, as to exempt it from straitness of hours, or
any measure of times, and so believe it came then.
And for my part, I shall make it so like my soul, that
as the affection of which it is the messenger, begun in
me without my knowing when, any more than I know,
when my soul began : so it shall continue as long as that.

" Your most affectionate friend and servant,

"J. D."

To the same,

"Happiest and woRTfflEST Lady, — I do not remember
that ever I have seen a petition in verse ; I would not
therefore be singular, nor add these to your other
papers. I have yet adventured so near as to make a
petition for verse, it is for those your ladyship did me
the honour [to show] me in Twickenham garden, except
you repent your making, and have mended your

46 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

judgment by thinking worse, that is, better, because
juster of their subject. They must needs be an
excellent exercise of your wit, which speak so well of
so ill : I humbly beg them of your ladyship, with two
such promises, as to any other of your compositions
were threatenings : that I will not show them, and
that I will not believe them : and nothing should be
so used that comes from your brain or breast. If I
should confesse a fault in the boldness of asking them,
or make a fault by doing it in a longer letter, your
ladyship might use your style and old fashion of the
court towards me and pay with a pardon. Here,
therefore, I humbly kiss your ladyship's fair learned
hands, and wish you good wishes and speedy grants.
" Your ladyship's servant,

"J. DONNK."

Donne continued to correspond with Lady Bedford
for many years ; some of his best poetry was addressed
to her ; she generously helped him with money more
than once or twice when he needed it most. She
stood as sponsor to one of his children, to whom she
gave her own name.^ When Bridget, Lady Markham,
her ladyship's cousin, died in May 1609, Donne wrote
one of his best elegies upon the deceased ; two months
later he wrote no less than three poems on Miss
Cecilia Bulstrode, one of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen
Anne, who had fallen sick and died in Lady Bedford's
house at an early age. It is probably that this was
the occasion on which Lady Bedford was so affected
by the poet's sympathy that she paid his debts in

^ Lucy, Donne's second daughter, was baptized at Micham 8th
August 1608.

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 47

acknowledgment of her gratitude. Some years later
another sorrow came upon her. In August 1613
her father, Lord Harrington, died at Worms ; and in
the following February her brother, the second lord,
died of the smallpox at Kew, leaving no heirs-male.
Donne was evidently much moved by the loss his
friend had sustained, and made use of the opportunity
to write what he calls " Obsequies on the Lord Har-
rington." Of course the poem was meant for Lady
Bedford's eye. It is addressed to her dead brother ;
and in view of the writer having by this time signified
his intention of shortly taking holy orders, he closes with
a kind of promise that he would write no more verse —

"Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse,
That in thy grave I do inter my muse ;
Which by my grief — great as thy worth — being cast
Behind hand, yet hath spoke, and sjjoke her last."

Lady Bedford had first known Donne in his bright
and joyous youth ; he was a trifler then and a courtier,
whom it was hard to look upon as anything more ;
she had not learned to see the real earnestness
that lay below the surface, and could not at first,
when she herself was beginning to feel sobered and
saddened by her sorrow, bring herself to approve of
her poet friend entering upon the ministry of Christ's
Church: for a little, a very little while, something
approaching to a cloud gathered over their friendship,
but it soon passed off. Her ladyship learnt to see
that in those early years she had not fathomed the
depths of that noble nature : she lived to understand
how worthy, and more than worthy, her friend was of
all the confidence and affection she had bestowed upon
him. The last occasion on which we hear of the two

48 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

meeting was in May 1619. Lady Bedford was re-
turning from Heidelberg, where she had been very
seriously UL Donne was himself on his way to
Germany. Lady Bedford was at Antwerp, and she was
lying in a darkened room suffering from some affec-
tion of the eyes. They parted — she to be met on her
arrival in London by a great crowd, who turned out to
welcome her on her recovery ; he to present himself at
the court of Elizabeth of Bohemia at Heidelberg, and to
preach a memorable sermon, which has been preserved.

After this Lady Bedford lived comparatively a
retired life at Moor Park in Hertfordshire, where
her gardens became even more celebrated than those
at Twickenham.

As late as 1622 Donne was still corresponding
with her. Her own letters from this time — and
many have been preserved — exhibit an increasing
seriousness of tone. She felt acutely the loss of
relatives and friends, and latterly she suffered much
from gout and other ailments.

But of all Donne's intimate associates who attached
themselves to him in his years of struggle and dis-
appointment, and who continued through life to feel
the irresistible attractiveness of his sweet and affec-
tionate nature, — the one man who found the way to his
fullest confidence, the man from whom he had no
secrets, and to whom he wrote with entire sympathy
and without reserve, was Sir Henry Goodere of
Polesworth in Warwickshire.

St. Edith's Abbey at Polesworth was a house of
Benedictine nuns, which enjoyed an unusually good
reputation when it was suppressed by the creatures of
Henry viii. in 1539. In the scramble that ensued.

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 49

when the lands of the monasteries came into the
market, the estates of this abbey were handed over to
one Francis Goodere of London, Gent., who appears
to have been a successful merchant in search of good
investments. He acquired extensive estates in War-
wickshire ; but — as was so often observed in the case
of the rich capitalists who bought up the lands of the
monasteries — in the next generation there was only
a single heir-male, upon whom all the property of his
father and brother (the sons of the original Francis
Goodere) was entailed on condition that he married
his uncle's daughter, and so kept the estates in the
family. This was our Sir Henry Goodere, who seems
to have been knighted at the close of Queen Eliza-
beth's reign, and on the accession of James i. obtained
the honorary appointment of a Gentleman of the
Privy Chamber. He never rose to any higher
position, though he was a courtier for many years,
and joined in all the gaieties and extravagant amuse-
rPjpnts of the court, to the serious damage of his
f&rtune, in so much that he appears to have died
insolvent. Sir Henry was a gentleman of many
accomplishments, with cultivated tastes, and of a
poetic temperament ; he had a large and apparently
well-chosen library ; but his almost romantic devotion
to his friend has won for him an immortality which
he could not otherwise have achieved. Donne's
letters to him, numbering between forty and fifty,
form the most precious portion of a correspondence
which will always be regarded as a chapter in English
literature we could ill spare, and which brings us into
touch with the modes of thought, the subtile question-
ings, and the true sentiments and beliefs of a time

4

60 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

when England was in the transition period between
the despotism of the Tudors and the social and political
revolution that was coming.

As the collection of Donne's Letters to Several Persons
of Honour, which were published in quarto in 1654,
are not now easily procurable, I think it well to
give here some few specimens of the letters to Sir
Henry Goodere, which may serve as examples of the
curiously stilted style in which correspondence was
carried on three centuries ago, and at the same time
furnish some insight into the inner life of one who
for many years was face to face with difficulties of
various kinds, such as weaker men would have sunk
under, but which, in Donne's case, became, under God,
only steps in the building up of his character. He
bore his training bravely ; he learned his lessons wisely ;
as he grew in depth of knowledge and breadth of
view, "he gathered strength — at last he beat his
music out."

It was not only among the nobility and the
courtiers that Donne's irresistible attractiveness won
him friends who stood by him, and were glad to enjoy
his society. Among the great lawyers who were
already in the first rank of the profession, or who
were sure to attain eminence, Donne had early been
recognised as a young man of supreme ability, and
as likely to make a great reputation. Among
these were Sir George Kingsmill, after whom, I con-
jecture, that Donne's second son George was named.
He had married Lady Bedford's cousin, the mother of
Henry, Earl of Huntingdon. Sir George, who was a
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, died in 1606,

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 51

but bis lady continued on intimate terms with tbe
poet tbrougb life, and appears among his correspondents.
Sir Julius Caesar has already been mentioned. He
became eventually Master of the Eolls; his extra-
ordinary generosity is noticed by Weldon, and his
house at Micham was Donne's frequent resort. Others
of his familiars at this period were William Hakewill,
an extremely learned barrister, Solicitor-General to
Queen Anne of Denmark ; Eichard Martin, afterwards
Eecorder of London ; and Sir William Jones, eventually
a Judge of the King's Bench, with many another whom
we may pass over.

But if the wits and the courtiers, the nobility, and
the luminaries of the law courts all agreed in their
high opinion of the young poet and courtier, there were
some, too, among the prominent divines and theo-
logians who even thus early had begun to recognise
that this universal genius had the making in him of
a formidable controversialist, and whose counsel and
suggestions even in matters theological were worth
asking and worth attending to. Foremost among
these were Bishop Andrewes and Bishop Morton.

Andrewes was, at the time of Donne's marriage,
Eector of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and a Prebendary of
St. Paul's ; he was already a frequent preacher in
London, and was noted for his ascetic life and
excessive devotion to study. Donne was his junior
by nearly twenty years, but this did not prevent the
elder man conceiving a cordial feeling of regard for
the younger ; and a friendship sprang up between them
which was honourable to both. Once, we learn,
Andrewes borrowed a book from Donne, which by
an accident fell into the hands of some children in the

62 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

house where he was staying. The urchins proceeded
to tear out some leaves of the volume, and, as a new
copy was not easily procurable, Andrewes wrote out
the torn pages with his own hand, and sent the book
back to its owner with the damaged portion replaced
in manuscript. The letter and Latin verses which
Donne sent to the future bishop acknowledging the
return of his book have survived ; but what would not
we give for that precious volume if we could handle it
ourselves ?

The intimacy with Bishop Morton must have begun
very soon after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Morton
was ten years Donne's senior, and, though now nearly
forty years of age, he had as yet published nothing.
Nevertheless, he had earned for himself a reputation
for learning and scholarship at Cambridge ; and when
he returned from a year's sojourn on the Continent, in
1603, he was well prep^ed to engage in the polemics
of the time, if any opportunity should arise. It was
not long in coming. The death of Queen Elizabeth
had given new hopes to the Ultramontane zealots in
England, and the Eomanists began to give themselves
the airs of superiors who were entitled to instruct the
Anglican divines and let the world see how defenceless
the position of the Church of England was when
exposed to the attacks of the trained logicians of the
Jesuit colleges and the great luminaries of the new
theology.

It is not to be wondered at that the controversialists
on the other side of the channel should have made
the mistake of deeming that the Anglican theology
at this time had no champions qualified to stand
forth as its defenders. Since the death of Bishop

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 63

Jewel, in 1575, absolutely the only representative of
theological learning in England who held any
important Church preferment was Nowell, Dean of
St. Paul's ; he was now nearly one hundred years old,
and had published his famous Catechism at the
beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Among the
Puritan clergy there were many who were laborious
preachers and diligent students of the Scriptures ;
but they and their Anglican opponents were wasting
their strength in wrangling about the ceremonies and
in curious questions regarding matters transcendental
which profit not, for they are vain. One has only
to run an eye down the pages of Le Neve, and
note the names of those who were members of the
cathedral chapters up and down the land, to under-
stand the way in which ecclesiastical patronage was
prostituted during the thirty years or so before the
accession of James i. In the Cathedral Church of
Canterbury during those thirty years not a single
Englishman can be found among the deans, arch-
deacons, or prebendaries, who had the least claim to be
considered a theologian. The one only member of
the Chapter of Canterbury during the barren period
who had any reputation for learning was Saravia, a
foreigner, who held his stall from 1595 to 1602.
At York, with its thirty-four prebendal stalls, there is
not a man who can be pointed to of whom anything is
known that is worth recording. Controversial theology
in the Church of England seemed to be dead. To
the outside world, to the English Jesuits, with Eobert
Parsons as their Coryphaeus, it might well have
seemed that all the intellect of the country was
devoting itself to mere literary trifling. The time

64 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

had come once more to show the people that their
leaders were blind guides, by whom they had been led
astray. When James i. showed that he was by no
means inclined to throw himself into the arms of the
Eoman faction, and when the detestable Gunpowder
Plot forced the Government to resort to strong
measures in self-defence, the Eoman polemics began
their campaign through the printing-press; but the
gauntlet was no sooner thrown down than, no doubt
to the astonishment of those who had delivered their
attack, the challenge was taken up by a band of
scholars armed at all points, though their names had
hardly been heard of outside the limited circle in
which they had hitherto moved. Eichard Hooker
was dead; he had published in 1597 his fifth book of
the immortal Ecclesiastical Polity, and dedicated it to
the Primate. What did Whitgift care for such as he ?
Hooker had been hunted out of the Mastership of the
Temple, and sent to rock the cradle and watch his
sheep at Bishopbourne, a short walk from Canterbury.
There Saravia seems to have been his only friend.
Some few bewailed him, and in their hearts cried
" Shame " ; but they held their peace when it was
the time for silence. Donne read and absorbed
Hooker's great work, especially the first book, —
utilised it, made it his own, and reproduced it in his
Biathana^, — but he never so much as mentioned
Hooker's name.

And yet there was a school of theology growing up
in the two universities, which was destined by and by
to send forth the glorious band of Anglican divines
who should prove themselves more than a match for
aH the Eoman gladiators. At Oxford there was

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 65

bitter dissension, almost before the queen had died,
between Eobert Abbot, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury,
and Laud, then proctor of the university. The one a
stubborn Calvinist, and exceedingly learned ; the other
the intrepid Eeformer, who claimed that the Church
of England should in ritual and discipline be brought
back to what she had been in her better days : so
only could she hope to deal with the sophistries and
corruptions of Eome. At Cambridge the influence of
Perkins, the able and earnest Calvinist, had been an
immeasurable force in awakening spiritual life in the
university ; but it was Andrewes to whom the
divinity students came in crowds to take down his
catechetical lectures at Pembroke, of which he was
tutor. Meanwhile, at St. John's College the study of
divinity was being pursued by the great majority of
Fellows with so much eagerness that the college had
almost become a theological seminary. When
James i. came to the throne three of the bishops
were St. John's men ; and during the next twenty
years no less than eight more Johnians were raised
to the Episcopate. They were the very best appoint-
ments the king made during his reign; they were
all men of conspicuous learning and high character,
such as the Church of England had not known
for many a long day. Of these eight Dr. Morton
was one, though he had to wait some years for
his promotion. The revival of interest in theology,
and the hitherto unheard-of care and discretion in
exercising church patronage, soon brought the ablest
men to the front ; and the stimulus given to the study
of divinity, which Donne alludes to in one of his
Problems^ made theology fashionable among all -classes.

66 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Men dragged their religion into all they talked and
all they wrote about, it gave a tinge to all their
lighter utterances in prose or verse. If this was not
all gain, at anyrate it was not all loss.

The. necessity of taking strong measures against
the Popish Becvsants, as they were called, who refused
on conscientious grounds to take the new oath of
allegiance, brought out a number of protests more or
less offensive from the Eoman party. It was judged
necessary to meet these books and pamphlets with
prompt rejoinders. Dr. Morton threw himself into
the fray with a vigour and readiness which made his
services peculiarly valuable. It is impossible here to
enter into the literary history of the controversies of
the time. In three years, at least six books, or pam-
phlets, some in English, some in Latin, appeared,
having Dr. Morton's name on the title, all overflowing
with learning, and all dealing heavy blows at Parsons
and his friends. They never could have been written
by one man single-handed. It was notorious that
the Eoman disputants helped one another in their
attacks. It was plain that there must be co-operation
among the Anglicans to foil their assailants. Morton
found in Donne a most able and willing coadjutor.
For years the younger man had been sedulously and
thoughtfully studying the points in dispute between
the Church of England and the Papacy ; he had been
buying books largely and reading them closely,
annotating and abstracting, as Walton expresses it;
" cribrating and re-cribrating and post-cribrating," as
he himself says. AH this accumulation of learned
lore, written in the small and beautiful hand which
never varies, and with all the references minutely set

DONNE AND HIS FRIENDS 67

down on the margin of his manuscripts, where a blot
or a correction is a thing unknown, was accessible
and ready for use at any moment. Even if we had
not been told that he gave Morton constant and
valuable help, a comparison of the authorities quoted
and referred to in Morton's Catholic Appeal, with those
set down in Donne's Pseudo Martyr, would have
convinced a careful reader of the fact. The curious
and out-of-the-way books cited in both works are
very numerous, and not to be found elsewhere.

As the two worked on, the king with his very
considerable theological training— pedantry you may
call it if you will — could not but be interested in
their task. James formed a strong opinion that this
gifted young scholar had a vocation, but his view of
what that vocation was was not Donne's view. It
seems that the king had expressed his opinion very
early, that the young courtier must stick to divinity
and give up his ambition to rise in the diplomatic
service. In June 1607 Morton got his first pre-
ferment ; he was offered, and accepted, the Deanery of
Gloucester. Nine years before this, George, Earl of
Huntingdon, had procured for him the living of Long
Marston in Yorkshire, a benefice of some value.
Morton immediately sent for his friend, and then and
there offered to resign the living if Donne could but
bring himself to take holy orders, as he advised him
in all seriousness and affection to do. The interview
is beautifully described by Walton ; but what Morton
advised was not yet to be. At the end of three days,
which had been given him to consider the proposal,
Donne gratefully but firmly declined ; his conscience
he would not tamper with ; and to enter the ministry

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

of Christ's Church only for the hope of gain, — that he
could uot, and would not, bring himself to do. It
might be the call of man, it was not the call of God.
So Morton went to his deanery, and Donne went
back to the little home at Michain, and continued his
attendance at the court, resisting and rebelling against
that gracious leading of God's providence, which in
the end bore him along the road that he was so
eminently fitted to ti-avel.

CHAPTER III

STEPS TO THE ALTAR

Donne ceased to reside with Sir Francis Wooley
some time in 1605. There were more reasons than
one for this removal. Not only was the distance
from London a serious inconvenience to a young
courtier on the look-out for preferment, but Donne's
family was increasing upon him; two children had
already been born, and a third was on the way. In
February 1605 he received an invitation to travel
abroad with three gentlemen of large means, who
were starting on a Continental tour, and who needed
some one to act as their interpreter and give them
the benefit of his experience. The party held a
licence for a three-years' absence, and took servants
and horse with them. Unfortunately, we know
nothing more about this journey; but we do know
that, whatever happened to his companions, Donne
was at home again in 1606, and, with his wife and
children, living at Micham. The house in which he
continued to reside for the next three or four years
was still standing in 1840, and was then known as
" Donne's House." It belonged then to the Simpson
family, and it was pulled down some few years later.
The illustration on the opposite page is a reproduc-
tion of a sketch by my lamented friend, the late

69

eo LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Mr. Bichard Simpson, author of the Life of Edmund
Campion, who as a boy often played in the garden,
and who was taught to believe that some of the
trees then standing had been planted during Donne's
tenancy.

On his return from this short absence he found him-
self without any employment, and his comparatively
small income compelled him to look about for some
means of adding to his resources. His friends came
round him, and did for him what they could ; and,
according to the fashion of the time, he set himself
to seek for new patrons by placing his pen at the
disposal of those whose vanity or ambition called
for such literary assistance as he could give. Mean-
while, he was pursuing his reading with ceaseless
industry. There had been a time when he had
devoted himself very earnestly to the study of the
law, for he had originally intended to adopt the legal
profession ; but during his four years as secretary
to the Lord Keeper his thoughts and pursuits had
necessarily been turned in another direction ; and he
now threw himself more than ever before into historic
theology and casuistry. His early training, under the
eye of his Jesuit uncle, had doubtless cultivated and
stimulated the natural subtlety of his intellect. He
could never be satisfied with a superficial treatment
of any subject, or take his opinions upon trust
without patient scrutiny. He was one of those men
who always find it hard to "run in harness"; a
man of original genius ; in fact, who must needs take
his own course in dealing with any question that
presented itself, and who found himself always going
to the root of things, and was almost morbidly rest-

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 61

less and ill -at -ease till he had discovered some
solution of his own for such difficulties as perplexed
him. It was irksome and distasteful to him to follow
the beaten track and tread in the footsteps of others,
leaving himself simply to follow where they led.

It is significant that during these Micham days we
still find him occasionally distributing those Problems
of which — perhaps, fortunately — only a few have
survived. They have, indeed, a certain interest for us,
in that they reflect the working of the writer's mind
at this time. They show him to us, not so much
inclined to scepticism as feeling his way towards
some positive basis of truth. Seeking for certainties
and finding none, he is in the stage when any system
of philosophy does not satisfy the intellect — the stage
when an inquirer tends to become a mere eclectic,
always inquiring, always seeing objections, always
surprising others with unexpected doubts and diffi-
culties, always prone to provoke and irritate shallow
minds with what seem to them mere intellectual
quibbles and paradoxes.

In one of his letters he mentions that he had been
engaged upon a small collection of Cases of Conscience
— exercises, that is, in casuistry ; a branch of ethical
theology to which our English divines have so seldom
given their attention, and which, indeed, since Jeremy
Taylor wrote his Ductor Dtcbitantium, none of them
have busied themselves with, though that, too, may
come up again some day. These " cases " have never
seen the light, and are not likely to be recovered now.

During these Micham days there is a tone of
mournfulness in his letters, attributable far less to
any mere lack of means than to that intellectual

62 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

depression inseparable from excessive strain upon the
powers of brain and heart. He read late into the
night; he wrote sometimes "in the noise of three
gamesome children," with his wife by his side. He
speaks of his " thin little house," as if there could be
no quiet in it; but he had a very large collection of
books, and he found no difficulty in borrowing largely
from others.

Of course there would come, under such circum-
stances, to the student, overwrought and never en-
joying robust health, moods of depression, weariness,
despondency ; and at the worst, the old thought would
intrude itself upon him : " Were it not better not to
be?"

That the temptation to put an end to his own
life ever presented itself to Donne in the form of a
possible course of action — much less as a deliberate
purpose to which his will inclined — must always
appear incredible to any who have learned to know
the man, and to appreciate the true nobility of his
character. Yet, as a question for casuists, it still
remained to be discussed as it never had been even
by the most adventurous of the schoolmen, whether
suicide, under no conceivable circumstances, could
become excusable or cease to be accounted in foro
consdentice, an unpardonable sin and crime.

Donne set himself to deal with this the greatest
and most hazardous of all cases of conscience. The
very novelty of the subject was doubtless to him its
chief fascination. He attacked it from the point of
view of an idealist, and an idealist only. When he
had brought the inquiry to a close it had grown into
a volume, bristling with references to an immense

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 63

number of authors whose works he had consulted —
not only consulted, but read, and weighed, and
pondered. He called the book, BiathancUos : A
Declaration of that Paradox or Thesis, that Self-
homicide is not so naturally sin that it may never be
othervnse. The work was written between 1606
and 1608, and for some years was kept under lock
and key, and appears to have been shown to very few
even of his closest friends. It was not till his
setting out to Germany in 1619 that he sent one
copy, in his own handwriting, to Sir Edward Herbert
(afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury),^ and another
to Sir Eobert Carr, afterwards Earl of Ancrum. A
third copy fell into the hands of his eldest son, John,
who, disregarding his father's wishes, and with charac-
teristic brutality, made merchandise of it, and caused
it to be published in 4to in 1644.

Donne sent the manuscript of the Biathanatos to
Sir Eobert Carr, with the following letter : —

"... Besides the poems, of which you took a
promise, I send you another book, to which there be-
longs this history : it was written by me many years
since; and because it is upon a misinterpretable subject,
I have always gone so near suppressing it as that it is
only not burnt. No hand hath passed upon it to copy
it, nor many eyes to read it ; only to some particular
friends in both universities then when I writ it I
did communicate it; and I remember I had their
answer, that certainly there was a false thread in it,
but not easily found. Keep it, I pray, with the same
jealousy. Let any that your discretion admits to the

^ Lord Herbert, in 1642, presented this copy to the Bodleian Library,
where it 9tiU remains.

64 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

sight of it know the date of it, and that it is a book
written by Ja^k Donne, and not by Dr. Donne,
Preserve it for me if I live, and if I die I only forbid
it the press and the fire. Publish it not, but yet burn
it not ; and between those do what you will with it."
The Biathanatos is the most carefully constructed
and closely reasoned of all Donne's writings, and
exhibits an extraordinary width and variety of curious
learning. That it should ever be an attractive book
is hardly to be expected; on the other hand, the
thesis is so cautiously handled and so delicately, that
the reading of the book could hurt no one. It is a
literary curiosity — a tour de force unique in English
literature, a survival of the old dialectic disputations,
carried on strictly according to the rules of syllogistic
reason, which the mediaeval schoolmen loved so well.

Just about the time that this book was written,
Donne was brought into that close intimacy with Dr.
Morton which led to the offer being made him of the
living of Long Marston. It is difi&cult to believe that
Morton's proposal to resign this benefice, on his re-
ceiving the Deanery of Gloucester, could have been
made without the cognisance of the king. I incline
to think, indeed, that it was made at His Majesty's
suggestion. As we have seen, it was gratefully
declined.

If we may trust to Walton for the date of this
incident, it was not many days after its occurrence
that Donne was exerting himself to obtain an ap-
pointment, not in the king's household, but in that of
Queen Anne of Denmark. The queen's secretary was
a certain William Fowler, whose only qualificatioii for

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 65

the office which he held was that he was a good
linguist. A knowledge of European languages was
essential for the management of the queen's corre-
spondence. Mr. Fowler had received his appointment
immediately on the king's coming into England, and
had now held it for four years. From what we know
of the man, he can hardly have had an agreeable berth
in the household, for he was a fantastic coxcomb, and
a likely person to be the object of a good deal of
ridicule. Fowler, however, had no serious thought of
resigning without making terms with his successor;
and he appears to have made an extravagant demand
as a condition of his vacating his post. The negotia-
tion fell through.

During the next year or two, Donne made many other
unsuccessful attempts to get employment under the
crown. At one time he hoped to obtain the post of Secre-
tary for Ireland ; at another he had some hope of being
sent on an embassy to Venice or the Low Countries ;
once he even thought of applying for an appointment
in the colony of Virginia. It was all in vain ; one, and
only one, road to advancement was open to him. The
king turned a deaf ear to all the solicitations of his
friends. If not Church preferment, then none at all.

As the years went by, and the controversies between
the faction of the Eoman recusants, who stubbornly
refused to take the Oath of Allegiance on the one side,
and the supporters of royal supremacy in Church and
State on the other, were become more and more acri-
monious ; while, too, everybody— learned and simple
— was talking theology, and the perpetual sermons of
the court prfeachers were being attended by the king

S

66 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

and the nobility, and being discussed and criticised
without reserve; and while everybody was asking
when the new translation of the Bible would be
finished, and what changes would be introduced,
Donne must have gradually got to see that it could
only be a question of time when he would be obliged
to give way; his scruples must have been slowly
getting overborne by the remorseless logic of facts.

As early as 1607 he had expressed very frankly to
a friend — probably Sir Henry Goodere, who himself, as
it seems, was troubled by some doubts and perplexities
of his own — what his religious position was : —

"You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the
word religion ; not straightening it friarly, Ad reHgi-
ones factitias (as the Eomans call well their orders of
religion), not immuring it in a Eome, or a Wittenberg,
or a Geneva ; they are all virtual beams of one sun,
and wheresoever they find clay hearts, they harden
them, and moulder them into dust ; and the^entender
and mollify waxen. They are not so contrary as the
north and south poles ; and that they are connatural
pieces of one circle. Eeligion is Christianity, which
being too spiritual to be seen by us, doth therefore ^
take an apparent body of good life and works, so
salvation requires an honest Christian. These are the
two elements, and he which is elemented from these
hath the complexion of a good man, and a fit friend.
The diseases are, too much intention into indiscreet
zeal, and too much remissness and negligence by giving
scandal: for our condition and state in this, is as
infirm as in our bodies; where physicians consider
only two degrees ; sickness, and neutrality ; for there

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 67

is no health in us. This, sir, I used to say to you,
rather to have so good a witness and corrector of my
meditations, than to advise ; and yet to do that too,
since it is pardonable in a friend : not to slack you
towards those friends which are reUgious in other
clothes than we (for amici vitia si /eras facts tua, is
true of such faults) ; but to keep you awake against
such as the place where you must live will often
obtrude, which are not only naked, without any
fashion of such garments, but have neither the body
of reUgion, which is moral honesty and sociable faith-
fulness, nor the soul, Christianity. I know not how
this paper escaped last week, which I send now ; I
was so sure that I enwrapped it then, that I should
be so still, but that I had but one copy ; forgive it as
you used to do. From Micham in as much haste,
and with as ill pen and ink, as the letter can excuse
me of ; but with the last and the next week's heart
and affection. — Tours, very truly and affectionately,

" J. Donne."

This is the language of one whose leanings were all
towards a large and fearless toleration, but for such
toleration the times were not ready ; the writer was
clearly a man before his age.

Meanwhile, the aggressive tone of the English
Jesuits, and their fierce attacks upon the king and
his policy, made it increasingly difl&cult for the Angli-
can divines to maintain a pacific attitude. Eobert
Parsons was forcing the hands of his own party and
of the loyalists at the same moment. The provocation
became ever greater and greater, and a feeling of
bitter hostiHty was growing up, not against the con-

68 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

scientious refusers of the Oath of Allegiance, which
James i. in sheer self-defence had been compelled to
enforce, but against the Jesuit wing of the great
Ultramontane army, whose champions disdained to
accept mere toleration, and would hear of nothing
short of supremacy.

Half angrily, half contemptuously, Donne at this
time wrote off his rather fierce little diatribe, entitled
" Ignatius his Conclave or his Inthronisation in a late
Election in Hell; wherein many things are mingled
by way of satire, concerning — (1) the Disposition of
Jesuits; (2) the Creation of a New Hell; (3) the
Establishing of a Church in the Moon." The tractate
was a jeu d'esprit, not in very good taste, and modelled
upon Seneca's Ludus de Morte Claudii^ and was origin-
ally written in Latin, though an English version was
made for the unlearned, and printed at the same time.
The date of composition can hardly be later than
1608. More than one issue of it appeared from time
to time, and there is reason to suspect that the
earliest editions were pirated. Though the bookling
has little merit, it possesses a certain interest as an
indication of the way in which Donne's feeling against
the Eomanists became gradually stronger, and his
position as an Anglican getting more and more clearly
defined and intelUgible as the years ran on.

The sequence of events in Donne's life between
1606 and 1610 is difficult to make out with any
certainty; but we know that he was on intimate
terms with Sir Francis Bacon during this period, and
apparently employed by that illustrious man to
revise some of his books before they received their
final corrections. It was through Bacon, too, as he

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 69

tells us in one of his letters, that Donne was first
introduced to James Hay, afterwards Earl of Carlisle.

Lord Hay was for some years the reigning favourite
at the court of King James, and he soon conceived
a strong regard, which eventually developed into an
affectionate friendship, for Donne. Hay, we learn,
"took him into his service;" by which we are to
understand that he became the great man's private
secretary, with an assured income, and the duty of
attending his patron at court. Hay was at this time
Master of the Wardrdbe, and this office necessitated his
being frequently in the royal presence ; and where he
went, there his secretary was in attendance upon his
patron. So it came about that Donne would be
called upon to take his part in those symposia^ of
which Bishop Hacket gives us the following curious
account : —

" His Majesty's table for the most part at times of
repasb was (as Constan tine's court, ecclesice instar) a
little university compassed with learned men of all
professions, and His Majesty in the midst of them
... a living library, furnished at all hands to reply,
answer, object, resolve, discourse, explain, according to
several occasions, emergent upon fact, or accidental
upon speech."

In other words, the discussions during meals were
kept up with interest and animation ; and when an
opinion was asked it had to be given on the spur of
the moment. The scholars and divines in waiting
were liable at any. moment to be subject to a severe
viva voce examination, were called upon to give chapter
and verse for all they asserted, and to produce on the
instant all they knew. It was in consequence of a

•70 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

remark thrown out at one of these discussions that
Donne received a command from the king to set
down in writing the suggestions and arguments which
he had brought forward on the never-ending question
of the Oath of Allegiance. His way of putting the
case had struck James i. as especially original and
likely to prove effective against the Boman contro-
versialists.

Walton assures us that in six weeks the royal
commands had been obeyed; and in the spring of
1610 The Pseudo Martyr appeared, a quarto volume
of nearly four hundred pages. The work was almost
immediately recognised as the most solid and masterly
contribution to the literature of a discussion which
had already been taken part in by the ablest and
most famous divines of the Church of England.

The view which Donne had set himself to support
was : — " That no pretence of conversion at first ;
assistance in the conquest; or acceptation of any
surrender from any of our kings, — can give the pope
any more right over the kingdom of England, than
over any other free state whatsoever." Further,
that the punishments incurred by those who refuse to
obey the laws of the realm, and the sufferings they
bring upon themselves by their disobedience to those
laws under whose protection they live, can never
entitle them to be called martyrs ; for " the refusal of
the Oath of Allegiance doth corrupt and vitiate the
integrity of the whole act, and despoils them of the
interest and title to martyrdom."

The controversy, with all its subtleties, has long
ceased to have any but a historic interest ;|,but even
in our own days it is impossible to read Donne's

STEPS TO THE ALTAR VI

Advertisement to the Reader and the introductory preface
without being profoundly touched by the allusions to
the author's early difficulties on the one hand, and by
the solemn tone of sad expostulation with those
against whom he is writing on the other. Throughout
the whole volume there is a self-restraint and dignity
in carrying on the argument which are in marked
contrast to the methods of discussion almost univer-
sally prevalent among the disputants on the one side
or the other who had hitherto taken part in the
controversies of the day.

At the close of the preface, Donne breaks forth into
the following earnest and beautiful appeal to those
with whom he had been arguing.

" I call to witness against you those whose
testimony God Himself hath accepted. — Speak then
and testify — you glorious and triumphant army of
martyrs, who enjoy now a permanent triumph in
heaven, which knew the voice of your Shepherd, and
stayed till He called, and went then with all alacrity:
Is then any man received into your blessed legion by
title of such a death as sedition, scandal, or any
human respect occasioned ? Oh no ! For they which
are in possession of that crown are such as have
washed their garments, not in their own blood only (for
so they might still remain red and stained), but in the
blood of the Lamb which changes them to white. . . .
That which Christian religion hath added to old
philosophy — which was to do no wrong — is in this
point no more than this, to keep our mind in an
habitual preparation to suffer wrong, but not to urge
and provoke and importune affliction so much as to
make those punishments just, which otherwise had

72 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

been wrongfully inflicted upon us. We are not sent
into this world to suffer but to do, and to perform the
offices of society required by our several callings. . . .
Thus much I was willing to premit, to awaken you, if
it please you to hear it, to a just love of your own
safety, of the peace of your country, of the honour and
reputation of your countrymen, and of the integrity
of that which you call the Catholic cause and to
acquaint you so far with my disposition and temper as
that you need not be afraid to read my poor writings,
who join you with mine own soul in my prayers, that
your obedience here may prepare your admission into
the heavenly Jerusalem, and that by the same
obedience, your days may he long in the land which the
Lord your God hath given you"

The Pseudo Martyr was received with profound
appreciation by the Anglican theologians of the time :
scholars and men of learning could not but admire
the originality of the writer, who had struck out a new
line of argument and taken up a position from which
he could not be dislodged. The Jesuits abroad at one
time had intended to answer the book ; but the truth
is, it was unanswerable, and to pass it by in silence or
with a depreciating sneer was deemed the safer course.
The University of Oxford, however, in recognition of the
author's conspicuous ability and learning, by decree of
convocation conferred upon him the honorary degree of
M.A. [18th April 1610]; the words of the grace setting
forth that " it was for the credit of the university that
such men as he who had deserved so well of the Church
and State should be distinguished by academic
honours."

When the Pseudo Martyr was presented in its

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 73

completeness to the king, once again he pressed upon
Donne his advice that he should take holy orders. This
time there could be no mistaking the significance of
the counsel given — it almost amounted to a royal
command. Even so he could not bring himself to
obey. He was haunted by morbid scruples ; he could
not trust himself ; he shrank from the thought that men
would attribute to him base and unworthy motives.

He had formed so high an ideal of the standard
which the " priest to the temple," as George Herbert
styled it, should attain to, that he could not bring
himself to embrace a life to which as yet he felt
no inner calL What form his answer to the king
took we shall never know; but that he excused
himself on the ground of his unfitness for the
ministry is certain. For the present there was an end
of the matter.

Another year passed away. Lord Hay, with the
shrewdness that characterised him, had become
convinced that he could do nothing for his friend as
long as he obstinately refused to enter upon the
only career which the king had marked out for him,
and the less so when it was evident that a new
favourite was now all-powerful at court and his own
personal influence was on the wane. Eobert Carr — a
kinsman of Donne's friend of the same name, who
became Earl of Ancrum in 1633 — was created
Viscount Eochester on the 25th March 1611, being
the first Scotchman promoted to a seat in the English
House of Lords. He was now the most influential
personage with the king — not excepting even Lord
Salisbury, whose health was declining. Lord Hay saw
plainly that if Donne could commend himself to

74 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

the king's bosom friend there might still be a
chance of promotion somewhere. But how to proceed
was the question. Two letters in Tobie Matthew's
collection give us a clue to what happened. It looks
as if the king was displeased with Donne for his
refusal to follow the advice tendered so emphatically.
To surrender at last would be flattering to James, but
to make Eochester the channel of communicating to
the king his submission would be a piece of delicate
flattery to the favourite. Accordingly, some time
during the summer of 1611, Donne addressed a letter
to the great man, enclosing it in another to Lord Hay.
The tenor of both letters is the same — that to Lord
Eochester begins as follows : —

" My Lord, — I may justly fear that your lordship
hath never heard of the name which lies at the
bottom of this letter, nor could I come to the boldness
of presenting it now without another boldness of
putting his lordship who now delivers it to that office.
Yet I have (or flatter myself to have) just excuses of
this and just ground of that ambition. For having
obeyed at last, after much debatement within me, the
inspiration (as I hope) of the spirit of God, and
resolved to make my profession divinity, I make
account that I do but tell your lordship what God
hath told me, which is, that it is in this course, if in
any, that my service may be of use to this Church
and State.

" Since, then, your lordship's virtues have made you
so near the head in the one and so religious a member
of the other, I came to this courage of thrusting
myself thus into your lordship's presence, both in

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 75

respect that I was an independent and disobliged
man towards any other person in this State, and
delivered over now (in my resolution) to be a house-
hold servant of God."

It is obvious that this letter was meant to be
laid before the king as an intimation that the writer
had at last made up his mind to be ordained. Never-
theless, I find it impossible to resist the conviction
that Kochester, so far from encouragmg Donne to
carry out his purpose, actually suppressed the letter,
took him at once into his service, treated him with
great liberality, and held out distinct hopes that he
would yet be able to procure for him some valuable
post at court. In other letters to the same nobleman,
Donne, during the next year or so, again and again
speaks of the obligations which he was under to his
new patron, reminding him that he had inspired new
hopes into him, telling him that there was this or
that post likely to be vacant, which he desired to
obtain, and excusing himself for asking for it on the
ground that Eochester had encouraged him to apply
for such preferment as he might desire to obtain.
Eochester had evidently counted upon his influence
with the king to save Donne from taking orders at
alL But the king had made up his mind, and not
even the favourite could induce him to change it.
Meanwhile, Donne was unsettled, anxious, and the
eternal want of pence was harassing him. Hope
deferred was making his heart sick.

Just about this time another circumstance occurred
which helped to turn him from the purpose hehad formed
of dedicating himself to the. ministry of the Church.

76 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

At the close of the year 1610 the only child of Sir
Eobert Drury of Hawsted m Suffolk, one of the richest
men in England, had died, in her sixteenth year, to the
deep sorrow of her parents, who appeared inconsol-
able at their loss. Up to this time Donne had known
little or nothing of Sir Eobert, and had never seen the
young lady ; but, touched by the grief of the parents,
and probably at the suggestion of some friend, he set
himself to write an elegy upon the departed. She
had been dead a year when the poem was presented
to Sir Eobert ; and it was apparently printed at his
expense. It was entitled "The First Anniversary:
An Anatomy of the World, wherein, by occasion of
the Untimely Death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the
Frailty and the Decay of this whole World is repre-
sented." The poem is written in a style of extrava-
gant panegyric, but it evidently gave unqualified
pleasure to those for whom it was intended. No
doubt Donne was handsomely rewarded for his work ;
but when, a little later, he ofifered to Sir Eobert (who
was a very vain man, and very greedy for notoriety)
" The Second Anniversary," there was no bounds to
his gratitude. Nothing was too much for him to do
to reward the court poet for his services. "The
First Anniversary" appears to have attracted
not much notice. It was otherwise with the
second, which appears to have been received with
some adverse criticism. In a letter to Sir Henry
Goodere, Donne thus replies to some of their stric-
tures : —

" I doubt not but they will soon give over that part
of that indictment which is that I have said so much ;
for nobody can imagine that I, who never saw her,

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 77

could have any other purpose in that, than that, when
I had received so very good testimony of her worthi-
ness, and was gone down to print verses, it became
me to say, not what I was sure was just truth, but
the best that I could conceive ; for that had been a
new weakness in me to have praised anybody in
printed verses that had not been capable of the best
praise that I could give."

Meanwhile, Sir Eobert Drury, hearing that the poet's
family had by this time outgrown the accommodation
of the little Micham house, and that he was too
straitened in his means to take a larger one, gener-
ously offered to give Donne, with his wife and children,
an asylum in Drury House, a magnificent mansion,
lying just outside the city, and to the north-west of
Temple Bar. There, for the next three or four years,
he continued to reside as his home. I suspect the '
change unsettled him ; that at Drury House he was
less his own master than he had been heretofore,
and that quiet retirement was difficult and often
impossible. In point of fact, one of the first claims
that his new friend made upon him was that he
should accompany himself and Lady Drury on a
foreign tour, on which the party set out in December
1611. It was then that Donne wrote the exquisite
stanzas which he entitled " The Valediction," perhaps
the best known of all his poems.

" A VALEDICTION, FORBIDDING TO MOURN.

"As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
*Now his breath goes,' and some say, *No,*

78 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

"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 trepidations of the spheres,
Tho' greater far, are innocent

"Dull sublunary lovers* love —

Whose soul is sense — cannot admit
Absence, because that doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

"But we, by a love so far refined.
That ourselves know not what it is.
Inter-assured of the mind.
Care less hands, eyes, or lips 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 we be two, — we are two — so
As stiff twin compasses are two.
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but does, if the other do.

"And though thine in the centre sit,
Yet, when my other far does roam.
Thine leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect as mine comes home.

"Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th* other foot, obliquely run :
Thy firmness makes my circle just.
And makes me end where I begun."

The travellers crossed the Channel to Dieppe, passed
through Amiens, and thence to Paris, where Donne

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 79

fell seriously ill ; and it seems that at this time the
incident occurred which Isaak Walton has so graphi-
cally described, and which can only be read in his own
words : —

" At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living
in Sir Kobert's house, the Lord Hay was, by King
James, sent upon a glorious embassy to the then French
king, Henry the Fourth; and Sir Kobert put on a
sudden resolution to accompany him to the French
court, and to be present at his audience there. And
Sir Eobert put on a sudden resolution to solicit Mr.
Donne to be his companion in that journey. And
this desire was suddenly made known to his wife,
who was then with child, and otherwise under so
dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she
professed an unwillingness to allow him any absence
from her, saying, * Her divining soul boded her some
ill in his absence,' and therefore desired him not to
leave her. This made Mr. Donne lay aside all
thoughts of the journey, and really to resolve against
it. But Sir Eobert became restless in his persuasions
for it, and Mr. Donne was so generous as to think he
had sold his liberty when he received so many
charitable kindnesses from him, and told his wife so ;
who did therefore, with an unwilling willingness, give
a faint consent to the journey, which was proposed to
be but for two months; for about that time they
determined their return. Within a few days after
this resolve, the ambassador, Sir Eobert, and Mr.
Donne, left London, and were the twelfth day got
all safe to Paris. Two days after their arrival there,
Mr. Donne was left alone in that room in which Sir
Bobert and he and some other friends had dined to-

80 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

gether. To this place Sir Eobert returned within
half an hour ; and as he left, so he found, Mr. Donne
alone, but in such an ecstasy, and so altered as to hiB
looks, as amazed Sir Eobert to behold him ; insomuch
that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what
had befallen him in the short time of his absence.
To which Mr. Donne was not able to make a present
answer ; but, after a long and perplexed pause, did at
last say : * I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw
you; I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me
through this room, with her hair hanging about her
shoulders, and a dead child in her arms : this I have
seen since I saw you.' To which Sir Eobert replied,
* Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you ; and this
is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire
you to forget, for you are now awake.' To which Mr.
Donne's reply was : * I cannot be surer that I now
live than that I have not slept since I saw you ; and
am as sure that at her second appearing she stopped
and looked me in the face and vanished.' Eest and
sleep had not altered Mr. Donne's opinion the next
day; for he then affirmed this vision with a more
deliberate and so confirmed a confidence that he in-
clined Sir Eobert to a faint belief that the vision was
true. It is truly said that desire and doubt have no
rest, and it proved so with Sir Eobert ; for he im-
mediately sent a servant to Drury House, with a
charge to hasten back and bring him word whether
Mrs. Donne were alive, and, if alive, in what condition
she was as to her health. The twelfth day the
messenger returned with this account : that he found
and left Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in her bed ;
and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 81

been delivered of a dead child. And, upon examina-
tion, the abortion proved to be the same day and
about the very hour that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw
her pass by him in his chamber.

" This is a relation that wHl beget some wonder,
and it well may ; for most of our world are at present
possessed with an opinion that visions and miracles
are ceased. And, though it is most certain that two
lutes, being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch,
and then one played upon, the other that is not
touched being laid upon a table at a fit distance, will,
like an echo to a trumpet, warble a faint audible har-
mony in answer to the same tune, yet many will not
believe there is any such thing as a sympathy of souls ;
and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his
own opinion."

The foreign tour came to an end in August
1612, and Donne, on his return to England, found
Lord Eochester in greater favour with the king
than ever. Lord SaUsbury had died on the 24th
May, and Eochester had virtually succeeded him
to his post as secretary. The great addition
to the work thus thrown upon the new minister (as
we may venture to call him) made him perhaps
more difficult of approach; for, shortly after his return
from abroad, Donne found it necessary to write the
following pathetic letter : —

To the Lord of Somerset.

" It is now somewhat more than a year since I took
the boldness to make my purpose of professing
divinity known to your lordship, as to a person,
6

82 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

whom God had made so great an instrument of His
providence in this kingdom, as that nothing in it
should be done without your knowledge, your lord-
ship exercised upon me then many of your virtues,
for besides, that by your bounty I have lived ever
since, it hath been through your lordship's advice,
and inspiration of new hopes into me, that I have
lived cheerfully. By this time, perchance, your lord-
ship may have discerned that the malignity of my ill-
fortune may infect your good, and that by some
impressions in your lordship, I may be incapable of
the favours which your lordship had purposed to me.
... I humbly, therefore, beg of your lordship that,
after you shall have been pleased to admit into your
memory, that I am now a year older, broken with
some sickness, and in the same degree of honesty as
I was, your lordship will aflford me one command-
ment, and bid me either hope for this business
in your lordship's hand, or else pursue my first
purpose, or abandon all, for as I cannot live with-
out your favour so I cannot die without your leave ;
because even by dying, I should steal from you one,
who is, by his own devotions and your purchase, your
lordship's most humble and thankful servant."

Eeading between the Imes, it is evident that
Eochester had made more than one attempt to serve
his friend during the past year, but without success
— the king was inexorable. Donne himself saw now
that it was in vain to resist the Divine leading, and
that he must return to the resolve from which he
had been diverted, only to find more disappointment.
This time he would not swerve.

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 83

And yet even now he found it impossible to break
away from his surroundings. In spite of himself he
was compelled to play the part of courtier, and to do
the work of a court poet at the bidding of his
patrons. From the moment when he had made up
his mind to give himself up to the higher life and
the service of the Church of Christ in the sanctuary,
the hoUowness of this wretched routine of amuse-
ment, and ceremony, and pomps, and vanities must
have fretted his soul with a continual sense of empti-
ness. What a purposeless life he was leading ! The
world was just using him for its own ends, and what
was he gaining by it all ? God schools some men in
one way, and some in another. Donne had to endure
a very, very hard schooling. The closer we follow his
career at this time, the sadder and more pitiful does
it appear to a thoughtful reader.

On the 6th November of this year [1612] Prince
Henry, the heir to the crown, died in his nmeteenth
year, after a short illness, to the sincere grief of the
nation at large. He was buried in Westminster
Abbey; and, among other tributes to his memory,
Donne wrote an " Elegy upon the Untimely
Death of the Incomparable Prince of Wales." It
is not a successful performance, and among the
least readable of his poems that have been pre-
served.

Two months later the Princess Elizabeth, the
king's only daughter, was married to the Elector
Frederick. Again Donne appears to have been
ordered to write the "Epithalamium." The marriage
was celebrated on the 15th February 1613, and the
poet makes the most of the day, being St. Valentine's

84 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Day. The beautiful opening stanza sounds like an
echo of Chaucer —

** Hail, Bishop Valentine — ^whose day this is 1

All the air is thy Diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other hirds are thy parishioners.

Thou marriest, every year.
The lyrick lark and the grave whispering dove;

The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher ;
Thou mak'st the blackbird speed as soon

As doth the goldfinch or the halcyon;

The husband cock looks out, and straight is sped.
And meets his wife, which brings her feather bed.
This day more cheerfully than ever shine (!)
This day, which might inflame thyself. Old Valentine ! "

Two months later we find him paying a visit to
Sir Edward Herbert at Montgomery Castle.^

On the 3rd August he was at home again, for on
that day a son, Nicholas, was baptized at St. Clement's
in the Strand. The remaining months of this year
were rendered for ever memorable by the bad business
of the divorce of Eobert, Earl of Essex (afterwards
General of the Parliamentary army), from his wife
Frances, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk,
and her subsequent marriage to Lord Eochester on
the 26 th December. Eochester was created Earl of
Somerset three days before, that he might be placed
in the same rank with his wife's relations — the
Howards.^

1 Hist, MS8. com. Rutland MSS., vol. ix. p. 6.

2 The hideous exposure which followed less than two years later
has cast a dreadful glare upon this shocking episode ; but no suspicion
of what came to light afterwards seems to have been entertained by
anyone at the time. It is only fair to add that, while no one doubts

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 85

Again Donne was (sailed upon to write the marriage
song; it is a poor performance, and does him little
credit. The wedding was celebrated at Whitehall :
Montagu, Bishop of Bath and Wells, performed the
ceremony; Dr. Mountaine, Dean of Westminster,
preached the sermon; the bride's father gave her
away ; the king and queen, with the Archbishop of
Canterbury, were present on the occasion. But Donne
himself was not there; he had been struck down
by a very serious illness, apparently of a typhoid
character. In one of his letters at this time he
describes himself as "more than half blind."

He had scarcely recovered from this severe attack
when the death of Lady Bedford's brother (2nd Feb.
1614) induced him once more to court the muse.
This time it was no task work, but an oflfering of
sympathetic regret at the loss of one he had loved,
besides being an attempt to console the noble lady
who had befriended him so long. In the concluding
lines of this elegy, as we have seen (chap. ii. p. 47),
Donne pledged himself to write no more verse.

After the Somerset marriage we hear no more of
any attempts to get State preferment. It is clear that
Donne had by this time ceased to desire it ; his mind
was fully made up to embrace the sacred calling.
When it became known that he had finally resolved
to follow the king's original suggestion, his friends
were unanimous in expressing their approval; and
among them his old master, the Lord Keeper

that Lady Essex had compassed the death of Sir Thomas Overbury,
the evidence against Somerset broke down ; and, by the general verdict
of legal experts, he stands acquitted of any knowledge of or complicity
in the crime.

86 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Egerton (now Lord EUesmere) was foremost in sending
him kind assurances of his goodwill, and expressmg
for him his strong regard. Donne was much touched
by this and other such evidences of sympathy and
encouragement as came to him. In a letter to
Sir Henry Wotton (?), who was then at Venice, he
hints, somewhat obscurely, that he had some hope of
paying his old friend a visit — there was now small
reason why he should not do so, and it might help
him to recover his shattered health. Then he adds a
significant announcement : " But I must tell you in
the meantime that I have lately been in a long con-
ference with a neighbour, and old friend of mine, who
was a companion to me in my first studies ; and now
he will needs be giving me counsel. And touching
the course which he advises me, I am not only of
opinion that it is best, but I had long since in mine
own judgment resolved upon it. . . . Believe me, I
do not cast into the account of my years, these last
five which I have lived [no] otherwise than as nights
slept out, which are indeed a part of time — which the
body steals from the mind, rather than a part of Zi/fe,
which cannot live but it must feel itself alive. God
Almighty awake me ! And in the meantime I think
that even this sleep I am in, is but a troubled one.
I have not forgotten that in a letter of yours you
asked me once, whether we should be fine gentlemen-
still ? In English, as I took it, whether still idlers,
without aims or ends ? My mark is chosen, which I
would be infinitely glad might be also yours, as I am
yours."

The friend here alluded to is Dr. John King,
Bishop of London, who had been chaplain to the

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 87

Lord Keeper when Donne was his secretary. It is
noticeable that Sir Henry Wotton, when at the end
of his brilliant career as a diplomatist he became
Provost of Eton, was himself ordained.

During the last eight or ten months of this year
1614 Donne was evidently living with his family at
Drury House; he had given up his attendance at
court, and was turning all his thoughts and all his
studies in one direction. In his case there should be
no lack of devout and earnest preparation for the new
career upon which he was about to embark. It was
during this time that he wrote those Essays in
Divinity which his son published in 1651. "They
were printed," we are told, "from an exact copy
under the author's own hand, and were the voluntary
sacrifices of several hours when he had many debates
betwixt God and himself whether he were worthy
and competently learned to enter into holy orders.
They are now published both to testify his modest
valuation of himself, and to show his great abilities ;
and they may serve to inform them in many holy
curiosities."

The little 12 mo volume of 224 pages is now
extremely rare. No second edition appeared till the
present writer reissued it, with a brief biographical
preface and some editorial notes, in 1855. This
edition, too, has long been out of print, and is now
seldom to be met with. It must be confessed that
the bookling is rather a literary curiosity than any-
thing else. The essays were evidently never meant
for publication. They are recorded soliloquies in
which the writer sets himself to deal with perplexities
and difficulties which presented themselves to bis

88 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

own mind while giving himself to a critical study of
Holy Scripture. They read like entries in a diary, in
which one question after another is stated with only
a short hint or suggestion of the direction in which
inquiry might be pursued, but there is no attempt
at exhaustive treatment, little method, and little of
that close and severe reasoning that appears in the
Biathanatos or the Pseudo Martyr, Perhaps the best
impression that could be conveyed of the little volume
would be to call it a fragmentary collection of religious
exercises interspersed with devotions written down
from time to time with a view to utilise suggestions
and illustrations hereafter in the pulpit when his
work as a preacher should begin. The style is not
ornate or finished, the thoughts are often expressed
in language involved and rugged, as if the writer were
content with setting down a hint for himself and there
leaving it. The prayers are the outpourings of a
heart that was laying itself open to the Heavenly
Father, and had no fear that he could be misunder-
stood nor miss acceptance, though he should wrap up
his spiritual yearnings in words that were too weak
in the expression of his aspiration.

I incline to believe that many of Donne's religious
poems were written during this period. Though he had
promised Lady Bedford, after the death of her brother,
that he would write no more verse, he kept that
promise doubtless in the spirit, but not in the letter ;
but there was no reason why he should not collect his
poems in a volume before he was ordained, and so
protect himself from that which was not only likely
to happen, but which actually did happen, later on,
when many fugitive pieces were attributed to him,

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 89

which he certainly never could have penned. For
several years past his name had been associated with
verses more or less frivolous ; he had written Satires,
Elegies, Songs, and Sonnets, which had passed from
hand to hand among the courtiers and men of letters
— and some few of them were not such as he would
wish to be read and dwelt on by the pure and
innocent. If they were ever to be printed, let them
be printed while he was still a layman, not pirated
to his discredit when he should have begun to exercise
the high calling of a priest of Christ's Church.

Poetry in those days was not generally accepted
as the legitimate language in which the soul might
pour forth its nobler thoughts — ^its longings, its holier
sorrows and regrets. George Herbert was now little
more than at the beginning of his university career,
and for many years after Donne's ordination was
going through a very similar experience to that
which had kept the elder man so long hanging about
the court. A poet was under some suspicion of being
a " worldling," just as in our own days a clergyman
with any reputation for culture or learning outside
the domain of homiletics or theology is too generally
assumed to be at best half-hearted in his ministerial
life. Be it as it may, Donne thought it became him
now to break with the old life and all its lighter
pursuits and amusements, and from this time he
allowed himself none of that joyous relaxation which
the writing of poetry might have afforded him. So,
before he finally turned his back upon the old ways
and habits, he was induced to print at his own expense
a little volume of poems, which he appears to have
given away to some favoured few among his most

90 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

valued friends. Of this he writes to Sir Henry
Goodere on the 14th December 1614.

" One thing now I must tell you ; but so softly that
I am loth to hear myself, and so softly that if that
good lady (Lady Bedford) were in the room with you
and this letter, she might not hear. It is that I am
brought to a necessity of printing my poems, and
addressing them to my Lord Chamberlain. This I
mean to do forthwith ; not for much public view, but
at mine own cost a few copies. ... I must do this as
a valediction to the world before I take orders . . . and
I would be just to my written words to Lord Har-
rington to write nothing after that."

Of this privately printed volume not a single copy
is known to exist ; it has absolutely disappeared.
The fact is the more to be regretted, because, when a
collected edition of his works was published by his
son in 1633, no attempt was made to place them in
chronological order, and it becomes a matter of great
difficulty to assign even an approximate date to those
which are the worthiest of our admiration. In the
later years of his life Donne certainly did think fit to
change his resolve of writing no more verse, and it
may be that at that time the influence of George
Herbert was upon ,oim, and that he had seen and
read in MS. some of those beautiful poems, which the
saintly Nicholas Ferrar, as Herbert's executor, issued
immediately after Herbert's death at Bemerton, and
just two years after Donne himself had passed away.

Little more than a month after the printing of the
poems, and almost certainly on the Feast of the
Conversion of St. Paul — 25 th January 1615 — a day

STEPS TO THE ALTAR 91

which thereafter he always kept as a day of special
memories, Donne was ordained by his old friend,
Dr. John King, Bishop of London, though where
the ordination was held we have not been told, nor
does it seem likely that it will ever be discovered.
In February it was rumoured that he had been
appointed chaplain to the king. In point of fact, he
did not actually receive this appointment till nearly a
year later. On the 14th March he received, during
the royal progress at Cambridge, the degree of Doctor
of Divinity from the university, not, however, without
some prptest from some members of the Theological
Faculty, who did not approve that an Oxford man
should be forced upon them for the highest academic
distinction which the university could confer. It
was on this occasion that his friend, Lord Hay, pre-
sented him with his doctor's robes.

CHAPTER IV

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS

A COLLECTION of letters of Dr. Donne was issued in a
4to volume by his son John, in 1654, that is, twenty-
three years after his death. It was, as far as I
know, the first collection of private letters ever
published in England. The appearance of the volume,
which had a large sale, was due to the high reputation
which, during his lifetime, Donne had earned as a
letter-writer. He was so much the representative
man of letters of his time that his contemporaries
valued and admired everything he wrote : for them,
even his lighter writings had a peculiar charm which
it is difficult for us to understand. Nevertheless,
these letters tell us so much that he only could tell,
— and could only tell in his own way, — they give us
such a curious insight into fashions and ways of
living, and the tone of feeling among the upper
classes of society during the reign of James i., and
they tell us so much, too, about the private life
of the writer himself, and of the difficulties
through which he passed, and the subtile question-
ings which helped him to " beat his music out," that
it would be an injustice to him if a selection from
his early correspondence did not form a part of this
biography.

92

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 93

Donne's letters, of which about a hundred and sixty
have come down to us, have never yet been edited
with any care.

Those which are here printed, were written, with
one single exception, before his ordination. I have
arranged them in chronological order, by the help of
such internal evidence as they severally afiford. Donne
was a little uncertain in dating his letters ; at any-
rate, among those which his son printed, only a
fraction are fully dated, and this must make it
difi&cult to determine even the year to which any
one of them is to be referred. Happily, our sources
for the history of the reign of James i. are very
numerous ; and if a letter deals at all with con-
temporary events, a clue is rarely wanting.

I.

[Donne to Sir Henry 6oodere.]i

" Sir, — Though you escape my lifting up of your
latch by removing, you cannot my letters ; yet of this
letter I do not much accuse myself, for I serve your
commandment in it, for it is only to convey to you
this paper opposed to those, with which you trusted
me. It is, I cannot say the weightiest, but truly the
saddest lucubration and night's passage that ever I
had. For it exercised those hours, which — with
extreme danger of her, whom I should hardly have
abstained from recompensing for her company in this
world, with accompanying her out of it — increased
my poor family with a son. Though her anguish,

^The date is January 1607. The son named is Francis, baptized
at Micham on the 8th of that month.

94 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

and my fears, and hopes, seem divers and wUd
distractions from this small business of your papers,
yet because they all narrowed themselves, and met
in via regia, which is the consideration of ourselves
and God, I thought it time not unfit for this dispatch.
Thus much more than needed I have told you, whilst
my fire was lighting at Tricombs, 10 o'clock.

" Yours ever entirely,

" J. Donne."

II.

To the same.

" Sir, — In the history or style of friendship, which
is best written both in deeds and words, a letter
which is of a mixed nature, and hath something of
both, is a mixed parenthesis : it may be left out,
yet it contributes, thought not to the being, yet to
the verdure, and freshness thereof. Letters have
truly the same office, as oaths. As these amongst
light and empty men, are but fillings, and pauses,
and interjections ; but with weightier, they are sad
attestations ; so are letters, to some compliment, and
obligation to others. For mine, as I never authorised
my servant to lie in my behalf (for if it were
officious in him, it might be worse in me), so I allow
my letters much less that civil dishonesty, both
because they go from me more considerately, and
because they are permanent; for in them I may
speak to you in your chamber a year hence, before
I know not whom, and not hear myself. They shall
therefore ever keep the sincerity and intemerateness
of the fountain, whence they are derived. And as

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 95

wheresoever these leaves fall, the root is in my heart,
so shall they, as that sucks good affections towards
you there, have ever true impressions thereof. Thus
much information is in very leaves, that they can
tell what the tree is, and these can tell you I am a
friend, and an • honest man. Of what general use,
the fruit should speak, and I have none: and of
what particular profit to you, your application and
experimenting should tell you, and you can make
none of such a nothing ; yet even of barren sycamores,
such as I, there were use, if either any light flashings,
or scorching vehemencies, or sudden showers made
you need so shadowy an example or remembrancer.
But (sir) your fortune and mind do you this happy
injury, that thev make all kinds of fruits useless unto
you ; therefore \{^ have placed my love wisely where
I need communicate nothing?^ All this, though per-
chance you read it not till Michaelmas, was told you
at Micham, 15th August, 1607."

III.

To the same,

" Sir, — This letter hath more merit, than one of
more diligence, for I wrote it in my 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

X

96 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

nothing else), I have contracted a sickness which I
cannot name nor describe. For it hath so much of
a continual cramp, that wrests the sinews, so much
of a tetane, that it withdraws and pulls the mouth,
and so much of the gout (which they whose counsel
I use, say it is), that it is not like to be cured,
though I am too hasty in three days to pronounce it.
If it be the gout, I am miserable; for that affects
dangerous parts, as my neck and breast, and (I think
fearfully) my stomach, 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 seldomest abroad : I shall
have many things to make me weary, and yet not
get leave to be gone. If I go, I will provide by my
best means that you suffer not for me, in your bonds.
The estate which I should leave behind me of any
estimation, is my poor fame in the memory of my
friends, and therefore I would be curious of it, and
provide that they repent not to have loved me.
Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made a
meditation in verse, which I call a "Litany"; the
word you know imports no other than supplication,
but all churches have one form of supplication, by
that name. Amongst ancient annals, I mean some
eight hundred years, I have met two Litanies in
Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my
meditations, for in good faith I thought not upon
them then, but they give me a defence, if any man,
to a layman, and a private, impute it as a fault, to
take such divine and public names, to his own little
thoughts. The first of these was made by Eatpetus,
a monk of Suevia ; and the other by St. Notker, of
whom I will give you this note by the way, that he

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 97

is a private saint, for a few parishes ; they were both
but monks, and the Litanies poor and barbarous
enough ; yet Pope Nicholas v. valued their devotion
80 much, that he canonised both their poems, and
commanded them for public service in their churches :
mine is for lesser chapels, which are my friends, and
though a copy of it were due to you, now, yet I am
so unable to serve myself with writing it for you at
this time (being some thirty staves of nine lines),
that I must entreat you to take a promise that you
shall have the first, for a testimony of that duty
which I owe to your love, and to myself, who am
bound to cherish it by my best offices. That by
which it will deserve best acceptation, is, that neither
the Eoman Church need call it defective, because it
abhors not the particular meijtion of the blessed
triumphers in heaven; nor the Eeformed can dis-
creetly accuse it of attributing more than a rectified
devotion ought to do. The day before I lay down,
I was at London, where I delivered your letter to
Sir Edward Conway, and received another for you,
with the copy of my book, of which it is impossible
for me to give you a copy so soon, for it is not of
much less than three hundred pages. If I die, it
shall come to you in that fashion that your letter
desires it. If I warm again (as I have often seen
such beggars as my indisposition is, end themselves
soon, and the patient as soon), you and I shall speak
together of that, before it be too late to Serve you in
that commandment. At this time I only assure you,
that I have not appointed it upon any person, nor
ever purposed to print it: which latter perchance
you thought, and grounded your request thereupon.

7

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

A gentleman that visited me yesterday, told me that
our Church hath lost Mr. Hugh Broughton, who is
gone to the Eoman Bide. I have known before, that
SerariuB the Jesuit, was an instrument from Cardinal
Earonius to draw him to Eome, to accept a stipend,
only to serve the Chriatian Churches in controveraiea
with the Jews, without endangering himself to change
of his persuasion in particular deductions between
these Chriatian Churches, or being inquired of,
tempted thereunto. And I hope he is no otherwise
departed from us. If he be, we shall not escape
it ; because, though he be a man of many
, yet when he shall come to eat
bread, and to be removed from partialities — to which
want drove him, to make himself a reputation and
raise up favourers — you shall see in that course of
opposing the Jews, he will produce worthy things
and our Church will perchance blush to have lost a
soldier fit for that great battle : and to cherish only
those single duellisma, between Eoiiie and England,
or that more single, and almost self-homicide, between
the uncouformed ministers, and bishops. Sir, you
would pity me if you saw me write, and therefore
will pardon me if I write no more : my pain hath.
di'awu my head so much awry, and holds it so, that
mine eye cannot follow mine hand : I receive you
therefore into my prayers, with mine own weary
3oul, and commend myself to yours. I doubt not
but next week I shall be good news to you, for I
have mending or dying on my side, which is two to
one. If I continue thus, I shall have comfort in
this, that my blessed Saviour exercising His justice
upon my two worldly parts, my fortune, and body,

A BUNDLE OP LETTERS 99

reserves all His mercy for that which best tastes it,
and most needs it, my soul. I profess to you truly,
that my lothness to give over now, seems to myself
an ill sign that I shall write no more.

" Your poor friend, and God's poor patient,

" J. Donne."

The mention of Hugh Broughton, as having " gone
to the Eoman side," fixes the date of this letter.
Broughton, of whom a fair account is given in the
Dictionary of National Biography^ never had any
dream of "going to the Eoman side"; but he left
England in 1607, and returned only to die in 1611.
The letter is interesting as showing that, however ill
he may have been, it was Donne's practice to write
on his sickbed. The book referred to can be none
other than the Biathanatos,

IV.

A. V. Merced.^

" Sir, — ^I write not to you out of my poor library,
where to cast mine eye upon good authors kindles or
refreshes sometimes meditations not unfit to com-
municate to near friends; nor from the high way,
where I am contracted, and inverted into myself;
which are my two ordinary forges of letters to you,
but I write from the fireside of my parlour, and in
the noise of three gamesome children; and by the
side of her, whom because I have transplanted into
a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that

"^A vuestra mereed, a Spanish compliment signifying, to your
w^rshiPt or your grace.

100

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

from her by all such honest devices, aa giving her my
company and diBCourse, therefore I steal from her,
all the time which I give this letter, and it ia there-
fore that I take so ahort a list, and gallop bo fast
over it. I have not been out of my house since I
received your packet. Aa I have much quenched
my senseB and diaused my body from pleasure, and
HO tried how I can endure to he mine own grave, so
I try now how I can suffer a prison. And since it
is but to build one wall more about our soul, she is
still in her own centre how many circumferencea soever
fortune or our own perveraenesa cast about her. I
would I could aa well entreat her to go out, aa she
knows whither to go. But if I melt into a melan-
choly whilst I write, I shall be taken in the manner :
and I sit by one too tender towards these impressions,
and it ia so much our duty, to avoid all occasions of
giving them sad apprehensions, as St. Hierome accuses
Adam of no other fault in eating the apple, but that
he did it M ccnitridiarctur delicias siias. I am not
careful what I write, because the enclosed letters
may dignify this ill-favoured bark, and they need not
grudge so coarse a countenance because they are now
to accompany themselves ; my man fetched them,
and therefore I can say no more of them than
themselves say ; Mistress Meautys entreated me by
her letter to hasten hers, aa I think, for by my troth
I cannot read it. My lady was dispatching in eo
much haate for Twickeuliam, as ahe gave no word to
a letter which T sent with yours; of Sir Thomas
Bartlet, I can say nothing, nor of the plague, though
your letter bid me : but that he diminishes, the
other increases, but in what proportion I am not

A BUNDLE OP LETTERS 101

clear. To them at Hammersmith, and Mrs. Herbert
I will do your command. If I have been good in
hope, or can promise any little offices in the future,
probably it is comfortable, for I am the worst present
man in the world; yet the instant, though it be
nothing, joins times together, and therefore this
unprofitableness, since I have been, and will still
endeavour to be so, shall not interrupt me now from
being

" Your servant and lover,

" J. Donne."

Mistress Meautys is Jane, daughter of Hercules
Meautys, Esq., of West Ham, County Essex. She was
one of the young ladies who "waited on" Lady
Bedford. She married Sir William Cornwallis of
Brome, County Suffolk, in 1608.

V.

To the same.

" Sir, — Though my friendship be good for nothing
else, it may give you the profit of a tentation, or of
an affliction: it may excuse your patience; and
though it cannot allure it shall importune you.
Though I know you have many worthy friends of all
ranks, yet I add something, since I which am of none,
would fain be your friend too. There is some of the
honour and some of the degree of a creation, to make
a friendship of nothing. Yet, not to annihilate myself
utterly (for though it seem humbleness, yet it is a
work of as much almightiness to bring a thing to
nothing, as from nothing), though I be not of the

102 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

best stuff for friendship, which men of warm and
durable fortunes only are, I cannot say that I am
not of the best fashion, if truth and honesty be that ;
which I must ever exercise, towards you, because I
learned it of you : for the conversation with worthy
men and of good example though it sow not virtue
in us, yet produceth and ripeneth it. Your man's
haste, and mine to Micham, cuts off this letter here,
yet, as in little patterns torn from a whole piece, this
may tell you what all I am. Though by taking me
before my day (which I accounted Tuesday) I make
short payment of this duty of letters, yet I have a
little comfort in this, that you see me hereby willing
to pay those debts which I can, before my tima

" Your affectionate friend,

"J. Donne.
" First Saturday in March 1607 [i.e. 7 th March 1608.]
" You forgot to send me the Apology ; and many
times, I think it an injury to remember one of a
promise, lest it confess a distrust. But of the book,
by occasion of reading the Dean's answer to it, I
have sometimes some want."

The book mentioned is Brerely's The Protestant
Apologie for the Roman Church ; the real author of
which work was Lawrence Anderton, S.J. The book
was published in London in 1606. Dr. Morton's
answer to Brerely was presented to James i. on the
27th October 1609. It is clear, from this letter,
that Donne was at this time " reading " — i.e. revising,
correcting and suggesting — for Morton's Catholic Appeale,
which was at this time being prepared for the press ;
" the Dean " is, of course. Dr. Morton.

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 103

VI.

To the same,

"SiE, — To you that are not easily scandalized,
and in whom, I hope, neither my religion nor
morality can suffer, I dare write my opinion of that
book in whose bowels you left me. It hath re-
freshed, and given new justice to my ordinary
complaint, that the divines of these times, are become
mere advocates, as though religion were a temporal
inheritance ; they plead for it with all sophistications,
and illusions, and forgeries, and herein are they
likest advocates, that though they be feed by the way
with dignities, and other recompenses, yet that for
which they plead is none of theirs. They write for
religion, without it. In the main point in question,
I think truly there is a perplexity (as far as I see
yet), and both sides may be in justice and innocence ;
and the wounds which they inflict upon the adverse
part, are all se defendendo: for, clearly, our state
cannot be safe without the oath ; since they profess,
that clergymen, though traitors, are no subjects, and
that all the rest may be none to-morrow. And, as
clearly, the supremacy which the Eoman Church
pretends, were diminished, if it were limited ; and wiU
as ill abide that, or disputation, as the prerogative
of temporal kings, who being the only judges of their
prerogative, why may not Eoman bishops (so en-
lightened as they are presumed by them) be good
witnesses of their own supremacy, which is now so
much impugned ? But for this particular author, I
looked for more prudence, and human wisdom in him.

104 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

in avoiding aU miscitings, or misinterpretings, because
at this time, the watch is set, and everybody's hammer
is upon that anvil ; and to dare ofifend in that kind
now is, for a thief to leave the covert, and meet a
strong hue and cry in the teeth : and yet truly this
man is extremely obnoxious in that kind ; for, though
he have answered many things fully (as no book ever
gave more advantage than that which he undertook),
and abound in delicate applications, and ornaments,
from the divine and profane authors, yet being chiefly
conversant about two points, he prevaricates in both.
For, for the matter, which is the first, he refers it
entirely, and namely, to that which Dr. Morton hath
said therein before, and so leaves it roundly : and for
the person (which is the second) upon whom he
amasses as many opprobries, as any other could
deserve, he pronounceth, that he will account any
answer from his adversary, slander, except he do (as
he hath done) draw whatsoever he saith of him, from
authors of the same religion, and in print : and so, he
having made use of all the quodlibetaries and imputa-
tions against the other, cannot be obnoxious himself
in that kind, and so hath provided safely. It were
no service to you, to send you my notes upon the
book, because they are sandy, and incoherent rags,
for my memory, not for your judgment; and to
extend them to an easiness, and perspicuity, would
make them a pamphlet, not a letter. I will therefore
defer them till I see you ; and in the meantime, I
will adventure to say to you, without inserting one
unnecessary word, that the book is full of falsifications
in words and in sense, and of falsehoods in matter of
fact, and of inconsequent and unscholarlike arguings,

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS l06

and of relinquishiDg the king, in many points of
defence, and of contradiction of himself, and of
dangerous and suspected doctrine in divinity, and of
silly ridiculous triflings, and of extreme flatteries, and
of neglecting better and more obvious answers, and
of letting slip some enormous advantages which the
other gave, and he spies not. I know (as I begun)
I speak to you who cannot be scandalized, and that
neither measure religion (as it is now called) by unity,
nor suspect unity, for these interruptions. Sir, not
only a mathematic point, which is the most indivisible
and unique thing which art can present, flows into
every line which is derived from the centre, but our
soul which is but one, hath swallowed up a negative,
and feeling soul; which was in the body before it
came, and exercises those faculties yet; and God
Himself, who only is one, seems to have been eternally
delighted, with a disunion of persons. They whose
active function it is, must endeavour this unity in
religion: and we at our lay altars (which are our
tables, or bedside, or stools, wheresoever we dare
prostrate ourselves to God in prayer) must beg it of
Him : but we must take heed of making misconclusions
upon the want of it: for, whether the mayor and
alderma'' fall out (as with us and the Puritans;
bisho' igainst priests), or the commoners' voices
difif^ ) is mayor, and who alderman, or what their

ju n (as with the Bishop of Kome, or whoso-

r it is still one corporation.

ur very afifectionate servant and lover,
jwLicuam, Thursday, late. " J. Donite."

" Never leave the remembrance of my poor service
unmentioned when you see the good lady."

106 LIFE OP JOHN BONNE

The severe and trenchant criticism in this letter
was provoked by Bishop William Barlow's Answer to
a CcUTiolike Englishman^ dedicated to James I., and
published in a 4 to volume of 370 pages, in 1609.
It is a wretched performance ; but Barlow had, all hia
life through, some very zealous friends, and he must
have had some popular talents.

vn.
To Yourself,

" Sir, — All your other letters, which came to me
by more hazardous ways, had therefore much merit
in them ; but for your letter by Mr. Pory, it was but
a little degree of favour, because the messenger was
so obvious, and so certain, that you could not choose
but write. by him. But since he brought me as much
letter as all the rest, I must accept that, as well as
the rest.

" By this time, Mr. Garret, when you know in your
conscience that you have sent no letter, you begin to
look upon the superscription, and doubt that you
have broken up some other body's letter : but whose
soever it were is must speak the same language, for I
have heard from nobody.

" Sir, if there be a proclamation in England against
writing to me, yet since it is thereby become a matter
of state, you might have told Mr. Pory so. And you
might have told him, what became of Sir Thomcus
Lucy's letter, in my first packet (for any letter to him
makes any paper a packet, and any piece of single
money a medal), and what became of my Lady
Kingsmel's in my second, and of hers in my third

A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 107

whom 1 will not name to you in hope that it is
perished, and you lost the honour of giving it.

" Sir, mine own desire of being your servant, hath
sealed me a patent of that place during my life, and
therefore it shall not be in the power of your for-
bidding (to which your stiff silence amounts) to make
me leave being

" Your very afifectionate servant,

" J. Donne."

This letter was written to George Gerrard, second
son of Sir William Gerrard [Garrard or Garret] of
Dorney, County Bucks. He was an early and life-
long friend of Donne's, and became Master of the
Charterhouse.

Donne was at this time abroad with Sir Eobert
Drury, and looking for letters from his friends.
None, it seems, had reached him. Mr. Pory was a
king's messenger who went to and fro with despatches.
Sir Thomas Lucy was the son and heir of Sir Thomas
Lucy of Charlcote, whose deer Shakespeare is said to
have had to do with. He had travelled with Lord
Herbert of Cherbury in 1608-9, and was a close
friend of Donne's.

vm.

To the Honourable Knight, SiE Egbert Cark,
Gentleman of His Highness's Bedchamber.

" Sir, — I have always your leave to use my liberty,
but now I must use my bondage. Which is my
necesssity of obeying a precontract laid upon me.
I go to-morrow to Camberwell, a mile beyond South-

106 Lff E OF JOHN 1>0NKE

wark. But from this town goes with me my brother
Sir Thomas Grymes and his lady, and I with them.
There we dine well enough I warrant you, with his
father-in-law, Sir Thomas Hunt. If I keep my whole
promise, I shall preach both forenoon and afternoon.
But 1 will obey your commandments for my return.
If you cannot be there by ten, do not put yourself
upon the way: for, sir, you have done me more
honour, than I can be worthy of, in missing me so
diligently. I can hope to hear Mr. Moulin again :
or ruminate what I have heretofore heard. The only
miss that T shall have is of the honour of waiting upon
you ; which is somewhat recompensed, if thereby you
take occasion of not putting yourself to that pain, to
be more assured of the inabilities of

" Your unworthy servant,

" J. Donne."

Internal evidence shows this letter to have been
written within six months after Donne's ordination.
Peter du Moulin, the French divine, preached before
James i. on the 6th June 1615. He had been
invited to England by the king, but his stay was
short. Sir Thomas Hunt of Foulsham, Norfolk,
married, as his second wife, Jane, mother of Sir
Thomas Grymes of Camberwell. He himself died in
January 1617. Donne was evidently engaged to
preach twice at Camberwell.

CHAPTER V

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS

IzAAE Walton tells us that Donne preached his first
sermon in the parish church of Paddington, then a
village on the outskirts of London. The living was
a " perpetual curacy " in the gift of the Bishop of
London, and the incumbent was one Grififen Edwards,
of whom little is known. He had held Paddington
with the curacy of Marylebone since 1598, and con-
tinued to hold them till 1640. We can well believe
that he was glad to ofifer his pulpit to one who was
already famous and marked out for high preferment.
The little church, though it had an east window filled
with stained glass, in which a figure of St. Catherine
occupied the most conspicuous place, must have been
already in a condition of decay, and about sixty years
later, — ^in 1678, — being old and ruinous, it was pulled
down and rebuilt at the cost of Sir Joseph — ^Lord
Mayor of London in 1675 — and his brother, Mr.
Daniel Shelton, the lessee of the manor of Padding-
ton. What the subject of Donne's sermon was we
are not told.

The earliest dated sermon which hsus come down to
us was preached before Queen Anne of Denmark at
Greenwich, on the 30th ApriL The queen was at
this time spending large sums of money upon this her

109

110 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

favourite residence, under the direction . and advice of
Inigo Jones, and had gone there from Somerset House,
afterwards better known as Denmark House, which
was her town residence. Here, just a week previously,
Villiers had been knighted by the king, after being
made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber. Lord Somer-
set was playing his cards very badly, and his influence
with James was almost gone. Villiers had entirely
supplanted him. And though he was now only in his
twenty-third year, he was rising every day in his royal
master's favour, and treated by that master rather as
a son than as a subject. The text of Donne's sermon
on this occasion was taken from Isaiah lii 3 : " Thus
saith the Lord, Ye have sold yourselves for nought ; and
ye shall he redeemed without moneyj* Donne seems to
have set himself in his sermon to lift up his voice
against the portentous extravagance of his time. Sel-
dom in our history has there been more reckless squan-
derings and senseless profusion than in the days of
James i. Donne's warm friend. Lord Hay, was conspic-
uous for the unmeasured waste of his large resources,
and the mischievous example which he set of costly
entertainments and magnificent display. On the
other hand, the fashion of leaving money and lands
for charitable uses — after having gone out since the
spoliation of the monasteries for well-nigh a century —
had now begun to revive, and was soon to be signalised
by such foundations as that of the Charterhouse by
Sutton, and of Dulwich College by Allen. It is
worthy of notice how Donne so early in his career
sets himself to deal with this subject.

"God can raise up children out of the stones of
the street," he says, " and therefore He might be as

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 111

liberal as He would of His people, and suffer them to
be sold for old shoes. But Christ will not sell His
birthright for a mess of pottage, the kingdom of
heaven for the dole at a funeral. Heaven is not to
be had in exchange for an hospital, or a chantry, or a
college erected in thy last will; it is not only the
selling of all we have, that must buy that pearl, which
represents the kingdom of heaven ; the giving of all
that we have to the poor, at our death, will not do it ;
the pearl must be sought, and found before, in an
even and constant course of sanctification ; we must
be thrifty all our life, or we shall be too poor for that
purchase."

How the preacher was listened to we are not told :
the probability is that the man who so lately had
been conspicuous among the courtiers as a wit and
man of letters would hardly be accepted thus early as
a pulpit orator with a message from God. Curiosity
must have been uppermost in the minds of his hearers,
and the thought, " Is Saul also among the prophets ? "
He had to win confidence and respect, and it seems
that he did not take the town by storm.

During the year which passed after his ordination
we hear little or nothing of his movements. Walton's
assertion that he received the ofifer of fourteen bene-
fices during this short period is quite incredible, and
the other assertion that immediately after his ordina-
tion the king made him his chaplain ia certainly
untrue.

More than a year later he writes to Lord Hay,
begging him to use his influence to obtain this dis-
tinction for him.

It seems clear that James, after obtaining for him

i

112 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

the doctor's degree at Cambridge, had not thought fifc
to do anything more for him until he had had acme
probation and shown himself qualified for preferment,
Donne was saddened, and entreated Lord Hay " to
take some time to move His Majesty before he go out
of town, that I may be his servant, which request
, , , I hope you shall. not find difficult nor unreason-
able." The application was made accordingly, and on
the 21st April 1616 we find Donne preaching at
Whitehall just at the time when the horrible revela-
tions connected with the murder of Sir Thomas Over-
bury were being discussed by everyone and were the
subject of common talk. The sermon on Ecclea, viii.
1 1 — " Because sentence against an evil work is not
c tUed speedily, therefo^-e the heart of the so9is of men is fully
set in them to do evil " — contains some fine passagea
which the congregation can hai'dly have helped apply-
ing to the dreadful circumstances uppermost in the
minds of all ; and the text itself must have come upon
them with a profound auggestiveneas and significance.

A little after this, Donne was presented to the
living of Keystone in Hunts, and in July he became
rector of the valuable benefice of Sevenoaks in Kent.
At neither of these places did he ever reside for more
than a few weeks at a time, though he held the first
till 1622, and the other to the end of his life.

In those days the holder of a benefice was considered
to have done his duty to the parish from which he
derived his income, if he took due care that the
ordinary ministrations of divine service in the
aanotuary were adequately provided for, and the
parsonage occupied by a curate who ministered to the
necessities and spiritual wants of the people. There

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 113

was no feeling against a man of learning and eminence
holding two or more livings in plurality. It was
thought better that a clergyman of great gifts should
be supported out of the surplus income of a rich
benefice, and allowed to exercise his talents in a
sphere which needed his personal presence and in-
fluence, rather than that he should be buried in a
country village where he would be likely to live and
die forgotten and unknown.

In the autumn of this year (1616) ancfther piece
of preferment was ofifered to and accepted by Donne.
The Preachership of Lincoln's Inn, then regarded as
one of the most important positions which a clergy-
man could hold in London, fell vacant by the death
of Dr. Thomas Holloway, Fellow of Balliol, who had
held it since 1611. Donne had many friends among
the Benchers, not the least zealous being Christopher
Brooke, who had got himself into trouble by being
present at Donne's marriage. By an order of the
Masters of the Bench, dated 24th October 1616, it
was resolved that " Mr. Doctor Donne is at this
council chosen to be Divinity Reader of this house,
. . . and is to preach every Sabbath day in the term,
both forenoon and afternoon, and once before and
after every term, and on the grand days every fore-
noon, and on the reading times." The post was no
sinecure ; it involved the preaching of about fifty
sermons every year to a highly-educated and critical
audience. " And now," says Walton, " his life was as
a shining light among his old friends ; now he gave
ocular testimony of the strictness and regularity of it ;
now he might say, as St. Paul adviseth the Corinthians,
' Be ye followers of wie, as I follow Christ , and walk as
8

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

ye have vis for an example^ not the example of a busy-
body, but of a contemplative, a harmless, a humble,
and a holy life and conversation."

To Donne the appointment was in every way a
desirable one ; " for, besides fair lodgings that were set
apart and newly furnished for him with all necessaries,
other courtesies were also daily added, indeed, ao
many and so freely, as if they meant their gratitude
should exceed his merits, — lie preaching faithfully and
constantly to them, and they liberally rewarding him."

After long years of waiting and difficulty, prosperity
had come at last. He was now in his forty-third
year, and, if bis income was not too large, it was, at
anyrate, sufficient for his necessities, and his time of
anxiety was at an end.

While Donne had been living for the last sixteen
years the anxious and worrying life of a man whose
income could never be made to square with his
necessary expenditure, his mother, who had been left
in affluence at her first husband's death, in 1575, had
herself experienced great vicissitudes of fortune.

We know very little about her during those years ;
there is no doubt that she was a zealous and profuse
supporter of the seminary priests and Jesuit fathers,
and that she was noted as a Uberal contributor to the
necessities of those who, like herself, were determined
adherents of the " Catholic " persuasion. A lady,
whose portion bequeathed by her first husband was
considerable, was not Hkely to remain long a widow.
It is true she had six children, but they too were all
provided for, and she can hardly have been thirty
years old when her first husband died. The books of
the Ironmongers' Company show that all her children

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 116

died under age except the future Dean of St. Paul's,
and a daughter, Anne, who in 1586 married Avery
Copeley, one of a Yorkshire family — all of whom were
staunch Bomanists, and many of them suffered for
their religious opinions. In 15&4 Anne married, as
her second husband, William Lyly of London, gentle-
man, of whom I have discovered nothing. She
appears to have died about 1616. Her mother had
by this time changed her name, at least once, since
her first widowhood,^ and had, as we must infer from
her son's letter addressed to her in her hour of sorrow
and bereavement, spent all her own fortune.

The following letter acquires a peculiar interest and
pathos when it is remembered that something like
estrangement between mother and son must in-
evitably have arisen in consequence of the decided
line which Donne had taken in the religious dis-
cussions of the time, and the consequent cleavage that
had ensued in what had been conmion ground for
mother and son in earlier days.

Though this letter is undated, it is certain that it
was written before the 15th August 1617, when
Donne lost his wife.

Dr. Donne to his Mother, comfortiTig her after the

death of her daughter.

"My most dear Mother, — When I consider so
much of your life, as can fall within my memory and

^ My lamented friend, the late T. B. O'fflahertie, professed to have
discovered a second and third marriage of Donne's mother — the second
to one Simmonds, the third to a Mr. Bainsford. He could tell me
nothing about either of them.

116 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

observation, I find it to have been a sea, under a
continual tempest, where one wave hath ever over-
taken another. Our most wise and blessed Saviour
phooseth what way it pleaseth Him, to conduct those
which He loves to His haven and eternal rest. The
way which He hath chosen for you is strait, stormy,
obscure, and full of sad apparitions of death and wants,
and sundry discomforts; and it hath pleased Him,
that one discomfort should still succeed, and touch
another, that He might leave you no leisure, by any
pleasure or abundance, to stay or step out of that way,
or almost to take breath in that way by which He
hath determined to bring you home, which is His
glorious kingdom. One of the most certain marks
and assurances, that all these are His works, and to
that good end is your inward feeling and apprehension
of them a patience in them. As long as the Spirit
of God distils and dews His cheerfulness upon your
heart ; as long as He instructs your understanding to
interpret His mercies and His judgments aright; so
long your comfort must needs be as much greater than
others as your afiBlictions are greater than theirs. The
happiness which God afiPorded to your first young
time ; which was the love and care of my most dear
and provident father, whose soul, I hope hath long
since enjoyed the sight of our blessed Saviour, and had
compassion of all our miseries in the world, God
removed from you quickly, and hath since taken
from you all the comfort that that marriage produced.
All those children (for whose maintenance his industry
provided, and for whose education you were so care-
fully and so chargeably diligent) He hath now taken
from you. All that wealth which he left, God hath

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 117

suffered to be gone from us all ; so that God hath
seemed to repent, that He allowed any part of your life
any earthly happiness ; that He might keep your soul
in continual exercise, and longing, and assurance of
coming immediately to Him. I hope therefore, my
most dear mother, that your experience of the
calamities of this life, your continual acquaintance with
the visitations of the Holy Ghost, which gives better
inward comforts, than the world can outward discom-
forts, your wisdom to distinguish the value of this
world from the next, and your religious fear of
offending our merciful God by repining at anything
which He doeth, will preserve you from any inordinate
and dangerous sorrow for the loss of my most beloved
sister. For my part, which am only left now to do
the office of a child, though the poorness of my
fortune, and the greatness of my charge, hath not
suffered me to express my duty towards you, as became
me ; yet I protest to you before Almighty God and His
angels and saints in heaven, that I do, and ever shall,
esteem myself to be as strongly bound to look to you
and provide for your relief, as for my own poor wife
and children. For whatsoever I shall be able to do
I acknowledge to be a debt to you from whom I had
that education, which must make my fortune. This I,
speak not as though I feared my father Eainsford's
cire of you. or his means to pro4e for you ; for he
hath been with me, and I perceive in him a loving and
industrious care to give you contentment, so, I see in
his business a happy and considerable forwardness.
In the meantime, good mother, take heed that no
sorrow nor dejection in your heart interrupt or
disappoint God's purpose in you; His purpose is to

remove out of your heart all such love of this world's
happinesB as might pub Him out of posseasion of it.
He will have you entirely, and as God is comfort
enough, so He is inheritance euough. Join with God
and make Hia visitations and afliictiona as He intended
them, mercies and comforts. And for God's sake
pardon those negligences which I have heretofore used
towards you ; and assist me with your hlessing to me,
and all mine j and with your prayers to our blessed
Saviour, that thereby both my mind and fortune may
be apt to do all my duties, especially those that belong
to you.

" God, whose omnipotent strength can change the
nature of anything by His raising-spirit of comfort,
make your poverty riches, your afflictions pleasure, and
all the gall and wormwood of your life honey and
manna to your taste which He hath wrought when-
soever you are willing to have it so. Which, heeauae I
cannot doubt in you, I will forbear more lines at this
time, and moat humbly deliver myself over to your
devotions and good opinion of me, which I desire do
longer to live than I may have."

Only fourteen sermons preached at Lincoln's Inn
have come down to us. They were probably those
which Donne himself prepared for the press before hia
death, thinking them such as were worth preserving
and handing down to posterity.

Donne was no mere rhetorician — he pi-actised none
of those arts which charm the multitude. Even at
St. Dunstan's, in his fully-written sermons, he seema
to be always addressing himself to men of thought,
refinement, and culture. These were the men

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 119

whom he had lived from his boyhood ; he knew them
well, their weaknesses, their temptations, their vices,
their regrets, their rivalries, their ambitions ; he had
lived in sympathy with those who had been dis-
appointed, and those who had gone astray, and those
who had the battle to fight in the upper walks of
social life, and he knew that among them too there
were souls saddened by a sense of sin, troubled by
doubts and questionings, finding it very hard to be
pure and true ; and yet there were among them many
who were stretching forth lame hands of faith, and
seeking after a closer walk with God in circumstances
from which they could not hope to escape, and under
the pressure of which to live the higher life was
very, very hard. It was to these, and such as these,
that Donne's earlier sermons are addressed ; he never
tried to preach down to his congregation — the greatest
of all mistakes for any man to make who hopes to
raise others. Sometimes, but not often, Donne
rather falls into the other extreme of seeming to
apologise for taking too high a stand. But at Lincoln's
Inn he is always direct, outspoken, fearless, and his
words must have come hoine to many who heard him.
Take the following as a specimen of his most familiar
manner : —

" I am not all here. I am here now preaching upon 1/
this text ; and I am at home in my library consider-
ing whether St. Gregory, or St. Hierome, have said best
of this text before. I am here speaking to you, and
yet I consider by the way, in the same instant what
it is likely you will say to one another, when I have
done. You are not all here neither, you are here now,
bearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have

120 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

heard a better sermon, somewhere else on this text
before. You are here, and yet you think you could
have heard some other doctrine of downright predesti-.
nation, and reprobation roundly delivered somewhere
else with more edification to you. You are here, and
you remember yourselves that now ye think of it, this
had been the fittest time — now when everybody else is
at church, to have made such and such a private visit,
and because you would be there you are there."
• •••••

Here is another characteristic passage —

■^ " The whole need not a physician, but the sick do.
If you mistake yourself to be well, or think you have
physic enough at home, knowledge enough, divinity
enough, to save you without us, you need no physician,
that is a physician can do you no good, but then is
this God's physic, and God's physician welcome unto
you if you become to a remorseful sense, and to an
humble and penitent acknowledgment that you are
sick, and that there is no soundness in your flesh
because of His anger, nor any rest in your bones,
because of your sins, till you turn upon Him in whom
this anger is appeased, and in whom these sins are
forgiven, the Son of His love, the Son of His right
hand, at His right hand Christ Jesus."
^ The following affords a good example of Donne's
more conversational style : —

" But whilst we are in the consideration of this
arch, this roof of separation, between God and us, by
sin, there may be use in imparting to you an observa-
tion, a passage of mine own.

" Lying at Aix, at Aquisgrane, a well-known town in
Germany, and fixing there some time for the benefit of

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 121

those baths, I found myself in a house which was divided
into many families, and indeed so large as it might
have been a little parish, or at least a great limb of a
great one ; but it was of no parish, for when I asked
who lay over my head, they told me a family of Ana-
baptists. And who over theirs ? Another family of
Anabaptists ; and another family of Anabaptists over
theirs, and the whole house was a nest of these boxes,
several artificers, all Anabaptists. I asked in what
room they met for the exercise of their religion, I
was told they never met, for though they were all
Anabaptists, yet for some collateral differences, they
detested one another, and though many of them were
near in blood and alliance to one another, yet the
son would excommunicate the father in the room
above him, and the nephew the uncle. As St. John
is said to have quitted that bath into which Cerinthus
the heretic came, so did I this house. I remember
that Hezekiah in his sickness turned himself in his
bed to pray to that wall that looked to Jerusalem,
and that Daniel in Babylon, when he prayed in his
chamber, opened those windows that looked towards
Jerusalem ; for in the first dedication of the temple
at Jerusalem there is a promise annexed to the
prayers made towards the temple, and I began to
think how many roofs, how many floors of separation,
were made between God and my prayers in that
house. And such is this multiplicity of sins which
we consider to be got over us as a roof, as an arch ;
many arches, many roofs ; for though these habitual
sins be so of kin, as that they grow from one
another, and yet for all this kindred excommunicate
one another (for covetousness will not be in the same

Hi

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

room with prodigality), yet It ia but going up another
Btair, and there is the other AuabaptiEt; it is but
living a few years and then the prodigal becomes
covetous. All the way they separate us from God as
a root, as an arch, and then an arch will bear any
weight, an habitual ain got over our head as an arch
will stand under any sicknees, any dishonour, any judg-
ment of God, and never sink towards any humiliation.'

It was not long after his appointment to the
Eeadership at Lincoln's Inn that Donne's sermons
began to attract notice, and he soon became recognised
as a great preacher.

When James i. started on his memorable " Pro-
gress" to Scotland on the 15th March 1617, he
appears to have ordered that Donne should preach
at Paul's Cross on the 24th March, the anniversary
of his coming to the crown. There was a gi
gathering of " the Lords of the Council and other
honourable persons," including the Archbishop of
Canterbury (Abbot), Lord Bacon (who had been
recently made Lord Keeper), the Lord Privy Seal,
secretary Winwood, and " divers other great men,"
including Donne's fast friend. Sir Julius CiEsar, Master
of the Bolls, and Lord Hay. It was Donne's firair
appearance in the famous metropoHtan pulpit, and
he showed himself worthy of the occasion. One who
was present writes that "Dr, Donne made them a
dainty sermon upon Proverbs xxii. 11: 'Jle that hveth
purcness of fieart, for the. grace of his lips the king
shall he his friend;' and was exceedingly liked generally
(i.e. by all), the rather that he did Queen Elizabeth
right, and held himself close to the text without
flattering the time too much." " The dainty eermoa "

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 123

scarcely expresses adequately the real loftiness of
tone and earnestness which characterise it. It must
have taken more than an hour to deliver, for it is
very long. Here is the passage concerning Queen
Elizabeth referred to — a passage which, in that age of
adulation when courtiers were shy of doing honour to
the great queen, must have seemed to many almost
an instance of audacious outspokenness.

" In the death of that queen, immatchable, inimit-
able in her sex, we were all under one common flood
and depth of tears ... Of her we may say, nihil
humUe aut dbjectum cogitavit quia novit de $e semper
loquendum. She knew the world would talk of her
after her death, and therefore she did such things all
her life as were worthy to be talked of. Of her
glorious successor and our gracious sovereign we may
say it would have troubled any king but him to
have come in succession and in comparison with such
a queen."

Donne was now a prosperous man ; but during this
year, 1617, and less than three years after his ordina-
tion, a great sorrow came upon him. His much-loved
wife died on the 15th August, seven days after the
birth of her twelfth child. She was in her thirty-
sixth year, Donne in his forty-fourth, — of her children
seven survived her. In the first agony of his grief he
gave his children an assurance that he would never
marry again, and this when his eldest child was only
fourteen and his youngest an infant in arms. The
promise was a rash one. It would perhaps have been
better for him, and better for them, if it had never
been made.

Mrs. Donne was buried in St, Clement Danes

124 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Church, where a monument was erected in the chancel
to her memory, with an elaborate inscription which
her husband himself composed. The old church has
been rebuilt, and the monument has long since
perished ; the inscription has been preserved by the
accident that Donne submitted it for approval to Sir
George More, and it is still to be found among the
muniments at Losely.

The story that Donne preached a funeral sermon
upon his wife in St. Clement's Church, upon the text.
Lamentations iii. 1, is a fable. He did preach a
beautiful sermon upon this text some ten years later,
which is to be found among his printed works, but it
is nothing like a funeral sermon, and it was preached
at St. Dunstan's Church, to which he was only in-
stituted in 1623.

During the next two years we find Donne frequently
preaching at Whitehall, besides diligently attending
to his duties at Lincoln's Inn. On the 28 th March
1619, being Easter Day, he was called upon to preach
before the Lords at a time of great public anxiety.
Queen Anne of Denmark had died on the first of the
month, and James i., after taking his leave of his
consort, had gone to Newmarket. Here he had him-
self fallen seriously ill, and on the day when Donne
preached at Whitehall he was reported to be
" dangerously sick." It was not until the middle of
April that the Bishop of London preached at St.
Paul's, to give thanks for the king's recovery.

Just eight days before Donne preached to the
Lords at Whitehall, the Emperor Matthias died sud-
denly on the 20th March 1619. He had become

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 126

King of Bohemia, after the enforced resignation of the
crown by his incompetent brother, Eudolph ii., in
May 1611 ; and on the death of that same brother,
eight months later, 20th January 1612, he was
elected to succeed him as emperor. Neither of the
brothers had any legitimate offspring, and, in view of
what might happen after his decease, Matthias so
ordered it that his kinsman, the Archduke Ferdinand,
of Styria, should succeed to the crown of Bohemia, the
States consenting to the arrangement in June 1617, he
himself still retaining the imperial crown.

The Bohemian nobility, a powerful oligarchical
body, were vehemently Protestant. Ferdinand, the
new king, was an uncompromising and bigoted
Catholic. Before a year had passed, Bohemia was in
open revolt, the country and its people were suffering
the horrors of war when the Emperor Matthias died.
The crisis was a very great one. Could nothing be
done to make peace between Ferdinand and his Bohe-
mian subjects? A proposal came to James I. that
he should act as arbitrator between the belligerents.
Nothing loth, the king ordered Lord Hay, now Earl of
Doncaster, to proceed to Germany as his Ambassador
Extraordinary, with instructions which were of the
vaguest kind. "And by special command of His
Majesty, Dr. Donne was appointed to assist and attend
that employment to the Princes of the Union." ^

Ostensibly, Donne went as his noble friend's chap-
lain, and before he set out upon his travels he preached

^ The Gennan Princes at this time were divided by their religious
differences into two hostile parties — the Catholic League, of which
Ferdinand was the head, and the Protestant Union, under Frederick
the Elector Palatine as president.

LIFE OP JOHN DONNE

what he calls " a eermoii of valediction at my going
into Germany," at Lincolu'a Inn, on the text, " fie-
member now thy Creator in the days of thy youth "
(ElccleB. xii. 1), in which the preacher closed with the
following beautiful and pathetic exordium : —

" Now to make up a circle, by returning to onr first
word, remember; as we remember God, bo for His
Bake, let us remember one another. In my long
absence, and far distance from hence, remember me,
as I shall do you . , . remember my labours and
endeavours, at least my desire, to make sure your
salvation. And I ah all remember your religious
cheerfulness in hearing the word, and your christianly
respect towards all them that bring that word unto
you, and towards myself in particular far above my
merit, Ajjd so as your eyes that stay here, and mine
that must be far off, tor all that distance shall meet
every morning, in looking upon that same sun, and
meet every night, in looking upon the same moon ; bo
our hearts may meet morning and evening in that
God, which sees and hears everywhere; that you may
come thither to Ilim with your pi-ayers, that I (if I
may be of use for His glory, and your edification in this
place) may be restored to you again; and may come
to Him with my prayer, that what Paul soever plant
amongst you, or what ApoUos soever water, God Him-
self will give the increase : that if I never meet you
again till we have all passed the gate of death, yet in
the gates of heaven, I may meet you all, and there say
to my Saviour and your Saviour, that which He said to
HiH Father and our Father, Of those whoin. thou Itast
given me, have 7 tiot lost one. Remember me thus, you
that stay in this kingdom of peace, where no sword is

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 127

drawn, but the sword of justice, as I shall remember
you in those kingdoms, where ambition on one side,
and a necessary defence from unjust persecution on
the other side hath drawn many swords ; and Christ
Jesus remember us all in His kingdom . . . where we
shall be all soldiers of one army, the Lord of hosts,
and children of one choir, the God of harmony and
consent ; where all clients shall retain but one coun-
sellor, our advocate Christ Jesus ; . . . where we shall
end, and yet begin but then ; where we shall have
continual rest, and yet never grow lazy ;(^ where we
shall be stronger to resist, and yet have no enemy ;
where we shall liv e ^nd nev^ r_i^i e^ w here we shall

70

meet and never part

The sermon was preached on the 18 th of April,
and on the 12 th May Doncaster and his retinue set
out on their journey, and arrived early in June at
Heidelberg, the palace of the Elector Palatine Frede-
rick and his wife EUzabeth, daughter of James L
Six years before this these two iUustrious personages
had been married at Whitehall, and Donne had written
the marriage song;^ they were both nearly of the same
age, each being now twenty-two years old. Since
that brilliant wedding-day, in February 1613, their
lives had been passed in one continual round of gaiety
and amusement. The young Palsgrave, as he was
usually called in England, had learned very little:
dreaming of greatness, he had not been preparing
himself to achieve it. A young man of restless ambi-
tion far beyond his ability, he waei certain to prove a
failure, in the day of trial ; and that day W6U3 very near
at hand. During those six years Donne had greatly

1 See p. 88.

128 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

changed and greatly grown ; the young princess may
have remembered him as a courtier high in favour
with the nobility, writing verses to order, graceful and
gay, whom her royal father had pressed to enter into
the Christian ministry, and had obeyed only when all
other avenues to advancement had been barred. She
found him now a profoundly serious and earnest
divine, who already had come to be regarded as one
of the greatest preachers of his time. He had not
been many days at Heidelberg before he was invited
to preach before the Prince and Princess Palatine.

The Princess Elizabeth appears to have been greatly
struck by the sermons (for there were two, though
only one has been preserved), and from this time con-
ceived a high regard for Donne, and, in a letter which
she wrote to him four years later, she says, " The hear-
ing of you deliver, as you call them, the messages of
God unto me . . . truly I never did but with delight,
and I hope some measure of edification."

The stay at Heidelberg was short. Doncaster soon
began to suspect that his mission to Germany was
not likely to be successful. Ferdinand was chosen
emperor on the 18th of August, and had hardly
heard of his election before the amazing intelligence
reached him that, two days before, the Bohemian
magnates had solemnly deposed him from being king,
and had ofifered his crown to Frederick, the Palsgrave.

Frederick hesitated for about a month before accept-
ing the kingdom. At last he assented, and in October
he set out for Prague for his coronation, which, alas !
was but the beginning of his humiliation, and all the
long horrors of the Thirty Years' War. Doncaster's
wanderings during the next five months are diflScult to

LINCOLN'S INN DAYS 129

follow, but on the 19 th December he was at the
Hague, where the States General presented Donne with
the gold medal that had been struck as a memorial
of the famous and futile Synod of Dort, which had
recently dispersed.

At the Hague, Donne (apparently with but short
warning) was called upon to preach before the Court
and the States General that sermon which he ex-
panded into two during his last illness.

Lord Doncaster returned to England with his
retinue during the first week of 1620. Donne had
derived much benefit from his eight months* absence,
and during the spring he preached more than once at
Whitehall ; his ordinary duties at Lincoln's Inn being
resumed as before his absence. We know very little
of his movements during this year, 1621, except that
in the summer he was disappointed of the Deanery of
Salisbury, which had fallen vacant, and which he had
expected would be oflfered to him. He had to wait
a little longer before receiving any substantial pre-
ferment.

On the 26th of August 1621, Cotton, Bishop of
Exeter, died, and a month later Valentine Carey, Dean
of St. Paul's, was elected to succeed him.

Then it seems " the king sent to Dr. Donne and
appointed him to attend him at dinner the next day.
When His Majesty was sat down, before he had eat
any meat, he said, after his pleasant manner, *Dr.
Donne, I have invited you to dinner; and, though
you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to you of
a dish that I know you love well ; for, knowing you
love London, I do therefore make you Dean of St.
Paul's; and, when I have dined, then do you take

9

130 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

your beloved dish home to your study, say grace there
to yourself, and much good may it do you/ "

He did not actually enter upon his office till the
27th November, as, in consequence of the delay which
occurred in the consecration of the Bishop of Exeter,
the deanery did not technically fall into the hands of
the king till the 20 th of the month. There is no
reason to believe that Donne expected or wished to
be raised to the Episcopate. Probably, he had now
gained the one piece of preferment in the Church of
England that he would have chosen if the choice had
been left to himself. The deanery stood in the south
of the present cathedral, with its frontage towards
the north, and its back gates opening upon Carter
Lane. There was a gatehouse and porter's lodge at
either entrance, and a spacious grass-plot on the east
side. There was a private chapel annexed to the
house and flanking the grass-plot on the southern
side; this chapel the new dean at once set himself to
repair and beautify. The expense of furnishing and
getting into so large a mansion was considerable ; and
it is not surprising that Donne, at the end of his first
year, wrote to his friend Sir Henry Goodere, " I had
locked myself, sealed and secured myself, against all
possibilities of falling into new debts, and, in good
faith, this year hath thrown me £400 lower than
when I entered this house." Nevertheless, the very
first occasion after receiving his preferment, when Sir
George More oflfered to pay the quarterly sum which
he had agreed to allow him, Donne refused to accept
it, and then and there gave him a release from the
obUgation by which he was bound.

CHAPTER VI

THE DEAN

During the seven years that passed after Donne had
been admitted to holy orders, it cannot be said that
he had made much way in his profession. A couple
of benefices given to him by personal friends— the
Preachership at Lincoln's Inn, and the barren honour
of being included among the king's chaplains — did not
amount to much. His income during these years
was indeed sufficient to relieve him from any pressing
anxiety ; but, moving as he did on terms of close
intimacy with the nobility and the most eminent
people of the court of James i., his position brought
with it many expenses which were unavoidable.

The deanery had come only after years of waiting
for the fulfilment of those hopes of preferment which
the king had given his chaplain reason to expect at
his hands.

Thus far, it must be remembered, Donne had had
few opportunities of addressing large and mixed
congregations. Lincoln's Inn Chapel, was then, as now,
a place of worship for a select few. At Whitehall
the nobility and courtiers made up the whole audience.
The sermon at St. Paul's, preached during the king's
absence in Scotland, had indeed attracted a great
crowd, and had been listened to with admiration by

181

132 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

all ; but, until his promotion to the deanery, Donne as
a preacher may be said to have been little known.
Among the general public he had his reputation still
to make. He continued to hold the Lincoln's Inn
Preachership for some months after he was admitted
to the deanery. Not till the 11th of February did
he resign his oflSce, and, in doing so, he presented a
magnificent copy of the Bible, with the commentary
of Nicholas de Lyra, in six volumes folio, printed at
Douai in 1617, as a token of gratitude to the society.
The book is carefully preserved in Lincoln's Inn
library; and the inscription, m Donne's own hand-
writing, may still be read by those who are not above
confessing to a sentimental interest in such relics.

In recognition of this gift and of his services as
preacher, we read that " The Masters of the Bench
acknowledging this and many other kind and loving
respects of the said Mr. Doctor Donne towards them
. . . with one voice and assent so ordered that tK^
said Mr. Doctor Donne shall continue his chamber in
this house which he now hath, as a Bencher of this
house, and with such privileges touching the same as
the Masters of the Bench now have, and ought to
have, for their general and respective chambers in this
house."

It may, I think, be safely aflSrmed that this is the
last instance of a divine having been made a Bencher
of Lincoln's Inn, and that, too, not only with an
honorary title, but with the substantial advantages
which the office confers.

• •••••

Then, as now, the Chapter of St. Paul's consisted of
thirty prebendaries, of whom the dean was one, and

THE DEAN 133

each of them had certain prescribed duties to perform.
Among the prebendaries were more than one man of
academic reputation with a career before him. Such
were John Bancroft, afterwards Bishop of Oxford, and
William Pierse, promoted to the Bishopric of Peter-
borough the year before Donne died; Dr. Thomas
Winniffe, who succeeded Donne in the deanery, and
afterwards became Bishop of Lincoln; and the brothers
John and Henry King, sons of John King, Bishop of
London, who had been chaplain to the Lord Keeper
Ellesmere when Donne had been his secretary.- The
only two members of the Chapter, nevertheless, who
appear to have had any gift of preaching, were Dr.
Winnifife and Henry Mason, rector of St. Mary's Under-
shaft London, of whose "edifying and judicious preach-
ing" Wood speaks in high terms. He had been chaplain
to Bishop King of London, by whom, too, he had been
collated to his stall. The bishop's two sons had been
presented to their several prebends by their father in
161 6 — Henry, the elder, in January ; John, the younger,
in December ; the one in his twenty-fourth, the other
in his twentyrsecond year. They were both young
men of conspicuous ability. Henry was a poet, whose
sweet verses are read with delight by many even now,
— a man of letters and many accomplishments. John
was a young scholar of promise, who became public
orator to the University of Oxford at the time that
George Herbert held the same honourable office at
Cambridge ; Donne had known them both from their
childhood. The younger brother was little heard of
in London ; he was a brilliant scholar, and his heart
was at Oxford. The elder, Henry, besides being pre-
bendary at St. Paul's, was collated by his father to

134 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

the Archdeaconry of Colchester in 1617; and with
the Eectory of Chigwell he also held the office of
Penitentiary in the cathedral. His preferments re-
quired that he should reside during the greater part
of the year in London, and Walton calls him the
" Chief Eesidentiary of St. Paul's." Donne appears
always to have had an affectionate regard for Henry
King — an affection which was cordially reciprocated
by the younger man ; and in his will Donne appointed
him one of his executors, as we shall see later on. As
for Dr. Valentine Cary, who had vacated the Deanery
of St. Paul's for the Bishopric of Exeter, he had the
reputation of being a past master in the art of
" getting on." An eminently safe man, he had never
committed himself to the writing of books, and as a
preacher of sermons he was unknown. It is true that
the famous pulpit at Paul's Cross still continued to be
served occasionally by ambitious, earnest, and eloquent
preachers from the country — men eager to get a hear-
ing and make a sensation before a London audience ;
but the ordinary sermons delivered in rotation by the
prebendaries taking their turns in the cathedral pulpit
must have been, as a rule, very perfunctory perform-
ances. The preachers who had the ear of the London
citizens were by no means the cathedral dignitaries,
but the men of a lower social standing, though not
necessarily of less learning or less worth listening to,
the lecturers whose congregations supported them, —
the holders of small benefices which barely afforded
them a livelihood, — the Puritans, as they were called,
which was a term of reproach vaguely applied to such
as were conspicuous less for strict orthodoxy than for
fervour, fluency, and passionate eloquence. As a class,

THE DEAN 135

these clergy were not too loyal to the ecclesiastical
status quo. They had very little to thank, and very
little to hope from, the powers that be in Church and
State. Some of them were more zealous than discreet,
more vehement than prudent, and the neglect which
they suffered at the hands of " people of importance "
often irritated and soured their friends and admirers
perhaps more than it did themselves. In so far as it
did so, however, their influence undoubtedly tended to
make a party of opposition in the Church, which sooner
or later was likely to become a formidable minority,
and indeed something more.

Archbishop Abbot's sympathies were almost wholly
in favour of the Puritan clergy, and in the universities
they had their leaders and representatives, who were
increasing in numbers from year to year.

There can be no greater mistake than to look upon
the Puritan clergy as schismatics ; they were no more
inclined that way than John Wesley was in the last
century, or than the Low Church party, who loved to
preach in the black gown, or the Tractarians, who
battled for the eastward position in our own day, were,
or are, inclined to separate from our communion.
Intolerant partisans on this side or the other in-
vented some odious name for such as were not of
their own way of thinking ; and it has always answered
the purpose of such as are fighting for no nobler
cause than the supremacy of their own views, in
politics or religion, to call their opponents Simeonites
or Puseyites in the one case, and Whigs or Tories in
the other. Would God that the spirit of faction could
have been kept out of the Church of Christ ! Alas !
from the very beginning it has shown itself, ever

136 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

since one said, I am of Paul, and another, I am of
ApoUos !

The new Dean of St. Paul's was as far from sym-
pathising with this narrowness as in those days a man
could well be. He had by God*s help found deliver-
ance from the thraldom of the Koman tyranny as
formulated in the Tridentine decrees, but he was not
the man to oscillate from extreme to extreme, and to
find no resting-place save in one or the other. He
had his spiritual conflicts, and he had passed through
an experience such as shallow natures can hardly be
expected to understand. He could never rest till he
got to some firm basis of belief, before he adopted any
opinion as his own ; he had a boundless sympathy for
the errors and the weaknesses of others ; he had the
rare gift of living by great principles, not by mere
hard-and-fast rules, the poet's wealth of illustration
and play of fancy, and the voice and readiness of
speech of the orator. Add to this the extraordinary
personal beauty and resistless grace of manner which
more than one of his contemporaries have dwelt upon.
"A preacher in earnest," as Walton says, "weeping
sometimes for his auditory, sometimes with them ;
always preaching to himself, like an angel from a
cloud, but in none ; carrying some, as St. Paul was,
to heaven in holy raptures, and enticing others by a
sacred art and courtship to amend their lives ; here
picturing a vice so as to make it ugly to those that
practised it ; and a virtue so as to make it beloved,
even by those that loved it not ; and all this with a
most particular grace and an inexpressible addition of
comeliness."

Donne's five years' preaching at Lincoln's Inn had

THE DEAN 137

done a great deal for him in the way of increasing
his effectiveness as a pulpit orator. The reading of
sermons was scarcely tolerated at this time ; even in
the university pulpit, where the practice was coming
in, James i. had written a letter expressing his dis-
approval of it. In Donne's time, our English preachers,
on great occasions, almost universally committed their
sermons to memory, as is still done in Italy, Germany,
France, and elsewhere. When a man ascended the
pulpit, he " took with him words " ; he was not
supposed to be speaking without due preparation;
but the habit of addressing his congregation without
a manuscript gave a preacher confidence on the one
hand, and on the other made him realise the necessity
of careful previous study of his subject. The memory
was cultivated from the first. Fluency with the
graces of distinct delivery were not disregarded ; and
only he who really gave proof of having something to
say, and of having tried to say it in the most
attractive manner, was designated as a 'painful
preacher, that is, one who had spent his best pains
upon matter and manner.

This severe and systematic training on pulpit
oratory, which English preachers went through in the
earlier half of the seventeenth century, necessarily
produced its effect in raising the standard of preach-
ing. The sermons of this time seem to us now to
be overloaded — too long — artificial, and sometimes in
bad taste ; but it is rare to find one without some
striking passages, some evidence or parade of learning.
That they were listened to with great attention, and
often produced very great effect upon the audience,
we know. Frequently the preacher was interrupted

138 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

by expressions of dissent or by loud applause. More
than once Donne takes notice of this, reproving it as
a modern practice which had but lately come into
vogue, though, as he points out, it had been common
in the fourth century, when Chrysostom preached at
Constantinople, and Augustine at Hippo.

" Truly," he says in one of his St. Paul's sermons,
" we come too near reinducing this vainglorious fashion,
in those often periodical murmurings and noises
which you make when the preacher concludes any
point. For those impertinent interjections swallow
up one quarter of his hour ; and many that were not
within distance of hearing the sermon will give a
censure upon it, according to the frequency or paucity
of these acclamations.

"These fashions then, howsoever, in those times,
they might be testimonies of zeal, yet because they
occasion vainglory and many times faction, . . .
we desire not, willingly we admit not. We come in
Christ's stead. Christ, at His coming, met Hosannas
and Crucifiges, A preacher may be applauded in the
pulpit and crucified in his turn."

It is very unlikely that the congregation in Lincoln's
Inn Chapel, accustomed as they were to the serious-
ness and strict discipline of the law courts, should
have indulged in these expressions of approval or the
reverse; on the other hand, the men of law were
severe critics, and a great deal was expected from
their preacher. During the five years when Donne
held the post he was responsible for an aggregate
of between two or three hundred sermons, and every
one of them stood for such an amount of careful
preparation as represented a serious mental strain.

THE DEAN 139

But that all these sermons should have been written
out word for word and committed to memory is
incredible; it would have been almost a physical
impossibility. In one of his letters Donne mentions
incidentally that the copying of one of his great
festival sermons took him eight hours ; and we know
that he was compelled, by the importunity of his
friends, to circulate some of them in manuscript
before he ventured to incur the expense of printing
them. Once, when replying to a request from Sir
Henry Goodere to send him a copy of what appears
to have been an occasional sermon, which he had
delivered some weeks before, he answers, "I will
pretermit no time to write it . . . though in good
faith / have half forgot it** Of all the large number
of sermons delivered at Lincoln's Inn, only fourteen
have come down to us. It is clear that before he
was promoted to the deanery he must have become
a practised extempore preacher. It was only what
was to be expected, that when he discovered that he
possessed the gift of oratory, and had done his best
to cultivate it earnestly and conscientiously, he should
come to take a delight in its exercise; though for
lazy and slovenly preaching he had no toleration, and
more than once he lifts up his voice against the
preachers who trusted to the so-called inspiration
of the moment.

" When the apostle says. Study to he quiet, methinks
he intimates something towards this — that the less
we study for our sermons, the more danger there is to
disquiet the auditory. Extemporal, unpremeditated
sermons, that serve the popular ear, vent, for the most
part, doctrines that disquiet the Church. Study for

140 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

them, and they will be quiet. Consider ancient
fundamental doctrine, and this will quiet and settle
the understanding and the conscience."

For himself, every year as he grew older, he seems
to have found more and more joy and delight in
preaching. Latterly, even when his constitution was
broken by frequent illnesses and the excitement and
exhaustion which his emphatic delivery occasioned, he
confesses to his friend, Sir Eobert Carr, that his
practice was to fast rigidly on his preaching days.

" This morning I have received a signification from
my Lord Chamberlain that His Majesty hath com-
manded to-morrow's sermon at St. James's ; and that
it is in the afternoon — for, into my mouth there must
not enter the word ' after dinner,' because that day
there enters no dinner into my mouth. Towards the
time of the service, I ask your leave that I may hide
myself in your oufc-chamber." (2nd April 1625.)

In another letter, again, he writes, " . . . I do not
eat before, nor can after ^ till I have been at home ; so
much hath this year's debility disabled me even for
receiving favours. After the sermon I will steal into
my coach home, and pray that my good purpose may
be well accepted, and my defects graciously pardoned."

Five years later, when already death-stricken, and
very near his end, writing to another of those many
friends who had clung to him in close intimacy from
his youth, he says, "... I have been always more
sorry when I could not preach, than any could be that
they could not hear me. It hath been my desire — and
God may be pleased to grant it me — that I might die
in the pulpit ; if not that, yet that I might take my
death in the pulpit, that is, die the sooner by occasion

THE DEAN 141

of my former labours." It can hardly be doubted that
he hastened his end by preaching when he was physi-
cally quite unfit for such exertion ; but life was, to
his thinking, valueless when the privilege of delivering
his Master's message to sinful men was denied him.
And so, as Walton beautifully says, " his speech, which
had long been his ready and faithful servant, left him
not till the last minute of his life, and then forsook
him, not to serve another master — for who speaks
like him ? — but died before him ; for that it was then
become useless to him that now conversed with God
on earth, as angels are said to do in heaven, only by
thoughts and looks."

The duties required of the Dean of St. Paul's were
definitely prescribed by the cathedral statutes.

The Psalter was divided up among the thirty pre-
bendaries, each of whom was supposed to recite
his five psalms daily, and to make them his special
subject of meditation. Donne took his place in the
Chapter as prebendary of Chiswick, and his five psalms
were the 62nd to the 66th inclusive. As prebendary
he was required to preach upon the Monday in Whit-
sun week. As dean he preached on Christmas Day,
Easter Sunday, and Whit Sunday. Every one of the
Easter sermons have been preserved, and are to be
found in the printed volumes ; so are all those which
he delivered on Whit Sunday. Twice, owing to severe
illness, he was unable to preach on Christmas Day ; but
the eight Christmas sermons that he did deliver at St.
Paul's are among the most carefully thought out and
most eloquent of any that have survived.

The same may be said of the five prebend sermons

142 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

delivered on his allotted psalms. On the great
festivals he did not spare himself; and on these
important occasions, when large congregations came
expecting much from the great preacher, he never
sent them empty away.

His first appearance in the pulpit of St. Paul's as
dean was on Christmas Day 1621. The sermon is
unlike any of those which he had preached at Lincoln's
Inn or at the court. It is marked by an almost
entire absence of learned quotations or allusions. It
is studiously direct, practical, and homely ; and though
the structure and analysis of the composition is as
minute as he could not help making it, this sermon is
marked by such simplicity of diction and illustration
as makes it apparent that the preacher was thinking
of his congregation and not of himself, seeking to
reach their hearts and consciences, with never a thought
of merely winning their admiration and applause.

Though no word has reached us of the reception
which Donne met with on his first appearance as
dean, yet there are abundant indications that his first
sermon made a great impression. Certainly, in no one
year was he applied to so frequently to address large
audiences as in 1622.

No fewer than twelve of his most important
sermons, delivered during this year, have been pre-
served. Unequal in merit, they are yet all character-
ised by an almost excessive elaboration, as if the new
dean was profoundly convinced of the responsibility
which his office had brought with it, and was deter-
mined, by God's help, to turn to the utmost account
the influence which he had the opportunities of
exercising.

THE DEAN 143

As a theologian, Donne occupied a middle position
between the two extreme parties among the clergy,
whose diflferences were becoming daily more pro-
nounced, and their attitude more hostile towards each
other. On the burning questions of the ceremonies and
the sacraments, he was emphatically a High Church-
man,outspoken, uncompromising, definite, though gentle,
sympathetic, and animated by a large-hearted tolerance.
But in his treatment of Holy Scriptures no Puritan
of them all insisted more frequently upon the inspira-
tion of every syllable in the Old Testament and the
New. With far less of that trifling with his hearers,
which is too frequently the blemish in Bishop Andrewes'
sermons, Donne's interpretations occasionally startle us
by their grotesqueness ; they are the outcome of his
almost superstitious biJ)liolatry, if this modern phrase
may be allowed. It was this, however, which gained
for him the ear of the trading classes, and the con-
fidence and popularity which never left him. Both
parties in the Church claimed him as their own.
Abbot, the Puritan primate, trusted and admired
him ; Andrewes loved him as a friend ; Laud would
have recognised him, with some reservations, as one of
his most orthodox supporters. It was this many-
sidedness that attracted the thoughtful and devout to
listen to the message he came to deliver. He spoke
like one who had studied and prayed out the con-
clusions he arrived at; men felt they could leave
themselves in the hands of the new preacher, who was
no partisan. Three of Donne's sermons during this
year, 1622, preached on occasions of some historical
interest, deserve rather more than a passing mention.
1. In the summer of 1621, Henry Percy, ninth

144 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Earl of Northumberland (who, it may be remembered/
had gone out of his way to intercede with Sir Greorge
More on the occasion of Donne's clandestine marriage),
was released from the Tower, after an imprisonment
of nearly sixteen years, through the intercession of
Donne's friend. Lord Hay, now Viscount Doncaster.
Doncaster had married the earl's beautiful and very
accomplished daughter Lucy, without her father's
consent, and during the time of his imprisonment.
The king had favoured the match. The earl was
strongly averse to it, and hated Doncaster, whom he
affected to regard as a Scotch upstart. Northumber-
land, though freed from the Tower, was put upon
parole, and required to reside at Petworth, or within
thirty miles of that centre. It was an annoying
restriction, and Doncaster did his best to get it
removed. On his return from an embassy to France
in 1622, he made fresh efforts to gain full liberty
for the earl, who about the middle of August found
himself a free man. But he had nob yet forgiven his
son-in-law; and, moreover, he had conceived a bitter dis-
like for the king's new favourite, Villiers, now Marquis
of Buckingham, whose ostentation and lavish ex-
penditure provoked and irritated him. He regarded
himself, as indeed he was, as the representative of
the old nobility, and he found it very difficult to
acquiesce in the position (which common prudence
required that he should submit to) of inferior import-
ance to the new men, who on all occasions were
taking the lead at court. So wary and shrewd a
diplomatist as Doncaster saw that this attitude was
full of danger. He himself was at this time living

1 Chap, i. p. 23.

THE DEAN 145

at Hanworth, which had formerly been the dower
house of Queen Katharine Parr, and here Lady
Doncaster was keeping up a great establishment, and
indulging in every kind of profuse extravagance.
Some recognition of his son-in-law's good offices in
procuring him his release from the Tower could hardly
be refused now, and Northumberland accepted an in-
vitation to Hanworth on the 25 th of August, knowing,
of course, that in doing so he would be signifying
his assent to the marriage which he had originally
opposed. It was a great occasion. Many of the
nobility were assembled to show their sympathy with
the earl, and their satisfaction at his once more
taking his place as head of the English aristocracy.
Among them came Buckingham himself, ready to
evince his cordiality, and having nothing to lose, and
something to gain, by taking part in the festivities.
On such an occasion it was inevitable that there should
be a sermon, and what fitter man could be thought of
to preach it than the new Dean of St. Paul's ?

About a year before this, Donne, at the suggestion
of the king,^ had offered his services to Villiers; but,
so far as we know, nothing had come of it, except that
his name was formally presented to James as a proper
person to be promoted to the deanery.

Donne's sermon at Hanworth was preached from a
text that might almost be called fantastic. " Every
man may see it; man may behold it afar off" (Job
XXX vi. 25). After a brief introductory paragraph the
preacher comes to his analysis. "Be pleased to
admit, and charge your memories with this distribution
of the words. ... I threaten you but with two parts,

^ CobbaZa, p. 314.
lo

146 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

no further tediousness, but I ask for divers branches.
I can promise no more shortness. . . . The first is a
discovery, a manifestation of God to man. Every man
Toay see it . , . This proposition, this discovery, will
be the first part, and the other will be a tacit answer
to a likely objection : * Is not God far ofif, and can
man see at that distance ? ' Yes ! he may. Man
may behold it afar off"

The sermon is one of the shortest of Donne's
sermons, and ends so abruptly as to leave the im-
pression that it never was delivered exactly in the
form in which it has come down to us. I think it is
an instance of Donne's having written out his recollec-
tions of what he actually said, assisted by notes which
he had prepared. There are some delicate allusions to
the vicissitudes of fortune through which the Earl of
Northumberland had passed, which everyone present
must have understood. But the concluding passage
loses none of its point, because the personal allusions
are so gracefully veiled under the disguise of
generalities in the language.

The festivities at Hanworth brought Donne into more
intimate relations with Buckingham, and the result was
that a few weeks later he was called upon by the king
to discharge a duty of much delicacy and difficulty.

2. This was to preach a sermon at St. Paul's, which
should be a defence of His Majesty's Instructions to
Preachers recently issued by authority, and which had
proved by no means acceptable to a large section of
the clergy and their congregations.

For some years before this a movement had been
going on at Oxford, which was slowly effecting a
reaction against the hitherto dominant Calvinism of

THE DEAN 147

the Puritan clergy. The consecration of Laud to the
Bishopric of St. Asaph, on the 18th November 1621,
had been regarded as a great encouragement to his
friends, but it had provoked into most unseemly
language many of the more violent of his opponents.
There was great excitement up and down the country,
and the preachers hurled defiance against those with
whom they were at variance. James i., as usual,
believing that he could settle anything by issuing a
proclamation or an order, put forth certain " instruc-
tions" to the preachers, which read as if the king
intended to restrict the liberty of speech hitherto
allowed to the pulpit, and seemed to foreshadow the
silencing of one of the two Church parties by the
other in the near future. As mere advice, no
exception could be taken to the words of these
instructions, " but, coming as they did, as an attempt
to enforce silence on the great questions of the day,
they only served to embitter the quarrel which they
were meant to calm." ^

As might have been expected, the popular excite-
ment increased; and the king, thinking to allay it
among the Londoners by appointing so popular a
preacher as the new dean to explain the meaning and
intention of the Instructions, ordered Donne to preach
at St. Paul's Cross on the 14th September, and act as
his spokesman and interpreter to the people. There
was an immense crowd, — '' as large a congregation as
I ever saw," writes Donne, — but the effect of the
sermon appears to have been not at all as great as
was looked for. Indeed, it is but a poor specimen of

^ S. B. Gardiner, PHtiu Charles and the S;pamsh Marria^f ch. x,
p. 233.

148 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

pulpit oratory ; it is an apology carefully drawn up,
but cold and passionless. There is, however, one
curious passage which deserves quoting, as illustrative
of the habits of the Londoners at this time, and of
their passion for the study of Holy Scripture, which
extended even to the working-classes. Speaking of
the great necessity there was for the people to be
taught the Catechism, and to be instructed in the
elements of Christian doctrine, Donne says, " If you
should tell some men that Calvin's Institution were a
catechism, would they not love catechising the better
for that name ? "

The sermon was immediately published "by
commandment of His Majesty,'* with an epistle
dedicatory addressed to Villiers, now High Admiral
and Marquis of Buckingham. I do not think it met
with any large sale, and there is no sign that a second
edition was ever called for.

3. A very different sermon was that which Donne
preached two months later before the Virginia
Company, in which he himself was an adventurer, or
shareholder, and indeed was one of the counciL

This sermon may, with truth, be called the first
missionary sermon ever preached in England since
Britain had become a Christian land. The Virginia
Company had been started in 1610 by a large
number of the nobility, gentry, London merchants,
and clergy, partly as a commercial and partly as a
philanthropical and missionary undertaking on a very
ambitious scale. It had proved, during its first ten
years, an unsuccessful speculation, and its affairs had
been grossly mismanaged. About 1620, things had
come to such a pass that the Company were divided

THE DEAN 149

into two parties, who were quarrelling violently ; and
when the saintly Nicholas Ferrar, as executor to his
father, was called on to administer to the old
merchant's estate, he appears to have found it
necessary to look very closely into the accounts of
the Company, of which the elder Mr. Ferrar had
been one of the founders and a large shareholder.

The history of the Virginia Company has not yet
been written, and the materials for writing that history
have only recently been made available for research.
It looks, however, as if Nicholas Ferrar and his
enthusiastic friends were trying to bring the religious
and missionary element into far greater prominence
than had been done even from the beginning ; and it
is not unlikely that the hope of utilising the resources
of the Company, for bringing about the conversion of
the Indians to Christianity, was the strong motive
which urged Nicholas Ferrar to take so active a part
in the attempt to put the finances upon a safe basis.
In 1622 Lord Southampton, Shakespeare's early
friend and patron, was chosen treasurer, and Nicholas
Ferrar deputy. It must have been at their invitation
that Donne was invited to preach before the Company,
and to impress upon the adventurers, who included
among them a large number of bishops, clergy, and
devout laity, an appeal from the missionary point
of view which would be likely to produce a great
efifect. Unfortunately, some months earlier, the
dreadful tidings had arrived that the Indians in the
colony had risen and massacred some six hundred
of the settlers, and since then the outlook had not
been very reassuring. The occasion did not seem
favourable for advocating the duty of proselytising.

160 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

yet Donne kept to his point with consummate skill,
and pleaded his cause with a lofty earnestness and
eloquence^ such as even he has seldom surpassed.
Some of those he addresses were seeking, he says,
" to establish such a government as should not depend
upon this." Some "propose to themselves an ex-
emption from laws — to live at liberty ; some present
benefit and profit, a sudden way to be rich, and an
abundance of all desirable commodities from thence.
. . . All these are not yet in the right way. O if
you could once bring a catechism to be as good ware
amongst them as a bugle, as a knife, as a hatchet ; O
if you would be as ready to hearken at the return of
a ship how many Indians were converted to Christ
Jesus, as what trees, or drugs, or dyes that ship
brought, then you were in your right way, and not
till then ; liberty and abundance are characteristic of
kingdoms, and a kingdom is excluded in the text ; the
apostles were not to look for it in their emplojrment,
nor you in this plantation." . . .

" Beloved," he adds, " use godly means, and give God
His leisure. You cannot sow your com to-day, and say
it shall be above ground to-morrow. . . . All that you
would have by this plantation, you shall not have ; God
binds not Himself to measures. All that you shall have,
you have not yet; God binds not Himself to times. But
something you shall have. Nay! you have already
some great things. . . . The gospel must be preached
to those men to whom ye send. . . . Preach to them
doctrinally. Preach to them practically. Examine
them with your justice (as far as consists with your
security), your civility; but influence them with your

^ The text of the sermon was Acts i. 8.

THE DEAN 161

godliness and your religion. . . . Those amongst you
that are old now shall pass out of this world with this
great comfort, that you contributed to the beginning of
that commonwealth and that Church, though they live
not to see the growth thereof to perfection. And you
that are young now, may live to see the enemy as
much impeached by that place, and your friends — yea
children — as well accommodated in that place as any
other. You shall have made this island, which is but
as the suburbs of the old world, a bridge, a gallery to
the new, to join all to that world that shall never grow
old — the kingdom of heaven, and add names to the
books of our chronicles, and to the Book of life."

The sermon was immediately published. It had a
very large sale, and contributed greatly to increase
Donne's popularity.

Early in the year another piece of preferment had
fallen to him — the valuable rectory of Blunham in
Bedfordshire, which had been promised him some years
previously by Charles Grey, Earl of Kent. He held
this living with his deanery till his death, and occasion-
ally went down there, but never appears to have
resided for more than a few weeks at a time. When
the year 1622 came to an end, Donne must have been
in the enjoyment of a considerable income, and he was
freed from all anxieties about providing for his family.
His eldest son, John, had just passed out of West-
minster School and been elected to a studentship at
Christ Church, Oxford, and the hand of his daughter
Constance had already been sought in marriage,
though the match did not come off. He himself
never seems to have wished for any higher Church
preferment than that which he enjoyed; but there

162 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

must have been many who expected that he would
be moved to the Episcopate. Happily, he died Dean
of St. Paul's: if he had gone up higher we should
hardly have known him as we do, as the greatest
preacher of his time.

CHAPTER VII

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S

The year 1623 is a somewhat memorable one in our
annals. On the 19 th of February Prince Charles,
accompanied by Buckingham, and with no more than
three attendants, crossed the Channel on the famous
journey to Spain, to bring back, if it might be so, the
Infanta Maria, sister of Philip iv., as the prince's bride
and the future Queen of England. It was a mad
adventure ; but it had its very serious aspects. The
Infanta was the granddaughter of Philip IL, consort of our
own Queen Mary, who, in the firm belief of the people
of England,had been the chief instigator of the execrated
Marian persecutions. The Infanta was a devout, even
a bigoted member of the Roman communion ; and that
such a princess should become the wife of the heir
to the English throne, and mother of his children, was
a dreadful and hateful thought to the great bulk of the
nation. The news that the Prince of Wales had
actually slipped away and put himself into the power
of those whom the Puritan zealots unhesitatingly
believed to be capable of any treachery, created an
outburst of alarm and dismay such as had not been
known since the days of the Armada. Nor was the
widespread feeling of anxiety groundless.

Though James i. was only in his fifty-seventh year,

158

164 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

he had been for some time in bad health, and was
frequently ailing. Parliament had been dissolved for
more than a year, and the king had let it be known
that he would not again summon the great council of
the nation. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot)
was in disgrace, and, when consulted, took up a
position of antagonism to the Spanish marriage. The
religious dissensions among the clergy and their
several adherents were acute and increasing in
acrimony. Trade and commerce indeed were flourish-
ing, but there was deep discontent among the rising
middle classes, who were sullenly chafing under
grievances, which they were determined should be
redressed some day; and while these elements of
discord were fermenting below the surface, James i.,
grown more and more indolent, undecided, and pro-
crastinating as he had grown older, was left in a
position of strange isolation. His consort. Queen
Anne, had been dead just four years (2nd March 1619).
Of the seven d^dren she had borne him only two
survived her./*Wrince Charles had just put himself
in the power W the hated Spaniards, and his sister,
the so-called Queen of Bohemia, was living with her
children in banishment. There was no one in Britain
nearer by blood to the king than his distant cousin,
Ludovic Stuart, Duke of Lennox, in the peerage of
Scotland.^ As to who had the best title to the
crown, next in succession to the kiog's grandchildren,
no one seemed to know, and certainly no one was
audacious enough to assert his claim. The king

^ He was created Duke of Richmond, in the peerage of England,
17th May 1622, possibly to assure him precedence over any others of
the nobility who claimed to be of the blood royal.

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 166

stood alone. Of such festivities and amusements as
had been continual in former years we hear almost
nothing. Over the court a gloom was hanging. Only
twice do we hear of Donne being called upon during this
year to preach any special sermons, viz., on the 25th
April, when the new chapel of Lincoln's Inn (of
which he had himself laid the foundation stone five
years before) was consecrated; and on the 23rd of
October, when a great feast was held in the Temple,
on occasion of fifteen sergeants being admitted to the
degree of the Coif. The sermon was delivered at St.
Paul's in the evening. It came at the end of a very
long day. The rain was falling in torrents — the new
sergeants and their friends "went dabbling on foot
and bareheaded," and how the congregation listened
to the preacher we are not told. But the great
" Sergeants' Feast " was nearly fatal to Donne him-
self: shortly afterwards he was struck down by a
very serious illness, which appears to have been of a
typhoid character, and for some weeks he was in such
great danger that little hope was entertained of his
recovery. The king sent his own physician to consult
with others on his case, but it was not till the 20 th
December that hopes began to be entertained of his
recovery. During all these six or eight weeks of
very serious illness, when he was hovering between
lite and death, Donne seems to have kept a kind of
diary, in which he wrote down thoughts that suggested
themselves to him from day to day. He was still
confined to his sickroom when he employed himself
in revising these meditations. Eeading was for-
bidden him by his physicians, though they did not
order him to cLe from writing, judghig it prudent to

166 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

allow him this one indulgence, perhaps because his
wonderfully active intellect could not safely be left
without some opportunity of exercising itself. Here-
upon he determined to prepare for the press that
unique volume, which he entitled Devotions upon
Emergent Occasions, and Several Steps in my Sickness.
The following letter to Sir Eobert Carr shows that
the first issue was printed privately for distribution
among his friends. It was dedicated to Prince
Charles, and was sent out very early in 1624: —

" Though I have left my bed, I have not left my
bedside. I sit there still, and as a prisoner dis-
charged sits at the prison door, to beg fees, so sit I
here to gather crumbs. I have used this leisure to
put the meditations, had in my sickness, into some
such order as may minister some holy delight. They
arise to so many sheets (perchance twenty) as that,
without staying for that furniture of an epistle that
my friends importuned me to print them, I importune
my friends to receive them printed. That, being in
hand, through this long trunk, that reaches from St.
Paul's to St. James's, I whisper into your ear this
question, whether there be any uncomeliness or un-
seasonableness in presenting matter of devotion or
mortification to that prince, whom I pray God nothing
may ever mortify, but holiness. If you allow my
purposes in general, I pray cast your eye upon the
title and the epistle, and rectify me in them ; I submit
substance and circumstance to you, and the poor
author of both.

" Your very humble and very thankful servant in
Christ Jesus,

" J. Donne."

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 167

Of this first edition I have never seen a copy, but
so great was the demand for the book that it became
necessary to publish a second edition almost immedi-
ately after the first ; a third edition was called for
in 1626, and others followed. The Devotions were
printed in a little 12mo volume of 589 pages.
Donne, in a letter to a friend whose name has
not come down to us, gives the following character-
istic account of the method and plan of the
work : —

" My Lord, — To make myself believe that our life
is something, I use in my thoughts to compare it to
something, if it be like anything that is something.
It is like a sentence, so much as may be uttered in a
breathiuff, and such a difference as is in styles is in
our livef contracted and dUated. And as in some
styles there are open parentheses, sentences within
sentences, so there are lives within our lives. I am
in such a parenthesis now (in a convalesence), when I
thought myself very near my period. God brought
me into a low valley, and from thence showed me a
high Jerusalem, upon so high a hill as that He
thought it fit to bid me stay and gather more breath.
This I do by meditating, by expostulating, by praying,
for since I am. barred of my ordinary diet, which is
reading, I make these my exercises, which is another
part of physic. And these meditations and expostula-
tions and prayers I am bold to send to your lordship,
that, as this which I live now is a kind of a second
life, I may deliver myself over to your lordship in
this lite with the same affection and devotion as made
me yours in aU my former life, and as long as any

168 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

image of this world sticks in my soul, shall ever
remain in your lordship's," etc.

I have called Donne's Devotions a unique work, for
it is unique in the circumstances under which it was
composed, and not less so in the matter and style of
the composition itself. It is difficult to understand
how it should ever have been as popular as it un-
doubtedly was, and it is hardly less difficult to explain
how it has continued to exercise a strong fascination
over men of very various orders of mind — men of
fastidious taste, who might have been expected to be
ofifended by the ruggedness of the style, and men of
deeply devout temperament, who, one would have
thought, would be shocked by what \I can only call
the religious familiarity which sometimes approaches
to a grotesque profaneness of language, y

There is, indeed, a certain interest m following the
daily course of the patient's illness and its treatment
by the physicians, from what Donne calls " the firjt
grudging of my sickness till the recovery had been
assured,*' and they had taken their leave of him with a
warning " of the fearful danger of relapsing." That he
should have lived through the severity of the attack
and the drastic treatment prescribed is wonderful, but
that during all that time of dangerous illness he should
have continued to take notes and write them down,
and that when he had only just been allowed to sit
up in his bed those notes should have been in such a
form as allowed of their beiug prepared for the press,
is more wonderful still.

For every day there is (1) a meditation aioiU God
and His dealings with His servant ; (2) an expostula-

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 159

tion with God — a kind of protest as if he would
know why his Heavenly Father was thus dealing with
him ; and (3) a prayer to God — a supreme oflfering of
submission and aspiration, of adoring hope and trust and
love. But all these outpourings are, in some strange
way, at least as much the outpourings of the sanctified
intellect q& of the heart, and they are expressed in
language often hard to follow. The thoughts are
packed and crowded into sentences sometimes so
confused and entangled that they seem to be stagger-
ing under the weight they have to carry ; or, to change
the metaphor, it is as iE some craftsmen were weaving
a hundred threads at once, some fine as gossamer,
some coarse as vulgarest tow, till the roughness of the
texture almost concealed the pattern on the cloth.
We are apt to be irritated by the continual demand
upon our close attention, and are impatient of the
occasional obscurity, but Donne's contemporaries cared
less for a transparent style than for the thoughts that
the language was meant to express, and which some-
times was half concealed by verbiage. That which
did appeal to his contemporaries in the Devotions was
the intense reality of absorbing and entire trust in the
nearness of God, which the book exhibits in every
page. Donne " throws himself on God, and unperplext "
speaks to Him as a man might to his dearest friend,
who knew all his secrets, and loved him with a divine
love that would spare him all reproaches) Hence
there is no morbid dwelling on sins in the past long
since forgiven ; no details of self -accusation in the
presence of the Holy One, who is of purer eyes than
to behold iniquity ; only a brave confidence in the
Father of Mercies, whose gracious Spirit had wrought

160 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

a great work in His servant's heart, and would not
leave him even to the end. And all this is what
makes this book to many, even now, a stay and support
in hours when the devotional instinct in the hunger of
the soul calls for strong meat, and not mere milk for
babes.

Extracts or quotations from the Devotions will leave
a very inadequate impression upon the reader of the
scope and tone of the work, but the following prayer,
which represents the patient's attitude of supplication
on the fifth day, when " the physician comes," may
serve as a specimen of these pleadings with God :—

" eternal and most gracious Lord, who calledst
down fire from heaven upon the sinful cities, but once,
and openedst the earth to swaUow the murmurers,
but once, and threwest down the Tower of Siloe upon
sinners, but once, but for Thy works of mercy repeatest
them often, and still workest by Thine own patterns,
as Thou broughtest man into this world, by giving
him a helper fit for him here, so whether it be Thy
will to continue me long thus, or to dismiss me by
death, be pleased to afford me the helps fit for both
conditions, either for my weak stay here or my final
transmigration from hence. And if Thou mayest
receive glory by that way (and by all ways. Thou
mayest receive glory), glorify Thyself in preserving
this body from such infections as might withhold
those who would come, or endanger them who do
come, and preserve this soul in the faculties thereof
from all such distempers, as might shake the assur-
ance which myself and others have had, that because
Thou hast loved me. Thou wouldst love me to my
end and at my end. Open none of my doors, not of

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 161

my heart, not of mine ears, not of my house, to any
supplanter that would enter to undermine me in my
religion to Thee in the time of my weakness, or to
defame me and magnify himself with false rumours
of such a victory, and surprisal of me after I am
dead. Be my salvation, and plead my salvation:
work it and declare it, and as Thy triumphant shall
be, so let the militant Church be assured that Thou
wast my God, and I Thy servant, to, and in my
consummation. Bless Thou the learning and the
labour of this man, whom Thou sendest to assist me ;
and since Thou takest me by the hand and puttest
me into his hands (for I come to him in Thy name,
who in Thy name comes to me), since I clog not my
hopes in him, no, nor my prayers to Thee, with any
limited conditions, but enwrap all in those two
petitions. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done,
prosper him, and relieve me in Thy way, in Thy time,
and in Thy measure. Amen."

While Donne was still lying in great peril of his
life, his daughter Constance was married to Edward
Allen, the founder of Dulwich College, the bride
being in her twentieth, her husband in his fifty-eighth
year, i,e, seven years older than her father. The
marriage had been arranged some two months before,
and was celebrated at Camberwell on the 3rd
December 1623, from the house of her uncle. Sir
Thomas Grymes, who, as has been mentioned, had
married Margaret, second daughter of Sir George
More of Losely. Parliament assembled on the
18th February 1624, and Convocation was, as a
matter of course, called together at the same time,
Donne was appointed Prolocutor of the Lower House,
II

162 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

much against his own wishes. In his opening
address to the House, he declares that he had done
his utmost to escape a burden which his state of
health evidently showed he was unable to support,
but that it had been forced upon him at very short
notice, and he had so little expected it that he
hardly knew what his duties as Prolocutor were, or
what was expected of him.

A fortnight later he received his last piece of
preferment. This was the Vicarage of St. Dunstan's
in the West, which had been promised him some years
before by Eichard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, one of
the most munificent patrons of poets and men of
letters in that munificent aga

• . • • • • ■

St. Dunstan's had been held for fifty years by Dr.
Thomas White, who had come up to London shortly
after taking his degree at Oxford, and been presented
to St. Dunstan's in 1575, ix, two years after Donne
was born. Here he attracted the notice of Bishop
Aylmer by his eloquence as a preacher, and in the
year of the Armada he became Prebend of Mora in
St. Paul's Cathedral. During the next five years
he was promoted in rapid succession to the Chancellor-
ship of Salisbury, to a Canonry at Christ Church,
Oxford, and to another in the Chapel Eoyal at
Windsor. All these preferments he held till his
death, on the 1st of March 1624, and it must be
admitted that he made a good use of the wealth he
acquired. Besides building and endowing almshouses
at Bristol, where he was born, he founded Sion College
in his lifetime, and the Professorship of Moral Philo-
sophy at Oxford, which still bears his name, and he

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 163

provided for the endowment of a Lectureship at St.
Dunstan's, the lecturer being required to preach
every Sunday and Thursday afternoon.

From its proximity to the Temple and the lawyers'
quarter, and within a short walk of most of the great
housed of the nobility, St. Dunstan's could not fail to
be a very important cure for any man of earnestness
and more than ordinary gifts as a preacher ; it had
been for long what is now called a fasMoTvable church,
and Donne felt the responsibility which was laid
upon him. The income was not large, but it was
not so inconsiderable as might be inferred from a
passage in one of his letters, where he says, " I make
not a shilling profit of St. Dunstan's as a churchman,"
meaning that, after payment of all outgoings and the
stipend of his curate, there was nothing left out of
the vicarial tithes. As to the rectorial tithes, of these
he held a lease from the Earl of Dorset at a rent
which apparently was higher than it should have
been. It is abundantly clear that Donne accepted
the living of St. Dunstan's from no mercenary motive.
He seems to have had a desire to bring himself into
closer personal relations with his congregation than
was possible at St. Paul's. There he had nothing
that could be strictly called a cure of souls. The
"statutable sermons" preached in the Cathedral
brought him no nearer to the people who came to
listen ; there was a gulf between him and them — ^he
was not their pastor, and they were not his flock.
At St. Dunstan's all this was changed. Though
continuing, of course, to reside at the deanery, he
appears to have given up the vicarage-house to his
lecturer as curate ; this was Matthew GriflBth, a young

164

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

man who had but recently taken hia M.A. d^ree i
Oxford, and for whom he is said to have entertained
a warm regard. Mr. Griffith Buffered for his loyalty
during the Commonwealth days ; he became eventually
Preacher at the Temple, and held one of the City livings
in the gift of the Dean and Chapter, from which ha
was ejected as a Eoyaliat in 1642. At the Restonb^
tion he recovered his benefice, and died there in 1665.
Donne preached hie first sermon at St. Dunstan's on
^ the 11th April, and chose aa hia text Deut. xxv. 5 :
" If hrethren dwell together, and one of them die, a?ul
leave no child, the wife of the dead shall -iwt marrg
witliout unto a stranger : her husband's brother shall i,
in unto her, ami take her to him to wife, and perfor
duty of the husband's brother to her."

The sermon is a kind of manifesto setting forth tb^
preacher's view of the reciprocal duties of the pastoi;
and his flock. It was evidently composed with great
care, and is expressed in language almost homely in
its simplicity, very unlike the ordinary style o(
Donne's most studied sermons delivered on important
occasions. " From these words," he says, " we shall
make our approaches and appHcation to the presenb
occasion. . . . Tirst, there is a marriage in the case—
the taking and leaving the Church is not an indifferent,
un arbitrary thing ; it is a marriage, and marriage
implies honour ; it is an honourable estate, and that
implies charge ; it is a burdensome state — there is
hoDour and labour in marriage. Youmust be content J
to afford the honour, we must be content to endurel
the labour, ... It is a marriage after the death i
another. ... It must be a brother, a spiritual broth^
■ — a professor of the same faith — that succeeds in tbi$

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN*S 166

marriage, in this possession, and this government of
that widow Church. . . . And then, being thus
married to this widow — taking the charge of this
Church — he must * perform the duty of. a husband's
brother.' He must — it is a personal service, not to be
done always by proxy and delegates ; he must, and he
must perform — not begin well and not persist, com-
mence and not consummate ; but perform the work — as
it is a duty. ... It is a duty in us to do that we
are sent for, by His word and His sacraments to
establish you in His holy obedience and His rich and
honourable service, . . . and that the true right of
people and pastor and patron be preserved, to the
preservation of love and peace and good opinion of one
another."

In the course of the sermon all these points are
dwelt on, and he ends by emphasising and recapitu-
lating what he had said. " If the pastor love, there
will be a double labour ; if the people love, there will
be double respect. For where the congregation loves
the pastor, he will forbear bitter reproofs and wounding
increpations, and where the pastor loves his congrega-
tion, his rebukes, because they proceed out of love, will
be acceptable and well interpreted by them, . . . that
love being the root of all, the fruit of all may be peace ;
love being the soul of all, the body of all may be
unity, which the Lord of unity and concord grant to
us all for His Son Jesus Christ's sake."

Such was Donne's manifesto when he preached for
the first time in St. Dunstan's pulpit ; it was a noble
setting forth of a high ideal, which for the remaining
seven years of his life he strove with all his heart to
carry out, and in doing so be found his reward.

lee LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

The fact that no more than five or six sermons
preached at St. Dunstan's are to be found among
Donne's printed works ^ goes far to prove that his
usual practice in that church was to trust to such
notes as he had prepared beforehand. In preaching
at court, or on the important occasions when he was
called upon to speak with authority, and when every
word had to be weighed lest any word should be mis-
understood or misinterpreted, he doubtless committed
the sermon to memory, according to the almost uni-
versal custom of the tune ; and of such sermons we
may assume that we have the ipsisdma verba of the
preacher, who was liable to be called to account for
them, and sometimes to produce the manuscript, which
might be used against him ; indeed this happened once
to Donne himself, as we shall see a little later on.

Not many months before Donne's becoming Vicar of
St. Dunstan's, Izaak Walton had married his first
wife, and settled as a tradesman in the parish. He
was then in his thirty-first year, and he occupied a
house on the north side of Fleet Street, two doors to
the west of Chancery Lane.^

A close intimacy sprang up between the gentle
angler and Donne. On the one side there was an
almost idolatrous reverence and admiration ; on the
other a generous esteem and afifection. From this time
Walton's life of his friend and pastor is much more
to be trusted than the earlier portion, where many

^ In the first folio there are eighty sermons ; in the second, fifty ; in
the third, twenty-five ; to these must be added five others (including
that at the funeral of Lady Danvers), published during Donne's life-
time, four of which have never been reprinted.

^ There is an engraving of Nash's drawing of Walton's house in
Zouch's Life of Walton, p. 4, 12mo, 1828.

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 167

errors of detail are to be found which modern
research has corrected ; and Walton's account of
Donne's habits and of his inner life and character
(which became increasingly softened and sanctified
during his declining years) gives us a picture such as
no other writer in the English language has put into
words. Walton's life of Donne is the masterpiece of
biographical literature. It is curious to note how, in
the latter portion of this inimitable sketch of his great
friend, Walton seems to think of him much less as
Dean of St. Paul's than as the honoured Vicar of St.
Dunstan's, and how he represents him from the day
when he entered upon his new vocation of parish
priest as becoming more and more absorbed in that,
as though the claims which St. Paul's had upon him
were regarded as ofiicial duties indeed, but such as
were of secondary importance as compared with those
more personal calls upon him which his parish and his
parishioners claimed at his hands. Indeed, from this
time Donne retired more and more from the old
world in which for the last twenty years he had been
such a conspicuous figure, and he rarely attended the
court except on those occtisions when he was summoned
to preach in his turn as one of the king's chaplains ;
and though the long and close friendships which he had
formed with many of the nobiUty still brought him
necessarily into frequent intercourse with some of the
greatest people in the land, — by whom, as by the
members of their families, he was regarded as one
worthy of special confidence and true regard, — yet the
tone of his letters is different from that of his earlier
correspondence; there is little of mere court gossip
and laboured compliments, the old frivolity has died

168 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

out, and the old anxiety about the future. The world
had not treated him badly. God had been very
gracious to him. The work that he had to do he
loved to perform. Eiches, he knew — and had again
and again proclaimed it — were as often as not a snare.
He aimed at nothing higher than he had attained to ;
he asked for no more than had been bestowed.

" The latter part of his life," says Walton, " may be
said to be a continual study ; for as he usually preached
once a week, if not oftener, so after his sermon he
never gave his eyes rest till he had chosen out a new
text, and that night cast his sermon into a form, and
his text into divisions ; and the next day betook him-
self to consult the fathers and so commit his medita-
tions to his memory, which was excellent. But upon
Saturday he usually gave himself and his mind a rest
from the weary burden of his week's meditations, and
usually spent that day in visitation of friends, or some
other diversions of his thoughts, and would say that
he gave both his body and mind that refreshment that
he might be enabled to do the work of the day follow-
ing, not faintly, but with courage and cheerfulness."
• ••..•

When Donne entered upon his ministry at St.
Dunstan's the reign of James I. was drawing to a
close, and Prince Charles had returned to England.
When Lord Bristol took his leave of Philip IV. on
28th January 1624, the long-protracted negotiations
concerned with the Spanish marriage practically
came to an end. James was compelled to assemble
Parliament once more; and on the 23rd of March,
in deference to the strong feeling expressed in the
House of Commons, the king declared the treaties

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 169

dissolved. Meanwhile, the feeling in the country at
large against the popish recusants and the Eoman
propagandists was waxing stronger and stronger. To
tolerate them or their tenets was denounced as
abominable. Yet the Prince of Wales was still
unmarried, and it was obviously desirable that a
consort for him should be provided without delay.
On the 17th May, Hay, Earl of Carlisle, was sent
to France to negotiate a treaty of marriage with
Henrietta Maria ; and, as before, the great difficulty
that presented itself was the question of how the
English Catholics were to be treated in the future.
Certain concessions were made which were very
distasteful to the people, and especially to the
Puritans, and it is possible that, among other
sufficient reasons, the desire to avoid the discussion
of the subject in the House of Commons may have
suggested successive prorogations of Parliament from
the 29 th May till its final reassembling on the 19 th
February 1625. The treaty for the marriage of
Prince Charles to Henrietta Maria had been pre-
viously ratified by James i. on the 12 th December
1624, though nearly five months passed before it was
actually carried into efiect.

That spring was a very sickly season, and among
others of the nobility who succumbed was the
Marquis of Hamilton, who on the 2nd March died
at Whitehall of what is called " a malignant fever,"
and which was probably either typhus, or perhaps
the dreaded plague, which a month later began its
frightful ravages in London. Chamberlain speaks of
Hamilton as " the flower of that nation " (Scotland),
and " the gallantest gentleman of both nations." He

170 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

was little more than thirty-five years of age, and a
man of great ability and promise. His death was a
painful shock to the king, and some days after it
occurred Sir Robert Carr wrote to Donne asking him
to write a poem upon the occasion. He could hardly
refuse, and he sent the foUowing letter in reply :-

" Sir, — I presume you rather try what you can do
in me, than what I can do in verse : you know my
uttermost when it was best, and even then I did best
when I had least truth for my subjects. In this
present case there is so much truth as it defeats
all poetry. Call, therefore, this paper by what
name you will, and if it be not worthy of him,
nor of you, nor of me, smother it, and be that the
sacrifice. If you had commanded me to have waited
on his body in Scotland and preached there, I would
have embraced the obligation with more alacrity.
But I thank you, that you would command to do
that which I was loth to do, for even that hath
given a tincture of merit to the obedience of

" Your poor friend and servant in Christ Jesus,

" J. DONNB."

Donne put his thoughts into the form of what
he calls "A Hymn to the Saints and to Marquis
Hamilton." It was at once circulated in manuscript,
but so strong was the prejudice at this time against
a divine stooping so low as to write poetry, that
Chamberlain, when forwarding a copy of "certain
verses of our Dean of Paul's upon the death of
the Marquis of Hamilton," adds, that " though they
be reasonable, witty, and weU done, yet I could wish

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 171

a man of his years and place to give over versifying."
One would have thought that the beautiful conclusion
of the poem might have protected the writer from
any word of disparagement —

"And if, fair soul, not with first Innocents
Thy station be, but with the PeniterUs,

When thou rememVrest what sins thou didst find
Amongst those many friends now left behind.
And seest such sinners as they are, with thee
Got thither by repentance, let it be
Thy wish to wish all there, to wish them clean;
Wish him a David, her a Magdalen."

A few days after Lord Hamilton's death the king
became alarmingly ill at Theobalds. The physicians
soon pronounced the symptoms very grave, and on
Sunday the 27th of the month he breathed his last;
Prince Charles, his successor, being at his side. The
new king was proclaimed the same day at Whitehall,
and immediately started for London, where he took up
his residence at St. James's Palace. Donne received
a command to preach in the chapel there next
Sunday, and the king attended, " his majesty looking
very pale, his visage being the true glass of his inward,
as well as his accoutrements of external mourning."

Donne chose his text from the 11th Psalm, ver. 3 :
" If the foundations he destroyed, whcU can the righteous
dot'* It was a noble, outspoken, and pathetic
sermon. It was not published till some months after
its delivery, and has never been reprinted, though it
deserves to be reckoned among the preacher's most
ingenious and splendid efforts. The body of James i.
was removed to Denmark House on the 4th ApriL

172 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

While it lay there in state Donne was again called
upon to preach in the chapel on the 27th April " to
the nobility," who composed the congregation.

A greater contrast than this beautiful sermon
offers to the fulsome and almost profane oration
which the Bishop of Lincoln (Williams) delivered at
Westminster Abbey, can hardly be imagined.

While the late king's body was lying unburied at
Denmark House, the plague " had once more settled
down upon the capital." Isolated cases had been
reported on the bills of mortality as early as February,
but from the third week in March they went on slowly
increasing in numbers week by week. Parliament
assembled on the 18th June, and continued sitting
till the 11th July. That week more than a thousand
deaths in eighty-two infected parishes of London were
attributed to the plague alone, and, the outlook being
serious, the House of Commons was adjourned till the
1st of August, when it was summoned to meet at
Oxford. But in London the pestilence increased its
area and its ravages. In the months of August and
September upwards of 26,000 poor wretches were
carried out to their horrible burial-places, and it is
stated that in the 119 parishes within and without
the walls and liberties of the city, during the year, at
least 41,313 fell victims to the awful visitation. In
the parish of Stepney alone there were nearly 500
plague deaths in a single week. The parish of St.
Dunstan's, though one of the smallest in the city,
suffered frightfully, and no less than 642 deaths are
recorded as having been caused by the plague during
this year in that little area, where in our own times
it is thought that a population of 1860 souls is

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 173

quite overcrowded. The adjournment of the House of
Commons was the signal for a general exodus from
London. By the middle of August the nobility, the
magistrates, and all who were rich enough to go away,
had left the city to take care of itself. " The magis-
trates in desperation," writes one, "have abandoned
every care: everyone does what he pleases, and the
houses of merchants who have left London are broken
into and robbed."

Dr. Meadows, Eector of St. Gabriel, Fenchurch
Street, who nobly stuck to his post, though a man no
longer young, writing on the 1st September, says :
" The want and misery is the greatest here that ever
any man living knew : no trading at all ; the rich all
gone ; housekeepers and apprentices of manual trades
begging in the streets, and that in such a lamentable
manner as will make the hearts of the strongest to
yearn." In one of Mead's news-letters, he tells how
" A gentleman who on Thursday was sennight came
through the city at one o'clock in the afternoon,
resembled the face thereof, at that time, to the ap-
pearance it useth to have at three o'clock in the
morning in the month of June: no more people
stirring, no more shops open. The citizens fled away
as out of a house on fire, and stufifed their pockets
with their best wares, and threw themselves into the
highways, and were not received so much as into
bams, and perished so; some of them with more
money about them than would have bought the
village where they died. A justice of the peace told
me of one that had died so with £1400 about him."

It is not to be wondered at if during that dreadful
autumn the churches were closed for lack of congrega-

174

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

tioDS ; and Donne appears to have remained in London
till the end of November, about which time the
pestilence was almost at its worse, and it is probable
that the report of hie death which was circulated
about this time originated in his having kept to his
post through the worst days of the contagiou, and the
fact that he had not been seen for many weeks in the
great houses of his noble friends gave credibility to
the rumour. In a letter of the 21at December
he gives the following account of himself and hia
movements : —

"Sib, — Our blessed Saviour, who abounds in power
and goodness towards us all, bless you, and your
family, with ble^ings proportioned to His ends in you
all, and bless you with the testimony of a rectified
conscience, of having discharged all the offices of a
father, towards your discreet and worthy daughters,
and bless them with a satisfaction, and quiescence, and
more, with a complacency and a joy, in good ends, and
ways towards them, Amen.

"Your man brought me your letter of the 8th of
December this 21at of the same, to Chelsea, and gives
me the largeness, till Friday to send a letter to Paul'a-
hoose. There can scarce be any piece of that, or
of those things whereof you require light from me,
that is not come to your knowledge, by some clearer
way, between the time of your letter and this. Be-
sides, the report of my death hath thus much of truth
in it, that though I be not dead, yet I am buried.
Within a few weeks after I immured myself in thia
house, the infection struck into the town, into so many
houses as that it became ill-manners to make any

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 175

visits. Therefore, I never went to Knoll,^ nor Han-
worth,* nor Keyston, nor to the court, since the court
came into these quarters, nor am yet come to London :
therefore I am little able to give you account of high
stages.* . . .

" Mr. George Herbert is here at the receipt of your
letter, and with his service to you, tells you that all of
Uvedall-house are well I reserve not the mention of
my Lady Huntingdon to the end of my letter, as grains
to make the gold weight, but as tincture to make the
better gold, when you find room to intrude so poor
and impertinent a name, as mine is, in her presence.
I beseech you let her ladyship know that she hath
sowed her favour towards me, in such a ground, that if
I be grown better (as I hope I am) her favours are
grown with me, and though they were great when she
conferred them, yet (if I mend every day) they
increase in me every day, and therefore every day
multiply my thankfulness towards her ladyship : say
what you will (if you like not this expression) that
may make her ladyship know that I shall never let
fall the memory, nor the just valuation of her noble
favours to me, nor leave them unrequited in my
exchequer, which is the blessings of God upon my
prayers. If I should write another sheet, I should be
able to serve your curiosity no more of dukes nor
lords nor courts, and this half line serves to tell you
that I am truly

" Your poor friend and humble servant in Christ
Jesus, J. Donne."

This letter was written from Lady Danvers' house,

^ Knole Park, Lord Dorset's honse. ' Hanworth, Lord Carlisle's.

176 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

where he was evidently staying; and another letter
from the same place, written somewhat earlier, gives
us some dreadful particulars of terror and demoralisa-
tion which the plague had caused among the Londoners.
So it was at St. Dunstan's, where the mortality
continued its ravages even after it had begim to abate
in larger parishes. As the winter drew on the plague
abated, and on the 15th January 1626 Donne
preached at St. Dunstan's on Ex. xii 30 : '^ For there
was not a house where there was not one dead" He
calls it " The first sermon after our dispersion by the
sickness." It was a pathetic and impressive sermon,
elaborate as usual, but admirably suited to the
occasion. It is one of the few sermons preached at
St. Dunstan's that Donne thought it advisable to
write out fully before delivering. He knew that on
such an occasion much would be expected from him,
and a sense of responsibility doubtless led him to
bestow upon it more than usual pains and careful
preparation. Twelve times at least, during 1626,
Donne was called upon to preach what he calls
" solemn sermons to great auditories at Paul's and at
court." All save one are to be found in the folios or
the collected edition of his works.

One has somehow escaped notice. It was
preached before Charles i. at Whitehall, and was
immediately published by command of the king. The
text^ (Isa. 1. 1) was a strange one, and gave very
little promise of what was coming : the sermon was a

^ " Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother* s divorce'
mentf whom I have put away ? Or which of my creditors is it to whom
I have sold you f Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves^
and for your trans^ressiom is your mother pv^ away,'*

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 177

vehement denunciation of the hateful doctrine of
Beprobation, which some of the extreme Calvinists
were talking much about at this time, and which
Donne abhorred and frequently lifted up his voice
against. As the sermon is a very characteristic one
and is very little known, I venture to dwell upon it
here at some length. " In this text," he says, " there
are two parts : God's discharge from all imputation
of tyranny, and man's discharge from all necessity of
perishing." The mother is the Churchy and God's
putting away of tKis^Tnoth^f is the leaving her to her-
self. " That Church which now enjoys so abundantly
Truth and Unity may be perished with heresy and
wounded with schism, and yet God be free from all
imputation of tyranny. . . . 'Tis true there may be a
selling, there may be a putting away, but hath not
God reserved to Himself a power of revocation in both
— in all cases ?

" Where is the bill of thy mother's divorcement —
Ubi libellus ? Where is this bill ? Upon what do ye
ground this jealousy and suspicion in God that He
should divorce you ? It must be God's whole book,
and not a few misunderstood sentences out of that
book, that must try thee. . . . Those bills of divorce-
ment were to be authentically sealed — Ubi iste libellus ?
Hath thy imaginary bill of divorce and everlasting
separation from God any seal from Him ? God hath
given thee seals of His mercy in both His sacraments,
but seals of reprobation at first, or of irrevocable
separation now, there are none from God. . . . No
calamity — not temporal ; no ! not spiritual. No dark-
ness in the understanding, no scruple in the conscience,
no perplexity in the resolution. Not a sudden death,

12

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Qot a shameful death, not a stupid, not a raging deatJi
must be to thyself bj the way, or may be to nq
who may see thine end, an evidence, a seal of eternal
reprobation or of final separation. ... If the bill
were interlined or blotted or dropt, the bill
void — Ubilibellits? What place of Scripture soever
thou pretend, that place ia interlined — interlined by
the Spirit of God Himaelf with conditions and liraita->
tions and provisions, — ' If thou return,' ' if thon
repent," — and that interlining destroys the hill And
canst thou think that that God who married thee i
the hotise of dmt, and married thee in the house c
infirmity, and divorced thee not then (He made the*
not no creature, nor He mado thee not no man),
having now married thee in the house of power, aiM
of peace, in the body of His Sod, the Church, will now
divorce thee ? Lastly, to end this consideration
divorces, if the bill were interlined or blotted
dropt, the bill was void — Vii libdlus? WhsA
place of Scripture soever thou pretend, that pla«
is interlined — interlined by the Spirit of God HimseU
with conditions and limitations and provisions,—
thou repent, if thou retm-n,' — and that interlining
destroys the bill

" Look also if this bill be not dropt upon anj
blotted ; the venom of the serpent ia dropt upoii
it, the wormwood of thy desperation is dropt upon
it, the gall of thy melancholy is dropt upon it ; and
that voids the bill. If thou canst not discern these
drops before, drop upon It now ; drop the tears of true
compunction, drop the blood of thy Saviour ; and that
voids the bill ; and through that spectacle, the blood
of thy Saviour, look upon that bill, and thou shalt

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 179

see that that bill was nailed to the cross when He
was nailed, and torn when His body was torn ; and
that hath cancelled the bilL"

Another sermon of Donne's during this year was
that which he preached at the funeral of Sir William
Cokayne, who was buried in St. Paul's on the 12th of
December. Sir William was a London merchant who
had accumulated an enormous fortune, and was one of
the richest men in England. His lady was Mary,
daughter of Eichard Morris, who had been Master of
the Ironmongers' Company in 1588, i.e. fourteen years
before Donne's father had served the same honourable
office. Her ladyship and Donne were born in the
same year. In childhood they must have been
playmates, for their respective homes were hardly more
than a bow-shot apart ; but whether anything in their
later lives had brought them together again we are not
told. What we do know is that during Donne's last
years, and when the hand of death was upon him, he
was corresponding on very close and afifectionate terms
with the forsaken wife of the eccentric Thomas
Cokayne and mother of Sir Aston Cokayne, the poet ;
but there is nothing to show that there were any very
cordial relations between these Cokaynes and the far
more prosperous branch of the same family. In
preaching Sir William Cokayne's funeral sermon
Donne speaks of him as a personal friend. He chose
for his text John xi 21 : ** Lord, if Thou hadst been
here, my brother had not died** The sermon is a very
interesting one for the little incidents which it gives
us in the life of the dead man which are illustrative
of the manners of the time ; and one passage indicates
that the choir of St. Paul's had continued to be

ISO

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

reserved Cor the prebendaries and clergy excluaivel;
long after the cliangeB brought about by Henry ■v
Speaking o£ the dignified and devout bearing of t
City magnates dming their attendance at the cathedra
Donne eaye : " And truly , . . that reverence thaC
they use in this place, when they come hither, is that
that makes ua who have now the administration i
this choir, glad, that our predecessors, hid a veiy feu
years he/ore our time (mid tiot irfore i
admitted tliese honourable arid worshipful jiersons of t/v
city to sit in this choir, so as tliey do upon Sundays ;
Church receives an honour in it ; but the honoor i
more in their reverence than in their presence."

The two points upon which Donne dwells
eloquently in this sermon are — " First, that there i
nothing in this world perfect, and then that, such i
it is, there la nothing constant, nothing
. . . What one thing do we know perfectly ?
all knowledge ia rather like a child that is embalme
to make a mummy, than that that is ni
a man ; i-ather conserved in the stature of the first ag^
than grown to be greater ; and if there be anj
addition to knowledge, it ia rather a new knowledg(
th!in a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in
desire of proposing something that was not known i
all before, than an improving, an advancing, a multiply;
ing of former inceptions ; and by that means n
knowledge comes to be perfect. . . .

" But when we consider with a religious serionsnen
the manifold weaknesses of the strongest devotion
in time of prayer, it is a sad consideration. I throi
myself down in my chamber, and I call in and ioyit
God and His angels thither ; and when they are then

DONNE AT ST. DUNSTAN'S 181

I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly,
for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door ;
I talk on, in the same posture of prayer ; eyes lifted up,
knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God ; and if
God should ask me when I thought last of God in
that prayer I cannot tell: sometimes I find that I
forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget
it, I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures,
a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee,
a noise in mine ear, a chimera in my brain, troubles me
in my prayer. So certainly is fhere nat^g. nothing
in spiritual things, perfect in this world) . . . Weak-
nesses there were in those holy and devout sisters of
Lazarus. . . . Our devotions do not the less bear us
upright in the sight of God, because they have some
declinations towards natural affections. God doth
easilier pardon some neglecting of His grace when it
proceeds out of a tenderness, or may be excused out
of good nature, than any presuming upon His grace.

• . * a . ■

" And since we are in an action of preparing this
dead brother of ours to that state ... so shall we
dismiss you with an occasional inverting the text from
passion in Martha's mouth to joy in ours — * Lord^ lecause
Thou wast here, our brother is not dead.*

• ••*••

" In the presence of God we lay him down. In the
power of God he shall rise. In the person of Christ
he is risen already. And so into the same hands that
have received his soul, we commend his body ; beseech-
ing His blessed Spirit that ... for all our sakes, but
especially for His own glory, He will be pleased to
hasten the consummation of all, in that kiugdom'which

182 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

that Son of God hath purchased for us, with the
inestimable price of His incorruptible blood."

Donne closed the year 1626 by preaching his usual
Christmas Day sermon at St. Paul's, and he began the
next year by preaching there one of his prebend
sermons in January.

CHAPTEE VIII

A YEAR OF GLOOM

When the year 1627 opened there was only one
prominent divine in England who can in any sense be
called a great preacher ; and that one was the Dean of
St. Paul's. Bishop Andrewes died in September 1626.
Among the bishops that survived there was not a man
who had any popular gifts or who attracted any large
following. Abbot was always solemn and dull. Laud
was always hard and dry. Montagu, not yet a bishop,
was a controversialist pure and simple. Williams was
impossible. XJssher only appeared in England at
wide intervals ; his immense reputation had not yet
travelled far from Ireland, though scholars could not
speak of him too highly. Sanderson had not yet
attracted the notice of Laud, and, sound and solid as
his sermons were, he was the first of our eminent
theologians who never trusted himself in the pulpit
without his manuscript. Such a mere reader was not
likely to be run after by the multitude. As for
Joseph Hall, who was consecrated Bishop of Exeter
this year, he was everything except great: pre-
eminently clever, ingenious to a fault, a born
journalist with a graceful pen and a fluent tongue,
he was never at a loss for a retort or an epigram ;

but whereas Andrewes declared of himself that

m

184 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

"whenever he preached twice in a day he prated
once," Hall boasts that his regular practice at
Waltham was to preach three sermons every week —
and we may be sure it was always very pleasant
prattle. At Cambridge there was one young man
of whom the world would hear something by and
by, but Jeremy Taylor was now only in his teens.

Donne as a preacher stood alone. It was said of
him that he was always growing more impressive and
more eloquent as he grew older — the truth being that
he became ever more and more absorbed in the duties
of his sacred office, throwing his whole heart into it,
rising to every occasion on which demands were made
upon him, always doing his best as an enthusiast with
a mission, who felt that he would have to give account
for the talent that was committed to him.

We modems have lost touch with the pulpit oratory
of the seventeenth century, and it is difficult for those
who have never acquired any familiarity with the
sermons of the Jacobean era to understand the effect
they produced upon mixed congregations. In the way
Holy Scripture was dealt with by the preachers of
that day, there was, to our taste, a quite fantastic
ingenuity that we are apt to think meretricious.

These men handled Holy Scripture in their sermons
after a method which had the sanction of ages of tra-
ditionary interpretation. Whatever could be read
into a text, or whatever could be drawn out of it,
was regarded as perfectly legitimate. It was done
with such consummate rhetorical art that congrega-
tions were dazzled and bewildered : they took it all
very seriously ; we are inclined to regard it as mere
trickery, and often find it hard to believe that there

A YEAR OP GLOOM 186

was not a sophistical unreality about it all. Never-
theless, history shows that in every age the orators
have reached the hearts and consciences of the
thousands, where the logicians have hardly convinced
the tens. The cold light of dialectics leaves men
where it found them, — " Ice makes no conflagration ! "
When argument has done its utmost, then comes
the fervid enthusiast with his flaming sword that
turns every way, and at its touch the unreasoning
emotions are fanned into a glowing heat. The
startled multitude never doubts that the fire has
been kindled by a spark from the altar of God. It
takes the prophet at his own estimation, and accepts
his premises without demur, and in those premises
astounding conclusions are involved. Granted that
every syllable and every letter in the printed pages
of the Old Testament and of the New found its place
there by divine inspiration and carries with it a
divine authority, and what a tremendous power the
preacher had at his disposal ! Fortified with that, he
became at once a prophet armed with a message from
the Most High; the torrent of denunciation, ex-
postulation, warning, pleading, menace, or assurance
and encouragement poured forth resistless from Ups
that spake the very truth; the sinner might be
scared, the saint be lifted up to the seventh heaven, —
neither presumed to criticise. " Yea ! hath not God
said ? "

What gave a double force to Donne's preaching
was, that everyone knew he had no ambition for any
higher preferment — that he was giving his best to
the ministry of the Word — that he was labouring
very much more than he w«ts required to do. The

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

ide 87ia>^H
judgment ^^

I

noble e&mestnese of his manner, the wide
pathy and enormous learning, the sound judgment
and lai^e-hearted tolerance, won men's confidence
and the burets of eloquence that startled his
hearers so often when they came quite unexpectedly
upon them, attracted crowds to listen whenever it
was announced that he was going to appear in the
pulpit. But no man in so prominent a position as he,
could hope to find all his audience friendly. There
were gainsayers and critics who were on the watch
for him ; and never, whether in politics or religion,
were the factions more embittered against one another)
nor was it ever more difficult to avoid giving offence
when a man believed with all his heart, and felt that he
had a message to deliver which he could not keep back.

It was in this year, 1627, that that incident
occurred which Izaak Walton has strangely ante-
dated by some four or five years, and when he tells
U8 that his friend " was once, and but once, clouded
with the king's displeasure." The circumstance*
were these : —

Dr. Richard Montagu, a Cambridge man, and one of
the most acute and learned scholars of hia day, had
during the last few years of King James's reign made
himself famous by advocating in a very caustic and.1
trenchant style a somewhat novel view of the position'
which he claimed for the Church of England aa a
true branch of the Catholic Church, whose doctrini
were opposed to the teaching of the Church of Itome:
on the one hand, and equally opposed to those ol
Geneva on the other. He found himself, as a matter'
of course, the object of rancorous denunciations om
the part of the Calvinist sectaries and the Puritaorl

A YEAR OF GLOOM 187

clergy; while their allies among the laity were
scarcely less bitterly opposed to him for his vigorous
support of extreme views of the royal prerogative.
On the 11th February 1626 a conference was
arranged at Buckingham House for the discussion of
the questions at issue between Montagu and his
opponents. Dr. White, Dean of Carlisle, imdertook
to defend what may be called the High Church views.
Morton, Donne's old and dear friend, now Bishop of
Lichfield, and Dr. Preston, who had succeeded Donne
as Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, were chosen to assail
those views from the Low Church side. The confer-
ence, as usual, came to an abortive termination ; and
Charles i., tired of the business, issued a proclamation
forbidding any further disputation on the abstruse
questions under discussion. A year before this,
Montagu had written his famous Appello Ccesarem;
and when Archbishop Abbot, after reading the work,
had stoutly refused to license it, it was printed in
spite of him, under the imprimatur of Dr. White, the
aforesaid Dean of Carlisle.

In April 1627 Donne was appointed to preach at
Whitehall before the king. Laud, then Bishop of
Bath and Wells, was in attendance. He was, as
might have been expected, the strongest of all
Montagu's supporters, and he was daily gaining more
and more influence over Charles. He could hardly
have helped feeling some suspicion of Donne, who
was on intimate terms with Abbot, and was the much-
loved friend of Morton, with whom he had been a
fellow-labourer in his theological studies for well-nigh
thirty years. What line would the author of the
Pseudo Martyr take — the divine who had been

188

LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

^

honoured with a medal by the Synod of Dort eight
yeaiB before ?

Donne chose as hia text Mark iv. 24 : " TaJea.
Jieed what ye hear." It is difficult to couceive how
any unprejudiced hearer could have been able ta
discover ground for offence in the beautiful and wise
aermon which he preached ; but where men come to
find fault, they will not fail to discover it. It iet
more charitable, perhaps, to suppose that some of
those present may have honestly misunderstood the:
I»eacber, but, after carefully reading the sere
several times, I can find only one passage that may
have hurt the prejudices or irritated the susceptibilities,
of some of the audience as possibly reflecting upoi
themselves : —

" When the apostles came in their peregrinatioiii
to a new state, to a new court, to Rome itaeli, they
did not inquire, ' How stands the Emperor affected to
Christ and to the preaching of the gospel ? la there
not a sister or a wife that might he wrought upon
to further tlie preaching of Christ ? Are there not
some persons great in power and place that might be
content to hold a party together by admitting the
preaching of Christ y ' This was not their way. All
divinity that is bespoken, and not ready made, fitted
to certain turns and not to general ends, and alt
divines that have their souls and consciences bo
disposed as their libraries may be, — at that end stand
Papists, and at that end Protestants, and !te in th(
middle, as near one as the other, — all these have t
brackish taste as a river hath that comes nea;
the sea ; so have they in coming near the sea a
Kome."

A YEAR OF GLOOM 189

Whether this passage were the one that was found
fault with or not, Donne had scarcely got home to the
deanery before he was startled by learning that he
had grievously displeased the king. The intelligence
came to him in a letter from Sir Eobert Carr. In
acknowledging this, Donne writes as follows :—

" A few hours after I had the honour of your letter,
I had another from my Lord of Bath and Wells,
commanding from the king a copy of my sermon. I
am in preparations of that, with diligence, yet this
morning I waited upon his lordship, and laid up in
him this truth, that of the Bishop of Canterbury's
sermon, to this hour, I never heard syllable, nor what
way, nor upon what points he went : and for mine, it
was put into that very order, in which I delivered it,
more than two months since. Freely to you I say,
I would I were a little more guilty: only mine
innocency makes me afraid. I hoped for the king's
approbation heretofore in many of my sermons, and I
have had it ; but yesterday I came very near looking
for thanks, for in my life I was never in any one
piece so studious of his service ; therefore, exceptions
being taken, and displeasure kindled at this, I am
afraid it was rather brought thither, than met there.
If you know any more, fit for me (because I hold that
imfit for me, to appear in my master's sight as long
as this cloud hangs, and therefore this day forbear
my ordinary waitings), I beseech you to intimate it to

" Your very humble and very thankful servant,

" J. Donne."

The next letter enters into further particulars : —

190 LIFE OP JOHN DONNE

To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Carr, at Oourt^

" Sir, — I was this morning at your door, somewhat
early ; and I am put into such a distaste of my last
sermon, as that I dare not practise any part of it, and
therefore though I said then, that we are bound to
speak aloud, though we awaken men, and make them
froward, yet after two or three modest knocks at the
door, I went away. Yet I understood after, the king
was gone abroad, and thought you might be gone
with him. I came to give you an account of that,
which this does as well. I have now put into my
Lord of Bath and Wells' hands the sermon faithfully
exscribed. I beseech you be pleased to hearken far-
ther after it ; I am still upon my jealousy, that the
king brought thither some disafifection towards me,
grounded upon some other demerit of mine, and took
it not from the sermon. For, as Cardinal Cusanus writ
a book Cribratio Alcorani, I have cribrated, and re-
cribrated, and post-cribrated the sermon, and must
necessarily say, the king who hath let fall his eye
upon some of my poems, never saw, of mine, a hand,
or an eye, or an afifection, set down with so much
study, and diligence, and labour of syllables, as in this
sermon I expressed those two points, which I take so
much to conduce to his service, the imprinting of
persuasibility and obedience in the subject, and the
breaking of the bed of whisperers, by casting in a
bone, of making them suspect and distrust one an-
other. I remember I heard the old king say of a
good sermon, that he thought the preacher never had
thought of his sermon, till he spoke it ; it seemed to

1 About 1624.— Ed.

A YEAR OF QJjyO^ 191

him negligently and extempondly spoken. * And I
knew that he had weighed every syUaUe, for half a
year before, which made me condiule,- that the king
had before some prejudice upon hini. *' Sq, the best
of my hope is, that some over bold allngioiifl, or ex-
pressions in the way, might divert his mighty, from
vouchsafing to observe the frame and purppse of the
sermon. When he sees the general scope, I4u)p6 hiB
goodness will pardon collateral escapes. I entreated
the bishop to ask his majesty, whether his difij^easure
extended so far, as that I should forbear waitixig, and
appearing in his presence ; and I had a return, tiiat I
might come. Till I had that, I would not o£Eer to .put
myself under your roof. To-day I come for that porpose,
to say prayers. And if, in any degree, my health
sufiFer it, I shall do so, to-morrow. If anything fall
into your observation before that (because the bishop
is likely to speak to the king of it, perchance, this
night), if it amount to such an increase of displeasure,
as that it might be unfit for me to appear, I beseech
you afiford me the knowledge. Otherwise, I am likely
to inquire of you personally, to-morrow before nine in
the morning, and to put into your presence then,

" Your very humble, and very true, and very honest
servant to God and the king and you,

" J. Donne.

" I writ yesterday to my Lord Duke, by my Lord
Carlisle, who assured me of a gracious acceptation of
my putting myself in his protection."

The king had no sooner read the sermon and
listened to the explanation offered than Donne was at
once restored to favour, and for the remainder of his

192 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

life coiitmned to receive assurancee of the confideua

and eateem which Charles felfc for hie favourite cha^
lain. Donne'fl last sermon was preached before th
king at Whitehall, a few weeks before his death, i
we shall see in the sequel

In June of this year he lost one of hia oldest an
most faithful friends, Lady D^mvers, better known b
the oaine of Magdalen Herbert. Her first huBbant
Richan* Herbert of Montgomery Castle, died in 159)
leaving her a widow with ten children, of whoti
EdwaH, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, was the eldei
and -the saintly George Herbert, the fifth son. Sb
renaincd a widow for twelve years, and then nmrriet
ir. 1608, Sir John Danvers, who was little more tha
twenty years old. He was a young man of greai
wealth, and kept up a style of Uving at Danvet
House, Chelsea, which even in that age was looke
upon as extraordinarily sumptuous. Here Donne i
a frequent visitor, and always welcome. Lady Dan
vers was noted for her exemplary life and bountift
charities. She had been in failing health for t
time, and in May 1627 her son George Herbert wa
summoned to her aide. She lingered on till the firs
week in June, when she died, and was buried i
Chelsea Church on the 8th of that month, withou
the usual sermon. Donne liad been asked to perfon
this duty, but, being " bound by pre-obligationa an
pre-contracts to his own profession," it had to t
poned till the 1st July, when an immense congregatio
assembled to hear the great preacher.

Before giving out hia text [2 Peter iii. 13] b
offered up one of thoae glorious acts of prayer an
adoration with which on several occasions he prefaofl

/■

i

A TBAB OF 3L0^M 193

. »

his most notable sermons. The oj^ieiuiig words must
liave come upon those that heard theiii with a surprise
that could never be forgotten : — \

'* eternal and most glorious Qod I enable us in
life and death seriously to consider tha pzioe of a
soul. . . . Sufifer us not, therefore, lisA^ so to
undervalue ourselves, nay, so to impoverish Thee, as
to give away those souls. Thy souls, Thy .dear and
precious souls, for nothing ! "

But no words can adequately express the Bobliine
elevation of tone in this wonderful prayeir — the
majestic sweep and rhythm of the sentences aa^they
follow one another, the music of the words, and \tlw
awful solemnity of thought and feeling which perrade
this lofty utterance of faith and aspiration.

To have heard the writer of that prayer oflfering \t
up himself must have been an event in any man's
life. I do not believe that any mere reading it wifk
the eye could suffice to convey its mysterious power
and significance, any more than the reading the score
of one of Beethoven's symphonies could reveal the
profounder messages which the great master's inspira-
tion is meant to convey to the inner man.

The sermon itself can only be described as magnifi-
cent. The pathos of the occasion, the affectionate
gratitude of the preacher, the sense of loss and be-
reavement, the love that he bore towards those that
grieved, the memories of the long years that were the
treasures of the past, and the faith and hope which
claimed the great joy of the future, — if all these
would not lift up the poet preacher to a supreme
effort of something like inspired eloquence, would
he have been what he was ? The sermon was at once

13

TTT"

194 LITE OF JOHN DONNE

called for, and wfts immediately published in a littl
1 2mo volume. It is one of the rarest of books
Happily, it haa been reprinted more than once,
there is a cop.V of it in its original form in the libi
of the Britisl?! MuBeum,

Within tb few days of the death of Lady Danvera,
Donne lost another of those generous and devoted
frienda who had stood by him so nobly in the years ot
difficulty and anxiety when he was vainly looking oufe
fot Bonw poet at court. Lucy, Countess of Bedford,
who had been living in retirement at Moor Park in
Herfordshire, and there ministering tenderly at the
Bid« of her much-afflicted husband, died on the 3 let
oJ,, May, having survived the earl just three weeks.
Sfke had been a great sufferer from a complication of
diBCffders for some years past. The old brilliant gaiety
had faded, the old beauty had passed, but faith and
trust had not left her, though she had almost become
forgotten by the world in which she had once been so
conspicuous a figure. About this time, too. Sir Henry
Goodere died. He bad fallen into poverty, none the Iobb
distressing because he had spent his fortune improvi-
dently, and had never received a post at court in
return for all his attendance at the old plays and
pt^eanta ; but I have no doubt that it was to bipi that
Izaak Walton refers when he says that Donne had
the happiness ot being able in his later years to help
with the gift of £100 one special friend of his, "whom
he had known hve plentifully, and by a too liberal
heart and carelessness became decayed in his estata"

There were other matters which coutiibuted to
make this year a sad and anxious one for Donne. Hia
eldest son, John, whom he never names in his letters,

A YEAR OF GLOOM 196

had already entered upon that course of dissipation
and profligacy which in his later years made his
name a reproach to all that bore it; and this very
year he had, there is some reason to believe, made a
disreputable marriage. His son George had taken to
a military life ; of his career we know little but that
he was one of those taken prisoner at the disastrous
retreat from the Isle of Eh6, and had already attained
the rank of captain. His father was anxious about
him, and had received no letters from him.

George Donne was kept in a French prison for five
years — his father never saw him again. He procured
his liberty in 1633, by bribing his jailer, and escaped
safely to England.

During this year, too, his aged mother had become
dependent upon her son by the death of her third (?)
husband (Eainsford). Disregarding the ill-natured re-
marks which some made at the scandal of so noted a
supporter of the Eomanist faction being received into
the deanery, Donne ofifered her there an asylum in
her old age. She continued to live with her illustri-
ous son till his death, and survived him nine months.
She was buried at All Hallows, Barking, on the 28th
January 1631[— 2].

CHAPTER IX
life's evening and the sunset

It was Donne's practice to keep the Festival of the
Conversion of St. Paul by preaching in the Cathedral
pulpit either upon the 25 th January itself or upon
the Sunday followiug. In the year 1628 he did so
on Sunday the 27 th, and thus began the new year.
Three times during that spring he was called upon
to preach before the kiug at Whitehall, and on Whit
Sunday, as usual, he took his turn at St. Paul's.
Shortly afterwards he left London to pay a visit to
his parishioners at Sevenoaks, and during his absence
his daughter Margaret was taken with the small-
pox. The girl's attack was a mild one. She was
carefully attended by an old servant, named Eliza-
beth, who for many years had been the faithful
" waiting-maid " and friend of herself and her sisters.^
There was nothing to be gained by her father's re-
maining to watch by her sickbed, and in the month
of August he went down to Blunham, where he stayed
for three weeks. On his way back to London he was
seized with a fever " which," as he writes, " when Dr.
Fox, whom I found at London, considered well and
perceived the fever to be complicated with a squin-
ancie [quinsy], by way of prevention of both he pre-

^ Donne left a legacy of £20 to this good woman in his will.

196

life's evening and the sunset 197

sently took blood ; and so with ten days starving in a
close prison, that is, my bed, I am — blessed be God
— returned to a convenient temper and pulse and
appetite."

The symptoms appear to have been violent, and his
" mouth and voice " — presumably his throat — were so
afifiected that, he adds, " It is likely to take me from
any frequent exercise of my duty of preaching. But
God will either enable me or pardon me. His will
be done upon us alL"

A man of fifty-five finds it hard to believe that he has
passed his prime and that he can no longer do as much
and as well as he has been accustomed to do. In
Donne's case, however, he had been living for years at
very great tension, not only of mind but much more so of
body, and his frequent and enthusiastic preaching had
put so great a strain upon his constitution that his health
was seriously breaking. The very last thing that he
would have assented to was that a period of absolute rest
had now become imperatively necessary ; this was now
forced upon him, much against his will, and for more
than six months he was compelled to retire from all
active work, iusomuch that towards the end of the
year a report was widely circulated that he was
dead. He refers to this rumour in the following
letter to Mrs. Cokayne : —

" I have found this rumour of my death to have
made so deep impression and to have been so per-
emptorily believed, that from very remote parts I
have been entreated to signify under my hand that
I am yet alive. . . . What gave the occasion of this
rumour I can make no conjecture. And yet the
hour of my death and the day of my burial were

188

LIFE OF JOHN DONHB

i-elatFed in the highest place of this kingdom. I bad
at that time no kind of sickness, nor was otherw
than I had been ever since my fever, and am yet:
that is, too weak at this time of year to go foitt
especially to London . , . where I must necessarily
open myself to more busineBs than my present state
conld bear. Yet next term, by God's grace, I will be
there."

He -was better than his word ; for he preached at
St. Paul's on Christmas Day, taking as Iiis text tha
words, " i^ho hath believed our report ? " — -possibly with
a latent allusion to the rumoui'S that had been'
circulated regarding himself.

Next year, 1629, during the spring, he preached
four or five times, at court and at St. Paul's ; but in.
May he broke down again. In November he was so
far reeoveted as to preach at Paul's Gross on Matt
XL 6, and we may infer that a great crowd had
assembled to hear him, from the following passage : — .

" Beloved, there are poor that are litercdly poorj
poor in estate and fortune ; and poor, that are ■natur-
ally poor, poor in capacity and understanding; and
poor that are spiritually poor, dejected in spirit, and
insensible of the comforts which the Holy Ghost oCTera .
imto them ; and to all these poor, are we all bound to
preach the gospel. . . . For them which are lit&raUff
poor, poor in estate, bow much do they want of this
means of salvation — preaching — which the rich have I
They cannot maintain chaplains in their houses ; they
cannot forbear the necessary labours of their calling
to hear extraordinary sermons ; they cannot have &
in ch/im-ch whetisoever they come ; they must stay, tkejf,
■nvast stand, they mud thrust, they must overeomfl

life's evening and the sunset 199

that difficulty, which St. Augustine makes an im-
possibility, that is for any man to receive benefit by
that sermon that he hears with pain: they must take
pains to hear. To these pooVy therefore, the Lord and
His Spirit hath sent me to preach the gospel. ..."

The sermon must have taken more than an hour to
deliver; it is singularly free from those quotations
from and references to other men's works and opinions
which sometimes weary us in the more laboured
efiforts of the great preacher. Donne gives us here
more of himself, and surrenders himself to the impulse
of his own genius, or perhaps it would be truer to
say, he surrenders himself to the thoughts that had
been the subjects of his contemplation during the
past months, when his long illness had led him to
think of the nearness of death and of the beatific
vision that his soul desired. What is this blessedness
— he asks — which the Saviour speaks of in the text ?

" Blessedness itself is God Himself. Our blessedness
is our possession, our union with God. To see God
as He is, that is blessedness. There in heaven I
shall have continuitatem intuendi ; it is not only vision,
but intuition; not only a seeing, but a beholding, a
contemplating of God. ... I shall be still but the
servant of my God, and yet I shall be of the same
spirit with that God. When ? . . . Our last day is
our first day ; our Saturday is our Sunday ; our eve
is our holy day ; our sunsetting is our morning ; the
day of our death is the first day of our eternal life.
The next day after that . . . comes that day that
shall show me to myself. Here I never saw myself
but in disguises ; there, then, I shall see myseK, but I
shall see God too. . . . Here I have one faculty

200 ^ LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

enlightened, and another left in darkness ; mine under-
standing sometimes cleared, my will at the same time
perverted. There I shall be all light, no shadow
upon me ; my soul invested in the light of joy, and
my body in the light of glory. . . . How glorious is
God as He calls up our eyes to Him in the beauty
and splendour and service of the Church ! How
glorious in that spouse of His ! But how glorious
shall I conceive this Ught to be when I shall see it
in His own place ! In that sphere which, though a
sphere, is a centre too ; in that place which, though a
place, is all and everywhere ! "

The preaching of this sermon overtaxed Donne's
failing strength ; for when Christmas Day came he was,
for the first time, unable to appear in the pulpit of
St. Paul's. He made amends for his absence then by
preaching one of his most ingenious and characteristic
sermons on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul
(25th January 1630). He chose as his text
Acts xxiii. 6, 7.

" In handling of which words," he says, ". . . we
shall stop first upon that consideration, that all the
actions of holy men . . . are not to be drawn into
example and consequence for others, no, nor always to be
excused and justified in them that did them. And
secondly we shall consider this action of St. Paul in
some circumstances that invest it. . . . And in a
third consideration we shall lodge all these in our-
selves, and make it our own case, and find that we
have all Sadducees and Pharisees in our own bosoms
— contrary affections in our own hearts — and find
an advantage in putting these home - Sadducees
and home-Pharisees in coUuctation and opposition

LIFE S EVENING AND THE SUNSET 201

against one another. ... A civil war is, in this case,
our way to peace : — ...

" Paul's way was by a twofold protection ; the first
this, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee !

... ...

" Beloved, there are some things in which all religions
agree: the worship of God, the holiness of life.
Therefore, if (when I study this holiness of life, and
fast, and pray, and submit myself to discreet and
individual mortifications for the subduing of my body)
any man will say, * This is papistical ! Papists do
this ! ' — it is a blessed protestation, and no man is the
less a Protestant nor the worse a Protestant for making
it — * I am a Papist ! that is, I will fast and pray as
much as any Papist, and enable myself for the service
of my God, as seriously, as sedulously, as laboriously
as any Papist.'

"So if — when I startle and am afifected at the
blasphemous oath, as at a wound upon my Saviour —
if — when I avoid the conversation of those men that
profane the Lord's day — any other will say, * This is
puritanical ! Puritans do this ! ' — it is a blessed pro-
testation, and no man is the less a Protestant nor the
worse a Protestant for making it — * Men and brethren,
I am a Puritan ! that is, I will endeavour to be pure,
as my Father in heaven is pure — as far as any
Puritan ! '

......

" End we all with this ; we have all these Sadducees
and Pharisees in our own bosoms. . . . Sins of pre-
sumption and carnal confidence are our Sadducees ; and
then our Pharisees are our sins of separation, of division,
of diflSdence and distrust in the mercies of our God. . . .

202 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

Now if I go St. Paul's way, to put a dissension between
these my Saddueees and my Pharisees, to put a jealousy
between my presumption and my desperation, ... I
may, as St. Paul did in the text, 'scape the better for
that. . . .

" That God that is the God of peace, grant us His
peace and one mind one towards another. That God
that is the Lord of hosts, maintain in us that war which
Himself hath proclaimed; an enmity between the
seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent,
between the truth of God and the inventions of men ;
that we may fight His battles against His enemies
without, and fight His battles against His enemies
within — our own corrupt affections ; that we may be
victorious here, in ourselves and over ourselves, and
triumph with Him hereafter in eternal glory."

Donne preached his last sermon at St. Paul's on
Easter Day, 28th March 1630. Then he broke down
again.^

It will be remembered that Donne's eldest daughter,
Constance, had been married in December 1623 to
Edward Allen. She was left a widow on 25 th
Nov. 1626. She was comfortably provided for, and
continued a widow until the 24th June of this year
1630, when she married as her second husband Mr.
Samuel Harvey of Aldborough Hatch, near Barking, in
Essex. The newly-married pair had known each
other all their lives ; for the husband was a grandson
of Sir James Harvey, to whom the dean's father had

^ The sermon said to have been preached **in Lent to the king,
April 20, 1630 " (vol. i. folio, p. 127), is certainly wrongly dated. In
that year the drd Sunday after Easter fell upon the 23rd April.

life's evening and the sunset 203

served his time before his admission to the freedom of
the city of London ; and as prominent members of the
Ironmongers' Company the two men must have been
brought into close business relations with one another,
till the early death of Donne's father brought these
to a close.

Whether Donne was able to be present at this
second marriage — which appears to have taken place
from the house of her uncle, Sir Thomas Grymes, at
Camberwell — we are not told ; but two months later
Walton assures us that his friend went down to
Abrey Hatch (as it was pronounced) to pay a visit to
his daughter, and while with her "he fell into
a fever," from the efifects of which he never
quite recovered. By this time he had begun to realise
that his earthly career was drawing to a close, and
that there was little for him now to do save to make
all needful preparations for the end that was at hand.
Cut ofif as he was from the privilege of preaching
during the winter of 1629, and now again during the
greater part of 1630, he employed himself in prepar-
ing his sermons for the press, and in writing or
expanding some of those with which he was not
satisfied. Thus, in a prefatory note to the .two sermons
on Matthew iv. 18, 20, he writes: "At the Hague,
Dec. 19, 1619, I preached upon this text. Since in
sickness at Abrey Hatch in Essex, 1630, revising my
short notes of that sermon, I digested them into these
two." In the three folios published by Donne's son
between 1640 and 1660, there are five or six of
these double sermons which internal evidence proves
were never preached as they stand in the printed
text; and in a precious volume in my possession.

204 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

prepared by Donne himself for the press, written
throughout in his own hand, there is one long sermon
(on Luke iii 21, 22) left unfinished, but followed
by eleven blank pages evidently meant to be written
on, though the writer never carried out his intention.
There is also what may be called a fantastic treatise
upon JacoVs Ladder in the form of a sermon on
Gen. xxviii 12, 13, which could never have been
delivered, or indeed intended to be delivered, inasmuch
as it would take at least three hours to read aloud.

During all this long period of enforced idleness, so
far from his intellect suffering any loss of power or
from weariness, Walton assures us that " the latter
part of his life may be said to have been a continual
study."

As it had been in 1624, when in the very crisis of
what threatened to be a fatal illness he went on
writing diligently day by day even for hours at a
time, 80 it was now: his mind was incessantly at
work, and the extraordinary versatility of his genius
showed itself in the many curious fancies that were
the subjects of his thoughts. He had been hereto-
fore wont to seal his letters with an impression of his
family crest — a knot of snakes argent ; during his last
illness he seems to have discarded this signet, "and
not long before his death he caused to be drawn a
figure of the body of Christ extended upon an anchor,
like those which painters draw when they would
present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the
cross : his varying no otherwise than to afiBx Him not
to a cross, but to an anchor — the emblem of Hope ;
this he caused to be drawn in little, and then many
of those figures thus drawn to be engraven very small

life's evening and the sunset 205

in heliotropium stones and set in gold ; and of these
he sent to many of his dearest friends, to be used as
seals or rings, and kept as memorials of him and of
his affection to them." Walton names five of these
friends, George Herbert beiog one of them. He does
not mention his own name, though the ring which
Donne gave to honest Izaak Walton bias been handed
down as an heirloom in the fanuly of his descendants.

It was about this time that Dr. Fox, the physician
who was in constant attendance upon him during his
last illness, suggested that a monument should be
prepared for him, to be set up in St. Paul's after his
death. " Dr. Donne, by the persuasion of Dr. Fox,
easily yielded at this very time to have a monument
made for him ; but Dr. Fox undertook not to persuade
him how, or what monument it should be ; that was
left to Dr. Donne himself.

" 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
cofl&n 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

806 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

face, which waa purposely turned towards the east;
from whence he expected the second coming of hia
and our Saviour Jesus. In this posture he wag
drawn at his just height ; and when the picture was
fully finished, he caused it to be set by hia bedsid^
where it continued and became his hourly object tiU
his death, and was then given to his dearest friena
and executor, Dr. Henry King, then chief residentiaijt
of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved i'
one entire piece of white marble, aa it now stands ixi
that church." ^

Though Donne seems to have considered hii
bound by hia half promise to Lady Bedford to wiiU
no more verae after he had been admitted to holj
orders, yet by her ladyship's death he appears bS
have thought himself released from any such pledge
and now in hia lonely houi's he found a solaee ii
surrendering himself to bis poetic gift. How mac!
of his religious poetry he wrote at this time it ii
impossible to conjecture ; but the magnificent bymi
which he calls " An Hymn to God the Father " i
have been written at this period, though WaltcH
au^ests that it was composed at an earlier date
Familiar as it doubtless is to most of us, it would b
unpardonable to omit it here.

"Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before 7

Wilt Thou forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore!

When Thou haat done, Thou hast not done.

For I have more.

'.' This was aae of the few monuments whicli escaped the ravages
the grent fire in 1 666, and has within the lust few years been set i
again in the south aiale of the choir.

LIFE S EVENING AND THE SUNSET 207

Wilt Thou forgive that sin, which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two — but wallowed in a score?

When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done.

For I have more.

I have a sin of fear that when IVe spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore ;

But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son

ShaU shine as He shines now, and heretofore ;

And having done that. Thou hast done,

I fear no more."

" I have," writes Walton, " the rather mentioned this
hymn, for that he caused it to be set to a most grave
and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ
by the choristers of St. Paul's Church, in his own
hearing, especially at the evening service ; and at his
return from his customary devotions in that place,
did occasionally say to a friend, * The words of this
hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy
that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I com-
posed it. And, the power of church music! that
harmony added to this hymn has raised the affections
of my heart and quickened my graces of zeal and
gratitude ; and I observe that I always return from
paying this public duty of prayer and praise to God,
with an unexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a
willingness to leave the world.' "

During these last years of his Kfe Donne continued
writing sedulously to [his old friends ; and of these
letters several have come down to us which afford
us a pathetic insight into his thoughts and occupations
as the days passed on. He was anxious and a little
troubled about his son George, who was still in a

208 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

French prison. Some great lady had borrowed a sum
of money from him and left her diamonds with him
as a security for the loan. Donne, in view of his
approaching end, was uneasy at the thought that the
jewels might be found in the deanery after his death,
and a scandal might be occasioned or difficulties
arise ; and he writes to his old friend, George Grarrard,
who was at this time Master of Charterhouse, begging
him in some way to relieve him of the embarrass-
ment of the situation.

The saddest letter is a long one addressed to Mrs.
Cokayne, who had made a somewhat peremptory
application for a living in the dean's gift which had
just fallen vacant. Mrs. Cokayne was exceedingly
anxious to get it for a certain Nathaniel Hazard, of
whom nothing is known except that he had been a
tutor in Mrs. Cokayne's family. Donne's letter in
reply will tell its own tale : —

" My NOBLE Sister, — I am afraid that Death will
play with me so long as he will forget to kill me ; and
suffer me to live in a languishing and useless age a
life that is rather a forgetting that I am dead than of
living. We dispute whether the dead shall pray for
the living, and because my life may be short, I pray
with the most earnestness for you now. By the
advantage of sickness, I return the oftener to that
holy exercise, and in it join yours with mine own
soul. I would not have dignified myself or my
sickness with saying so much of either, but that it is
in obedience to your command that I should do so.
And though there he upon me no command, yet there
lies a necessity growing out of my respect and a

life's evening and the sunset 209

nobler root than that, my love to you, to enlarge
myself, as far as I have gone already in this Mr.
Hazard's business. My noble sister, when you carry
me up to the beginning, which it pleases you to call
a promise to yourself, and your noble sister ; I never
slackened my purpose of performing that promise.
But if my promise, which was that I should be ready
to assist him in any thing I could, were translated by
you, or your noble sister or him, that I would give
him the next living in my gift, certainly we speak
not one language, or understand not one another, and
I had thought we had. This which he imagined to
be vacant (for it is not yet nor any way likely) is the
first that fell to me since I made that promise. And,
my noble sister : if a person of my place from whom
one scholar in each university sucks something and
must be weaned by me, and who hath otherwise a
latitude of unfortunate friends and very many obliga-
tions, hast a living once in five or six years fall in
his gift (for it is so long since I gave any), and may
not make a good choice with freedom then, it is hard;
yet it is not my fortune to do so now : for, now there
is a living fallen (though not that), I am not left to
my choice, for my Lord Carlisle and Percy have
chosen for me : but truly such a man as I would have
chosen : and for him, they laid an obligation upon me
three years since, for the next that should fall ; yet
Mr. Hazard presses you to write for that, because he
to whom my promise belongs hath another before,
but doth he or his lord owe me any thing for that ?
Yet Mr. Hazard importunes me, to press that chaplain
of my lord, that when he takes mine, he shall resign
the other to him, which, as it is an ignorant request

14

210 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

(for if it be resigned it is not in his power to place it
upon Mr. Hazard), so it is an unjust request that I
that give him fifty pounds a year should take from
him forty. But amongst Mr. Hazard's manifold
importunities that that I took worst was that he
should write of domestic things, and what I said of
my son, to you : and arm you with that plea that my
son was not in orders. But, my noble sister, though I
am far from drawing my son immaturely into orders,
or putting into his hands any church with cure : yet
there are many prebends and other helps in the
church, which a man without taking orders may be
capable of, and for some such I might change a living
with cure, and so begin to accommodate a son in some
preparation. But Mr. Hazard is too piercing. It is
good counsel (and as I remember I gave it him) that
if a man deny him any thing and accompany his
denial with a reason, he be not too searching whether
that be the true reason or no, but rest in the denial :
for many times it may be out of my power to do a
man a courtesy which he desires and yet I not tied
to tell him the true reason : therefore out of his letter
to you, I continue my opinion that he meddled too
far herein. I cannot shut my letter till (whilst we are
upon this consideration of reasons of denials) I tell
you one answer of his, which perchance may weaken
your so great assurance of his modesty. I told him
that my often sicknesses had brought me to an inability
of preaching, and that I was under a necessity of
preaching twelve or fourteen solemn sermons every
year, to great auditories, at Paul's, and to the Judges,
and at courts, and that therefore I must think of
conferring something upon such a man as may supply

life's evening and the sunset 211

my place in these solemnities, and surely, said I, I
will offer them no man in those cases which shall not
be at least equal to myself ; and, Mr. Hazard, I do
not know your faculties. He gave me this answer.
* I will not make comparisons, but I do not doubt but
that I should give them satisfaction in that kind.'
Now, my noble sister, whereas you repeat often, that
you and your sister rested upon my word and my
worth, and but for my word and my worth you would
not have proceeded so far : I must necessarily make
my protestation, that my word and my worth is,
herein, chaste and untouched. For, my noble sister,
goes there no more to the giving of a scholar a church
in London but that he was a young gentleman school-
master? You know the ticklishness of London
pulpits, and how ill it would become me, to place a
man in a London church that were not both a strong
and a sound man. And therefore those things must
come into consideration before he can have a living
from me though there was no need of reflecting upon
those things when I made that general promise, that
I would assist his fortune in any thing. You end in
a phrase of indignation and displeasure rare in you
towards me, therefore it affects me : which is, that he
may part from me as I received him at first ; as though
I were likely to hinder him. The heat that produced
that word I know is past, and therefore, my most
beloved sister, give me leave to say to you that he
shall not part from me, but I shall keep him still in
my care, and make you always my judge of all omissions.

" Your faithful friend and servant."

Mrs. Cokayne took this remonstrance in . the spirit

212 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

in which it was written, and the affectionate letter
which Donne wrote to her a few days before he left
Abrey Hatch, to return thanks, shows that the under-
standing between the two friends continued then to
be as cordial as ever ; and this is the last letter that
has come down to us.

Donne made his will at his daughter's house on the
13th December 1630. Weak and frail as he was, he
could not yet give up the hope of being able to preach
once more at St. Paul's on Christmas Day. When he
was persuaded that this was impossible, he still hoped
to be at his post on Candlemas Day (2nd February),
but again he had to find a substitute.

"Before that month ended, he was appointed to
preach upon his old constant day, the first Friday in
Lent : he had notice of it, and had in his sickness so
prepared for that employment, that as he had long
thirsted for it, so he resolved his weakness should not
hinder his journey ; he came therefore to London some
few days before his appointed day of preaching. At
his coming thither, many of his friends — who with
sorrow saw his sickness had left him but so much
flesh as did only cover his bones — doubted his strength
to perform that task, and did therefore dissuade him
from undertaking it, assuring him, however, it was
like to shorten his life: but he passionately denied
their requests, saying, ' He would not doubt that that
God, who in so many weaknesses had assisted hirn
with an unexpected strength, would now withdraw it
in his last employment ; professing a holy ambition to
perform that sacred work.' And when, to the amaze-
ment of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit,
many of them thought he presented himself not to

life's evening and the sunset 213

preach mortification by a Kving voice, but mortality
by a decayed body and a dying face. And doubtless
many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel (chap,
xxxvii. 3), 'Do these bones live? or can that soul
organise that tongue to speak so long time as the
sand in that glass will move towards its centre, and
measure out an hour of this dying man's imspent life ?
Doubtless it cannot.' And yet, after some faint
pauses in his zealous prayer, his strong desires enabled
his weak body to discharge his memory of his precon-
ceived meditations, which were of dying; the text
being, 'To God the Lord belong the issues from
death.' Many that then saw his tears, and heard his
faint and hollow voice, professing they thought the
text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had
preached his own funeral sermon.

" Being full of joy that God had enabled him to
perform this desired duty, he hastened to his house ;
out of which he never moved, till, like St. Stephen,
* he was carried by devout men to his grave.' ^

" The next day after his sermon, his strength being
much wasted, and his spirits so spent as indisposed
him to business or to talk, a friend that had often
been a witness of his free and facetious discourse
asked him, *Why are you sad?' To whom he
replied, with a countenance so full of cheerful gravity,
as gave testimony of an inward tranquillity of mind,
and of a soul willing to take a farewell of this world ;
and said :

" ' I am not sad ; but most of the night past I have

^ The Gregorian Calendar was not accepted at this time in England.
Therefore, according to our reckoning, the 1st Friday in Lent fell on
the 25th February. Donne died on the Slst March.

214 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

entertained myself with many thoughts of several
friends that have left me here, and are gone to that
place from which they shall not return; and that
within a few days I also shall go hence, and be no
more seen. And my preparation for this change has
become my nightly meditation upon my bed, which
my infirmities have now made restless to me. But at
this present time, I was in a serious contemplation of
the providence and goodness of God to me; to me,
who am less than the least of His mercies : and look-
ing back upon my life past, I now plainly see it was
His hand that prevented me from all temporal
employment ; and that it was His will I should never
settle nor thrive till I entered into the Ministry, in
which I have now lived almost twenty years — I hope
to His glory — and by which, I most humbly thank
Him, I have been enabled to requite most of those
friends which showed me kindness when my fortune
was very low, as God knows it was : and — as it hath
occasioned the expression of my gratitude — I thank
God most of them have stood in need of my requital.
I have lived to be useful and comfortable to my good
father-in-law, Sir George More, whose patience God
hath been pleased to exercise with many temporal
crosses ; I have maintained my own mother, whom it
hath pleased God, after a plentiful fortime in her
younger days, to bring to great decay in her very old
age. I have quieted the consciences of many that
have groaned under the burthen of a wounded spirit,
whose prayers I hope are available for me. I cannot
plead innocency of life, especially of my youth ; but I
am to be judged by a merciful God, who is not willing
to see what I have done amiss. And though of my-

life's evening and the sunset 215

self I have nothing to present to Him but sins and
misery, yet I know He looks not upon me now as I am
of myself, but as I am in my Saviour, and hath given
me, even at this present time, some testimonies by His
Holy Spirit, that I am of the number of His Elect : I
am therefore full of inexpressible joy, and shall die in
peace.' "

There was no more work remaining to be done.
The sands of life were fast running out. Eight days
before the end came he wrote his last poem on his
deathbed, which bore the title —

"An Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness."
March 23, 1630.

The first and last verses are those best worth
quoting : —

"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.

So, in His purple wrapt, receive me, Lord I
By these His thorns, give me His other Crown :

And, as to other souls I preached Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
* Therefore, that He may raise, the Lord throws down.' "

He had only three days to live when he became
disturbed by anxiety regarding the large mass of
manuscripts which he was about to leave behind him.
By some strange misadventure he had made no
mention of these in his will ; and inasmuch as they
not only comprehended an immense accumulation of
miscellaneous notes and extracts, the Ephemerides of a

216 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

student of extraordinary industry during nearly fifty
years of research, but also included all his sermons and
other writings, representing in the aggregate a collection
which even in those days was worth no inconsider-
able sum of money, common prudence would have
suggested that this literary property should be dealt
with by a special bequest. Donne had and could have
no confidence in his son John, and in view of what
might happen he endeavoured to provide against a
contingency which actually did happen. So far as at
this stage it was possible for him to do so without
adding a codicil to his will, he endeavoured to make
a surrender of his manuscripts by deed of gift to Dr.
King, one of his executors. Among them were the
sermons prepared for the press and afterwards pub-
lished in folio, " together with which," says Dr. King
himself — " as his best legacy — he gave me all his ser-
mon notes and his other papers, containing an extract
of near fifteen hundred, professing before Dr. Winniff,
Dr. Montford [and Izaak Walton], then present at his
bedside, that it was my restless importunity that he
had prepared them for the press."

Unhappily, very soon after Donne's death, and
while the estate was in the custody of the executors,
his son John, as heir- male, laid claim to the whole of
these literary remains; and Dr. King was — under
pressure the nature of which remains unexplained —
compelled to surrender them.

Thirty years later, in a letter to Izaak Walton,
King, complaining of this outrage, writes : " How these
were got out of my hands, you who were the
messenger for them, and how lost to me and yourself,
is not now seasonable to complain." The collection

life's evening and the sunset 217

appears bo have been kept in the first instance in a
cabinet reserved for it — an illustration this of the
dean's methodical habits which Walton remarks upon.
It looks as if towards the close of his life the younger
Donne felt some compimction or shame at the wrong
he had done to his father and his father's friend ; for
in his will, which he drew up in 1662, he says, "To
the Eeverent Bishop of Chichester I return the cabinet
that was my father's, now in my dining-room, and all
those papers which are of authors analysed by my
father ; Tnany of which he hath already received with
his Common Place Book, which I desire may pass to
Mr. Walton's son as being most likely to have use for
such a help when his age shall require it."

Many attempts have been made to discover what
became of these papers, but without result. It is
evident they were practically kept together till some
years after the Eestoration, but in Bishop King's
will, subscribed by him 14th July 1663, and
proved without any codicils in 1669, there is no
mention of or allusion to the Donne MSS., nor
does the name of Izaak Walton the younger occur.
• •••••

"Thus variable, thus virtuous was the life; thus
excellent, thus exemplary was the death of this
memorable man."

So writes Izaak Walton, as he prepares to add the
last few sentences to that masterpiece of English
biography which he entitles the Life of Dr, John
Donne, It is no panegyric; it is much less a mere
dry recital of facts. If, as some tell us, poetry is the
language of excited feeling, never was there a more
truly poetic story written than Walton's life of Donne.

218 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

It is a story told in solemn rhythmic prose, throbbing
with a burden of tender memories and fond regrets
too full of blessed associations to allow of any gloom
in recording them. It is an idealised picture of his
master, famov^, calm and dead, drawn by a disciple
who had loved that master with enthusiastic loyalty
and reverence, loved him " on this side idolatry."
Walton could afford to be careless about details
and accessories when he was setting down the re-
miniscences of others regarding Donne's early life.
It seems he could only have known him intimately for
the five or six years before he died. They were long
enough, however, to draw together by the mysterious
attractive force of sympathy the two men of genius
who in the circumstances of their lives and their
education had so little in common. Once brought
together in close relations, and a subtile affinity
between the two united them more and more closely
from day to day. While Donne lay dying, Walton
was always at his side — he seems never to have left
him. We have no such grand and pathetic narrative
of the passing of a dying saint of God.

It was not till the 31st March 1631 that the
gracious summons came.

Let Izaak Walton draw the curtain. It would be
little less than profanation to substitute for his closing
words of this life's drama any others that we of the
common herd could write down.

" The Sunday following he appointed his servants
that, if there were any business yet imdone that
concerned him or themselves, it should be prepared
against Saturday next, for after that day he would
not mix his thoughts with anything that concerned

LIFE S EVENING AND THE SUNSET 219

this world, nor ever did ; but as Job, so he ' waited
for the appointed day of his dissolution/

" And now he was so happy as to have nothing to do
but to die, to do which he stood in need of no longer
time ; for he had studied it long, and to so happy a
perfection, that in a former sickness he called God to
witness (in his 'Book of Devotions,' written then),
' He was that minute ready to deliver his soul into
His hands, if that minute God would determine his
dissolution/ In that sickness he begged of God the
constancy to be preserved in that estate for ever;
and his patient expectation to have his immortal soul
disrobed from her garment of mortality, makes me
confident that he now had a modest assurance that
his prayers were then heard and his petition granted.
He lay fifteen days earnestly expecting his hourly
change; and in the last hour of his last day, as
his body melted away, and vapoured into spirit, his
soul having, I verily believe, some revelation of the
beatifical vision, he said, * I were miserable if I might
not die ; ' and after those words, closed many periods
of his faint breath by saying often, *Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done/ His speech, which had
long been his ready and faithful servant, left him not
till the last minute of his life, and then forsook him,
not to serve another master — for who speaks like
him — but died before him; for that it was then
become useless to him that now conversed with God
on earth as angels are said to do in heaven, only by
thoughts and looks. Being speechless, and seeing
heaven by that illumination by which he saw it, he
did, as St. Stephen, * look steadfastly into it, till he
saw the Son of Man standing at the right hand of

220 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

God His Father/ and being satisfied with this blessed
sight, as his soul ascended and his last breath de-
parted from him, he closed his own eyes, and then
disposed his hands and body into such a posture as
required not the least alteration by those that came
to shroud him.

" He was buried in that place of St. Paul's Church
which he had appointed for that use some years
before his death, and by which he passed daily to
pay his public devotions to Almighty God, who was
then served twice a day by a public form of prayer
and praises in that place; but he was not buried
privately, though he desired it, for, beside an un-
numbered number of others, many persons of nobility
and of eminence for learning, who did love and
honour him in his life, did show it at his death, by
a voluntary and sad attendance of his body to the
grave, where nothing was so remarkable as a public
sorrow.

" To which place of his burial some mournful friends
repaired, and, as Alexander the Great did to the
grave of the famous Achilles, so they strewed his with
an abundance of curious and costly flowers, which
course they, who were never yet known, continued
morning and evening for many days, not ceasing till
the stones that were taken up in that church to give
his body admission into the cold earth — now his
bed of rest — were again by the mason's art so
levelled and firmed as they had been formerly, and
his place of burial undistinguishable to common
view.

" The next day after his burial some unknown friend,
some one of the many lovers and admirers of his

life's evening and the sunset 221

virtue and learning, writ this epitaph with a coal on
the wall over his grave : —

* Keader ! I am to let thee know,
Donne's body only lies below;
For, could the grave his soul comprise.
Earth would be richer than the skies!'

" Nor was this all the honour done to his reverend
ashes; for, as there be some persons that will not
receive a reward for that for which God accounts
Himself a debtor, persons that dare trust God with
their charity, and without a witness, so there was by
some grateful unknown friend that thought Dr.
Donne's memory ought to be perpetuated, a hundred
marks sent to his faithful friends and executors (Dr.
King and Dr. Montford), towards the making of his
monument. It was not for many years known by
whom ; but, after the death of Dr. Fox, it was known
that it was he that sent it, and he lived to see as
lively a representation of his dead friend as marble
can express ; a statue indeed so like Dr. Donne, that
— as his friend Sir Henry Wotton hath expressed
himseK — * It seems to breathe faintly, and posterity
shall look upon it as a kind of artificial miracle.'

" He was of stature moderately tall, of a straight and
equally proportioned body, to which all his words and
actions gave an unexpressible addition of comeliness.

" The melancholy and pleasant humour were in him
so contempered that each gave advantage to the
other, and made his company one of the delights of
mankind.

" His fancy was unimitably high, equalled only by
his great wit, both being made useful by a conmiand-
ing judgment.

222 LIFE OF JOHN DONNE

" His aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent
testimony of a clear knowing soul, and of a conscience
at peace with itself.

" His melting eye showed that he had a soft heart,
full of noble compassion ; of top brave a soul to ofifer
injuries, and too much a Christian not to pardon them
in others.

"He did much contemplate, especially after he
entered into his sacred calling, the mercies of Al-
mighty God, the immortaUty of the soul, and the
joys of heaven, and would often say in a kind of
sacred ecstasy, * Blessed be God that He is God, only
and divinely like Himself.'

" He was by nature highly passionate, but more apt
to reluct at the excesses of it. A great lover of the
offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit that
he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity
and relief.

" He was earnest and unwearied in the search of
knowledge, with which his vigorous soul is now
satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of that
God that first breathed it into his active body, that
body which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost,
and is now become a small quantity of Christian
dust.

" BUT I SHALL SEE IT REANIMATED 1 "

APPENDIX A

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APPENDIX B

DR. DONNE'S CHILDREN

In the monumental inscription which Donne set up in the
old Church . of St. Clement Danes, in memory of his wife,
he states that she died on the 15th August 1617. — Vii. post
xii, partum {quorum vii, supersunt) dies.

Whatever may be meant by the expression " xii. partum^^
it is clear that at her death Mrs. Donne left seven children
behind her. Of each and all of them we can give some
account.

1. Constance has been usually assumed to have been

Donne's eldest child. She was probably bom at
Pyrford in 1603. She married, first, Edward Allen
in 1623, and, secondly, Samuel Harvey in 1630. By
her first husband she had no offspring ; by her second
she had at least three sons, whose names, but their
names only, we know.

2. John. — Of him a sufficient account will be found in

the Dictionary of National Biography, He, too,
was probably born at Pyrford in 1604. He married
Mary Staples, of whom nothing is known, at Cam-
-befffi^ll 27th March 1627. There seems to have
been nofestt^of the marriage. She seems to have
died early, asfeSUQ^iition is made of either mother
or child in the wili?^)i^Pr. Donne or of his son.

3. George. — He was baptize3h§t Camberwell, 9th May
1605. He was a prisoner of \'f*^ ^ France at the
time of his father's death, but rel&fi^ed to England
in 1633 or 1634, and appears to have'TSiarried some
time after, for the baptism of a daughter'^SiiJiis is
entered in the Register of Camberwell, 22nd
1638. Nothing more is known of him.

224

APPENDIX B 226

4. Lucy. — Baptized at Michain, 8th January 1608, Lady

Bedford standing as her godmother. She died un-
married, and was buried at Camberwell, 9th June
1626.

5. Bridget. — ^Unmarried, but "of years to govern her-

self," when her father made his will ; was probably
bom between 1609 and 1612. She became the wife
of Thomas Gardiner, Esq., of Peckham, son of Sir
Thomas Gardiner of Camberwell (Blanch, History of
the Parish of Camberwell), Nothing further is
known of her.

6. Margabbt. — Some years after her father's death

married Sir William Bowles of Clerkenwell. Even-
tually she died at Ghislehurst in Kent, and was buried
in the church-porch there. She had at least one
daughter.

7. EuzABETH. — On the 18th May 1637 married Cornelius

Lawrence, Doctor of Physic, at All Hallows, Barking.

The last two children were evidently young girls in 1630.

It is clear from the above, that at the time of Donne's
death only two of his children were married. Constance
had at that time no family ; and there is a strong presump-
tion that the wife of his son John was then dead, and died
childless.

My belief is that neither of Donne's sons had any male
offspring. It is hardly conceivable, that if at the end of
the seventeenth century any descendants of the Dean
entitled to perpetuate his illustrious name had been still
living, the fact should have remained undiscovered down to
our own time.

^5

APPENDIX C

DONNE'S WILL

In the name of the holy blessed and glorious Trinitie
Amen.

I JOHN DONNE by the Mercye of Christe Jesus and
by the callinge of the Churche of Englande Preist beinge at
this tyme in good & perfect understandinge praysed be God
therefore, doe hereby make my last Will and Testament in
manner and forme f oUowinge.

Firste I give my good and gracious God an intire Sacrifice
of body & soule w**^ my moste humble thanks for that assur-
ance w*^^ his blessed Spiritt ymprints in me nowe of the
Salvation of the one & the Eesurrection of the other and
for that constant & cheerful resolucon w®^ the same Spiritte
established in me to live & dye in the Religion nowe pro-
fessed in the Churche of Englande In expectation of that
Resurrection I desyre that my body may be buryed in the
moste private manner that maye be in th^t place of S°*.
Paules Churche London w*^*^ the nowe Residentiaries of that
Church have bene pleased at my requeste to assigne for that
purpose.

Item I make my well beloved friends Henrye Kinge
Doctor of Divinitie & John Montford Doctor of Divinitie
bothe Residentiaries of the Churche of S^*. Pauls London
Executors of this my Will.

And my will & desyre is that my verie worthie friend and
Kynde Brother in Lawe S^ Thomas Grymes of Peckham in
the Countye of Surrye Knighte be Overseer of this my
Will To whom I give hereby that strykinge clocke w*^*' I
ordinarilye weare and alsoe the Picture of Kipge James.

To Dcor Kinge my Executor I give that Medall of Gold of
the Synod of Dort which the Estates presented me w**^*" at
the Hague as also the twoe Pictures of Padre Paolo and Ful-

2^6

APPENDIX C 2^1

gentio vf^^ hange in the Parlo'^. at my house at Pauls and
to Doctor Montford my other Executor I give forty ounces
of white plate and the twoe pictures that hange on the
same syde of the Parlo'.

Item I give to the Righte Hono'able the Earle of Carlisle
the Picture of the Blessed Virgin Marye w*^^ hangs in the
little Dynynge Chamber. And to the Right Honorable the
Earle of Dorse^K the Picture of Adam and Eve w*^*^ hangs in
the greate chamber.

Item I give to Doctor Winniffe Deane of Glocester and
Residentiarie of S*. Pauls the Picture called the Sceleton
w^^ hangs in the Hall and to my kynde frend M^, George
Garrard the Picture of Marye Magdalene in my Chamber
and to my ancient frend Dcor Brooke Master of Trinitie
College in Cambridge the Picture of the B. Virgin and
Joseph vf^\ hangs in my Studey and to M^, TouriJoM a
French Minister (but by the Ordination of the Englishe
Churche) I give any Picture vi^K he will chuse of those w*^^.
hange in the little Dynynge roome & are not formerley
bequeathed.

Item I give to my two faithfuU servants Robert Christmaaa
and Thomas Roper officers of the Churche of S*. Paul's to
eache of them Five pounds to make them scale rihges en-
graved w**^. that Figujre w^^ I usuallye scale w****^. of w°K
sorte they knowe I have given many to my particular
frendes.

Item I give to my God Daughter Constance Grymes Tenn
pounds to be bestowed in plate for her.

Item I give to that Mayde whoe hathe many yeares
attended my Daughters whose name is Elizabeth^ Twenty
pounds if shee shall be in my se'^vice at the tyme of my
deathe and to the other mayde servants w*'*^ shall be in my
service at that tyme I give a yeares wages over and beyond
that w*^^ shall at that time be due to them.

Item I give to Vincent my coachman and to my servant
John Christmass to eache of them Ten pounds if they be at
the tyme of my deathe in my service.

Item I give to Thomas Moore a younge boy whome I
tooke latelie Five pounds if he shal be in my service then
and if any of these servants shall be departed from me
before I give to everie man servant that shall at that tyme

APPENDIX C

k above that w'

be in my service a yearea wages o
be tben due to them.

Item I give to eacli of the petty canDns and vicars chora
T** shall be in the Cliurche of S^ Paule at the tyme of Ta_
death B To each of them Fortye ahil lings and FortyB
abillings to the M'. of the Choristera and Fortye shiUingi
to be equally distributed amongst the then Choristers.

Item I give Thirtye shillings to eaelie of the vergers and
to each of the bell ringers Twentye shillings.

Item I will and bequeath to my Cosyn Jane Kent who
bathe heretofore been serrant to my mother Twelve poands
and to my Cosyn Edvm,rd Dawnon being decayed Twelvft
pounds and to hia Sister Oraee Daioson Six pounds w*
proporcon they being aged persons I make accounte doths
annswere those pencons w"*" I have yearlie heretofore given
unto them and meant to have contynued for theire lives i|
it had pleased to God to have C' ^

Item my will ia that the fower large pictures of the fowec
greate Prophetts w'^'' hange in the Hall and that large piotur«(
of ancient church work w'='' hange in the Lobby 1
to my chamber And whatsov^. I have pkcd in the ChappeU
(excepted that wheele of Deskea w"'' at this tyme stande*
there) shall temayne still in those place As alsoe tha
marble table sonne dyail and pictures w"** I have placed in
the Garden of all w"'' I desyre an Inventorie may be made
by sure Begister and the things to contynue alwayea in tha
House as they are.

Item I give to my Daughter ITarvije all the furniture v
is usuallye in that Chamber w'^'' wee cal the Flannel
Chamber and in the ynner Chamber thereof.

Item I give to the Poore of the parish of S'. Gregoriei
where I dwell Five pounds. And to the Poore of eache t
the Parrisbes of S'. Dunatana in the West London & (
Seavenoakes in Kent and of Elunbam in Bedfordshire To
eache parish Twentye poundea

Item I give to the Right Honorable the Earle of I
Patron of that Churche of Elunliam the Picture of laying)
Christe in the Tombe vf'^ bangs in my Study.

Item my Will is that all the former Legacies given u
monye be pnyde within six weekes after my deat&e. A\
which Legacies bcinge soe payed and all charge that can u

APPENDIX C 229

any waye fall uppon my Executors being discharged, my
Will is That my plate & bookes (such bookes only beinge
excepted as by a Schedule signde w*^ my hand I shall give
awaye) and all my other goods beinge praysde and soulde
all my Poore Estate of money left & money soe raised &
money lent maye be distributed in manner and forme
following.

Firste I will that for the mayntenance of my dearly
beloved Mother whome it hathe pleased God after a plenti-
fidl Fortune in her former tymes to bringe in decaye in her
very olde age, there be ymployed Five hundred poundes of
^ch jj^y meaninge is not that the Propertye but only the
proffite shoulde accrue to her during her natural life and after
her deathe the sayd Five hundred poundes to be divided
amongste those my children w*^^ shall be then alive And
because there maye be some tyme before any proffitt of that
monye will come to her handes my will is that Twenty
poundes be payde unto her order and besydes the benefitte
of the Five hundred pounds at the breakinge up of my
familye & her removinge from thence.

Item my Will is that my children's portions shoulde be
equall yf they be unmarried at my deathe But if they be
marryed before, they are to content themselves w*^ that w*'^
they shall have received from me at theire marriage Except
I make some other declaration of my Will by a CodicUl
hereafter to be annexed my will neverthelesse is that my
eldest daughter Constance Harvye whoe receyved from me
at her firste marriadge but Fyve hundred poundes for
portion shal be equall w*^ the rest whoe at my deathe are
to receive portions though theire portions amounte to noe
more than Five hundred poundes.

And therefore whereas there is at this tyme in my handes
a conveighance of a certaine Farme calld the Tannhouse
from her husband AT, Samuel Harvye in consideracon of
Twoe hundred and fif tye poundes payde by me for his use
in w**^ there is a Provisoe for redemption for a certaine
tyme. My will is that if that Twoe hundred and fiftie
poundes be accordinglie payde it be then added to the whole
Stocke w**^ is to be devided amongste the children If for
defaulte of payment it become absolutelie myne my will is
that that land be reassured unto him and his heires w^^

S30

APPENDIX C

this oondicon & not oth'wise that it be added to her J
ture for hir lief if ehee survive him and if it fall oute
that this land be thus given baeke, whereby my DaiightsB
received Twee hundred and fiftie poundea above hir formet
Five hundred, my will is that shee make noe clayme to any
parte of my state by any thinge formerlye aayd in this my
Will till all the rest of my children have received Seaven
hundred & fiftie poundea because upon the whole matter
ehee bathe teceyved so muche, yf I give backe that land.
But if by Gods goodnes theire portions come to more, Then
ahee is alsoe to enter for an equall pte of the suppluaage
aa well in that w'^'^ retumes to the children after ;
mothers deathe as any othere waye In all w'^h accrues w"*
may come to my Daughter Harvye my will is that uppoa
receipt thereof her husband moke a proportionable addicoa
to her Joynture in land or els that that monye «■* bIuU
soe accrue unto them niaye come to the longer liver of thenw

Item I give to my sonne George that Annuyte of FortyS;
pounds yearelie for the payment of W'' my hono'able frend
S^. Joha Davere of Chelsey Knighte bathe some yeares eiitaa
accepted from me Firate Twoe hundred pounJes and after
One hundred marcks of w"*" Annuyte thougho there be s
yett noe assurance made, yett there remayue w"" me Boodefl
for those sevrall sommea And S'. John Davers will uppoa
requeste made, either make suche assiiranco or repaye th8>
moneye as he hathe alwayea promisd me And my will i
that wliataov'' arysea to my other cbihlren my soniie George
be mode equall to them that Two hundred poundea and
one hundred marcks beinge accounted as part of the Somme.

Item my will is that the portions w"* shaU become duft
to my twoe Sonnea John & George & to my eldest daughtes
Bridgett yett unmarryed be payed to them as soone aftei
my deathe as may be because they are of years to govetna
theire portions. But for my twoe younger daughters Margaret
and Elizaheth my will is that theire portions be payde at the
dayea of theire severall marriages or at theire age of T
and Twentye yeares, theire portions to be ymployed in the
mcane tyme for theire mayntenance and for the increase ol
f^ portions if it will beare it. And if they or either c "
them dye before that tyme of marriage or of twoo Ui<
twentye yeares that then the portions of them or either c

APPENDIX C 231

them soe dyenge shal be equallye devided amongste my
othere children w*'^ shal be alyve at theire deathe And
because there maye be some tyme before they receave any-
thihge for theire mayntenance oute of the ymployment of
theire portions, my Will is that to eache of my children
John, George, Bridgett, Margarett and Elizabeth there be
Twenty e poundes payde at the same tyme as I have formerlie
appointed the like somme to be payde to my Mother.

Item I give to my hono^'able and faithful friendes Mr
Robert Karr of his Mjst^^ bedchamb' that Picture of mine
w*'^ is taken in Shaddowes and was made very many years
before I was of this Profession And to my honorable frend
S^ John Danvers I give what Picture he shall accept of
those that remayne unbequeathed.

And this my last Will and Testament made in the f eare
of God whose Mercye I humbly begge & constantlye relye
uppon in Christe Jesus & in perfecte love & charitie w**^ all
the World e whose pardon I aske from the lowest of my
Servants to the highest of my Superior*. I writt all w*^
myne owne hand & subscribed my name to everie page
thereof of w^ there are five & sealled the same & published
and declared it to be my last Will the thirteenth daye of
December 1630

J Donne in the pr^ of

Samuel Harvyb Edw Pickerell

John Harrington John Gibbs

Robert Ghristmass.

(This Will was proved 5*^ April 1631 by D' Henry
Kinge, and D' John Montford, the Executors.)

'J

.1.

f r

I-.

■H

1

INDEX

Abbot, Archbishop, 122, 135, 187.
Robert, afterwards Bishop of

Salisbury, 55.
Abrey Hatch (or Alborough Hatch),

202, 203.
Allegiance, Oath of, 65.
Allen, Constance, Donne's daughter

(cf. Donne, Constance), 161, 202.
Edward, husband of above,

founder of Dulwich College, 110,

161.
Amiens, 78.
Anderton, Lawrence, S.J., real

author of Brerely's Protestant

Apologie for the Bomam, Church,

102.
Andrewes, Dr. Lancelot, Bishop of

Winchester, 61, 55, 183.
Anne, Queen of Denmark, 64, 109,

124.
Applause at sermons, 138.
Ark, Admiral's ship, on Cadiz

expedition, 15, 16.
Augustine, 138.
Aylmer, Bishop, 162.

Bacon, Sir Francis, 68.

Bancroft, John, afterwards Bishop

of Oxford, 133.
BarkiDg, All Hallows, 195, App. B.
Barlow, Bishop William, Aiiswer to

a Catholike Englishman, 106.
Bartholomew's, St., Day, 6.
Bartlet, Sir Thomas, 100.
Beaumont, Francis, Lines to Ben

Jonson, 18.
Bedford, the young, 85.

Bedford, Lucy, Countess of, 42-48,

194.
Bemerton, 42.
Bequest for religious house at

Sawtrey, 9^
Biathanatos, 62, 63, 64, 99.
Bishopbourne, 54.
Blunham, 151, 196.
Bohemia, King of, 125.
Bowles, Sir W., married Margaret

Donne, App. B.
Brerely, The Protestamt Apologie

for the Bonum Church, 102.

Cf. Anderton.
Bridgewater, Lady, 40.
Brbme (Co. SuflFoik), 101.
Brooke, Christopher, 12, 23, 113,
Broughton, Mr. Hugh, 98, 99.

Samuel, 23, App. C.

Brydges, Grey, Baron Chandos of

Sudely, 40.

Ann (n^ Stanley), his wife, 40.

Buckingham. Cf. Villiers.
Bulstrode, Cecilia, 46.

CiESAB, Sir Julius, Master of the
Rolls, 27, 51, 122.

Camberwell, 27, 107, 108, 161,
App. B.

Cambridge (St. John's), 55, 112.

Carew, Sir George, commanded the
Mwry Bose in the Cadiz expedi-
tion, 15, 16.

Sir Nicholas Throckmorton,

Lord of the Manor of Mioham, 27.
Carey, Valentine, Dean of St. Paul's,
predecessor of Donne, 129, 184.

888

234

INDEX

Carlisle, Lord (cf. Hay), 169,

209, App. C.
Carr, Sir Robert (Earl of Ancram),

63, 73, 189, App. C.
Carr, Sir Robert (Viscount Roch-
ester, Earl of Somerset), 73-75,

84.
Cases of ConsciencCy 61.
Chamberlain, 169.
Chandos, Baron of Sudely. Cf.

Brydges.
Charles, Prince, 153, 168, 171.

I., King, 171, 176, 187, 196.

Charterhouse, 110.
Chenies (Cheneys), 40.
Chichester, Bis
Chigwell, 134.
Christmass, John, App. C.

Robert, App. C.

Chrysostom, 138.

Clement, John, 3, App. A.

Margaret,his wife {rUe Griggs),

3, App. A.
^— Winifred, daughter, married

William Rastall, 3, App. A.
Cokayne, Sir Aston, 179.

Sir Thomas, 179.

Sir William, 179.

Lady (n^ Morris), wife of Sir

Thomas, 179.
Mrs., 197, 211.

Chichester, Bishop, 217.

ys), <
ihop.

Colchester Archdeaconry, 134.
Conway, Sir Edward, 97.
Copley, Avery, 115.
Cornwallis, Sir W. and Lady, 101.
Cotton, Bp., of Exeter, 129.

Danvers, Lady, previously Mag-
dalen Herbert, 42, 175, 192,
193.

Danvers, Sir John, App. C.

Dawson, Edward, cousin of Donne,
App. C.

Grace, cousin of Donne,

App. C.

Dee, John, 39.

Denmark House, 110, 171, 172.

Derby, Alice (n6e Spencer), Countess
of, 40.

Devereux, Walter, 16.

Dieppe, 78.

Do not, fair sotU, this sacrijiee re-

fuse, 47.
Doncaster, 128, 129. Cf. Hay.
Donne, Ann {n4e More), Dean's

wife, 20, etc. ; her illness, 80.
Ann, Dean's sister, m. Avery

Copley, 115.
Bridget, Dean's daughter,

App. B.
Constance, Dean's daughter,

m., first, Edward Allen ; second,

Samuel Harvey, 161, 202, App.

B.

Elizabeth {nie Rastall), Dean's

mother, 4, 114, 195, App. C.

— Francis, Dean's son, 93.

— George, Dean's son, a soldier,
imprisoned five years, 50, 195,
208, App. B.

Henry, Dean's brother, 4,

5, 10, 11.

— John, Dean's father, 2, 8, 10.
John, Dean's son, 194, 218,

App. B.

— John, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's,

parentage, 3 ;

brought up in the tenets of the

Chui'ch of Rome, 10 ;
went to Hart Hall, Oxford, 11 ;
took no degree, travelled abroad,

12;
entered Lincoln's Inn, 12 ;
a literary celebrity in London, 18;
personal attractions, 13 ;
suspected of too much sympathy

with the Romanists, 14.
volunteers for Cadiz expedition,

16;
appointed secretary to Lord

Keeper, 17 ;
a poet and wit, 18 ;
an omnivorous reader, 20 ;
marriage, 23 ;
sent to Fleet Prison, 24 ;
dismissed by Lord Keeper, 24 ;
resides at Pyrford, 27 ;
at Micham, 27 ;
visits Earl of Northumberland in

prison and on release, 40 ;
becomes acquainted with Herbert

family at Oxford, 41 ;

INDEX

235

Donne, John — amtinued,
assists Bishop Morton in his

Catholic Appeal, 66 ;
a good linguist, 65 ;
anxious for Crown appointment,

65;
his M.A. degree, 72 ;
pressed to take holy orders, 73 ;
accompanies Sir Robert Drury on

a foreign tour, 77 ;
illness at Paris, 79 ;
vision of his wife, 81 ;
residence at Drury House, 87 ;
gives up poetiy, 88 ;
comi)ellea to publish, 90 ;
ordained, 91 ;

D.D. degree conferred at Cam-
bridge, 91.
first sermon, 109.
rector of Sevenoaks, 112 ; of

Keyston, 112 ;
Preacher at Lincoln's Inn, 113 ;
first appearance at Paul's Cross,

122;
death of his wife, 123 ;
preaches before the Lords at

Whitehall 1619, 126 ;
chaplain to Earl of Doncaster,

127;
accompanies Doncaster abroad,

127;
preaches before Prince and Prin-
cess Palatine, 128 ;
at the Hague, 129.
made Dean of St. Paul's, 130 ;
resigns Preachership at Lincoln's

Inn, 132 ;
made Bencher of Lincoln's Inn,

132;
prebendary of Chiswick, 141 ;
last sermon at Whitehall, 142 ;
effect of his preaching, 142 ;
estimate as a theologian, 143 ;
preaches at Temple on great

Sergeants* Feast, 165 ;
serious illness, 165 ;
writes Devotions, 156 ;
Prolocutor of Lower House, 161 ;
vicar of St. Dunstan's, 162 ;
last illness, 204 ;
memorial rings, 204 ;

Donne, John — continued,

his monument, 206 ;

his death, 215, 222 ;

his burial, 220 ;

his will, 226, App. C.
Lucy, Deans daughter, 46,

App. B.

Margaret, Dean's daughter,

married Sir W. Bowles, 196,
App. B.

Nicholas, Dean's son, 84.

Dorset (Edwd. Sackville), Earl, 162.
Dort, medal of Synod of, conferred,

129, App. C.
Drake, Sir F., 6.
Drayton, Michael, 12.
Drury of Hawstead, Sir Richard

and Lady, 76, 77.

Elizabeth, their daughter, 77.

Drury House, 77.

Dulwich, 110.

Dunstan's, St., 118.

Duties of Dean of St. Paul's, 141.

Dwynns of Dwynn, 2.

Effingham, Lord Howard of, Loi*d

High Admiral, 15, 16.
Egerton, Sir T. Cf. EUesmere.

Lady, 40.

Thomas, son, killed, 21.

Elizabeth, Princess, daughter of

James i., wife of the Elector

Palatine, 83, 127, etc.
Elizabeth, an old family servant,

196, App. C.
Elizabeth, Queen, 6, 18, 27.
EUesmere, Lord, Keeper of the

Great Seal, 17, 20, 34, 36, 40.
Essays in Dimnity, 87.
Essex, Robert, Earl of, 16, 16, 84.

Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria,
Claimant of Crown of Bohemia,
head of Catholic LeacftLC, 125 ,128,

Ferrar, Nicholas, 90, 149.

Fowler, William, 64, 65.

Fox, Dr., 196, 205.

Frederick, Elector Palatine, mar-
ries Princess Elizabeth, 83.

head of Protestant Union,

126, 127.

236

INDEX

Frederick, Elector Palatine, elected

King of Bohemia, 125.
Friars Observants, 9.

Gardiner, Sir Thomas, and son,

App. B.
Garrat or Grarrard, Mr. George,

Master of Charterhouse, 106,

107, 208, App. C.
Gibbs, John, App. C.
Goodere, Francis, 49.
Goodere, Sir Henry, of Polesworth,

34, 48, 49, 76, 90, 130, 139, 194.
Greenwich, 109.

Grey, Charles, Earl of Kent, 151.
Griffen, Edward, 109.
Griffith, Matthew, 163, 164.
Griggs, Margaret (cf. Clement), 3,

App. A.
Grymes, Constance, goddaughter

of the Dean, App. 0.
Jane, mother of Sir Thos. , mar-
ried, secondly, Sir T. Hunt, 108.
Sir Thomas (and Lady), 27,

108, 161, 203, App. C.
Gunpowder Plot, 39, 54.

Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day

this is ! 84.
Haines, Mr., 35.
Hakewill, William, 51.
Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Exeter,

183, 184.
Hamilton, Marquis, 169.
Hanworth, 145, 146, 175.
Harrington, John, witness of

Donne's will, App. C.
Sir John, Lord of Exton, father

of Lady Bedford, 42, 47, 90.
second Lord, brother of Lady

Bedford, 47.
William, 4.

Harriott, Thomas, the astronomer,
39.

Harvey, Mr., afterwards Sir James,
8, 202.

Samuel, 202, App. C.

Hay, James, Lord, Earl of Don-
caster, then Earl of Carlisle, 69,
91, 110, 111, 122, 125, 128, 129,
142, 169.

Hazard, Nathaniel, 208.

Heidelberg, 127.

Henrietta Maria, wife of King

Charles i., 169.
Henry, Prince of Wales, 83.
Herbert, Edward, Lord of Cherbury,

10, 41, 63, 107.
George, 89, 90.

Magdalen, Mrs., afterwards

Lady Dan vers, 41, 101, etc.

Richard, of Montgomery

Castle, 41, 84.

Hey wood, Elizabeth (ti^ Eastall), 3

Elizabeth (married John

Donne), Dean's mother, 7.

Ellis, Dean's unde, 4, App.

A.

Jasper, Dean's uncle, 4, 10,

App. A.

John, Donne's maternal grand-

father, 4.
Hooker, Richard, D.D., 54.
Hoskins, John, 12.
Howard, Thomas, 7, 84.
Hunt, Sir Thomas, of Foulsham,

108.

Ignatius his Conda/vef 68, 80.
Infanta Maria, 153.
Inscription on Donne's wife's monu-
ment, 124.

James i. enforces oath of allegi-
ance, 68, 112, 124 ; progress to
Scotland, 122 ; arbitrator be-
tween the conflicting German
princes, 125 ; promotes Donne
to the deanery, 129 ; his Instruc-
tion to Preachers, 146 ; ill-health,
154, 168 ; death, 171.

Jesuits, English, 67.

Jewel, Bishop, 53.

Jones, Inigo, 110.

Jonson, Ben, 12.

Kent, Jane, cousin to the Dean,

App. C.
Keystone, 112, 175.
King, Henry, poet, Bishop of

Chichester, 133, 206, 216, 217,

221, App. C.

INDEX

237

King, John, Bishop of London, 87,
91, 133.

John, his son, 133.

Eingsmill, Sir George, 50 ; Lady, 51.
KnoU, 175.

Lawrence, Cornelius, M.D., mar-
ried Elizabeth Donne, App. B.

Lincoln's Inn, Bible given by
Donne to the library, 132.

Letters to Severed Persons o/Ronoury
50.

to Sir Robert Carr, 107, 156,

170, 189, 190.

to Lady Bedford, 44, 45.

to Mrs. Cokayne, 197, 208.

to a Friend, 157.

to Sir Henry Goodere of

Polesworth, 24, 34, 66, 93, 94,
95.

— to George Garrett, 106, 107.

— to " A. V. Merced," 99, 101,
103.

to Lord Keeper Egerton, 33,

36.

to his Mother, 115.

to Sir George More, 24, 30.

to Lord Rochester, 74.

to Lord Somerset (Sir R. Carr),

81.

Malines, 8, 4.
Markham, Lady, 46.
Martin, Richard, 51.
Mary, Queen, 155.
Marylebone, 109.
Mason, Henry, 133.
Matthias, Emperor, 124.
Meadows, Dr., Rector of St. Gabriel,

172.
Meautys, Mistress, 100, 101.
Mermaid Tavern, 12.
Micham or Mitcham, 27, 44, 46,

60, 93, 95.
Montagu, Dr. Richard, 183, 186,

187, 217.
Montagu, Bishop of Bath and

Wells, 85, 183.
Montford, Dr. John, 216, App. C.
Monument suggested by Dr. Fox,

designed by himself, 205.

Moor Park, 42.

Moore, Thomas, Dean's servant,

App. C.
More, Agnes, wife of Sir John {n^

Granger), App. A.
Ann, marriage with Dr. Donne,

22. Cf. Donne, A.

Elizabeth, sister of Sir Thomas,

App. A.

Margaret, second daughter of

Sir George More of Losely,
married Sir T. Grymes, 161.
Sir Thomas, App. A.

Morris, Richard, father of Mary,

wife of Sir W. Cokayne, 179.
Morton, Dr., Dean of Gloucester,

afterwards Bishop of Lichfield,

51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 187.
Moulin, Peter du, 108.
Mountaine, Dean of Westminster,

85.

Neve, Le, 53.
Nicholas, St, Olave, 8.
Northumberland, Earl of. V. Percy.
Notker, St., 96.

Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's, author
of the Catechigmf 53.

Oath of Allegiance, 65, 70.
O'fflahertie, Rev. T., 115.
Ostend, 85.
Overbury, Sir T., 85, 112.

Paddinqton, 109.

Parr, Katharine, Queen, 145.

Parsons, Robert, 53, 67.

Paul's Cross, 134.

Peckham, App. B, C.

Pembroke, Lord, 35.

Percy, Henry, Earl of Northumber-
land, 23, 39, 144, 209.

Perkins, 55.

Petworth, 144.

Philip II., 153.

IV., 153, 168.

Pickerel!, Edward, App. C.

Pierse, W., Bishop of Peterborough,
133.

Pius v., Pope, his bull excommuni-
cating Queen Elizabeth, 5.

238

INDEX

Plague, The, 172, 173.

Polesworth, 34-48.

Pory, Mr., 106, 107.

Prague, 128.

Prebendaries of St. Paul's, 132,

180.
Preston, Dr., 187.
Privy Seal, Lord, 122.
Problems^ 61.

Pseudo Martyr, 67, 70, 72.
Pyrford, 16, 21, 27, App. C.

Rainsford, Mr., third husband of
Donne's mother, 115, 117.

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 16, 16, 39.

Rastall, Elizabeth {n4e More), 3,
App. A.

Elizabeth, wife of J. Heywood,

3, App. A.

John, 3, App. A.

William, 3, App. A.

Winifred {lUe Clement), 3.

Ratpetus, monk of Suevia, 96.
Recusants, 66, 66.
Rings designed by Donne, 42, 204.
Rochester (Robt. Can), Earl of, 73,

76, 81, 84.
Roper, Thomas, App. C.
Rudde, Dr. Anthony, Dean of

Gloucester, 14.
Rudolph II., 126.

Sackville, Richard, Earl of
Dorset, 162.

Salisbury, Lord, 73, 81.

Sanderson, Bishop, 183.

Sara via, 63, 64.

Sawtrey, 8.

Sermons — first sermon preached
at Paddington, 109 ; earliest
dated at Greenwich, 109; at
Whitehall, 111 ; Lincoln's Inn,
118 ; fourteen published speci-
mens, 119, 120, 126 ; at Paul's
Cross, 122 ; frequently at White-
hall, 124 ; at Heidelberg, 128 ;
at St. Paul's, 131 ; first as Dean,
142 ; at Hanworth, 146 ; at
Paul's Cross to explain Instruc-
tionSf 146 ; before the Vir-
ginian Co., 149; at consecra-

tion of Lincoln's Inn Chapel,

153 ; first at St. Dunstan's, 164;

there extempore, 166 ; first to

King Charles i., 171, 176 ; on

death of Lady Dan vers, 192;

later, 196, 200 ; the last, 202.
Seldon, John, 12.
Sevenoaks, Rector of, 112, 196.
Shakespeare at the Mermaid

Tavern, 12.
Shallow, Justice, 42.
Shelton, Sir Joseph, 109.

Mr. Samuel, 109.

Simmonds, second husband of

Donne's mother (?), 115.
Simpson, Mr. Richard, Life of

Edward Campion, 60.
Since I am coming to that holy room

216.
Somerset House, 110.
Southampton, Lord, 149.
Spain, Kmg of, 36.
Spanish marriage, 168.
Spencer, Sir John, of Althorpe,

40.
Staples, Mary, wife of the Dean's

eldest son, John, App. B.
Suffolk. V. Howard, 7, 84.
Sutton, founder of Charterhouse,

110.
Symposia at Court of King James i. ,

69.

Thavios Inn, 4.
Theobalds, 171.
Tourvall, Mr., a French minister,

App. C.
Tricombs, 94.
Twickenham, 48, 48.
Tyrrels, 36.

Universities, early entrance of the

sons of Catholic gentry, 11.
Ussher, Archbishop, 183.
Uvedall House, 175.

Valediction, A, forbidding to

mourn, 77.
Vere, Sir Francis, 15, 16, 85.
Villiers, Earl of Buckingham, 110,

144, 145, 153.

INDEX

239

Vincent, Donne's coachman, App.
C.

Walton, Izaak, biographer of

Donne, 109 &nd pcusim,
his »near neighbour at

St. Dnnstan's, 166.

watches his dying-bed, 218.

Izaak, the younger, 217.

Weldon, 51.
White, Francis, Dean of Carlisle,
187.

Thomas, Dr., 162.

Whitehall, 112.

Willoughby, Lord, 35.

Williams, John, Bishop of Lincoln,

183.
PTilt Thou forgive that sin lohere I

heguUf 206.
Winniffe, Dr. Thomas, Donne's

successor as Dean, 183, 216,

App. C.
Winwood, Ralph", secretary, 122.
Wooley, Sir Francis, of Pyrford,

16, 21, 59.
Wotton, Sir Henry, 11, 86, 87.

York House, 31.

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