(1573-1631)
[Illustration: JOHN DONNE]
"The memory of Dr. Donne must not, cannot die, as long as men speak
English," wrote Izaak Walton, "whilst his conversation made him and
others happy. His life ought to be the example of more than that age
in which he died."
Born in 1573, all the influences of the age in which Donne lived
nourished his large nature and genius. Shakespeare and Marlowe were
nine years older than he; Chapman fourteen; Spenser, Lyly, and Richard
Hooker each twenty; while Sir Philip Sidney counted one year less.
Lodge and Puttenham were grown men, and Greene and Nash riotous boys.
In the following year Ben Jonson "came forth to warm our ears," and
soon after we have his future co-worker Inigo Jones. It was the time
of a multitude of poets,--Drayton, the Fletchers, Beaumont, Wither,
Herrick, Carew, Suckling, and others. Imagination was foremost, and
was stimulated by vast discoveries. Debates upon ecclesiastical
reform, led by Wyclif, Tyndal, Knox, Foxe, Sternhold, Hopkins, and
others, had prepared the way; and the luminous literatures of Greece
and Italy, but recently brought into England, had made men's spirits
receptive and creative. It was a period of vast conceptions, when men
discovered themselves and the world afresh.
Under such outward conditions Donne was born, in London, "of good and
virtuous parents," says Walton, being descended on his mother's side
from no less distinguished a personage than Sir Thomas More. In 1584,
when he was eleven years old, with a good command both of French and
Latin, he passed from the hands of tutors at home to Hare Hall, a much
frequented college at Oxford. Here he formed a friendship with Henry
Wotton, who, after the poet's death, collected the material from which
Walton wrote his tender and sincere 'Life of Donne.'
After leaving Oxford he traveled for three years on the Continent, and
on his return in 1592 became a member of Lincoln's Inn, with intent to
study law; but his law never, says Walton, "served him for other use
than an ornament and self-satisfaction." While a member of Lincoln's
Inn he became one of the coterie of the poets of his youth. To this
time are to be referred those of his 'Divine Poems' which show him a
sincere Catholic. Stirred by the increasing differences between the
Romanist and the Anglican denominations, Donne turned toward
theological questions, and finally cast his lot with the new
doctrines. His large nature, impetuously reacting from the asceticism
to which he had been bred, turned to excess and overboldness in
action, and an occasional coarseness of phrasing in his poems.
The first of his famous 'Satires' are dated 1593, and all were
probably written before 1601. During this time also he squandered his
father's legacy of L3000. In 1596, when the Earl of Essex defeated the
Spanish navy and pillaged Cadiz, Donne, now one of the first poets of
the time, was among his followers. "Not long after his return into
England ... the Lord Ellesmere, the Keeper of the Great Seal,...
taking notice of his learning, languages, and other abilities, and
much affecting his person and behavior, took him to be his chief
secretary, supposing and intending it to be an introduction to some
weighty employment in the State;... and did always use him with much
courtesy, appointing him a place at his own table." Here he met the
niece of Lady Ellesmere,--the daughter of Sir George More, Lord
Lieutenant of the Tower,--whom at Christmas, 1600, he married, despite
the opposition of her father. Sir George, transported with wrath,
obtained Donne's imprisonment; but the poet finally regained his
liberty and his wife, Sir George in the end forgiving the young
couple. "Mr. Donne's estate was the greatest part spent in many
chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought experience, he [being] out
of all employment that might yield a support for himself and wife."
The depth and intensity of Donne's feeling for this beautiful and
accomplished woman are manifested, says Mr. Norton, in all the poems
known to be addressed to her, such as 'The Anniversary' and 'The
Token.'
Of 'The Valediction Forbidding Mourning' Walton declares:--"I beg
leave to tell that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them;" while from Lowell's unpublished 'Lecture on Poetic
Diction' Professor Norton quotes the opinion that "This poem is a
truly sacred one, and fuller of the soul of poetry than a whole
Alexandrian Library of common love verses."
During this period of writing for court favors, Donne wrote many of
his sonnets and studied the civil and canon law. After the death of
his patron Sir Francis in 1606, Donne divided his time between
Mitcham, whither he had removed his family, and London, where he
frequented distinguished and fashionable drawing-rooms. At this time
he wrote his admirable epistles in verse, 'The Litany,' and funeral
elegies on Lady Markham and Mistress Bulstrode; but those poems are
merely "occasional," as he was not a poet by profession. At the
request of King James he wrote the 'Pseudo-Martyr,' published in 1610.
In 1611 appeared his funeral elegy 'An Anatomy of the World,' and one
year later another of like texture, 'On the Progress of the Soul,'
both poems being exalted and elaborate in thought and fancy.
The King, desiring Donne to enter into the ministry, denied all
requests for secular preferment, and the unwilling poet deferred his
decision for almost three years. All that time he studied textual
divinity, Greek, and Hebrew. He was ordained about the beginning of
1615. The King made him his chaplain in ordinary, and promised other
preferments. "Now," says Walton, "the English Church had gained a
second St. Austin, for I think none was so like him before his
conversion, none so like St. Ambrose after it; and if his youth had
the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellences of the other,
the learning and holiness of both."
In 1621 the King made him Dean of St. Paul's, and vicar of St. Dunstan
in the West. By these and other ecclesiastical emoluments "he was
enabled to become charitable to the poor and kind to his friends, and
to make such provision for his children that they were not left
scandalous, as relating to their or his profession or quality."
His first printed sermons appeared in 1622. The epigrammatic terseness
and unexpected turns of imagination which characterize the poems, are
found also in his discourses. Three years later, during a dangerous
illness, he composed his 'Devotion.' He died on the 31st of March,
1631.
"Donne is full of salient verses," says Lowell in his 'Shakespeare
Once More,' "that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with
their beauty; of thoughts that first tease us like charades, and then
delight us with the felicity of their solution." There are few in
which an occasional loftiness is sustained throughout, but this
occasional excellence is original, condensed, witty, showing a firm
and strong mind, clear to a degree almost un-English. His poetry has
somewhat of the stability of the Greeks, though it may lack their
sweetness and art. His grossness was the heritage of his time. He is
classed among the "metaphysical poets," of whom Dr. Johnson
wrote:--"They were of very little care to clothe their notions with
elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which
are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to
adorn their thoughts." It was in obedience to such a dictum, and to
Dryden's suggestion, doubtless, that Pope and Parnell recast and
re-versified the 'Satires.'
The first edition of Donne's poems appeared two years after his death.
Several editions succeeded during the seventeenth century. In the more
artificial eighteenth century his harsh and abrupt versification and
remote theorems made him difficult to understand. The best editions
are 'The Complete Poems of John Donne,' edited by Dr. Alexander
Grosart (1872); and 'The Poems of John Donne,' from the text of the
edition of 1633, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1895), from whose
work the citations in this volume are taken.