What have I, which I have not received from the Lord? He bestows, also,
to the intent that what He hath bestowed may revert to Him by the proper
use of it: that, as I have not consciously been wanting to myself during
the whole course of the past year, either in discharging my secular
duties, in retaining the dignity of my station, or in my conduct towards
my servants and the poor--so my children for whom remains whatever is
remaining, may receive it with gratitude, and acknowledge the beneficent
Giver. Amen.
* * * * *
But I return from my long digression.
We left the Author sick in Essex, where he was forced to spend much of
that winter, by reason of his disability to remove from that place; and
having never, for almost twenty years, omitted his personal attendance
on his Majesty in that month, in which he was to attend and preach to
him; nor having ever been left out of the roll and number of Lent
Preachers, and there being then--in January, 1630--a report brought to
London, or raised there, that Dr. Donne was dead; that report gave him
occasion to write the following letter to a dear friend:--
"Sir,
"This advantage you and my other friends have by my frequent
fevers, that I am so much the oftener at the gates of Heaven; and
this advantage by the solitude and close imprisonment that they
reduce me to after, that I am so much the oftener at my prayers, in
which I shall never leave out your happiness; and I doubt not,
among His other blessings, God will add some one to you for my
prayers. A man would almost be content to die--if there were no
other benefit in death--to hear of so much sorrow, and so much good
testimony from good men, as I--God be blessed for it--did upon the
report of my death; yet I perceive it went not through all; for one
writ to me, that some--and he said of my friends--conceived I was
not so ill as I pretended, but withdrew myself to live at ease,
discharged of preaching. It is an unfriendly, and, God knows, an
ill-grounded interpretation; for I have always been sorrier when I
could not preach, than any could be they could not hear me. It hath
been my desire, and God may be pleased to grant it, 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 of those labours.
Sir, I hope to see you presently after Candlemas; about which time
will fall my Lent Sermon at Court, except my Lord Chamberlain
believe me to be dead, and so leave me out of the roll: but as long
as I live, and am not speechless, I would not willingly, decline
that service. I have better leisure to write, than you to read; yet
I would not willingly oppress you with too much letter. God so
bless you and your son, as I wish to
"Your poor friend and Servant
"In Christ Jesus,
"J. Donne."
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
him with an unexpected strength, would now withdraw it in his last
employment; professing an holy ambition to perform that sacred work."
And when, to the amazement of some beholders, he appeared in the pulpit,
many of them thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by
a living 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 unspent 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 preconceived 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 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 is 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 looking 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 shewed 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 fortune
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
burden 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 myself 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."
I must here look so far back, as to tell the reader that at his first
return out of Essex, to preach his last sermon, his old friend and
physician, Dr. Fox--a man of great worth--came to him to consult his
health; and that after a sight of him, and some queries concerning his
distempers he told him, "That by cordials, and drinking milk twenty days
together, there was a probability of his restoration to health"; but he
passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless, Dr. Fox, who loved him
most entirely, wearied him with solicitations, till he yielded to take
it for ten days; at the end of which time he told Dr. Fox, "He had drunk
it more to satisfy him, than to recover his health; and that he would
not drink it ten days longer, upon the best moral assurance of having
twenty years added to his life; for he loved it not; and was so far from
fearing Death, which to others is the King of Terrors, that he longed
for the day of his dissolution."
It is observed, that a desire of glory or commendation is rooted in the
very nature of man; and that those of the severest and most mortified
lives, though they may become so humble as to banish self-flattery, and
such weeds as naturally grow there; yet they have not been able to kill
this desire of glory, but that like our radical heat, it will both live
and die with us; and many think it should do so; and we want not sacred
examples to justify the desire of having our memory to outlive our
lives; which I mention, because 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 coffin, or grave.
Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the
sheet turned aside as might shew his lean, pale, and death-like face,
which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the
second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus." In this posture he was
drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he
caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued and became his
hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend
and executor Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who
caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it
now stands in that Church; and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these
words were to be affixed to it as an epitaph:--