SAC. THEOL. PROFESS. POST VARIA STUDIA, QUIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS
FIDELITER, NEC INFELICITER INCUBUIT; INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SP.
SANCTI, MONITU ET HORTATU REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS,
ANNO SUI JESU, MDCXIV. ET SUÆ ÆTATIS XLII. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIÆ
INDUTUS, XXVII. NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII,
MDCXXXI. HIC LICET IN OCCIDUO CINERE, ASPICIT EUM CUJUS NOMEN EST
ORIENS.
And now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities
of a various life, even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire
is, he may rest, till I have told my reader that I have seen many
pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in several
postures: and I now mention this because I have seen one picture of him,
drawn by a curious hand, at his age of eighteen, with his sword, and
what other adornments might then suit with the present fashions of youth
and the giddy gaieties of that age; and his motto then was--
"How much shall I be changed
Before I am changed!"
And if that young, and his now dying picture were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, "Lord! how much is Dr. Donne already
changed, before he is changed!" And the view of them might give my
reader occasion to ask himself with some amazement, "Lord! how much may
I also, that am now in health, be changed before I am changed; before
this vile, this changeable body shall put off mortality!" and therefore
to prepare for it.--But this is not writ so much for my reader's
memento, as to tell him, that Dr. Donne would often in his private
discourses, and often publicly in his sermons, mention the many changes
both of his body and mind, especially of his mind from a vertiginous
giddiness; and would as often say, "His great and most blessed change
was from a temporal to a spiritual employment"; in which he was so
happy, that he accounted the former part of his life to be lost; and the
beginning of it to be, from his first entering into Sacred Orders, and
serving his most merciful God at His altar.
Upon Monday, after the drawing this picture, he took his last leave of
his beloved study; and, being sensible of his hourly decay, retired
himself to his bedchamber; and that week sent at several times for many
of his most considerable friends, with whom he took a solemn and
deliberate farewell, commending to their considerations some sentences
useful for the regulation of their lives; and then dismissed them, as
good Jacob did his sons, with a spiritual benediction. The Sunday
following, he appointed his servants, that if there were any business
yet undone, that concerned him or themselves, it should be prepared
against Saturday next; for after that day he would not mix his thoughts
with any thing that concerned 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
stedfastly into it, till he saw the Son of Man standing at the right
hand of God His Father"; and being satisfied with this blessed sight, as
his soul ascended, and his last breath departed 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.
Thus variable, thus virtuous was the life; thus excellent, thus
exemplary was the death of this memorable man.
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 unnumbered
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 virtue and learning, writ this epitaph with a
coal on the wall over his grave:--
"Reader! 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, an
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 himself--"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 commanding judgment.
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 too brave a soul to offer 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 Almighty God, the immortality of the soul, and
the joys of heaven: and would often say in a kind of sacred
ecstacy--"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 re-animated.