daughter, a child of fifteen, whom he had never seen; this he followed next year by another (The Anatomy of the World), and yet a third, all containing beautiful and even splendid passages, but marred by overmultiplied and overstrained conceits and utterly preposterous hyperbole 'enormous and disgusting hyperboles' is a phrase of Dr Johnson's. Thus Donne declares death now Can find nothing after her to kill,

Except the world itself, so great as she :

the world could better have spared the sun, and by reason of this damsel's death is now a mere cripple and the ghost of its former self! But the elegies so commended the

elegist that Drury gave him and his wife free quarters in his house, and took the poet abroad with him. It was at Paris that Donne saw the vision of his wife with a dead child in her arms, afterwards proved a veritable fact. Donne had ere this offered to go into the Church if he could thus secure patronage; and now in 1615 he did so, after mysterious delays and hesitations, credited by Walton to his remorse for youthful sins, but open-partly at least -to a less gracious reference to worldly calculations and ambitious hopes. The

shroud and standing on an urn in a specially warmed room. From his ordination till near his end Donne wrote few poems; his trenchant thought, his brilliant fancy, his profound insight, and his command of the English tongue finding outlet in his sermons.

Donne's poems-songs and quatorzains, satires, elegies, religious poems, complimentary epistles in verse, epithalamiums, epigrams, and miscellaneous meditations in metre-were many of them diligently handed about in manuscript from the beginning, but were not collected and published till 1633. In virtue of his early poems, whose erotic sensualism he in later days regretted

king encouraged him to take English orders. Either now, as one would hope, or, as Mr Gosse thinks, after his wife's death (1617), his deeper nature was stirred to true religious zeal, and theology was no longer a hobby or a professional exercise. Walton's story that Donne had fourteen livings offered him in his first year of clerical life is shown by Mr Gosse to be quite incredible; but seasonable preferments came fairly soon. In 1616 he received the livings of Keyston in Huntingdon and Sevenoaks in Kent, but he never lived in either parish. Various preacherships he also held, and in 1621 became Dean of St Paul's. Charles I. had resolved to make him a bishop, but Donne died on the 31st of March 1631, before this purpose was carried out. He was buried in St Paul's, and by-and-by that eccentric monument was erected from the painting made in the last month of the Dean's life-the invalid solemnly posing to the artist sheeted in a

though he preserved the MSS., as Beza, another Churchman, republished his erotic verse-Donne ranks in a sense with earlier and contemporary Elizabethans, but seems to have consciously revolted against their mellifluous monotonies, their pseudo-classical nomenclature, their pastoral and other conventions. His hard and crabbed style is to some extent deliberately adopted; we may even congratulate ourselves that so much perfect and melodious verse took that shape as it were in spite of him. He stands curiously apart from the master As Mr Gosse points

influences in poetry at home. out, he took no interest in Shakespeare, in Bacon, in Daniel, or in Drayton, and had relations with Ben Jonson alone of the notable English poets of his day. He was markedly influenced by Spanish literature, but was original to a fault. In virtue of his studied carelessness, his avoidance of smoothness or form, his pedantry, his infectious harshness, this 'foremost of the metaphysical poets' opens a new era, if he does not found a school. Even as handed about in his early manhood, Donne's privately circulated MS. poems had a great vogue, and a powerfulevidently too powerful-influence on the next generation, who could more easily imitate his eccentricities and extravagances than rival his soaring flights and exquisite beauties. Ben Jonson told Drummond that he held Donne 'the first poet in the world in some things,' yet added that for not keeping accent he deserved to

be hanged,' and that he would perish from not being understood. It must be accounted a glory to Donne that George Herbert and his brother of Cherbury were, for good or evil, his pupils, and the mystic Crashaw, too; Carew was another enthusiastic admirer. In Dryden's judgment Donne was the greatest wit though not the best poet of our nation,' for of course Dryden sympathised with the contrary influences represented by Waller, Denham, and Cowley. Donne was discredited in the later seventeenth century and all the eighteenth. But Mr Gosse traces Donne's influence in Pope even, and thinks the modern appreciation of Donne began with Browning, who was very directly influenced, and put the Mandrake Song to music. Now it is agreed that, amidst roughness and obscurity, far-fetched allusion, contorted imagery and allegory, and unrhythmical wit, Donne often presents us with poetry of a high order, in expression as well as in thought.

With Hall, Donne was one of the first English satirists on the regular Latin model: Buchanan's satires were in Latin, and Skelton and Lyndsay belong to a different category. Dryden, Pope, and Young took over and smoothed Donne's type of rhyming couplet; and Pope, acting on Dryden's hint, modernised some of Donne's satires. His swift transitions from voluptuous ecstasies to meditation on the mystery of life and death, and his profound but at times not a little fantastic speculations, no doubt contributed to securing for Donne the epithet-seldom precisely used of 'metaphysical.' His intellect was active and keen, his fancy vivid and picturesque, his wit playful and yet caustic. His too great terseness and prodigality of ideas breeds obscurity; the uneven and crabbed versification, with superfluous syllables to be slurred over, and accents that must be thrown on the wrong syllables-however much a part of his conscious design-is puzzling; you have to understand the poem before you can scan his verse. The conceits are often not merely striking but suggestive and beautiful, lightly and gracefully handled. Mr Gosse praises especially :

Doth not a Teneriffe or higher hill

Rise so high like a rock that one might think The floating moon would shipwreck there and sink. On the other hand, Donne constantly piles up Ossas upon Pelions of metaphors, prefers such as are puerile or grotesque-defying the good taste of his own time as well as ours and overelaborates them to wearisomeness. Thus, treating of a broken heart, he runs off into a play on the expression 'broken heart.' He entered a room, he says, where his mistress was present, and Love, alas,

At one first blow did shyver yt [his heart] as glasse. Then, insisting on the idea of a heart broken to pieces, he goes on to exhaust the conceit and make it tedious:

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be emptye quyte;
Therefore I think my brest hath all

Those peeces still, though they do not unyte: And now as broken glasses showe

A thousand lesser faces, soe

My raggs of hart can like, wish, and adore ; But after one such love can love no more.

Address to Bishop Valentine, on the Day of the Marriage of the Elector Palatine to the Princess Elizabeth.

Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is,
All the air is thy diocis,

And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners:

Thou marryest every year

The lyrique larke, 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 halcion;
This day more cheerfully than ever shine,
This day, which might inflame thyself, old Valentine.
Valediction forbidding Mourning.

As virtuous men pass myldly away,

And whisper to their sowles to goe,
Whilst some of their sad freinds doe say,
Now his breath goes, and some say, noe;
Soe let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere prophanation of our joyes
To tell the laietie our love.

Movinge of th' earth brings harms and feares,
Men reckon what it did, and meant ;
But trepidations of the sphæres,
Though greater farr, are innocent.
Dull sublunary Lovers' love,

Whose sowle is sence, cannot admytt
Absence; for that it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we, by a love so far refynde

That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mynde,

Care less eyes, lipps, and hands to miss.
Our two sowles therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, indure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,
Like gould to aerye thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two soe

As styff twynn compasses are two;
Thy sowle, the fixt foote, makes no showe
To move, but doth if th' other doe:

And though it in the center sytt,

Yet when the other farr doth rome, It leans and hearkens after it, And growes erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foote, obliquely runn; Thy fyrmness makes my circles just,

And makes me end where I begunn.

The Will.

Before I sigh my last gaspe, let me breath,
Great Love, some legacies. I heere bequeath
Myne eyes to Argus, if myne eyes can see ;
If they be blynd, then, Love, I give them thee;
My tongue to Fame; to 'embassadors myne eares ;
To women, or the sea, my tears.
Thou, Love, hast taught me heretofore

By making me love her who 'had twentie more,

That I should give to none but such as had too much before.

My constancie I to the plannets give;

My truth to them who at the Court doe live;
Mine ingenuitie and opennesse

To Jesuits; to buffoones my pensivenes;
My sylence to any who abroad have been;

My money to a Capuchin.

Thou, Love, taught'st mee, by appointing mee
To love her where no love receiv'd can bee,
Only to give to such as have an incapacitye.
My faith I give to Romane Catholiques;
All my good woorkes unto the schismatiques
Of Amsterdam; my best civilitie
And courtshipp to an Universitie;
My modestie I give to souldiers bare;

My patience lett gamesters share.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by making mee
Love her, that houlds my love disparitie,

Only to give to those that count my guifts indignitie.
My reputacion I give to those

Which were my friends; mine industry to foes;
To Schoolmen I bequeath my doubtfulnes;

My sicknes to phisitians, or excess;

To Nature all that I in rithme have writt;
And to my company my witt.
Thou, Love, by making me adore

Her who begot this love in me before,

Taught'st me to make as though I gave, when I do but

restore.

To him for whom the passing-bell next toles

I give my phisik-books; my wrytten roles

Of morrall counsells I to Bedlam give;
My brazen meddalls unto them which live
In want of bread; to them which passe amonge
All foranners, myne English toungue.
Thou, Love, by makinge me love one
Who thynks her friendshipp a fitt portionn

For younger lovers, dost my guift thus disproportion.
Therefore I'le give noe more; but I'le undoe
The world by dyinge; because Love dyes too.
Then all your bewties wilbe no more worth
Then gold in mynes, when none doe draw it forth;
And all your graces no more use will have

Then a sun-dyall in a grave.

Thou, Love, taught'st me, by appointinge mee To love her who doth neglect both mee and thee, T' invent and practize that one way t' annihilate all three.

Character of a Bore-from Donne's Fourth Satire.

Towards me did runne

A thing more strange than on Nile's slime the sunne
E'er bred, or all which into Noahs arke came;
A thing which would have pos'd Adam to name.

Stranger than seven Antiquaries studies,
Than Africks monsters, Guiana's rarities,
Stranger than strangers. One who for a Dane
In the Danes massacre had sure beene slaine,
If he had liv'd then; and without helpe dies
When next the Prentises 'gainst Strangers rise.
One whom the watch at noone scarce lets goe by;
One to whom th' examining justice sure would cry:
'Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what you are?'
His clothes were strange though coarse, and black
though bare;

Sleevelesse his jerkin was, and it had bin

Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seene)

Become Tuff-taffaty; and our children shall

See it plain rashe awhile, then nought at all.

The thing hath travail'd, and saith, speaks all tongues ;
And onely knoweth what to all States belongs.
Made of th' Accents and best phrase of all these,
He speakes one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste;
But Pedants motley tongue, souldiers bumbast,
Mountebanks drug tongue, nor the termes of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw

Me to beare this. Yet I must be content
With his tongue, in his tongue call'd compliment. . .
He names me, and comes to me. I whisper, 'God!
How have I sinn'd, that thy wraths furious rod,
This fellow, chooseth me?' He saith: 'Sir,

I love your judgment-whom do you prefer

For the best Linguist?' And I seelily
Said that I thought Calepines Dictionarie.
Nay, but of men, most sweet sir?'-Beza then,
Some Jesuits, and two reverend men

Of our two academies, I named. Here

He stopt me, and said: ‘Nay, your Apostles were
Pretty good linguists, and so Panurge was;
Yet a poor gentleman all these may pass
By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold
His tongue, he praised it, and such wonders told,
That I was faine to say: 'If you had lived, sir,
Time enough to have been Interpreter
To Babels bricklayers, sure the Tower had stood.'
He adds: If of court-life you knew the good,
You would leave lonenesse.' I said: 'Not alone
My lonenesse is, but Spartans fashion.

To teach by painting drunkards doth not taste
Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts-though there be few
Better pictures of vice-teach me vertue.'
He, like to a high-stretcht lute-string, squeakt: ‘O sir,
'Tis sweet to talke of kings! At Westminster,'
Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombes,
And for his price doth, with whoever comes,

Of all our Harries, and our Edwards talke,
From King to King, and all their kin can walke:
Your eares shall heare nought but Kings; your eyes

meet

Kings onely; The way to it is King's-street.'
He smack'd, and cryd, 'He's base, mechanique, coarse;
So are all your English men in their discourse.'
'Are not your French men neat?' 'Mine? as you see,
I have but one, Sir; looke, he followes me.
Certes, they are neatly cloath'd.' I, of this minde am,
Your onely wearing is your Grogaram.'
'Not so, Sir, I have more.' Under this pitch
He would not flie. I chaff'd him; But as itch

Scratch'd into smart, and as blunt Iron grownd
Into an edge, hurts worse; so I (foole !) found
Crossing hurt me. To fit my sullennesse,
He to another key his stile doth dresse ;

And askes, what newes? I tell him of new playes:
He takes my hand, and, as a Still which stayes
A semibriefe 'twixt each drop, he niggardly,

As loath to inrich me, so tels many a ly,

More than ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes,
Of triviall houshold trash, He knowes: he knowes
When the queen frown'd or smil'd; and he knows what
A subtile Statesman may gather of that:

He knowes who loves; whom and who by poyson
Hasts to an Offices reversion :

He knows who 'hath sold his land, and now doth beg
A license, old iron, bootes, shooes, and egge-
Shells to transport; Shortly boyes shall not play
At span-counter or blow-point, but shall pay
Toll to some Courtier; and wiser than all us,
He knows what Lady is not painted. Thus
He with home-meats cloyes me.

An early poetic allusion to the Copernican system occurs in Donne :

As new phylosophy arrests the sun,
And bids the passive earth about it run.

This simile was often repeated by later poets :
When goodly, like a shipp in her full trimme,
A swann so white, that you may unto him
Compare all whitenes, but himselfe to none,
Glided along, and, as hee glided, watched,

And with his arched neck this poore fish catch't:
It mooved with state, as if to looke upon
Low things it scorn'd.

The second of Donne's five 'Prebend Sermons,' preached at St Paul's in 1625, 'a long poem of victory over death,' is, as Mr Gosse says, 'one of the most magnificent pieces of religious writing in English literature, and closes with a majestic sentence of incomparable pomp and melody':

As my soule shall not goe towards Heaven, but goe by Heaven to Heaven, to the Heaven of Heavens, so the true joy of a good soule in this world is the very joy of Heaven; and we goe thither not that being without joy we might have joy infused into us, but that, as Christ sayes, Our joy might be full, perfected, sealed with an everlastingnesse: for as he promises That no man shall take our joy from us, so neither shall Death itselfe take it away, nor so much as interrupt it or discontinue it, but as in the face of Death, when he layes hold upon me, and in the face of the Devil when he attempts me, I shall see the face of God (for everything shall be a glasse, to reflect God upon me); so in the agonies of Death, in the anguish of that dissolution, in the sorrowes of that valediction, in the irreversiblenesse of that transmigration, I shall have a joy which shall no more evaporate than my soule shall evaporate, a joy that shall passe up and put on a more glorious garment above, and be joy superinvested in glory. Amen.

Donne's poems were posthumously collected and published in a one-volume quarto in 1633; his son issued a fuller edition in 1649. The son published also successive collections of sermons, prose works, and letters. Alford's edition of the poems (1839) is singularly unsatisfactory; Grosart's (in the Fuller Worthies Library') is the fullest. There is an edition by E. K. Chambers (1896), with critical

introduction by Professor Saintsbury. Izaak Walton's Life, a remarkable masterpiece of biography, was originally prefixed to some of the sermons published in 1640, and was afterwards enlarged; but Walton had insufficient information on some parts of Donne's life. Dr Jessopp's John Donne, sometime Dean of St Paul's (1897) dwells mainly on the theological side of the man; then the same author's article in the Dictionary of National Biography is noteworthy. But when Mr Gosse undertook his Life and Letters he could justly say that it was 'perhaps the most imposing task left to the student of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature.' The work, issued in two volumes in 1899, is a triumph of biographical skill and literary insight. Mr Gosse arranged the letters for the first time, and shed much light on various parts of Donne's career. The bibliographical and critical information brought together by Mr Gosse is unapproached elsewhere in value.

Joseph Hall (1574-1656), born at Ashby-dela-Zouch, in Leicestershire, studied at Cambridge, and rose through various church preferments to be Bishop of Exeter (1627) and then of Norwich (1641). In 1617 he went with James to Scotland in the design of establishing Episcopacy, and next year was a deputy to the Synod of Dort. He was accused of Puritanism, was at enmity with Laud, and in 1641, as a prelate claiming his rights in the House of Lords, was imprisoned in the Tower for seven months. His revenues were sequestrated and his property pillaged; and in 1647 he retired to a small farm near Norwich, where he lived till his death. His principal works were theological and devotional-Christian Meditations, The Contemplations on the New Testament and On the Holy Story, and a Paraphrase of Hard Texts. His sermons have a rapid, vehement eloquence well fitted to arouse and impress. He wrote against Papists and Brownists with equal fervour. In 1608 he published a remarkable series of Characters of Vertues and Vices, similar to the famous Characters of Overbury (1614). Hall's Epistles are also numerous. Fuller, who says that 'for his pure, full, plain style' Hall was called the English Seneca, judges him 'not ill at controversies, more happy at comments, very good in his characters, better in his sermons, best of all in his meditations.' He is, however, best remembered in literature for his satires, published under the title of Virgidemiarum, Sixe Bookes, in 1597-98, before he was in holy orders. In them he followed Latin models, but is rather vigorous, witty, and even scurrilous than polished. Archbishop Whitgift condemned them to be burned as licentious with works by Marlowe and Marston, but the judgment was withdrawn. Pope thought them the best poetry and the truest satire in the English language; while Hallam pronounces them rugged, obscure, and ungrammatical. Hall boldly claims to be the first English satirist :

I first adventure, follow me who list
And be the second English satirist.

He means probably the first regular satirist, following Latin models; and even then Marston was enraged by Hall's claim. Donne and Marston seem to have written about the same time; Lodge's Fig for Momus was some years earlier. Wyatt and Gascoigne, too, might claim to be reckoned,

and Nash, whether or no he was Greene's 'Young Juvenal, that biting satirist,' even though Skelton were regarded as too irregular and ribald; and Piers Plowman was, of course, very far removed from classical models. In Scotland, Dunbar and Lyndsay were persistent satirists in vernacular verse, and Buchanan both in Latin verse and Scottish prose.

The Chaplain.

A gentle squire would gladly entertain
Into his house some trencher-chapelain :
Some willing man that might instruct his sons,
And that would stand to good conditions.
First, that he lie upon the truckle-bed,
While his young master lieth o'er his head.
Second, that he do, on no default,
Ever presume to sit above the salt.

Third, that he never change his trencher twice.
Fourth, that he use all common courtesies;
Sit bare at meals, and one half rise and wait.
Last, that he never his young master beat,
But he must ask his mother to define
How many jerks he would his breech should line.
All these observed, he could contented be
To give five marks and winter livery.

The Famished Gallant.

Seest thou how gaily my young master goes,
Vaunting himself upon his rising toes;
And pranks his hand upon his dagger's side;
And picks his glutted teeth since late noon-tide?
'Tis Ruffio: Trow'st thou where he dined to-day?
In sooth I saw him sit with Duke Humphrey.
Many good welcomes, and much gratis cheer,
Keeps he for every straggling cavalier;
An open house, haunted with great resort;
Long service mixt with musical disport.
Many fair younker with a feathered crest,
Chooses much rather be his shot-free guest,
To fare so freely with so little cost,
Than stake his twelvepence to a meaner host.
Hadst thou not told me, I should surely say
He touched no meat of all this livelong day;
For sure methought, yet that was but a guess,
His eyes seemed sunk for very hollowness,
But could he have-as I did it mistake-
So little in his purse, so much upon his back?
So nothing in his maw? yet seemeth by his belt
That his gaunt gut no too much stuffing felt.
Seest thou how side it hangs beneath his hip? long, low
Hunger and heavy iron makes girdles slip.
Yet for all that, how stiffly struts he by,
All trapped in the new-found bravery.
The nuns of new-won Calais his bonnet lent,
In lieu of their so kind a conquerment.
What needed he fetch that from farthest Spain,
His grandame could have lent with lesser pain?
Though he perhaps ne'er passed the English shore,
Yet fain would counted be a conqueror.
His hair, French-like, stares on his frighted head,
One lock Amazon-like dishevelled,
As if he meant to wear a native cord,

If chance his fates should him that bane afford.
All British bare upon the bristled skin,
Close notched is his beard, both lip and chin;

His linen collar labyrinthian set,
Whose thousand double turnings never met:
His sleeves half hid with elbow pinionings,
As if he meant to fly with linen wings.
But when I look, and cast mine eyes below,
What monster meets mine eyes in human show?
So slender waist with such an abbot's loin,
Did never sober nature sure conjoin.
Lik'st a strawn scarecrow in the new-sown field,
Reared on some stick, the tender corn to shield,
Or, if that semblance suit not every deal,
Like a broad shake-fork with a slender steel.

A part of old St Paul's Cathedral was called Duke Humphrey's Walk, from a tomb erroneously supposed to be that of the famous Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester; it was the resort of beggars, bankrupts, and dinnerless poor gentlemen, who were playfully said to dine with Duke Humphrey.

Upon the Sight of a Tree Full-blossomed.

Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms. It is not possible that all these should prosper; one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth. I do not love to see an infancy over-hopeful; in these pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and at last leaves the mind sapless and barren. As, therefore, we are wont to pull off some of the too frequent blossoms, that the rest may thrive; so it is good wisdom to moderate the early excess of the parts, or progress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it otherwise in our Christian profession; a sudden and lavish ostentation of grace may fill the eye with wonder, and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit. Let me not promise too much, nor raise too high expectations of my undertakings; I had rather men should complain of my small hopes than of my short performances.

Upon a Redbreast coming into his Chamber. Pretty bird, how cheerfully dost thou sit and sing; and yet knowest not where thou art, nor where thou shalt make thy next meal, and at night must shroud thyself in a bush for lodging! What a shame is it for me, that see before me so liberal provisions of my God, and find myself set warm under my own roof, yet am ready to droop under a distrustful and unthankful dulness! Had I so little certainty of my harbour and purveyance, how heartless should I be, how careful! how little list [inclination] should I have to make music to thee or myself! Surely thou comest not hither without a Providence. God sent thee not so much to delight as to shame me, but all in a conviction of my sullen unbelief, who, under more apparent means, am less cheerful and confident. Reason and faith have not done so much in me, as in thee mere instinct of nature; want of foresight makes thee more merry, if not more happy here, than the foresight of better things maketh me. O God! thy providence is not impaired by those powers thou hast given me above these brute things; let not my greater helps hinder me from a holy security, and comfortable reliance on thee.

Upon hearing of Music by Night.

How sweetly doth this music sound in this dead season! In the daytime it would not, it could not so much affect the ear. All harmonious sounds are advanced by a silent darkness. Thus it is with the glad tidings of salvation; the gospel never sounds so sweet as in the night of preservation, or of our own private affliction. It is ever the same; the difference is in our