JOHN DONNE.* DONNE was not only during his life, but
most remain as long as our language lasts, one of the most fascinating figures in English literature. Ben Jonson was not fond of bestowing unqualified praise, yet he spoke of Donne as be spoke of no other poet but Shakespeare. Dryden called him the greatest wit of his own, if not of any, age. This was an exaggeration no doubt, but one of those exaggerations which are meant as deliberate protests against the want of appreciation shown by the world in general ; for though Donne had been popular in his lifetime, the age of Dryden gave him little recognition. It would be possible to add many other testimonies to Donne's literary gifts, from Pope to Browning, but it is not necessary to do more than note the fact that though Donne is not, and never will be, popular, his place in our literature is absolutely secure. He will always be the poet's poet. It is as impossible to imagine a time when no one will care for "The Calm," "The Autumnal," or the poem addressed by Donne to his wife when she wished to accompany him abroad dressed as his page, as to imagine a time when those poems will be generally popular. But though Donne's special and peculiar place as a poet is secure, there was real risk of Donne being forgotten as a divine and a preacher. In spite of Walton's beautiful Life of Donne—a masterpiece in biography, as Dr. Jessopp rightly calls it—this side of Donne has been almost entirely hidden. It is to be hoped that Dr. Jeseopp's biography will alter this, and that henceforth both Donnes—" Jack Donne and Dr. Donne," to use the poet's own distinction—will be known and appreciated at their true value. Certainly it will not have been Dr. Jessopp's fault if the world does not begin to under- stand Donne's greatness as a preacher and a Churchman, for his work is a most interesting and, in spite of the difficulty of the subject, very readable study. Dr. Jessopp is an enthusiast, a Donne worshipper; but even if he does not always persuade us to take quite his view, he never fails to make his subject attractive.
A more strangely complex character than Donne it would be difficult to imagine. At bottom the man was a poet, and the world looked always to him as it does to the maker and creator. He was not, however, of the dreamy poets, but be- longed to the men of quick, busy, subtle brains, who are always twisting and turning the kaleidoscope of the mind, impatient for new combinations and new effects. But while Nature made Donne a poet, chance made him a courtier and a diplomatist. If this were all, Donne would of course have been no miracle of complexity; but it was not all. In addition to being a poet he was a philosopher, a theologian, and a con- troverealist. He wrote not only the most " decadent " poetry of his time—that is not a fair term, but it suggests the best illustration by comparison—but also some of the ablest pamphlets, political and theological, of the seventeenth century. Again, though for half his life a courtier and a man about town, he was a devoted father and husband. But even when his character is thus mapped out it presents plenty of cross complexities. As a poet his style harked back, on the one hand, to the conceits of the early Elizabethans ; on the other, it anticipated the antithetical structure of the vighteenth century. One half of his couplets read like Chap- • John Donne. 11, Auzu tun Jesavp. D D. L.udou: 31.thuen and Co.
man, the next almost like Pope. In theology he inclined at one and the same time to the Papists and the Puritans. Yet he was not Anglican enough for Laud, nor Protestant enough for Abbot. The more closely it is looked at the more strange and illusive appears his life. A superficial observer might lightly say that Donne was, like so many men before and since, a man of pleasure who became converted in later life and threw himself with all the greater zeal and enthusiasm into holy living. But this easy explanation does not really fit Donne in the least. He was never wholly a man of pleasure and of the world, and he never underwent any mental process
which could be called conversion. He became a priest as the result of a long and complicated series of circumstances. An enemy might say that he knew he was not fit to be a priest, but at last yielded to the temptation to obtain an advancement which he could not obtain in other ways. A friendly critic would say with Dr. Jessopp that a rebellious spirit long made him reject the opportunities offered him to undertake the ministry of the Gospel, but that at last the heart he had hardened so often, yielded. What is the exact truth of the case we cannot attempt to determine. Certainly the unfriendly view is false, but we are not sure that the other is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
We shall leave our readers to follow for themselves the events of Donne's life as they are set forth in Dr. Jessopp's attractive little book. We will dwell here rather on his most interesting account of Donne as a preacher. Donne was among the greatest of the great pulpit orators of the English Church. Yet how strange and eccentric was the position he occupied ! Suppose that Robert, Lord Lytton, in his early diplomatic days had gained not only the fame of Tennyson as a poet, but also that of, say, Sir Henry Maine as a serioua writer, and that before he had exhausted the fame thus won he had become Dean of St. Paul's, and achieved the reputation as a preacher which belonged to Canon Liddon. That is a caricature, of course, but it helps to make one realise the sort of prestige with which Dr. Donne preached to the Court or the Judges, or to the London mob at Paul's Cross. The marvellous thing about Donne's sermons is the fact that in spits of their originality, their subtlety, and their rhetorical skill, they are so full of true, even simple, piety. Take the following fascinating passage from a sermon preached at Lincoln's Inn as an example of Donne's subtlety and originality :—
"I am not all here. I am here now preaching upon this text; and I am at home in my library considering whether St. Gregory, or St. Hierome, have said best of this text before. I am hero 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, hearing me, and yet you are thinking that you have 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 predestination 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."
There must have been something very "enticing," to use
Walton's phrase, in such a preacher as this. It has all South's cleverness and none of his trickiness and gaudiness. Here is another passage which reminds one of South, but it is again South with a difference, and a difference to the good :—
"When the apostles came in their peregrinations to a new state, to a new court, to Rome itself, they did not inquire, How stands the Emperor affected to Christ and to the preaching of the gospel ? Is there not a sister or a wife that might be wrought upon to further the preaching of Christ ? Are there not some persons great in power and place that might be content to hold s. party together by admitting the preaching of Christ ? ' This was not their way. All divinity that is bespoken, and not ready made, fitted to certain turns and not to general ends, and all divines that have their souls and consciences so disposed as their libraries may be,—at that end stand Papists, and at that end Protestants, and he in the middle, as near one as the other,—all these have a brackish taste as a river hath that comes near the sea; so have they in coming near the sea of Rome."
With one more extremely characteristic passage we must close our quotations from Donne's sermons. It pats Donne's theological attitude with great force and shows his deep and humane piety :—
" 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 labori- ously as any Papist.' So if—when I startle and am affected 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 protestation, 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 !' "
No review of Donne's life could be adequate without an attempt to point out Donne's defects, for defects there were. In our opinion a certain fantastic insincerity, or rather affectation, was Donne's great weakness. It was a mighty mind, but, as he said of one of his own books, "there was a false thread in it, but not easily found." Donne was not a whole-hearted man. He could not—alas for him, and so many men like him !—see a duty plain before him and do it simply. There was always in his case something fantastic in thought and action. The chief fault of the age was, as it were, sublimated in his mind. He was the intellectual foible of the age incarnate, though the foible, we admit, took on the flesh of a noble nature. Read the account of how Dr. Donne sat for his monument. It was his most characteristic act. This fantastic attitude to life, this want of Philistine ballast, this "wild enormity of ancient magnanimity," tended to sophisticate his nature:—
" 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 bands 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 show 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."
Somehow one feels a true and simple-minded saint ought not to have indulged in this fantastic mummery. It was charac- teristic of his age but unworthy of a man who should have been, but was not, above his age.
Previous page
