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VIII

10 say that, at the time of his taking orders, Donne was a Christian in the most

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complete conception of the word, which involves self-sacrifice, a persuasion of communion with God, and abhorrence of the world, would certainly be a misstatement. Yet he was a man of moral life, having a grave sense of the importance of religion, one of the best theologians in England, and possessed of great ability. King James was right in judging that Donne would make a learned and capable divine. Having taken the plunge he applied himself unsparingly to his new calling. At first he was very diffident about preaching; one would say it was the first time he had ever experienced the sensation. He chose country churches such as St Pancras for his early efforts, and within a month or two preached before the Queen. When later in the year he delivered a sermon at Whitehall his success was assured. The King was more than satisfied, made Donne his chaplain, and within twelve months promotions began to pour in. The King forced Cambridge, much against its will, to confer on Donne the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The objection of the university seems to have been based partly on academic jealousy, for Donne in 1610 had been made honorary M.A. of Oxford, partly on policy, because degrees had been given away far too freely in past years, and partly on honest doubt

whether Jack Donne the wit could become in so few months a worthy recipient. In 1616 the livings of Keyston and Sevenoaks were bestowed on the newly made Doctor. He continued to reside in London, of course. There was no nonsense in those days about pluralities and absentee landlords. Of these livings Sevenoaks, at any rate, was richly endowed, so that from this time Donne's financial troubles were over.

A further appointment in this year probably gratified him a great deal. He was made Divinity Reader to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn. This certainly was no sinecure, for he had to deliver fifty sermons a year, each one hour long, before the most learned and critical audience in England. By the end of 1616 Donne's financial position was assured; he was famous for his preaching, and on the highroad to further promotion, which there is little reason to doubt he eagerly coveted.

Fate in 1617 dealt him a blow from which his ambition never entirely recovered. His wife died of sheer weakness after giving birth to her twelfth child. To us she appears the uncomplaining sacrifice to his egotism, and one can hardly believe she can have been sorry to be rid of the burden of life. But to Donne, whose love for her was as real as it was selfish, the loss was a terrible blow.

It was his love for her that had rescued him from the bitterness of hopeless scepticism; it was his affection for and belief in this gentle,

compliant lady which had constantly confirmed his faith in good, and such faith is a necessary preliminary to belief in God. Arguing from her nature and the nature of those like her, he had come to believe in God. But until her death his belief had been purely intellectual. He considered it sincere, but, having domestic affection and many interests, he had felt no need of it as a prop. Now everything was changed. His wife had gone, and he felt an intense loneliness. His world lay shattered at his feet, mere pleasures were ashes in his mouth. In his distress he turned to his God, not as a theoretical deity whom his theology told him must exist, but as an almighty source of comfort with whom he longed to place himself in personal communion. For this comforting assurance he wrestled with all the might of his vast egotism. In the course of the struggle he seems to have passed through all phases but the last of what is generally called 'conversion.' It is almost certain, however, that he never succeeded in attaining his end— a continual consciousness of the comforting presence of God within him.

The reason for this failure was the conflicting elements of his nature. The idealist in him longed for God, and he conceived God after the manner of his generation, largely according to the teaching of the Roman Catholic milieu in which he had passed his youth. Given the information of his time, there was no other view open to him. But his virile intellect-that

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intellect which made him, alone among the poets of his day, realize that the new discoveries struck at the root of the accepted fabric of religious thought-refused to make some of the vast assumptions which the contemporary view of God required. The urgency of his spiritual need of God and his latent scepticism were sufficient in themselves to cause a tremendous struggle within him, but the keenness of desperation was imparted to it by his horror of death. We have noted before how the subject of death was gaining an increasing hold on his imagination. From this time forth it seems constantly with him. It was not merely terror, although undoubtedly that formed one factor, but the gruesome circumstances of decay which held him in morbid fascination.

Donne's inconclusive agony of soul is set forth in full in the "Holy Sonnets," nineteen in number, which were composed just after the death of his wife. These form the most important body of verse that he wrote after entering the Church. When he strives to turn to God for comfort he realizes acutely his unworthiness, the weight of sin that he bears.

HOLY SONNETS

IV

Oh my blacke Soule ! now thou art summoned
By sicknesse, deaths herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turne to whence hee is fled,

Or like a thiefe, which till deaths doome be read,
Wisheth himselfe delivered from prison;
But damn'd and hal'd to execution,

Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lacke;
But who shall give thee that grace to beginne?
Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sinne;
Or wash thee in Christs blood, which hath this
might

That being red, it dyes red soules to white.

Viewing his life forward and back, he realizes how short a term remains to him, and utters this cry-the close-packed verse indicates its urgency :

VI

This is my playes last scene, here heavens
appoint

My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace,
My spans last inch, my minutes latest point,
And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt
My body, and soule, and I shall sleepe a space,
But my ever-waking part shall see that face,
Whose feare already shakes my every joynt :
Then, as my soule, to heaven her first seate, takes
flight,

And earth-borne body, in the earth shall dwell,
So, fall my sinnes, that all may have their right,
To where they are bred, and would presse me, to

hell.

Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evill,

For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devill.

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