fraught as they are with false thoughts, affected phrases, and unnatural conceits.' His sermons, though not without that pedantry which debases the writings of almost all the divines of those times, are often written with energy, elegance, and copiousness of style. Yet it must be confessed, that all the wit and eloquence of the author have been unable to secure them from neglect.

physical poets; but this can be no enviable situation, when Dr. Johnson's opinion of their merit is consulted. "We can have," he remarks, in his Life of Cowley, "little inducement to peruse the works of men, who, instead of writing poetry, wrote only verse, who cannot be said to have imitated any thing, as they neither copied nature from life, neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect. Deficient in the sublime and pathetic, they abounded in hyperbole, and in unnatural thoughts, in violent fictions and foolish conceits, and in expressions either grossly absurd, or indelicate and disgusting."

1 Pope has classed the English Poets by their school. First, School of Provence. Second, School of Chaucer. Third, School of Petrarch. Fourth, School of Dante. Fifth, School of Spenser. Sixth, School of Donne. In the latter School he has very injudiciously placed Michael Drayton, who wrote before Donne, and not in the least in his manner. "Dr. Donne's (poetical) writings are like a voluntary or prelude, in which a man is not tied to any particular design of air, but may change his key or mood at pleasure; so his compositions seem to have been written without any particular scope." Butler's Remains, 1759, vol, ii. p. 498.

A singular instance of filial gratitude and affection occurs in the following letter, from John Donne, junior, to Walton, thanking him for writing his father, the Dean's Life.

"SIR,

I send this book rather to witness my debt, than to make any payment. For it would be incivil in me to offer any satisfaction for that all my father's friends, and indeed all good men, are so equally engaged. Courtesies that are done to the dead being examples of so much piety, that they cannot have their reward in this life, because lasting as long, and still (by awaking the like charity in others) propagating the debt, they must expect a retribution from him, who gave the first inclination.

2. And by this circle, Sir, I have set you in my place, and instead of making you a payment, I have made you a debtor; but 'tis to Almighty God, to whom you will be so willingly committed, that I may safely take leave to write myself,

Your thankful servant,

From my house in Covent-garden,

24th June, 1640."

JO. DONNE."

It is difficult to discover what correspondence subsisted between our biographer and the writer

2

of this letter, who, having been admitted Doctor of Laws in the University of Padua, was incorporated in that degree at Oxford in 1638. In the Will of Dr. John Donne, junior, printed in 1662, he bequeathed all his father's writings, with his 'Common Place-Book,' to Isaac Walton, for the use of his son, if he should be brought up a scholar. That he was a clergyman, and had some preferment in the diocese of Peterborough, we learn, from a letter written to him, by Dr. John Towers, bishop of Peterborough; wherein his Lordship thanks him for the first volume of his father's sermons, telling him that his parishioners may pardon his silence to them for a while, since by it he hath preached to them and to their children's children, and to all our English parishes, for ever. Anthony Wood, although he describes him as a man of sense and parts, is unfavourable to his memory. He represents him as no better than an atheistical buffoon, a banterer, and a person of over-free thoughts, yet valued by Charles II.," and with a sarcasm not unusual to him, he informs his reader, that Dr. Walter Pope, ' leads an epicurean and heathenish life, much like to that of Dr. Donne, the son.' Bishop Kennet, in his Register, p. 318, calling him, by mistake, Dr. John Downe, names him as the editor of

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2 Already noticed as being printed in folio, in 1640. The second volume was printed in 1649.—ED.

"A Collection of Letters made by Sir Toby Matthews, Knight, with a character of the most excellent Lady, Lucy Countess of Carlisle, by the same author; to which are added, several letters of his own to several persons of honour, who were contemporary with him," printed in 1660, in 8vo. Dr. Donne neither consulted the reputation of his father, nor the public good, when he caused the Biathanatos to be printed. If he was determined, at all events, to disregard the injunctions of parental authority, would it not have been more expedient to have committed the manuscript to the flames, rather than to have encountered the hazard of diffusing certain novel opinions, from which no good consequences could possibly arise? For though those effects did not actually follow, which are mentioned by an industrious foreign writer, who tells us that on the first publication of this work, many persons laid violent hands on themselves; yet the most remote probability of danger accruing from it should have induced him entirely to have suppressed it. But to return from this digression

"One Joseph Kannell,

3 Hearne, in his MS. Coll., says, of Lincoln College, has writ a short discourse against selfmurther, in opposition to Dr. Donne. He made some application a little while since to get it printed, but could not prevail with any one to undertake it, being a book for which there is no manner of occasion. I am informed he is quite off

Walton's narrative of the vision in the Life of Dr. Donne, has subjected him to some severe animadversions. Let it, however, be remembered, that he probably related the particulars with cautious and discreet fidelity, as they were really represented to him. The account is not inserted in the earlier editions, hence, we may presume that the strictest and most severe inquiry was made before their introduction. Plutarch is not esteemed a credulous writer :-yet he has given a full and circumstantial history of the appearances that presented themselves to Dion and to Brutus; and in modern times, Dr. Doddridge, a most sedulous examiner of facts, and of all men the least liable to credulity and weakness of understanding, published a relation of an extraordinary vision. Let it also be remarked that, according to the opinion of a medical writer of great eminence, a discriminating symptom of human insanity, is "rising up in the mid of images not distinguishable by the patient from impressions upon the senses"—to a momentary delusion, originating from some bodily disorder, we may safely attribute the visions or false perceptions, of which many authentic descriptions

publishing it, being laughed at by some in the college, who entitle the book Dr. Donne undone." Kannell died in 1710.

Dr. John Donne, junior, died in 1682, and was buried in the church-yard of St. Paul's, Covent-garden.-Ed.

D