Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. I. Early Poetry: Chaucer to Donne
John Donne (1572–1631)Critical Introduction by John W. Hales
[Born in London, his mother being a descendant of Sir Thomas More. He studied both at Oxford and Cambridge, and also at Lincoln’s Inn; travelled in Italy and Spain, ‘and returned perfect in their languages.’ He was afterwards in the service of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere and others, and in 1610 was persuaded by James I ‘to enter into sacred orders.’ In 1621 the king made him Dean of St. Paul’s, and he held other benefices. Izaak Walton’s celebrated Life was prefixed to his Eighty Sermons, fol., 1640; and this Life asserts that ‘most of his poems were written before the twentieth year of his age.’ The Poems were collected and first published posthumously in 1633: but Harl. MS. 5110 (British Museum), is entitled, ‘Jhon Dunne his Satyres anno domini 1593.’]
To this school Dr. Johnson has given the title of the Metaphysical; and for this title there is something to be said. ‘Donne,’ says Dryden, ‘affects the metaphysics not only in his Satires, but in his amorous verses where Nature only should reign, and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts and entertain them with the softnesses of love.’ Thus he often ponders over the mystery of love, and is exercised by subtle questions as to its nature, origin, endurance. But a yet more notable distinction of this school than its philosophising, shallow or deep, is what may be called its fantasticality, its quaint wit, elaborate ingenuity, far-fetched allusiveness; and it might better be called the Ingenious, or Fantastic School. Various and out-of-the-way information and learning is a necessary qualification for membership. Donne in one of his letters speaks of his ‘embracing the worst voluptuousness, an hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning and languages.’ Eminence is attained by using such stores in the way to be least expected. The thing to be illustrated becomes of secondary importance by the side of the illustration. The more unlikely and surprising and preposterous this is, the greater the success. This is wit of a kind. From one point of view, wit, as Dr. Johnson says, ‘may be considered as a kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit thus defined they [Donne and his followers] have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtility surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes admires is seldom pleased.’
And so in the following curious passage from Donne’s Dedication of certain poems to Lord Craven it should be observed how ‘wit’ and ‘poetry’ are made to correspond: ‘Amongst all the monsters this unlucky age has teemed with, I find none so prodigious as the poets of these late times [this is very much what Donne’s own critics must say], wherein men, as if they would level undertakings too as well as estates, acknowledging no inequality of parts and judgments, pretend as indifferently to the chair of wit as to the pulpit, and conceive themselves no less inspired with the spirit of poetry than with that of religion.’ Dryden styles Donne ‘the greatest wit though not the best poet of our nation.’
The taste which this school represents marks other literatures besides our own at this time. It was ‘in the air’ of that age; and so was not originated by Donne. But it was he who in England first gave it full expression—who was its first vigorous and effective and devoted spokesman. And this secures him a conspicuous position in the history of our literature when we remember how prevalent was the fashion of ‘conceits’ during the first half of the seventeenth century, and that amongst those who followed it more or less are to be mentioned, to say nothing of the earlier poems of Milton and Waller and Dryden, Suckling, Denham, Herbert, Crashaw, Cleveland, Cowley.
This misspent learning, this excessive ingenuity, this laborious wit seriously mars almost the whole of Donne’s work. For the most part we look on it with amazement rather than with pleasure. It reminds us rather of a ‘pyrotechnic display,’ with its unexpected flashes and explosions, than of a sure and constant light (compare the Valediction given in our selections). We weary of such unmitigated cleverness—such ceaseless straining after novelty and surprise. We long for something simply thought, and simply said.
His natural gifts were certainly great. He possesses a real energy and fervour. He loved, and he suffered much, and he writes with a passion which is perceptible through all his artificialities. Such a poem as The Will is evidence of the astonishing rapidity and brightness of his fancy.
He also claims notice as one of our earliest formal satirists. Though not published till much later, there is proof that some at least of his satires were written three or four years before those of Hall. Two of them (ii. and iv.) were reproduced—‘versified’—in the last century by Pope, acting on a suggestion by Dryden: No. iii. was similarly treated by Parnell. In these versions, along with the roughness of the metre, disappears much of the general vigour; and it should be remembered that the metrical roughness was no result of incapacity, but was designed. Thus the charge of metrical uncouthness so often brought against Donne on the ground of his satires is altogether mistaken. How fluently and smoothly he could write if he pleased, is attested over and over again by his lyrical pieces.