'Satire was Donne's forte; but as Dryden observed, his "thoughts were debased by his versification." 'On a superficial inspection, Donne's verses look like so many riddles. They seem to be written upon the principle of making the meaning as difficult to find out as possible,—of using all the resources of language, not to express thought but to conceal it.. 'But, running through all this bewilderment, a deeper insight detects not only a vein of the most exuberant wit, but often the sunniest and most delicate fancy, and the truest and tenderest feeling... 'Donne's later poetry, in addition to the same abundance of originality of thought, often running into a wildness and extravagance not so excusable here as in his erotic verses, is famous for the singular movement of the versification, which has been usually described as the extreme degree of the rugged and the tuneless. . . 'His lines, though they will not suit the see-saw style of reading verse, to which he probably intended that they should be invincibly impracticable,—are not without a deep and subtle music of their own, in which the cadences respond to the sentiment, when enunciated with a true feeling of all that they convey. They are not smooth and luscious verses, certainly; nor is it contended that the endeavor to raise them to as vigorous and impressive a tone as possible, by depriving them of all over-sweetness or liquidity, has not been carried too far; but we cannot doubt that whatever harshness they have was designedly given to them, and was conceived to infuse into them an essential part of their relish. 'Here is one of Donne's Songs : 'Somewhat fantastic as this may be thought, it is surely, notwithstanding, full of feeling; and nothing can be more delicate than the execution. Nor is it possible that the writer of such verses can have wanted an ear for melody, however capriciously he may sometimes have experimented upon language, in the effort, as we conceive, to bring a deeper, more expressive music out of it than it would really yield.'1 Craik is quoted thus at length, here and elsewhere, because it seems that he has approached nearer to an understanding of Donne's principle of versification than any Englishman,-Coleridge alone excepted, that has yet studied him. Taine (1864): 'Plusieurs ont du talent néanmoins, Quarles, Herbert, Habington,2 surtout Donne, un satirique poignant, d'une crudité terrible, un puissant poëte d'une imagination précise et intense, et qui grande encore quelque chose de l'energie et du frémissement de la première inspiration. Mais il gâte tous ces dons de parti pris, et réussit, à force de peine, à fabriquer du galimatias.' 3 While this criticism, 'crudité terrible,' includes others, besides Donne, and seems pointed at his Satires, it comes nearer to touching on the mechanism of his verse than anything else said by Taine. Arnold (1867): 'As a writer, the great popularity which he [Donne] enjoyed in his own day has long since given way before the repulsive harshness and involved obscurity of his style.' * Macdonald (1868) 5: 'It is not surprising that, their author [Donne] being so inartistic with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and unmusical beyond the worst we would imagine fit to be called verse. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of metrical movement and associated sounds. 1 Geo. L. Craik, A Compendious History of Eng. Lit., &c., London, 1871, i, 597, 580. (Craik died in 1866. The preface to this work bears the date, 1861, as above.) * Babington. 3 H. Taine, Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise, Paris, 1903, onzième édition, i, 362-3. 4 Thos. Arnold, op. cit., p. 131. 5 George Macdonald, England's Antiphon, p. 115: Quoted by Grosart, ii, xliii, from p. 116. (Grosart refers indiscriminately to ‘Antiphon,' ii, xxxvi, and xlvii, and to 'Dr. Macdonald,' xxxvii, and xxxix. His page reference may be correct. The only available copy here is an edition bearing no date. The date assigned for the criticism is that of the original ed. of the Antiphon in England.) This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows more strange to us when we find that he can write a lovely verse and even an exquisite stanza.' Grosart fails to note Macdonald's contradiction (p. 113) of the charge of 'indifference' cited above: 'Faulty as they are [Donne's Poems]... they are not the less the work of a great and earnest man.' On Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness, Macdonald comments (p 118): 'The three stanzas together [4, 5, 6] make us lovingly regret that Dr. Donne should have ridden his Pegasus over quarry and housetop, instead of teaching him his paces.' Quoting Holy Sonnets, I., VIII., and X., Macdonald remarks (p. 121): 'Rhymed after the true Petrarchian fashion, their rhythm is often as bad as it can be to be called rhythm at all. Yet these [three] are very fine.' Corser (1873): ... Donne left English poetry worse than he found it. The Editor is free to confess, along with many others, that Donne as a writer of poetry is no favorite of his. When he considers the › pedantry, obscurity and metaphysical conceits introduced into his lighter poetry, the rugged discordant diction, and inharmonious versification of his Satires, and the dullness and utter want of sensibility in his Elegies and religious Poems, as compared with the beauty, the tenderness and graceful simplicity of many of the writers, of his own age, he is immediately struck with the contrast they exhibit. . 91 Grosart (1873, ii, xliv.): 'But after all, I fear it must be conceded that it is as Thinker and Imaginator, and Artist of ideas rather than words in verse, we have to assert Donne's incomparable genius. He has nothing of the "smoothness" of various contemporaries, and very little of the ever-changing music of the Poet of "all time." Nevertheless, the various-readings and perpetual fluctuation of text in the MSS. lift up a united protest against any such charge as that of "indiffer 1 Thomas Corser, Collectanea Anglo-Poetica, 1873, Part V, p. 223. (Chetham Society Publications, vol. xci.) ence." ." He must have worked laboriously, even in his versification. What satisfied Ben Jonson ought to be sympathetically studied by us . . (p. xlv). On reading the verse Letters, and Elegies, and Funeral Elegies, and the class entitled "Lyrical," there reach [reaches?] my ear occasionally Shakespearean melody, and now and again as I study I am conscious of an indefinable something suggestive of Shakespeare.' Lightfoot (1877): [Donne's] versatility is a constant theme of admiration with those who knew him. At the age of twenty he wrote poems which his contemporaries regarded as masterpieces. His fame as a poet was greater in his own age than it has ever been since. During the last century, which had no toleration for subtle conceits and rugged rhythms, it was unduly depreciated; but now again it has emerged from its eclipse. No quaintness of conception and no recklessness of style and no harshness of metre can hide the true poetic genius which flashes out from his nobler pieces.' Kempe (1877): 'The tenderness, the fervour and the poetry of Donne . . reconcile . . . us to his fancies, extravigances and affectations. . .' Adams (1877):3 'The Funeral Elegies exhibit all Dr. Donne's subtlety of thought and ruggedness of versification, and many passages have a sonorous dignity, like the prose of Bacon or Sir Thomas Brown.' On page 203 Adams quotes Hazlitt as having said, 'Of Donne I know nothing but some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad, and some quaint riddles, in verse, which the sphinx could not unravel.' Browning (1878): 'Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Historical Essays, London, 1895, pp. 244–5. ‘Donne, the Poet-Preacher,' pp. 221-245. (This is one of a course of lectures on 'The Classic Preachers of the English Church,' delivered at St. James Church, Westminster, in 1887.) 2 Lightfoot's Lectures, The Classic Preachers of the English Church, with Introduction by J. Edward Kempe, London, 1877, p. xix. 3 W. Davenport Adams, Dictionary of English Literature (no date), p. 263. (Allibone gives '1877.') He's greatest now and to de-struc-ti-on Nearest. Attend the solemn words I quote Thus knolls thy knell the Doctor's bronzèd throat! Better and truer verse none ever wrote (Despite the antique outstretched a-i-on) Than thou, revered and magisterial Donne. The Two Poets of Croisic, cxiv. 'The modern appreciation of Donne seems to begin with Robert Browning, who met with the poems when he was still a boy (about 1827), and was greatly influenced by them. He put the Mandrake song to music. He quoted and praised the Dean so constantly in later years that Miss Barrett noticed it early in their acquaintance; 'your Donne," she says on several occasions.' 66 Minto (1880): 91 'The terrible crudeness and power which some critics have seen in [Donne's] satires is not a churlish crudeness; it is nothing but the boisterous extravagance of youth, the delight of a fresh untamed intellect in its own strength. . . 'If we take talent to be the power of adroitly manipulating common materials into common forms, no man had less of it than Donne. He had an invincible repugnance to the commonplace. Everything is his own, alike the thought and the instrument by which it is expressed. He is no man's debtor. He digs his own ore, and uses it according to his own fancy.'" Hales (1880): For the most part we look on [Donne's work] 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. . . We weary of such unmitigated cleverness-such ceaseless straining after novelty and surprise. We long for something simply said. 1 Gosse, ii, 353. 2 William Minto, ‘John Donne,' The Nineteenth Century Review, vol. vii (1880, pp. 845-863), pp. 853 and 862. |