are greater than we can bear is so near to despairing as that the same words express both; for when we consider Cain's words in that original tongue in which God spake, we cannot tell whether the words be, My punishment is greater than can be born, or, My sin is greater than can be forgiven. 'But, Madame, you who willingly sacrificed yourself to God in your obedience to Him in your own sickness cannot be doubted to dispute with Him about any part of you which He shall be pleased to require at your hands. The difference is great in the loss of an arm or a head, of a child or a husband; but to them who are incorporated into Christ, their head, there can be no beheading; upon you, who are a member of the spouse of Christ, the Church, there can fall no widowhood, nor orphanage upon those children to whom God is father. I have not another office by your husband's death, for I was your chaplain before in my daily prayers, but I shall enlarge that office with other collects than before, that God will continue to you that peace which you have ever had in Him, and send you quiet and peaceable dispositions in all them with whom you shall have anything to do in your temporal estate and matters of this world, Amen.-Your Ladyship's very humble and thankful servant in Christ Jesus, "At my poor house at St. Paul's, 26th October 1624." "J. DONNE. A little group of hitherto unpublished letters now throws a curious light on the ecclesiastical procedure of the time. Donne, in connection with the Chapter of St. Paul's, had in his gift the living of St. Faith's, in the City of London. This belonged to the Dean and Chapter to present, and the members of the Chapter took turns in presentation. It was now Donne's turn, "according to our courses." He had promised the living to a friend of his own, but, when the cure became vacant by the promotion of the incumbent, William Woodford, the King demanded St. Faith's for a Royal protégé, Emmanuel Smith. The Dean and Chapter had nothing to do but to submit as gracefully as they might. "From King JAMES I. to the Dean of ST. PAUL'S.1 "Trusted, &c.,-We are moved by our especial favour to William Woodford, now minister of St. Faith's Parish, to dispose of him in another place, which, for some consideration, cannot well be effected without your consent and allowance of Emmanuel Smith to succeed him in the Cure of St. Faith's. Who Who being very able and sufficient to discharge that duty, and now having a gracious desire to accommodate Woodford, we have taken it upon us to procure your acceptance and admittance of Smith to that cure, and do by these, our letters, earnestly recommend him to be placed in that cure by your favour and at our request, which, in regard of our engagement to prefer Woodford, we shall take as done in duty and respect unto us, and be ready to acknowledge it in all occasions of yours to your advantage. "27th November 1624.” "To Secretary CONWAY.2 "May it please your Honour,-I received by the hands of Mr. Woodford a letter from our most gracious master to myself and the other presidentiaries of our church, recommending unto us Mr. Smith to succeed Mr. Woodford in St. Faith's Church. Though it be thus much to your Honour's trouble, it behoves me to give an account thereof. That church is, at this accordance according to our courses, in my particular gift, as, also, it fell out to be so when Mr. Woodford received it at my hands. And upon just confidence in that title, I had given the next presentation thereof (before any intimation or imagination of his Majesty's pleasure) to a person that hath deserved a greater service from me; so that, to make myself able to 1 Domestic State Papers. 2 Ibid. do that which is always infinitely my desire, to serve his Majesty, I was put, first to work the Chapter and then to recall my grant, and, after, to waive my work and turn. of presenting. All which being with the speediest diligence that I could use, and the very ready forwardness of our whole Chapter, accomplished, and thereby the way made certain and plain for Mr. Smith to enter thereupon as soon as it shall be made void, I thought it necessary to signify so much to your Honour; not that these circumstances of difficulty add anything to my merit, but that it adds to my gladness, that in one business I had so many occasions to testify my desire to serve his Majesty, from whom I have not only (as other men have) received my livelihood, but my priesthood. To which joy of mind I humbly beseech your Honour that I may have leave to add this other, that you will be pleased to return to your knowledge and retain in your favour your Honour's humblest servant in Christ Jesus, "At my poor house at Paul's, 7th December 1624." "J. DONNE. Hitherto, since he became Dean, Donne had retained the chamber in Lincoln's Inn, to which he had a right as a Bencher. On the 29th of November a letter was read to the Council in which he resigned this privilege," with an expression of his humble thanks, and assurance of all readiness to serve this society, or any member thereof, with his best endeavours." This resignation of the chamber very kindly accepted by the members of the Bench. was On the 31st of December 1624 the King thanked the Dean of St. Paul's for bestowing the Cure of St. Faith's on the Royal protégé. One of the most shining lights in the Court of James I. was the young James Hamilton, Earl of Cambridge and Marquess of Hamilton, of whom Chamberlain wrote that he was "in every way held the gallantest gentleman of both the nations." He had been born in 1589, and in 1604 succeeded as second Marquess of Hamilton in the Scotch peerage. He was in such high favour with the King that he was once spoken of as a possible husband for the Princess Elizabeth. He succeeded his uncle as fourth Earl of Arran in 1609, and in 1619 was created Lord Ennerdale and Earl of Cambridge in the English peerage. The Marquess of Hamilton was appointed Lord High Steward of the King's Household in 1624, and in that capacity may have come into personal contact with Donne as Chaplain - in - Ordinary. He died, rather suddenly, on the 3rd of March 1625, of what was called "a malignant fever," not improbably a form of the plague which was now gathering upon London. Sir Robert Ker applied to Donne for an elegiacal poem on this painful occasion, made more sinister by the rapidly failing health of the King himself. Donne replied: "To Sir ROBERT KER. "SIR,-I presume you rather try what you can do in me, than what I can do in verse: you know my uttermost when it was best, and even then I did best when I had least truth for my subjects. In this present case there is so much truth. as it defeats all poetry. Call, therefore, this paper by what name you will, and if it be not worthy of him, nor of you, nor of me, smother it, and be that the sacrifice. If you had commanded me to have waited on his body in Scotland and preached there, I would have embraced the obligation with more alacrity. But I thank you, that you would command to do that which I was loth to do, for even that hath given a tincture of merit to the obedience of your poor friend and servant in Christ Jesus, [March 1625.] "J. DONNE." The elegy written thus to order is of much greater merit than we should be prepared to expect. A Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquis Hamilton is one of Donne's most poetical efforts in this direction. The elegist reminds the angels, in their jubilation over the arrival in heaven of this charming young man, that their gain is mankind's loss : "One of your orders grows by his access, The poet indulges in his favourite ingenuities, and tells the angels that the Marquess deprived his body of all its beauty that he might send "that fair form it wore Unto the sphere of forms, and doth-before The whole of this poem has a prosodical character which is somewhat novel in Donne, and the careful student will detect in the rhythm of A Hymn to the Saints, and to Marquis Hamilton, perhaps for the first time in English poetry, a certain rhetorical wail, which was caught and intensified by both Crashaw and Cowley, and lasted until Tickell composed his splendid funeral chant for Addison. "To the Right Honourable Sir ROBERT KER, at Court.1 "SIR, I pursued my ambition of having the honour to kiss your hands somewhere, so far as to inform myself occasionally of my great neighbour. And I perceive he is under an inundation of uncertain comers, which he cannot divest, except I had your leave, to speak plain to him. A second inconvenience is that he is so deaf, that we must speak to the whole house if we will speak to him. And a third is, that I am in a riddling, rather a juggling, indisposition, fast and loose, and therefore dare not stir far. Yet, Sir, I am not thereby unfit to receive the honour of seeing you here, if greater business have not overcome, or worn 1 From the Letters of 1651. |