advent of death, as by one who fears, in the flutter of mortality, to lose some peculiarity of the skeleton, some jag of the vast crooked scythe of the spectre. The most ingenious of poets, the most subtle of divines, whose life had been spent in examining Man in the crucible of his alchemic fancy, seems anxious to preserve to the very last his powers of unflinching spiritual observation. The Dean of St. Paul's, whose reputation for learned sanctity had scarcely sufficed to shelter him from scandal on the ground of his casuistical apology for suicide, was familiar with the idea of Death, and greeted him in his latest public utterance as a welcome old friend whose face he was glad to look on long and closely.

arts.

At the end of Death's Duel are printed the earliest of the encomiastic copies of verse which it presently became the fashion to shower on the tomb of Donne. These are anonymous, but were written respectively by Dr. Henry King and Dr. Edward Hyde. We may confidently suppose that Death's Duel was published under King's supervision. Where at this time was the poet's eldest son? Of this, exact evidence is wanting, but we know that he, about sixand-twenty years of age, had for nearly ten years past been a resident of Christ Church, Oxford, and was a master of The curious incident which was to revolutionise his life did not occur until a few months later; but I am inclined to think that the theft of his father's papers from the custody of King took place in 1632. It may be conjectured that he found King dilatory, and even disinclined to risk the publication of Donne's works, and it is conceivable that, with intentions not entirely discreditable, he determined to take his father's reputation into his own hands. John Donne the younger was not a worshipful person, but there is no evidence of any kind forthcoming which points to want of veneration for his father's genius.

It would be unjust, however, to lay to the charge of John Donne the publication of his father's Juvenilia. The history of this issue is entirely mysterious. Some one got hold of certain puerile writings of the late Dean's, and contrived to persuade Sir Henry Herbert to license them,

in the autumn of 1632. The little book was already printed when the Bishop of Lincoln, applying to the King, obtained an injunction in Star Chamber. Sir Henry Herbert was asked to give his reasons for "warranting the book of Dr. Donne's paradoxes." What happened next is not certain, but early in 1633 Henry Seyle, an obscure publisher, whose shop was at the Tiger's Head in St. Paul's Churchyard, issued a shabby pamphlet in quarto, entitled Juvenilia, or certaine Paradoxes and Problems written by 7. Donne. We have spoken in an earlier part of this work of the truncated appearance of this little book. The "Paradoxes" are eleven, as against twelve in the authorised edition of 1652, and the "Problems ten as against seventeen. When John Donne the younger ultimately edited these, and other trifles of his father's youth, he ignored the existence of the two editions of Juvenilia of 1633, and there can be no doubt that they were piratical.

No one who honoured Donne, or had any regard for his memory, would have opened the series of his writings with these idle little essays in casuistry. That they were genuine is not to be questioned, but they belong to his gay and flippant youth. We shall scarcely be in danger of error if we date their composition before 1600, for they belong to the unregenerate times of his intellect no less than of his soul. In the "Paradoxes" he takes some absurd statement, such as that old men are more fantastic than young ones, or that only cowards dare to die, and endeavours by casuistry to prove it true. The "Problems" have the air of being more mature compositions than the "Paradoxes." In them, Donne takes a question of vulgar tradition or of proverbial error, and examines it, faintly in the manner exemplified a generation later, with far closer science, by Sir Thomas Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Thus Donne discusses "Why is Venus-star multinominous, called both Hesperus and Vesper?" and "Why there is more variety of green than of any other colour?" On this species of idle trifling the learned youth of the reign of Elizabeth were wont to expend their superabundant intellectual spirits. They might, perhaps, have been worse

employed, for they were sharpening the arrows of their wit on these vain exercises, and, after all, as La Rochefoucauld was presently to remark, " l'étude est le garde-fou de la jeunesse." But the publication of Juvenilia could not enhance the reputation of the dead Dean of St. Paul's.

It was very different with the next instalment of his posthumous writings. Few publications have had a stronger influence in controlling and guiding the current of public taste than the quarto volume of Poems by J. D., which was issued by John Marriot from his shop in St. Dunstan's Churchyard in 1633, but entered upon the Stationers' Registers on the 13th of September of the preceding year. The care of Donne's son, and the researches of later editors, have added to the treasures contained in this book; but, speaking broadly, Donne lies here revealed to us in full as a poet, and if we had no more than is contained in these four hundred pages, his place in our literary evolution would not be modified. The quarto of 1633 is the nucleus round which our criticism of Donne has to crystallise, and the history of the volume, therefore, possesses extreme interest. Unfortunately it has remained no less extremely obscure. Who produced it? Who supplied the materials? By whom, if by any one, was it authorised and corrected for the press? To these questions there are no positive replies forthcoming. It has been customary to take for granted that the responsibility lay with the younger John Donne. The latest and best of Donne's commentators roundly complains of "the carelessness with which [Donne's Poems] were tossed into the lap of the public by his unworthy son." For this, I confess, I am unable to discover one iota of evidence.

As in the case of Henry Seyle and the Juvenilia, so in the case of John Marriot and the Poems, John Donne the younger does not seem to have been consulted. The preface" to the Understanders "-is not signed by him, but by the printer, by whom seems to be meant, not M. F., the compositor, but John Marriot, the bookseller for whom the job was done. The publication of the volume was delayed because the censor was doubtful whether he could pass the