ABSTRACT
The study of a great writer acquires its highest interest only when we view his work as a whole; when we perceive the relation of the parts to one another, and to their centre; when nothing remains isolated or fragmentary; when we trace out unity in variety; when we feel the pulse and the rhythm of life. I had hoped to speak of Donne the famous preacher as well as Donne the poet, and to show how the same intellect and the same heart lived under the doublet of the poet, courtier, scholar, and the gown of the grave, yet passionate divine. But the task has proved too much for the limited time at my disposal. I must reserve for some other occasion what I have to say of the eloquent Dean of St Paul’s. In presenting to Sir Robert Carr, afterwards Earl of Somerset, the unworthy favourite of James I, one of his early works, the author begs him to remember that ‘Jack Donne’, not ‘Dr Donne’, was the writer. It is of Jack Donne that I propose to speak this evening. After he had taken holy orders Donne seldom threw his passions into verse; even his ‘Divine Poems’ are, with few exceptions, of early date; the poet in Donne did not cease to exist, but his ardour, his imagination, his delight in what is strange and wonderful, his tenderness, his tears, his smiles, his erudition, his intellectual ingenuities, were all placed at the service of one whose desire was that he might die in the pulpit, or if not die, that he might take his death in the pulpit, a desire which was in fact fulfilled.
