DONNE, don, John, English poet and divine: b. London 1573; d. 31 March 1631. His father, John Donne, of a Welsh family, was an ironmonger; his mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of John Ileywood. His father died in 1575, leaving six children, whom the mother brought up in the doctrines of the Catholic Church. In October 1584 Donne en tered Hart Hall, Oxford, where for a while his roommate was Sir Henry Wotton. After three years at Oxford he seems to have trav eled on the Continent. In May 1592 he was ad mitted at Lincoln's Inn. For some time he shared his rooms with Christopher Brooke, the poet, through whom he apparently became one of the group of young London poets, and who later suffered a brief imprisonment for com plicity in Donne's marriage. In 1593 Donne suffered for the first time some of that persecu tion which had pursued his family because of their Roman sympathies; his brother, Henry Donne, was arrested for sheltering a proselyting priest, William Harrington. Harrington was put to death at once and a few weeks later Henry Donne died of disease contracted in prison.
John Donne joined the expedition of Essex to Cadiz in June 1596. In August of that year he became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. Five years later he made a clandestine marriage with Anne, daughter of Sir George More and niece of Lady Egerton. His patron and his wife's father were exceedingly angry; he and the friends who had connived at the elopement were imprisoned, and all hope of advancement through Sir Thomas Egerton was lost. In a short time Donne was released from prison and forgiven, but he was penniless. For the next few years he lived on the charity of his friends, and at the beginning of the new reign he sought the king's favor. James recognized his ability, but, insisting that Donne was fitted for the Church, he promised only Church preferment, and Donne seems to have waited, in hope of a worldly career.
In 1611 he traveled on the Continent as the guest of Sir Robert and Lady Drury, upon the death of whose daughter Elizabeth he wrote the quaint 'Anatomic of the World? remem bered now by the three exquisite lines about °her pure and eloquent blood° that "spoke in her cheeks.°' On his return the following year
he gave himself seriously to the study of theol ogy. Ordained by the bishop of London in 1615, he became rector a year later of Keyston and of Sevenoaks. But a more important op portunity came at the same time, in the appoint ment as preacher to Lincoln's Inn. Here he immediately proved himself the most eloquent pulpit orator of his day. The death of his wife in 1617 saddened his life permanently, but he seems to have found a new ambition, far from worldly, in the use of the great powers he had discovered so late. His reputation as an orator was wide. While on a visit to Germany in 1619, as chaplain to Lord Doncaster, he preached in Germany and Holland to the admiration of his hearers. Shortly after his return to Eng land he was made dean of Saint Paul's.
The last 10 years of his life were years of honor. His sermons as he preached them and published them were of extraordinary popu larity, and still justify his fame. His great mind and broad experience of life had the added grace of the poet's temperament, and time sweetened his nature, which in youth at least was intellectually hard. Toward the end of his life his health gradually failed, and at his last sermon, preached before the king at Whitehall on Ash Wednesday, 1631, his hearers and he were conscious that he would never preach again. A few weeks later he died.
Donne's poems were published posthumously in 1633. Some of the pieces can be dated ap proximately by their context; most of them might have been written any time before the last 15 years of his life. The sacred poems, however, are naturally referred to the end and the secular poems to the beginning of his career; the satires probably belong to the time when he was seeking court favor and the epistles to the same time or slightly later. The funeral poems are comparatively easy to date; the amatory elegies, it is to be hoped, were the work of youth.