Donne's reputation as a poet was great dur ing his life, before his poems were published, and his love poetry shows not only marked individuality, but also the influence of minor schools of the time. In his early work he is clearly a Cavalier poet, yet his genius was not by nature fitted for that kind of song-writing. It has been said that he had no ear; his verse is harsh; and in spite of vigorous defense on the part of his admirers, the criticism con stantly recurs. But perhaps it is truer to say that Donne had too much intellect for the kind of verse he wrote in; the brief Cavalier song was no room for his robust mind. Except for occasional lines of great beauty, such as those mentioned in the (Anatomie of the World' and those of the lovely 'Break of Day,' his form of expression is cramped, and the poem as a whole displays no convincing proportion. So strong is the intellect in his verse, and so low is the emotional temperature, that thought and image, or even thought and word, rarely fuse; they frequently remain stub bornly unmated, however interesting each may be in itself. This is equivalent to saying that most of Donne's verse is fanciful rather than imaginative; and if it be added that he had little taste in selecting the image for his thought, it will be seen that he was by nature fitted to be one of the school—indeed the chief fantastic poet in English. At his worst, as in the ironical verses, The Indifferent,' in praise of inconstancy in lovers, he seems to search for novelty of idea at all costs, and the difficulty of his crowded lines offers little re ward at last to the reader's patience. At his best, as in the famous ((Valediction Forbidding Mourning," in which he compares the parted lovers to the pair of compasses, the ingenuity of the fancy gives a delight of its own; though its defect as poetry is clear in the fact that the attention is diverted from the poet and his poem to his astonishing conceit. The vogue of fantastic poetry gave Donne his audience; yet some of his verses have a smoothness and ease rare in him — such as the almost perfect song, 'Sweetest love, I do not go," and the vigorous lines, "The Broken Heart)) containing the in genious image of the broken mirror, which Byron turned to his own good account.
An intellect so energetic as Donne's would not ignore such a strange fashion of thought as the Precieuse movement, transplanted from France by Henrietta Maria. The fantastic problems of that school as to the place of love in society, their perversions of Platonism, ap pealed to his genius. The influence is felt in several of his poems, but chiefly in 'The Ecstasy.' Donne's sacred poems show the same gen eral characteristics as the secular verse; the in tellectual element is strong, so that their inter est seems usually to be theological rather than religious; and the lack of constructive lyric form still mars any total effect. But the note of trifling, which went with the early fantastic images, is absent from this sacred verse; a great nature speaks seriously throughout, even though none of the poems are memorable. The best perhaps is the 'Litany.) Of the elegies the ninth is the best, written in honor of George Herbert's mother. The others, like the Satires, are made upon Latin models, perhaps as academic trifling, but with the coarseness which the age easily forgave in Latin imitations. The epistles or "Verse Let ters" are interesting for some of the persons to whom they were addressed — Christopher Brooke, Sir Henry Wotton, Isaak Walton, Ben Jonson.
It has been the fashion to praise Donne's poetry highly and to make a merit of its tricity. Its real merits, of an intellectual kind, are great, and were recognized by his age, but he was best known as a preacher. In the pulpit his keen intellect, his gift for striking expres sion and the force of a great personality deep ened by time and suffering, found room for just expression.
Bibliography.— The best editions are those by Grosart, in Fuller's 'Worthies' Library); Chambers, with an introduction by Saintsbury, in the 'Muses' Library' ; and Gnerson. For criticism, consult to the above; Gosse, 'Life and Letters of John Donne", and Ward's 'English Poets.' An annotated edition, edited by C. E. Merrill, Jr., of Donne's 'Letters to Several Persons of Honour' was published in 1912.
jOHN ERSKINE, Professor of .English, Columbia University.