Shakespeare might hear of it at Stratford, and talk of the prisoner
as he strolled with some friend on the banks of Avon. A greater than
Shakespeare--as most men thought in those days--Ben Jonson himself,
might talk the matter over "at those lyric feasts, Made at the Sun,
The Dog, the triple Tun"; for had not he himself languished in a
worse dungeon and under a heavier charge than Wither? To be
seven-and-twenty, to be in trouble with the Government about one's
verses, and to have other young poets, in a ferment of enthusiasm,
clinging like swallows to the prison-bars--how delicious a torment!
And to know that it will soon be over, and that the sweet, pure
meadows lie just outside the reek of Southwark, that summer lingers
still and that shepherds pipe and play, that Fame is sitting by her
cheerful fountain with a garland for the weary head, and that lasses,
"who more excell Than the sweet-voic'd Philomel," are ready to cluster
round the Interesting captive, and lead him away in daisy-chains--what
could be more consolatory! And we close the little dainty volume, with
its delicate perfume of friendship and poetry and hope.




DEATH'S DUEL

DEATH'S DVELL; _or, A Consolation to the Soule, against the dying
Life, and living Death of the Body. Delivered in a Sermon at White
Hall, before the King's Maiesty, in the beginning of Lent_, 1630. _By
that late learned and Reverend Divine, John Donne, Dr. in Divinity, &
Deane of S. Pauls, London. Being his last Sermon, and called by his
Maiesties houshold The Doctor's owne Funerall Sermon. London, Printed
by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Benjamin Fisher, and are to