Izaak Walton in his short life of Donne has painted a figure of almost
seraphic beauty. When Donne was but a boy, he declares, it was said that
the age had brought forth another Pico della Mirandola. As a young man in
his twenties, he was a prince among lovers, who by his secret marriage
with his patron's niece--"for love," says Walton, "is a flattering
mischief"--purchased at first only the ruin of his hopes and a term in
prison. Finally, we have the later Donne in the pulpit of St. Paul's
represented, in a beautiful adaptation of one of his own images, as
"always preaching to himself, like an angel from a cloud, though in none;
carrying some, as St. Paul was, to Heaven in holy raptures, and enticing
others by a sacred art and courtship to amend their lives." The picture is
all of noble charm. Walton speaks in one place of "his winning
behaviour--which, when it would entice, had a strange kind of elegant
irresistible art." There are no harsh phrases even in the references to
those irregularities of Donne's youth, by which he had wasted the fortune
of £3,000--equal, I believe, to more than £30,000 of our money--bequeathed
to him by his father, the ironmonger. "Mr. Donne's estate," writes Walton
gently, referring to his penury at the time of his marriage, "was the
greatest part spent in many and chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought
experience." It is true that he quotes Donne's own confession of the
irregularities of his early life. But he counts them of no significance.
He also utters a sober reproof of Donne's secret marriage as "the
remarkable error of his life." But how little he condemned it in his heart
is clear when he goes on to tell us that God blessed Donne and his wife
"with so mutual and cordial affections, as in the midst of their
sufferings made their bread of sorrow taste more pleasantly than the
banquets of dull and low-spirited people." It was not for Walton to go in
search of small blemishes in him whom he regarded as the wonder of the
world--him whose grave, mournful friends "strewed ... with an abundance of