infidelity to fidelity, from wandering amorousness to deep and enduring
passion. The image that is finally stamped on his greatest work is not
that of a roving adulterer, but of a monotheist of love. It is true that
there is enough Don-Juanism in the poems to have led even Sir Thomas
Browne to think of Donne's verse rather as a confession of his sins than
as a golden book of love. Browne's quaint poem, _To the deceased Author,
before the Promiscuous printing of his Poems, the Looser Sort, with the
Religious_, is so little known that it may be quoted in full as the
expression of one point of view in regard to Donne's work:

When thy loose raptures, Donne, shall meet with those
That do confine
Tuning unto the duller line,
And sing not but in sanctified prose,
How will they, with sharper eyes,
The foreskin of thy fancy circumcise,
And fear thy wantonness should now begin
Example, that hath ceased to be sin!
And that fear fans their heat; whilst knowing eyes
Will not admire
At this strange fire
That here is mingled with thy sacrifice,
But dare read even thy wanton story
As thy confession, not thy glory;
And will so envy both to future times,
That they would buy thy goodness with thy crimes.

To the modern reader, on the contrary, it will seem that there is as much
divinity in the best of the love-poems as in the best of the religious
ones. Donne's last word as a secular poet may well be regarded as having