edition we propose to mention is the present neat and copious one published by old Jacob Tonson, to which is prefixed a short Memoir of the Author and a Table of Contents. It contains a Poem addressed "To his Mistress," p. 90, which is omitted in most of the other editions, and which, with one or two others disfigured by their grossness, it would have been better also to have omitted. Donne lived at a period when great licentiousness was tolerated, and when much more coarseness and vulgarity was allowed in speaking than at present, and in his younger days he was not free from those defects which he afterwards repudiated and abhorred. But had he lived to correct and edit his own early Poems these blemishes would certainly have been corrected.

We have already given a few notices of this eminent divine and writer, in addition to which it may be remarked further that it was in 1614 that he took orders, being then in his forty-second year. He was made Dean of St. Paul's 27th November, 1621, and died March 31st, 1631.

Isaac Walton says little about Donne's children, naming indeed his eldest daughter, Mrs. Harvey, but omitting to inform us that before she married Harvey she was the wife of Edward Alleyn the player, founder of Dulwich College. They were married the 3rd October, 1623. Besides the singularity of this marriage, Alleyn being a player and she the daughter of a Dean of St. Paul's and very popular preacher, there was also a great difference in their ages, she being then not more than twenty and he fifty-seven. We all know what commotion was raised at Donne's runaway match with the daughter of Sir George More; but this unequal marriage, in its great disparity of years and condition of life, required still more a defence. By her marriage with Harvey she had issue, as may be seen elsewhere.

Margaret, another of Dr. Donne's daughters, married Sir William Bowes, and had a daughter Margaret, wife of Peter Scot, D.D., Canon of Windsor. See Aubrey's Surrey, vol. i. p. 175.

George

His eldest son was named John, of whom see more hereafter. Donne was another son, and had the poetical turn of his family. He has poems before the works of Massinger and Ford, and in Jonsonus Virbius, 1638, and he is probably the G. D. who has Latin verses before Sir Thomas Hawkins' Translation of the Odes of Horace, 1631. We have thus the names of John, George, Constance and Margaret, four of the seven children which Dr. Donne's wife left surviving her. But we have not the names of his other children.

There was a good deal of punning on Donne's name among his contemporaries, serving to show how his name was pronounced. It was both spelt and sounded as Dun; and in John Davies's Muses Sacrifice, 1612, it is made to rhyme with runne; and in the same writer's Scourge of Folly, Epig. 97, inscribed to Mr. John Dun, there is a punning conceit in it on the colour called dun.

Donne had a grant of arms from Camden, a wolf rampant with an ermine spot on the shoulder. His motto was, "Fiat voluntas Dei." The ancient crest of his family, as he himself tells us in his Poems, was "a sheaf of arrows."

Those who are desirous of pursuing this subject further may consult Isaac Walton's Life of Donne, but not much assistance is got from Ant. Wood, who does not seem to have held him in very high estimation. He gives indeed a list of Donne's printed works, but there is a much more copious list in Lowndes, to which the reader may be referred. See also Collier's Poetical Decameron, vol. i. p. 153-9; Drake's Life and Times of Shakespeare, vol. i. p. 615; and Hunter's Chorus Vatum Anglicanorum, vol. v. fol. 165; Addit. MSS. Brit. Mus., 24,491, to which we acknowledge ourselves very greatly indebted in these notices of Donne.

The

This impression by Tonson, besides its moral defects, is also incorrect, and shows the necessity for an improved edition of these Poems. present copy is embellished with Marshall's portrait of Donne, in armour, ætatis suæ 18, with Isaac Walton's lines underneath.

Collation Sig. A to R 4 in 12mo, pp. 390.

:

Half-bound in Green Morocco.

*DONNE (JOHN, JUN).-Donne's Satyr. Containing 1. A short Map of Mundane Vanity. 2. A Cabinet of Merry Conceits. 3. Certain Learned Propositions and Questions, with their merry Solutions and Answers. Being very Useful, Pleasant, and Delightful to all; and offensive to none. By Jo. Donne. London, Printed by R. W. for W. Wright, at the Kings Head in the Old Bailey. 1662. Sm. 8vo, pp. 142.

Opposite the title-page is an engraving of a dancing Satyr, with a label issuing from his mouth and extending above his head, containing two lines

in Latin with an English translation. After the title occurs the Epistle Dedicatory "To the Right Worshipful and his very good Friend Sir Francis. Edwards Baronet, and to his truly courteous Mother, the right worshipful Lady Cicely Edwards of Shrewsbury, in the county of Salop, whom the Author entirely wishes the full accomplishment of their choicest desires both here and hereafter." This occupies ten pages, ending thus: "Your Worships most humbly hearted Servant to be commanded,

Then follows page 1,

Jo. DONNE, Salopiensis."

"A Short Map of Mundane Vanity."

Vanitas Vanitatum omnia Vanitas.

Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity.

This occupies thirteen pages, and ends with

Mors ultima linea rerum. FINIS.

Between pages 14 and 15 there is inserted a folded page much larger than the book, containing forty-four lines of English verse, divided into two columns, the one headed Roundhead, the other Cavallier.

is a direction to place this between folios 14 and 15. Then occurs page 15,

"A Cabinet of Merry Conceits."

At the bottom

This poem is continued to page 101. At page 102 commences

"Certain pleasant Questions and Answers."

These end at the upper portion of page 126. Upon the same page is "A Merry May Song for this year of our Lord 1662," twelve verses, ending page 129, and finishing the volume.

We select two short pieces from this rather uncommon little work as specimens of the younger Donne's verse:

32. Of two stealers of Hay by night.
A Barge-man in Hay-harvest late at night,
With weary toilsome labour spent out-right,
Creeps in a Cock of Hay quite over head,
And there fell fast asleep as in a bed.
Two Knaves who used to steal Hay thither came,
The Master and his man (whom I could name)
Went fair and softly to some Cocks of Hay,
The Man takes that wherein the Barge-man lay;

And for to binde it hard he was not slack,
But lifting of 't it almost broke his back.
Quoth he, and swore, It weighs the Dev'l and all,

I am scarce able with it for to crawl:

So much the better (fool) his master sayes;
For it has in't the more, the more it weighs.
At last to a Rail hard by, he him betakes,
And rests him on't, at which the Bargeman wakes.
Oh! quoth the Bargeman: th'other never stayes,
But (frighted) throws down all, and runs his wayes.
The Bargeman thought for some fault done that day,
The Devil by night was carrying him away.
Which was worse fear'd it's hard for to discover,
For both were sore afraid of one another.

101. Of a Blinde and Lame man that found an Oyster
on the High-way.

A blinde man bearing a lame man abroad,

It chanc'd they found an Oyster on the road:
That one should have it, neither would agree,

Nor yet to part it, would well pleased be.

The blinde man said, 'twas found by help of 's feet,
Not so, the lame alledg'd, but by his sight.

So arguing a long time each with either,
At last they thus concluded both together;
That the next person which on that way came,
Should wholly arbitrate and end the same.
And as things oft-times strangely come to pass,
So th'next which that way came, a Lawyer was,
They ope to him the Case, and tells him, He,
To end that strife, the onely man must be.
He opes the Oyster, eats it up, and calls
Them wrangling fools, and then returns the shels.
Such subtil sleights by Lawyers oft are cast
On Clients, who have nought but shells at last.
You shall have Costs and Charges they'l pretend,
When as you'l finde but meer shells in the end.

John Donne, the author of this little work, was the eldest son of the Dean of St. Paul's. He was born in 1604, educated at Westminster, and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford, and became M.A. in 16-. He took the degree of LL.D. at Padua, and at Oxford June 30, 1638. He appears to have inherited the poetical turn of his family, and besides the present

work, other poems and verses of his are scattered about in various publications of the time. Wood speaks of him in an extremely severe and sarcastic manner as an atheistical buffoon, and as a person of over free thought. He seems to have been under a cloud among his contemporaries, and the circumstances of his life are involved in a good deal of obscurity which we are unable to fathom. Wood's account of him is extremely unfavourable, but he gives us no particulars. He says: "Dr. John Donne left behind him a son of both his names, but of none of his virtues, manners, or generous qualities; and therefore by many his memory is condemn'd to utter oblivion, while that of his father flourisheth in the history of his life written by Isaac Walton." What were the son's particular delinquencies we are unable to state, but we know, from other sources, that after leaving Oxford, Donne entered into holy orders, and was preferred to the rectory of Upford, in the diocese of Peterborough; but during the latter part of his life he resided in Covent Garden, and dying there in 1662, was buried at the west end of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. Notwithstanding much pains we have been unable to make out what were the peculiar ties which connected Donne with Shropshire. Besides dedicating the present work to an old established family in that county, his friend Sir Francis Edwards, Bart., and his mother Lady Cicely Edwards, he signs himself at the close "Jo. Donne Salopiensis;" and another 4to volume of manuscript poems, which he had prepared for press, is dedicated to Francis Lord Newport, High Ercall, and the Lady Diana his wife, two other Shropshire persons, to the former of whom he bequeathed a picture. A copy of his very curious will is printed in Notes and Queries for August 29, 1857, p. 171, for which and the notice at the end we have been indebted for our information. From this will, which is dated July 24, 1637, in which Jerome Earl of Portland was the executor, it does not appear that he had much to leave beyond a picture or two, and some few books, and some manuscripts of his father which he gave to Isaac Walton for the use of his son. There were remembrances also to Sir Allen Brodrick, Tom Killigrew, and to Henry King, Bishop of Chichester. In this will there is no mention made of either wife or children, but only a few simple remembrances to his friends. The great merit of John Donne the son consists in his being the means of handing down to us some of his father's works which, but for his care, might have been lost to posterity.

the

For further information respecting Donne consult Wood's Ath. Oxon., vol. ii. p. 504; Hunter's MSS.; Bibl. Ang. Poet., p. 27; Notes and Queries,