ts,--Drayton, the Fletchers, Beaumont, Wither,
Herrick, Carew, Suckling, and others. Imagination was foremost, and
was stimulated by vast discoveries. Debates upon ecclesiastical
reform, led by Wyclif, Tyndal, Knox, Foxe, Sternhold, Hopkins, and
others, had prepared the way; and the luminous literatures of Greece
and Italy, but recently brought into England, had made men's spirits
receptive and creative. It was a period of vast conceptions, when men
discovered themselves and the world afresh.

Under such outward conditions Donne was born, in London, "of good and
virtuous parents," says Walton, being descended on his mother's side
from no less distinguished a personage than Sir Thomas More. In 1584,
when he was eleven years old, with a good command both of French and
Latin, he passed from the hands of tutors at home to Hare Hall, a much
frequented college at Oxford. Here he formed a friendship with Henry
Wotton, who, after the poet's death, collected the material from which
Walton wrote his tender and sincere 'Life of Donne.'

After leaving Oxford he traveled for three years on the Continent, and
on his return in 1592 became a member of Lincoln's Inn, with intent to
study law; but his law never, says Walton, "served him for other use
than an ornament and self-satisfaction." While a member of Lincoln's
Inn he became one of the coterie of the poets of his youth. To this
time are to be referred those of his 'Divine Poems' which show him a
sincere Catholic. Stirred by the increasing differences between the
Romanist and the Anglican denominations, Donne turned toward
theological questions, and finally cast his lot with the new
doctrines. His large nature, impetuously reacting from the asceticism
to which he had been bred, turned to excess and overboldness in
action, and an occasional coarseness of phrasing in his poems.

The first of his famous 'Satires' are dated 1593, and all were
probably written before 1601. During this time also he squandered his
father's legacy of L3000. In 1596, when the Earl of Essex defeated the
Spanish navy and pillaged Cadiz, Donne, now one of the first poets of
the time, was among his followers. "Not long after his return into
England ... the Lord Ellesmere, the Keeper of the Great Seal,...
taking notice of his learning, languages, and other abilities, and
much affecting his person and behavior, took him to be his chief
secretary, supposing and intending it to be an introduction to some
weighty