it was only after prolonged
thought that he yielded to the importunity of King James, who was so
convinced of his surpassing fitness for the church that he would speed
him towards no other goal. When at length he dared hope that God might
have called him to the high office, never man gave himself to its duties
with more of whole-heartedness and devotion, and none have proved
themselves more clean of the sacrilege of serving at the altar for the
sake of the things offered thereon.

He is represented by Dr. Johnson as one of the chief examples of that
school of poets called by himself the _metaphysical_, an epithet which,
as a definition, is almost false. True it is that Donne and his followers
were always ready to deal with metaphysical subjects, but it was from
their mode, and not their subjects, that Dr. Johnson classed them. What
this mode was we shall see presently, for I shall be justified in setting
forth its strangeness, even absurdity, by the fact that Dr. Donne was the
dear friend of George Herbert, and had much to do with the formation of
his poetic habits. Just twenty years older than Herbert, and the valued
and intimate friend of his mother, Donne was in precisely that relation
of age and circumstance to influence the other in the highest degree.

The central thought of Dr. Donne is nearly sure to be just: the
subordinate thoughts by means of which he unfolds it are often grotesque,
and so wildly associated as to remind one of the lawlessness of a dream,
wherein mere suggestion without choice or fitness rules the sequence. As
some of the writers of whom I have last spoken would play with words, Dr.
Donne would sport with ideas, and with the visual images or embodiments
of them. Certainly in his case much knowledge reveals itself in the
association of his ideas, and great facility in the management and
utterance of them. True likewise, he says nothing unrelated to the main
idea of the poem; but not the less certainly does the whole resemble the
speech of a child of active imagination, to whom judgment as to the
character of his suggestions is impossible, his taste being equally
gratified with a lovely image and a brilliant absurdity: a butterfly and
a shining potsherd are to him similarly desirable. Whatever wild thing
starts from the thicket of thought, all is worthy game to the hunting
intellect of Dr. Donne, and is followed without question of tone,
keeping, or harmony. In his play with words, Sir Philip S