"in her younger days, to bring to a great decay in her very old age. I have quieted the confciences of many that have "groaned under the burthen of a wounded fpirit, whofe prayers "I hope are available for me. I cannot plead innocency of "life, efpecially of my youth; but I am to be judged by a "merciful God, who is not willing to see what I have done amifs: "And though of myself I have nothing to prefent to him but "fins and mifery, yet I know he looks not upon me now as I "am of myself, but as I am in my Saviour, and hath given me even at this present time fome teftimonies by his Holy Spirit, "that I am of the number of his elect: I am therefore full of "inexpressible joy, and shall die in peace." I must here look fo far back as to tell the reader, that at his first return out of Efsex, to preach his laft fermon, his old friend and physician, Dr. Fox, a man of great worth, came to him to confult his health, and after a fight of him, and fome queries concerning his distempers, he told him, "That by cordials, "and drinking milk twenty days together, there was a probability of his refloration to health." But he passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless, Dr. Fox, who loved him most entirely, wearied him with folicitations, till he yielded to take it for ten days, at the end of which time he told Dr. Fox, "He had drunk it more to fatisfy him, than to recover his "health; and that he would not drink it ten days longer upon "the best moral afsurance of having twenty years added to his "life, for he loved it not, and was fo far from fearing death, "which to others was the King of Terrors, that he longed for "the day of his dissolution "." It is obferved, that a defire of glory or commendation is rooted in the very nature of man; and that thofe of the fevereft and most mortified lives, though they may become fo humble d Dr. Donne feems to have entertained an indifference to and an alienation from every fecular purfuit. In the various fcenes of his maturer life, he has his attention principally fixed upon another and a better ftate. His defires and affections being mortified and entirely fubdued, he familiarizes to his thoughts the idea of death. Hence he exprefses not merely an acquiefcence in the difpenfations of God calling him away from this world, but even an unwillingness to live; and by that very extraordinary mode of representation, which his biographer has recorded, he reconciles and endears to himself the approaching moment of his dissolution. But fuch a conduct will not be pursued by the generality of mankind. We are indeed influenced by every religious and moral principle to afpire after length of days and an honourable old age; when we languilh on the bed of ficknefs, to bear the agonies of pain with the confoling hopes of being refiored to health, not to reject the probable remedies which medicinal fkill proposes for extinguishing difeafe and protracting life. This difpofition, joined with a cheertul and ready confignment of our flate to the will of God, and a jufi fente of the final value of all earthly enjoyments, is furely not unworthy of the Chriftian character. as to banish felf-flattery, and fuch weeds as naturally grow there; yet they have not been able to kill this defire of glory, but that, like our radical heat, it will both live and die with us, and many think it fhould do fo; and we want not facred examples to justify the defire of having our memory to out-live our lives, which I mention because Dr. Donne, by the perfuafion of Dr. Fox, eafily yielded at this very time to have a monument made for him; but Dr. Fox undertook not to perfuade him how or what monument it fhould be; that was left to Dr. Donne himfelf. A monument being refolved upon, Dr. Donne fent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and to bring with it a board of the juft height of his body. Thefe being got; then, without delay, a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth. Several charcoal-fires being first made in his large ftudy, he brought with him into that place his winding-fheet in his hand; and having put off all his clothes, had this fheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands fo placed as dead bodies are ufually fitted to be fhrowded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus ftood, with his eyes fhut, and with fo much of the sheet turned afide, as might fhew his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purpofely turned toward the eaft, from whence he expected the fecond coming of his and our Saviour Jefus. In this pofture he was drawn at his juft height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be fet by his bed-fide, where it continued, and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor, Doctor Henry King, then chief Refidentiary of St. Paul's, who caufed him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that church; "In 1631 I made a tombe for Dr. Donne, and fette it up in St. "Paul's, London, for which I was paid by Dr. Mountford the fum of "£120. I took 460 in plate, in part of payment." (From a Copy of the Pocket-Book of Nicholas Stone.)" 1631, Humphrey Mayor, a "workman employed under Stone, finifht the fiatue for Dr. Donne's "monument, £8:0:0," (Ibid.). On the fouth-fide of the Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, flood a white marble monument, with the figure of Dr. Donne, in his fhroud, ftanding erect, his feet in an urn, and placed in a nich. Speed calls it A White Marble Statue on an Urn." Above are the arms of the Deanery, impaled with his own, viz. a WOLF suliant. The concluding lines of the infcription evidently allude to his pofture." He was look"ing toward the eati, from whence he expected his Saviour." critical reader will remember, that in Zech v. 12. the passage alluded to, fhould be rendered Behold the Man, whole name is the BRANCH," which the Seventy-Two tranflate Avatuλn óvoμa 'aut8,—and the Vulgate "Oriens nomen ejus." The Of and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these words were to be affixed to it as his epitaph : JOHANNES DONNE, SAC. THEOL. PROFESS. POST VARIA STUDIA QUIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS ANNO SUI JESU, MDCXIV. ET SUÆ ÆTATIS XLII. DECANATU HUJUS ECCLESIÆ INDUTUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII MDCXXXI. And now having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities of a various life, even to the gates of death and the grave, my defire is, he may reft till I have told my reader, that I have feen many pictures of him, in feveral habits, and at feveral ages, and in several postures: And I now mention this, because I have feen one picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen, with his fword and what other adornments might then fuit with the prefent fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age; and his motto then was"How much fhall I be chang'd, "Before I am chang'd f!" Of the portraiture of Sir William Wefton, Lord Prior of the Hofpitallers, lying dead in his fhroud, the most artificially cut in flone that ever man beheld, fee Fuller's Holy War, p. 240. que mudada f "Antes muerta que mudada.” The words antes muerta are fuppofed by a Spanish author to have been originally written on the fand by a lady promifing fidelity to her lover. The following lines were compofed by Mr. Ifaac Walton, and infcribed under the print taken from this picture, and prefixed to an edition of Dr. Donne's Poems in 1639. "This was for youth, ftrength, mirth, and wit, that time "Thine was thy later years, fo much refin'd "From youth's drofs, mirth and wit, as thy pure mind "Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise "Witnefs this book thy emblem, which begins "With love, but ends with fighs and tears for fins," |