his prose.' We beg leave to differ, in some degree, from De Quincey in his estimate of the 'Metempsychosis,' or 'The Progress of the Soul,' although we have given it entire. It has too many far-fetched conceits and obscure allegories, although redeemed, we admit, by some very precious thoughts, such as "This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh.' Or the following quaint picture of the apple in Eden'Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn, Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born.' Or this roe 96 'Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.' If our readers, however, can admire the account the poet gives of Abel and his bitch, or see any resemblance to the severe and simple grandeur of Æschylus and Ezekiel in the description of the soul informing a body, made of a female fish's sandy newly leavened with the male's jelly,' we shall say no more. Donne, altogether, gives us the impression of a great genius ruined by a false system. He is a charioteer run away with by his own pampered steeds. He begins generally well, but long ere the close, quibbles, conceits, and the temptation of shewing off recondite learning, prove too strong for him, and he who commenced following a serene star, ends pursuing a will-o'-wisp into a bottomless morass. Compare, for instance, the ingenious nonsense which abounds in the middle and the close of his 'Progress of the Soul' with the dark, but magnificent stanzas which are the first in the poem. In no writings in the language is there more spilt treasure—a more lavish loss of beautiful, original, and striking things than in the poems of Donne. Every second line, indeed, is either bad, or unintelligible, or twisted into unnatural distortion, but even the worst passages discover a great, though trammelled and tasteless mind; and we question if Dr Johnson himself, who has, in his 'Life of Cowley,' criticised the school of poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a tithe of the rich fancy, the sublime intuition, and the lofty spirituality of Donne. How characteristic of the difference between these two great men, that, while the one shrank from the slightest footprint of death, Donne deliberately placed the image of his dead self before his eyes, and became familiar with the shadow ere the grim reality arrived! Donne's Satires shew, in addition to the high ideal qualities, the rugged versification, the fantastic paradox, and the perverted taste of their author, great strength and clearness of judgment, and a deep, although somewhat jaundiced, view of human nature. That there must have been something morbid in the structure of his mind is proved by the fact that he wrote an elaborate treatise, which was not published till after his death, entitled, 'Biathanatos,' to prove that suicide was not necessarily sinful. HOLY SONNETS. I. Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? II. As due by many titles, I resign Myself to thee, O God! First I was made By thee, and for thee; and when I was decayed I am thy son, made with thyself to shine, Why doth the devil then usurp on me? III. Oh! might these sighs and tears return again Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain! Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent! 'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain. The hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief, No ease; for long yet vehement grief hath been IV. Oh! my But damn'd, and haul'd to execution, V. I am a little world, made cunningly But black sin hath betrayed to endless night Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal. VI. This is my play's last scene; here Heavens appoint Then as my soul to heaven, her first seat, takes flight, For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil. VII. At the round earth's imagined corners blow VIII. If faithful souls be alike glorified As angels, then my father's soul doth see, That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride; eyes How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried? They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn, And style blasphemous conjurors to call |