ing they thought the Text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preached his own Funeral Sermon.* Being full of joy that God had enabled him to perform this desired duty, he hastened to his house; out of which he never moved, till, like St. Stephen, "he was carried by devout men to his grave." The next day after his Sermon, his strength being much wasted, and his spirits so spent as indisposed him to business or to talk, a friend that had often been a witness of his free and facetious discourse asked him, "Why are you sad?" To whom he replied, with a countenance so full of cheerful gravity, as gave testimony of an inward tranquillity of mind, and of a soul willing to take a farewell of this world; and said, "I am not sad; but most of the night past I have entertained myself with many thoughts of several friends that have left me here, and are gone to that place from which they shall not return; and that within a few days I also shall go hence, and be no more seen. And my preparation for this change is become my nightly meditation upon my bed, which my infirmities have now made restless to me. But at this present time, I was in a serious contemplation of the providence and goodness of God to me; to me, who am less than the least of his mercies: and looking back upon my life past, I now plainly see it was his hand that prevented me from all temporal employment; and that it was his will I should never settle nor thrive till I entered into the Ministry; in which I have now lived almost twenty years I hope to his glory, and by which, I most humbly thank him, I have been enabled to requite most of those friends which showed me kindness when my fortune was very low, as God knows it was :—and, as it hath occasioned the expression of my gratitude—I thank God most of them have stood in need of my requital. I have lived to be useful and comfortable to my good Father-in-law, Sir George More, whose patience God hath been pleased to exercise with many temporal crosses; I have maintained my own Mother, * This discourse was printed at London in 1633, in 4to., under the quaint title of "Death's Duel, or a Consolation to the Soule against the Dying Life and Living Death of the Body." The text is from Ps. lxviii. 20. It is the last discourse in the third volume of Dr. Donne's Sermons. whom it hath pleased God, after a plentiful fortune in her younger days, to bring to great decay in her very old age. I have quieted the consciences of many, that have groaned under the burthen of a wounded spirit, whose prayers I hope are available for me. I cannot plead innocency of life, especially of my youth; but I am to be judged by a merciful God, who is not willing to see what I have done amiss. And though of myself I have nothing to present to him but sins and misery, 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, sume testimonies 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 so far back as to tell the reader that at his first return out of Essex, to preach his last Sermon, his old friend and Physician, Dr. Fox-a man of great worth-came to him to consult his health; and that after a sight of him, and some queries concerning his distempers, he told him, "That by cordials, and drinking milk twenty days together, there was a probability of his restoration to health ;" but he passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless, Dr. Fox, who loved him most entirely, wearied him with solicitations, 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 satisfy him, than to recover his health; and that he would not drink it ten days longer, upon the best moral assurance of having twenty years added to his life; for he loved it not; and was so far from fearing Death, which to others is the King of Terrors, that he longed for the day of his dissolution. It is observed, that a desire of glory or commendation is rooted in the very nature of man; and that those of the severest and most mortified lives, though they may become so humble as to banish self-flattery, and such weeds as naturally grow there; yet they have not been able to kill this desire of glory, but that like our radical heat, it will both live and die with us; and many think it should do so; and we want not sacred examples to justify the desire of having our memory to outlive our lives, which I mention, because Dr. Donne, by the persuasion of Dr. Fox, easily yielded at this very time to have a monument made for him; but Dr. Fox undertook not to persuade him how, or what monument it should be; that was left to Dr. Donne himself. A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent 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 just height of his body. "These 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 study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this Urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the East, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus." In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bed-side, where it continued and became his hourly object till his death, and was then given to his dearest friend and executor Dr. Henry King, then chief Residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble,* as it now stands in that Church; and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these words were to be affixed to it as an epitaph : 66 * In the account-book of Nicholas Stone, are contained several particulars concerning Dr. Donne's monument. "In 1631," observes he, I made a tombe for Dr. Donne and sette it up in St. Paul's London, for the which I was payed by Doctor Mountford the sum of 120l. I took 601. in plate, in part of payment." Another entry refers to a workman employed by Stone upon the same effigy. "1631, Humphrey Mayor finisht the statue for Dr. Donne's monument, 81." The figure was erected within the choir in the south aisle, against the south east pier of the central tower of St. Paul's; and it stood in a niche of black marble, which was surmounted by a square tablet, hung with garlands of fruit and leaves, having over it the arms of the Deanerv, impaling Donne. JOHANNES DONNE, SAC. THEOL. PROFESS. POST VARIA STUDIA, QUIBUS AB ANNIS INSTINCTU ET IMPULSU SP. SANCTI, MONITU REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS, 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 desire is, he may rest, till I have told my Reader that I have seen many pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in several postures: and I now mention this, because I have seen one picture of him, drawn by a curious hand, at his age of eighteen, with his sword, and what other adornments might then suit with the present fashions of youth and the giddy gaities of that age; and his motto then was How much shall I be changed, *"Antes muerta que mudada." These words are supposed by a Spanish author to have been originally written on the sand by a lady promising fidelity to her lover. The following lines were composed by Mr. Izaak Walton, and inscribed under the print taken from this picture, and prefixed to an edition of Dr. Donne's Poems in 1639. "This was for youth, strength, mirth, and wit, that time Thine was thy later years, so much refin'd From youth's dross, mirth and wit, as thy pure mind And if that young, and his now dying picture were at this time set together, every beholder might say, Lord! how much is Dr. Donne already changed, before he is changed! And the view of them might give my Reader occasion to ask himself with some amazement, "Lord! how much may I also, that am now in health, be changed before I am changed; before this vile, this changeable body shall put off mortality!" and therefore to prepare for it. But this is not writ so much for my Reader's memento, as to tell him, that Dr. Donne would often in his private discourses, and often publicly in his Sermons, mention the many changes both of his body and mind; especially of his mind from a vertiginous giddiness; and would as often say, "His great and most blessed change was from a temporal to a spiritual employment;" in which he was so happy, that he accounted the former part of his life to be lost; and the beginning of it to be, from his first entering into Sacred Orders, and serving his most merciful God at his altar.* Upon Monday, after the drawing this picture, he took his last leave of his beloved study; and, being sensible of his hourly decay, retired himself to his bed-chamber; and that week sent at several times for many of his most considerable friends, with whom he took a solemn and deliberate farewell, commending to their considerations some sentences useful for the regulation of their lives; and then dismissed them, as good Jacob did his sons, with a spiritual benediction. The Sunday following, he appointed his servants, that if there were any business yet undone, that concerned him or themselves, it should be prepared against Saturday next; for after that day he would not mix his thoughts with any thing that concerned this world; nor ever did; but, as Job, so he "waited for the appointed day of his dissolution." Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise Of thy Creator, in those last best days. With love, but ends with sighs and tears for sins." * The whole of the passage, from the words, "I must here look back," down to "at his altar," were not inserted until the second edition of Donne's Life, nor was the paragraph containing the Epitaph; and several less important variations in the text occur between that place and the end. |