JOHN DONNE[1]
There is something curiously and yet intermittently fascinating about Donne. His fame has been fitful. After the obscuration of the eighteenth century Coleridge and Lamb felt a charm which has been potent with some later critics. Browning was drawn to him by a congenial subtlety of intellect, and Lowell, an equally ardent lover of all that is quaint and witty, read and annotated him carefully. But his poetry seems to be for the select few. Not one of his lyrics appears in The Golden Treasury, whether because Palgrave disliked a style which is the antithesis of Tennyson's, or because he thought it unfit for the ordinary reader. To read Donne's verses is, indeed, for most people, to crack very hard nuts on a doubtful chance of finding a sweet kernel.
- ↑ Mr. Beeching contributed an article upon Walton's life of Donne to the Cornhill Magazine for February 1900. He pointed out some blunders in this article as it appeared in the National Review. I have endeavoured to correct the errors indicated, and have altered a passage or two in which I seem to have said something which I did not mean.
