in fact, Donne seems to have been left in a rather neutral position. He 'betrothed himself,' says Walton rather vaguely, 'to no religion that might give him any other denomination than Christian.' Donne himself asserts the slowness of his decision as a proof of his honesty. It would, that is, have been clearly to his interest to be converted at once. But it was also clearly to his interest to be converted as soon as he could. The desire to investigate implies some doubt; and what, we should like to know, raised the doubt in a man so steeped in the purest Catholic tradition? He was, somehow, induced to test the strength of the intellectual fetters, which were obstacles to every ambition, but how far or with what intensity various motives—intellectual curiosity or the promptings of interest—operated is one of the insoluble questions.
This wide reading did not wholly absorb him. The eager student, while imbibing masses of law, divinity, and 'human learning' in general, was also, it appears, seeing life after the fashion of the young men in the later days of Elizabeth. He left his books, divines, philosophers, and chroniclers, as he tells us, to keep company 'with fighting and untrussed gallants.' The strange adventurers of the day, disbanded soldiers, and shifty hangers-on
