ingenious scheme might be stated as a theory or the ethics of giving—When is a present not a present? With Donne it becomes rhymed casuistry, or a brilliant little poem in six stanzas. Mr. Gosse quotes it as illustrating the phase in which his passion is turning to bitterness. Mr. Gosse may be justified; but it is the more characteristic that an outburst of passionate bitterness should be thus crammed into a close logical framework, which must, one supposes, have taken as much hard thinking as strong feeling. It is, in fact, this odd combination of syllogism and sentiment which gives one peculiar flavour to Donne's poetry, and makes him, as Coleridge put it, 'wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.' Sometimes he seems to be merely a schoolman trying in spite of nature to be a poet; and at times reveals himself as a genuine poet, cramped and distorted by the training of the schools.
Donne, we are told, became a learned lawyer; but his mind, it is clear, could not be concentrated upon law-books. It was too discursive to confine itself within the limits of Coke. He might have become a divine: but his life hitherto had not been exactly clerical; his religious opinions were vague; and to take orders would have been to
