JOHN DONNE
(To the Editor of The London Mercury)
Sir,—Mr. Robert Lynd in his very readable essay on Donne in your last number has inadvertently fallen into the old error of saying that Donne was in 1612 "making use of his legal knowledge in order to help the infamous Countess of Essex to secure the annulment of her first marriage." It is true that Donne wrote an Epithalamium for the Countess's second marriage, and that is mortifying enough without any further charge. But Professor Grierson pointed out some time since that it was Dr. Daniel Donne (or Dun) who drew up the paper referred to (Grierson's Donne, ii. 94). If further evidence were needed, it might be supplied from MS. Rawlinson 1386 in the Bodleian. On page 201 is the autograph Daniel Dun, and someone, probably Rawlinson, has added "Sr. Daniel Dr of Civil Lawes concern'd in Somerset's Divorce."
Mr. Lynd very rightly insists that John Donne is "the supreme example of a Platonic lover among the English poets." But he implies that the impassioned logic of The Ecstasy is not quite consistent with Platonism. What is Platonism? It is customary to develop a system of philosophy of love from a few famous pages of the Symposium, ignoring the rest, and this more or less hypothetical or mythical Platonism has caused many people to forget Plato's real teaching. A careful study of the Symposium will, I think, show Donne to be much more truly in the genuine Platonic tradition than were some of the poetical Platonists who preceded him. Mr. Lynd is quite right on this point, and I think he might have put it even more strongly.—Yours, etc.,
Ben Crocker Clough.
Oxford, February 13th.