[CHAPTER XXII.]
LATE ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN POETS.
It may have occurred to the reader that the words which Ben Jonson quoted about Shakespeare, Sufflaminandus erat—he flowed so freely that he needed stopping—indicate the great fault of Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature. The authors did not know where to stop. The age was luxuriantly rich in genius; and was over-wealthy in new ideas, gained from Greece, Rome, France, Spain, and Italy; from the clash of religions, the discoveries in the new world, and the re-discoveries of the treasures of the old world. What the English poets did not re-discover was the Greek lucidity, brevity, condensation, and orderliness. Even in plays of Shakespeare these graces are lacking: even Shakespeare's construction is not his strong point. The intellectual wealth of the poets tempted them to prolixity; the abundance of their ideas provoked them to that fashion of "conceits," of comparisons between the things most remote in heaven, earth, and the world of fancy. There was a taste which reappears now and then in literature, from early Icelandic poetry to Browning and George Meredith, for wilful abruptness, harshness, and obscurity. But industrious prolixity is not the fault of Donne, whom we now approach: his error lay in harshness, obscurity, and a measureless indulgence in conceit. Through these the light which is in him is darkened. Meanwhile rank over-abundance, the inability to stop, renders Daniel and Drayton and Phineas Fletcher burdensome, while Giles Fletcher crowds with conceits and points of wit a poem on the most sacred theme. These poets are not now commonly read, except in selections of their best things, and such selections give no idea of their pervading faults. When we extend our knowledge of the authors, and mark the formless character of the age in poetry, the sudden appearance of Milton indicates as great a miracle of genius as the existence of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare in the throng of their contemporaries.
John Donne was born in London, in 1573. His father was an eminent ironmonger, of a Catholic family; his mother's kin, the Heywoods, had suffered much from Protestant persecution. One of them was the writer of Interludes which amused the melancholy of Mary Tudor. John entered Hart Hall, Oxford, later Magdalen Hall, in 1584, he also studied at Cambridge, and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1592. A portrait of him in 1591 shows a young man holding the hilt of a very large rapier, and wearing a large earring shaped as a cross. He has a look of audacity, perhaps of sensuality, with a tinge of melancholy. He seems at this time to have studied the controversy between Catholics and Protestants, and in his "Epistle" (rhymed heroic couplets) we perceive that he was of no fervent piety, but rather a doubter. His satires appear to have been written about 1593. They are obscure, and the versification is bad, apparently of set purpose. Often the reader is puzzled to guess how a line is meant to be scanned, the natural rules of accent are set at defiance, as Ben Jonson remarked. Probably Donne aimed at imitating Persius, the obscure young Roman satirist. The satires can scarcely be read except by curious students tracing the evolution of Donne's thought and style.
In 1596 he sailed with Essex to the victory over Spain at Cadiz. Before starting he wrote one of his poetical "Elegies" to a lady with whom he had an intrigue. In 1597 he went on "the Islands Voyage" with Essex, to capture plate ships. He experienced a tempest, was driven back to Falmouth, wrote "The Storm," and later, in the Tropics "The Calm". The men are roasted by the sun and bathe, then
from the sea into the ship we turn,
Like parboiled wretches, on the coals to burn.
The poems are rude in versification and exaggeration, but most vivid are their pictures of Nature and the sea. Returning in the autumn of 1597, Donne is supposed to have travelled in Italy and Spain, if it be not more probable that he visited these countries in 1592-1596. If Ben Jonson rightly said that Donne wrote "all his best pieces of verse" before he was 25, they must have been finished by 1598. They were not printed till 1633, but circulated in manuscript.
Probably most of the pieces in his "Elegies" and "Songs and Sonnets" were composed in his tempestuous youth. The amorous conceits in "The Flea" are equally rich in ingenious fancies and in bad taste. "Woman's Constancy" and many other poems have the same moral burden as