In a powerful sermon on Matthew xxi. 44, Donne enumerates this among the curses that will overwhelm the sinner: 'There shall fall upon him those sinnes which he hath done after anothers dehortation, and those, which others have done after his provocation.' Sermons 50. 35. 319.
ELEGIES UPON THE AUTHOR.
The first and third of these Elegies, those by King and Hyde, were affixed, without any signature, to Deaths Duell, or A Consolation to the Soule, against the dying Life, and living Death of the Body.... By that late learned and Reverend Divine John Donne, Dr in Divinity, and Deane of S. Pauls, London. Being his last Sermon, and called by his Maiesties houshold The Doctors owne Fvnerall Sermon. London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Beniamin Fisher, and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in Alders-gate street. 1632. The book was entered in the Stationers' Register to Beniamin Fisher and Richard Redmer on the 30th of September, 1631, and was issued with a dedicatory letter by Redmer to his sister 'Mrs Elizabeth Francis of Brumsted in Norff' and a note 'To the Reader' signed 'R'. Now we know from his own statement that King was Donne's executor and had been entrusted with his sermons which at King's 'restless importunity' Donne had prepared for the press. (Letter, dated 1664, prefixed to Walton's Lives, 1670.) The sermons and papers thus consigned to King were taken from him later at the instance apparently of Donne's son. But the presence of King's epitaph in this edition of Deaths Duell seems to show that he was responsible for, or at any rate permitted, the issue of the sermon by Redmer and Fisher. The reappearance of these Elegies signed, and accompanied by a number of others, suggests in like manner that King may have been the editor behind Marriot of the Poems in 1633. This would help to account for the general excellence of the text of that edition, for King, a poet himself as well as an intimate friend, was better fitted to edit Donne's poems than the gentle and pious Walton, who was less in sympathy with the side of Donne which his poetry reveals.
Of Henry King (1591-1669) poet, 'florid preacher', canon of Christ Church, dean of Rochester, and in 1641 Bishop of Chichester it is unnecessary to say more here. A fresh edition of his poems by Professor Saintsbury is in preparation and will show how worthy a disciple he was of Donne as love-poet, eulogist, and religious poet. Probably the finest of his poems is The Surrender.
It was to King also that Redmer was indebted for the frontispiece to Deaths Duell, the picture of Donne in his shroud, reproduced in the first volume. 'It was given', Walton says, 'to his dearest friend and Executor Dr King, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white Marble, as it now stands in the Cathedral Church of St. Pauls.'
The second of the Elegies in 1633 was apparently by the author of the Religio Medici and must be his earliest published work, written probably just after his return from the Continent. The lines were withdrawn after the first edition.
The Edw. Hyde responsible for the third Elegy, 'On the death of Dr. Donne,' is said by Professor Norton to be Edward Hyde, D.D. (1607-59), son of Sir Lawrence Hyde of Salisbury. Educated at Westminster School and Cambridge he became a notable Royalist divine; had trouble with Parliament; and wrote various sermons and treatises (see D.N.B.). 'A Latin poem by Hyde is prefixed to Dean Duport's translation of Job into Greek verse (1637) and he contributed to the "Cambridge Poems" some verses in celebration of the birth of Princess Elizabeth.'
It would be interesting to think that the author of the lines on Donne was not the divine but his kinsman the subsequent Lord Chancellor. There is this to be said for the hypothesis, that among those who contribute to the collection of complimentary verses are some of Clarendon's most intimate friends about this time, viz. Thomas Carew, Sir Lucius Carie or Lord Falkland, and (but his elegy appears first in 1635) Sidney Godolphin. The John Vaughan also, whose MS. lines to Donne I have printed in the introduction (Text and Canon, &c., p. [lxiv], note (9)), is enrolled by Clarendon among his intimates at this time. If his friends, legal and literary, were thus eulogizing Donne, why should Hyde not have tried his hand too? However, we know of no other poetical effusions by the historian, and as these verses were first affixed with King's to Deaths Duell it is most probable that their author was a divine.
The author of the fourth elegy, Dr. C. B. of O., is Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Oxford (1582-1635). Walton reprinted the poem in the Lives (1670) as 'by Dr. Corbet ... on his Friend Dr. Donne'. We have no particulars regarding this friendship, but they were both 'wits' and their poems figure together in MS. collections. Ben Jonson was an intimate of Corbet's, who was on familiar terms with all the Jacobean wits and poets. For Corbet's life see D.N.B. His poems are in Chalmers' collection.
The Hen. Valentine of the next Elegy matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in December, 1616, and proceeded B.A. in 1620/1, M.A. 1624. He was incorporated at Oxford in 1628, where he took the degree of D.D. in 1636. On the 8th of December, 1630, he was appointed Rector of Deptford. He was either ejected under the Commonwealth or died, for Mallory, his successor, was deprived in 1662. For this information I am indebted to the Biographical Register of Christ's College, 1505-1905, &c., compiled by John Peile ... Master of the College, 1910. Of works by him the British Museum Catalogue contains Foure Sea-Sermons preached at the annual meeting of the Trinitie Companie in the Parish Church of Deptford, London, 1635, and Private devotions, digested into six litanies ... Seven and twentieth edition, London, 1706. The last was first published in 1651.