There is enough nastiness, eccentricity, coarseness, roughness and extravagance in Donne to put off many fastidious readers: but his faults lie open to the sky: his beauties are frequently hidden, but they are worth searching for.
And yet—a word of warning—let George Saintsbury give it: "No one who thinks Don Quixote a merely funny book, no one who sees in Aristophanes a dirty-minded fellow with a knack of Greek versification ... need trouble himself even to attempt to like Donne."
We read Donne, then, for his fiery imagination, for his deep and subtle analysis, for his humanity, for his passion, for his anti-sentimentalism, for his eager search "to find a north-west passage of his own" in intellect and morals, for the richness and rarity of the gems with which all his work, both prose and poetry, is studded, for his modernity and freshness. We read Donne as a corrective of lazy thinking: he frees us from illusion.
IX
SUCH A BOOK AS THE BEGGAR'S OPERA
One imagines Nigel Playfair and Arnold Bennett suddenly starting hares over their cigars after dinner. "What shall we do next?" asks N. P. plaintively. "Aren't there any old plays that are really good that the public knows nothing of?"
A. B. gets up wearily and turns over a Dodsley or a Nimmo. "We don't want to cut into the preserves of the Phœnix," he grumbles. "The Duchess of Malfi, Volpone, All for Love ... do you mean that sort of thing?"
"Good God, no," replies Nigel truculently. "I meant something light—something with a 'zip' about it."
"The Critic or A Trip to Scarborough?" queries A. B. He is getting sleepy and is rather bored.