ds of many diseases. In some of his letters he dwells
miserably on the symptoms of his illnesses. At one time, his sickness
"hath so much of a cramp that it wrests the sinews, so much of tetane that
it withdraws and pulls the mouth, and so much of the gout ... that it is
not like to be cured.... I shall," he adds, "be in this world, like a
porter in a great house, but seldomest abroad; I shall have many things to
make me weary, and yet not get leave to be gone." Even after his
conversion he felt drawn to a morbid insistence on the details of his
ill-health. Those amazing records which he wrote while lying ill in bed in
October, 1623, give us a realistic study of a sick-bed and its
circumstances, the gloom of which is hardly even lightened by his odd
account of the disappearance of his sense of taste: "My taste is not gone
away, but gone up to sit at David's table; my stomach is not gone, but
gone upwards toward the Supper of the Lamb." "I am mine own ghost," he
cries, "and rather affright my beholders than interest them.... Miserable
and inhuman fortune, when I must practise my lying in the grave by lying
still."

It does not surprise one to learn that a man thus assailed by wretchedness
and given to looking in the mirror of his own bodily corruptions was often
tempted, by "a sickly inclination," to commit suicide, and that he even
wrote, though he did not dare to publish, an apology for suicide on
religious grounds, his famous and little-read _Biathanatos_. The family
crest of the Donnes was a sheaf of snakes, and these symbolize well enough
the brood of temptations that twisted about in this unfortunate
Christian's bosom. Donne, in the days of his salvation, abandoned the
family crest for a new one--Christ crucified on an anchor. But he might
well have left the snakes writhing about the anchor. He remained a tempted
man to the end. One wishes that the _Sermons_ threw more light on his
later personal life than they do. But perhaps that is too much to expect
of sermons. There is no form of literature less personal except a leading
article. The preacher usually regards himself as a mouthpiece rather than
a man giving expression to himself. In the circumstances what surprises us
is that the _Sermons_ reveal, not so little, but so much of Donne. Indeed,
they make us feel far more intimate with Donne than do his private
letters, many of which are little more than exercises in composition. As a
preacher, no less than as a poe