employment in the State;... and did always use him with much
courtesy, appointing him a place at his own table." Here he met the
niece of Lady Ellesmere,--the daughter of Sir George More, Lord
Lieutenant of the Tower,--whom at Christmas, 1600, he married, despite
the opposition of her father. Sir George, transported with wrath,
obtained Donne's imprisonment; but the poet finally regained his
liberty and his wife, Sir George in the end forgiving the young
couple. "Mr. Donne's estate was the greatest part spent in many
chargeable travels, books, and dear-bought experience, he [being] out
of all employment that might yield a support for himself and wife."
The depth and intensity of Donne's feeling for this beautiful and
accomplished woman are manifested, says Mr. Norton, in all the poems
known to be addressed to her, such as 'The Anniversary' and 'The
Token.'

Of 'The Valediction Forbidding Mourning' Walton declares:--"I beg
leave to tell that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them;" while from Lowell's unpublished 'Lecture on Poetic
Diction' Professor Norton quotes the opinion that "This poem is a
truly sacred one, and fuller of the soul of poetry than a whole
Alexandrian Library of common love verses."

During this period of writing for court favors, Donne wrote many of
his sonnets and studied the civil and canon law. After the death of
his patron Sir Francis in 1606, Donne divided his time between
Mitcham, whither he had removed his family, and London, where he
frequented distinguished and fashionable drawing-rooms. At this time
he wrote his admirable epistles in verse, 'The Litany,' and funeral
elegies on Lady Markham and Mistress Bulstrode; but those poems are
merely "occasional," as he was not a poet by profession. At the
request of King James he wrote the 'Pseudo-Martyr,' published in 1610.
In 1611 appeared his funeral elegy 'An Anatomy of the World,' and one
year later another of like texture, 'On the Progress of the Soul,'
both poems being exalted and elaborate in thought and fancy.

The King, desiring Donne to enter into the ministry, denied all
requests for secular preferment, and the unwilling poet deferred his
decision for almost three years. All that time he studied textual
divinity, Greek, and Hebrew. He was ordained about the beginning of
1615. The King made him his chaplain in ordinary, and promised other
prefermen