ts. "Now," says Walton, "the English Church had gained a
second St. Austin, for I think none was so like him before his
conversion, none so like St. Ambrose after it; and if his youth had
the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellences of the other,
the learning and holiness of both."

In 1621 the King made him Dean of St. Paul's, and vicar of St. Dunstan
in the West. By these and other ecclesiastical emoluments "he was
enabled to become charitable to the poor and kind to his friends, and
to make such provision for his children that they were not left
scandalous, as relating to their or his profession or quality."

His first printed sermons appeared in 1622. The epigrammatic terseness
and unexpected turns of imagination which characterize the poems, are
found also in his discourses. Three years later, during a dangerous
illness, he composed his 'Devotion.' He died on the 31st of March,
1631.

"Donne is full of salient verses," says Lowell in his 'Shakespeare
Once More,' "that would take the rudest March winds of criticism with
their beauty; of thoughts that first tease us like charades, and then
delight us with the felicity of their solution." There are few in
which an occasional loftiness is sustained throughout, but this
occasional excellence is original, condensed, witty, showing a firm
and strong mind, clear to a degree almost un-English. His poetry has
somewhat of the stability of the Greeks, though it may lack their
sweetness and art. His grossness was the heritage of his time. He is
classed among the "metaphysical poets," of whom Dr. Johnson
wrote:--"They were of very little care to clothe their notions with
elegance of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which
are often gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to
adorn their thoughts." It was in obedience to such a dictum, and to
Dryden's suggestion, doubtless, that Pope and Parnell recast and
re-versified the 'Satires.'

The first edition of Donne's poems appeared two years after his death.
Several editions succeeded during the seventeenth century. In the more
artificial eighteenth century his harsh and abrupt versification and
remote theorems made him difficult to understand. The best editions
are 'The Complete Poems of John Donne,' edited by Dr. Alexander
Grosart (1872); and 'The Poems of John Donne,' from the text of the
edition of 1633, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (1895), from whose
work the citations in this vol