to the document, a
piece of history. Such a book has now been written by Mr. Gosse, in his
_Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's_. It is perhaps the
most solid and serious contribution which Mr. Gosse has made to English
literature, and we may well believe that it will remain the final
authority on so interesting and so difficult a subject. For the first
time, in the light of this clear analysis, and of these carefully
arranged letters, we are able, if not indeed to see Donne as he really
was, at all events to form our own opinion about every action of his
life. This is one of the merits of Mr. Gosse's book; he has collected
his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us
adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not
allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And
he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest
importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a
very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive,
somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his sword so
tightly that his knuckles start out from the thin covering of flesh;
passing into the mature Donne as we know him, the lean, humorous,
large-browed, courtly thinker, with his large intent eyes, a cloak
folded elegantly about his uncovered throat, or the ruff tightening
about his carefully trimmed beard; and ending with the ghastly emblem
set as a frontispiece to _Death's Duel_, the dying man wrapped already
in his shroud, which gathers into folds above his head, as if tied
together like the mouth of a sack, while the sunken cheeks and hollow
closed eyelids are mocked by the shapely moustache, brushed upwards from
the lips. In the beautiful and fanciful monument in St. Paul's done
after the drawing from which this frontispiece was engraved, there is
less ghastliness and a more harmonious beauty in the brave attitude of a
man who dresses for death as he would dress for Court, wearing the last
livery with an almost foppish sense of propriety. Between them these
portraits tell much, and Mr. Gosse, in his narrative, tells us
everything else that there is to tell, much of it for the first time;
and the distinguished and saintly person of Walton's narrative, so
simple, so easily explicable, becomes more complex at every moment, as
fresh light makes the darkness more and more visible. At the end we seem
to have be