Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/236

Rh a preacher at this time Donne stood almost alone. Andrewes's preaching days were over (he died in September 1626), Hall never carried with him the conviction of being much more than a consummate gladiator, and was rarely heard in London; of the rest there was hardly one who was not either ponderously learned like Sanderson, or a mere performer like the rank and file of rhetoricians who came up to London to air their eloquence at Paul's Cross. The result was that Donne's popularity was always on the increase, he rose to every occasion, and surprised his friends, as Walton tells us, by the growth of his genius and earnestness even to the end.

When convocation met in 1623, Donne was chosen prolocutor (, Ch. Hist. bk. x. vii. 15), and in November of the same year he fell ill with what seems to have been typhoid fever. He was in considerable danger, and hardly expected to recover. During all his illness his mind was incessantly at work; a feverish restlessness kept him still with the pen in his hand from day to day, and almost from hour to hour. He kept a kind of journal of his words and prayers, and hopes and yearnings during his sickness, and on his recovery he published the result in a little book, which was very widely read at the time, and went through several editions during the next few years. It was entitled 'Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and several Steps in my Sickness;' it was printed in 12mo, and dedicated to Prince Charles. Copies of the original impression are rarities. On 3 Dec. of this year, when he must still have been suffering from the effects of his illness, his daughter Constance married Edward Alleyn [q. v.], the founder of Dulwich College. She was left a widow three years later, and then returned to her father and became his housekeeper for some time longer. When the parliament met in February 1624, Donne was again chosen prolocutor of convocation, and during the spring two more pieces of preferment fell to him, the rectory of Blunham in Bedfordshire, which had been promised him several years before by the Earl of Kent, and the vicarage of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, which was bestowed upon him by the Earl of Dorset. Donne was most diligent in performing the duties of this last cure to the end of his life, though his deanery could have been no sinecure, and though we have his assurance that he never derived any income from the benefice (Letters, p. 317). His country living he held in commendam. In those days few were offended by a divine of eminence being a pluralist, and no one objected to such a preacher as Donne serving his rural parishes by the help of a duly qualified stipendiary curate. The few years that remained to the great dean of St. Paul's were uneventful; the passage of time is marked only by the attention which an occasional sermon or its publication aroused. He preached the first sermon which Charles I heard after his accession (3 April 1625), and was called upon to print it. The same obligation was laid upon him the next year, and at least twice afterwards. The most notable of these sermons was the one preached at the funeral of Lady Danvers on 1 July 1627 at Chelsea. This sermon Izaak Walton tells us he heard. Lady Danvers was George Herbert's mother, and it was to her, just twenty years before, that Donne had sent his 'Divine Poems,' as has been stated above. During these last years of his life Donne surrendered himself more than once to the inspiration of his muse. He wrote a hymn, which was set to music and sung by the choir of St. Paul's. He composed verses on the death of the Marquis of Hamilton in March 1625, and probably many of his devotional poems belong to this period. Once and once only he seemed in danger of losing the favour of his sovereign. In a sermon preached at Whitehall on 1 April 1628 he made use of some expressions which were misconstrued, and the king's suspicions were for a moment aroused. When a copy of the sermon was sent in and Donne's simple explanation was heard, the cloud passed, and next month he was preaching before Charles once more. In 1629 he fell ill again, but he would not give up preaching so long as he could mount the pulpit, though the exertion was more than his exhausted constitution could safely bear. In the autumn of 1630 he went down to the house of his daughter Constance (who had recently married her second husband, Mr. Samuel Harvey, an alderman of London, and who lived at Aldbrough Hatch, near Barking). With him he appears to have taken his aged mother, who had spent all her fortune, and now was wholly dependent upon her son. On 13 Dec. 1630 he made his will, writing it with his own hand. The rumour spread that he was dead, and Donne took some pains to contradict it. The truth was that his mother died in January 1631, and was buried at Burking on the 29th of the month, as the parish register testifies. He had been appointed to preach at Whitehall on the following Ash Wednesday, which that year fell upon 23 Feb. To the surprise of some he presented himself, but in so emaciated a condition that the king said he was preaching his own funeral sermon. He had chosen his text from the 68th Psalm: 'Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death.' There is a tone of almost awful solemnity throughout