Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/382

364 ful, and it was reserved to La Favorita, generally considered as Donizetti s masterpiece, to break the evil spell. His next important work, Linda di Chamounix, was written for Vienna, where it was received most favourably in, and the same success accompanied the production of Don Pasquale after Donizetti s return to Paris in. Soon after this event the first signs of a fatal disease, caused to a great extent by overwork, began to show them selves, The utter failure of Don Sebastian, a large opera produced soon after Don Pasquale, is said to have hastened the catastrophe. A paralytic stroke in 1844 deprived Donizetti of his reason ; for four years he lingered on in ,a state of mental and physical prostration. A visit to his country was proposed as a last resource, but he reached his native place only to die there on April 1st,. The sum total of his operas amounts to 64, the more important of which have been mentioned in the course of this notice, The large number of Donizetti s works at the same time accounts for many of their chief defects. His rapidity of working made all revision impossible. It is said that he once wrote the instrumentation of a whole opera within thirty hours, a time hardly sufficient, one would think, to put the notes on paper. And yet it may be doubted whether more elaboration would have essentially improved his work ; for the last act of the Favorita, infinitely superior to the preceding ones, is also said to have been the product of a single night.  DONNE, (–), poet and divine of the reign of James L, was born in London in of Catholic parents. His father was a wealthy and influential merchant, a Welshman by descent ; his mother claimed relationship with Sir Thomas More and Heywood the epigrammatist. Brought up under a tutor at home until his tenth year, he proceeded to Oxford, and was entered at Hart Hall about . At the university his learning was extraordinary, and he was compared, for juvenile erudition, with Pico della Mirandola. In he was removed to Trinity College, Cambridge, but he took no degree there or at Oxford, his scruples as a Catholic standing in the way. In he went up to London and was admitted into Lincoln s Inn. His father presently died, and left his son . Until he came of age, he was under his mother s care, and it is supposed that this was the period to which he refers in Pseudo-Martyr, in which an increasing convic tion of the truth of Protestantism struggled with the old faith and the familiar surroundings. Walton has given an interesting account of Donne s change of faith, which probably took place about. Before this he must have been writing, for many of the Divine Poems, and of these not the worst, are obviously written by a sincere Catholic. The rebound from Catholic asceticism was a severe trial to an ardent nature ; it seems that he plunged into various excesses, and that his father s legacy was rapidly squandered. In, however, he had already laid the foundation of his poetic reputation. The first three of his famous Satires exist in a MS. dated, and the rest appear to have been composed at various times before . In he commenced his travels, wandering over Europe, and accompanying the earl of Essex at the taking of Cadiz in, and again in the expedition of. It has been thought that he was engaged in military service in Holland in. He did not return to England until he had seen Italy, and was planning an excursion into Palestine, when the difficulty of travelling in the East diverted his thoughts to Spain, In both Italy and Spain he took considerable pains to master the language and existing literature of each country, as the notes to his works testify. It is possible that the fantastic Spanish school of conceits, which takes its name from Gongora, may have affected the style of Donne. Returning to England, he secured the patronage of Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who appointed him his chief private secretary, and took so much delight in his company and conversation that he made him lodge under his roof. The young poet was five years in Egerton s house, with every prospect of a successful career. He had the misfortune, however, to fall in love with the daughter of Sir George More of Loxly, lord lieutenant of the Tower, who was visiting in the house. Donne s love was returned, but her father violently objected. Recalling her to Loxly, he was enraged to find that the young couple had already been privately married. In his anger, Sir George More not only persuaded Lord Ellesmere to dismiss his secretary, but threw Donne, with his friend Christopher Brooke, the poet, who had given the bride away, into prison. They were soon released, but the father was inexorable, and the young couple would have suffered from penury if it had not been for the generosity of Sir Francis Wooley, who invited them to reside at his house. During these later years Donne had written much in prose and verse. He had completed his Satires, and in he had written his extra ordinary poem of The Progress of the Soul, which De Quincey has so warmly praised. In ten sonnets, addressed to Philomel, were printed in Davison s Poetical Rhapsody. It is probable that many of his miscellaneous elegies and lyrics date from the same period of early man hood. Among his early works, too, we know was the singular treatise called Biatfavaros, in praise of suicide, of which he was afterwards ashamed, and which was not printed until long after his death, in. The early follies of his career were now, however, played out, and his temperament was become so grave and earnest that it attracted the attention of Morton, afterwards bishop of Durham, who was staying in the house of Sir Francis Wooley in, and who offered the poet certain preferment in the church, if he would only consent to take holy orders. Donne, however, had conscientious scruples against taking such a step. His generous patron soon after died, and the Donnes took a house at Mitcham, where they resided for two years. It was here that in he published his prose work against the Catholics, Pseudo-Martyr, and in a still more bitter polemical treatise, Ignatius his Conclave. In , moreover, appeared Donne s first poetical work, The Anatomy of the World, of which revised and enlarged editions appeared in, , and. This was but a pamphlet, how ever. He was urged by Sir Robert Drury to come with his wife and their eleven children to reside in his mansion in Drury Lane ; after some demur this offer was accepted, but when, almost immediately after their arrival, Sir Robert desired Donne to travel on the Continent with him, Mrs Donne, who was in feeble health, strongly objected. It seems almost certain that this objection caused him to com pose one of his loveliest poems—

Sweetest Love, I do not go For weariness of thee.

He permitted himself to be persuaded, however, and accompanied his patron to Paris, where he is said to have had a vision of his wife, with her hair over her shoulders, bearing a dead child in her arms, on the very night that Mrs Donne, in London, was delivered of a still-born infant. This was in. In he published An Elegy on the Death of Prince Henry. Efforts were made to gain him preferment at court, but James L, who had conceived a high opinion of Donne s theological gifts, refused to give him a single post out of the church. The poet s scruples were at last removed, and in he preached in orders before the king at Whitehall. Within a single year fourteen good livings were offered to him ; but he refused them all, simply accepting the post of lecturer at Lincoln s Inn. In the death of his wife was a blow under which his health 