Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/52

 character remains impenetrable or to be guessed from imperfect glimpses. If Mr. Gosse hesitates after so much study and such familiarity with details, it is not for one who depends chiefly upon Mr. Gosse himself to speak with confidence. Biography, alas! even the biography of intimate friends involves, as soon as one tries to penetrate the inner life, a great deal of guesswork. Donne, with his strange facility for seeing things in unexpected lights, was so ingenious in discovering reasons that he probably misunderstood his own motives. How are we, judging from fragmentary records and ambiguous utterances and rose-coloured sophistications, at a distance of some three centuries, to speak with any confidence?

Without over-confidence, however, one may point out some elements of this curious psychological problem. From the outset events conspired to make life one long problem in casuistry for Donne himself. He was involved in the great religious struggles of the day, and his sympathies were curiously distracted. He came of the staunchest Catholic breed; no family, he said himself, had supplied more sufferers in the cause. An ancestress was sister of Sir Thomas More; other relations had risen under Mary and been exiled