therefore full of inexpressible joy, and shall die in peace." I must here look so far back as to tell the reader, that at his first return out of Essex to preach his last sermon, his old friend and physician, Dr. Fox, a man of great worth, came to him to consult his health, and after a sight of him, and some queries concerning his distempers, he told him, "That by cordials, and drinking milk twenty days together, there was a probability of his restoration to health :" but he passionately denied to drink it. Nevertheless Dr. Fox, who loved him most entirely, wearied him with solicitations, till he yielded to take it for ten days, at the end of which time he told Dr. Fox, "He had drunk it more to satisfy him than to recover his health, and that he would not drink it ten days longer upon the best moral assurance of having twenty years added to his life; for he loved it not, and was so far from fearing death, which to others was the king of terrors, that he longed for the day of his dissolution." It is observed, that a desire of glory or commendation is rooted in the very nature of man, and that those of the severest and most mortified lives, though they may become so humble as to banish self-flattery, and such weeds as naturally grow there; yet they have not been able to kill this desire of glory, but that, like our radical heat, it will both live and die with us: and many think it should do so; and we want not sacred examples to justify the desire of having our memory to outlive our lives: which I mention because Dr. Donne, by the persuasion of Dr. Fox, easily yielded at this very time to have a monument made for him; but Dr. Fox undertook not to persuade him how or what monument it should be; that was left to Dr. Donne himself. A monument being resolved upon, Dr. Donne sent for a carver to make for him in wood the figure of an urn, giving him directions for the compass and height of it; and to bring with it a board of the just height of his body. These being got, then, without delay, a choice painter was got to be in readiness to draw his picture, which was taken as followeth :several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand; and having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead bodies are usually fitted to be shrouded and put into their coffin or grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside, as might show his lean, pale, and death-like face, which was purposely turned toward the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this posture he was drawn at his just height; and when the picture was fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it continued, and became his hourly object till his death; and was then given to his dearest friend and executor, Doctor Henry King, then chief residentiary of St. Paul's, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white marble, as it now stands in that church; and by Dr. Donne's own appointment, these words were to be affixed to it as his epitaph : JOHANNES DONNE SAC THEOL. PROFESS. POST VARIA STUDIA QUIBUS AB ANNIS TENERRIMIS REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXUS XXVII NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI. EXUTUS MORTE ULTIMO DIE MARTII MDCXXXI. And now having brought him through the many, labyrinths and perplexities of a various life, even to the gates of death and the grave, my desire is, he may rest till I have told my reader, that I have seen many pictures of him in several habits, and at several ages, and in several postures. And I now mention this, because I have seen one picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen, with his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the present fashions of youth, and the giddy gaieties of that age; and his motto then was: "How much shall I be changed, And if that young, and his now dying picture, were at this time set together, every beholder might 6 "Antes muerta que mudada." The words antes muerta que mudada are supposed by a Spanish author to have been originally written on the sand by a lady promising fidelity to her lover. The following lines were composed by Izaak Walton, and in say, "Lord! how much is Dr. Donne already changed, before he is changed!" And the view of them might give my reader occasion to ask himself with some amazement, "Lord! how much may I also that am now in health be changed, before I am changed, before this vile, this changeable body shall put off mortality!" and therefore to prepare for it. But this is not writ so much for my reader's memento, as to tell him, that Dr. Donne would often in his private discourses, and often publicly in his sermons, mention the many changes both of his body and mind; especially of his mind, from a vertiginous giddiness; and would as often say, "His great and most blessed change was from a temporal to a spiritual employment;" in which he was so happy, that he accounted the former part of his life to be lost, and the beginning of it to be from his first entering into sacred orders, and serving his most merciful God at his altar. Upon Monday, after the drawing this picture, he took his last leave of his beloved study; and being sensible of his hourly decay, retired himself to his bed-chamber, and that week sent at several times for many of his most considerable friends, with whom he scribed under the print taken from this picture, and prefixed to an edition of Dr. Donne's Poems in 1639: "This was for youth, strength, mirth, and wit, that time Most count their golden age, but was not thine. Thine was thy later years, so much refin'd From youth's dross, mirth and wit, as thy pure mind With love, but ends with sighs and tears for sins." took a solemn and deliberate farewell, commending to their considerations some sentences useful for the regulation of their lives, and then dismissed them, as good Jacob did his sons, with a spiritual benediction. The Sunday following he appointed his servants, that if there were any business yet undone that concerned him or themselves, it should be prepared against Saturday next, for after that day he would not mix his thoughts with any thing that concerned this world; nor ever did; but as Job, so he "waited for the appointed day of his dissolution." And now he was so happy as to have nothing to do but to die; to do which, he stood in need of no longer time; for he had studied it long, and to so happy a perfection, that in a former sickness he called God to witness (in his Book of Devotions written then), "He was that minute ready to deliver his soul into his hands, if that minute God would determine his dissolution." In that sickness he begged of God the constancy to be preserved in that estate for ever: and his patient expectation to have his immortal soul disrobed from her garment of mortality, makes me confident, that he now had a modest assurance that his prayers were then heard, and his petition granted. He lay fifteen days earnestly expecting his hourly change, and in the last hour of his last day, as his body melted away and vapoured into spirit, his soul having, I verily believe, some revelation of the Beatifical Vision, he said, "I were miserable if I might not die" and after those words closed many periods of his faint breath by saying often, " Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." His speech, which had long been |