Dr. Donne, than in that admirable character of him drawn up by Mr. Isaac Walton, which I shall present to the reader entire as I find it.

He was of stature moderately tall, of a straight and well-proportioned body; to which all his words and actions gave an unexpressible addition of comeliness.

The melancholy and pleasant humor were in him so contempered that each gave advantage to the other, and made his company one of the delights of mankind.

His fancy was unimitably high, equalled only by his great wit; both being made useful by a commanding judgment.

His aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear knowing soul, and of a conscience at peace with itself.

His melting eye showed that he had a soft heart, full of noble compassion; of too brave a soul to offer injuries, and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others.

He did much contemplate (especially after he had entered into his sacred calling) the mercies of Almighty God, the immortality of the soul, and the joys of heaven; and would often say, in a kind of sacred ecstasy, Blessed be God, that he is God only, and divinely like himself.

He was by nature highly passionate, but more apt to reluct at the excesses of it; a great lover of the offices of humanity, and of so merciful a spirit that he never beheld the miseries of mankind without pity and relief.

He was earnest and unwearied in the search of

Knowledge; with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied, and employed in a continual praise of that God that first breathed it into his active body; that body which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and is now become a small quantity of Christian dust.

But I shall see it reanimated.

I. W.

EPISTLES

TO SEVERAL PERSONAGES.

THE STORM.

TO MR. CHRISTOPHER BROOK, FROM THE ISLAND VOYAGE WITH THE EARL OF ESSEX.

THOU, which art I ('tis nothing to be so)

Thou, which art still thyself, by this shalt know Part of our passage; and a hand, or eye,

By Hilliard* drawn, is worth a history

By a worse painter made; and (without pride)
When by thy judgment they are dignified,
My lines are such: 'tis the preeminence
Of friendship only to impute excellence.
England, to whom we owe what we be and have,
Sad that her sons did seek a foreign grave
(For Fate's or Fortune's drifts none can sooth-
say,†

Honour and misery have one face, one way,)
From out her pregnant entrails sighed a wind,
Which at the air's middle marble room did find

*Nicholas Hilliard, born at Exeter, 1547, died 1619. He imitated Holbein. His portrait of Mary Queen of Scots was much applauded, and Queen Elizabeth sat to him several times.

† Var. gainsay.

Such strong resistance, that itself it threw
Downward again; and so when it did view
How in the port our fleet dear time did leese,
Withering like prisoners, which lie but for fees,-
Mildly it kissed our sails, and fresh and sweet,
As to a stomach starved, whose insides meet,
Meat comes, it came, and swole our sails, when we
So joyed, as Sara her swelling joyed to see:
But 'twas but so kind as our countrymen,
Which bring friends one day's way, and leave

them then.

Then like two mighty kings which, dwelling far Asunder, meet against a third to war,

The south and west winds joined, and, as they

blew,

Waves like a rolling trench before them threw. Sooner than you read this line, did the gale, Like shot not feared till felt, our sails assail, And what at first was called a gust, the same Hath now a storm's, anon a tempest's name. Jonas, I pity thee, and curse those men, [then: Who, when the storm raged most, did wake thee Sleep is pain's easiest salve, and doth fulfil All offices of death, except to kill.

But when I waked, I saw that I saw not.

I and the Sun, which should teach me, 'had forgot
East, west, day, night; and I could only say,
If the world lasted, now it had been day.*

*Farr. Had the world lasted, that it had been day.
If the world had lasted, yet it had been day.—

Thousands our noises were, yet we amongst all
Could none by his right name, but thunder call:
Lightning was all our light, and it rained more,
Than if the sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffined in their cabins lie equally
Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die :
And as sin-burdened souls from graves will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,
And trembling ask what news, and do hear so
As jealous husbands, what they would not know;
Some, sitting on the hatches, would seem there
/ With hideous gazing to fear away Fear;

There note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist
With a salt dropsy clogged; and our tacklings
Snapping like too high-stretched treble-strings;
And from our tattered sails rags drop down so,
As from one hanged in chains a year ago;
Yea ev'n our ordnance, placed for our defence,
Strives to break loose, and scape away from thence.
Pumping hath tired our men, and what's the
gain?

Seas into seas thrown, we suck in again:
Hearing hath deafed our sailors, and if they
Knew how to hear, there's none knows what to say.
Compared to these storms, death is but a qualm,
Hell somewhat lightsome, the Bermudas calm:
Darkness, light's eldest brother, his birthright
Claims o'er the world, and to heaven hath chased
light: