After describing the circumstances attending the
execution
of the last
portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the _Lives_ (the
passage is not in the earlier editions of the _Life of Donne_): '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 gayeties of that age: and his Motto
then was,
How much shall I be chang'd,
Before I am chang'd.
John Donne
In l. 3, 1616 reads 'looke,' with
comma.
_To John Donne_ (p. 6) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' is
in _1616_ more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.
PAGES =7=, =175=, =369=. I am indebted for the excellent copies of
the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence
Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems along
with which they are placed. The first is the young man of the _Songs
and Sonets_, the _Elegies_ and the _Satyres_, the counterpart of Biron
and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of Shakespeare's
Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in his _Scrinia
Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams ... Archbishop of York_ (1693),
'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising features.'
The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the
author of the _Letters_, _Epicedes_, _Anniversaries_ and earlier
_Divine Poems_, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy
yet ever and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into
sportiveness', writing at one time the serious _Pseudo-Martyr_,
at another the outrageous _Ignatius his Conclave_, and again the
strangely-mooded, self-revealing _Biathanatos_: 'mee thinks I have the
keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe
so soone to my heart, as mine own sword.
'
After describing the circumstances attending the
execution
of the last
portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the _Lives_ (the
passage is not in the earlier editions of the _Life of Donne_): '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 gayeties of that age: and his Motto
then was,
How much shall I be chang'd,
Before I am chang'd.
And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, _Lord! How much is_ Dr. Donne
_already chang'd, before he is chang'd!_' The change written in the
portrait is the change from the poet of the _Songs and Sonets_ to the
poet of the _Holy Sonnets_ and last _Hymns_.
The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made from
it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on the
figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also 'a board
of the just height of his body'. What was this for? Walton does not
explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the folds of
the drapery show the statue was modelled from a recumbent figure. Can
it be that Walton's account confuses two things? The incident of the
picture is not in the 1640 _Life_, but was added in 1658. How could
Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with his winding-sheet knotted
'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable that he was painted lying
in his winding-sheet on the board referred to; but that the monument,
as designed by himself, and executed by Nicholas Stone, was intended
to represent him rising at the Last Day from the urn, habited as he
had lain down--a symbolic rendering of the faith expressed in the
closing words of the inscription
Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere
Aspicit Eum
Cuius nomen est Oriens.
