No More Learning

It will seem to some readers hardly fair to compare a poem like _In
Memoriam_, which, if in places the staple of its feeling and thought
wears a little thin, is entirely serious throughout, with poems which
have so much the character of an intellectual _tour de force_ as
Donne's _Anniversaries_, but it is easy to be unjust to the sincerity
of Donne in these poems. Their extravagant eulogy did not argue any
insincerity to Sir Robert and Lady Drury. It was in the manner of the
time, and doubtless seemed to them as natural an expression of grief
as the elaborate marble and alabaster tomb which they erected to the
memory of their daughter. The _Second Anniversarie_ was written in
France when Donne was resident there with the Drurys. And it was
on this occasion that Donne had the vision of his absent wife which
Walton has related so graphically. The spiritual sense in Donne was
as real a thing as the restless and unruly wit, or the sensual,
passionate temperament. The main thesis of the poem, the comparative
worthlessness of this life, the transcendence of the spiritual, was
as sincere in Donne's case as was in Tennyson the conviction of the
futility of life if death closes all. It was to be the theme of the
finest passages in his eloquent sermons, the burden of all that
is most truly religious in the verse and prose of a passionate,
intellectual, self-tormenting soul to whom the pure ecstasy of love of
a Vondel, the tender raptures of a Crashaw, the chastened piety of a
Herbert, the mystical perceptions of a Vaughan could never be quite
congenial.

I have dwelt at some length on those aspects of Donne's 'wit' which
are of interest and value even to a reader who may feel doubtful as to
the beauty and interest of his poetry as such, because they too
have been obscured by the criticism which with Dr. Johnson and Mr.
Courthope represents his wit as a monster of misapplied ingenuity, his
interest as historical and historical only. Apart from poetry there is
in Donne's 'wit' a great deal that is still fresh and vivid, wit as we
understand wit; satire pungent and vivid; reflection on religion
and on life, rugged at times in form but never really unmusical as
Jonson's verse is unmusical, and, despite frequent carelessness,
singularly lucid and felicitous in expression; elegant compliment,
extravagant and grotesque at times but often subtle and piquant;
and in the _Anniversaries_, amid much that is both puerile and
extravagant, a loftier strain of impassioned reflection and vision. It
is not of course that these things are not, or may not be constituents
of poetry, made poetic by their handling. To me it seems that in Donne
they generally are. It is the poet in Donne which flavours them all,
touching his wit with fancy, his reflection with imagination, his
vision with passion.
But if we wish to estimate the poet simply in
Donne, we must examine his love-poetry and his religious poetry. It is
here that every one who cares for his unique and arresting genius will
admit that he must stand or fall as a great poet.

For it is here that we find the full effect of what De Quincey points
to as Donne's peculiarity, the combination of dialectical subtlety
with weight and force of passion. Objections to admit the poetic worth
and interest of Donne's love-poetry come from two sides--from those
who are indisposed to admit that passion, and especially the
passion of love, can ever speak so ingeniously (this was the
eighteenth-century criticism); and from those, and these are his more
modern critics, who deny that Donne is a great poet because with rare
exceptions, exceptions rather of occasional lines and phrases than of
whole poems, his songs and elegies lack beauty. Can poetry be at once
passionate and ingenious, sincere in feeling and witty,--packed with
thought, and that subtle and abstract thought, Scholastic dialectic?
Can love-poetry speak a language which is impassioned and expressive
but lacks beauty, is quite different from the language of Dante
and Petrarch, the loveliest language that lovers ever spoke, or the
picturesque hyperboles of _Romeo and Juliet_? Must not the imagery and
the cadences of love poetry reflect 'l'infinita, ineffabile bellezza'
which is its inspiration?

The first criticism is put very clearly by Steele, who goes so far as
to exemplify what the style of love-poetry should be; and certainly
it is something entirely different from that of _The Extasie_ or the
_Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day_. Nothing could illustrate better the
'return to nature' of our Augustan literature than Steele's words:

'I will suppose an author to be really possessed with the
passion which he writes upon and then we shall see how he
would acquit himself. This I take to be the safest way to form
a judgement upon him: since if he be not truly moved, he
must at least work up his imagination as near as possible
to resemble reality. I choose to instance in love, which is
observed to have produced the most finished performances in
this kind. A lover will be full of sincerity, that he may be
believed by his mistress; he will therefore think simply; he
will express himself perspicuously, that he may not perplex
her; he will therefore write unaffectedly. Deep reflections
are made by a head undisturbed; and points of wit and fancy
are the work of a heart at ease; these two dangers then into
which poets are apt to run, are effectually removed out of the
lover's way. The selecting proper circumstances, and placing
them in agreeable lights, are the finest secrets of all
poetry; but the recollection of little circumstances is the
lover's sole meditation, and relating them pleasantly, the
business of his life. Accordingly we find that the most
celebrated authors of this rank excel in love-verses.