Jonson suggested, his kind of poetry runs the risk of neglect,
especially in periods that value perspicuity. Dryden thought
of him as a great wit, rather than as a poet, and a normal
late seventeenth-century view was that Donne 'of an
eminent poet . . . became a much more eminent preacher'.
Johnson's brilliant critique occurs more or less accidentally
in his Life of Cowley. Coleridge and Lamb, Browning and
George Eliot admired him, but Gosse, in what is still the
standard biography, is patronizing about the poetry and calls
Donne's influence 'almost entirely malign'. The revaluation
of Donne has certainly been radical. The present is probably
a favourable moment for a just estimate. The past forty
years have provided the essential apparatus, and though the
time for partisan extravagance has gone, so has the time for
patronage.

Donne was born early in 1572, of Roman Catholic parents.
His mother was of good family; and since she numbered
among her kinsmen Mores, Heywoods and Rastells, Donne
could well claim, in his apologia at the beginning of the anti-
Jesuit Pseudo-Martyr, that his family had endured much for
the Roman Doctrine. His own brother was arrested for con-
cealing a priest, and died in prison. His father, a prosperous
City tradesman, died when Donne was not yet four, leaving
him a portion of about £750. A more enduring legacy was
his early indoctrination by Jesuits. To his intimate acquain-
tance with their persecution under Elizabeth he attributes
his interest in suicide ( Biathanatos) and his right to charac-
terize as mistaken the Jesuit thirst for martyrdom by the
hostile civil power ( Pseudo-Martyr). In fact, his whole life and
work were strongly affected by this circumstance of his child-
hood. He suffered materially; for example, as a Roman
Catholic he was disabled from taking a degree at Oxford.
But, more important, his mind was cast in the mould of

-6-