to be nothing: there being such an equipoise of reasons for and against all extremes that the author's fancy suggested, as to leave him a pyrrhonist: until he arbitrates with himself to steer a middle course and seek the golden mean." The work is further and more justly said by Sir Egerton Brydges, the author of the rather too cavalier account we have quoted, to be "not unworthy the ingenuity, fertility, fluency, metrical ease, and moral force of Breton's commendable pen."

"Machivell's Dogge" is the title of another short poem, in quarto, published in 1617, three years after the issue of "I Would and Would Not." This production incorporates all the following stanzas-with the exception only of the pairs which respectively begin and end the extract— although it presents them in a slightly different sequence. During the greater part of this quaintly vigorous satire, the "Dogge" is tutored with such precepts as are calculated to fit him for worthily sustaining the character of the ancestral cur that kennelled in the tub of Diogenes. A better spirit finally comes over the animal, as if a surreptitious baptism had been administered into the principles of Christian benevolence.

We have not been able to discover any, the most fugitive, speculation as to the reason of the partial identity of these two poems: it would seem not unfair to presume that only an identity of authorship could justify so extensive, and venture upon so open, an appropriation.

THE DECISION.

To tell you truly, what I wish to be,
And never would be other, if I could,
But in the comfort of the Heavens' decree
In soul and body that I ever should-

Though in the world, not to the world to live,
But to my God my service wholly give.

This would I be, and would none other be,
But a religious servant of my God;

And know there is none other God but He,
And willingly to suffer mercy's rod;
Joy in his grace, and live but in his love,
And seek my bliss but in the heaven above.
And I would frame a kind of faithful prayer
For all estates within the state of grace;
That careful love might never know despair,
No servile fear might faithful love deface;
And this would I both day and night devise,
To make my humble spirit's exercise.

And I would read the rules of sacred life;
Persuade the troubled soul to patience;
The husband care, and comfort to the wife,
The child and servant due obedience,

Faith to the friend, and to the neighbour peace;
That love might live, and suits at law might cease.
Pray for the health of all that are diseased,
Confession unto all that are convicted,
And patience unto all that are displeased,
And comfort unto all that are afflicted,
And mercy unto all that have offended,
And grace to all, that all may be amended.
Flatter not folly with an idle faith,
Nor let earth stand upon her own desart;
But shew what wisdom in the Scripture saith,
The fruitful hand doth shew the faithful heart;
Believe the Word, and thereto bend thy will,
And teach obedience for a blessed skill.

Chide sinners as the father doth his child,
And keep them in the awe of loving fear;
Make sin most hateful, but in words be mild,
That humble patience may the better hear;
And wounded conscience may receive relief,
When true repentance pleads the sinner's grief.
Yet flatter not the foul delight of sin,
But make it loathsome in the eye of love,
And seek the heart with holy thoughts to win
Unto the best way to the soul's behove;
So teach, so live, that both in word and deed
The world may joy thy heavenly rules to read.

Heal the infect of sin with oil of grace,

And wash the soul with true Contrition's tears;
And when Confession shows her heavy case,
Deliver Faith from all infernal fears,

That when high Justice threatens sin with death,
Mercy again may give Repentance breath.

Thus would I spend in service of my God
The ling'ring hours of these few days of mine,
To show how sin and death are overtrod
But by the virtue of the power divine;

Our thoughts but vain, our substance slime and dust,
And only Christ for our eternal trust!

This would I be; and say "would not" no more,
But only-not be otherwise than this:

All in effect, but, as I said before,

The life in that life's kingdom's love of his,
My glorious God, whose grace all comfort gives,
Than be on earth the greatest man that lives.

IZAAK WALTON, the biographer of Donne, says that "by his mother he was descended of the family of the famous and learned Sir Thomas More, some time Lord Chancellor of England." Donne was also maternally related to Heywood, the epigrammatist. He was born in London, in 1573; and became a commoner of Hart Hall, Oxford, in the year 1584, being then but eleven years of age. Here he spent three years, and, at the end of that time migrated to Cambridge, which, after another period of three years,

he left "to obtain knowledge in the municipal laws," in Lincoln's Inn; "where he had," says Wood, "for his chamber-fellow, for some time, Mr. Christopher Brook, an eminent poet of his time." During two years he appears to have cultivated his poetical aptitude quite as much as his legal studies, which latter he relinquished in his nineteenth year. As the son of Roman Catholic parents, he had been bred in that religion; but having arrived at an age to decide for himself, and having weighed the arguments on both sides, he professed the Reformed faith. A course of foreign travel gave him a wide experience of men and manners; and on his return, being now a man of considerable and various learning, versatile in attainments and accomplishments, and being withal of an amiable and engaging disposition, he was made chief secretary to Egerton, the Lord Chancellor; and was presently admitted M.A. of the University of Oxford. secretly married the daughter of Sir George Moore, Lord Lieutenant of the Tower; a step which entailed upon him many years of trouble and adversity. This lady died, to the inexpressible sorrow of her husband, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child.

He

At the age of forty-two, the solicitation of his friends and the hearty desire of James I. coinciding with his own mature convictions, he received ordination at the hands of his friend Dr. John King, Bishop of London, who had been Egerton's chaplain, whilst Donne acted as secretary.

"Now," says the rapturous Walton, "the English Church had gained a second St. Austin, for I think none were so like him before his conversion; none so like St. Ambrose after it; and if his youth had the infirmities of the one, his age had the excellences of the other-the learning and holiness of both." He was made king's chaplain in ordinary; and on the strength of his treatise "Pseudo-Martyr," and of the royal recommendation,

received the degree of D.D. from the University of Cambridge. He succeeded Dr. Gataker as Lecturer of Lincoln's Inn; and in his fiftieth year was appointed to the deanery of St. Paul's, vacant by the promotion of Dr. Val. Carey to the see of Exeter. To this preferment was immediately added the vicarage of St. Dunstan-in-theWest, the advowson of which had long before been given to him by the Earl of Dorset. Dr. Donne died in 1631, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

His collected poems were first published by Tonson, in 1719, under the title of "Poems, Letters, and Elegies." Ben Jonson predicted that Donne would perish as a poet for want of being understood; if he had given a more ill-natured turn to his criticism, he would have said, for want of being tolerated. Donne has been represented as "imbued to saturation with the learning of his age;" as being of a "most active and piercing intellect—an imagination, if not grasping and comprehensive, most subtle and far-darting-a fancy rich, vivid, and picturesque-a mode of expression terse, simple, and condensed-and a wit admirable, as well for its caustic severity as for its playful quickness." We are glad to be able to eulogize him by proxy. To the above praise it may be added that Donne was ever on the stretch and strain after conceits; and that much of his rhythm is as rugged, and much of his verse as tuneless, as if he had forfeited his ears to the pillory. The "Hymn to God the Father" is in his best manner, and the author delighted to hear it sung to the organ by the choristers of St. Paul's to "a most grave and solemn tune."