Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/76

Gosse points out, to have been more receptive than Bacon of the new astronomy of Kepler and Galileo. And yet he remains hopelessly buried in the scholastic system upon which Bacon was pronouncing sentence. He wanders in a vast labyrinth of speculation instead of striking at once to the heart of the problem. Though his early prejudices drop off, he only sidles and shifts by slow degrees and with infinite complications into the Anglican position, always holding to its continuity with Catholicism. His life is as distracted and dependent as his thought. He cannot fairly decide to be the divine, and apologises for his want of learning while he is displaying learning enough for a whole bench of bishops. The Court still charms and fascinates the accomplished flatterer, and he cannot help hoping that one of the great favourites to whom he can make himself so acceptable will, at last, lift him out of his troubles. All the time the poor man is 'neurotic,' troubled by ill-health, weighed down by family cares, and driven to speculate upon the ethics of suicide. The knot of these tangled difficulties was at last to be cut, and by the most appropriate deus ex machina. Nobody was better qualified than James I. to appreciate Donne's abilities, and