Page:The Poems of John Donne - 1896 - Volume 1.djvu/17

daughter of John Heywood, and of the house of Sir Thomas More, was born in or about the year 1573. It is thought, but not certainly known, that all his secular poetry, satiric and erotic, was written before the end of the century, and probably most of it before he was five-and-twenty. His education, both in secular and religious matters, appears to have been peculiar. His family were of the old faith, and it is said to have been for this reason that he took no degree at either Oxford or Cambridge, though he was a member of both Universities, entering Hart Hall at Oxford in his eleventh year, and, so Walton tells us, removing to Cambridge in his fourteenth. His father soon died, and he, inheriting no inconsiderable portion, was transferred to Lincoln’s Inn, perhaps after an experience of foreign travel. Walton will have it that before he was twenty, he, having never actually professed the Romish faith, argued himself out of his tendency to it by study. But this is perhaps rather questionable. What is certain, though vaguely certain, is, that he was for some years a traveller and a man of pleasure, if not actually a soldier. He went with Essex to Cadiz in 1596, and visited the Azores, journeying also in Italy, and in Spain. He is thought to have spent his fortune in these wanderings.