As though the world unworthy were to know
Their rich composures, let those men that keep
These wondrous relics in their judgment deep,
And cry them up so, let such pieces be
Spoke of by those that shall come after me,
I pass not for them.”
I am afraid that Drayton was not allowed to have a copy.
The passage from Walton’s Life which I have quoted above is of service also in helping to determine the date of Donne’s work in the field of poetry. As here too Dr. Grosart has gone wrong, it is worth while to put together some additional testimony of Walton and others on the matter. It all points to the fact that on the whole, although they overlap considerably, the secular are earlier in date than the sacred poems.
(a) There are the lines by Walton, printed beneath the portrait frontispiece by Marshall to the Poems of 1635. The portrait is dated ‘‘Anno Dni 1591, aetatis suae 18.”
Most count their golden age; but ‘twas not thine.
Thine was thy later years, so much refined
From youth’s dross, mirth, and wit, as thy pure mind
Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise
Of thy Creator in those last best days.
Witness this book, thy Emblem, which begins
With Love; but ends with sighs and tears for sins.”
(b) There is the following passage in Walton’s Elegy, written April 7, 1631, first printed together with the Life in the LXXX Sermons of 1640.
Lay Love’s philosophy? was every sin
Pictured in his sharp satires, made so foul,
That some have fear’d sin’s shapes, and kept their soul
Safer by reading verse; did he give days,
Past marble monuments, to those whose praise
He would perpetuate? Did he—I fear
Envy will doubt—these at his twentieth year?
