Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/51

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JOHN DONNE
39

offering a posthumous homage as sincere and touching as that which no doubt engaged the condescending kindness of the great man in life. The book illustrates the most attractive aspect of the Anglicanism of those days. It recalls John Inglesant and the holy Mr. Ferrar of Little Gidding. But the real Donne—the strange complex human being, with his weaknesses, his passions, his remorse, his strange twists of thought and character—has disappeared, and just enough is revealed to make us ask for more. Our petition has been heard. For fifty years Dr. Jessopp has been collecting materials. He has made them over to Mr. Gosse, who cordially acknowledges the generosity of his ally. Mr. Gosse, already an independent inquirer and an accomplished historian of literature, has given us all that can now be discoverable. There are still gaps—gaps which suggest regrets that we cannot cross-examine Donne himself, and doubts whether, if we could, he would be a satisfactory witness. Mr. Gosse modestly avows that, to some extent, Donne 'eludes' him. The last secret of that singular

    where it is said of preachers that they do 'as angels out of clouds, from pulpits speak.' It surely implies that Donne was a very good representative of the angels.