shock his relations by an unqualified breach with their Church. For one career, however, he might seem to be admirably qualified. Where in our time a youth enters a public office, a youth of those days entered the 'family' of a great man. The relation was personal as much as official. At the age of twenty-four Donne, who had already accompanied Essex to Cadiz and on the Islands voyage, became secretary to the Lord Keeper Egerton. He must have felt himself to be well on the way to fortune. Learned and acute enough to be eminently useful to his patron, man of the world enough to be socially acceptable, and possessed of a special charm of manner and power of subtle flattery which specially recommended him to all the great ladies of the circle, the young secretary obviously had his foot on the ladder. And then comes the famous catastrophe which determined his future. 'His marriage,' says the worthy Walton, 'was the remarkable error of his life.' In spite of his ability in maintaining paradoxes, he was 'very far from justifying it,' and, indeed, 'would occasionally condemn himself for it.' The phrase, no doubt, refers to the clandestine proceedings which he had to employ; but one could have wished that he had used his skill
