John Donne the Younger: Addenda and Corrections to His Biography

Abstract

JOHN DONNE, the eldest son of John Donne the poet, is a shadowy figure, and our knowledge of him is fragmentary. Though he seems to have been acquainted with some of the most notable poets, wits and courtiers of his time, and though he was well known as the editor of his father's works, he left curiously few traces of his existence, and an account of his life is little more than a patchwork of details. Most of the known facts, gathered from older sources of information,1 may be found in Canon Augustus Jessopp's brief and uncharitable 'life' in the Dictionary of National Biography; in Mr John Beresford's interesting and imaginative account, entitled 'A Seventeenth Century Jester',2 which attempts to reconstruct the personality of the younger Donne from the little we know of his writings; and lastly, in the full summary of his life which Mr Keynes appends to his bibliography of the elder Donne.3 From my own investigations I can add a few details, which may be grouped into three sections. (i) The first item is of interest because it provides a background for the younger Donne. It reveals him as something of a poet, and the friend of such poets and wits as Denham, Waller, and the Duke of Buckingham. Moreover, it links him with Sir William Davenant, author of Gondibert (1651), one of the most elaborate literary works of the period. Mr Keynes, in his account of the younger Donne, refers to a poem entitled 'Satire on Sir W. Davenant', which he discovered among the Thomason Tracts4 in the British Museum. It is in the hand of Thomason himself, and was written between 27 November 1649 and 29 February 1650. Beneath it, in Thomason's writing, is the note 'The author Dr Donne'. Mr Keynes is mistaken in saying that the poem remains in manuscript. It is printed in two books, Merry Drollery (1661), and a small volume of poems entitled Certain Verses written by severall of the Authors Friends; to be reprinted with the second edition of Gondibert.... 1653.