"First the burden, and then the ease": Donne and the art of convetere in four texts.

Sanchez, Reuben

I

This essay is concerned with the ways in which Donne attended to his own spiritual welfare and that of others, as well as with how his conception of conversion--the turn toward God--developed over time. The Latin word for this turn would be convetere, and its development may be traced through four texts broken down into two pairs: The first pair consists of The Lamentations of Jeremy, for the most part according to Tremellius and "Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward"; the second pair consists of Donne's sermon on Lamentations 3:1 and his letter to his mother regarding the death of her daughter. (1) The two poems exemplify Donne's desire to turn toward God, as well as his desire to turn the reader toward God. The two prose texts exemplify his desire to ensure the turn of his auditors (his congregation and his mother) toward God.

Like many of Donne's other works to which we cannot assign specific composition dates, the two works inspired by Lamentations cannot be precisely dated, (2) though for reasons suggested below, 1608 is most likely for The Lamentations of Jeremy and 1616 for the sermon on Lamentations 3:1. Among other reasons having to do with historical, social, and biographical contexts, the sermon shows significant resemblances, in terms of argument and style, to a brief letter Donne wrote to his mother that same year. The sermon and the letter evince what Donne must have learned during and since the composition of The Lamentations of Jeremy and "Good Friday, 1613," knowledge that would have been essential to him in his new role as Anglican priest. Via these four texts, we may also trace Donne's developing understanding of and appreciation for artes concio. nandi, the art of making sermons. In 1616, the year after he took holy orders but the year before his wife died, Donne, as an Anglican priest, demonstrated that he had learned to offer consolation to those who grieve.

II

Raymond-Jean Frontain in his essay on Donne and Jeremiah has suggested Lamentations appealed to Donne for three reasons. First, Donne apparently considered it a challenge to translate this complex, acrostic poem, albeit his is not an acrostic. Second, it was an important work in Renaissance religious discourse. Third, this poem could teach one how to grieve and come to terms with loss, which appealed to Donne the most as preparation to comfort the grieving. Frontain points out that Donne depends on biblical models to drive him forward from the world of the profane to the world of the sacred: "Donne's biblical self-fashioning is a self-conscious and deliberative way of launching himself at paradise and sailing home" (128). Lamentations is an especially apt vehicle for Donne's self-fashioning. As a Catholic-turned-Anglican Jeremiah, he must have recognized that although Jerusalem had fallen, it would eventually be restored. More specifically, he recognized that neither in The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah nor in Lamentations did Jeremiah preach that the nation would be restored in his own lifetime; rather, the emphasis is on the individual attempting to restore his relationship with God first before any reconciliation between God and nation is possible. Like Jeremiah before him, Donne did not argue for a paradise regained in one's own lifetime but rather for an understanding of how "affliction" (a key word for Donne in the sermon and in the letter) can lead to spiritual enlightenment, a turning back to God. How and why the turn occurs was of special significance to Donne. His interest in Jeremiah as argument, in Jeremiah as exemplary model, and in Jeremiah as genre was thereby personal and professional. Donne's paraphrase of Lamentations better enabled him to understand and appreciate the central, homiletic lesson of that biblical text: the value of consolation to a grieving nation, or congregation, or individual.

Some critics have suggested Donne composed The Lamentations of Jeremy after his ordination, while others have suggested a pre-1615 composition date. (3) One argument for a pre-1615 composition date, however, posits two early dates for The Lamentations of Jeremy. According to John Klause Donne wrote two versions of the poem: one in either 1589-91 or in 1596-97, which was lost; the other, which remains, in 1608. Klause deduces this from a letter Donne wrote in 1608, perhaps to Goodyer, promising to send a "translation" he wrote, or rather rewrote, for he claims to have lost the earlier version; the description of this translation sounds like Donne's paraphrase of Lamentations. Klause's argument rests upon the supposition that the translation referred to is The Lamentations of Jeremy, though this cannot be proven conclusively. Yet, Klause's suggestion is plausible, given that other circumstances favor a composition date of 1608: The Lamentations of Jeremy resembles other poems Donne wrote from about 1608 to 1613. To understand and appreciate the significance of those similarities, we might first consider why Donne undertook a paraphrase of Lamentations.

As noted above, Frontain believes that Donne may have considered it a challenge to paraphrase an acrostic poem--a reason perhaps more in keeping with Donne's professional aspirations as a poet. William B. Hunter, on the other hand, suggests that the poem was written for deeply personal reasons, as "a response to a depressive crisis in Donne's life," the death of his wife Anne (19). While Lamentations does concern itself with grief and loss, it is difficult to conceive of Donne's English poem as a personal expression of grief for the loss of his wife. After all, it is an attempt to work within a limited structure, an acrostic format in the original, in order to render a well-known biblical poem into English. The need to respond poetically to the death of his wife would surely have elicited from Donne something other than a paraphrase about a suffering nation--as it did in his sonnet, "Since she whom I loved hath paid her last debt."

Others have suggested Donne may have written the poem in order to set it to music. David Novarr contends that, in the post-1615 period, Donne was interested in using his art in the service of the Church, particularly via church music (147). Diane Kelsey McColley similarly argues that when one considers the value of Lamentations to Protestants and Catholics alike during the Renaissance, one can understand Donne's interest in this work: "John Donne, a Catholic by upbringing and an Anglican by profession, treats Lamentations, in his metrical translation 'according to Tremelius,' in ways applicable to both communions. The fact that both churches used these texts [Psalms and Lamentations] to lament their dangers and divisions further sharpens their poignancy" (87). McColley adds that "the Lamentations were used by both Protestants and Catholics, not simply musically, to lament the plight of a divided Jerusalem" (128). This helps explain how and why The Lamentations of Jeremy could not have been Donne's response to the death of his wife: The original and Donne's paraphrase ostensibly concern the difficulties, the afflictions, of a divided nation, but perhaps even more significantly they concern the desire of the individual to re-establish his relationship with God after Judah has fallen to the Babylonians.

Though Klause dismisses the notion that Donne intended the poem to be set to music for church services and perhaps the liturgy, he reads the poem politically as a statement about a suffering nation--or, more specifically, he reads it typologically as it reflects the current religious conflicts of the reformation and counter-reformation, as it refers to England as a fallen Jerusalem for Catholics (the first, lost, version of this poem) to England as a fallen Jerusalem for Protestants (the 1608 version) (343-347). Yet it does appear that during the Renaissance Lamentations was so popular with Protestants and Catholics precisely because of its musical, its liturgical, and therefore its sacerdotal value. One must note, as well, that Lamentations forces the individual to contemplate the nation's relationship to God, a relationship that logically implies the significance of the individual's relationship to God. Therefore, 1608 seems an especially apt composition date for The Lamentations of Jeremy in that it marked a time when Donne may have been contemplating how best to express publically his loyalty to king, country, and God.

Lamentations concludes that the severe punishment the Israelites experience is justified, but the didacticism involves chastisement as well as consolation. As we discover in The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, acceptance of guilt is necessary for the nation's restoration to take place, not at present but at some future time. Deserved, at times requested, punishment balances the acknowledgment that restoration after such punishment comes only through God's grace, as Donne states in The Lamentations of Jeremy: "Restore us Lord to thee, that so we may/Return, and as of old, renew our day" (387-388). But Donne's is a curious, and telling, revision of the earlier English translations, for the Geneva Bible version of 5:21 reads: "Turne thou us unto thee, o Lord, and we shalbe turned: renue our dayes as of olde." The same verse in the King James Bible reads: "Turn thou us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old." Evident is Donne's preference for the verbs "Restore," "Return," and "renew"--an intentional overemphasis, signaling the speaker's desire for a conversion experience. Donne shows the same word preference in "Good Friday, 1613":

   O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
   Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
   Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,
   That thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face. (39-42)

The acknowledgment of deserved punishment, followed by a restoration, then a "turn," is also important in this poem. The speaker asks for what the speaker in The Lamentations has already received, punishment, followed some day by restoration, which itself can be thought of as a turn/return. Donne's admirer and fellow Anglican, George Herbert, also recognized and appreciated the practical use of the word "restore" in "The Sinner":

Yet Lord restore thine image, hear my call:

   And though my hard heart scarce to thee can groan,
   Remember that thou once didst write in stone. (12-14)

And Herbert's own admirer, Henry Vaughan, likewise uses the word "restore" prominently in "The Waterfall": "Why should frail flesh doubt any more / That what God takes, he'll not restore?" (21-22). Both Herbert and Vaughan, like Donne before them, describe a conversion process--one that seems Anglican, though it could very well be Puritan-in which God restores His own works, albeit that restoration depends upon the participation of the sinner. Hence the conversion experience becomes contingent. Although the word "restore" is not used, similar pleas for a conversion are expressed in several of Donne's Holy Sonnets, written roughly around the same period (1609-11?): in sonnet 1, "Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay? / Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste" (1-2); in sonnet 5, "And bum me O Lord, with a fiery zeal / Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal" (13-14), and in sonnet 14:

   Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
   Take me to you, imprison me, for I
   Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
   Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. (11-14)

The motif of God restoring the individual through a forceful action, or turn, after being implored to do so, does not appear in the three later Hymns, post-ordination poems that date from about 1619 to 1623. When there is a reference to a turn in one of the Hymns, God is turning away from the speaker:

   Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
   Thy face; yet through that mask I know those eyes,
     Which, though they turn away sometimes,
      They never will despise.

   ("A Hymn to Christ, at the Author's last going into Germany" 5-8)

Now, it is the speaker who is looking toward God. Gone from the Hymns are the forced, violent restorations that mark the Holy Sonnets, "Good Friday, 1613," and The Lamentations of Jeremy.

The use of "restore" in The Lamentations of Jeremy and in "Good Friday, 1613" infers a sacerdotal value. A similar use of this word occurs in A Funeral Elegy, perhaps written in 1610: "May't not be said, that her grave shall restore / Her, greater, purer, firmer, than before?" (45-46). One other relevant example may be found in An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being Married on St Valentine's Day: "And by this act of these two phoenixes / Nature again restored is" (99-100). Instances of "restore" and "restorative" in Donne's poetry that contrast with the sacerdotal tone come from an earlier period in Donne's life. In "The Bracelet" (1593?), for example, the speaker declares: "But I forgive; repent thee honest man: / Gold is restorative, restore it then" (111-112). In "The Will," the speaker states:

   Thou Love, by making me adore
   Her, who begot this love in me before,
   Taught'st me to make, as though I gave, when I did but restore.
      (34-36)

Similarly, the speaker in "Sappho to Philaenis," whose date and authorship are in dispute, declares: "O cure this loving madness, and restore / Me to me; thee, my half, my all, my more" (57-58). These instances of restore/restorative (one could perhaps also add the word "turn") probably come from the last decade of the sixteenth century, whereas the same words used in a much more serious way occur only in the four other poems probably written at least a decade later and within a few years of each other: The Lamentations of Jeremy (1608?), A Funeral Elegy (1610?), "Good Friday, 1613," and An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on the Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being Married on St Valentine's Day (1613).

The preference, at times, for "restore" over "turn" notwithstanding, both "Good Friday, 1613" and The Lamentations of Jeremy explore how and why the individual turns toward God. Each poem recognizes that God turns the individual, but the individual must first request or desire the turn. Note the significant use of "turn" in "Good Friday, 1613":

   Could I behold those hands which span the poles,
   And turn all spheres at once, pierced with those holes? (21-22)

   I turn my back to thee, but to receive
   Corrections (37-38)

   Restore thine image, so much, by thy grace,
   That thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face. (41-42)

The turn, as essential to spiritual conversion, also figures importantly in Herbert's poetry, as, for example, in "Sunday":

   Man had straight forward gone
   To endless death: but thou dost pull
   And turn us round to look on one,
   Whom, if we were not very dull,
   We could not choose but look on still;
   Since there is no place so alone,
      The which he doth not fill. (15-21)

In "The Elixir," Herbert similarly argues:

   This is the famous stone
   That turneth all to gold:
   For that which God doth touch and own
   Cannot for less be told. (21-24)

And in "The Dedication" affixed to The Temple, Herbert declares his intention to "Turn their [the readers'] eyes hither, who shall make a gain: / Theirs, who shall hurt themselves or me, refrain" (5-6). The turn becomes crucial to what might be called a sacerdotal poetics, a discourse in which the speaker meditates upon the process of conversion.

We may compare these examples from Donne and Herbert with the significance of a turn in The Lamentations of Jeremy:

   For thee vain foolish things thy prophets sought,
   Thee, thine iniquities they have not taught,
   Which might disturn thy bondage: but for thee
   False burdens, and false causes they would see. (141-144)

The use of "disturn" here seems unusual in that the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible use "turn away"; this is the only use of the word "disturn" in Donne's poetry. However, the OED (which cites this passage from Donne as an example of the word) gives the meaning of "disturn" as "To turn aside or away; to avert, divert, pervert," making Donne's choice appropriate for what he attempts to convey in this passage: The prophets do not turn aside, avert, or pervert bondage after all.

As with "disturn," another archaic and somewhat unusual word, "footstool," appears only twice in Donne's poetry, those instances occurring in the poems under discussion. In "Good Friday, 1613," the speaker, considering the enormity of Christ's death, states: "It made his own lieutenant Nature shrink, / It made his footstool crack, and the sun wink" (19-20). In The Lamentations, the speaker refers to God having forgotten "his foot-stool in the day of wrath!" (92). The biblical allusion is to Isaiah: "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool" (66:1, King James). The earth as God's footstool seems an appropriate referent in both poems: The speaker is riding away from God in one poem, which eventually, and logically, becomes riding toward God; the nation has fallen away from God in the other, which becomes a necessary precursor to the establishment of a new relationship with God.

While there are literal turns described in each poem, the argumentative point in each is also achieved by figurative turns. The speaker in "Good Friday, 1613" paradoxically achieves a turn toward God by literally turning away from God: "O Savior, as thou hang'st upon the tree; / I turn my back to thee, but to receive / Corrections" (36-38). These corrections are part of the conversion process in which the speaker is turned toward God. And in The Lamentations of Jeremy the speaker turns toward God when he recalls his "mournings":

   My soul is humbled in remembering this;
   My heart considers, therefore, hope there is.
   'Tis God's great mercy we'are not utterly
   Consumed, for his compassions do not die. (205-208)

Each passages raises the behold or "Ecce homo" theme as Donne refers to it in the sermon on Lamentations 3:1. In The Lamentations of Jeremy, the speaker states, "O hear all my people, and my sorrow see, / My maids, my young men in captivity" (71-72). The specific use of the word "behold" may be found at different times in the poem. God is asked to behold: "behold / O Lord my affliction, for the foe grows bold" (34-5); "How cheap I am grown, O Lord, behold, and weigh" (44); "Behold O Lord" (165). Compare the use of "behold" in the previously cited passage from "Good Friday, 1613," where it is not God but the speaker himself who, though refusing to do so at present, must eventually see the humiliation and death of the creator and sustainer of the universe (21-24). The speaker's inability to witness the enormity of Christ's death forces him, or so he argues, to turn away and ride in the opposite direction, the true direction in which he will (be forced to?) witness or behold.

In "Good Friday, 1613" the speaker prays for God to act, to do something. Frontain argues that Donne's self-fashioning in The Lamentations of Jeremy carries over into "Good Friday, 1613" in that in the latter it is an imperative performance intended to move God to act on the speaker's behalf ("Donne, Spenser"). For Donne, the spoken word is more powerful than the written word because it could evoke a response: "[T]he occasional or performative aspect of Donne's poetry derives from the poet's determination-verging at times on carefully restrained desperation--to access the residual power of the spoken word to move a superior creature to action on the speaker's behalf, a power that Donne found modeled in biblical prophecy and lyric" (84). Particularly in "Good Friday, 1613" as Donne fashions himself as a supplicant to God, the poem becomes "A curious amalgam of elements from both oral and written tradition" (84). As such, the poem is a performance "that begins in a rational mode [a meditative mode that emphasizes the significance of 'writing'] ... but concludes in a mode of direct address that suggests an occasion of orality" (86). The shift in the poem, Frontain contends, occurs at line 35, where the speaker directly addresses "thou," that is, the "Saviour." No longer does the poem function as a meditation, but rather as a dramatic supplication that implores direct intercession from God on behalf of the speaker's desired conversion. The turn, therefore, involves both parties turning toward each other. The speaker, as well as the God whom he implores, must act.

The Latin root of convert is convetere, "to turn about, turn in character or nature, transform, translate"--con signifying "together, altogether," and vetere signifying "to turn." According to the OLD the theological meaning of the word convert is "To cause to turn from a sinful or irreligious life to one marked by love of God and pursuit of holiness: to turn to godliness." As an early example of this word, in its theological meaning, the OLD presents a passage from The Book of Common Prayer (1559), one of the Collects from "On Good Friday"; the Elizabethan Prayer Book (1559), the version used by the Church of England, reads: "MERCIFUL God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live" (144). The third Collect for Good Friday, a request for mercy and conversion, continues with a request for God to take an active part in the process:

Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word: And so fetch them home blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold, under one shepherd Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth, etc. (144)

There are many collects throughout the Book of Common Prayer. Originating in the Middle Ages and continuing to be written and included in church services into the Reformation, the term derives from the Latin collectus or coligere, "to gather together." (4) Although there is some variation, collects generally have a tri-partite structure--invoking God, petitioning, and pleading with or praising God.

The third Collect, part of which is cited above, is structured as follows: Invocation: "MERCIFUL God who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live"; Petition: "Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word: And so fetch them home blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold"; Pleading: "under one shepherd Jesus Christ our Lord; who liveth and reigneth, etc."

The last ten lines of "Good Friday, 1613" comprise a prayer, which functions as a collect in modified form, for at the end of the poem the speaker directly addresses God to plead for something specific:

Invocation:

   Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
   They are present yet unto my memory,
   For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards me,
   O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;

Petition:

   I turn my back to thee, but to receive
   Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
   O think me worth thine anger, punish me,
   Burn off my rusts, and my deformity,
   Restore thine image, so much by thy grace,

Pleading:

That thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

Although he has literally turned away, the speaker invokes God as being present in his memory. He acknowledges the power of the Saviour as symbolized in the image of the "tree." His petition is for a conversion or correction, which, if granted, will restore God's image.

There are of course clear contrasts between "Good Friday, 1613" and The Lamentations of Jeremy. For example, the speaker in "Good Friday, 1613" does remember, does possess "memory" of the events he does not wish to see (33-34). By contrast, the speaker in The Lamentations of Jeremy seems to forget: "And thus my soul far off from peace was set, / And my prosperity I did forget" (199-200). Yet, within a few lines, he forces himself to remember: "My soul is humbled in remembering this" (205); further, the speaker emphasizes that God will remember: "Remember, O Lord, what is fallen on us" (349). The behold theme is thus connected to the act of remembering when the speaker declares, "See and mark" (350), and "Why shouldst thou forget us eternally?" (385). In both poems, forgetting and remembering are the mechanisms by which one turns away from God and by which one is turned back toward God. Though The Lamentations of Jeremy implies the eventual restoration of the nation, that poem and "Good Friday, 1613" are nonetheless focused on the speaker's own turn or conversion, his own spiritual welfare. In the sermon and in the letter to his mother, however, Donne uses the same biblical tropes to address the turn, the conversion, of others, and therefore their spiritual welfare.

III

Donne builds his sermon around Lamentations 3:1, quoting the King James version: "I am the man, that hath seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath." (5) The Geneva version reads, "I am the man, that hathe sene affliction in the rod of his indignation." Neither uses the word "God" or "Lord," instead using "his wrath" or "his indignation." Yet, the parallel passage from The Lamentations of Jeremy reads, "I am the man which have affliction seen, / Under the rod of God's wrath having been" (187-188). It is difficult to know why Donne chose to use the word "God" in his poetic rendering of Lamentations 3:1. In the sermon, however, Donne explains why the word "God" is not used in 3:1:

[H]ere, the name of God is onely by implication, by illation, by consequence; All necessary, but yet but illation, but implication, but consequence. For, there is no name of God in this verse: but, because in the last verse of the former chapter, the Lord is expresly named, and the Lords Anger, and then, this which is the first verse of this chapter, and connected to that, refers these afflictions, and rods, and wrath to Him, (The rod of his wrath) it must necessarily bee to him who was last spoken of, The Lord, They are Ejus, His, and therefore heavy. (10.9. 201-02)

Perhaps in the years between 1608 and 1616 Donne learned that, in certain instances, the name of God implied carries more force, or more mystery, than the name stated. The force, or wrath, though certainly present, is underplayed in the sermon, where the overall tone is conciliatory, a rhetorical manifestation of which is seen in the preacher often addressing the congregation as "Beloved."

Yet, the power of God becomes an organizing principle in the sermon. For example, Donne describes the "The rod of his wrath" as a metaphor by which "correction" is achieved: "For, though this Metaphore, the Rod, may seeme to present but an easie correction.... Beloved, whether Gods Rod, and his correction, shall have the savour of life unto life, or of death unto death, consists much in the hand, that is to receive it, and in the stomach that is to digest it" (10.9. 203). In "Good Friday, 1613" the corrections the speaker requests will result from God's active participation (in the form of anger, punishment, and burning), but also from the individual eventually turning toward God to accept those corrections. In the sermon "correction ... consists much" with the manner in which the individual receives it. In both works correction becomes contingent. Donne preaches, further, that the "afflictions" God sends can either be seen as something positive, "a shoure of fatning dew upon us," or as something negative, "a shoure of Egyptian haile-stones" (10.9. 203). "It is not every mans case," Donne concludes, "to mend by Gods corrections; onely the poore of the sheep, the broken-hearted, the contrite spirit, the discerner of his owne poverty and infirmity, could make that good use of affliction, as to finde Gods hand, and then Gods purpose in it" (10.9. 204). Donne argues that the individual--not necessarily the nation, although that is implied--must somehow be brought to correction, again, a type of contingency in the sense of choosing to accept an offered (though, paradoxically, also a forced) grace: "The double effect and operation of Gods Rod, and Corrections, is usefully and appliably expressed in the Prophet Zachary: where God complaines, That he had fed the sheep of slaughter, that he had been carefull for them, who would needs dye, say what he could. Therefore he was forced to come to the Rod, to correction" (10.9. 203). A similar contingency characterizes "Good Friday, 1613" as the speaker turns his back to God but wishes to be forced somehow to "receive / Corrections" (37-38).

While the sermon is an extended interpretation of 3:1, it also presents an interpretation of the entire chapter. For the preacher, 3:1 is a microcosm of the chapter in that it suggests a duality of positives and negatives:

[There] are two parts of this text, I am the man, that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. For, here is an Ecce, behold; Jeremy presents a map, a manifestation of as great affliction, as the rod of Gods wrath could inflict; But yet it is Ecce homo, Behold the man, I am the man, he is not demolished, he is not incinerated so, not so annihilated, but that he is still a man; God preserves his children from departing from the dignity of men, and from the soveraigne dignity of Christian men, in the deluge, and inundation of all afflictions. (10.9.192)

The duality of opposites, of the good and the bad, Donne argues, is inferred by Pilate in "the exhibiting of Christ" (10.9. 193). The exemplary model is thus held up for all to view, and the Ecce homo theme--that is, the behold theme, from The Lamentations of Jeremy and "Good Friday, 1613"--is presented anew. Donne preaches that one can read the phrase "I am the man" as referring "prophetically"--by which Donne means typologically--to Christ. Lest he emphasize typology too strongly, however, Donne quickly adds that "there are some other passages in this Chapter, that are not so conveniently appliable to Christ" (10.9.193). Different passages in the chapter represent Jerusalem or a man "of the nation" who suffered. Hence, the chapter possesses "figurative" as well as literal value, referring to Christ, to Jeremiah, to the nation. A central emphasis of the sermon is that, like Christ and Jeremiah, all are subject to afflictions, burdens which must be borne patiently-- essentially the same lessons preachers in Donne's time were expected to convey in sermons of consolation.

Donne would have been familiar with many of the available books on the arts of preaching and sermon-making. Artes praedicandi and artes concionandi were important and popular subjects of study and discourse during the Renaissance, subjects that could be traced back at least as far as Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana. On the one hand, Augustine held that the preacher's sermons--as well as everything else he does as a preacher--must come from the heart, must not be false or artificial. The preacher must be inspired by the Holy Spirit, and such spontaneity seemed contrary to the dictates of rhetoric and art. On the other hand, Augustine also held that the preacher might very well learn about rhetoric and oratory so that he could more effectively fulfill his responsibilities, his primary responsibility, after all, being to communicate with his congregation.

Renaissance authors who addressed the subjects of how to preach and how to make a sermon apparently tried to adhere to Augustine's general guidelines, and, especially for Puritans, tried to promote a plain style of preaching and sermon-making while acknowledging the value of rhetoric and art. (6) Among the many guides available, perhaps one of the best-known was Erasmus's Ecclesiastae sive de ratione concionandi libri quatuor (1535). Another was a book by the German theologian Hyperius of Marburg (Andreas Gerardus), De formandis concionibus sacris, seu de interpretatione scripturarum populari, published in 1553, but with an influential English translation by John Ludham in 1577 under the title, On Framing of Divine Sermons, or Popular Interpretations of the Scriptures. Other prominent works on preaching that devoted some discussion to sermon-making were written by Englishmen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Puritan William Perkins's The Arte of Prophecying, Or a Treatise Concerning The Sacred Art And Onely True Manner And Methode of Preaching (originally published in 1592, but with several important editions following in the seventeenth-century), Perkins wished to combine the art of preaching with an emphasis on practicality; there was an art to plain-speaking and plain-writing, he contended, an art that the preacher could study, imitate, and learn. So too John Wilkins's Ecclesiastes, Or, A Discourse concerning the Gift of Preaching as it fals under the rules of Art (1646) emphasized preaching and sermon-making as arts whose rules could be learned and practiced. William Chappell, Milton's first tutor at Cambridge, wrote Methodus Concionandi (1648), translated as The Preacher, Or the Art & Method of Preaching (1656).

Since even Augustine considered the sermon as a type of oration, Thomas Wilson's The Art of Rhetoric (1560) would have been essential to Renaissance preachers in that Wilson argued strongly for the oration as an art form. As examples, he lists several types of orations; one of the best known, "An Example of Comfort," concerns the art of consolation one must master to help those grieving the loss of a loved one. In "Of Comforting"--the short section that introduces "An Example of Comfort"--Wilson points out that he had a friend who had lost her two young sons, and that he therefore wished to comfort her; in the section that follows, he describes that effort, and addresses the grieving mother in a dialogue, intended, of course, as an oration.

Wilson concludes "An Example of Comfort" by pointing out that for the preacher to make his lesson clear, he must use "precepts" that are "plain" and easily identifiable: "Thus the rather to make precepts plain, I have added examples at large both for counsel-giving and for comforting. And most needful it were in such kind of orations to be most occupied, considering the use thereof appeareth full oft in all parts of our life, and confusedly is used among all other matters" (120). Wilson contends that he renders practical advice in that everyone, not just the preacher, will be faced with the grieving process at one time or another. Therefore, a method, or "art," can be learned as regards consolation.

Donne not only learned that sermon-making is an art form, but that there are many types of sermons. For example, Hyperius, who devotes a chapter of his De formandis concionibus sacris to the "Cosolatory, or Comforative" sermon, categorizes five different sermon styles. Erasmus in Ecclesiastae sive de ratione concionandi libri quatuor also suggests five different styles, as does Abraham Wright in Five Sermons in Five Several Styles; or Waies of Preaching (London, 1656). But Hyperius, Erasmus, and Wright all contend, as well, that within those (five) general categories, there are sub-categories or sub-types. Renaissance theorists on artes concionandi held that there were potentially many different forms the sermon could take. Hence, it is possible to suggest that other literary genres might also be characterized as "sermons." Barbara Lewalski argues that a lyric poem may function as a "sermon": The religious lyric had certain things in common with the sermon--its interest in describing that which is spiritual in terms the individual can grasp, its emphasis on teaching, yes, but specifically the types of homiletic lessons taught--and there were different forms the sermon could take, forms not dependent on the preacher's, or author's, specific religious affiliation (214). A longer lyric poem, like Lycidas, might also function as a type of sermon: Milton's poem, after all, is about grieving and consolation; through a series of rhetorical strategies in a carefully structured poem, the speaker progresses toward consolation, one in which the reader participates; the poem offers homiletic lessons concerning God's justness, the role of the shepherd-poet in society, the condition of the current clergy, death and rebirth; and in its various rhetorical strategies, the poem sounds like an oration. In fact, Milton's poem basically follows Wilson's advice in "An Example of Comfort." As someone who had intended to become a preacher, but who nonetheless remained interested in preaching and prophesying even after he realized he could not become a preacher, Milton would have been familiar with the many books on the art of preaching and sermon-making. That familiarity is manifested in his poetry and his prose.

Although in his youth John Donne may not have intended to become a preacher, learning the art of preaching and sermon-making became a practical necessity later in his life, which meant studying many of the same books available to someone like Milton. Even though Donne wrote many sermons, what he learned about sermon-making may have manifested itself, as it did with Milton, in other forms of writing--poetry and prose, including letter-writing. For example, in 1616 the lessons Donne had learned regarding grief and consolation, and regarding the art and the rhetoric of the sermon, are made use of in his attempt to comfort his mother regarding the death of her daughter. The lessons conveyed by Wilson in "An Example of Comforting" are reflected in that letter.

That Donne could have offered consolation and comfort in keeping with specific principles of decorum would not have been unusual. Claude J. Summers suggests that Donne did so not long before 1616 in four poems Summers groups under Epicedes and Obsequies. (7) Lady Bridget Markham and Cecilia Boulstred were friends of Donne and of Lucy, Countess of Bedford; Markham and Boulstred died at Lady Bedford's home in the summer of 1609. Their deaths occasioned four poems by Donne and one attributed to Lady Bedford, all offering "a dynamic sequence of grief and comfort" (212). We may read these poems individually, but when

we locate them in their proper context, placed in a "sequence," they represent more than Donne's attempt to respond decorously to the deaths of his friends and, perhaps, flatter his patroness: "Rather, they are highly complex social transactions between Donne and Lady Bedford" (213). The poems are "occasional and idealized" in that they prompt "Donne to abstract philosophizing about the nature and meaning of death, but the sequence is finally most remarkable not for its philosophy or even its striking imagery and ingenious arguments, but for its revelation of Donne's rhetorical agility, his tentativeness and tactfulness, his willingness to revise his positions, and, especially, his persistent awareness of audience and occasion" (211,212). His awareness of audience and occasion, enabled Donne to fashion a decorous response in poetry or prose.

That Donne's letter to his mother--or his sermon on Lamentations 3:1, for that matter--manifests well-known formulas of consolation and comfort is no reason to assume he was insincere. Quite the opposite, for although Augustine held that sincerity, speaking from the heart, was essential to preaching, and that artfulness for its own sake must be avoided, he also held that the preacher could benefit from learning about art, rhetoric, and the oration if his ultimate goal is to communicate effectively with his congregation.

IV

Anne Lyly, Donne's only surviving sibling, died in 1616, though we are not certain of the exact date of her death that year. In one of the most moving of all of Donne's letters, he writes to Elizabeth, his mother, to comfort her on the loss of her daughter; there too, we are not certain of the exact date of the letter. As he points out, his mother has had many other grievous losses in her life. Donne's father died in 1576. Elizabeth married again, a man named Symmings, who died in 1588. Her third husband, Richard Rainsforth, or Rainsford, suffered serious financial difficulties and was imprisoned at least twice between 1611 and 1613 for refusal to take the Oath of Allegiance (Bald 267-268, 316). Of Elizabeth's six children, three died in infancy, and Henry died in prison, having been charged with sheltering a Catholic priest. Elizabeth had also lost most her fortune over the forty years since her first husband died. After the death of her third husband, she lived with her son at the Deanery--dying only a couple of months before her son. In 1616 Donne's mother was grieving over the loss of her daughter. The letter thus speaks of her "afflictions," a thrice-repeated word in this relatively short letter. It should be noted that because the word "affliction" appears in Lamentations 3:1, the word and its variants (afflictions and afflicted) appear over one hundred times in the sermon.

In a passage reminiscent of "Good Friday, 1613" concerning the power of God to turn or correct the individual, Donne writes to his mother: "God, whose omnipotent strength can change the nature of anything by his raising-Spirit of comfort, make your poverty riches, your afflictions pleasure, and all the gall and wormwood of your life honey and manna to your taste " (87). In the second sentence of the sermon, Donne speaks of "That man [Christ] upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all ancient Prophecies, and the venome and malignity of all the cruel instruments thereof, was now poured out" (10.9.192). In Lamentations "wormwood" and "gall" occur only in Chapter 3, in both the King James and the Geneva versions: "He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail" (King James 3:5); "He hathe buydled against me, & compassed me with gall, and labour" (Geneva 3:5); "He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood" (King James 3:15); "He hathe filled me with bitterness, & made me drunken with wormewood" (Geneva 3:15); "Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall" (King James 3:19); "Remembring mine affliction, & my mourning, the wormewood and the gall (Geneva 3:19). In the passage from The Lamentations of Jeremy that corresponds to 3:5, Donne substitutes "hemlock" for "gall":

   He hath broke my bones, worn out my flesh and skin,
     Built up against me; and hath girt me in
   With hemlock, and with labour; and set me
     In dark, as they who dead for ever be. (181-184)

Donne's paraphrase of 3:15 roughly parallels the biblical versions: "He hath filled me with bitterness, and he / Hath made me drunk with wormwood" (196-197). But in the passage that corresponds to 3:19, Donne returns to the word "hemlock" as the speaker associates his mournings with "My wormwood, hemlock, and affliction" (203-204). Clearly, Donne prefers the word "hemlock" to "wormwood" and "gall" in The Lamentations of Jeremy, but in his poetry, generally, "wormwood" and "hemlock" appear infrequently. (8)

In Donne's letter to his mother, he significantly alludes to the Holy Ghost:

I hope therefore, my most dear mother, that your experience of the calamities of this life, your continual acquaintance with the visitations of the Holy Ghost (which gives better inward comforts than the world can outward discomforts), your wisdom to distinguish the value of this world from the next, and your religious fear of offending our merciful God by repining at anything which he doth will preserve you from any inordinate and dangerous sorrow for this loss of my most beloved sister. (86)

Early on in the sermon, Donne also alludes to the Holy Ghost, as a type of "supernaturall" visitation: "that man, who, as he entred into the wombe of his first mother, the blessed Virgin, by a supernaturall way, by the overshadowing of the holy Ghost, so he vouchsafed to enter into the wombe of her, whom he had accepted for his second mother, the earth, by an unnaturall way, not by a naturall, but by a violent, and bitter death" (10.9. 192). Later in the sermon, he again refers to the Holy Ghost twice (10, 201). We might also note that there are only two uses of "Holy Ghost" in Donne's poetry, both located close to 1616. One appears in A Litany, in the section titled "The Holy Ghost," perhaps written in 1608-09: "O Holy Ghost, whose temple I / Am, but of mud walls, and condensed dust" (19-20). The other appears in The Second Anniversary, written in 1612: "Up to those virgins, who thought that almost / They made joint tenants with the Holy Ghost, / If they to any should his temple give" (353-355). The allusions to the Holy Ghost are infrequent, but come from around the time Donne contemplated entering the church, or making a public commitment to Anglicanism, or currying royal favor via a religious cause.

In the sermon, Donne preached that life is characterized by the opposites of joy and grief, an argument central to his letter: "God, whose omnipotent strength can change the nature of anything by his raising-Spirit of comfort, make your poverty riches, your afflictions pleasure, and all the gall and wormwood of your life honey and manna to your taste" (87). Indeed, the balancing of opposites becomes a theme in the sermon: "In these words then, (I am the man &c.) these are our two parts; first the Burden, and then the Ease, first the waight, and then the Alleviation, first the Discomfort, and then the Refreshing, the sea of afflictions that overflow, and surround us all, and then our emergency and lifting up our head above that sea" (10.9.194). The word "burden" is repeated six more times (10.9. 195,206, 207), and, as noted above, the word "affliction" and its variants appear many times.

The sermon emphasizes that afflictions must be borne by all, a point Wilson makes as well. In the letter to his mother, he similarly contends that afflictions come from God: "In the meantime, good mother, take heed that no sorrow nor dejection in your heart interrupt or disappoint God's purpose in you. His purpose is to remove out of your heart all such love of this world's happiness as might put him out of possession of it" (87). Earlier in the letter, Donne refers to the children, his brothers and sisters, whom his mother has lost:

All those children (for whose maintenance his industry provided, and for whose education you were so carefully and so chargeably diligent) he hath now taken from you. All that worth which he left, God hath suffered to be gone from us all, so that God hath seemed to repent that he allowed any part of your life any earthly happiness that he might keep your soul in continual exercise and longing and assurance of coming immediately to him. (86)

The sense of loss is, to use Donne's own word in the letter, "inordinate," and he cannot begin to comprehend it. We find the same sentiment in the sermon:

Thy affliction is his, The Lords; And the Lord is infinite, and comprehends all at once, and ever finds something in thee to correct, something that thou has done, or something that thou wouldest have done, if the blessing of that correction had not restrained thee. And therefore, when thou canst not pitch thy affliction upon any particular sinne, yet make not thy selfe so just, as that thou make God unjust, whose Judgements may be unsearchable, but they cannot be unjust. (10.9. 202-03)

That affliction comes from God and therefore must be borne patiently becomes the linchpin of both the letter and the sermon. The need to possess a burden in the first place is, after all, Donne's central argument in "The Cross," as the speaker realizes the worst burden would be in not suffering: "no affliction, /No cross is so extreme, as to have none" (1314). Learning to bear disappointment is fundamental to sermon theory as regards consolation and fundamental to Wilson's conception of the oration that offers comfort to the grieving. Donne's letter to his mother and his sermon both deal with loss, but the letter comforts an individual who has experienced a specific loss, while the sermon comforts a congregation whose members at one time or another must endure afflictions and loss.

Learning how to deal with inordinate grief is the focus of all four works. Appropriately, each ends with a prayer. The Lamentations of Jeremy ends with a prayer that God will not allow the chosen people to remain in "banishment"; "Good Friday, 1613" with a prayer that the speaker will "turn" and that God's image will be restored. The sermon on Lamentations 3:1 concludes with a prayer that God "would not be angry with us forever" (212), alluding to a passage from The Litany in The Book of Common Prayer: "Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers, neither take thou vengeance of our sins: spare us good Lord, spare thy people whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and be not angry with us forever" (68). And the letter ends with a prayer that God will "change" Elizabeth's "poverty" to "riches" and her "afflictions" to "pleasure," if she is "willing to have it so." In those four prayers we can trace a movement from an inward-looking concern to an outward-looking one, from convetere as it applies to the speaker's own spiritual welfare to convetere as it applies to the spiritual welfare of others.

What Donne learned in the year after he took holy orders is, one would think, what any preacher must learn early in his career--to offer consolation and comfort to an individual as well as a congregation in time of grief. Donne learned how to do that by studying Lamentations, considered one of the main biblical texts for that purpose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, by Protestants and Catholics alike. Translating Lamentations into an English poem taught him the pertinent lessons, and writing "Good Friday, 1613" allowed him to apply those lessons in that inward-looking poem. The treatment of Chapter 3 in his sermon, however, displays an understanding of and appreciation for the value of convetere only hinted at in the poems. The sermon and the letter are thus examples of Donne's artes concionandi in 1616. Donne grieved over the loss of his sister, but the dutiful son's priority was to comfort his mother--so, too, the preacher's duty was to his congregation. Those are efforts outwardly directed and selfless. The consolation in The Lamentations of Jeremy is translated into English; it already exists in the form of an ancient, acrostic poem, already translated, paraphrased, and set to music often since the Middle Ages. The consolation in "Good Friday, 1613" is I-centered. With help, the speaker in each poem desires to turn again toward God and desires for God to turn again toward him. But the consolation in the sermon and in the letter are in keeping with the principles of artes concionandi; fashioned for a specific occasion, they are intended to help others. Neither the two prose works nor the two poems, however, show Donne grieving the loss of Anne Donne. For that affliction, that burden, he would need to act on what he learned between 1608 and 1616 and on what he surely learned those first two and one-half years of his ministry from January 1615 to August 1617.

Works Cited

Bald, R.C. John Donne: A Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1970. Print.

Blench, J.W. Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: A Study of English Sermons, 1450-c.1600. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964. Print.

Booty, John E., ed. The Book of Common Prayer 1559. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1976. Print.

Brook, Stella. The Language of The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Oxford UP, 1965. Print.

Carey, John. John Donne: Life, Mind and Art. New York: Oxford UP, 1981. Print.

Di Cesare, Mario A., ed. George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Print.

Donne, John. The Complete English Poems. Ed. A.J. Smith. New York: Penguin Books, 1971. Print.

--. The Sermons of John Donne. 10 vols. Ed. Evelyn M. Simpson and George R. Potter. Berkeley: U of California P, 1962. Print.

--. Selected Letters. Ed. P.M. Oliver. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print. Ferrell, Lori Anne, and Peter McCullough, eds. The English Sermon Revised: Religion, Literature and History 1600-1750. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. Print.

Frontain, Raymond-Jean. "the man which have affliction seene': Donne, Jeremiah, and the Fashioning of Lamentation." Centered on the Word: Literature, Scripture, and the Tudor-Stuart Middle Way. Ed. Daniel W. Doerksen and Christopher Hodgkins. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2004, 127-147. Print.

--. "Donne, Spenser, and the Performative Mode of Renaissance Poetry." Explorations in Renaissance Culture 32.1 (Summer 2006): 76-102. Print.

Gardner, Helen, ed. The Divine Poems of John Donne. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1978. Print.

Gosse, Edmund. The Life and Letters of John Donne. 2 vols. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1899. Print.

Grierson, H.C., ed. The Poems of John Donne. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1912. Print.

Herbert, George. George Herbert: The Complete English Poems. Ed. John Tobin. London: Penguin, 1991. Print.

Hunter, William B. "An Occasion for John Donne's 'The Lamentations of Jeremy'." ANQ: Quarterly of Short Articles, Notes, and Queries 12.3 (Summer 1999): 18-23. Print.

Klause, John. "The Two Occasions of Donne's Lamentations of Jeremy." Modern Philology 90.3 (Feb. 1993): 337-359. Print.

Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Protestant Poetics and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Lyric. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979. Print.

McColley, Diane Kelsey. Poetry and Music in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.

Mitchell, W. Fraser. English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson: A Study of Its Literary Aspects. New York: Russell & Russell, 1962. Print.

Morrissey, Mary. "Scripture, Style and Persuasion in Seventeenth-Century English Theories of Preaching." The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53.4 (2002): 686-706. Print.

Novarr, David. The Disinterred Muse: Donne's Texts and Contexts. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980. Print.

Patrides, C.A. "The Experience of Otherness: Theology as a Means of Life." The Age of Milton: Backgrounds to Seventeenth-Century Literature. Ed. C.A. Patrides and Raymond B. Waddington. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1980. 170-196. Print.

Pebworth, Ted-Larry. "John Donne's 'Lamentations' and Christopher Fetherstone's Lamentations ... in prose and meeter (1587)." Wrestling with God: Literature and Theology in the English Renaissance, Essays to Honour Paul Grant Stanwood. Eds. Mary Ellen Henley and W. Speed Hill, with R.G. Siemens. Spec. issue of Early Modern Literary Studies 7 (May 2001): 21 pars. Web. Accessed 22 February 2008.

Pollock, John J. "Donne's 'Lamentations of Jeremy' and the Geneva Bible." English Studies: A Journal of English Language and Literature 55.6 (1974): 513-15. Print.

Roebuck, Graham. "Donne's Lamentations of Jeremy Reconsidered." John Donne Journal 10.1-2 (1991): 37-44. Print.

Shawcross, John T., ed. The Complete Poetry of John Donne. New York: New York UP, 1968. Print.

Summers, Claude J. "Donne's 1609 Sequence of Grief and Comfort." Studies in Philology 89.2 (1992): 211-31. Print.

Walton, Izaak. The Life of Dr. John Donne. London: Oxford UP, 1927. Print.

Wilson, Thomas. The Art of Rhetoric (1560). Ed. Peter E. Medine. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1994. Print.

Notes

(1) Donne's sermon on Lamentations 3.1 is No. 48 in Fifty Sermons and number 9 in volume 10 of the Simpson and Potter edition. All citations for Donne's sermons throughout the essay refer to the Simpson and Potter edition. Quotations from Donne's poems are from the Smith edition; quotations from the letters are from Oliver's edition. All references to Herbert's poetry are from Tobin's edition; citations for Vaughan from DiCesare.

(2) One other sermon was inspired by Lamentations: The Gunpowder Sermon, based on 4:20 and preached on 5 November 1622 in St. Paul's Cathedral (4.8. 235-63).

(3) Following Walton, Hunter argues for a composition date of 1617 (18-23). Walton suggested that Donne wrote and preached a sermon in August 1617 in response to his wife's death: After a period of grieving, Donne's "first motion from his house was to preach, where his beloved wife lay buried (in St Clements Church, near Temple-Bar London) and his Text was a part of the Prophet Jeremy's Lamentation: Lo, I am the man that have seen affliction" (52). Walton refers to the sermon based on Lamentations 3:1, which appears to be sermon 9 in Potter and Simpson 10. Shawcross believes Donne wrote The Lamentations in 1617-18 because of its location in the manuscripts (415). Gardner places the poem after Donne's ordination but later than 1617-18, around the time of Donne's poem commemorating the Sidneys' translation of the Psalms, after 1621 and during the plight of the German Protestants in 1620-22 (103-104). Novarr agrees the poem is post-ordination and post-1620 but acknowledges possibilities for earlier composition. Because it does not appear in any Group I manuscript, which Donne collected in 1614, Novarr suggests the poem might have been written later than 1614, perhaps shortly after Donne's ordination, when he may have had time on his hands before his appointment as Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn in October 1616. If he did compose it at that time, the manuscript did not seem to circulate; it may also be possible to locate it in early 1620 after Donne's return from the embassy to Germany, or in 1621 before he began aggressively campaigning for the deanship at St. Paul's in August. Novarr tentatively prefers 1621 (142-145).

Related to the issue of the composition date is the question--despite the disclaimer "for the most part according to Tremellius"--regarding which biblical version Donne relied on for his paraphrase. Much disagreement exists among scholars concerning this issue. Gardner and Grierson argue that when Donne does not use the Bibla Sacra of John Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius, the Latin bible for Protestants published around 1580, he tends to use the Vulgate (Gardner 104; Grierson 2: 245). Shawcross contends that Donne relied on the Vulgate but also on the King James (371). Pollock disagrees, arguing instead that when Donne varies from the Tremellius, he relies on the Geneva Bible; furthermore, because Donne does from time to time use the King James Bible, his poem could not have been written before 1611 (513-515).

While Roebuck agrees that Donne relies on the Geneva rather than the King James, he disagrees with Pollock about the possible composition date, placing it earlier than 1611, perhaps even as early as the 1590s when other paraphrases and works on Lamentations appeared (37-44). Pebworth argues for a pre-1611 composition based on Donne's supposed knowledge of a 1587 book by Christopher Fetherstone: The Lamentations of Jeremie, in prose and meeter.... Pebworth believes Donne "must certainly have consulted" this work (85). Fetherstone (1510-1580), an Italian Jew who converted to Christianity around 1530, held posts as professor of theology at Cambridge and Heidelberg. He published two versions of Lamentations, one prose, the other a versification, the latter probably written by someone else whom Pebworth believes may have been female. This anonymous author based her translation not on the Tremellius but on the Geneva. Pebworth contends Donne was influenced both by Fetherstone's rendering of the prose Lamentations via the Tremellius and by the anonymous author of the verse Lamentations via the Geneva. Donne could have had access to various other versions of Lamentations in the late sixteenth century. Hunter lists eight such versions (18-19). While Donne may have known of some of these, including Fetherstone's, there is no proof. The arguments of Roebuck and Pebworth for early (or at least pre-1611) composition dates, while possible, depend upon assumptions difficult to substantiate.

(4) A collect is a short prayer in which the supplicant prays for something specific. Stella Brook defines collects as follows: "They are constructed on a definite plan. They open with the invocation of God, they proceed to present a petition, they close either with a simple pleading of the name of Christ ('through Jesus Christ our Lord' represents the plainest form) or with a more elaborate formula ascribing glory to God (e.g. 'Who livest and reignest, one God, world without end'). In both Latin and English collects, the patterned construction of the prayer tends to be reinforced by verbal patterning" (129). In terms of structure, sound, and argument, then, the collect can be considered a literary genre.

(5) As with The Lamentations, we do not have a date of composition for Donne's sermon on Lamentations 3:1. Since "Preached at St. Dunstan's" appears on the title page in the Folio, Donne may have preached it after 18 March 1624 when he was appointed Vicar of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, a small parish church in London. However, a pre-1624 composition date is also possible. As noted above, Walton argues that Donne preached a sermon on Lamentations 3:1 at St. Clement Danes in 1617 just after his wife's burial there. But others disagree that the sermon came about as a result of his grieving the loss of his wife. For example, Gosse contends:

[A]n examination of the sermon itself reveals no such emotional or hysterical appeals to sympathy as the sentimental genius of Walton conceived. It is a very dignified and calm address on the mode in which we should endure the afflictions with which God sees it fitting to chastise us. Not one word, however, applies the text or his exhortations to the speaker himself; no one would guess from any personal emotion or parade of grief, that the preacher was more afflicted than the rest of the race of man. In no sense is this sermon a funeral oration over Anne Donne, or a record of the preacher's loss. Rather, after shutting himself up in his house until the bitterness of his anguish was over, we see Donne here putting his bereavement behind him, and resuming, with stately impassibility, his priestly task. (2: 95)

In their edition of the sermons, Potter and Simpson echo Gosse, but in doing so consign the sermon to a date later than 25 April 1624, since, as they point out, there are two extant, and dated, sermons Donne preached at St. Dunstan's in early to mid April, and since the title page in the Folio does indicate "Preached at St. Dunstan's" (10: 29).

Writing years after the fact and with the intention of glorifying Donne, Walton may have simply gotten it wrong. It was not until 1658, eighteen years after the Life of Dr. John Donne first appeared and twenty-five years after the Dean of St. Paul's death, that Walton added the anecdote about Donne preaching the sermon based on Lamentations 3:1 at St. Clement's (see Novarr 145). Albeit Walton may have been incorrect in his description of the sermon as a specific written response to his wife's death, perhaps Donne did write and preach a sermon on Lamentations 3:1 around this period, a year or so after he took holy orders but before his wife's death. "Preached at St. Dunstan's" affixed to the Folio does not necessarily mean that it was preached at St. Dunstan's nor that it was preached after 25 April 1624.

Once he received the vicarage at St. Dunstan's, Donne seems to have preached his first sermon there on 11 April 1624, a sermon based on Deuteronomy 25:5; he seems to have preached his second sermon there on 25 April 1624, a sermon based on Psalms 34:11 (Sermons no. 3 and no. 4, respectively in Potter and Simpson 6). There are nine extant sermons in Potter and Simpson that indicate in their titles, "Preached at St. Dunstan's": 6.9 on Deuteronomy 25:5 (preached on 11 April 1624); 6.4 on Psalms 34:11 (preached on 25 April 1624); 6.6 on Matthew 3:17 (preached on Trinity Sunday 1624); 6.9 on Genesis 17:24 (preached on New Year's Day 1624); 6.18 on Exodus 12:30 (preached on 15 January 1625); 8.1 on Revelation 4:8 (preached on Trinity Sunday 1627); 10.8 on Genesis 3:14 (no date); 10. 9 on Lamentations 3:1 (no date); 10.10 on 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (no date; Potter and Simpson speculate that this sermon may have been preached at St. Paul's).

While certain dates elude us, we know Donne had formal and informal connections to the parish of St. Dunstan's years before he actually received its vicarage. In 1616 after being in the ministry for a full year, Donne was awarded two benefices, the first at Keyston in Huntingdon, the second at Sevenoaks. Christopher Brooke and Walter Bailey signed bonds to guarantee Donne's payment of the taxes on those benefices (see Bald 317-318). Bailey was a parishioner of St. Dunstan's. Bald speculates: "It is tempting to imagine that he [Bailey] might have been a friend also of Walton, and perhaps a source of information for the Life of Donne" (318n). It is also tempting to imagine that Bailey's friendship with Donne in 1616 might mean that Donne had an even stronger tie to St. Dunstan's. Another of the parishioners at St. Dunstan's, Richard More, published Ignatius his Conclave in 1611 and 1626 (Bald 459). Walton was a parishioner at St. Dunstan's, and though a great admirer of Donne, there is no evidence that the two were close acquaintances.

When Dr. Thomas Whyte, the vicar of St. Dunstan's for nearly fifty years, died on 1 March 1624, the vicarage was granted to Donne, though as Walton points out, "the "Advowson of it having been given to him long before by his honourable friend, Richard Earl of Dorset, then the Patron, and confirmed by his brother the late deceased Edward, both of them men of such honour" (55). Walton does not specify the year in which the advowson, or reversion, was granted, but Gosse contends that it was granted not long after Donne took holy orders (2:201). In English law, an advowson is "the right to name the holder of a church benefice" (Webster's). A reversion, as it pertains to the law, is "the right of succession, future possession, or enjoyment" (Webster's). Bald also confirms that Dorset "had some time previously [to the death of Dr. Whyte] promised it [the vicarage] to Donne when it should fall vacant" (455). Carey adds that Dorset, reckless and extravagant with his money, made promises of patronage to Donne even before he took holy orders:

Before Donne's ordination, Dorset had apparently been rash enough to give him some large assurances of financial aid, which he proved slow in fulfilling. Donne was not the man to let the matter rest. Dorset's honour, he insisted, was involved; there was no backing out, for his promises had been given before witnesses. Despite this importunity, Donne was careful not to offend Dorset, and his courtly skills bore fruit in 1624 when the Earl added the vicarage of St. Dunstan's in the West, which was in his gift, to Donne's tally of church livings. (89-90)

There is reason to believe, then, that a formal promise was made to Donne regarding the vicarage of St. Dunstan's well before the passing of the holder of that vicarage.

Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, promised Donne the vicarage of St. Dunstan's perhaps as early as 1616. Dorset died ten days after Donne was appointed vicar on 18 March 1624, but the Earl's brother, Edward Sackville, confirmed the appointment. Because Donne had a connection to the parish of St. Dunstan's several years before 1624, Walton may not have been far wrong when he claimed that Donne preached a sermon based on Lamentations 3:1 in 1617 at St. Clement's. At the time of his wife's death, Donne was Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn, and as Bald suggests, he may very well have preached the sermon at St. Clement's, for the rector at that church had died some months earlier and a replacement had not been appointed until late in 1617 (327-328).

Walton's assertions might be qualified, therefore, to suggest that while it was not 1617, Donne may have preached the sermon based on Lamentations 3:1 at St. Clement's or at St. Dunstan's some time in 1616, more likely at the latter church perhaps as a visitor or guest substituting for the aging Dr. Whyte, whom many of the parishioners must have known Donne would eventually replace. It is difficult to know exactly what Donne was doing from January through March 1615, when he first took orders, but he was appointed Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King perhaps in early 1615. Certainly, the first year after his ordination he preached at different churches, as he was not granted benefices until he had been in the ministry for a year. As noted above, the first benefice granted Donne came on 16 January 1616 at Keyston in Huntingdon, the second on 7 July 1616 at Sevenoaks; Donne did not live at either benefice. On 24 October 1616 Donne was made Reader of Divinity at Lincoln's Inn, at which point he apparently preached many of his sermons there; indeed, this position seemed to have kept him quite busy (see Bald 302-337, and Gosse 2: 57-95). Perhaps up until late October 1616, then, Donne may have had the time to preach at different churches, including St. Clement's or St. Dunstan's.

(6) For the background on Renaissance conceptions of artes praedicandi and artes concionandi, see Lewalski 214-231; Patrides 185-188; Blench; and Mitchell. Morrissey represents a different perspective on the notion that Puritans generally promoted a plain style. Morrissey argues against the distinction between the Puritan "plain" style and the Laudian "metaphysical" style in preaching because such a distinction relies on the assumption that preaching styles were based upon "theories from classical rhetoric" (686). Rather, Morrissey points out "that the unique status of preaching in Reformed theology set it apart from other forms of oratory and shaped the theory of preaching accepted within the mainstream of the English Church before the Civil War" (687). Further, the "profound differences" between "Reformed doctrines of Scripture" and "classical theories of persuasion" made "the latter inappropriate as a theoretical basis for homiletics" (689). While oratorical skills could be important to the preacher's efforts to move his listeners, more important to "English Reformed theory" was the influence of the Holy Spirit on the preacher and on the listeners (689-690). There is an "art" to preaching, but that art "was an act of biblical interpretation whereby the teachings of the Bible were made relevant (or applied) to the circumstances of the sermon and to the hearers' lives" (693).

The plain versus ornate issue may also suggest a larger Puritan-Anglican dichotomy as regards the genre of the sermon in early modern England. Ferrell and McCullough promote a "revisionist" approach to sermons--that is, they promote a different way to approach the sermons, including Donne's, which begins with dispensing with the traditional assessment of the significance of the Puritan Revolution. Indeed, the "simplistic" distinctions between "Anglican" and "Puritan" needs to be abandoned in lieu of a more accurate and contextual understanding of the religious conflict of which the sermon was often a manifestation. A more appropriate way to describe the religious conflict of the 1620s and 1630s, they contend, would be via the distinction between conformity and non-conformity, and in this regard they wish to show "how the sermon text can be animated by better reconstructing its historical context" (9). Their argument challenges "the notion that puritanism was a force for historical change" (12). But while the "puritan revolution" became less of a focus, "puritanism" nonetheless remained an important shaping force (12).

(7) The five poems occasioned by the deaths of Lady Bridget Markham and Cecilia Boulstred were the following: "To the Lady Bedford" ("You that are she and you, that's double she"); "Elegy on Lady Markham" ("Man is the world, and death the ocean"); "Elegy on Mistress Boulstred" ("Death I recant, and say, unsaid by me"); "An Elegy upon the Death of Mistress Boulstred" ("Language thou art too narrow, and too weak"); and the funeral elegy attributed to Lady Bedford, "Death be not proud, thy hand gave not this blow."

(8) The repetition of "wormwood" in The Lamentations represents the only times in his poetry this word appears. Other than these two passages, the only other place in Donne's poetry where "hemlock" appears is twice in the same line from "To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers" (1610): "To us, as to his chickens, he doth cast / Hemlock, and we as men, his hemlock taste" (23-24). "Gall" appears five times in Donne's poetry, the most relevant for our purposes being in "Twicknam Garden": "But O, self traitor, I do bring / The spider love, which transubstantiates all, / And can convert manna to gall" (5-7). The use of "manna" and "gall" resembles Donne's letter to his mother cited above: "the gall and wormwood of your life honey and manna to your taste." Twicknam Garden was the home of Donne's patroness, Lucy, Countess of Bedford, from 1607 to 1618. If "Twicknam Garden" was intended for Lady Bedford, it must have been written during these years, which locates it within the general time frame of the four texts considered here.