In the crypt of the cathedral, amongst a few relics of the old building destroyed by the great fire, is a bust, which formed part of the monument of John Colet, dean of St. Paul's, and founder of St. Paul's school, a man who has many claims upon the grateful regard of the citizens of London and the dignitaries of the establishment, of which he was a distinguished ornament and liberal benefactor. He was the eldest son of Sir Henry Colet, who was twice lord mayor of London, and the father of twenty-one children besides the subject of this sketch. Singular to state, his mother survived the whole of this numerous progeny. Colet was born in London in the year 1466, and early destined for the Church. He completed his studies at Magdalen college, Oxford, and then travelled in France and Italy, where his theological attainments are said to have been greatly respected. Settling at Oxford, after his return from the Continent, he read public lectures, and became intimate with Erasmus, who was then residing at that university. The acquaintance thus commenced was continued in a correspondence with that celebrated foreigner, in which much of the history of Colet's life, and all the particulars that are now known of his character, are to be sought. He seems to have been a man of a very happy temperament, sanguine, highspirited, quick, sensitive, and gay,-one who could relish the pleasures of life without excess in enjoying them, and was not insensible to the attractions of some in which he never permitted himself to indulge. "Virginitatis florem ad mortem usque servavit," says Erasmus. In 1493 he was admitted prebendary of York, and in 1502 of Salisbury. Three years after he was promoted, without any

solicitation upon his part, to the deanery of St. Paul's. In this office he attained great distinction. He discharged the pastoral duties connected with it in an exemplary manner that commanded general admiration, husbanded the property of the chapter with honest care, and drew a concourse of eminent divines and scholars, amongst whom was Erasmus, to hear his lectures. His learning, zeal, and abilities are specially commended by that eminent scholar.

While thus actively engaged he conceived the noble plan of founding a grammar-school near the cathedral, and he had the satisfaction of living to witness the completion of that liberal undertaking. It cost him 4500l. He made the celebrated W. Lilly the grammarian, first master, and vested the government of the establishment in the Mercers' Company, to which his father belonged. Notwithstanding this generous labour, he was obnoxious to the clergy. The friend of Erasmus met with persecution instead of support in his efforts to reform the abuses of the Church and improve the application of its revenues. Soon after his school opened, his health began to decline. He suffered three attacks of a prevailing epidemic, the sweating sickness, which superinduced a languor and feebleness that terminated in consumption. Finding himself no longer equal to the active duties of his office, he looked around for some suitable place of retreat, and fixed upon the Carthusian monastery at Sheen, as being more silent and solitary than any other in England. There he lingered four months, and died September 16, 1519. He was buried in the cathedral, where his mother, aged and decrepit, superintended his obsequies.

Several of Dean Colet's works have been published, as the introduction to Lilii Rudimenta Grammatices, 8vo, Antwerp, 1535; Erasmi Libellus de Octo Orationis Partium Constructione, 8vo, Antwerp, 1535; Oratio ad Clerum in Convocatione, 1511; Daily Devotions; a Trustful Admonition to a good Life; Epistolæ ad Erasmum. The sermons which are said to have attracted so many eminent auditors were never published; nor were any portions of them ever known to exist. The dean was a man of natural eloquence, and preached extemporaneously and without notes. The memory of this ripe scholar and generous Christian seems to have been equally neglected by the city of London, the dignitaries of the cathedral, the Mercers' Company, who are the trustees of the estate, and the many persons who have stood indebted for a classical education to the

| noble charity he founded. By none of these has his monument, destroyed with the old cathedral, been repaired; no statue to his memory graces the cathedral in which tributes to so many less meritorious characters appear; and his damaged bust, that escaped the great fire, is placed in the crypt, as if to conceal as much as possible from observation so palpable a proof of the ingratitude which men who devote life and fortune to the public good so often meet with from those who have most profited by their munificence. One person only seems to have paid due honour to his benefactor,-Dr. Knight, prebendary of Ely, who wrote a life of Dean Colet in 1724. A plate of his tomb is preserved in Dugdale's St. Paul's, consisting of his bust, placed over a full length skeleton, between columns ornamented with death's heads.

In the east window of the present crypt are the remains of a monument in old St. Paul's to Dr. Donne, who was dean of the cathedral. Of this piece of statuary, which represents the dean wrapped in his winding-sheet, and standing in an urn, the merits deserve a far better fate than it has of late years received; and the history, appropriately quaint, is this :-Some time before Donne's death, his friend Dr. Fox prevailed upon him to design a monument, and write an epitaph for his own grave. Assenting to the proposal, he sent for a painter, and directed him to paint a picture, from which the existing performance was modelled. The dean, we are told, sat, or rather stood, for the picture,his feet in a clay urn, and his person wrapped in a sheet. This was a philosophical proceeding, and the manner in which the project became realized was appropriately singular. After the dean's death, a hundred marks were anonymously forwarded to his executors, with a desire that they would cause a faithful model of the painting to be erected in the cathedral. To this uncommon instance of modest generosity (his friend, Dr. Fox, was afterwards known to be the donor) we are indebted for an image, which, according to the prophecy of Sir Henry Wotton, posterity shall look upon as a living miracle, an honour which might certainly be attained, were the dean and chapter of the cathedral to renovate the statue, and give it a place among the more modern ornaments of the building. According to Lord Orford, it was carved by Nicholas Stone, and cost 1207. Donne's epitaph, remarkable for a characteristic play upon words, was this :

* JOHANNES Donne, Sac. Theologiæ Professor,

Post variis studiis quibus ab annis tenerrimis Fideliter nec infeliciter incubuit; Instinctu et impulsu Sp. Sancti, monitu et hortatu Regis Jacobi, Ordines Sacros amplexus

JOHN DONNE,

Professor of Sacred Theology,

After various studies, to which from his tenderest years. He applied faithfully and not infelicitously, Embracing holy orders,

At the inspiration and impulse of the Holy Ghost, and the advice and exhortation of King James,

Anno sui Jesus 1614, et suæ ætatis 42; Decanatu hujus Ecclesiæ indutus 27 Novembris, 1621,

Exutus morte, ultimo die Martii, 1631;
Hic licet in occiduo cinere aspicit Eum

Cujus nomen est Oriens.

John Donne was born at London, in the year 1573. His father was a merchant in good trade, and his mother claimed affinity with the families of Sir Thomas More and Judge Rastal. The first instruction he received was from a private tutor, under whom his advancement was so rapid, that he was removed to Hart Hall, Oxford, in his eleventh year. There he studied the sciences with the same success that had before rendered his proficiency in Greek, Latin, and French, conspicuous: he was already regarded as a literary prodigy, and was adjudged fully qualified for a degree at the end of three years. But his parents, who were Catholics, entertained scruples about the college oath, and he declined the honour. Proceeding, however, to Cambridge, he continued his studies, though excluded from all reward, until the year 1590, when the death of his father put him in possession of 3000l. By his mother's advice, he now proposed to follow the profession of a barrister in Lincoln's Inn. Great pains were taken to secure his attachment to the religion of his family: his mother is represented to have used all the tender arts of devotional affection, in order to implant in his mind a thorough disrelish of Protestantism, and a proper conviction of the glory his predecessors had obtained by suffering persecution for the Catholic faith. These pious cares, however, were all fruitless: young Donne resolved to judge for himself, and, in the result, renounced the religion of his parents, and declared himself a Protestant.

Urged by a desire to travel, he accompanied the Earl of Essex on the expedition against Cadiz and the Azores, in 1596, and upon the issue of the In the year of his Jesus 1614, and of his age 42, Was invested with the Deanery of this Church November 27, 1621,

But divested of it by death on the last day of March, 1631;
And here, though in falling ashes, he looks up
To Him whose name is Rising.

affair spent some years in journeying through Spain and Italy. Upon his return to England, he became secretary to Lord Ellesmere, who subsequently rose to be chancellor, and fell in love with Miss More, niece to his lordship's wife. The maiden had no sooner shown a return of this partiality, than her friends interfered to mar the match; but vows of passion too ardent to be cooled by frowns or interdictions had been interchanged; the lovers maintained a secret correspondence, and ultimately contracted a private marriage. This was a step taken in smiles, but retraced in tears: the lady's father, Sir George More, then lieutenant of the Tower, was so incensed, that he forced his daughter home, and had Donne cast into prison, where he amused himself by scribbling doggrel on the walls, beginning, “John Donne, Anne Donne, undone."

Being liberated on bail, he still found himself pursued by the displeasure of his father-in-law, who prevailed upon Lord Ellesmere to dismiss him from his secretaryship,-a misfortune in some degree softened by a compliment which accompanied it, that "he was fitter to be secretary to a king than a chancellor." By this time his own fortune was exhausted, nevertheless he recovered possession of his wife by an expensive lawsuit, and found his reputation as a scholar stand well in lieu of a more substantial independence. Sir Francis Woolley invited him to his residence at Pitford, in Surrey, and there entertained him for years with honourable courtesy. Upon that knight's death, he removed to Croydon, and then to Mitcham, but afterwards settled in a house in Drurylane, which was presented to him rent-free by Sir Robert Drury. By this time the interposition of mutual friends had so far conciliated Sir George More's anger, that he gave his blessing to the match, and after a while endeavoured to restore Donne to his secretaryship under Lord Ellesmere. The application, however, was unsuccessful, his lordship observing, that "he was sorry for what he had done, but it stood not with his credit to discharge and re-admit servants at the request of passionate petitioners." Sir George made some amends for his former conduct, by giving Donne a bond for 800l., with a condition of paying him 201. quarterly, until the principal was discharged.

Donne was now fully established in the rank of a man of letters: his acquaintance was cultivated by the learned of different nations, and his society courted by the highest in his own country. During the year 1610, he became a master of arts in the university of Oxford, and in 1612 went to Paris, as an attendant upon our ambassador, his patron, Sir Robert Drury. When he came home, great exertions were made to induce the king to confer some civil appointment upon him, but James not inaptly declared, that a sound scholar must make a good divine, and he therefore desired that Donne should enter into holy orders. James did not hold this language without good grounds; for Donne had shown his aptitude for controversial theology, by drawing up, at his majesty's command, a treatise upon the pending controversy between the Catholics and Protestants, concerning the oath of allegiance and supremacy, which was printed in 1710, under the title of the Pseudo-Martyr. James, with his usual precipitation, would have had him ordained forthwith, but Donne requested and ob

tained three years for the study of textual divinity and Hebrew. At the end of that period he was made king's chaplain, and travelled in a royal progress to Cambridge, where the university honoured him with the degree of doctor in divinity. During this year he had the misfortune to lose his wife, a lady who had borne him twelve children, of whom only seven were then living, and who had rendered herself so dear to him, that he promised, at her death-bed, never to subject her offspring to the control of a stepmother, a pledge which he faithfully observed.

His celebrity as a preacher had now grown so eminent, that no less than fourteen advowsons were offered to him in the country, but a partiality for London induced him to accept only the lectureship at Lincoln's Inn. From the duties of this situation he was called away in 1619 to accompany Hay, Earl of Doncaster, on an embassy to the German princes, in favour of James's son-in-law, the ejected Palsgrave of Bohemia. Fourteen months after his return, he was appointed dean of St. Paul's, in the room of Dr. Cary, promoted to the bishopric of Windsor, and was about the same time inducted into the vicarage of St. Dunstan in the West, and a minor benefice. His first act upon this acquisition of fortune was to repair, at his own cost, the private chapel attached to the deanery, and the second to return his father-in-law the bond for 800l. already mentioned, adding, “It is enough: you have been kind to me and my children, and I bless God I am provided for :-therefore will I receive no more."

Donne was in his fiftieth year when he became dean, and in four years after he was seized with a spotted fever, which ended in a cough, and so wasted his frame, that an immediate consumption was apprehended. Amidst the dangers of this illness, he solaced himself with the composition of a book of devotional prayers upon emergent occasions, which has been much praised for purity and fervour. There is a hymn preserved, which he wrote under this affliction, and which presents so easy a specimen of his versification, that it is here inserted :

A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER. "WILT thou forgive that sin when I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt though forgive that sin through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

"Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

"I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore :
And having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more."

From this attack, however, he recovered, and lived on for five years with good health and pious study: but in 1630 he was again seized by a fever, while on a visit to his daughter, Mrs. Harvey, at

Aubrey-Hatch, in Essex, from which he arose in a confirmed consumption. While in this reduced state, he returned to London, and preached his Lent sermon in rotation, notwithstanding the earnest deprecation of his friends. After struggling through the delivery with a virtuous energy he was immediately removed to his bed, where a confinement of fifteen days terminated his existence on the 31st of March, 1630. There is a little discourse given by an old biographer, which he pronounced upon his death-bed, and it is here extracted, because it contains an exemplary abstract of the character of his life :-"I am not sad," he observed to an anxious friend, "but in a serious contemplation of the mercies of my God to me; and now I plainly see it was his hand that prevented me from all temporal employment. And I see it was his will that I should never settle nor thrive until I entered into the ministry, in which I have now almost lived twenty years, I hope to his glory; and by which, as I most humbly thank him, I have been enabled to requite most of those friends that showed me kindness when my fortunes were low. And, as it hath occasioned the expression of my gratitude, I thank God most of them have stood in need of my requital. I have been useful and comfortable to my good father-in-law, Sir George More, whose patience God hath been pleased to exercise by many temporal crosses. I have maintained my own mother, whom it hath pleased God, after a very plentiful fortune in her former times, to bring to a great decay in her very old age. I have quieted the consciences of many that groaned under the burden of a wounded spirit; whose prayers, I trust, are available for me. I cannot plead innocency of life, especially of my youth; but I am to be judged by a merciful God, who hath given me, even at this time, some testimonies, by his Holy Spirit, that I am of the number of the elect. I am full of joy, and shall die in peace." He was buried in St. Paul's cathedral, and his funeral was attended by a numerous and honourable train of the nobility and gentry, his friends and admirers. An idea of the respect in which his memory was regarded may be gathered from the pleasant fact, that, long after his death, a custom prevailed of decorating his grave with curious and costly flowers.

Dr. Donne was an author equally esteemed both in prose and verse; for a time he was chiefly remembered as a poet, but latterly his prose works have again come into notice. His reputation as a poet has been principally preserved through the medium of Pope's softened, but not improved, version of two of his satires, in which strong sense and laboured wit are prominent. He is more particularly entitled to notice as being the father of that school of poetry which Cowley urged to its highest popularity, and which has been somewhat speciously distinguished as "the quaint,"-a term by which those who cultivated it understood a fancy for associating words in a collision of discordant imagery, contrasting literal meanings and general idioms, and presenting an idea in its most remote and capricious bearings. In this antiquated style, Donne exhibits much of the ingenuity and most of the faults of his school-fellows: stern in thought, hard of expression, and compact in meaning, he has all the gross robustness peculiar to primitive strength, but is somewhat less wild, though quite

as racy, in his conceits as any one of his imitators.

One extract must suffice for an elucidation of this character. It is taken from the fourth satire, which opens with an account of his having been so silly as to go to court, where he met with a traveller, whom he thus richly describes :

"Therefore I suffer'd this:-Towards me did run
A thing more strange, than on Nile's slime the sun
E'er bred, or all which into Noah's ark e'er came:
A thing which would have posed Adam to name.
Stranger than seven antiquaries' studies,
Than Afric monsters, Guinea's rarities,
Stranger than strangers: one who, for a Dane,
In the Dane's massacre had sure been slain,
If he had lived then; and without help dies,
When next the 'prentices 'gainst strangers rise;
One whom the watch at noon scarce lets go by:
One to whom the examining justice sure would cry,
'Sir, by your priesthood, tell me what ye are?'
His clothes were strange, though coarse, and black, though
bare,

Sleeveless his jerkin was, and it had been

Velvet, but 'twas now (so much ground was seen)
Become tuff-taffety, and our children shall

See it plain rash awhile, then nought at all.

The thing hath travell'd, and, faith, speaks all tongues,
And only knoweth what to all states belongs;
Made of the accents, and best phrase of all these,
He speaks one language. If strange meats displease,
Art can deceive, or hunger force my taste;
But pedant's motley tongue, soldier's bombast,
Mountebank's drug tongue, nor the terms of law,
Are strong enough preparatives to draw
Me to bear this; yet must I be content
With this tongue, in his tongue called compliment;
In which he can win widows, and pay scores,
Make men speak treason, cozen subtlest whores,
Outflatter favourites, or outlie either
Jovius or Surius, or both together.

He names me, and comes to me; I whisper, 'G
How have I sinn'd that thy wrath's furious rod,
This fellow chooseth me!' He saith, 'Sir,
I love your judgment;-whom do you prefer
For the best linguist?' and I seelily
Said that I thought Calpine's Dictionary.
'Nay, but of men, sweet Sir?' Beza, then,
Some Jesuits, and two reverend men
Of our two academies, I named. Here

He stopp'd me, and said, 'Nay, your apostles were
Good pretty linguists, so Panurgus was;

Yet a poor gentleman: all these may pass

By travel.' Then, as if he would have sold his tongue,
He praised it, and such wonders told,

That I was fain to say, 'If you had lived, Sir,
Time enough to have been interpreter
To Babel's bricklayers, sure the tower had stood.'
He adds, 'If of court life you knew the good,
You would leave loneness.' I said, 'Not alone
My loneness is; but Spartan's fashion

To teach by painting drunkards doth not last;

Now, Aretine's pictures have made few chaste;
No more can princes' courts (though there be few
Better pictures of vice) teach me virtue," &c. &c.

In Latin, Donne wrote verse with greater purity and elegance; as a proof of which his lucubrations in that language were collected in 1633, under the title of Fasciculus Poematum et Epigrammatum Miscellanearum. In prose he is often spoken of for his Biathanatos, an elaborate treatise of subtleties upon the paradox which declares that "suicide is not so naturally a sin, but that it may be other

wise." This performance Donne is said to have been in the habit of enouncing as the resultance of fourteen hundred authors, all analyzed with his own hand. An edition of his essays in divinity, "Sermons," to the number of six score, &c. &c. was published after his death, in 3 vols. folio. He is also reported to have kept from his youth a diary, in Latin and English, of every remarkable circumstance which happened during his lifetime either abroad or at home. This compilation, however, has never been printed; and the loss of it is much to be regretted. One cannot imagine it to have been any thing but highly quaint and original.

Dryden, who calls Donne the greatest wit, but not the greatest poet of our country, was the first author of celebrity who praised him distinctly and highly. This was done in the dedication of his Juvenal to the Earl of Dorset, where he observes, with a singular admixture of sound criticism and abject flattery:-" Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talents, but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification: and were he translated into English numbers, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, and choice of thoughts: you excel him in the manner and the words. I read you both with the same admiration,

but not with the same delight. He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature alone should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love."

That far-famed angler, Isaac Walton, wrote a life of Dr. Donne, and gave the following eulogy of his character:-"His fancy was inimitably high, equalled only by his great wit, both being made useful by a commanding judgment; his aspect was cheerful, and such as gave a silent testimony of a clear knowing soul, and of a conscience at peace with itself: his melting eye showed he had a soft heart full of noble compassion; of too brave a soul to suffer injuries, and too much a Christian not to pardon them in others."

An edition of Donne's works, by the Rev. H. Alford, appeared in 1839, which, though in six volumes, is imperfect. Sermons are omitted "from the great difficulty of procuring them :" some poems are "pruned," and others suppressed, "to avoid the strange jumble of subjects in the old edition.” No less than five distinct prose works are enumerated in the preface as not included in this edition, the title of which, notwithstanding, is, The Works of Dr. Donne.

THE architect of St. Paul's lies appropriately interred in the crypt of that cathedral. His epitaph there, a composition distinguished by its brevity, truth, simplicity, and effect, has also been inscribed over the entrance to the choir, as the more conspicuous situation :

Subdus conditur hujus Ecclesiæ et Urbis Conditor, CHRISTOPHERUS WREN, qui vixit Annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi, sed Bono publico. Lector, si monumentum requiris, Circumspice.

Obiit xxv. Feb. Ætatis XCI

An. MDCCXXIII.

Below, built in, lies the Builder of this Church and City, CHRISTOPHER WREN, who lived More than ninety years, not for himself, But the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument, Look around.

spirit of the poet Horace-"I have carved my own monument; behold it in my deeds! I have written my own epitaph; go read it in my works." Nor is there any panegyric more easily understood than a direct and practical one like this. Whether inscribed by the sword of the warrior, the author's pen, or the painter's pencil; whether by the chisel of the statuary, or the trowel of the architect, it comes readily and agreeably home to the best feelings of the head and the heart. Biography thus strictly measured would be a stern performance : a very commendable resource has therefore been thrown open, by which we are allowed to trace the development of the fertile mind, and illustrate the dignity of human actions, by detecting and dwelling upon those personal traits and domestic passages, which chequer and relieve the intensity of higher and severer pursuits. The facilities at command for the compilation of the present sketch are, in this latter respect, far from numerous or

of his age,

And of our Lord the 1723rd.

How natural, elevated, just, and instructive are the reflections we are led to make after reading these lines! There are but few persons who can wish the incidents of their private lives to be recorded a great man desires to be known by his works; and one of inferior mind and mould will generally have too many reasons to fear that the more we enter into details respecting him, the fewer will be found his claims to remembrance and reputation. This is a principal source of that barrenness for which biography has generally been so remarkable. Genius will always exclaim, in the

recommend itself; and the task is thus sure of welcome.

This great architect was born at East Knowle, Wilts, in 1632. His father, Dr. Christopher Wren, was rector of the parish, and dean of Windsor. Young Wren was educated at Westminster school, and entered of Wadham college, Oxford, in 1646. At the early age of thirteen he had given an extraordinary specimen of proficiency and talent, by the invention of an astronomical instrument, and a pneumatic machine, the former of which he formally presented to his father, with a copy of Latin verses "On the rise of rivers." Such promises of future eminence naturally attracted the notice of