1 When, according to Bald, Donne ‘was probably living with more intensity than at any other period of his life’: John Donne: A Life, p. 79.

2 ‘Donne, John: the Middle Phase’, The Bookman, 73 (1931), 346 Google Scholar.

3 John Donne: A Life, p. 155.

4 The Divine Poems (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1952), pp. xvii-lv. The latter insight was achieved also by Louis Martz (in The Poetry of Meditation [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954], chaps 1, 2 and 6) and applied by him not only to interpretation of the ‘Holy Sonnets’ but also to the ‘Anniversary Poems’. But Martz ignored most biographical questions to concentrate on the relation between meditative techniques and some qualities of ‘metaphysical’ verse.

5 John Donne: A Life, pp. 233-6. According to Gardner, ‘There is no need to feel surprise that Donne, at a time when he was engaged in bitter controversy with the Jesuits, should be drawing on Jesuit spirituality in his poetry, and presumably had continued to use a Jesuit method of prayer. He would be making a distinction here which Protestants made without difficulty—taking the corn and leaving the chaff’ (The Divine Poems, pp. liv-lv). One may in a sense agree there is nothing surprising about Donne’s behaviour; but if some Protestants made this distinction without difficulty, Protestants like Donne were strongly attached to Catholic religious forms, partly because of their education and family tradition. For such Protestants, ‘the chaff’ often seemed also to have been valuable, and probably could not have been discarded so easily as Gardner suggests.

6 John Donne: A Life, p. 301.

7 Ibid., p. 235.

8 As Bald observes in connection with Donne’s letters to Sir Henry Goodyere, in them ‘Donne usually communicated anything he had written to his friend’ (ibid., p. 169). Though these communications were not for public view, they certainly left Donne’s closest friends in no doubt as to where his religious sympathies lay.

9 ‘All the Facts’, p. 371. The term Gardner quotes is from Walton, for whom the outstanding consequence of Donne’s wedding seems to have been its destructive effect on his career.

10 John Donne: A Life, p. 142.

11 Ibid,, p. 144. Bald quotes this passage apparently without realising its bearing on his theory about scandal.

12 Donne evidently did leave Pyrford long enough to view the new King for the first time as Wolley received knighthood in the crowd of new knights made at the Charterhouse on 11 May 1603. See my ‘The Originals of Donne’s Overburian Characters’, The Bulletin of the N.Y. Public Library, 78 (1974), 243-9. Bald states erroneously that Wolley was knighted at the coronation in July and that Donne first saw the King in August at Pyrford (John Donne: A Life, p. 141).

13 Ibid., p. 148.

14 Ibid., p. 160. Donne had moved closer to London after returning from the Continent, and had also rented additional quarters in the Strand, from which he wrote this letter on 13 June 1607.

15 Ibid.

16 See Gosse, 1, 199-200. Bald quotes only the last sentence of this passage and interprets it out of context as signifying that Donne had been disappointed in many other untraceable efforts to secure a position (John Donne: A Life, p. 160).

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., pp. 205-12.

19 Ibid., p. 206.

20 Ibid., p. 207.

21 Gosse, 1, 161.

22 John Donne: A Life, p. 207.

23 Ibid., 227. Considering the rather cavalier irony of the book, James may not have fully appreciated it. See my ‘Irony in Donne’s Biathanatos and Pseudo-Martyr’, Recusant History, 12 (1973), pp. 49-69.

24 John Donne: A Life, p. 272.

25 Ibid., p. 291. Bald has unjustifiably emended this letter where he quotes Donne as asking Somerset to ‘bid me either hope for this businesse in your Lordship’s hand, or else pursue my first purpose, [and] abandon all’. The original text as printed in the Tobie Mathew Collection (p. 315) reads ‘or’ where Bald inserts ‘[and]’. Bald’s emendation supports his view that Donne was not wholly sincere in proposing the ministry as a real alternative, but it should not therefore be admitted as evidence. As originally printed, the text suggests that Donne distinguished between secular and church careers as real options, and the non-option to ‘abandon all’, i.e. to continue to do nothing.

26 John Donne: A Life, pp. 274, 277, 280 and 300.

27 Ibid., p. 146.

28

Wesley Milgate finds in these lines ‘a tinge of disappointment … after his injudicious marriage (The Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1967, p. 235). Donne is actually drawing an implicit distinction, to be borne in mind by Wotton, between God’s ‘staires’ and the ladder of Jacobus Rex, whose favour, unlike God’s, must necessarily be more distant and difficult for some to gain than for others.

29 John Donne: A Life, p. 146. It is unclear whether Bald’s mention of ‘The Sunne Rising’ and ‘The Canonization’ (ibid., pp. 146-7) is meant to support what he says about Donne’s new sense of religion. Without specific reference he states that these poems, also written around 1604, may ‘express some of the moods’ of these years. Though Bald has not told us what moods he means, he could hardly have argued that these two poems are evidence of inner content or quiet resignation; and in the case of ‘The Canonization’, at any rate, the only sense of religion perceivable is not new but Catholic religion. Applying these poems to elucidating Donne’s attitudes around 1604, one would remark first their hauteur and even contempt for the Court; and their defiance, even bitterness, suggestive of an oppressed though conforming conscience, such as Donne was undoubtedly still nursing. See Clay Hunt’s Donne’s Poetry, pp. 172-5.

30 John Donne: A Life, p. 234.

31 Ibid., p. 235.

32 Ibid., p. 214.

33 Ibid., p. 222. Bald’s point here is an example of much useful information he has added to the background of Donne’s controversial writings, although he has not realised their satirical elements. Biathanatos and Pseudo-Martyr have yet to receive adequate treatment by students of the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance.

34 The Celtic Peoples and Renaissance Europe (London: Longmans, 1933), p. 410.

35 John Donne: A Life, p. 163.

36 Gosse, 1, 109.

37 John Donne: A Life, pp. 153-4.

38 This group of friends may have joined with Goodyere in trying to gain Fowler’s place for Donne. For details of Goodyere’s biography see Newdigate, B.H., Michael Drayton and His Circle (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 29-31, 80Google Scholar; and John Donne: A Life, pp. 163-171.

39 Ibid., p. 164.

40 Ibid., p. 241, Bald refers several times to The Courtier’s Library, but he never mentions its Catholic elements.

41 The Courtier’s Library, ed. Simpson, Evelyn (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1930). pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

42 See Donne’s reference to ‘my study (which your books make a pretty library)’ in Gosse, 1, 195.

43 Ibid., 1, 170.

44 John Donne: A Life, p. 169. Bald again quotes this phrase out of context as if Donne were using a mere figure of speech: ‘Donne is at pains to present himself as the gentleman of leisure, with all the time in the world for the cultivation of his “second religion”, friendship’. But Donne’s phrase has a much more serious religious content than Bald has realised.

45 Gosse, 1, 170.

46 Ibid., 1, 174.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., 1., 175.

49 John Donne: A Life, p. 216.

50 Gosse, 1, 223. This passage is from the same letter as the last passage quoted, but Bald has referred only to the first passage, making no mention of this most poignant and dramatic expression of Donne’s spiritual isolation. Nothing more clearly shows Bald’s indifference to Donne’s religious development.

51 The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre Press, 1945), pp. 598-603.

52 ‘While the Catholic doctrines of the priesthood and the conversion of the elements were retained, the remnants of the corporate action still provided an objective centre which was identical for all present. But it needed only a continuation of the shift of emphasis for the eucharistic action itself to come to be regarded as a mere occasion for or accompaniment to the individual’s subjective devotion and thoughts. The shift of emphasis was growing in the fifteenth century, and it reached full development in the sixteenth. We call it “the Protestant conception of the Eucharist” ’ (ibid., p. 600).

53 The Divine Poems, p. xxii.

54 The Poetry of Meditation, pp. 107-08.

55 The Divine Poems, p. xxii.

56 Ibid. Bald nowhere mentions the Catholicism of these poems.

57 Gosse, 1, 178.

58 Ibid., 1, 190.

59 Ibid., 1, 196.

60 The Divine Poems, p. xxi. Bald makes no mention of this aspect of Donne’s devotional verse.

61 Gosse, 1, 196.

62 The Poetry of Meditation, p. 7.

63 An example of the Anglican church’s attitude in this matter is the statement of Edmund Bunny, the minister who had revised Robert Persons’ The Firste Booke of the Christian Exercise for the Anglican bishops in 1584: ‘And no matter at al, though many of them that are our adversaries, are in wilful banishment abroad, or else restrained by some part of their liberties at home. For though themselves be not partakers of [our] special blessednes; yet notwithstanding they might if they would (as others of their fellowes are) reserving their consciences to themselves, and conforming their outward demeanor no further, than is needful for the common tranquilitie of all, and as themselves might lawfully do (as well as their fellowes) wtihout impeachment to the substance of their profession’.

64 The Divine Poems, p. xxviii.

65 Ibid., p. 23.

66 Ibid., p. 25.

67 Ibid., p. xxxi.

68 Ibid., pp. 7, 9, 10.

69 Ibid., p. 14.

70

71 The Divine Poems, p. 14.

72 Ibid.

73 John Donne: A Life, p. 301.

74 ‘Donne as a Lost Catholic Poet’, The Month, 136 (1920), p. 12.