86 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



Donne is said to have been very beautiful, 

 and to have become so after his golden age, i.e. 

 eighteen : — 



to^ 



" Thine was thy later years, so much refined 

 From youth's dross mirth and wit." 



His company was " one of the delights of man- 

 kind, and his fancy was inimitably high, equalled 

 only by his great wit, and his melting eye showed 

 he had a soft heart." 



Walton ends his Life of Donne thus : " He was 

 earnest and unwearied in the search of knowledge, 

 with which his vigorous soul is now satisfied, and 

 employed in a continual praise of that God that 

 first breathed it into his active body ; that body 

 which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, 

 and is now become a small quantity of Christian 

 dust : — 



" ' But I shall see it re-animated.' " 



Donne's white marble effigy escaped damage in 

 the great fire of London ^ : — 



"In Paul's I look, 

 And see his statue in a sheet of stone. " 



His epitaph in St Paul's Cathedral is in 



iHare, in his London^ says : "Out of some remains saved from the 

 fire only one statue has been given a place in the Cathedral, that of 

 Donne." 



