Far be it from me to wish to ridicule any man’s belief in the supernatural; but still, as a lover of truth, wishing to believe what _is_, whether natural or supernatural, without confusing the former with the latter, let me analyse this pictured presentiment. An imaginative man, against his sick wife’s wish, undertakes a perilous journey. Absent from her--alone--after wine and friendly revel feeling still more lonely--in the twilight he thinks of home and the wife he loves so much. Dreaming, though awake, his fears resolve themselves into a vision, seen by the mind, and to the eye apparently vivid as reality. The day and hour happen to correspond, or he persuades himself afterwards that they do correspond with the result, and the day-dream is henceforward ranked among supernatural visions. Who is there candid enough to write down the presentiments that do not come true? And after all, the vision, to be consistent, should have been followed by the death of Mrs. Donne as well as the child. Some verses are pointed out by Isaac Walton as those written by Donne on parting from her for this journey. But there is internal evidence in them to the contrary; for they refer to Italy, not to Paris, and to a lady who would accompany him as a page, which a lady in Mrs. Donne’s condition could scarcely have done. I have myself no doubt that the verses cited were written to his wife long before, when their marriage was as yet concealed. With what a fine vigour the poem commences!-- “By our first strange and fatal interview, By all desires which thereof did ensue, By our long-striving hopes, by that remorse Which my words’ masculine persuasive force Begot in thee, and by the memory Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me!” * * * * * And how full of true feeling and passionate tenderness is the dramatic close!-- “When I am gone dream me some happiness, Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; Nor praise nor dispraise me; nor bless nor curse Openly love’s force; nor in bed fright thy nurse With midnight startings, crying out, ‘Oh! oh! Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go O’er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, and die.’” The verses really written on Donne’s leaving for Paris begin with four exquisite lines-- “As virtuous men pass mild away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, ‘The breath goes now,’ and some say ‘No!’” A later verse contains a strange conceit, beaten out into pin-wire a page long by a modern poet--[530] “If we be two, we are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show To move, but does if t’other do.”