In his youth he lavished a considerable fortune in dissipation, in travelling, and, it may be added, in the acquisition of great and various learning. He then entered the service of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, as secretary. Under the same roof resided Lady Ellesmere's niece, Anne Moore, a lovely and amiable woman. She was about nineteen, and Donne was about thirty, handsome, lively, and polished by travel and study. They met constantly, and the result was a mutual attachment of the most ardent and romantic character. As they were continually together, and always in presence of watchful relations ("ambushed round with household spies," as he expresses it,) it could not long be concealed. "The friends of both parties," says Walton, "used much diligence and many arguments to kill or cool their affections for each other, but in vain:" and the lady's father, Sir George Moore, "knowing prevention to be the best part of wisdom," came up to town in all haste, and carried off his daughter into the country. But his preventive wisdom came too late: the lovers had been secretly married three weeks before. This precipitate step was perhaps excusable, from the known violence and sternness of Sir George's character. His daughter was well aware that his consent would never be voluntary: she preferred marrying without it, to marrying against it; and trusted to obtain his forgiveness when there was no remedy:--a common mode of reasoning, I believe, in such cases. Never perhaps was a youthful error of this description more bitterly punished--more deeply expiated--and so little repented of!