"copy it, nor many eyes to read it; only to some parti"cular friends in both universities then, when I writ it, "I did communicate it; and I remember I had this answer, that certainly there was a false thread in it, but "not easily found. Keep it, I pray, with the same jealousy: Let any, that your discretion admits to the "sight of it, know the date of it, and that it is a book "written by Jack Donne, not Dr Donne: Reserve it for "me, if I live; and if I die, I only forbid it the press "and the fire. Publish it not, yet burn it not; but be"tween those do what you will with it." However, his worthless son disobeyed this injunction, and published it. If he had committed it to the flames, he had shewn a better regard to his father's memory.

Dr Donne was naturally of a melancholy disposition, and wrote this tract before he was truly serious, when under the impressions of that disorder. It is lamentable to consider, how the greatest learning and the brightest parts may be easily overcome by any and by every temptation; but at the same time, it is comfortable to reflect, that the weakest believer, under the protection of divine grace, is a conqueror, and more than a conqueror, over all trials and distresses.

These are all the Works of Donne that we know of for certain to be his. Mr Wood proposes a quære, whether he was the author of a piece entitled, "A Scourge for Paper Persecutors," printed in the reign of K. James I. the running title of which, at the top of every page, is, "Paper's Complaint." Besides an hundred and twenty sermons, the publication of which we have already mentioned, he left, adds our Biographer, the resultance of one thousand four hundred authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand. All the business likewise that passed of any public consequence, either in this or any of our neighbouring nations, he abbreviated either in Latin, or in the language of that nation, and kept them by him for useful memorials. So he did the copies of divers letters and cases of conscience, that had concerned his friends, with his observation and solutions of them, and divers other matters of importance, all particularly and methodically digested by him.'

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.