The grim eight-foot-high iron-bound serving-man
  That oft names God in oaths, and only then;
  He that to bar the first gate doth as wide
  As the great Rhodian Colossus stride,
  Which, if in hell no other pains there were,
  Makes me fear hell, because he must be there.

But the most interesting of all the sensual intrigues of Donne, from the point of view of biography, especially since Mr. Gosse gave it such commanding significance in that Life of John Donne in which he made a living man out of a mummy, is that of which we have the story in Jealousy and His Parting from Her.  It is another story of furtive and forbidden love.  Its theme is an intrigue carried on under a

                  Husband’s towering eyes,
  That flamed with oily sweat of jealousy.

A characteristic touch of grimness is added to the story by making the husband a deformed man.  Donne, however, merely laughs at his deformity, as he bids the lady laugh at the jealousy that reduces her to tears: 

O give him many thanks, he is courteous,
That in suspecting kindly warneth us. 
We must not, as we used, flout openly,
In scoffing riddles, his deformity;
Nor at his board together being set,
With words nor touch scarce looks adulterate.

And he proposes that, now that the husband seems to have discovered them, they shall henceforth carry on their intrigue at some distance from where

              He, swol’n and pampered with great fare,
  Sits down and snorts, cag’d in his basket chair.

It is an extraordinary story, if it is true.  It throws a scarcely less extraordinary light on the nature of Donne’s mind, if he invented it.  At the same time, I do not think the events it relates played the important part which Mr. Gosse assigns to them in Donne’s spiritual biography.  It is impossible to read Mr. Gosse’s two volumes without getting the impression that “the deplorable but eventful liaison,” as he calls it, was the most fruitful occurrence in Donne’s life as a poet.  He discovers traces of it in one great poem after another—­even in the Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, which is commonly supposed to relate to the Countess of Bedford, and in The Funeral, the theme of which Professor Grierson takes to be the mother of George Herbert.  I confess that the oftener I read the poetry of Donne the more firmly I become convinced that, far from being primarily the poet of desire gratified and satiated, he is essentially the poet of frustrated love.  He is often described by the historians of literature as the poet who finally broke down the tradition of Platonic love.  I believe that, so far is this from being the case, he is the supreme example of a Platonic lover among the English poets.  He was usually Platonic under protest, but at other times exultantly so.  Whether he finally overcame the more consistent Platonism of his mistress