Unlike Seneca, John Donne appears to be subject to no controversy about his honesty and integrity. This could be due to the fact that he patently is a hypocrite. Or it could be because very few would be interested in his prose nowadays. It is shite. He is very lucky indeed that without his knowledge and consent someone published the verse of his earlier years for which he is now justifiably known.
When he was down on his luck, having misjudged the reaction of his rich father-in-law to his secret marriage, he wrote abject prose for about fifteen years to those who could help him. When he was given a job in the Anglican Church he becomes somewhat unctuous. Reading his letters it becomes obvious when this job occurs because they suddenly become full of holy sentiments and references to God and Our Saviour.
The tortuous turn of phrase which is an asset in his poetry is diabolical in his prose. He uses many tortured phrases to say very little. He invents arguments which have no cogency. He is a boring clever-dick.
As he rises in the Anglican Church and becomes known for his public sermons the reader gets a sense of the showmanship and grandstanding implicit in the performance, while the substance of the sermons can be trite and common-place. There is absolutely no originality of thought. Given that he is now a leading figure in a Christian church, the references to Christ are few and far between and when they occur there is a complete lack of grappling with the meaning of this spiritual individuality. It is all God and the Old Testament, fearfulness and death. His sermons, which are fearfully dated to death now, have no timeless value whatsoever.
Donne is the archetype for all mountebank preachers. From young man to elder church-man who staged his own funeral, from first to last, he is a complete tosser and toady.
