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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:06:54 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:06:54 -0700 |
| commit | 6ca60929ffd62e16928945601765a2723e38b271 (patch) | |
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font-size: 0.9em; margin-left: 39%; margin-bottom: 1em; width: 200px; text-align: center; border: 1px dashed #dddddd;} + +span.dropcap {float:left; font-size:3em; font-weight:bold; line-height:80%;} + +span.sp3 {margin-left: 1.5em;} +span.sp4 {margin-left: 2em;} +span.sp5 {margin-left: 2.5em;} + + a:link {color: blue; background: inherit; text-decoration: none;} + a:visited {color: #cc3399; background: inherit; text-decoration: none;} + a.ask:link {color: blue; background: inherit; font-size: 1.0em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;} + a.ask:visited {color: #cc3399; background: inherit; font-size: 1.0em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;} + a.ask1:link {color: blue; background: inherit; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;} + a.ask1:visited {color: #cc3399; background: inherit; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: normal;text-decoration: none;} + a.contents:link {color: #330066; text-decoration:none;} + a.contents:visited {color: #cc3399; text-decoration:none;} + +@media handheld { +body { +margin-left : 2%; +margin-right : 2%; +margin-top : 1%; +margin-bottom : 1%; +} +hr { +margin-top : 0.1em; +margin-bottom : 0.1em; +visibility : hidden; +color : white; +display : none; +} +} +@media print { +span.pagenum { +visibility : hidden; +color : white; +display : none; +} +} + +@media handheld { +span.dropcap {margin-left: 0.5em;} +} + + h1.pg { margin-top: 0em;} + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 3em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + height: 4px; + border-width: 4px 0 0 0; /* remove all borders except the top one */ + border-style: solid; + border-color: #000000; + clear: both; } + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2), +by John Donne, Edited by Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson</h1> +<p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States +and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no +restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it +under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this +eBook or online at <a +href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you are not +located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this ebook.</p> +<p>Title: The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2)</p> +<p> Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts</p> +<p>Author: John Donne</p> +<p>Editor: Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson</p> +<p>Release Date: April 24, 2015 [eBook #48772]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE, VOLUME II (OF 2)***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by<br /> + Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek, Stephen Rowland,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p><a name="top"></a></p> +<div class="tn"> + +<h5>Transcriber's Note</h5> + +<p> +This is the second Volume of two. </p> + +<p>Volume I contains the Poems and Line Notes, showing textual and punctuaton +differences between the various MSS. and Editons and the Index of First Lines. +Volume II contains the Introduction and Commentary, Annotational Notes for the +Poems of Vol. I, and the Index of First Lines for poems quoted in Vol. II. +There are links between the Poems and the Commentary Notes, with various +references back and forth. These links are designed to work when the books are +read on line. For information on the downloading of both interlinked volumes +so that the links work when the files are on your own computer, see the +Transcriber's Note at the end of this book.</p> + +<p>The rest of the <a href="#transcriber_note">Transcriber's Note</a> is at the end of the book.</p> +</div> +<h3>Link to</h3> +<h3><a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm">Volume I</a></h3> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.i" id="pageii.i"></a></span></p> + +<h1><big>THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE</big></h1> + +<p class="centerc space-above">EDITED FROM THE OLD EDITIONS AND NUMEROUS MANUSCRIPTS,</p> +<p class="centerc space-above">WITH INTRODUCTIONS & COMMENTARY</p> + +<p class="centerc space-above2">BY</p> + +<p class="centertb space-above">HERBERT J. C. GRIERSON M.A.</p> + +<p class="centerb space-above2">CHALMERS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE</p> +<p class="centerb space-above">IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN</p> + +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="centerc">VOL. II</p> +<p class="centerc">INTRODUCTION AND COMMENTARY</p> +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centertb">OXFORD</p> +<p class="centerc">AT THE CLARENDON PRESS</p> +<p class="centerc">1912</p> + +<hr /> + +<p id="half-title">HENRY FROWDE, M.A.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.ii" id="pageii.ii"></a></span><br /> + +PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD<br /> + +LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK<br /> +TORONTO AND MELBOURNE</p> +<hr /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.iii" id="pageii.iii"></a>[pg iii]</span></p> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<table class="toc" summary="contents" border="0"> +<tr> + <td class="left1" colspan="2"> </td> + <td class="right">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left" colspan="2"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.v">INTRODUCTION</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.v">v</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="right"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.v">I.</a></td> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.v"><span class="sc">The Poetry of Donne</span> </a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.v">v</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="right"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.lvi">II.</a></td> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.lvi"><span class="sc">The Text and Canon of Donne's Poems</span></a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.lvi">lvi</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left" colspan="2"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.1">COMMENTARY</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.1">1</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left" colspan="2"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.276">INDEX OF FIRST LINES</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.276">276</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.iv" id="pageii.iv"></a></span><br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.v" id="pageii.v"></a>[pg v]</span></p> + +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> + +<h3>I</h3> + +<p class="title1">THE POETRY OF DONNE</p> + +<p>Donne's position among English poets, regarded from the +historical and what we like to call scientific point of view, +has been defined with learning and discrimination by Mr. +Courthope in his <i>History of English Poetry.</i> As a phenomenon +of curious interest for the student of the history of +thought and literary fashions, there it is. Mr. Courthope +is far too well-informed and judicious a critic to explain +Donne's subtle thought and erudite conceits by a reference to +'Marini and his followers'. Gongora and Du Bartas are alike +passed over in silence. What we are shown is the connexion +of 'metaphysical wit' with the complex and far-reaching +changes in men's conception of Nature which make the seventeenth +century perhaps the greatest epoch in human thought +since human thinking began.</p> + +<p>The only thing that such a criticism leaves unexplained and +undefined is the interest which Donne's poetry still has for us, +not as an historical phenomenon, but as poetry. Literary +history has for the historian a quite distinct interest from that +which it possesses for the student and lover of literature. For +the historian it is a matter of positive interest to connect Donne's +wit with the general disintegration of mediaeval thought, to +recognize the influence on the Elizabethan drama of the +doctrines of Machiavelli, or to find in Pope's achievement in +poetry a counterpart to Walpole's in politics. For the lover +of literature none of these facts has any positive interest whatsoever. +Donne's wit attracts or repels him equally whatever +be its source; Tamburlaine and Iago lose none of their +interest for us though we know nothing of Machiavelli; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.vi" id="pageii.vi"></a>[pg vi]</span> +Pope's poetry is not a whit more or less poetical by being +a strange by-product of the Whig spirit in English life. For +the lover of literature, literary history has an indirect value. +He studies history that he may discount it. What he relishes +in a poet of the past is exactly the same essential qualities as +he enjoys in a poet of his own day—life and passion and art. +But between us and every poet or thinker of the past hangs +a thinner or thicker veil of outworn fashions and conventions. +The same life has clothed itself in different garbs; the same +passions have spoken in different images; the same art has +adapted itself to different circumstances. To the historian +these old clothes are in themselves a subject of interest. His +enjoyment of Shakespeare is heightened by finding the +explanation of Falstaff's hose, Pistol's hyperboles, and the +poet's neglect of the Unities. To the lover of literature they +are, until by understanding he can discount them, a disadvantage +because they invest the work of the poet with an +irrelevant air of strangeness. He studies them that he may +grow familiar with them and forget them, that he may clear +and intensify his sense of what alone has permanent value, the +poet's individuality and the art in which it is expressed.</p> + +<p>Donne's conceits, of which so much has been made and on +whose historical significance Mr. Courthope has probably +said the last word, are just like other examples of these old +clothes. The question for literature is not whence they came, +but how he used them. Is he a poet in virtue or in spite of +them, or both? Are they fit only to be gathered into a +museum of antiquated fashions such as Johnson prefixed to his +study of the last poet who wore them in quite the old way +(for Dryden, who pilfered more freely from Donne than from +any of his predecessors, cut them to a new fashion), or are they +the individual and still expressive dress of a true and great +poet, commanding admiration in their own manner and degree +as freshly and enduringly as the stiff and brocaded magnificence +of Milton's no less individual, no less artificial style?</p> + +<p>Donne's reputation as a poet has passed through many +vicissitudes in the course of the last three centuries. With +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.vii" id="pageii.vii"></a>[pg vii]</span> +regard to his 'wit', its range and character, erudition and +ingenuity, all generations of critics have been at one. It is +as to the relation of this 'wit' to, and its effect on, his poetry +that they have been at variance. To his contemporaries the +'wit' was identical with the poetry. Donne's 'wit' gave him +the same supremacy among poets that learning and humour +and art gave to Jonson among dramatists. To certain of his +Dutch admirers the wit of <i>The Flea</i> seemed superhuman, and +the epitaph with which Carew closes his <i>Elegy</i> expresses the +almost universal English opinion of the seventeenth century:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Here lies a king that ruled as he thought fit</p> +<p>The universal monarchy of wit;</p> +<p>Here lies two flamens, and both those the best,</p> +<p>Apollo's first, at last the true God's priest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It may be doubted if Milton shared this opinion. He never +mentions Donne, but it was probably of him or his imitators he +was thinking when in his verses at Cambridge he spoke of</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">those new-fangled toys and trimmings slight</p> +<p>Which take our late fantastics with delight.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Certainly the growing taste for 'correctness' led after the +Restoration to a discrimination between Donne's wit and his +poetry. 'The greatest wit,' Dryden calls him, 'though not +the greatest poet of our nation.' What he wanted as a poet +were just the two essentials of 'classical' poetry—smoothness +of verse and dignity of expression. This point of view is +stated with clearness and piquancy in the sentences of outrageous +flattery which Dryden addressed to the Earl of Dorset +in the opening paragraphs of his delightful <i>Essay on Satire</i>:</p> + +<blockquote><p> +'There is more of salt in all your verses, than I have seen in +any of the moderns, or even of the ancients; but you have +been sparing of the gall, by which means you have pleased all +readers, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, +had your talent; but was not happy enough to arrive at +your versification; and were he translated into numbers, and +English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. +That which is the prime virtue, and chief ornament, of Virgil, +which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.viii" id="pageii.viii"></a>[pg viii]</span> +in your verses, that it casts a shadow on all your +contemporaries; we cannot be seen, or but obscurely, while +you are present. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity, +and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and the +words. I read you both with the same admiration, but not +with the same delight.</p> + +<p>He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his +amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes +the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, +when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with +the softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for so +bold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault; so great +a one, in my opinion, that it throws his Mistress infinitely +below his Pindarics and his latter compositions, which are +undoubtedly the best of his poems and the most correct.' +</p></blockquote> + +<p>Dryden's estimate of Donne, as well as his application to his +poetry of the epithet 'metaphysical', was transmitted through +the eighteenth century. Johnson's famous paragraphs in +the <i>Life of Cowley</i> do little more than echo and expand +Dryden's pronouncement, with a rather vaguer use of the word +'metaphysical'. In Dryden's application it means correctly +'philosophical'; in Johnson's, no more than 'learned'. +'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show +their learning was their whole endeavour; but unluckily +resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they +only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial +of the fingers better than of the ear.' They 'drew their conceits +from recesses of learning not very much frequented by +common readers of poetry'. Waller is exempted from being +a metaphysical poet because 'he seldom fetches an amorous +sentiment from the depths of science; his thoughts are for +the most part easily understood, and his images such as the +superficies of nature readily supplies'.</p> + +<p>Even to those critics with whom began a revived appreciation +of Donne as a poet and preacher, his 'wit' still bulks +largely. It is impossible to escape from it. 'Wonder-exciting +vigour,' writes Coleridge, 'intenseness and peculiarity, +using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious +memory, and exercised on subjects where we have no right +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.ix" id="pageii.ix"></a>[pg ix]</span> +to expect it—this is the wit of Donne.' And lastly De +Quincey, who alone of these critics recognizes the essential +quality which may, and in his best work does, make Donne's +wit the instrument of a mind which is not only subtle and +ingenious but profoundly poetical: 'Few writers have shown +a more extraordinary compass of powers than Donne; for he +combined what no other man has ever done—the last sublimation +of dialectical subtlety and address with the most +impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very +substance of his poem on the Metempsychosis, thoughts and +descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of +Ezekiel or Aeschylus, whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical +brilliancies is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses +and his prose.'</p> + +<p>What is to-day the value and interest of this wit which +has arrested the attention of so many generations? How far +does it seem to us compatible with poetry in the full and generally +accepted sense of the word, with poetry which quickens the +imagination and touches the heart, which satisfies and delights, +which is the verbal and rhythmical medium whereby a gifted +soul communicates to those who have ears to hear the content +of impassioned moments?</p> + +<p>Before coming to close quarters with this difficult and +debated question one may in the first place insist that there +is in Donne's verse a great deal which, whether it be poetry +in the full sense of the word or not, is arresting and of worth +both historically and intrinsically. Whatever we may think +of Donne's poetry, it is impossible not to recognize the +extraordinary interest of his mind and character. In an age +of great and fascinating men he is not the least so. The +immortal and transcendent genius of Shakespeare leaves +Donne, as every other contemporary, lost in the shadows and +cross-lights of an age that is no longer ours, but from which +Shakespeare emerges into the clear sunlight. Of Bacon's +mind, 'deep and slow, exhausting thought,' and divining as none +other the direction in which the road led through the débris of +outworn learning to a renovated science and a new philosophy, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.x" id="pageii.x"></a>[pg x]</span> +Donne could not boast. Alike in his poetry and in his +soberest prose, treatise or sermon, Donne's mind seems to +want the high seriousness which comes from a conviction that +truth is, and is to be found. A spirit of scepticism and +paradox plays through and disturbs almost everything he +wrote, except at moments when an intense mood of feeling, +whether love or devotion, begets faith, and silences the sceptical +and destructive wit by the power of vision rather than of +intellectual conviction. Poles apart as the two poets seem at +a first glance to lie in feeling and in art, there is yet something +of Tennyson in the conflict which wages perpetually in +Donne's poetry between feeling and intellect.</p> + +<p>But short of the highest gifts of serene imagination or +serene wisdom Donne's mind has every power it well could, +wit, insight, imagination; and these move in such a strange +medium of feeling and learning, mediaeval, renaissance and +modern, that every imprint becomes of interest. To do full +justice to that interest one's study of Donne must include his +prose as well as his verse, his paradoxical <i>Pseudomartyr</i>, +and equally paradoxical, more strangely mooded <i>Biathanatos</i>, +the intense and subtle eloquence of his sermons, the tormented +passion and wit of his devotions, and the gaiety and melancholy, +wit and wisdom, of his letters. But most of these +qualities have left their mark on his poetry, and given it +interests over and above its worth simply as poetry.</p> + +<p>One quality of his verse, which has been somewhat overlooked +by critics intent upon the definition and sources of metaphysical +wit, is wit in our sense of the word, wit like the wit +of Swift and Sheridan. The habit in which this wit masquerades +is doubtless old-fashioned. It is not always the worse +for that, for the wit of the Elizabethans is delightfully blended +with fancy and feeling. There is a little of Jaques in all +of them. But if fanciful and at times even boyish, Donne's +wit is still amusing, the quickest and most fertile wit of the +century till we come to the author of <i>Hudibras.</i></p> + +<p>It is not in the <i>Satyres</i> that this wit is to us most obvious. +Nothing grows so soon out of date as contemporary satire. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xi" id="pageii.xi"></a>[pg xi]</span> +Even the brilliance and polish of Pope's satire—and Pope's +art is nowhere more perfect than in <i>The Dunciad</i> and the +<i>Imitations of Horace</i>—cannot interest us in Lord Hervey, +Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the forgotten poets of +an unpoetic age. How then should we be interested in +Elizabeth's fantastic 'Presence', the streets of sixteenth-century +London, and the knavery of pursuivants, presented with +a satiric art which is wonderfully vivid and caustic but still +tentative,—over-emphatic, rough in style and verse, though +with a roughness which is obviously a studied and in +a measure successful effect. The verses upon <i>Coryats +Crudities</i> are in their way a masterpiece of insult veiled as +compliment, but it is a rather boyish and barbarous way.</p> + +<p>It is in the lighter of his love verses that Donne's laughable +wit is most obvious and most agile. Whatever one may +think of the choice of subject, and the flame of a young man's +lust that burns undisguised in some of the <i>Elegies</i>, it is impossible +to ignore the dazzling wit which neither flags nor +falters from the first line to the last. And in the more +graceful and fanciful, the less heated <i>Songs and Sonets</i>, +the same wit, gay and insolent, disports itself in a +philosophy of love which must not be taken altogether +seriously. Donne at least, as we shall see, outgrew it. His +attitude is very much that of Shakespeare in the early +comedies. But the Petrarchian love, which Shakespeare +treats with light and charming irony, the vows and tears of +Romeo and Proteus, Donne openly scoffs. He is one of +Shakespeare's young men as these were in the flesh and the +Inns of Court, and he tells us frankly what in their youthful +cynicism (which is often even more of a pose than their +idealism) they think of love, and constancy, and women.</p> + +<p>Of all miracles, Donne cries, a constant woman is the +greatest, of all strange sights the strangest:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If thou findst one, let mee know,</p> +<p class="i2">Such a Pilgrimage were sweet;</p> +<p>Yet doe not, I would not goe,</p> +<p class="i2">Though at next doore wee might meet,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xii" id="pageii.xii"></a>[pg xii]</span> +<p>Though shee were true, when you met her,</p> +<p>And last, till you write your letter,</p> +<p class="i16">Yet shee</p> +<p class="i16">Will bee</p> +<p>False, ere I come, to two, or three.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But is it true that we desire to find her? Donne's answer is +<i>Woman's Constancy</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Now thou hast lov'd me one whole day,</p> +<p>To-morrow when thou leav'st what wilt thou say?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>She will, like Proteus in the <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>, have +no dearth of sophistries—but why elaborate them?</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Vain lunatique, against these scapes I could</p> +<p>Dispute, and conquer, if I would,</p> +<p>Which I abstaine to doe,</p> +<p>For by to-morrow, I may think so too.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Why ask for constancy when change is the life and law of +love?</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I can love both fair and brown;</p> +<p>Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays;</p> +<p>Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays.</p> +<p class="i6"><big>. . . + . . + . .</big></p> +<p>I can love her and her, and you and you,</p> +<p>I can love any so she be not true.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is not often that the reckless and wilful gaiety of youth +masking as cynicism has been expressed with such ebullient +wit as in these and companion songs. And when he adopts +for a time the pose of the faithful lover bewailing the cruelty +of his mistress the sarcastic wit is no less fertile. It would be +difficult to find in the language a more sustained succession of +witty surprises than <i>The Will</i>. Others were to catch these +notes from Donne, and Suckling later flutes them gaily in his +lighter fashion, never with the same fullness of wit and fancy, +never with the same ardour of passion divinable through the +audacious extravagances.</p> + +<p>But to amuse was by no means the sole aim of Donne's 'wit'; +gay humour touched with fancy and feeling is not its only +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xiii" id="pageii.xiii"></a>[pg xiii]</span> +quality. Donne's 'wit' has many strands, his humour many +moods, and before considering how these are woven together +into an effect that is entirely poetical, we may note one or +two of the soberer strands which run through his <i>Letters</i>, +<i>Epicedes</i>, and similar poems—descriptive, reflective, and +complimentary.</p> + +<p>Not much of Donne's poetry is given to description. Of +the feeling for nature of the Elizabethans, their pastoral and +ideal pictures of meadow and wood and stream, which delighted +the heart of Izaak Walton, there is nothing in Donne. +A greater contrast than that between Marlowe's <i>Come live +with me</i> and Donne's imitation <i>The Baite</i> it would be hard to +conceive. But in <i>The Storme</i> and <i>The Calme</i> Donne used his +wit to achieve an effect of realism which was something new in +English poetry, and was not reproduced till Swift wrote +<i>The City Shower</i>. From the first lines, which describe how</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The South and West winds join'd, and as they blew,</p> +<p>Waves like a rolling trench before them threw,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>to the close of <i>The Storme</i> the noise of the contending +elements is deafening:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thousands our noises were, yet we 'mongst all</p> +<p>Could none by his right name, but thunder call:</p> +<p>Lightning was all our light, and it rain'd more</p> +<p>Than if the Sunne had drunke the sea before.</p> +<p class="i2"> <big>. . . + . . . + . . .</big></p> +<p>Hearing hath deaf'd our sailors, and if they</p> +<p>Knew how to hear, there's none knowes what to say:</p> +<p>Compared to these stormes, death is but a qualme,</p> +<p>Hell somewhat lightsome, and the Bermuda calme.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The sense of tropical heat and calm in the companion poem +is hardly less oppressive, and, if the whole is not quite so happy +as the first, it contains two lines whose vivid and unexpected +felicity is as delightful to-day as when Ben Jonson recited +them to Drummond at Hawthornden:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay</p> +<p>Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xiv" id="pageii.xiv"></a>[pg xiv]</span></p> + +<p>Donne's letters generally fall into two groups. The first +comprises those addressed to his fellow-students at Cambridge +and the Inns of Court, the Woodwards, Brookes, and others, +or to his maturer and more fashionable companions in the quest +of favour and employment at Court, Wotton, and Goodyere, +and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. To the other belong the +complimentary and elegant epistles in which he delighted and +perhaps bewildered his noble lady friends and patronesses +with erudite and transcendental flattery.</p> + +<p>In the first class, and the same is true of some of the <i>Satyres</i>, +notably the third, and of the satirical <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, +especially at the beginning and the end, the reflective, moralizing +strain predominates. Donne's 'wit' becomes the instrument +of a criticism of life, grave or satiric, melancholy or +stoical. Despite Matthew Arnold's definition, verse of this +kind seldom is poetry in the full sense of the word; but, as +Stevenson says in speaking of his own Scotch verses, talk not +song. The first of English poets was a master of the art. +Neither Horace nor Martial, whom Stevenson cites, is a more +delightful talker in verse than Geoffrey Chaucer, and the +archaism of his style seems only to lend the additional charm +of a lisp to his babble. Since Donne's day English poetry has +been rich in such verse talkers—Butler and Dryden, Pope +and Swift, Cowper and Burns, Byron and Shelley, Browning +and Landor. It did not come easy to the Elizabethans, whose +natural accent was song. Donne's chief rivals were Daniel +and Jonson, and I venture to think that he excels them both +in the clear and pointed yet easy and conversational development +of his thought, in the play of wit and wisdom, and, +despite the pedantic cast of Elizabethan erudite moralizing, in +the power to leave on the reader the impression of a potent +and yet a winning personality. We seem to get nearer to the +man himself in Donne's letters to Goodyere and Wotton than +in Daniel's weighty, but also heavy, moralizing epistles to the +Countess of Cumberland or Sir Thomas Egerton; and the +personality whose voice sounds so distinct and human in our +ear is a more attractive one than the harsh, censorious, burly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xv" id="pageii.xv"></a>[pg xv]</span> +but a little blustering Jonson of the epistles on country life +and generous givers. Donne's style is less clumsy, his verse +less stiff. His wit brings to a clear point whatever he has to +say, while from his verse as from his prose letters there disengages +itself a very distinct sense of what it was in the man, +underlying his brilliant intellect, his almost superhuman cleverness, +which won for him the devotion of friends like Wotton +and Goodyere and Walton and King, the admiration of a +stranger like Huyghens, who heard him talk as well as preach:—a +serious and melancholy, a generous and chivalrous spirit.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>However, keepe the lively tast you hold</p> +<p class="i2">Of God, love him as now, but feare him more,</p> +<p>And in your afternoones thinke what you told</p> +<p class="i2">And promis'd him, at morning prayer before.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Let falshood like a discord anger you,</p> +<p class="i2">Else be not froward. But why doe I touch</p> +<p>Things, of which none is in your practise new,</p> +<p class="i2">And Tables, or fruit-trenchers teach as much;</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>But thus I make you keepe your promise Sir,</p> +<p class="i2">Riding I had you, though you still staid there,</p> +<p>And in these thoughts, although you never stirre,</p> +<p class="i2">You came with mee to Micham, and are here.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>So he writes to Goodyere, but the letter to Wotton going +Ambassador to Venice is Donne's masterpiece in this simpler +style, and it seems to me that neither Daniel nor Jonson nor +Drayton ever catches this note at once sensitive and courtly. To +find a like courtliness we must go to Wotton; witness the reply +to Donne's earlier epistle which I have printed in the notes. But +neither Wotton nor any other of the courtly poets in Hannah's +collection adds to this dignity so poignant a personal accent.</p> + +<p>This personal interest is very marked in the two satires +which are connected by tone and temper with the letters, the +third of the early, classical <i>Satyres</i> and the opening and closing +stanzas of the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>. Each is a vivid picture of +the inner workings of Donne's soul at a critical period in his +life. The first was doubtless written at the moment that he +was passing from the Roman to the Anglican Church. It is one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xvi" id="pageii.xvi"></a>[pg xvi]</span> +of the earliest and most thoughtful appeals for toleration, for the +candid scrutiny of religious differences, which was written +perhaps in any country—one of the most striking symptoms +of the new eddies produced in the stream of religious +feeling by the meeting currents of the Reformation and the +Counter-Reformation.</p> + +<p>It was a difficult and dangerous process through which +Donne was passing, this conversion from the Church of his +fathers to conformity with the Church of England as by law +established. It would be as absurd, in the face of a poem like +this and of all that we know of Donne's subsequent life, to call +it a conversion in the full sense of the term, a changed conviction, +as to dub it an apostasy prompted by purely political considerations. +Yet doubtless the latter predominated. The +position of a Catholic in the reign of Elizabeth was that of +a man cut off rigorously from the main life of the nation, +with every avenue of honourable ambition closed to him. He +had to live the starved, suspected life of a recusant or to seek +service under a foreign power. Some of the most pathetic +documents in Strype's <i>Annals of the Reformation</i> are those +in which we hear the cry of young men of secure station and +means driven by conscientious conviction to abandon home +and country. It is possible that before 1592 Donne himself +had been sent abroad by relatives with a view to his entering +a seminary or the service of a foreign power. His mother +spent a great part of her life abroad, and his own relatives were +among those who suffered most severely under Walsingham's +persecution. 'I had', Donne says, 'my first breeding and +conversation with men of suppressed and afflicted Religion, +accustomed to the despite of death, and hungry of an imagined +Martyrdome.' To a young man of ambition, and as yet certainly +with no bent to devotion or martyrdom, it was only +common sense to conform if he might.</p> + +<p>From this dilemma Donne escaped, not by any opportune +change of conviction, or by any insincere profession, but by +the way of intellectual emancipation. He looks round in this +satire and sees that whichever be the true Church it is not by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xvii" id="pageii.xvii"></a>[pg xvii]</span> +any painful quest of truth, and through the attainment of conviction, +that most people have accepted the Church to which +they may belong. Circumstances and whim have had more +to do with their choice than reason and serious conviction. +Yet it is only by search that truth is to be found:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> On a huge hill</p> +<p>Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will</p> +<p>Reach her, about must, and about must goe;</p> +<p>And what the hills suddenes resists win so.</p> +<p>Yet strive so, that before age, deaths twilight,</p> +<p>Thy Soule rest, for none can work in that night.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It was not often in the sixteenth or seventeenth century that +a completely emancipated and critical attitude on religious, +not philosophical, questions was expressed with such entire +frankness and seriousness. From this position, Walton would +have us believe, Donne advanced through the study of +Bellarmine and other controversialists to a convinced acceptance +of Anglican doctrine. The evidence points to a rather +different conclusion on Donne's part. He came to think that +all the Churches were 'virtual beams of one sun', 'connatural +pieces of one circle', a position from which the next step was +to the conclusion that for an Englishman the Anglican Church +was the right choice (Cujus regio, ejus religio); but Donne +had not reached this conclusion when he wrote the <i>Satyre</i>, and +doubtless did not till he had satisfied himself that the Church +of England offered a reasonable <i>via media</i>. But changes of +creed made on purely intellectual grounds, and prompted by +practical motives, are not unattended with danger to a man's +moral and spiritual life. Donne had doubtless outwardly conformed +before he entered Egerton's service in 1598, but long +afterwards, when he is already in Orders, he utters a cry which +betrays how real the dilemma still was:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Show me, deare Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and the first result of his 'conversion' was apparently to +deepen the sceptical vein in his mind.</p> + +<p>Scepticism and melancholy, bitter and sardonic, are certainly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xviii" id="pageii.xviii"></a>[pg xviii]</span> +the dominant notes in the sombre fragment of satire <i>The Progresse +of the Soule</i>, which he composed in 1601, when he +was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary, four months before his +marriage and six months after the death of the Earl of Essex. +There can be little doubt, as I have ventured to suggest +elsewhere, that it was the latter event which provoked this +strange and sombre explosion of spleen, a satire of the same +order as the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> or the <i>Vision of Judgment</i>. The +account of the poem which Jonson gave to Drummond does +not seem to be quite accurate, though it was probably derived +from Donne himself. It was, one suspects from several circumstances, +a little Donne's way in later years to disguise the +footprints of his earlier indiscretions. According to this +tradition the final <i>habitat</i> of the soul which 'inanimated' the +apple</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> Whose mortal taste</p> +<p>Brought death into the world and all our woe,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>was to be John Calvin. The tradition is interesting as marking +how far Donne was in 1601 from his later orthodox +Protestantism, for Calvin is never mentioned but with respect +in the <i>Sermons</i>. A few months later he wrote to Egerton +disclaiming warmly all 'love of a corrupt religion'. But, +though sceptical in tone, the poem is written from a Catholic +standpoint; its theme is the progress of the soul of heresy. +And, as the seventh stanza clearly indicates, the great heretic +in whom the line closed was to be not Calvin but Queen +Elizabeth:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">the great soule which here among us now</p> +<p>Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow</p> +<p>Which, as the Moone the sea, moves us.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne can hardly have thought of publishing such a poem, or +circulating it in the Queen's lifetime. It was an expression +of the mood which begot the 'black and envious slanders +breath'd against Diana for her divine justice on Actaeon' to +which Jonson refers in <i>Cynthia's Revels</i> the same year. That +some copies were circulated in manuscript later is probably +due to the reaction which brought into favour at James's +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xix" id="pageii.xix"></a>[pg xix]</span> +Court the Earl of Southampton and the former adherents of +Essex generally.</p> + +<p>The tone, moreover, of the stanza quoted above suggests that +it was no vulgar libel on Elizabeth which Donne contemplated. +Elizabeth, the cruel persecutor of his Catholic kinsfolk, now +stained with the blood of her favourite, appeared to him somewhat +as she did to Pope Sixtus, a heretic but a great woman. +He felt to her as Burke did to the 'whole race of Guises, +Condés and Colignis'—'the hand that like a destroying angel +smote the country communicated to it the force and energy +under which it suffered.' In a mood of bitter admiration, of +sceptical and sardonic wonder, he contemplates the great bad +souls who had troubled the world and served it too, for the +idea on which the poem was to rest is the disconcerting reflection +that we owe many good things to heretics and bad +men:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Who ere thou beest that read'st this sullen Writ,</p> +<p>Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it,</p> +<p>Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with mee,</p> +<p>Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,</p> +<p>Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,</p> +<p>By cursed <i>Cains</i> race invented be,</p> +<p>And blest <i>Seth</i> vext us with Astronomie.</p> +<p>Ther's nothing simply good, nor ill alone,</p> +<p>Of every quality comparison,</p> +<p class="i2">The onely measure is, and judge, opinion.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It would have been interesting to read Donne's history of the +great souls that troubled and yet quickened the world from +Cain to Arius and from Mahomet to Elizabeth, but unfortunately +Donne never got beyond the introduction, a couple of +cantos which describe the progress of the soul while it is still +passing through the vegetable and animal planes, the motive of +which, so far as it can be disentangled, is to describe the pre-human +education of a woman's soul:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">keeping some quality</p> +<p>Of every past shape, she knew treachery,</p> +<p>Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow</p> +<p>To be a woman.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xx" id="pageii.xx"></a>[pg xx]</span></p> + +<p>The fragment has some of the sombre power which De +Quincey attributes to it, but on the whole one must confess it +is a failure. The 'wit' of Donne did not apparently include +invention, for many of the episodes seem pointless as well as +disgusting, and indeed in no poem is the least attractive side of +Donne's mind so clearly revealed, that aspect of his wit which +to some readers is more repellent, more fatal to his claim to be +a poet, than too subtle ingenuity or misplaced erudition—the +vein of sheer ugliness which runs through his work, presenting +details that seem merely and wantonly repulsive. The same +vein is apparent in the work of Chapman, of Jonson, and even in +places of Spenser, and the imagery of <i>Hamlet</i> and the tragedies +owes some of its dramatic vividness and power to the same +quality. The ugly has its place in art, and it would not be +difficult to find it in every phase of Renaissance art, marked +like the beautiful in that art by the same evidence of power. +Decadence brought with it not ugliness but prettiness.</p> + +<p>The reflective, philosophic, somewhat melancholy strain of +the poems I have been touching on reappears in the letters +addressed to noble ladies. Here, however, it is softened, less +sardonic in tone, while it blends with or gives place to another +strain, that of absurd and extravagant but fanciful and subtle +compliment. Donne cannot write to a lady without his heart +and fancy taking wing in their own passionate and erudite +fashion. Scholastic theology is made the instrument of courtly +compliment and pious flirtation. He blends in the same +disturbing fashion as in some of the songs and elegies that +depreciation of woman in general, which he owes less to +classical poetry than to his over-acquaintance with the Fathers, +with an adoration of her charms in the individual which passes +into the transcendental. He tells the Countess of Huntingdon +that active goodness in a woman is a miracle; but it is clear +that she and the Countess of Bedford and Mrs. Herbert and +Lady Carey and the Countess of Salisbury are all examples of +such miracle—ladies whose beauty itself is virtue, while their +virtues are a mystery revealable only to the initiated.</p> + +<p>The highest place is held by Lady Bedford and Mrs. Herbert. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxi" id="pageii.xxi"></a>[pg xxi]</span> +Nothing could surpass the strain of intellectual and etherealized +compliment in which he addresses the Countess. If lines like +the following are not pure poetry, they haunt some quaint +borderland of poetry to which the polished felicities of Pope's +compliments are a stranger. If not pure fancy, they are not +mere ingenuity, being too intellectual and argumentative for the +one, too winged and ardent for the other:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Should I say I liv'd darker then were true,</p> +<p>Your radiation can all clouds subdue;</p> +<p>But one, 'tis best light to contemplate you.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>You, for whose body God made better clay,</p> +<p>Or tooke Soules stuffe such as shall late decay,</p> +<p>Or such as needs small change at the last day.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>This, as an Amber drop enwraps a Bee,</p> +<p>Covering discovers your quicke Soule; that we</p> +<p>May in your through-shine front your hearts thoughts see.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne</p> +<p>To our late times, the use of specular stone,</p> +<p>Through which all things within without were shown.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Of such were Temples; so and such you are;</p> +<p><i>Beeing</i> and <i>seeming</i> is your equall care,</p> +<p>And <i>vertues</i> whole <i>summe</i> is but <i>know</i> and <i>dare</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The long poem dedicated to the same lady's beauty,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>You have refin'd me</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is in a like dazzling and subtle vein. Those addressed to Mrs. +Herbert, notably the letter</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Mad paper stay,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and the beautiful <i>Elegie</i></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>No Spring, nor Summer Beauty hath such grace</p> +<p>As I have seen in one Autumnall face,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>are less transcendental in tone but bespeak an even warmer +admiration. Indeed it is clear to any careful reader that in the +poems addressed to both these ladies there is blended with the +respectful flattery of the dependant not a little of the tone of +warmer feeling permitted to the 'servant' by Troubadour +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxii" id="pageii.xxii"></a>[pg xxii]</span> +convention. And I suspect that some poems, the tone of +which is still more frankly and ardently lover-like, were +addressed to Lady Bedford and Mrs. Herbert, though they +have come to us without positive indication.</p> + +<p>The title of the subtle, passionate, sonorous lyric <i>Twicknam +Garden</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with teares,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>points to the person addressed, for Twickenham Park was the +residence of Lady Bedford from 1607 to 1618, and Donne's +intimacy with her seems to have begun in or about 1608. +There can, I think, be little doubt that it is to her, and neither +to his wife nor the mistresses of his earlier, wandering fancy, +that these lines, conventional in theme but given an amazing +<i>timbre</i> by the impulse of Donne's subtle and passionate mind, +were addressed. But if <i>Twicknam Garden</i> was written +to Lady Bedford, so also, one is tempted to think, must have +been <i>A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day</i>, for Lucy was the +Countess's name, and the thought, feeling, and rhythm of the +two poems are strikingly similar.</p> + +<p>But the <i>Nocturnall</i> is a sincerer and profounder poem than +<i>Twicknam Garden</i>, and it is more difficult to imagine it the +expression of a conventional sentiment. Mr. Gosse, and there +is no higher authority when it comes to the interpretation of +Donne's character and mind, rightly, I think, suggests that the +death of the lady addressed is assumed, not actual, but he +connects the poem with Donne's earlier and troubled loves. +'So also in a most curious ode, the <i>Nocturnal</i> ..., amid fireworks +of conceit, he calls his mistress dead and protests that +his hatred has grown cold at last.' But I can find no note of +bitterness, active or spent, in the song. It <i>might</i> have been +written to Ann More. It is a highly metaphysical yet sombre +and sincere description of the emptiness of life without love. +The critics have, I think, failed somewhat to reckon with +this stratum in Donne's songs, of poems Petrarchian in +convention but with a Petrarchianism coloured by Donne's +realistic temper and impatient wit. Any interpretation of so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxiii" id="pageii.xxiii"></a>[pg xxiii]</span> +enigmatical a poem must be conjectural, but before one denied +too positively that its subject was Lady Bedford—perhaps her +illness in 1612—one would need to answer two questions, how +far could a conventional passion inspire a strain so sincere, and +what was Donne's feeling for Lady Bedford and hers for him?</p> + +<p>Poetry is the language of passion, but the passion which +moves the poet most constantly is the delight of making poetry, +and very little is sufficient to quicken the imagination to its +congenial task. Our soberer minds are apt to think that there +must be an actual, particular experience behind every sincere +poem. But history refutes the idea of such a simple relation +between experience and art. No poet will sing of love convincingly +who has never loved, but that experience will suffice +him for many and diverse webs of song and drama. Without +pursuing the theme, it is sufficient for the moment to recall +that in the fashion of the day Spenser's sonnets were addressed +to Lady Carey, not to his wife; that it was to Idea or to Anne +Goodere that Drayton wrote so passionate a poem as</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and that we know very little of what really lies behind Shakespeare's +profound and plangent sonnets, weave what web of +fancy we will.</p> + +<p>Of Lady Bedford's feeling for Donne we know only what +his letters reveal, and that is no more than that she was his warm +friend and generous patroness. It is clear, however, from +their enduring friendship and from the tone of that correspondence +that she found in him a friend of a rarer and +finer calibre than in the other poets whom she patronized in +turn, Daniel and Drayton and Jonson—some one whose sensitive, +complex, fascinating personality could hardly fail to touch +a woman's imagination and heart. Friendship between man +and woman is love in some degree. There is no need to +exaggerate the situation, or to reflect on either her loyalty or +his to other claims, to recognize that their mutual feeling was +of the kind for which the Petrarchian convention afforded +a ready and recognized vehicle of expression.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxiv" id="pageii.xxiv"></a>[pg xxiv]</span></p> + +<p>And so it was, one fancies, with Mrs. Herbert. She too +found in Donne a rare and comprehending spirit, and he in +her a gracious and delicate friend. His relation to her, indeed, +was probably simpler than to Lady Bedford, their friendship +more equal. The letter and the elegy referred to already are +instinct with affection and tender reverence. To her Donne +sent some of his earliest religious sonnets, with a sonnet on her +beautiful name. And to her also it would seem that at some +period in the history of their friendship, the beginning of +which is very difficult to date, he wrote songs in the tone of +hopeless, impatient passion, of Petrarch writing to Laura, and +others which celebrate their mutual affection as a love that +rose superior to earthly and physical passion. The clue here +is the title prefixed to that strange poem <i>The Primrose, +being at Montgomery Castle upon the hill on which it is +situate</i>. It is true that the title is found for the first time in +the edition of 1635 and is in none of the manuscripts. But it +is easier to explain the occasional suppression of a revealing +title than to conceive a motive for inventing such a gloss. +The poem is doubtless, as Mr. Gosse says, 'a mystical celebration +of the beauty, dignity and intelligence of Magdalen +Herbert'—a celebration, however, which takes the form (as it +might with Petrarch) of a reproach, a reproach which Donne's +passionate temper and caustic wit seem even to touch with +scorn. He appears to hint to Mrs. Herbert that to wish to be +more than a woman, to claim worship in place of love, is to be +a worse monster than a coquette:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">Since there must reside</p> +<p>Falshood in woman, I could more abide</p> +<p>She were by Art, than Nature falsifi'd.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Woman needs no advantages to arbitrate the fate of man.</p> + +<p>In exactly the same mood as <i>The Primrose</i> is <i>The Blossome</i>, +possibly written in the same place and on the same day, for +the poet is preparing to return to London. <i>The Dampe</i> is in +an even more scornful tone, and one hesitates to connect it with +Mrs. Herbert. But all these poems recur so repeatedly together +in the manuscripts as to suggest that they have a common origin. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxv" id="pageii.xxv"></a>[pg xxv]</span> +And with them go the beautiful poems <i>The Funerall</i> and <i>The +Relique</i>. In the former the cruelty of the lady has killed her +lover, but in the second the tone changes entirely, the relation +between Donne and Mrs. Herbert (note the lines</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou shalt be a Mary <i>Magdalen</i> and I</p> +<p>A something else thereby)</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>has ceased to be Petrarchian and become Platonic, their love +a thing pure and of the spirit, but none the less passionate for +that:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">First, we lov'd well and faithfully,</p> +<p class="i4">Yet knew not what wee lov'd, nor why,</p> +<p class="i4">Difference of sex no more wee knew,</p> +<p class="i4">Then our Guardian Angells doe;</p> +<p class="i8">Comming and going, wee</p> +<p>Perchance might kisse, but not between those meales;</p> +<p class="i8">Our hands ne'r toucht the seales,</p> +<p>Which nature, injur'd by late law, sets free:</p> +<p>These miracles wee did; but now alas,</p> +<p>All measure, and all language, I should passe,</p> +<p>Should I tell what a miracle shee was.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Such were the notes that a poet in the seventeenth century +might still sing to a high-born lady his patroness and his friend. +No one who knows the fashion of the day will read into them +more than they were intended to convey. No one who knows +human nature will read them as merely frigid and conventional +compliments. Any uncertainty one may feel about the subject +arises not from their being love-poems, but from the difficulty +which Donne has in adjusting himself to the Petrarchian +convention, the tendency of his passionate heart and satiric wit +to break through the prescribed tone of worship and complaint.</p> + +<p>Without some touch of passion, some vibration of the heart, +Donne is only too apt to accumulate 'monstrous and disgusting +hyperboles'. This is very obvious in the <i>Epicedes</i>—his +complimentary laments for the young Lord Harington, Miss +Boulstred, Lady Markham, Elizabeth Drury and the Marquis +of Hamilton, poems in which it is difficult to find a line that +moves. Indeed, seventeenth-century elegies are not as a rule +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxvi" id="pageii.xxvi"></a>[pg xxvi]</span> +pathetic. A poem in the simple, piercing strain and the Wordsworthian +plainness of style of the Dutch poet Vondel's lament +for his little daughter is hardly to be found in English. An +occasional epitaph like Browne's</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>May! be thou never grac'd with birds that sing,</p> +<p class="i12">Nor Flora's pride!</p> +<p>In thee all flowers and roses spring,</p> +<p class="i12">Mine only died,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>comes near it, but in general seventeenth-century elegy is apt +to spend itself on three not easily reconcilable themes—extravagant +eulogy of the dead, which is the characteristically +Renaissance strain, the Mediaeval meditation on death and its +horrors, the more simply Christian mood of hope rising at times +to the rapt vision of a higher life. In the pastoral elegy, such +as <i>Lycidas</i>, the poet was able to escape from a too literal +treatment of the first into a sequence of charming conventions. +The second was alien to Milton's thought, and with his genius +for turning everything to beauty Milton extracts from the +reference to the circumstances of King's death the only touch +of pathos in the poem:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding Seas</p> +<p>Wash far away, where ere thy bones are hurld,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and some of his loveliest allusions:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Where the great vision of the guarded Mount</p> +<p>Looks towards <i>Namancos</i> and <i>Bayona's</i> hold;</p> +<p>Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth.</p> +<p>And, O ye <i>Dolphins</i>, waft the hapless youth.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In the metaphysical elegy as cultivated by Donne, Beaumont, +and others there was no escape from extravagant eulogy and +sorrow by way of pastoral convention and mythological +embroidery, and this class of poetry includes some of the worst +verses ever written. In Donne all three of the strains +referred to are present, but only in the third does he achieve +what can be truly called poetry. In the elegies on Lord +Harington and Miss Boulstred and Lady Markham it is difficult +to say which is more repellent—the images in which the poet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxvii" id="pageii.xxvii"></a>[pg xxvii]</span> +sets forth the vanity of human life and the humiliations of death +or the frigid and blasphemous hyperboles in which the virtues +of the dead are eulogized.</p> + +<p>Even the <i>Second Anniversary</i>, the greatest of Donne's +epicedes, is marred throughout by these faults. There is no +stranger poem in the English language in its combination of +excellences and faults, splendid audacities and execrable +extravagances. 'Fervour of inspiration, depth and force and +glow of thought and emotion and expression'—it has something +of all these high qualities which Swinburne claimed; but +the fervour is in great part misdirected, the emotion only half +sincere, the thought more subtle than profound, the expression +heated indeed but with a heat which only in passages kindles +to the glow of poetry.</p> + +<p>Such are the passages in which the poet contemplates the +joys of heaven. There is nothing more instinct with beautiful +feeling in <i>Lycidas</i> than some of the lines of Apocalyptic +imagery at the close:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>There entertain him all the Saints above,</p> +<p>In solemn troops, and sweet Societies</p> +<p>That sing, and singing in their glory move,</p> +<p>And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But in spiritual sense, in passionate awareness of the transcendent, +there are lines in Donne's poem that seem to me +superior to anything in Milton if not in purity of Christian +feeling, yet in the passionate, mystical sense of the infinite as +something other than the finite, something which no suggestion +of illimitable extent and superhuman power can ever in +any degree communicate.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Think then my soule that death is but a Groome,</p> +<p>Which brings a Taper to the outward roome,</p> +<p>Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,</p> +<p>And after brings it nearer to thy sight:</p> +<p>For such approaches does heaven make in death.</p> +<p class="i4"><big>. . . + . . . + .</big></p> +<p>Up, up my drowsie Soule, where thy new eare</p> +<p>Shall in the Angels songs no discord heere, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In passages like these there is an earnest of the highest note of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxviii" id="pageii.xxviii"></a>[pg xxviii]</span> +spiritual eloquence that Donne was to attain to in his sermons +and last hymns.</p> + +<p>Another aspect of Donne's poetry in the <i>Anniversaries</i>, of +his <i>contemptus mundi</i> and ecstatic vision, connects them more +closely with Tennyson's <i>In Memoriam</i> than Milton's <i>Lycidas</i>. +Like Tennyson, Donne is much concerned with the progress of +science, the revolution which was going on in men's knowledge +of the universe, and its disintegrating effect on accepted beliefs. +To him the new astronomy is as bewildering in its displacement +of the earth and disturbance of a concentric universe as the new +geology was to be to Tennyson with the vistas which it opened +into the infinities of time, the origin and the destiny of man:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The new philosophy calls all in doubt,</p> +<p>The Element of fire is quite put out;</p> +<p>The Sun is lost, and th' earth, and no mans wit</p> +<p>Can well direct him where to look for it.</p> +<p>And freely men confesse that this world's spent,</p> +<p>When in the Planets, and the Firmament</p> +<p>They seeke so many new; they see that this</p> +<p>Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>On Tennyson the effect of a similar dislocation of thought, the +revelation of a Nature which seemed to bring to death and +bring to life through endless ages, careless alike of individual +and type, was religious doubt tending to despair:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O life as futile, then, as frail!</p> +<p class="i4"><big>. . . + . .</big></p> +<p>What hope of answer, or redress?</p> +<p>Behind the veil, behind the veil.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>On Donne the effect was quite the opposite. It was not of +religion he doubted but of science, of human knowledge with +its uncertainties, its shifting theories, its concern about the +unimportant:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Poore soule, in this thy flesh what dost thou know?</p> +<p>Thou know'st thy selfe so little, as thou know'st not,</p> +<p>How thou didst die, nor how thou wast begot.</p> +<p class="i2"><big>. . . . + . . . . + .</big></p> +<p class="i14">Have not all soules thought</p> +<p>For many ages, that our body is wrought</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxix" id="pageii.xxix"></a>[pg xxix]</span> +<p>Of Ayre, and Fire, and other Elements?</p> +<p>And now they thinke of new ingredients;</p> +<p>And one Soule thinkes one, and another way</p> +<p>Another thinkes, and 'tis an even lay.</p> +<p class="i2"><big>. . . . + . . . . + .</big></p> +<p>Wee see in Authors, too stiffe to recant,</p> +<p>A hundred controversies of an Ant;</p> +<p>And yet one watches, starves, freeses, and sweats,</p> +<p>To know but Catechismes and Alphabets</p> +<p>Of unconcerning things, matters of fact;</p> +<p>How others on our stage their parts did Act;</p> +<p>What <i>Cæsar</i> did, yea, and what <i>Cicero</i> said.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>With this welter of shifting theories and worthless facts he +contrasts the vision of which religious faith is the earnest +here:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In this low forme, poore soule, what wilt thou doe?</p> +<p>When wilt thou shake off this Pedantery,</p> +<p>Of being taught by sense, and Fantasie?</p> +<p>Thou look'st through spectacles; small things seeme great</p> +<p>Below; But up unto the watch-towre get,</p> +<p>And see all things despoyl'd of fallacies:</p> +<p>Thou shalt not peepe through lattices of eyes,</p> +<p>Nor heare through Labyrinths of eares, nor learne</p> +<p>By circuit, or collections, to discerne.</p> +<p>In heaven thou straight know'st all concerning it,</p> +<p>And what concernes it not, shalt straight forget.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It will seem to some readers hardly fair to compare a poem +like <i>In Memoriam</i>, which, if in places the staple of its feeling +and thought wears a little thin, is entirely serious throughout, +with poems which have so much the character of an intellectual +<i>tour de force</i> as Donne's <i>Anniversaries</i>, but it is +easy to be unjust to the sincerity of Donne in these poems. +Their extravagant eulogy did not argue any insincerity to +Sir Robert and Lady Drury. It was in the manner of the time, +and doubtless seemed to them as natural an expression of grief +as the elaborate marble and alabaster tomb which they erected +to the memory of their daughter. The <i>Second Anniversarie</i> +was written in France when Donne was resident there with +the Drurys. And it was on this occasion that Donne had the +vision of his absent wife which Walton has related so graphically. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxx" id="pageii.xxx"></a>[pg xxx]</span> +The spiritual sense in Donne was as real a thing as the restless +and unruly wit, or the sensual, passionate temperament. The +main thesis of the poem, the comparative worthlessness of this +life, the transcendence of the spiritual, was as sincere in Donne's +case as was in Tennyson the conviction of the futility of life if +death closes all. It was to be the theme of the finest passages +in his eloquent sermons, the burden of all that is most truly +religious in the verse and prose of a passionate, intellectual, +self-tormenting soul to whom the pure ecstasy of love of +a Vondel, the tender raptures of a Crashaw, the chastened +piety of a Herbert, the mystical perceptions of a Vaughan +could never be quite congenial.</p> + +<p>I have dwelt at some length on those aspects of Donne's +'wit' which are of interest and value even to a reader who +may feel doubtful as to the beauty and interest of his poetry +as such, because they too have been obscured by the criticism +which with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Courthope represents +his wit as a monster of misapplied ingenuity, his interest as +historical and historical only. Apart from poetry there is in +Donne's 'wit' a great deal that is still fresh and vivid, wit as +we understand wit; satire pungent and vivid; reflection on +religion and on life, rugged at times in form but never really +unmusical as Jonson's verse is unmusical, and, despite frequent +carelessness, singularly lucid and felicitous in expression; +elegant compliment, extravagant and grotesque at times but +often subtle and piquant; and in the <i>Anniversaries</i>, amid +much that is both puerile and extravagant, a loftier strain of +impassioned reflection and vision. It is not of course that +these things are not, or may not be constituents of poetry, +made poetic by their handling. To me it seems that in +Donne they generally are. It is the poet in Donne which +flavours them all, touching his wit with fancy, his reflection +with imagination, his vision with passion. But if we wish to +estimate the poet simply in Donne, we must examine his +love-poetry and his religious poetry. It is here that every +one who cares for his unique and arresting genius will admit +that he must stand or fall as a great poet.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxi" id="pageii.xxxi"></a>[pg xxxi]</span></p> + +<p>For it is here that we find the full effect of what De +Quincey points to as Donne's peculiarity, the combination of +dialectical subtlety with weight and force of passion. Objections +to admit the poetic worth and interest of Donne's love-poetry +come from two sides—from those who are indisposed +to admit that passion, and especially the passion of love, can +ever speak so ingeniously (this was the eighteenth-century +criticism); and from those, and these are his more modern critics, +who deny that Donne is a great poet because with rare +exceptions, exceptions rather of occasional lines and phrases +than of whole poems, his songs and elegies lack beauty. Can +poetry be at once passionate and ingenious, sincere in feeling +and witty,—packed with thought, and that subtle and +abstract thought, Scholastic dialectic? Can love-poetry speak +a language which is impassioned and expressive but lacks +beauty, is quite different from the language of Dante and +Petrarch, the loveliest language that lovers ever spoke, or the +picturesque hyperboles of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>? Must not the +imagery and the cadences of love poetry reflect 'l'infinita, +ineffabile bellezza' which is its inspiration?</p> + +<p>The first criticism is put very clearly by Steele, who goes +so far as to exemplify what the style of love-poetry should be; +and certainly it is something entirely different from that of <i>The +Extasie</i> or the <i>Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day</i>. Nothing +could illustrate better the 'return to nature' of our Augustan +literature than Steele's words:</p> + +<blockquote><p> +'I will suppose an author to be really possessed with the +passion which he writes upon and then we shall see how he +would acquit himself. This I take to be the safest way to +form a judgement upon him: since if he be not truly moved, +he must at least work up his imagination as near as possible +to resemble reality. I choose to instance in love, which is +observed to have produced the most finished performances in +this kind. A lover will be full of sincerity, that he may be +believed by his mistress; he will therefore think simply; he will +express himself perspicuously, that he may not perplex her; he +will therefore write unaffectedly. Deep reflections are made +by a head undisturbed; and points of wit and fancy are the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxii" id="pageii.xxxii"></a>[pg xxxii]</span> +work of a heart at ease; these two dangers then into which +poets are apt to run, are effectually removed out of the +lover's way. The selecting proper circumstances, and placing +them in agreeable lights, are the finest secrets of all poetry; +but the recollection of little circumstances is the lover's sole +meditation, and relating them pleasantly, the business of his +life. Accordingly we find that the most celebrated authors of +this rank excel in love-verses. Out of ten thousand instances +I shall name one which I think the most delicate and tender +I ever saw. +</p></blockquote> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To myself I sigh often, without knowing why;</p> +<p>And when absent from Phyllis methinks I could die.</p> + </div> </div> + +<blockquote><p> +A man who hath ever been in love will be touched by the +reading of these lines; and everyone who now feels that +passion, actually feels that they are true.' +</p></blockquote> + +<p>It is not possible to find so distinct a statement of the other +view to which I have referred, but I could imagine it coming +from Mr. Robert Bridges, or (since I have no authority to +quote Mr. Bridges in this connexion) from an admirer of +his beautiful poetry. Mr. Bridges' love-poetry is far indeed +from the vapid naturalness which Steele commended in <i>The +Guardian</i>. It is as instinct with thought, and subtle thought, +as Donne's own poetry; but the final effect of his poetry is +beauty, emotion recollected in tranquillity, and recollected +especially in order to fix its delicate beauty in appropriate +and musical words:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!</p> +<p>The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,</p> +<p>It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake</p> +<p>The o'ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake!</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee;</p> +<p>Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee,</p> +<p>Already they watch the path thy feet shall take:</p> +<p>Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>And if thou tarry from her,—if this could be,—</p> +<p>She cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee;</p> +<p>For thee would unashamed herself forsake:</p> +<p>Awake to be loved, my heart, awake, awake!</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxiii" id="pageii.xxxiii"></a>[pg xxxiii]</span> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Awake, the land is scattered with light, and see,</p> +<p>Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree:</p> +<p>And blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake;</p> +<p>Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Lo all things wake and tarry and look for thee:</p> +<p>She looketh and saith, 'O sun, now bring him to me.</p> +<p>Come more adored, O adored, for his coming's sake,</p> +<p>And awake my heart to be loved: awake, awake!'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne has written nothing at once so subtle and so pure and +lovely as this, nothing the end and aim of which is so entirely +to leave an untroubled impression of beauty.</p> + +<p>But it is not true either that the thought and imagery of +love-poetry must be of the simple, obvious kind which Steele +supposes, that any display of dialectical subtlety, any scintillation +of wit, must be fatal to the impression of sincerity and +feeling, or on the other hand that love is always a beautiful +emotion naturally expressing itself in delicate and beautiful +language. To some natures love comes as above all things +a force quickening the mind, intensifying its purely intellectual +energy, opening new vistas of thought abstract and subtle, +making the soul 'intensely, wondrously alive'. Of such were +Donne and Browning. A love-poem like 'Come into the +garden, Maud' suspends thought and fills the mind with a +succession of picturesque and voluptuous images in harmony +with the dominant mood. A poem such as <i>The Anniversarie</i> +or <i>The Extasie</i>, <i>The Last Ride Together</i> or <i>Too Late</i>, +is a record of intense, rapid thinking, expressed in the simplest, +most appropriate language—and it is a no whit less natural +utterance of passion. Even the abstractness of the thought, on +which Mr. Courthope lays so much stress in speaking of Donne +and the 'metaphysicals' generally, is no necessary implication of +want of feeling. It has been said of St. Augustine 'that his +most profound thoughts regarding the first and last things +arose out of prayer ... concentration of his whole being in +prayer led to the most abstract observation'. So it may be +with love-poetry—so it was with Dante in the <i>Vita Nuova</i>, and +so, on a lower scale, and allowing for the time that the passion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxiv" id="pageii.xxxiv"></a>[pg xxxiv]</span> +is a more earthly and sensual one, the thought more capricious +and unruly, with Donne. The <i>Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day</i> +is not less passionate because that passion finds expression in +abstract and subtle thought. Nor is it true that all love-poetry +is beautiful. Of none of the four poems I have mentioned in +the last paragraph is pure beauty, beauty such as is the note of +Mr. Bridges' song, the distinctive quality. It is rather vivid +realism:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And alive I shall keep and long, you will see!</p> +<p class="i2">I knew a man, was kicked like a dog</p> +<p>From gutter to cesspool; what cared he</p> +<p class="i2">So long as he picked from the filth his prog?</p> +<p>He saw youth, beauty and genius die,</p> +<p class="i2">And jollily lived to his hundredth year.</p> +<p>But I will live otherwise: none of such life!</p> +<p class="i2">At once I begin as I mean to end.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But this sacrifice of beauty to dramatic vividness is a characteristic +of passionate poetry. Beauty is not precisely the +quality we should predicate of the burning lines of Sappho +translated by Catullus:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus</p> +<p>flamma demanat, sonitu suopte</p> +<p>tintinant aures geminae, teguntur</p> +<p class="i2">lumina nocte.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Beauty is the quality of poetry which records an ideal passion +recollected in tranquillity, rather than of poetry either dramatic +or lyric which utters the very movement and moment of +passion itself.</p> + +<p>Donne's love-poetry is a very complex phenomenon, but the +two dominant strains in it are just these: the strain of dialectic, +subtle play of argument and wit, erudite and fantastic; and the +strain of vivid realism, the record of a passion which is not +ideal nor conventional, neither recollected in tranquillity nor a +pure product of literary fashion, but love as an actual, immediate +experience in all its moods, gay and angry, scornful and +rapturous with joy, touched with tenderness and darkened with +sorrow—though these last two moods, the commonest in love-poetry, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxv" id="pageii.xxxv"></a>[pg xxxv]</span> +are with Donne the rarest. The first of these strains +comes to Donne from the Middle Ages, the dialectic of the +Schools, which passed into mediaeval love-poetry almost from +its inception; the second is the expression of the new temper +of the Renaissance as Donne had assimilated it in Latin countries. +Donne uses the method, the dialectic of the mediaeval love-poets, +the poets of the <i>dolce stil nuovo</i>, Guinicelli, Cavalcanti, +Dante, and their successors, the intellectual, argumentative +evolution of their <i>canzoni</i>, but he uses it to express a temper +of mind and a conception of love which are at the opposite pole +from their lofty idealism. The result, however, is not so entirely +disintegrating as Mr. Courthope seems to think: 'This fine +Platonic edifice is ruthlessly demolished in the poetry of Donne. +To him love, in its infinite variety and inconsistency, represented +the principle of perpetual flux in nature.'<a id="footnotetagi1" name="footnotetagi1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotei1"><sup>1</sup></a> The truth is rather +that, owing to the fullness of Donne's experience as a lover, the +accident that made of the earlier libertine a devoted lover and +husband, and from the play of his restless and subtle mind on the +phenomenon of love conceived and realized in this less ideal +fashion, there emerged in his poetry the suggestion of a new +philosophy of love which, if less transcendental than that +of Dante, rests on a juster, because a less dualistic and ascetic, +conception of the nature of the love of man and woman.</p> + +<p>The fundamental weakness of the mediaeval doctrine of love, +despite its refining influence and its exaltation of woman, was +that it proved unable to justify love ethically against the claims +of the counter-ideal of asceticism. Taking its rise in a relationship +which excluded the thought of marriage as the end and +justification of love, which presumed in theory that the relation +of the 'servant' to his lady must always be one of reverent and +unrewarded service, this poetry found itself involved from the +beginning in a dualism from which there was no escape. On +the one hand the love of woman is the great ennobler of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxvi" id="pageii.xxxvi"></a>[pg xxxvi]</span> +human heart, the influence which elicits its latent virtue as the +sun converts clay to gold and precious stones. On the other +hand, love is a passion which in the end is to be repented of in +sackcloth and ashes. Lancelot is the knight whom love has +made perfect in all the virtues of manhood and chivalry; but +the vision of the Holy Grail is not for him, but for the virgin and +stainless Sir Galahad.</p> + +<p>In the high philosophy of the Tuscan poets of the 'sweet +new style' that dualism was apparently transcended, but it was +by making love identical with religion, by emptying it of +earthly passion, making woman an Angel, a pure Intelligence, +love of whom is the first awakening of the love of God. +'For Dante and the poets of the learned school love and virtue +were one and the same thing; love <i>was</i> religion, the lady +beloved the way to heaven, symbol of philosophy and finally +of theology.'<a id="footnotetagi2" name="footnotetagi2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotei2"><sup>2</sup></a> The culminating moment in Dante's love for +Beatrice arrives when he has overcome even the desire that she +should return his salutation and he finds his full beatitude in +'those words that do praise my lady'. The love that begins in +the <i>Vita Nuova</i> is completed in the <i>Paradiso</i>.</p> + +<p>The dualism thus in appearance transcended by Dante +reappears sharply and distinctly in Petrarch. 'Petrarch', says +Gaspary, 'adores not the idea but the person of his lady; he +feels that in his affections there is an earthly element, he cannot +separate it from the desire of the senses; this is the earthly +tegument which draws us down. If not as, according to the +ascetic doctrine, sin, if he could not be ashamed of his passion, +yet he could repent of it as a vain and frivolous thing, regret +his wasted hopes and griefs.'<a id="footnotetagi3" name="footnotetagi3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotei3"><sup>3</sup></a> Laura is for Petrarch the flower +of all perfection herself and the source of every virtue in her +lover. Yet his love for Laura is a long and weary aberration +of the soul from her true goal, which is the love of God. This +is the contradiction from which flow some of the most lyrical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxvii" id="pageii.xxxvii"></a>[pg xxxvii]</span> +strains in Petrarch's poetry, as the fine canzone 'I'vo pensando', +where he cries:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>E sento ad ora ad or venirmi in core</p> +<p>Un leggiadro disdegno, aspro e severo,</p> +<p>Ch'ogni occulto pensero</p> +<p>Tira in mezzo la fronte, ov' altri 'l vede;</p> +<p>Che mortal cosa amar con tanta fede,</p> +<p>Quanta a Dio sol per debito convensi,</p> +<p>Più si disdice a chi più pregio brama.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Elizabethan love-poetry is descended from Petrarch by way +of Cardinal Bembo and the French poets of the <i>Pléiade</i>, notably +Ronsard and Desportes. Of all the Elizabethan sonneteers +the most finely Petrarchian are Sidney and Spenser, especially +the former. For Sidney, Stella is the school of virtue and +nobility. He too writes at times in the impatient strain of +Petrarch:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But ah! Desire still cries, give me some food.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And in the end both Sidney and Spenser turn from earthly to +heavenly love:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Leave me, O love, which reachest but to dust,</p> +<p>And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things:</p> +<p>Grow rich in that which never taketh rust,</p> +<p>Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And so Spenser:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Many lewd lays (Ah! woe is me the more)</p> +<p>In praise of that mad fit, which fools call love,</p> +<p>I have in the heat of youth made heretofore;</p> +<p>That in light wits affection loose did move,</p> +<p>But all these follies now I do reprove.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But two things had come over this idealist and courtly +love-poetry by the end of the sixteenth century. It had become +a literary artifice, a refining upon outworn and extravagant +conceits, losing itself at times in the fantastic and absurd. +A more important fact was that this poetry had begun to +absorb a new warmth and spirit, not from Petrarch and mediaeval +chivalry, but from classical love-poetry with its simpler, +less metaphysical strain, its equally intense but more realistic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxviii" id="pageii.xxxviii"></a>[pg xxxviii]</span> +description of passion, its radically different conception of the +relation between the lovers and of the influence of love in +a man's life. The courtly, idealistic strain was crossed by an +Epicurean and sensuous one that tends to treat with scorn the +worship of woman, and echoes again and again the Pagan cry, +never heard in Dante or Petrarch, of the fleetingness of beauty +and love:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus!</p> +<p class="i4">Soles occidere et redire possunt:</p> +<p class="i4">Nobis quum semel occidit brevis lux</p> +<p class="i4">Nox est perpetua una dormienda.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Vivez si m'en croyez, n'attendez à demain;</p> +<p class="i4">Cueillez dès aujourd'hui les roses de la vie.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,</p> +<p>But sad mortality o'er-sways their power,</p> +<p>How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea</p> +<p>Whose action is no stronger than a flower?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Now if we turn from Elizabethan love-poetry to the <i>Songs +and Sonets</i> and the <i>Elegies</i> of Donne, we find at once two +distinguishing features. In the first place his poetry is in one +respect less classical than theirs. There is far less in it of the +superficial evidence of classical learning with which the poetry +of the 'University Wits' abounds, pastoral and mythological +imagery. The texture of his poetry is more mediaeval than +theirs in as far as it is more dialectical, though a dialectical +evolution is not infrequent in the Elizabethan sonnet, and the +imagery is less picturesque, more scientific, philosophic, +realistic, and homely. The place of the</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">goodly exiled train</p> +<p>Of gods and goddesses</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is taken by images drawn from all the sciences of the day, from +the definitions and distinctions of the Schoolmen, from the +travels and speculations of the new age, and (as in Shakespeare's +tragedies or Browning's poems) from the experiences +of everyday life. Maps and sea discoveries, latitude and +longitude, the phoenix and the mandrake's root, the Scholastic +theories of Angelic bodies and Angelic knowledge, Alchemy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xxxix" id="pageii.xxxix"></a>[pg xxxix]</span> +and Astrology, legal contracts and <i>non obstantes</i>, 'late +schoolboys and sour prentices,' 'the king's real and his +stamped face'—these are the kind of images, erudite, fanciful, +and homely, which give to Donne's poems a texture so different +at a first glance from the florid and diffuse Elizabethan poetry, +whether romantic epic, mythological idyll, sonnet, or song; +while by their presence and their abundance they distinguish +it equally (as Mr. Gosse has justly insisted) from the studiously +moderate and plain style of 'well-languaged Daniel'.</p> + +<p>But if the imagery of Donne's poetry be less classical than +that of Marlowe or the younger Shakespeare there is no poet +the spirit of whose love-poetry is so classical, so penetrated +with the sensual, realistic, scornful tone of the Latin lyric +and elegiac poets. If one reads rapidly through the three +books of Ovid's <i>Amores</i>, and then in the same continuous +rapid fashion the <i>Songs</i> and the <i>Elegies</i> of Donne, one will +note striking differences of style and treatment. Ovid develops +his theme simply and concretely, Donne dialectically and +abstractly. There is little of the ease and grace of Ovid's +verses in the rough and vehement lines of Donne's <i>Elegies</i>. +Compare the song,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>with the famous thirteenth Elegy of the first book,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,</p> +<p class="i2">Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Ovid passes from one natural and simple thought to another, +from one aspect of dawn to another equally objective. Donne +just touches one or two of the same features, borrowing them +doubtless from Ovid, but the greater part of the song is devoted +to the subtle and extravagant, if you like, but not the less +passionate development of the thought that for him the woman +he loves is the whole world.</p> + +<p>But if the difference between Donne's metaphysical conceits +and Ovid's naturalness and simplicity is palpable it is not less +clear that the emotions which they express, with some important +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xl" id="pageii.xl"></a>[pg xl]</span> +exceptions to which I shall recur, are identical. The love +which is the main burden of their song is something very +different from the ideal passion of Dante or of Petrarch, of +Sidney or Spenser. It is a more sensual passion. The same +tone of witty depravity runs through the work of the two poets. +There is in Donne a purer strain which, we shall see directly, +is of the greatest importance, but such a rapid reader as I am +contemplating might be forgiven if for the moment he overlooked +it, and declared that the modern poet was as sensual +and depraved as the ancient, that there was little to choose +between the social morality reflected in the Elizabethan and in +the Augustan poet.</p> + +<p>And yet even in these more cynical and sensual poems +a careful reader will soon detect a difference between Donne +and Ovid. He will begin to suspect that the English poet is +imitating the Roman, and that the depravity is in part a reflected +depravity. In revolt from one convention the young poet is +cultivating another, a cynicism and sensuality which is just as +little to be taken <i>au pied de la lettre</i> as the idealizing worship, +the anguish and adoration of the sonneteers. There is, as has +been said already, a gaiety in the poems elaborating the thesis +that love is a perpetual flux, fickleness the law of its being, +which warns us against taking them too seriously; and even +those <i>Elegies</i> which seem to our taste most reprehensible are +aerated by a wit which makes us almost forget their indecency. +In the last resort there is all the difference in the world between +the untroubled, heartless sensuality of the Roman poet and the +gay wit, the paradoxical and passionate audacities and sensualities +of the young Elizabethan law-student impatient of an +unreal convention, and eager to startle and delight his fellow +students by the fertility and audacity of his wit.</p> + +<p>It is not of course my intention to represent Donne's love-poetry +as purely an 'evaporation' of wit, to suggest that there +is in it no reflection either of his own life as a young man or +the moral atmosphere of Elizabethan London. It would be +a much less interesting poetry if this were so. Donne has +pleaded guilty to a careless and passionate youth:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xli" id="pageii.xli"></a>[pg xli]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In mine Idolatry what showres of raine</p> +<p>Mine eyes did waste? what griefs my heart did rent?</p> +<p>That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent;</p> +<p>Cause I did suffer I must suffer pain.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>From what we know of the lives of Essex, Raleigh, +Southampton, Pembroke, and others it is probable that Donne's +<i>Elegies</i> come quite as close to the truth of life as Sidney's +Petrarchianism or Spenser's Platonism. The later cantos +of <i>The Faerie Queene</i> reflect vividly the unchaste loves and +troubled friendships of Elizabeth's Court. Whether we can +accept in its entirety the history of Donne's early amours +which Mr. Gosse has gathered from the poems or not, there +can be no doubt that actual experiences do lie behind these +poems as behind Shakespeare's sonnets. In the one case as in +the other, to recognize a literary model is not to exclude the +probability of a source in actual experience.</p> + +<p>But however we may explain or palliate the tone of these +poems it is impossible to deny their power, the vivid and +packed force with which they portray a variously mooded +passion working through a swift and subtle brain. If there is +little of the elegant and accomplished art which Milton admired +in the Latin Elegiasts while he 'deplored' their immorality, +there is more strength and sincerity both of thought and +imagination. The brutal cynicism of</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Fond woman which would have thy husband die,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>the witty anger of <i>The Apparition</i>, the mordant and +paradoxical wit of <i>The Perfume</i> and <i>The Bracelet</i>, the +passionate dignity and strength of <i>His Picture</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>My body a sack of bones broken within,</p> +<p>And powders blew stains scatter'd on my skin,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>the passion that rises superior to sensuality and wit, and takes +wing into a more spiritual and ideal atmosphere, of <i>His parting +from her</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I will not look upon the quick'ning Sun,</p> +<p>But straight her beauty to my sense shall run;</p> +<p>The ayre shall note her soft, the fire most pure;</p> +<p>Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure—</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlii" id="pageii.xlii"></a>[pg xlii]</span> +compare these with Ovid and the difference is apparent +between an artistic, witty voluptuary and a poet whose +passionate force redeems many errors of taste and art. Compare +them with the sonnets and mythological idylls and +<i>Heroicall Epistles</i> of the Elizabethans and it is they, not Donne, +who are revealed as witty and 'fantastic' poets content to +adorn a conventional sentiment with mythological fancies and +verbal conceits. Donne's interest is his theme, love and woman, +and he uses words not for their own sake but to communicate +his consciousness of these surprising phenomena in all their +varying and conflicting aspects. The only contemporary +poems that have the same dramatic quality are Shakespeare's +sonnets and some of Drayton's later sonnets. In Shakespeare +this dramatic intensity and variety is of course united with +a rarer poetic charm. Charm is a quality which Donne's +poetry possesses in a few single lines. But to the passion +which animates these sensual, witty, troubled poems the closest +parallel is to be sought in Shakespeare's sonnets to a dark +lady and in some of the verses written by Catullus to or of +Lesbia:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor +scorn and anger, is the dominant note in Donne's love-poetry. +Of the last quality there is, despite the sardonic emphasis of +some of the poems, less than in either Shakespeare or Catullus. +There is nothing in his poetry which speaks so poignantly of +an outraged heart, a love lavished upon one who was worthless, +as some of Shakespeare's sonnets and of Catullus's poems. +The finest note in Donne's love-poetry is the note of joy, +the joy of mutual and contented passion. His heart might be +subtle to plague itself; its capacity for joy is even more +obvious. Other poets have done many things which Donne +could not do. They have invested their feelings with a garb +of richer and sweeter poetry. They have felt more deeply +and finely the reverence which is in the heart of love. But it +is only in the fragments of Sappho, the lyrics of Catullus, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xliii" id="pageii.xliii"></a>[pg xliii]</span> +the songs of Burns that one will find the sheer joy of loving +and being loved expressed in the same direct and simple +language as in some of Donne's songs, only in Browning that +one will find the same simplicity of feeling combined with +a like swift and subtle dialectic.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I wonder by my troth what thou and I</p> +<p>Did till we loved.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">If yet I have not all thy love,</p> +<p>Deare, I shall never have it all.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Lines like these have the same direct, passionate quality as</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><ins title="Greek: phainetai moi kênos isos theoisin">φαίνεταί +μοι κῆνος ἴσος +θέοισιν</ins></p> +<p><ins title="Greek: emmen ônêr">ἔμμεν ὤνηρ</ins></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O my love's like a red, red rose</p> +<p class="i2">That's newly sprung in June.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The joy is as intense though it is of a more spiritual and +intellectual quality. And in the other notes of this simple +passionate love-poetry, sorrow which is the shadow of joy, and +tenderness, Donne does not fall far short of Burns in intensity +of feeling and directness of expression. These notes are not +so often heard in Donne, but</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So, so break off this last lamenting kiss</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is of the same quality as</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Had we never lov'd sae kindly</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Take, O take those lips away.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And strangest of all perhaps is the tenderness which came +into Donne's poetry when a sincere passion quickened in his +heart, for tenderness, the note of</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O wert thou in the cauld blast,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is the last quality one would look for in the poetry of a nature +at once so intellectual and with such a capacity for caustic +satire. But the beautiful if not flawless <i>Elegy XVI</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>By our first strange and fatal interview,</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xliv" id="pageii.xliv"></a>[pg xliv]</span> +and the <i>Valedictions</i> which he wrote on different occasions +of parting from his wife, combine with the peculiar +<i>élan</i> of all Donne's passionate poetry and its intellectual content +a tenderness as perfect as anything in Burns or in Browning:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">O more than Moone,</p> +<p>Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,</p> +<p>Weepe me not dead in thine armes, but forbeare</p> +<p>To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Let not thy divining heart</p> +<p class="i4">Forethink me any ill,</p> +<p class="i2">Destiny may take thy part</p> +<p class="i4">And may thy feares fulfill;</p> +<p class="i6">But thinke that we</p> +<p>Are but turn'd aside to sleep;</p> +<p>They who one another keepe</p> +<p class="i4">Alive, ne'er parted be.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Such wilt thou be to mee, who must</p> +<p class="i2">Like th' other foot, obliquely runne;</p> +<p>Thy firmnes makes my circle just,</p> +<p class="i2">And makes me end, where I begunne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The poet who wrote such verses as these did not believe any +longer that 'love ... represents the principle of perpetual flux +in nature'.</p> + +<p>But Donne's poetry is not so simple a thing of the heart and +of the senses as that of Burns and Catullus. Even his purer +poetry has more complex moods—consider <i>The Prohibition</i>—and +it is metaphysical, not only in the sense of being erudite and +witty, but in the proper sense of being reflective and philosophical. +Donne is always conscious of the import of his moods; +and so it is that there emerges from his poems a philosophy or +a suggested philosophy of love to take the place of the idealism +which he rejects. Set a song of the joy of love by Burns or by +Catullus such as I have cited beside Donne's <i>Anniversarie</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">All Kings, and all their favorites,</p> +<p class="i6">All glory of honors, beauties, wits,</p> +<p>The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe,</p> +<p class="i6">Is elder by a year, now, than it was</p> +<p>When thou and I first one another saw,</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlv" id="pageii.xlv"></a>[pg xlv]</span> +and the difference is at once apparent. Burns gets no further +than the experience, Catullus than the obvious and hedonistic +reflection that time is flying, the moment of pleasure short. In +Donne's poem one feels the quickening of the brain, the vision +extending its range, the passion gathering sweep with the +expanding rhythms, and from the mind thus heated and +inspired emerges, not a cry that time might stay its course,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Lente, lente currite noctis equi,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>but a clearer consciousness of the eternal significance of love, +not the love that aspires after the unattainable, but the love +that unites contented hearts. The method of the poet is, +I suppose, too dialectical to be popular, for the poem is in few +Anthologies. It may be that the Pagan and Christian strains +which the poet unites are not perfectly blended—if it is possible +to do so—but to me it seems that the joy of love has never +been expressed at once with such intensity and such elevation.</p> + +<p>And it is with sorrow as with joy. There is the same +difference of manner in the expression between Donne and +these poets, and the deepest thought is the same. The <i>Nocturnall +on S. Lucies Day</i> is at the opposite pole of Donne's +thought from the <i>Anniversarie</i>, and compared with</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Had we never loved sae kindly</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Take, O take those lips away,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>both the feeling and its expression are metaphysical. But the +passion is felt through the subtle and fantastic web of dialectic; +and the thought from which the whole springs is the emptiness +of life without love.</p> + +<p>What, then, is the philosophy which disengages itself from +Donne's love-poetry studied in its whole compass? It seems +to me that it is more than a purely negative one, that +consciously or unconsciously he sets over against the abstract +idealism, the sharp dualism of the Middle Ages, a justification +of love as a natural passion in the human heart the +meaning and end of which is marriage. The sensuality and +exaggerated cynicism of so much of the poetry of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlvi" id="pageii.xlvi"></a>[pg xlvi]</span> +Renaissance was a reaction from courtly idealism and +mediaeval asceticism. But a mere reaction could lead no-whither. +There are no steps which lead only backward in +the history of human thought and feeling. Poems like +Donne's <i>Elegies</i>, like Shakespeare's <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, like +Marlowe's <i>Hero and Leander</i> could only end in penitent outcries +like those of Sidney and Spenser and of Donne himself. +The true escape from courtly or ascetic idealism was a poetry +which should do justice to love as a passion in which body and +soul alike have their part, and of which there is no reason to +repent.</p> + +<p>And this with all its imperfections Donne's love-poetry is. +It was not for nothing that Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary +made a runaway match for love. For Dante the poet, his wife +did not exist. In love of his wife Donne found the meaning +and the infinite value of love. In later days he might bewail +his 'idolatry of profane mistresses'; he never repented of +having loved. Between his most sensual and his most +spiritual love-songs there is no cleavage such as separates +natural love from Dante's love of Beatrice, who is in the end +Theology. The passion that burns in Donne's most outspoken +elegies, and wantons in the <i>Epithalamia</i>, is not cast +out in <i>The Anniversarie</i> or <i>The Canonization</i>, but absorbed. +It is purified and enriched by being brought into harmony +with his whole nature, spiritual as well as physical. It has +lost the exclusive consciousness of itself which is lust, and +become merged in an entire affection, as a turbid and discoloured +stream is lost in the sea.</p> + +<p>This justification of natural love as fullness of joy and life is +the deepest thought in Donne's love-poems, far deeper and +sincerer than the Platonic conceptions of the affinity and +identity of souls with which he plays in some of the verses +addressed to Mrs. Herbert. The nearest approach that he +makes to anything like a reasoned statement of the thought +latent rather than expressed in <i>The Anniversarie</i> is in <i>The +Extasie</i>, a poem which, like the <i>Nocturnall</i>, only Donne could +have written. Here with the same intensity of feeling, and in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlvii" id="pageii.xlvii"></a>[pg xlvii]</span> +the same abstract, dialectical, erudite strain he emphasizes the +interdependence of soul and body:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As our blood labours to beget</p> +<p class="i2">Spirits, as like soules as it can,</p> +<p>Because such fingers need to knit</p> +<p class="i2">That subtile knot, which makes us man:</p> +<p>So must pure lovers soules descend</p> +<p class="i2">T'affections, and to faculties,</p> +<p>Which sense may reach and apprehend,</p> +<p class="i2"><i>Else a great Prince in prison lies</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It may be that Donne has not entirely succeeded in what he +here attempts. There hangs about the poem just a suspicion +of the conventional and unreal Platonism of the seventeenth +century. In attempting to state and vindicate the relation of +soul and body he falls perhaps inevitably into the appearance, +at any rate, of the dualism which he is trying to transcend. +He places them over against each other as separate entities +and the lower bulks unduly. In love, says Pascal, the body +disappears from sight in the intellectual and spiritual passion +which it has kindled. That is what happens in <i>The +Anniversarie</i>, not altogether in <i>The Extasie</i>. Yet no poem +makes one realize more fully what Jonson meant by calling +Donne 'the first poet in the world for some things'. 'I should +never find any fault with metaphysical poems,' is Coleridge's +judgement, 'if they were all like this or but half as +excellent.'</p> + +<p>It was only the force of Donne's personality that could +achieve even an approximate harmony of elements so divergent +as are united in his love-verses, that could master the +lower-natured steed that drew the chariot of his troubled and +passionate soul and make it subservient to his yoke-fellow of +purer strain who is a lover of honour, and modesty, and +temperance, and the follower of true glory. In the work of +his followers, who were many, though they owed allegiance to +Jonson also, the lower elements predominated. The strain of +metaphysical love-poetry in the seventeenth century with its +splendid <i>élan</i> and sonorous cadence is in general Epicurean +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlviii" id="pageii.xlviii"></a>[pg xlviii]</span> +and witty. It is only now and again—in Marvell, perhaps in +Herrick's</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Bid me to live, and I will live,</p> +<p class="i2">Thy Protestant to be,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>certainly in Rochester's songs, in</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>An age in her embraces past</p> +<p class="i2">Would seem a winter's day,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or the unequalled:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>When wearied with a world of woe</p> +<p class="i2">To thy safe bosom I retire,</p> +<p>Where love, and peace, and truth does flow,</p> +<p class="i2">May I contented there expire,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>that the accents of the <i>heart</i> are clearly audible, that passion +prevails over Epicurean fancy or cynical wit. On the other +hand, the idealism of seventeenth-century poetry and romances, +the Platonism of the Hôtel de Rambouillet that one finds in +Habington's <i>Castara</i>, in Kenelm Digby's <i>Private Memoirs</i>, +in the French romances of chivalry and their imitations in +English is the silliest, because the emptiest, that ever masqueraded +as such in any literature, at any period. A sensual and +cynical flippancy on the one hand, a passionless, mannered +idealism on the other, led directly to that thinly veiled +contempt of women which is so obvious in the satirical essays +of Addison and Pope's <i>Rape of the Lock</i>.</p> + +<p>But there was one poet who meditated on the same problem +as Donne, who felt like him the power and greatness of love, +and like him could not accept a doctrine of love which seemed +to exclude or depreciate marriage. In 1640, just before his +marriage, as rash in its way as Donne's but less happy in +the issue, Milton, defending his character against accusations +of immorality, traced the development of his thought about love. +The passage, in <i>An Apology against a Pamphlet called +'A Modest Confutation'</i>, &c., has been taken as having a +reference to the <i>Paradise Lost</i>. But Milton rather seems at +the time to have been meditating a work like the <i>Vita Nuova</i> +or a romance like that of Tasso in which love was to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xlix" id="pageii.xlix"></a>[pg xlix]</span> +a motive as well as religion, for the whole theme of his +thought is love, true love and its mysterious link with chastity, +of which, however, 'marriage is no defilement'. In the +arrogance of his youthful purity Milton would doubtless have +looked with scorn or loathing on the <i>Elegies</i> and the more careless +of Donne's songs. But perhaps pride is a greater enemy +of love than such faults of sense as Donne in his passionate +youth was guilty of, and from which Dante by his own +evidence was not exempt. Whatever be the cause—pride, +and the disappointment of his marriage, and political polemic—Milton +never wrote any English love-poetry, except it be +the one sonnet on the death of the wife who might have opened +the sealed wells of his heart; and some want of the experience +which love brought to Dante has dimmed the splendour of the +great poem in which he undertook to justify the ways of God +to men. Donne is not a Milton, but he sounded some notes +which touch the soul and quicken the intellect in a way that +Milton's magnificent and intense but somewhat hard and +objective art fails to achieve.</p> + +<p>That the simpler and purer, the more ideal and tender of +Donne's love-poems were the expression of his love for Ann +More cannot of course be proved in the case of each individual +poem, for all Donne's verses have come to us (with a few +unimportant exceptions) undated and unarranged. But the +general thesis, that it was a great experience which purified and +elevated Donne's poetry, receives a striking confirmation from +the better-known history of his devotional poetry. Here too +wit, often tortured wit, fancy, and the heat which Donne's wit +was always able to generate, would have been all his verse had +to show but for the great sorrow which struck him down +in 1617 and gave to his subsequent sonnets and hymns a +sincerer and profounder note, his imagery a more magnificent +quality, his rhythms a more sonorous music.</p> + +<p>Donne was not by nature a devotional poet in the same way +and to the same degree as Giles Fletcher or Herbert or +Crashaw. It was a sound enough instinct which, despite his +religious upbringing and his wide and serious interest in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.l" id="pageii.l"></a>[pg l]</span> +theological questions, made him hesitate to cross the threshold +of the ministry and induced him to seek rather for some such +public service as fell to the lot of his friend Wotton. It was +not, I think, the transition from the Roman to the Anglican +Church which was the obstacle. I have tried to describe what +seems to me to have been the path of enlightenment which +opened the way for him to a change which on every ground of +prudence and ambition was desirable and natural. But to +conform, and even to take a part as a free-lance in theological +controversy was one thing, to enter the ministry another. +When this was pressed upon him by Morton or by the King +it brought him into conflict with something deeper and more +fundamental than theological doctrines, namely, a temperament +which was rather that of the Renaissance than that +either of Puritan England or of the Counter-Reformation, +whether in Catholic countries or in the Anglican Church—the +temperament of Raleigh and Bacon rather than of Milton +or Herbert or Crashaw.</p> + +<p>The simple way of describing Donne's difficulty is Walton's, +according to whom Donne shrank from entering the ministry +for fear the notorious irregularities of his early years should +bring discredit on the sacred calling. But there was more in +Donne's life than a youth of pleasure, an old age of prayers. +It is not the case that all which was best and most serious in +Donne's nature led him towards Holy Orders. In his earliest +satires and even in his 'love-song weeds' there is evidence +enough of an earnest, candid soul underneath the extravagances +of wit and youthful sensuality. Donne's mind was naturally +serious and religious; it was not naturally devout or ascetic, +but worldly and ambitious. But to enter the ministry was, for +Donne and for all the serious minds of his age, to enter a +profession for which the essential qualifications were a devotional +and an ascetic life. The country clergy of the Anglican +Church were often careless and scandalous livers before Laud +took in hand the discipline of the Church; but her bishops and +most eminent divines, though they might be courtly and +sycophantic, were with few exceptions men of devout and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.li" id="pageii.li"></a>[pg li]</span> +ascetic life. When Donne finally crossed the Rubicon, convinced +that from the King no promotion was to be hoped for +in any other line of life, it was rather with the deliberate +resolution that he would make his life a model of devotion and +ascetic self-denial than as one drawn by an irresistible attraction +or impelled by a controlling sense of duty to such a life. Donne +was no St. Augustine whose transition from libertinism to +saintliness came entirely from within. The noblest feature of +Donne's earlier clerical life was the steadfast spirit in which he +set himself to realize the highest ideals of the calling he had +chosen, and the candour with which he accepted the contrast +between his present position and his earlier life, leaving to +whosoever wished to judge while he followed the path of duty +and penitence.</p> + +<p>But such a spirit will not easily produce great devotional +poetry. There are qualities in the religious poetry of simpler +and purer souls to which Donne seldom or never attains. The +natural love of God which overflows the pages of the great +mystics, which dilates the heart and the verses of a poet like +the Dutchman Vondel, the ardour and tenderness of Crashaw, +the chaste, pure piety and penitence of Herbert, the love from +which devotion and ascetic self-denial come unbidden—to these +Donne never attained. The high and passionate joy of <i>The +Anniversary</i> is not heard in his sonnets or hymns. Effort +is the note which predominates—the effort to realize the +majesty of God, the heinousness of sin, the terrors of Hell, the +mercy of Christ. Some of the very worst traits in Donne's +mind are brought out in his religious writing. <i>The Essays on +Divinity</i> are an extraordinary revelation of his accumulations +of useless Scholastic erudition, and his capacity to perform feats +of ingenious deduction from traditional and accepted premises. +To compare these freakish deductions from the theory of +verbal inspiration with the luminous sense of the <i>Tractatus +Theologico-Politicus</i> is to realize how much rationalism was +doing in the course of the century for the emancipation and +healing of the human intellect. Some of the poems, and those +the earliest written, before Donne had actually taken Orders, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lii" id="pageii.lii"></a>[pg lii]</span> +are not much more than exercises in these theological subtleties, +poems such as that <i>On the Annunciation and Passion falling +in the same year</i> (1608), <i>The Litany</i> (1610), <i>Good-Friday</i> +(1613), and <i>The Cross</i> (<i>c.</i> 1615) are characteristic examples +of Donne's intense and imaginative wit employed on traditional +topics of Catholic devotion to which no change of Church ever +made him indifferent. Donne never ignored in his sermons +the gulf that separated the Anglican from the Roman Church, +or the link that bound her to the Protestant Churches of the +Continent. 'Our great protestant divines' are one of his +courts of appeal, and included Luther and Calvin of whom he +never speaks but with the deepest respect. But he was unwilling +to sacrifice to a fanatical puritanism any element of +Catholic devotion which was capable of an innocent interpretation. +His language is guarded and perhaps not always +consistent, but it would not be difficult to show from his +sermons and prose-writings that many of the most distinctively +Catholic tenets were treated by him with the utmost tenderness.</p> + +<p>But, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, the sincerest and profoundest +of Donne's devotional poetry dates from the death of +his wife. The loss of her who had purified and sweetened his +earliest love songs lent a new and deeper <i>timbre</i> to the sonnets +and lyrics in which he contemplates the great topics of personal +religion,—sin, death, the Judgement, and throws himself on the +mercy of God as revealed in Christ. The seven sonnets entitled +<i>La Corona</i> have been generally attributed to this period, +but it is probable that they were composed earlier, and their +treatment of the subject of Christ's life and death is more intellectual +and theological than spiritual and poetical. It is when +the tone becomes personal, as in the <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, when he is +alone with his own soul in the prospect of death and the Judgement, +that Donne's religious poetry acquires something of the +same unique character as his love songs and elegies by a similar +combination of qualities, intensity of feeling, subtle turns of +thought, and occasional Miltonic splendour of phrase. Here +again we meet the magnificent openings of the <i>Songs and +Sonets</i>:—</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.liii" id="pageii.liii"></a>[pg liii]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>This is my playes last scene; here heavens appoint</p> +<p>My pilgrimages last mile; and my race</p> +<p>Idly yet quickly run hath this last space,</p> +<p>My spans last inch, my minutes latest point;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>At the round earths imagin'd quarters blow</p> +<p>Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise</p> +<p>From death you numberlesse infinities</p> +<p>Of soules, and to your scatter'd bodies go:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and again—</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>What if this present were the worlds last night!</p> +<p>Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,</p> +<p>The picture of Christ crucified, and tell</p> +<p>Whether that countenance can thee affright,</p> +<p>Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,</p> +<p>Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This passionate penitence, this beating as it were against +the bars of self in the desire to break through to a fuller +apprehension of the mercy and love of God, is the intensely +human note of these latest poems. Nothing came easily to his +soul that knew so well how to be subtle to plague itself. The +vision of divine wrath he can conjure up more easily than the +beatific vision of the love that 'moves the sun in heaven and all +the stars'. Nevertheless it was that vision which Donne sought. +He could never have been content with Milton's heaven of +majesty and awe divorced from the quickening spirit of love. +And there are moments when he comes as close to that +beatific vision as perhaps a self-tormenting mind involved in +the web of seventeenth-century theology ever could,—at +moments love and ecstasy gain the upper hand of fear and +penitence. But it is in the sermons that he reaches these +highest levels. There is nothing in the florid eloquence of +Jeremy Taylor that can equal the splendour of occasional +passages in Donne's sermons, when the lava-like flow of his +heated reasoning seems suddenly to burst and flower in such +a splendid incandescence of mystical rapture as this:—</p> + +<blockquote><p> +'Death and life are in the power of the tongue, says Solomon, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.liv" id="pageii.liv"></a>[pg liv]</span> +in another sense: and in this sense too, If my tongue, suggested +by my heart, and by my heart rooted in faith, can say, <i>non +moriar, non moriar</i>: If I can say (and my conscience do not +tell me that I belie mine own state) if I can say, That the blood +of the Saviour runs in my veins, That the breath of his spirit +quickens all my purposes, that all my deaths have their +Resurrection, all my sins their remorses, all my rebellions their +reconciliations, I will hearken no more after this question as it +is intended <i>de morte naturali</i>, of a natural death; I know I +must die that death; what care I? nor <i>de morte spirituali</i>, +the death of sin, I know I doe, and shall die so; why despair +I? but I will find out another death, <i>mortem raptus</i>, a death +of rapture and of extasy, that death which St. Paul died more +than once, the death which St. Gregory speaks of, <i>divina +contemplatio quoddam sepulchrum animae</i>, the contemplation +of God and heaven is a kind of burial and sepulchre and +rest of the soul; and in this death of rapture and extasy, in +this death of the Contemplation of my interest in my Saviour, +I shall find myself and all my sins enterred, and entombed in +his wounds, and like a Lily in Paradise, out of red earth, I +shall see my soul rise out of his blade, in a candor, and in an +innocence, contracted there, acceptable in the sight of his +Father.' +</p></blockquote> + +<p>This is the highest level that Donne ever reached in eloquence +inspired by the vision of the joy and not the terror of the +Christian faith, higher than anything in the <i>Second Anniversary</i>, +but in his last hymns hope and confidence find a simpler +and a tenderer note. The noble hymn, 'In what torn ship so +ever I embark,' is in somewhat the same anguished tone as the +<i>Holy Sonnets</i>; but the highly characteristic</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Since I am coming to that Holy roome,</p> +<p>Where with thy Quire of Saints for evermore,</p> +<p>I shall be made thy Musique;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and the <i>Hymn to God the Father</i>, speak of final faith and hope +in tones which recall—recall also by their sea-coloured imagery, +and by their rhythm—the lines in which another sensitive and +tormented poet-soul contemplated the last voyage:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne</p> +<p class="i2">My last thred, I shall perish on the shore;</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lv" id="pageii.lv"></a>[pg lv]</span> +<p>Swear by thy self that at my death thy sunne</p> +<p class="i2">Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore:</p> +<p>And having done that, Thou hast done,</p> +<p class="i2">I feare no more.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Beside the passion of these lines even Tennyson's grow a little +pale:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Twilight and evening bell</p> +<p class="i2">And after that the dark;</p> +<p>And may there be no sadness of farewell</p> +<p class="i2">When I embark:</p> +<p>For though from out our bourne of Time and Place</p> +<p class="i2">The flood may bear me far,</p> +<p>I hope to see my Pilot face to face</p> +<p class="i2">When I have crost the bar.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It has not been the aim of the present editor to attempt +to pronounce a final judgement upon Donne. It seems to +him idle to compare Donne's poetry with that of other poets +or to endeavour to fix its relative worth. Its faults are great +and manifest; its beauties <i>sui generis</i>, incommunicable and +incomparable. My endeavour here has been by an analysis +of some of the different elements in this composite work—poems +composed at different times and in different moods; +flung together at the end so carelessly that youthful extravagances +of witty sensuality and pious aspirations jostle +each other cheek by jowl; and presenting a texture so +diverse from that of poetry as we usually think of it—to +show how many are the strands which run through it, and +that one of these is a poetry, not perfect in form, rugged +of line and careless in rhyme, a poetry in which intellect +and feeling are seldom or never perfectly fused in a work +that is of imagination all compact, yet a poetry of an extraordinarily +arresting and haunting quality, passionate, +thoughtful, and with a deep melody of its own.</p> + +<p class="footnote1"><a id="footnotei1" name="footnotei1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagi1"><sup>1</sup></a> +<i>History of English Poetry</i>, iii. 154. Mr. Courthope qualifies this +statement somewhat on the next page: 'From this spirit of cynical lawlessness +he was perhaps reclaimed by genuine love,' &c. But he has, +I think, insufficiently analysed the diverse strains in Donne's love-poetry.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotei2" name="footnotei2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagi2"><sup>2</sup></a> +Gaspary: <i>History of Italian Literature</i> (Oelsner's translation), 1904. +Consult also Karl Vossler: <i>Die philosophischen Grundlagen des 'süssen +neuen Stils'</i>, Heidelberg, 1904, and <i>La Poesia giovanile &c. di Guido +Cavalcanti: Studi di Giulio Salvadori</i>, Roma, 1895.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotei3" name="footnotei3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagi3"><sup>3</sup></a> +Gaspary: <i>Op. Cit.</i></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lvi" id="pageii.lvi"></a>[pg lvi]</span></p> + +<h3>II</h3> + +<h2>THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS</h2> + +<p class="title1">TEXT</p> + +<p>Both the text and the canon of Donne's poems present +problems which have never been frankly faced by any of his +editors—problems which, considering the greatness of his +reputation in the seventeenth century, and the very considerable +revival of his reputation which began with Coleridge +and De Quincey and has advanced uninterruptedly since, are +of a rather surprising character. An attempt to define and, +as far as may be, to solve these problems will begin most +simply with a brief account of the form in which Donne's +poems have come down to us.</p> + +<p>Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime—the +Anniversaries (i.e. <i>The Anatomy of the World</i> with <i>A Funerall +Elegie</i> and <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>) in 1611 and 1612, with +later editions in 1621 and 1625; the <i>Elegie upon the untimely +death of the incomparable Prince Henry</i>, in Sylvester's <i>Lachrymae +Lachrymarum</i>, 1613; and the lines prefixed to <i>Coryats +Crudities</i> in 1611. We know nothing of any other poem by +Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy, as +Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the <i>Miscellanies</i> which +appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as <i>Englands +Parnassus</i><a id="footnotetagt1" name="footnotetagt1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet1"><sup>1</sup></a> (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth +century, as Davison's <i>Poetical Rhapsody</i>,<a id="footnotetagt2" name="footnotetagt2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet2"><sup>2</sup></a> contained poems +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lvii" id="pageii.lvii"></a>[pg lvii]</span> +by Donne. The first of these is a collection of witty and +elegant passages from different authors on various general +themes (Dissimulation, Faith, Learning, &c.) and is just the +kind of book for which Donne's poems would have been +made abundant use of at a somewhat later period. There are +in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest +conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating +from the second quarter of the seventeenth century.<a id="footnotetagt3" name="footnotetagt3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet3"><sup>3</sup></a> The +editor of the second of the anthologies mentioned, Francis +Davison, became later much interested in Donne's poems. +In notes which he made at some date after 1608, we find +him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc., by John +Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from +Eleaz. Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books +again which he has lent to his brother at a later date are +'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on the part of Davison in +Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely that if he +had known them earlier he would not have included some of +them in his <i>Rhapsody</i>, or that if he had done so he would not +have told us. It has been the custom of late to assign to +Donne the authorship of one charming lyric in the <i>Rhapsody</i>, +'Absence hear thou my protestation.' I hope to show elsewhere +that this is the work, not of Donne, but of another +young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few extant poems +are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney +and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.</p> + +<p>The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in +1633, two years after his death. This is a small quarto, the +title-page of which is here reproduced.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lviii" id="pageii.lviii"></a>[pg lviii]</span></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON THE AUTHORS</p> +<p class="centerc">DEATH.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="centerc">LONDON.</p> +<p class="center"><span class="more">Printed by <i>M. F.</i> for <span class="sc">Iohn Marriot</span>,</span><br /> +and are to be sold at his shop in S<sup>t</sup> '<i>Dunstans</i><br /> +Church-yard in <i>Fleet-street</i>. 1633.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i058-340.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lix" id="pageii.lix"></a>[pg lix]</span></p> + +<p>The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain +(1) <i>The Printer to the Understanders</i>,<a id="footnotetagt4" name="footnotetagt4"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet4"><sup>4</sup></a> (2) the <i>Hexastichon +Bibliopolae</i>, (3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, +<i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, with which poem the volume +opens. The poems themselves, with some prose letters and +the <i>Elegies upon the Author</i>, fill pages 1-406. The +numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of +the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems +follow the order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance +of this, and of the source and character of this edition, +I shall speak later. As regards text and canon it is the most +trustworthy of all the old editions. The publisher, John +Marriot, was a well-known bookseller at the sign of the Flower +de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton, Drayton, Massinger, +Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably Miles Fletcher, +or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance in Little Britain +from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from the heading +of the introductory letter, that the printer was more responsible +for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is perhaps +noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded +in getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, +John Marriot's name remained on the title-page (1650) as +publisher, but the printer's initials disappeared, and his +prefatory letter made way for a dedication by the younger +Donne. (See page <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.4">4</a>.) It should be added that copies of the +1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In some +a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally <i>The Printer to the +Understanders</i> is omitted, the <i>Infinitati Sacrum &c.</i> following +immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably +<i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, and certain of the <i>Letters</i> to +noble ladies, the text underwent considerable alteration as +the volume passed through the press. Some copies are more +correct than others. A few of the errors of the 1635 edition +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lx" id="pageii.lx"></a>[pg lx]</span> +are traceable to the use by the printer of a comparatively +imperfect copy of the 1633 edition.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON</p> +<p class="centerc">THE AUTHORS</p> +<p class="centerc">DEATH.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON.</i></p> +<p class="center"><span class="more">Printed by <i>M. F.</i> for <span class="sc">John Marriot</span>,</span><br /> +and are to be sold at his Shop in S<sup>t</sup> <i>Dunstans</i><br /> +Church-yard in <i>Fleet-street</i>.<br /> +1635.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i060-340.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p>The <i>Poems by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death</i> +were reprinted by M. F. for John Harriot in 1635 (the +title-page is here reproduced), but with very considerable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxi" id="pageii.lxi"></a>[pg lxi]</span> +alterations. The introductory material remained unchanged +except that to the <i>Hexastichon Bibliopolae</i> was added +a <i>Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam. Incerti</i>. (See p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.3">3</a>.) To +the title-page was prefixed a portrait in an oval frame. Outside +the frame is engraved, to the left top, <span class="sc">ANNO DNI. 1591. ÆTATIS +SVÆ. 18.</span>; to the right top, on a band ending in a coat of +arms, <span class="sc">ANTES MVERTO QUE MVDADO</span>. Underneath the engraved +portrait and background is the following poem:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>This was for youth, Strength, Mirth, and wit that Time</i></p> +<p><i>Most count their golden Age; but t'was not thine.</i></p> +<p><i>Thine was thy later yeares, so much refind</i></p> +<p><i>From youths Drosse, Mirth, & wit; as thy pure mind</i></p> +<p><i>Thought (like the Angels) nothing but the Praise</i></p> +<p><i>Of thy Creator, in those last, best Dayes.</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Witnes this Booke, (thy Embleme) which begins</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>With Love; but endes, with Sighes, & Teares for sins.</i></p> +<p class="i36">IZ: WA:</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Will: Marshall sculpsit</i>.<a id="footnotetagt5" name="footnotetagt5"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet5"><sup>5</sup></a></p> + </div> </div> + +<p><i>The Printer to the Understanders</i> is still followed +immediately by the dedication, <i>Infinitati Sacrum</i>, of <i>The +Progresse of the Soule</i>, although the poem itself is removed to +another part of the volume. The printer noticed this mistake, +and at the end of the <i>Elegies upon the Author</i> adds this note:</p> + +<p class="title1"><i>Errata</i>.<a id="footnotetagt6" name="footnotetagt6"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet6"><sup>6</sup></a></p> + +<p><i>Cvrteous Reader, know, that that Epistle intituled, Infinitati +Sacrum</i>, 16. <i>of August</i>, 1601. <i>which is printed in</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxii" id="pageii.lxii"></a>[pg lxii]</span> +<i>the beginning of the Booke, is misplaced; it should have beene +printed before the Progresse of the Soule, in Page</i> 301. +<i>before which it was written by the Author; if any other in +the Impression doe fall out, which I know not of, hold me +excused for I have endeavoured thy satisfaction.</i></p> + +<p class="author">Thine, I. M.</p> + +<p>The closing lines of Walton's poem show that it must have +been written for this edition, as they refer to what is the chief +feature in the new issue of the poems (pp. 1-388, including +some prose letters in Latin and English, pp. 275-300, but not +including the <i>Elegies upon the Author</i> which in this edition +and those of 1639, 1649, 1650, and 1654 are added in unnumbered +pages). This new feature is their arrangement in +a series of groups:<a id="footnotetagt7" name="footnotetagt7"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet7"><sup>7</sup></a>—</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxiii" id="pageii.lxiii"></a>[pg lxiii]</span></p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li><span class="outdent">Songs and Sonets.</span></li> +<li><span class="outdent">Epigrams.</span></li> +<li><span class="outdent">Elegies.</span></li> +<li><span class="outdent">Epithalamions</span>, <i>or</i>, Marriage Songs.</li> +<li><span class="outdent">Satyres.</span></li> +<li><span class="outdent">Letters</span> to Severall Personages.</li> +<li><span class="outdent">Funerall</span> Elegies, (including <i>An Anatomie of the<br /> +World</i> with <i>A Funerall Elegie</i>, <i>Of the Progresse of<br /> +the Soule</i>, and <i>Epicedes and Obsequies upon the<br /> +deaths of sundry Personages</i>.)</li> +<li><span class="outdent">(Letters</span> in Prose).<a id="footnotetagt8" name="footnotetagt8"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet8"><sup>8</sup></a></li> +<li><span class="outdent">The Progresse</span> of the Soule.</li> +<li><span class="outdent">Divine Poems.</span></li> + </ul> + +<p>While the poems were thus rearranged, the canon also +underwent some alteration. One poem, viz. Basse's <i>Epitaph +on Shakespeare</i> ('Renowned Chaucer lie a thought more nigh +To rare Beaumont'), which had found its way into <i>1633</i>, was +dropped; but quite a number were added, twenty-eight, or +twenty-nine if the epitaph <i>On Himselfe</i> be reckoned (as it +appears) twice. Professor Norton, in the bibliographical note +in the Grolier Club edition (which I occasionally call Grolier +for convenience), has inadvertently given the <i>Elegie on the +L. C.</i> as one of the poems first printed in <i>1635</i>. This is an +error. The poem was included in <i>1633</i> as the sixth in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxiv" id="pageii.lxiv"></a>[pg lxiv]</span> +a group of <i>Elegies</i>, the rest of which are love poems. The +editor of <i>1635</i> merely transferred it to its proper place among +the <i>Funerall Elegies</i>, just as modern editors have transferred +the <i>Elegie on his Mistris</i> ('By our first strange and fatall +interview') from the funeral to the love <i>Elegies</i>.</p> + +<p>The authenticity of the poems added in <i>1635</i> will be fully +discussed later. The conclusion of the present editor is that +of the English poems fifteen are certainly Donne's; three or +four are probably or possibly his; the remaining eleven are +pretty certainly <i>not</i> by Donne. There is no reason to think that +<i>1635</i> is in any way a more authoritative edition than <i>1633</i>. +It has fewer signs of competent editing of the text, and it +begins the process of sweeping in poems from every quarter, +which was continued by Waldron, Simeon, and Grosart.</p> + +<p>The third edition of Donne's poems appeared in 1639. +This is identical in form, contents, and paging with that of 1635. +The dedication and introduction to <i>The Progresse of the +Soule</i> are removed to their right place and the <i>Errata</i> +dropped, and there are a considerable number of minor alterations +of the text.</p> +<p>In the issuing of all these editions of Donne's poems, the +younger Donne, who seems to have claimed the right to benefit +by his father's literary remains, had apparently no part.<a id="footnotetagt9" name="footnotetagt9"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet9"><sup>9</sup></a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxv" id="pageii.lxv"></a>[pg lxv]</span></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">VVITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON</p> +<p class="centerc">THE AUTHORS</p> +<p class="centerc">DEATH.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"><img src="images/i_i065-glyph-100.jpg" width="100" height="70" alt="glyph" /></div> +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON.</i></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="more">Printed by <i>M. F.</i> for <span class="sc">John Marriot</span>,</span><br /> +and are to be sold at his Shop in S<sup>t</sup> <i>Dunstans</i><br /> +Church-yard in <i>Fleet-street</i>.<br /> +1639.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i065-320.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxvi" id="pageii.lxvi"></a>[pg lxvi]</span></p> + +<p> What assistance, if any, the printer and publisher had from others of +Donne's friends and executors it is impossible now to say, +though one can hardly imagine that without some assistance +they could have got access to so many poems or been allowed +to publish the elegies on his death, some of which refer to the +publication of the poems.<a id="footnotetagt10" name="footnotetagt10"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet10"><sup>10</sup></a> Walton, as we have seen, wrote +verses to be prefixed to the second edition. At any rate in +1637 the younger John Donne made an effort to arrest +the unauthorized issue of his father's works. Dr. Grosart first +printed in his edition of the poems (<i>Fuller Worthies' Library</i>, +1873, ii, p. lii) the following petition and response preserved +in the Record Office:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"><div class="stanza"> +<p>To y<sup>e</sup> most Reverende Father in God</p> +<p class="i2">William Lorde Arch-Bisshop of</p> +<p class="i4">Canterburie Primate, and</p> +<p class="i4">Metropolitan of all Eng-</p> +<p class="i6">lande his Grace.</p> +</div></div> + +<p class="center2a">The humble petition of John Donne, Clercke.</p> +<p class="ind">Doth show unto your Grace that since y<sup>e</sup> death of his Father +(latly Deane of Pauls) there hath bene manie scandalous +Pamflets printed, and published, under his name, which were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxvii" id="pageii.lxvii"></a>[pg lxvii]</span> +none of his, by severall Boocksellers, withoute anie leave or +Autoritie; in particuler one entitoled Juvenilia, printed for +Henry Seale; another by John Marriott and William Sheares, +entitoled Ignatius his Conclave, as allsoe certaine Poems by +y<sup>e</sup> sayde John Marriote, of which abuses thay have bene often +warned by your Pe<sup>tr</sup> and tolde that if thay desisted not, +thay should be proceeded against beefore your Grace, which +thay seeme soe much to slight, that thay profess soddainly to +publish new impressions, verie much to the greife of your +Pe<sup>tr</sup> and the discredite of y<sup>e</sup> memorie of his Father.</p> + +<p class="ind">Wherefore your Pe<sup>tr</sup> doth beeseece your Grace that you +would bee pleased by your Commaunde, to stopp their farther +proceedinge herein, and to cale the forenamed boocksellers +beefore you, to giue an account, for what thay haue allreadie +done; and your Pe<sup>tr</sup> shall pray, &c.</p> + +<p class="indq">I require y<sup>e</sup> Partyes whom this Pe<sup>t</sup> concernes, not to +meddle any farther w<sup>th</sup> y<sup>e</sup> Printing or Selling of any y<sup>e</sup> +pretended workes of y<sup>e</sup> late Deane of St. Paules, saue onely +such as shall be licensed by publicke authority, and approued +by the Peticon<sup>r</sup>, as they will answere y<sup>e</sup> contrary at theyr +perill. And of this I desire Mr. Deane of y<sup>e</sup> Arches to take +care.</p> + +<p class="indb">Dec: 16, 1637. <span class="right2">W. Cant.</span></p> + +<p class="space-above2">Despite this injunction the edition of 1639 was issued, as the +previous ones had been, by Marriot and M. F. It was not till +ten years later that the younger Donne succeeded in establishing +his claim. In 1649 Marriot prepared a new edition, +printed as before by M. F. The introductory matter remained +unchanged except that the printing being more condensed it +occupies three pages instead of five; the use of Roman and +Italic type is exactly reversed; and there are some slight +changes of spelling. The printing of the poems is also more +condensed, so that they occupy pp. 1-368 instead of 1-388 in +<i>1635-39</i>. The text underwent some generally unimportant +alteration or corruption, and two poems were added, the lines +<i>Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.172">172</a>. It had been +printed with <i>Coryats Crudities</i> in 1611) and the short poem +called <i>Sonnet. The Token</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.72a">72</a>).</p> + +<p>Only a very few copies of this edition were issued. W. C. +Hazlitt describes one in his <i>Bibliographical Collections, &c.</i>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxviii" id="pageii.lxviii"></a>[pg lxviii]</span> +<i>Second Series</i> (1882), p. 181. The only copy of whose +existence I am aware is in the Library of Harvard College. +It was used by Professor Norton in preparing the Grolier +Club edition, and I owe my knowledge of it to this and to a +careful description made for me by Miss Mary H. Buckingham. +The title-page is here reproduced.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON</p> +<p class="centerc">THE AUTHORS</p> +<p class="centerc">DEATH.</p> +<hr class="short" /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;"><img src="images/i_i068-glyph-100.jpg" width="100" height="69" alt="glyph" /></div> +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON.</i></p> +<p class="center"><span class="more">Printed by <i>M. F.</i> for <span class="sc">Iohn Marriot</span>,</span><br /> +and are to be sold at his Shop in S<sup>t</sup> <i>Dunstans</i><br /> +Church-yard in <i>Fleet-street</i>.<br /> +1649.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i068-350.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxix" id="pageii.lxix"></a>[pg lxix]</span></p> + +<p>What happened seems to have been this. The younger +Donne intervened before the edition was issued, and either by +authority or agreement took it over. Marriot remained the +publisher. The title-page which in <i>1649</i> was identical with +that of <i>1635-39</i>, except for the change of date and the 'W' +in 'WITH', now appeared as follows:</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON THE</p> +<p class="centerc">AUTHORS DEATH.</p> +<p class="centerc">TO WHICH</p> +<p class="centerb"><i>Is added divers Copies under his own hand<br /> +never before in print.</i></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON.</i></p> + +<p class="center"><span class="more">Printed for <i>John Marriot</i>, and are</span><br /> +to be sold by <i>Richard Marriot</i> at his shop<br /> +by <i>Chancery</i> lane end over against the Inner<br /> +Temple gate. 1650.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i069-350.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxx" id="pageii.lxx"></a>[pg lxx]</span></p> + +<p>The initials of the printer, M. F., disappear, and the name of +John Marriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears +along with his own. There is no great distance between +St. Dunstan's Churchyard and the end of Chancery Lane. +With M. F. went the introductory <i>Printer to the Understanders</i>, +its place being taken by a dedicatory letter in young +Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron of +Hamsted-Marsham.</p> + +<p>In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration +was made. The 'divers Copies ... never before in print', of +which the new editor boasts, were inserted in a couple of +sheets (or a sheet and a half, aa, bb incomplete) at the end. +These are variously bound up in different copies, being sometimes +before, sometimes at the end of the <i>Elegies upon the +Author</i>, sometimes before and among them. They contain +a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse and prose, +Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a few complimentary +verses on Donne taken from Jonson's <i>Epigrams</i>.</p> + +<p>The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In +short, Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the +canon of his father's poems. The former, as it stands in the +body of the volume in the editions of 1650-54, he took over +from Marriot and M. F. As regards the latter, he speaks of +the 'kindnesse of the Printer, ... adding something too much, +lest any spark of this sacred fire might perish undiscerned'; +but he does not condescend to tell us, if he knew, what these +unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing.</p> + +<p>In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed +from the same types as in 1650. The text of the poems +(pp. 1-368) is identical in <i>1649</i>, <i>1650</i>, <i>1654</i>; of the +additional +matter (pp. 369-392) in <i>1650</i>, <i>1654</i>. The only change made +in the last is on the title-page, where a new publisher's name +appears,<a id="footnotetagt11" name="footnotetagt11"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet11"><sup>11</sup></a> as in the following facsimile:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxi" id="pageii.lxxi"></a>[pg lxxi]</span></p> + + <hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>,</h2> +<p class="centertb space-above"><i>By</i> J. D.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON THE</p> +<p class="centerc">AUTHORS DEATH.</p> +<p class="centerc">TO WHICH</p> +<p class="centerb"><i>Is added divers Copies under his own hand<br /> +never before in Print.</i></p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON</i>,</p> + +<p class="center">Printed by <i>J. Flesher</i>, and are to be sold<br /> +by <i>John Sweeting</i> at the Angel in<br /> +Popeshead-Alley. 1654.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i071-340.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p>James Flesher was the son of Miles Flesher, or Fletcher, who +is probably the M. F. of the earlier editions. John Sweeting +was an active bookseller and publisher, first at the Crown in +Cornhill, and subsequently at the Angel as above (1639-1661). +He was the publisher of many plays and poems, and in 1657 +the publication of Donne's <i>Letters to Severall Persons of +Honour</i> was transferred to him from Richard Marriot, who +issued them in 1651.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxii" id="pageii.lxxii"></a>[pg lxxii]</span></p> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span>, <span class="less">&c.</span></h2> +<p class="centertb space-above">BY</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">JOHN DONNE,</p> +<p class="centertb"><i>late Dean of St.</i> Pauls.</p> +<p class="centerc">WITH</p> +<p class="centertb space-above">ELEGIES</p> +<p class="centerc">ON THE</p> +<p class="centerc">AUTHORS DEATH.</p> +<p class="centerb">To which is added<br /> +<i>Divers Copies under his own hand</i>,<br /> +<span class="oes">Never before Printed.</span></p> +<hr class="short" /> +<hr class="short" /> +<p class="center"><span class="more"><i>In the SAVOY</i>,</span><br /><br class="b30" /> +Printed by <i>T. N.</i> for <i>Henry Herringman</i>, at the sign of<br /> +the <i>Anchor</i>, in the lower-walk of the<br /> +<i>New-Exchange.</i> 1669.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i072-300.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxiii" id="pageii.lxxiii"></a>[pg lxxiii]</span></p> + +<p>The last edition of Donne's poems which bears evidence of +recourse to manuscript sources, and which enlarged the canon +of the poems, was that of 1669. The younger Donne died in +1662, and this edition was purely a printer's venture. Its +title-page runs as opposite.</p> + +<p>This edition added two elegies which a sense of propriety had +hitherto excluded from Donne's printed works, though they +are in almost all the manuscript collections, and a satire which +most of the manuscripts assign not to Donne but to Sir John +Roe. The introductory material remains as in <i>1650-54</i> and +unpaged; but the <i>Elegies to the Author</i> are now paged, and +the poems with the prose letters inserted in <i>1633</i> and added to +in <i>1635</i> (see above, p. <a href="#pageii.lxiii">lxiii</a>, note 8), the <i>Elegies to the Author</i>, +and the additional sheets inserted in <i>1650</i>, occupy pp. 1-414. The +love <i>Elegies</i> were numbered as in earlier editions, but the +titles which some had borne were all dropped. <i>Elegie XIIII</i> +(XII in this edition) was enlarged. Two new Elegies were +added, one (<i>Loves Progress</i>) as <i>Elegie XVIII</i>, the second +(<i>Going to Bed</i>) unnumbered and simply headed <i>To his +Mistress going to bed</i>. The text of the poems underwent +considerable alteration, some of the changes showing a +reversion to the text of <i>1633</i>, others a reference to manuscript +sources, many editorial conjecture.</p> + +<p>The edition of 1669 is the last edition of Donne's poems +which can be regarded as in any degree an authority for the +text of the poems, because it is the last which affords evidence +of access to independent manuscript sources. All subsequent +editions, till we come to those of Grosart and Chambers, were +based on these. If the editor preferred one reading to another +it was on purely internal evidence, a result of his own decision +as to which was the more correct or the preferable reading. +In 1719, for example, a new edition was brought out by the well-known +publisher Jacob Tonson. The title-page runs as over.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxiv" id="pageii.lxxiv"></a>[pg lxxiv]</span></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced">POEMS</span></h2> +<p class="centerb">ON SEVERAL</p> +<p class="centert">OCCASIONS.</p> +<p class="centerb">Written by the Reverend</p> +<p class="centert"><i>JOHN DONNE</i>, D.D.</p> +<p class="centerb">Late Dean of St. PAUL'S.</p> +<p class="centerb">WITH</p> +<p class="centerb"><span class="sc">Elegies</span> on the Author's Death.</p> +<p class="centerb">To this Edition is added,</p> +<p class="centerc">Some <span class="sc">Account</span> of the <span class="sc">Life</span><br /> +of the <span class="sc">Author</span>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON:</i></p> + +<p class="center">Printed for <span class="sc">J. Tonson</span>, and Sold by<br /> +<span class="sc">W. Taylor</span> at the <i>Ship</i> in<br /> +<i>Pater-noster-Row</i>. 1719.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_i074-370.jpg">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p>This edition opens with the Epistle Dedicatory as in <i>1650-69</i>, +which is followed by an abridgement of Walton's <i>Life</i> of Donne. +An examination of the text of the poems shows clearly that +this edition was printed from that of 1669, but is by no means +a slavish reproduction. The editor has consulted earlier +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxv" id="pageii.lxxv"></a>[pg lxxv]</span> +editions and corrected mistakes, but I have found no evidence +either that he knew the editions of 1633 and 1635, or had access +to manuscript collections. He very wisely dropped the Satire +'Sleep next Society', inserted for the first time by the editor +of <i>1669</i>, and certainly not by Donne. It was reinserted by +Chalmers in 1810.<a id="footnotetagt12" name="footnotetagt12"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet12"><sup>12</sup></a></p> + +<p>These, then, are the early editions of Donne's poems. But +the printed editions are not the only form in which the poems, +or the great majority of the poems, have come down to us. +None of these editions, we have seen, was issued before the +poet's death. None, so far as we can discover (I shall +discuss this point more fully later), was printed from sources +carefully prepared for the press by the author, as were for +example the <i>LXXX Sermons</i> issued in 1640. But Donne's +poems were well known to many readers before 1633. One +of the earliest published references to them occurs in 1614, in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxvi" id="pageii.lxxvi"></a>[pg lxxvi]</span> +a collection of Epigrams by Thomas Freeman, called <i>Runne</i> | +<i>And a great Cast</i> | <i>The</i> | <i>Second Book</i>.</p> + +<h3>Epigram 84.</h3> + +<p class="title1">To Iohn Dunne.</p> +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The <i>Storme</i> describ'd hath set thy name afloate,</p> +<p>Thy <i>Calme</i> a gale of famous winde hath got:</p> +<p>Thy <i>Satyres</i> short, too soone we them o'relooke,</p> +<p>I prethee Persius write a bigger booke.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In 1616 Ben Jonson's <i>Epigrammes</i> were published in the +first (folio) edition of his works, and they contain the Epigram, +printed in this edition, <i>To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, +with Mr. Donnes Satyres</i>. In these and similar cases the +'bookes' referred to are not printed but manuscript works. +Mr. Chambers has pointed out (<i>Poems of John Donne</i>, i, pp. +xxxviii-ix) an interesting reference in Drayton's <i>Epistle to +Reynolds</i> to poems circulating thus 'by transcription'; and +Anthony Wood speaks of Hoskins having left a 'book of poems +neatly written'. In Donne's own letters we find references to +his poems, his paradoxes and problems, and even a long treatise +like the <ins title="Greek: BIATHANATOS">ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ</ins>, being sent to his friends with +injunctions of secrecy, and in the case of the last with an +express statement that it had not been, and was not to be, +printed. Sometimes the manuscript collection seems to have +been made by Donne himself, or on his instruction, for +a special friend and patron like Lord Ancrum; but after he +had become a distinguished Churchman who, as Jonson told +Drummond, 'repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his +poems,' it was his friends and admirers who collected and +copied them. An instructive reference to the interest +awakened in Donne's early poems by his fame as a preacher +comes to us from Holland. Constantine Huyghens, the Dutch +poet, and father of the more famous scientist, Christian, was +a member of the Dutch embassy in 1618, 1621-23, and again in +1624. He moved in the best circles, and made the acquaintance +of Donne ('great preacher and great conversationalist', he calls +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxvii" id="pageii.lxxvii"></a>[pg lxxvii]</span> +him) at the house probably of Sir Robert Killigrew. Writing +to his friend and fellow-poet Hooft, in 1630, he says:<a id="footnotetagt13" name="footnotetagt13"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet13"><sup>13</sup></a></p> + +<p class="ind">'I think I have often entertained you with reminiscences of +Dr. Donne, now Dean of St. Pauls in London, and on account +of this remunerative post (such is the custom of the English) +held in high esteem, in still higher for the wealth of his +unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the +pulpit. Educated early at Court in the service of the great; +experienced in the ways of the world; sharpened by study; +in poetry, he is more famous than anyone. Many rich fruits +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxviii" id="pageii.lxxviii"></a>[pg lxxviii]</span> +from the green branches of his wit<a id="footnotetagt14" name="footnotetagt14"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet14"><sup>14</sup></a> have lain mellowing +among the lovers of art, which now, when <i>nearly rotten with +age</i>, they <i>are distributing</i>. Into my hands have fallen, by +the help of my special friends among the gentlemen of that +nation, some five and twenty of the best sort of medlars. +Among our people, I cannot select anyone to whom they +ought to be communicated sooner than to you,<a id="footnotetagt15" name="footnotetagt15"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet15"><sup>15</sup></a> as this poets +manner of conceit and expression are exactly yours, Sir.'</p> + +<p>This is a very interesting piece of evidence as to the manner +in which Donne's poems had been preserved by his friends, and +the form in which they were being distributed. There is no +reference to publication. It is doubtless due to this activity in +collecting and transcribing the poems of the now famous +preacher that we owe the number of manuscript collections +dating from the years before and immediately after 1630.</p> + +<p>Had Donne undertaken the publication of his own poems, +such of these manuscript collections as have been preserved—none +of which are autograph, and few or none of which have +a now traceable history—would have little importance for +a modern editor. The most that they could do would be to +show us occasionally what changes a poem had undergone +between its earliest and its latest appearance. But Donne's +poems were not published in this way, and the manuscripts +cannot be ignored. They must have for his editor at least the +same interest and importance as the Quartos have for the +editor of Shakespeare. Whatever opinion he may hold, on +<i>a priori</i> or <i>a posteriori</i> grounds, regarding the superior +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxix" id="pageii.lxxix"></a>[pg lxxix]</span> +authority of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, no editor, +not 'thirled to' a theory, will deny that a right reading has +been preserved for us often by the Quartos and the Quartos +only. No wise man will neglect the assistance even of the +more imperfect of them. Before therefore discussing the +relative value of the different editions, and the use that may +be made of the manuscripts, it will be well to give a short +description of the manuscripts which the present editor has +consulted and used, of their relation to one another, their +comparative value, and the relation of <i>some</i> of them to the +editions. It is, of course, possible that there are manuscripts +of Donne's poems which have not yet come to light; and +among them may be some more correctly transcribed than +any which has come into the present editor's hands. He has, +however, examined between twenty and thirty, and with the +feeling recently of moving in a circle—that new manuscripts +were in part or whole duplicates of those which had been +already examined, and confirmed readings already noted but +did not suggest anything fresh.</p> + +<p>I will divide the manuscripts into four classes, of which the +first two, it will be seen at a glance, are likely to be the most +important for the textual critic.</p> + +<p>(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e.g. +the <i>Satyres</i>. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the +epigram quoted above was probably a small collection of this +kind, and we have seen that Jonson sent the <i>Satyres</i> to Lady +Bedford, and Francis Davison lent them to his brother. Of +such collections I have examined the following:</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>Q.</i> This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number +of other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library +of Queen's College, Oxford. It is headed <i>Mr. John Dunnes +Satires</i>, and contains the five Satires (which alone I have +accepted as Donne's own) followed by <i>A Storme</i>, <i>A Calme</i>, +and one song, <i>The Curse</i> (see p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.41a">41</a>), here headed <i>Dirae</i>. +As Mr. Chambers says (<i>Poems of John Donne</i>, i, p. xxxvi), +this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxx" id="pageii.lxxx"></a>[pg lxxx]</span> +The poems it contains are probably those of Donne's poems +which were first known outside the circle of his intimate +friends.</p> + +<p>What seems to be a duplicate of <i>Q</i> is preserved among the +Dyce MSS. in the South Kensington Museum. This contains +the five <i>Satyres</i>, and the <i>Storme</i> and <i>Calme</i>. The MSS. are +evidently transcribed from the same source, but one is not a +copy of the other. They agree in such exceptional readings +as e.g. <i>Satyres</i>, I. 58 'Infanta of London'; 94 'goes in the +way' &c.; II. 86 'In wringing each acre'; 88 'Assurances +as bigge as glossie civill lawes'. The last suggests that the +one is a copy of the other, but again they diverge in such +cases as III. 49 'Crants' <i>Dyce MS.</i>; 'Crates' <i>Q</i>; and IV. +215-16 'a Topclief would have ravisht him quite away' <i>Q</i>, +where the <i>Dyce MS.</i> preserves the normal 'a Pursevant would +have ravisht him quite away'.</p> + +<p>If manuscripts like <i>Q</i> and the <i>Dyce MS.</i> carry us back, as +they seem to do, to the form in which the <i>Satyres</i> circulated +before any of the later collections of Donne's poems were +made (between 1620 and 1630), they are clearly of great +importance for the editor. The text of the <i>Satyres</i> in <i>1633</i> +and the later editions, which closely resembles that of one of +the later MS. collections, presents many variants from the older +tradition. It is a difficult matter to decide how far these may +be the corrections of the author himself, or of the collector and +editor.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>W.</i> This, the Westmoreland MS., belonging to Mr. Edmund +Gosse, is one of the most interesting and valuable manuscripts of +Donne's poems which have come down to us. It is bound in +its original vellum, and was written, Mr. Warner, late Egerton +Librarian, British Museum, conjectured from the handwriting, +'a little later than 1625'. This date agrees with what one +would gather from the contents, for the manuscript contains +sonnets which must have been written after 1617, but does not +contain any of the hymns written just at the close of Donne's life.</p> + +<p><i>W</i> is a much larger 'book' than <i>Q</i>. It begins with the five +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxi" id="pageii.lxxxi"></a>[pg lxxxi]</span> +<i>Satyres</i>, as that does. Leaving one page blank, it then +continues with a collection of the <i>Elegies</i> numbered, thirteen in +all, of which twelve are Love Elegies, and one, the last, a Funeral +Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house.'<a id="footnotetagt16" name="footnotetagt16"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet16"><sup>16</sup></a> These are followed by +an <i>Epithalamion</i> (that generally called 'made at Lincolns +Inn') and a number of verse letters to different friends, some +of which are not contained in any of the old editions. So +many of them are addressed to Rowland Woodward, or +members of his family, that Mr. Gosse conjectures that the +manuscript was prepared for him, but this cannot be proved.<a id="footnotetagt17" name="footnotetagt17"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet17"><sup>17</sup></a> +The letters are followed by the <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, these by +<i>La Corona</i>, and the book closes (as many collections of the +poems do) with a bundle of prose <i>Paradoxes</i>, followed in +this case by the <i>Epigrams</i>. Both the <i>Holy Sonnets</i> and the +<i>Epigrams</i> contain poems not printed in any of the old +editions.</p> + +<p>It should be noted that though <i>W</i> as a whole may have +been transcribed as late as 1625, it clearly goes back in +portions to an earlier date. The letters are headed e.g. To +Mr. H. W., To Mr. C. B., &c. Now the custom in manuscripts +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxii" id="pageii.lxxxii"></a>[pg lxxxii]</span> +and editions is to bring these headings up to date, changing +'To Mr. H. W.' into 'To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Wotton'. That they bear +headings which were correct at the date when the poems were +written points to their fairly direct descent from the original +copies.</p> + +<p>If <i>Q</i> probably represents the kind of manuscript which +circulated pretty widely, <i>W</i> is a good representative of the +kind which circulated only among Donne's friends. Some of +the poems escaped being transcribed into larger collections +and were not published till our own day. The value of <i>W</i> for +the text of Donne's poems must stand high. For some of the +letters and religious poems it is our sole authority. Though +a unique manuscript now, it was probably not so always, for +Addl. MS. 23229 in the British Museum contains a single +folio which must have been torn from a manuscript identical +with <i>W</i>. The handwriting is slightly different, but the order +of the poems and their text prove the identity.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>A23.</i> This same manuscript (Addl. MS. 23229), which is +a very miscellaneous collection of fragments, presented to the +Museum by John Wilson Croker, contains two other portions +of what seem to have been similar small 'books' of Donne's +poems. The one is a fragment of what seems to have been +a carefully written copy of the <i>Epithalamion</i>, with introductory +<i>Eclogue</i>, written for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset. +Probably it was one of those prepared and circulated at the +time. The other consists of some leaves from a collection of +the <i>Satyres</i> finely written on large quarto sheets.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>G.</i> This is a manuscript containing only the <i>Metempsychosis</i>, +or <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, +who (<i>Life &c. of John Donne</i>, i. 141) states that it 'belonged +to a certain Bradon, and passed into the Phillipps Collection'. +It is not without errors, but its text is, on the whole, more +correct than that of the manuscript source from which the +version of 1633 was set up in the first instance.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a">(2) In the second class I place manuscripts which are, or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxiii" id="pageii.lxxxiii"></a>[pg lxxxiii]</span> +aim at being, complete collections of Donne's poems. Most of +these belong to the years between 1620 and 1633. They vary +considerably in accuracy of text, and in the care which has +been taken to include only poems that are authentic. They +were made probably by professional copyists, and some of +those whose calligraphy is most attractive show that the scribe +must have paid the smallest attention to the meaning of what +he was writing.</p> + +<p>Of those which I have examined, two groups of manuscripts +seem to me especially noteworthy, because both show that +their collectors had a clear idea of what were, and what were +not, Donne's poems, and because of the general accuracy with +which the poems in one of them are transcribed. Taken with +the edition of 1633 they form an invaluable starting-point for +the determination of the canon of Donne's poems.</p> + +<p>The first of these is represented by three manuscripts which +I have examined, <i>D</i> (Dowden), <i>H49</i> (Harleian MS. 4955), and +<i>Lec</i> (Leconfield).</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>D</i> is a small quarto manuscript, neatly written in a thin, clear +hand and in ordinary script. It was formerly in the Haslewood +collection, and is now in the possession of Professor +Edward Dowden, Trinity College, Dublin, by whose kindness +I have had it by me almost all the time that I have been at +work on my edition.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>H49</i> is a collection of Donne's poems, in the British Museum, +bound up with some by Ben Jonson and others. It is a large +folio written throughout apparently in the same hand. It +opens with some poems and masques by Jonson. A certain +Doctor Andrewes' poems occupy folios 57-87. They are +signed <i>Franc: Andrilla. London August 14. 1629</i>. Donne's +poems follow, filling folios 88 to 144<i>b</i>. Thereafter follow +more poems by Andrewes, Jonson, and others, with some prose +letters by Jonson.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>Lec.</i> This is a large quarto manuscript, beautifully transcribed, +belonging to Lord Leconfield and preserved at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxiv" id="pageii.lxxxiv"></a>[pg lxxxiv]</span> +Petworth House. Many of the manuscripts in this collection +were the property of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland +(1564-1632), the friend who communicated the news of +Donne's marriage to his father-in-law.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a">These three manuscripts are obviously derived from one +common source. They contain the same poems, except that +<i>D</i> has one more than <i>H49</i>, and both of these have some which +are not in <i>Lec</i>. The order of the poems is the same, except +that <i>D</i> and <i>Lec</i> show more signs of an attempt to group the +poems than <i>H49</i>. The text, with some divergences, especially +on the part of <i>Lec</i>, is identical. One instance seems to point +to one of them being the source of the others. In the +long <i>Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington, Brother to the +Countess of Bedford</i>, the original copyist, after beginning +l. 159 'Vertue whose flood', had inadvertently finished with +the second half of l. 161, 'were [<i>sic</i>] blowne in, by thy first +breath.' This error is found in all the three manuscripts. +It may, however, have come from the common source of this +poem, and there are divergences in order and text which make +me think that they are thus derived from one common source.</p> + +<p>A special interest attaches to this collection, apart from the +relative excellence of its text and soundness of its canon, from +the probability that a manuscript of this kind was used for +a large, and that textually the best, part of the edition of 1633. +This becomes manifest on a close examination of the order of +the poems and of their text. Mr. Gosse has said, in speaking +of the edition of 1633: 'The poems are thrown together +without any attempt at intelligent order; neither date, nor +subject, nor relation is in the least regarded.' This is not +entirely the case. Satires, Elegies, Epigrams, Songs are +grouped to some extent. The disorder which prevails is due +to two causes: (1) to the fact that the printer set up from a +variety of sources. There was no previous collected edition +to guide him. Different friends supplied collections, and of +a few poems there were earlier editions. He seems to have +passed from one of these to another as was most convenient at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxv" id="pageii.lxxxv"></a>[pg lxxxv]</span> +the moment. Perhaps some were lent him only for a time. +The differences between copies of <i>1633</i> show that it was +prepared carefully, but emended from time to time while the +printing was actually going on. (2) The second source of the +order of the poems is their order in the manuscripts from +which they were copied. Now a comparison of the order in +<i>1633</i> with that in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> reveals a close +connexion +between them, and throws light on the composition of <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p>It is necessary, before instituting this comparison with <i>1633</i>, +to say a word on the order of the poems in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> +themselves, as it is not quite the same in all three. <i>H49</i> is the +most irregular, perhaps therefore the earliest, each of the others +showing efforts to obtain a better grouping of the poems. +All three begin with the <i>Satyres</i>, of which <i>D</i> and <i>Lec</i> have +five, <i>H49</i> only four; but the text of <i>Lec</i> differs from that of +the other two, agreeing more closely with the version of +<i>1633</i> and of another group of manuscripts. They have all, +then, thirteen <i>Elegies</i> in the same order. After these <i>H49</i> +continues with a number of letters (<i>The Storme</i>, <i>The Calme</i>, +<i>To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Wotton</i>, <i>To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Goodyere</i>, <i>To the +Countesse of Bedford</i>, <i>To S<sup>r</sup> Edward Herbert</i>, and others) +intermingled with Funeral Elegies (<i>Lady Markham</i>, <i>Mris +Boulstred</i>) and religious poems (<i>The Crosse</i>, <i>The Annuntiation</i>, +<i>Good Friday</i>). Then follows a long series of lyrical +pieces, broken after <i>The Funerall</i> by <i>A Letter to the Lady +Carey, and Mrs. Essex Rich</i>, the <i>Epithalamion</i> on the Palatine +marriage, and an <i>Old Letter</i> ('At once from hence', p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.206a">206</a>). +The lyrical pieces are then resumed, and the collection ends +with the Somerset <i>Eclogue</i> and <i>Epithalamion</i>, the <i>Letanye</i>, +both sets of <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, a letter (<i>To the Countesse of +Salisbury</i>), and the long <i>Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington</i>.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>D</i> makes an effort to arrange the poems following the +<i>Elegies</i> in groups. The <i>Funeral Elegies</i> come first, and two +blank pages are headed <i>An Elegye on Prince Henry</i>. The +letters are then brought together, and are followed by the +religious poems dispersed in <i>H49</i>. The lyrical poems follow +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxvi" id="pageii.lxxxvi"></a>[pg lxxxvi]</span> +piece by piece as in <i>H49</i>, and the whole closes with the two +epithalamia and the <i>Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington</i>.</p> + +<p>The order in <i>Lec</i> resembles that of <i>H49</i> more closely than +that of <i>D</i>. The mixed letters, funeral elegies, and religious +poems follow the <i>Elegies</i> as in <i>H49</i>, but <i>Lec</i> adds to them +the +two letters (<i>Lady Carey</i> and <i>The Countess of Salisbury</i>) and +the <i>Letanie</i> which in <i>H49</i> are dispersed through the lyrical +pieces. <i>Lec</i> does not contain any of the <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, but +after <i>The Letanie</i> ten pages are left blank, evidently intended +to receive them. Thereafter, the lyrical poems follow piece +by piece as in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, except that <i>The Prohibition</i> ('Take +heed of loving mee') is omitted—a fact of some interest when +we come to consider <i>1633</i>. <i>Lec</i> closes, like <i>D</i>, with the +epithalamia +and the <i>Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington</i>.</p> + +<p>Turning now to <i>1633</i>, we shall see that, whatever other +sources the editor of that edition used, one was a collection +identical with, or closely resembling, <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, +especially +<i>Lec</i>. That edition begins with the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, +which was <i>not</i> derived from this manuscript. Thereafter +follow the two sets of <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, the second set containing +exactly the same number of sonnets, and in the same order, as +in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, whereas other manuscripts, e.g. <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, +which will be described later, have more sonnets and in a +different order; and <i>W</i>, which agrees otherwise with <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, adds three that are found nowhere else. The sonnets +are followed in <i>1633</i> by the <i>Epigrams</i>, which are not in <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, but after that the resemblance of <i>1633</i> to +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> becomes quite striking. These manuscripts, we have seen, +begin with the <i>Satyres</i>. The edition, however, passes on at +once to the <i>Elegies</i>. Of the thirteen given in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, +<i>1633</i> prints eight, omitting the first (<i>The Bracelet</i>), the second +(<i>Going to Bed</i>), the tenth (<i>Loves Warr</i>), the eleventh (<i>On +his Mistris</i>), and the thirteenth (<i>Loves Progresse</i>). That the +editor, however, had before him, and intended to print, the +<i>Satyres</i> and the thirteen <i>Elegies</i> as he found them in <i>his</i> +copy0 +of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, is proved by the following extract which +Mr. Chambers quotes from the Stationers' Register:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxvii" id="pageii.lxxxvii"></a>[pg lxxxvii]</span></p> + +<h3>13<sup>o</sup> September, 1632</h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>John Marriot. Entered for his copy under the hands of Sir</p> +<p class="i12"> Henry Herbert and both the Wardens, a book</p> +<p class="i12"> of verse and poems (the five Satires, the first,</p> +<p class="i12"> second, tenth, eleventh and thirteenth Elegies</p> +<p class="i12"> being excepted) and these before excepted to</p> +<p class="i12"> be his, when he brings lawful authority.</p> +<p class="i30"> vi<i>d.</i></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12"> written by Doctor John Dunn</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This note is intelligible only when compared with this +particular group of manuscripts. In others the order is +quite different.</p> + +<p>This bar—which was probably dictated by reasons of propriety, +though it is difficult to see why the first and the eleventh +<i>Elegies</i> should have been singled out—was got over later as +far as the <i>Satyres</i> were concerned. They are printed after all +the other poems, just before the prose letters. But by this +time the copy of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> had perhaps passed out of +Marriot's hands, for the text of the <i>Satyres</i> seems to show that +they were printed, not from this manuscript, but from one +represented by another group, which I shall describe later. +This is, however, not quite certain, for in <i>Lec</i> the version of +the <i>Satyres</i> given is not the same as in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, but is that +of +this second group of manuscripts. Several little details show +that of the three manuscripts <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, and <i>Lec</i> the last most +closely resembles <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p>Following the <i>Elegies</i> in <i>1633</i> come a group of letters, +epicedes, and religious poems, just as in <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> (<i>D</i> +re-groups +them)—<i>The Storme</i>, <i>The Calme</i>, <i>To Sir Henry Wotton</i>, +('Sir, more than kisses'), <i>The Crosse</i>, <i>Elegie on the Lady +Marckham</i>, <i>Elegie on Mris Boulstred</i> ('Death I recant'), <i>To +Sr Henry Goodyere</i>, <i>To Mr. Rowland Woodward</i>, <i>To Sr +Henry Wootton</i> ('Here's no more newes'), <i>To the Countesse of +Bedford</i> ('Reason is our Soules left hand'), <i>To the Countesse +of Bedford</i> ('Madam, you have refin'd'), <i>To Sr Edward +Herbert, at Julyers</i>. Here <i>1633</i> diverges. Having got into +letters to noble and other people the editor was anxious to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxviii" id="pageii.lxxxviii"></a>[pg lxxxviii]</span> +continue them, and accordingly from another source (which I +shall discuss later) he prints a long series of letters to the +Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Huntingdon, Mr. T. W., +and other more intimate friends (they are 'thou', the Countesses +'you'), and Mrs. Herbert. He perhaps returns to <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> in those to <i>The Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche, from +Amyens</i>, and <i>To the Countesse of Salisbury</i>; and, as in that +manuscript, the Palatine and Essex epithalamia (to which, +however, <i>1633</i> adds that written at Lincoln's Inn) are followed +immediately by the long <i>Obsequies to Lord Harrington</i>. +Three odd <i>Elegies</i> follow, two of which (<i>The Autumnall</i> +and <i>The Picture</i>, 'Image of her') occur in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> in the +same detached fashion. Other manuscripts include them +among the numbered <i>Elegies</i>. <i>The Elegie on Prince Henry</i>, +<i>Psalme 137</i> (probably not by Donne), <i>Resurrection, imperfect</i>, +<i>An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamilton</i>, <i>An +Epitaph upon Shakespeare</i> (certainly not by Donne), <i>Sapho +to Philaenis</i>, follow in <i>1633</i>—a queerly consorted lot. The +<i>Elegie on Prince Henry</i> is taken from the <i>Lachrymae Lachrymarum</i> +of Joshua Sylvester (1612); the rest were possibly +taken from some small commonplace-book. This would +account for the doubtful poems, the only doubtful poems in +<i>1633</i>. These past, the close connexion with our manuscript +is resumed. <i>The Annuntiation</i> is followed, as in <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, +by <i>The Litanie</i>. Thereafter the lyrical pieces begin, as in +these manuscripts, with the song, 'Send home my long strayd +eyes to me.' This is followed by two pieces which are not +in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>,—the impressive, difficult, and in +manuscripts +comparatively rare <i>Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day</i>, and the +much commoner <i>Witchcraft by a picture</i>. Thereafter the +poems follow piece by piece the order in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i><a id="footnotetagt18" name="footnotetagt18"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet18"><sup>18</sup></a> +until +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.lxxxix" id="pageii.lxxxix"></a>[pg lxxxix]</span> +<i>The Curse</i> is reached.<a id="footnotetagt19" name="footnotetagt19"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet19"><sup>19</sup></a> Then, in what seems to have been +the editor's or printer's regular method of proceeding in this +edition, he laid aside the manuscript from which he was +printing the <i>Songs and Sonets</i> to take up another piece of +work that had come to hand, viz. <i>An Anatomie of the World</i> +with <i>A Funerall Elegie</i> and <i>Of the Progresse of the Soule</i>, +which he prints from the edition of 1625. Without apparent +rhyme or reason these long poems are packed in between <i>The +Curse</i> and <i>The Extasie</i>. With the latter poem <i>1633</i> resumes the +songs and (with the exception of <i>The Undertaking</i>) follows the +order in <i>Lec</i> to <i>The Dampe</i>, with which the series in the +manuscripts +closes. It has been noted that in <i>Lec</i>, <i>The Prohibition</i> +(which in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i> follows <i>Breake of day</i> and precedes <i>The +Anniversarie</i>) is omitted. This must have been the case in the +manuscript used for <i>1633</i>, for it is omitted at this place and +though printed later was probably not derived from this +source.</p> + +<p>With <i>The Dampe</i> the manuscript which I am supposing +the editor to have followed in the main probably came to an +end. The poems which follow in <i>1633</i> are of a miscellaneous +character and strangely conjoined. <i>The Dissolution</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.64a">64</a>), +<i>A Ieat Ring sent</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.65a">65</a>), <i>Negative Love</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.66a">66</a>), +<i>The Prohibition</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.67">67</a>), <i>The Expiration</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.68a">68</a>), +<i>The Computation</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.69">69</a>), +complete the tale of lyrics. A few odd elegies follow +('Language thou art,' 'You that are she,' 'To make the doubt +clear') with <i>The Paradox</i>. <i>A Hymne to Christ, at the +Authors last going into Germany</i> is given a page to itself, +and is followed by <i>The Lamentations of Jeremy</i>, <i>The +Satyres</i>, and <i>A Hymne to God the Father</i>. Thereafter come +the prose letters and the <i>Elegies upon the Author</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xc" id="pageii.xc"></a>[pg xc]</span></p> + +<p>What this comparison of the order of the poems points to +is borne out by an examination of the text. The critical notes +afford the materials for a further verification, and I need not +tabulate the resemblances at length. In <i>Elegie IV</i>, for +example, ll. 7, 8, which occur in all the other manuscripts +and editions, are omitted by <i>1633</i> and by <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>. +Again, when a song has no title in <i>1633</i> it has frequently none +in the manuscript. When there are evidently two versions of +a poem, as e.g. in <i>The Good-morrow</i> and <i>The Flea</i>, the +version given in <i>1633</i> is generally that of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>. +Later editions often contaminate this with another version of +the poem. At the same time there are ever and again +divergences between the edition and the manuscript which are +not to be ignored, and cannot always be explained. Some +are due to error in one or the other, but some point either to +divergence between the text of the editor's manuscript and +ours, or to the use by the editor of other sources as well as this. +In the fifth elegy (<i>The Picture</i>), for example, <i>1633</i> twice seems +to follow, not <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, but another source, another +group of +manuscripts which has been preserved; and in <i>The Aniversarie</i> +ll. 23, 24, the version of <i>1633</i> is not that of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> but of +the same second group, which will be described later. On the +whole, however, it is clear that a manuscript closely resembling +that now represented by these three manuscripts supplied the +editor of <i>1633</i> with the bulk of the shorter poems, especially +the older and more privately circulated poems, the <i>Songs and +Sonets</i> and <i>Elegies</i>. When he is not following this manuscript +he draws from miscellaneous and occasionally inferior +sources.</p> + +<p>It would be interesting if we could tell whence this manuscript +was obtained, and whether it was <i>a priori</i> likely to be +a good one. On this point we can only conjecture, but it +seems to me a fairly tenable conjecture (though not to be built +on in any way) that the nucleus of the collection, at any rate, +may have been a commonplace-book which had belonged to +Sir Henry Goodyere. The ground for this conjecture is the +inclusion in the edition of some prose letters addressed to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xci" id="pageii.xci"></a>[pg xci]</span> +this friend, one in Latin and seven in English. There is +indeed also one addressed to the Countess of Bedford; but in +the preceding letter to Goodyere Donne says, 'I send you, +with this, a letter which I sent to the Countesse. It is +not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having it, there +were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you +are sure you have hers.' He goes on to refer to some verses +which are the subject of the letter to the Countesse. There +can be no doubt that the letter printed is the letter sent to +Goodyere. The Burley MS. (see Pearsall-Smith's <i>Life and +Letters of Sir Henry Wotton</i>, Oxford, 1907) gives us a good +example of how a gentleman in the seventeenth century dealt +with his correspondence. That contains, besides various letters, +as of Sidney to Queen Elizabeth on the Anjou marriage, and +other matter which recurs in commonplace-books, a number of +poems and letters, sent to Wotton by his friends, including +Donne, and transcribed by one or other of Wotton's secretaries. +The letters have no signatures appended, which is the case +with the letters in the 1633 edition of Donne's poems. +Wotton and Goodyere did not need to be reminded of the +authors, and perhaps did not wish others to know. The +reason then for the rather odd inclusion of nine prose letters +in a collection of poems is probably, that the principal manuscript +used by the printer was an 'old book'<a id="footnotetagt20" name="footnotetagt20"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet20"><sup>20</sup></a> which had +belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere and in which his secretaries +had transcribed poems and letters by Donne. Goodyere's +collection of Donne's poems would not necessarily be +exhaustive, but it would be full; it would not like the +collections of others include poems that were none of +Donne's; and its text would be accurate, allowing for the +carelessness, indifference, and misunderstandings of secretaries +and copyists.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcii" id="pageii.xcii"></a>[pg xcii]</span></p> + +<p>After <i>D, H49, Lec</i>, the most carefully made collection of +Donne's poems is one represented now by four distinct manuscripts:</p> + +<p><i>A18.</i> Additional MS. 18646, in the British Museum.</p> + +<p><i>N.</i> The Norton MS. in Harvard College Library, Boston, of +which an account is given by Professor Norton in a note +appended to the Grolier Club edition.</p> + +<p><i>TCC.</i> A manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, +Cambridge.</p> + +<p><i>TCD.</i> A large manuscript in the Library of Trinity +College, Dublin, containing two apparently quite independent +collections of poems—the first a collection of Donne's poems +with one or two additional poems by Sir John Roe, Francis +Beaumont, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Corbet; the second +a quite miscellaneous collection, put together some time in the +thirties of the seventeenth century, and including some of +Donne's poems. It is only the first of these which belongs to +the group in question.</p> + +<p>These four manuscripts are closely connected with one +another, but a still more intimate relation exists between <i>A18</i> +and <i>TCC</i> on the one hand, <i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i> on the other. +<i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i> are the larger collections; <i>A18</i> and <i>TCC</i> +contain each a smaller selection from the same body of poems. +Indeed it would seem that <i>N</i> is a copy of <i>TCD, A18</i> of +<i>TCC</i>.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>TCD</i>, to start with it, is a beautifully written collection +of Donne's poems beginning with the <i>Satyres</i>, passing on to +an irregularly arranged series of elegies, letters, lyrics and +epicedes, and closing with the <i>Metempsychosis</i> or <i>Progresse +of the Soule</i> and the <i>Divine Poems</i>, which include the hymns +written in the last years of the poet's life. <i>N</i> has the same +poems, arranged in the same order, and its readings are nearly +always identical with those of <i>TCD</i>, so far as I can judge +from the collation made for me. The handwriting, unlike +that of <i>TCD</i>, is in what is known as secretary hand and is +somewhat difficult to read. What points to the one manuscript +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xciii" id="pageii.xciii"></a>[pg xciii]</span> +being a copy of the other is that in 'Sweetest Love, +I do not go' the scribe has accidentally dropped stanza 4, +by giving its last line to stanza 3, and passing at once to +the fifth stanza. Both manuscripts make this mistake, whereas +<i>A18</i> and <i>TCC</i> contain the complete poem. In other places +<i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i> agree in their readings where <i>A18</i> and <i>TCC</i> +diverge. If the one is a copy of the other, <i>TCD</i> is +probably the more authoritative, as it contains some marginal +indications of authorship which <i>N</i> omits.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>TCC</i> is a smaller manuscript than <i>TCD</i>, but seems to be +written in the same clear, fine hand. It does not contain the +<i>Satyres</i>, the Elegy (XI. in this edition) <i>The Bracelet</i>, and the +epistles <i>The Storme</i> and <i>The Calme</i>, with which <i>N</i> and +<i>TCD</i> +open. It looks, however, as though the sheets containing +these poems had been torn out. Besides these, however, +<i>TCC</i> omits, without any indication of their being lost, an +<i>Elegie to the Lady Bedford</i> ('You that are she'), the Palatine +Epithalamion, a long series of letters<a id="footnotetagt21" name="footnotetagt21"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet21"><sup>21</sup></a> which in <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i> +follow that <i>To M.M.H.</i> and precede <i>Sapho to Philaenis</i>, +the elegies on Prince Henry and on Lord Harington, and <i>The +Lamentations of Jeremy</i>. There are occasional differences +in the grouping of the poems; and <i>TCC</i> does not contain +some poems by Beaumont, Corbet, Sir John Roe, and Sir +Thomas Overbury which are found in <i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i>. In <i>TCD</i> +these, with the exception of that by Beaumont, are carefully +initialled, and therefore not ascribed to Donne. In <i>N</i> these +initials are in some cases omitted; and some of the poems have +found their way into editions of Donne's poems.</p> + +<p>Presumably <i>TCC</i> is the earlier collection, and when <i>TCD</i> +was made, the copyist was able to add fresh poems. It is clear, +however, that in the case of even those poems which the two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xciv" id="pageii.xciv"></a>[pg xciv]</span> +have in common, the one manuscript is not simply a copy of +the others. There are several divergences, and the mistake +referred to above, in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go', is not made +in <i>TCC</i>. Strangely enough, a similar mistake is made by +<i>TCC</i> in transcribing <i>Loves Deitie</i> and is reproduced in <i>A18</i>.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>A18</i>, indeed, would seem to be a copy of <i>TCC</i>. It is not +in the same handwriting, but in secretary hand. It omits the +opening <i>Satyres</i>, &c., as does <i>TCC</i>, but there is no sign of +excision. Presumably, then, the copy was made after these +poems were, if they ever were, torn out of <i>TCC</i>. Wherever +<i>TCC</i> diverges from <i>TCD</i>, <i>A18</i> follows <i>TCC</i>.<a id="footnotetagt22" name="footnotetagt22"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet22"><sup>22</sup></a></p> + +<p>Whoever was responsible for this collection of Donne's +poems, it was evidently made with care, at least as regards +the canon. Very few poems that are not certainly by +Donne are included, and they are correctly initialled. The +only uninitialled doubtful poems are <i>A Paradox</i>, 'Whoso +terms Love a fire,' which in all the four manuscripts follows +'No Lover saith, I love', and Beaumont's letter to the Countess +of Bedford, which begins, 'Soe may my verses pleasing be.' +In <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i> this follows Donne's letter to the same lady, 'You +that are she and you.' It is regrettable that the text of the +poems is not so good as the canon is pure. The punctuation +is careless. There are numerous stupid blunders, and there +are evidences of editing in the interest of more regular metre +or a more obvious meaning. At times, however, it would seem +that the copyist is following a different version of a poem or +poems (e.g. the <i>Satyres</i>) from that given in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, and +other manuscripts, and is embodying corrections perhaps +made by the author himself. It is quite credible that Donne, +in sending copies of his poems at different times to different +people, may have revised and amended them. It is quite clear, +as my notes will show, that of certain poems more than one +version (each correct in itself) was in circulation.</p> + +<p>Was <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, or a manuscript resembling it one of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcv" id="pageii.xcv"></a>[pg xcv]</span> +sources of the edition of <i>1633</i>? In part, I think, it was. The +most probable case at first sight is that of the <i>Satyres</i>. These, +we have seen, Marriot was at first prohibited from printing. +Otherwise they would have followed the <i>Epigrams</i>, and immediately +preceded the <i>Elegies</i>. As it is, they come after all +the other poems; they are edited with some cautious dashes; +and their text is almost identical with that of <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>. In +the first satire the only difference between <i>1633</i> and <i>N</i>, +<i>TCD</i> +occurs in l. 70, where <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>, with all the other manuscripts +read—</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sells for a little state his libertie;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><i>1633</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sells for a little state high libertie;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'high' is either a slip or an editorial emendation. There are +other cases of similar editing, not all of which it is possible to +correct with confidence; but a study of the textual notes will +show that in general <i>1633</i> follows the version preserved in +<i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>, and also in <i>L74</i> (of which later), when the rest of +the manuscripts present an interestingly different text. But +strangely enough this version of the <i>Satyres</i> is also in <i>Lec</i>. +This is the feature in which that manuscript diverges most +strikingly from <i>D</i> and <i>H49</i>. Moreover in some details in +which <i>1633</i> differs from <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> it agrees with <i>Lec</i>. It +is possible therefore that the <i>Satyres</i> were printed from the same +manuscript as the majority of the poems.</p> + +<p>Again in the <i>Letters</i> not found in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> there +is a close but not invariable agreement between the text of <i>1633</i> +and that of this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which +follow that <i>To Sir Edward Herbert</i>, are printed in <i>1633</i> in +the same order as in this edition (pp. 195-226), except that the +group of short letters beginning at p. 203 ('All haile sweete +Poet') is here amplified and rearranged from <i>W</i>. Now in <i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> these letters are also brought together (<i>N</i>, +<i>TCD</i> adding +some which are not in <i>A18</i>, <i>TCC</i>), and the special group +referred to, of letters to intimate friends, are arranged in +exactly the same order as in <i>1633</i>; have the same headings, +the same omissions, and the same accidental linking of two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcvi" id="pageii.xcvi"></a>[pg xcvi]</span> +poems. In the other letters, to the Countesses of Bedford, +Huntingdon, Salisbury, &c., the textual notes will show some +striking resemblances between the edition and the manuscripts. +In the difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.195a">195</a>), <i>1633</i> +follows <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i> where <i>O'F</i> gives a different and in some +details more correct text. In 'This twilight of two yeares' +(p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.198a">198</a>) the strange reading of l. 35, 'a prayer prayes,' is +obviously due to <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>, where 'a praiser prayes' has +accidentally but explicably been written 'a prayer praise'. +In the letter <i>To the Countesse of Huntingdon</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.201a">201</a>) the +<i>1633</i> version of ll. 25, 26 is a correct rendering of what <i>N</i>, +<i>TCD</i> +give wrongly:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Shee guilded us, But you are Gold; and shee</p> +<p>Vs inform'd, but transubstantiates you.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>On the other hand there are some differences, as e.g. in the +placing of ll. 40-2 in 'Honour is so sublime' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.218a">218</a>), which +make it impossible to affirm that these poems were taken +direct from this group of manuscripts as we know them, without +alteration or emendation. The <i>Progresse of the Soule</i> or +<i>Metempsychosis</i>, as printed in <i>1633</i>, must have been taken in +the first instance from this manuscript. In both the manuscripts +and the edition, at l. 83 of the poem a blank space is left after +'did'; in both, l. 137 reads, 'To see the Prince, and soe fill'd +the waye'; in both, 'kinde' is substituted for 'kindle' at l. 150; +in l. 180 the 'uncloth'd child' of 1633 is explicable as an +emendation of the 'encloth'd' of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>; and similarly +the 'leagues o'rpast', l. 296 of <i>1633</i>, is probably due to the +omission of 'many' before 'leagues' in <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<i>TC</i>—'o'rpast' +supplies the lost foot. It is clear, however, from a comparison +of different copies that as <i>1633</i> passed through the press this +poem underwent considerable correction and alteration; and +in its final printed form there are errors which I have been +enabled to correct from <i>G</i>.</p> + +<p>The paraphrase of <i>Lamentations</i>, and the <i>Epithalamion +made at Lincolns Inn</i> (which is not in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>) are +other poems which show, in passages where there are divergent +readings, a tendency to follow the readings of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcvii" id="pageii.xcvii"></a>[pg xcvii]</span> +<i>TC</i>, though in neither of these poems is the identity complete. +It is further noteworthy that to several poems unnamed in +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> the editor of <i>1633</i> has given the title +which these +bear in <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, and <i>TCD</i>, as though he had +access to +both the collections at the same time.</p> + +<p>These two groups of manuscripts, which have come down +to us, thus seem to represent the two principal sources of the +edition of <i>1633</i>. What other poems that edition contains were +derived either from previously printed editions (The <i>Anniversaries</i> +and the <i>Elegy on Prince Henry</i>) or were got from +more miscellaneous and less trustworthy sources.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a">A third manuscript collection of Donne's poems is of +interest because it seems very probable that it or a similar +collection came into the hands of the printer before the second +edition of 1635 was issued. A considerable number of the +errors, or inferior readings, of the later editions seem to be +traceable to its influence. At least it is remarkable how often +when <i>1635</i> and the subsequent editions depart from <i>1633</i> and +the general tradition of the manuscripts they have the support +of this manuscript and this manuscript alone. This is the +manuscript which I have called</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>O'F</i>, because it was at one time in the possession of the +Rev. T. R. O'Flaherty, of Capel, near Dorking, a great student +of Donne, and a collector. He contributed several notes on +Donne to <i>Notes and Queries</i>. I do not know of any more +extensive work by him on the subject.</p> + +<p>This manuscript has been already described by Mr. R. +Warwick Bond in the Catalogue of Ellis and Elvey, 1903. It +is a large but somewhat indiscriminate collection, made +apparently with a view to publication. The title-page states +that it contains 'The Poems of D. J. Donne (not yet imprinted) +consisting of</p> + +<table summary="list of poems" border="0"> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Divine Poems, beginning Pag.</td> + <td class="righta">1</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Satyres</td> + <td class="righta">57</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1">Elegies</td> + <td class="righta">113</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Epicedes and Obsequies</td> + <td class="righta">161</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Letters to severall personages<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcviii" id="pageii.xcviii"></a>[pg xcviii]</span></td> + <td class="righta">189</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Songs and Sonnets </td> + <td class="righta">245</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Epithalamions</td> + <td class="righta">317</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">Epigrams</td> + <td class="righta">337</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left2">With his paradoxes and problems</td> + <td class="righta">421</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftq">finished this 12 of October 1632.'</td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p>The reader will notice how far this arrangement agrees with, +how far it differs from, that adopted in 1635.</p> + +<p>Of the twenty-eight new poems, genuine, doubtful, and +spurious, added in <i>1635</i>, this manuscript contains twenty, +a larger number than I have found in any other single manuscript. +An examination of the text of these does not, however, +make it certain that all of them were derived from this source +or from this source only. The text, for example, of the <i>Elegie +XI. The Bracelet</i>, in <i>1635</i>, is evidently taken from a manuscript +differing in important respects from <i>O'F</i> and resembling +closely <i>Cy</i> and <i>P</i>. <i>Elegie XII</i>, also, <i>His parting from +her</i>, +can hardly have been derived from <i>O'F</i>, as <i>1635</i> gives an +incomplete, <i>O'F</i> has an entire, version of the poem. In others, +however, e.g. <i>Elegie XIII. Julia</i>; <i>Elegie XVI. On his +Mistris</i>; <i>Satyre</i>, 'Men write that love and reason disagree,' it +will be seen that the text of 1635 agrees more closely with +<i>O'F</i> than with any of the other manuscripts cited. The +second of these, <i>On his Mistris</i>, is a notable case, and so are +the four <i>Divine Sonnets</i> added in <i>1635</i>. Most striking of all +is the case of the <i>Song</i>, probably not by Donne, 'Soules joy +now I am gone,' where the absurd readings 'Words' for +'Wounds' and 'hopes joyning' for 'lipp-joyning' (or perhaps +'lipps-joyning') must have come from this source. One can +hardly believe that two independent manuscripts would +perpetrate two such blunders. Taken with the many changes +from the text of <i>1633</i> in which <i>1635</i> has the support of <i>O'F</i>, +one can hardly doubt that among the fresh manuscript +collections which came into the hands of the printer of <i>1635</i> +(often only to mislead him) <i>O'F</i> was one.</p> + +<p>Besides the twenty poems which passed into <i>1635</i>, <i>O'F</i> +attributes some eighteen other poems to Donne, of which few +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.xcix" id="pageii.xcix"></a>[pg xcix]</span> +are probably genuine.<a id="footnotetagt23" name="footnotetagt23"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet23"><sup>23</sup></a> Of the other manuscript collections +I must speak more shortly. There is no evidence that any of +them was used by the seventeenth-century editors.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>B</i> is a handsome, vellum-bound manuscript belonging to +the Earl of Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House. I am, +I think, the first editor who has examined it. The volume +bears on the fly-leaf the autograph signature ('J. Bridgewater') +of the first Earl of Bridgewater, the son of Donne's early +patron, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper and later Lord Chancellor. On +the title-page 'Dr Donne' is written in the same hand. John +Egerton, it will be remembered, was, like Donne, a volunteer in +Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. In 1599 he and +his elder brother Thomas were in Ireland, where the latter was +killed, leaving John to be his father's heir. The book-number, +inscribed on the second leaf, is in the handwriting of the +second Earl of Bridgewater, the Elder Brother of Milton's +<i>Comus</i>. The manuscript has thus interesting associations, +and links with Donne's earliest patron. I had hoped that it +might prove, being made for those who had known Donne all +his life, an exceptionally good manuscript, but can hardly say +that my expectations were fulfilled. It was probably put +together in the twenties, because though it contains the <i>Holy +Sonnets</i> it does not contain the hymns written at the close of +the poet's life. It resembles <i>O'F</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, and <i>P</i>, +rather than +either of the first two collections which I have described, <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, in that it includes +with Donne's +poems a number of poems not by Donne,<a id="footnotetagt24" name="footnotetagt24"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet24"><sup>24</sup></a> but most of them +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.c" id="pageii.c"></a>[pg c]</span> +apparently by his contemporaries, Sir John Roe, Francis +Beaumont, Jonson, and other of the wits of the first decade of +the seventeenth century, the men who collaborated in writing +witty poems on Coryat, or <i>Characters</i> in the style of Sir +Thomas Overbury. In the case of some of these initials are +added, and a later, but not modern, hand has gone over the +manuscript and denied or queried Donne's authorship of others. +Textually also <i>B</i> tends to range itself, especially in certain +groups of poems, as the <i>Satyres</i> and <i>Holy Sonnets</i>, with <i>O'F</i>, +<i>S96</i>, <i>W</i> when these differ from <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and +<i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>. +In such cases the tradition which it represents is most correctly +preserved in <i>W</i>. In a few poems the text of <i>B</i> is identical +with that of <i>S96</i>. On the whole <i>B</i> cannot be accepted in any +degree as an independent authority for the text. It is important +only for its agreements with other manuscripts, as +helping to establish what I may call the manuscript tradition, +in various passages, as against the text of the editions.</p> + +<p>Still less valuable as an independent textual authority is</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>P</i>. This manuscript is a striking example of the kind of +collections of poems, circulating in manuscript, which gentlemen +in the seventeenth century caused to be prepared, and +one cannot help wondering how they managed to understand +the poems, so full is the text of gross and palpable errors. +<i>P</i> is a small octavo manuscript, once in the Phillipps collection, +now in the possession of Captain C. Shirley Harris, Oxford. +On the cover of brown leather is stamped the royal arms of +James I. On p. 1 is written, '1623 me possidet Hen. Champernowne +de Dartington in Devonia, generosus.' Two other +members of this old, and still extant, Devonshire family have +owned the volume, as also Sir Edward Seymour (Knight +Baronett) and Bridgett Brookbrige. The poems are written +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.ci" id="pageii.ci"></a>[pg ci]</span> +in a small, clear hand, and in Elizabethan character. Captain +Harris has had a careful transcript of the poems made, and +he allowed me after collating the original with the transcript +to keep the latter by me for a long time.</p> + +<p>The collection is in the nature of a commonplace-book, and +includes a prose letter to Raleigh, and a good many poems +by other poets than Donne, but the bulk of the volume is +occupied with his poems,<a id="footnotetagt25" name="footnotetagt25"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet25"><sup>25</sup></a> and most of the poems are signed +'J. D. Finis.' The date of the collection is between 1619, +when the poem <i>When he went with the Lo Doncaster</i> was +written, and 1623, the date on the title-page. Neither for text +nor for canon is <i>P</i> an authority, but the very carelessness with +which it is written makes its testimony to certain readings +indisputable. It makes no suggestion of conscious editing. +In certain poems its text is identical with that of <i>Cy</i>, even to +absurd errors. It sometimes, however, supports readings +which are otherwise confined to <i>O'F</i> and the later editions of +the poem, showing that these may be older than 1632-5.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>Cy.</i> The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred folio +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cii" id="pageii.cii"></a>[pg cii]</span> +pages bound in flexible vellum, and is now in the Harvard +College Library, Boston. It is by no means an exhaustive +collection; the poems are chaotically arranged; the text +seems to be careless, and the spelling unusually erratic; but +most of the poems it contains are genuine.<a id="footnotetagt26" name="footnotetagt26"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet26"><sup>26</sup></a> This manuscript +is not as a whole identical with <i>P</i>, but some of the +poems it contains must have come from that or from a common +source.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>JC.</i> The John Cave MS. is a small collection of Donne's +poems now in the possession of Mr. Elkin Matthews, +who has kindly allowed me to collate it. It was formerly in +Mr. O'Flaherty's possession. The original possessor had been +a certain John Cave, and the volume opens with the following +poem, written, it will be seen, while Donne was still alive:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Oh how it joys me that this quick brain'd Age</p> +<p>can nere reach thee (Donn) though it should engage</p> +<p>at once all its whole stock of witt to finde</p> +<p>out of thy well plac'd words thy more pure minde.</p> +<p>Noe, wee are bastard Aeglets all; our eyes</p> +<p>could not endure the splendor that would rise</p> +<p>from hence like rays from out a cloud. That Man</p> +<p>who first found out the Perspective which can</p> +<p>make starrs at midday plainly seen, did more</p> +<p>then could the whole Chaos of Arte〈s〉 before</p> +<p>or since; If I might have my wish 't shuld bee</p> +<p>That Man might be reviv'd againe to see</p> +<p>If hee could such another frame, whereby</p> +<p>the minde might bee made see as farr as th' eye.</p> +<p>Then might we hope to finde thy sense, till then</p> +<p>The Age of Ignorance I'le still condemn.</p> +<p class="i22">IO. CA.</p> +<p class="i24">Jun. 3. 1620.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.ciii" id="pageii.ciii"></a>[pg ciii]</span></p> + +<p>The manuscript is divided into three parts, the first containing +the five <i>Satyres</i>, the <i>Litany</i> and the <i>Storme</i> and +<i>Calme</i>. +The second consists of <i>Elegies</i> and <i>Epigrammes</i> and the third +of <i>Miscellanea, Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author</i>. +The elegies in the second part are, as in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and +<i>W</i>, +thirteen in number. Their arrangement is that of <i>W</i>, and, +like <i>W</i>, <i>JC</i> gives <i>The Comparison</i>, which, <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> do not, +but drops <i>Loves Progress</i>, which the latter group contains. +The text of these poems is generally that of <i>W</i>, but here +and throughout <i>JC</i> abounds in errors and emendations. It +contains one or two poems which were published in the +edition of 1650, and which I have found in no other manuscript +except <i>O'F</i>. In these <i>JC</i> supplies some obvious +emendations. The poems in the third part are very irregularly +arranged. This is the only manuscript, professing to be +of Donne's poems, which contains the elegy, 'The heavens +rejoice in motion,' which the younger Donne added to the +edition of 1650. It is not a very correct, but is an interesting +manuscript, with very few spurious poems. At the other end +of the manuscript from Donne's, are poems by Corbet.</p> + +<p>What seems to be practically a duplicate of <i>JC</i> is preserved +in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It +belonged originally to a certain 'Johannes Nedlam e Collegio +Lincolniense' and is dated 1625. Cave's poem 'Upon +Doctor Donne's Satyres' is inscribed and the contents and +arrangement of the volume are identical with those of <i>JC</i> +except that one poem, <i>The Dampe</i>, is omitted, probably by +an oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience +of <i>JC</i> I did not think it necessary to collate this manuscript. +It was from it that Waldron printed some of the unpublished +poems of Donne and Corbet in <i>A Collection of Miscellaneous +Poetry</i> (1802).</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>H40</i> and <i>RP31</i>, i.e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British +Museum, and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian +Library, are two manuscripts containing a fairly large number +of Donne's poems intermingled with poems by other and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.civ" id="pageii.civ"></a>[pg civ]</span> +contemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf of <i>RP31</i> +declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons +poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is +certainly not an accurate description.<a id="footnotetagt27" name="footnotetagt27"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet27"><sup>27</sup></a> Some of the poems +must have been written as late as 1610, and they are by +various authors, Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, +Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont, and probably others, but +names of authors are only occasionally given. Each manuscript +starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the +poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st.' The poems follow +the same order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by +Donne <i>RP31</i> contains several which are not in <i>H40</i>, and, on +the other hand, of poems by Donne <i>H40</i> inserts at various +places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not in +<i>RP31</i>. The latter is, in short, a miscellaneous collection of +Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems, including several of +Donne's; the former, the same collection in which Donne's +poems have become by insertion the principal feature. +I have cited the readings of <i>H40</i> throughout; those of <i>RP31</i> +only when they differ from <i>H40</i>, or when I wish to emphasize +their agreement. Wherever derived from, the poems are +generally carefully and intelligently transcribed. They +contain some unpublished poems of Jonson, Sir Edward +Herbert, and probably Daniel.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a"><i>L74.</i> The Lansdowne MS. 740, in the British Museum, is an +interesting collection of Donne's mainly earlier and secular +poems, along with several by contemporaries.<a id="footnotetagt28" name="footnotetagt28"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet28"><sup>28</sup></a> The text of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cv" id="pageii.cv"></a>[pg cv]</span> +the <i>Satyres</i> connects this collection with <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<i>TC</i>, but it is +probably older, as it contains none of the <i>Divine Poems</i> and +no poem written later than 1610. Its interest, apart from the +support which it lends to the readings of other manuscripts, +centres in the evidence it affords as to the authorship of some +of the unauthentic poems which have been ascribed to Donne.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>S.</i> The Stephens MS., now in the Harvard College Library, +Boston, is the manuscript on which Dr. Grosart based his +edition (though he does not reproduce it either consistently or +with invariable accuracy) in 1873—an unhappy choice even +were it legitimate to adopt any single manuscript in preference +to the edition of 1633. Of all the manuscripts I have examined +(I know it only through the collation made for me +and from Dr. Grosart's citations) it is, I think, without exception +the worst, the fullest of obvious and absurd blunders. +There are too in it more evidences of stupid editing than in <i>P</i>, +whose blunders are due to careless copying by eye or to +dictation, and therefore more easy to correct.</p> + +<p>The manuscript is dated, at the end, '19th July 1620,' and +contains no poems which are demonstrably later than this date, +or indeed than 1610. As, however, it contains several of the +<i>Divine Poems</i>, including <i>La Corona</i>, but <i>not</i> the <i>Holy +Sonnets</i>, it affords a valuable clue to the date of these poems,—of +which more elsewhere. The collection is an ambitious +one, and an attempt has been made at classification. Six +Satires are followed by twenty-seven Elegies (one is torn out) +under which head love and funeral elegies are included, and +these by a long series of songs with the <i>Divine Poems</i> interspersed. +Some of the songs, as of the elegies, are not by +Donne.<a id="footnotetagt29" name="footnotetagt29"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet29"><sup>29</sup></a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cvi" id="pageii.cvi"></a>[pg cvi]</span></p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>S96.</i> Stowe MS. 961 is a small folio volume in the British +Museum, containing a collection of Donne's poems very neatly +and prettily transcribed. It cannot have been made before +1630 as it contains all the three hymns written during the +poet's last illnesses. Indeed it is the only manuscript which +I have found containing a copy of the <i>Hymne to God, my +God in my Sicknes</i>. It is a very miscellaneous collection. +Three satires are followed by the long obsequies to the Lord +Harington, and these by a sequence of Letters, Funeral +Elegies, Elegies, and Songs intermingled. It is regrettable +that so well-written a manuscript is not more reliable, but its +text is poor, its titles sometimes erroneous, and its ascriptions +inaccurate.<a id="footnotetagt30" name="footnotetagt30"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet30"><sup>30</sup></a></p> + +<p class="space-above2a">(3) In the third class I place manuscripts which are not +primarily collections of Donne's poems but collections of +seventeenth-century poems among which Donne's are included. +It is not easy to draw a hard and fast line between this class +and the last because, as has been seen, most of the manuscripts +at the end of the last list contain poems which are not, or +probably are not, by Donne. Still, in these collections Donne's +work predominates, and the tendency of the collector is to +bring the other poems under his aegis. Initials like J. R., +F. B., J. H. disappear, or J. D. takes their place. In the case +of these last collections this is not so. Poems by Donne are +included with poems which the collector assigns to other wits. +Obviously this class could be made to include many different +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cvii" id="pageii.cvii"></a>[pg cvii]</span> +kinds of collections, ranging from those in which Donne is +a prominent figure to those which include only one or two of +his poems. But such manuscripts have comparatively little +value and no authority for the textual critic, though they are +not without importance for the student of the canon of Donne's +poetry. I shall mention only one or two, though I have +examined a good many more.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>A25.</i> Additional MS. 25707, in the British Museum, is a large +and interesting collection, written in several different hands, of +early seventeenth-century poems, Jacobean and Caroline. It +contains an <i>Elegie</i> by Henry Skipwith on the death of King +Charles I, but most of the poems are early Jacobean, and either +the bulk of the collection was made before this and some other +poems were inserted, or it is derived from older collections. +Indeed, most of the poems by Donne were probably got from +some older collection or collections not unlike some of those +already described. They consist of twelve elegies arranged in +the same order as in <i>JC</i>, <i>W</i>, and to some extent <i>O'F</i>, which +is not the order of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and <i>1633</i>; a number of +<i>Songs</i> with some <i>Letters</i> and <i>Obsequies</i> following one another sometimes +in batches, at times interspersed with poems by other writers; +the five <i>Satyres</i>, separated from the other poems and showing +some evidences in the text of deriving from a collection like <i>Q</i> +or its duplicate in the Dyce collection.<a id="footnotetagt31" name="footnotetagt31"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet31"><sup>31</sup></a> The only one of the +<i>Divine Poems</i> which <i>A25</i> contains is <i>The Crosse</i>. No poem +which can be proved to have been written later than 1610 is +included.</p> + +<p>The poems by Donne in this manuscript are generally, but +not always, initialled J. D., and are thus distinguished from +others by F. B., H. K., N. H., H. W., Sr H. G., T. P., T. G., +G. Lucy., No. B., &c. The care with which this has been done +lends interest to those poems which are here ascribed to +Donne but are not elsewhere assigned to him. <i>A25</i> (with its +partial duplicate <i>C</i>) is the only manuscript which attributes to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cviii" id="pageii.cviii"></a>[pg cviii]</span> +'J. D.' the Psalm, 'By Euphrates flowery side,' that was printed +in <i>1633</i> and all the subsequent editions.<a id="footnotetagt32" name="footnotetagt32"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet32"><sup>32</sup></a></p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>C.</i> A strange duplicate of certain parts of <i>A25</i> is a small +manuscript in the Cambridge University Library belonging to +the Baumgartner collection. It is a thin folio, much damaged by +damp, and scribbled over. A long poem, <i>In cladem Rheensen</i> +('Verses upon the slaughter at the Isle of Rhees'), has been used +by the cataloguer to date the manuscript, but as this has +evidently been inserted when the whole was bound, the rest of the +contents may be older or younger. The collection opens with +three of the <i>Elegies</i> contained in <i>A25</i>. It then omits eleven +poems which are in <i>A25</i>, and continues with twenty <i>Songs</i> and +<i>Obsequies</i>, following the order of <i>A25</i> but omitting the intervening +poems. Some nine more poems are given, following +the order of <i>A25</i>, but many are omitted in <i>C</i> which are found +in <i>A25</i>, and the poems in <i>C</i> are often only fragments of the +whole poems in <i>A25</i>. Evidently <i>C</i> is a selection of poems +either made directly from <i>A25</i>, or from the collection of +Donne's poems (with one or two by Beaumont and others) +which <i>A25</i> itself drew from.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>A10.</i> Additional MS. 10309, in the British Museum, is a +little octavo volume which was once the property of Margaret +Bellasis, probably the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Lord +Fauconberg. It is a very miscellaneous collection of prose +(Hall's <i>Characterismes of Vice</i>) and verse. Of Donne's +undoubted poems there are very few, but there is an interesting +group of poems by Roe or others (the authors are not named +in the manuscript) which are frequently found with Donne's, +and some of which have been printed as his.<a id="footnotetagt33" name="footnotetagt33"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet33"><sup>33</sup></a></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cix" id="pageii.cix"></a>[pg cix]</span></p> + +<p><i>M.</i> This is a manuscript bought by Lord Houghton and +now in the library of the Marquis of Crewe. It is entitled</p> + +<p class="centerc">A Collection of</p> +<p class="centertb">Original Poetry</p> +<p class="centerc">written about the time of</p> +<p class="centerc">Ben: Jonson</p> +<p class="centerc">qui ob. 1637</p> + +<p>A later hand, probably Sir John Simeon's, has added 'Chiefly +in the Autograph of Dr. Donne Dean of St. Pauls', but this is +quite erroneous. It is a miscellaneous collection of poems by +Donne, Jonson, Pembroke, Shirley, and others, with short +extracts from Fletcher and Shakespeare. Donne's are the +most numerous, and their text generally good, but such a +collection can have no authority. It is important only as +supporting readings and ascriptions of other manuscripts. I +cite it seldom.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"><i>TCD</i> (<i>Second Collection</i>).<a id="footnotetagt34" name="footnotetagt34"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet34"><sup>34</sup></a> The large manuscript volume in +Trinity College, Dublin, contains two collections of poems +(though editors have spoken of them as one) of very different +character and value. The first I have already described. It +occupies folios 1 to 292. On folio 293 a new hand begins +with the song, 'Victorious Beauty though your eyes,' and from +that folio to folio 565 (but some folios are torn out) follows a +long and miscellaneous series of early seventeenth-century +poems. There are numerous references to Buckingham, but +none to the Long Parliament or the events which followed, so +that the collection was probably put together before 1640. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cx" id="pageii.cx"></a>[pg cx]</span> +The poems are ascribed to different authors in a very haphazard +and untrustworthy fashion. James I is credited with Jonson's +epigram on the Union of the Crowns; Donne's <i>The Baite</i> is +given to Wotton; and Wotton's 'O Faithless World' to Robert +Wisedom. Probably there is more reliance to be put on the +ascriptions of later and Caroline poems, but for the student of +Donne and early Jacobean poetry the collection has no value. +Some of Donne's poems occur, and it is noteworthy that the +version given is often a different one from that occurring in the +first part of the volume. Probably two distinct collections +have been bound up together.</p> + +<p>Another collection frequently cited by Grosart, but of little +value for the editor of Donne, is the <i>Farmer-Chetham MS.</i>, +a commonplace-book in the Chetham Library, Manchester, +which has been published by Grosart. It contains one or two +of Donne's poems, but its most interesting contents are the +'Gulling Sonnets' of Sir John Davies, and some poems by +Raleigh, Hoskins, and others. Nothing could be more unsafe +than to ascribe poems to Donne, as Grosart did, because they +occur here in conjunction with some that are certainly his.</p> + +<p>A similar collection, which I have not seen, is the <i>Hazlewood-Kingsborough +MS.</i>, as Dr. Grosart called it. To judge from +the analysis in Thorpe's Catalogue, 1831, this too is a miscellaneous +anthology of poems written by, or at any rate +ascribed to, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, Donne, and +others. There is no end to the number of such collections, +and it is absurd to base a text upon them.</p> + +<p class="space-above2a">The <i>Burley MS.</i>, to which I refer once or twice, and which +is a manuscript of great importance for the editor of Donne's +letters, is not a collection of poems. It is a commonplace-book +of Sir Henry Wotton's in the handwriting of his secretaries. +Amid its varied contents are some letters, unsigned +but indubitably by Donne; ten of his <i>Paradoxes</i> with a +covering letter; and a few poems of Donne's with other poems. +Of the last, one is certainly by Donne (<i>H. W. in Hibernia +belligeranti</i>), and I have incorporated it. The others seem to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxi" id="pageii.cxi"></a>[pg cxi]</span> +me exceedingly doubtful. They are probably the work of +other wits among Wotton's friends. I have printed a selection +from them in Appendix C.<a id="footnotetagt35" name="footnotetagt35"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet35"><sup>35</sup></a></p> + +<p class="space-above2a">Of the manuscripts of the first two classes, which alone could +put forward any claim to be treated as independent sources of +the text of an edition of Donne's poems, it would be impossible, +I think, to construct a complete genealogy. Different poems, +or different groups of poems in the same manuscript, come +from different sources, and to trace each stream to its fountain-head +would be a difficult task, perhaps impossible without +further material, and would in the end hardly repay the trouble, +for the difficulties in Donne's text are not of so insoluble +a character as to demand such heroic methods. The interval +between the composition of the poems and their first publication +ranges from about forty years at the most to a year or +two. There is no case here of groping one's way back through +centuries of transmission. The surprising fact is rather that so +many of the common errors of a text preserved and transmitted +in manuscript should have appeared so soon, that the text and +canon of Donne's poems should present an editor in one form +or another with all the chief problems which confront the +editor of a classical or a mediaeval author.</p> + +<p>The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>. These with a portion of <i>1633</i> come from a common +source. (2) <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>. These also come from +a single stream and some parts of <i>1633</i> follow them. <i>L74</i> is +closely connected with them, at least in parts. (3) <i>A25</i>, <i>B</i>, +<i>Cy</i>, <i>JC</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>P</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, <i>W</i>. +These cannot be traced in their +entirety to a single head, but in certain groups of poems they +tend to follow a common tradition which may or may not be +that of one or other of the first two groups. Of the <i>Elegies</i>, +for example, <i>A25</i>, <i>JC</i>, <i>O'F</i> and <i>W</i> transcribe twelve in +the same +order and with much the same text. Again, <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S96</i>, and +<i>W</i> have taken the <i>Holy Sonnets</i> from a common source, but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxii" id="pageii.cxii"></a>[pg cxii]</span> +<i>O'F</i> has corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a +manuscript resembling <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, while <i>W</i> has a +more correct +version than the others of the common tradition, and three +sonnets which none of these include. Generally, whenever +<i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S96</i>, and <i>W</i> derive from the same source, +<i>W</i> is much +the most reliable witness.</p> + +<p>Indeed, our first two groups and <i>W</i> have the appearance of +being derived from some authoritative source, from manuscripts +in the possession of members of Donne's circle. All the others +suggest, by the headings they give to occasional poems, their +misunderstanding of the true character of some poems, their +erroneous ascriptions of poems, that they are the work of +amateurs to whom Donne was not known, or who belonged to +a generation that knew Donne as a divine, only vaguely as +a wit.</p> + +<p>These being the materials at our command, the question is, +how are we to use them to secure as accurate a text as possible +of Donne's poems, to get back as close as may be to what the +poet wrote himself. The answer is fairly obvious, though it +could not be so until some effort had been made to survey the +manuscript material as a whole.</p> + +<p>Of the three most recent editors—the first to attempt to +obtain a true text—of Donne's poems, each has pursued a +different plan. The late Dr. Grosart<a id="footnotetagt36" name="footnotetagt36"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet36"><sup>36</sup></a> proceeded on a principle +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxiii" id="pageii.cxiii"></a>[pg cxiii]</span> +which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine accurately +what is the source of, or authority for, any particular reading +he adopted. He printed now from one manuscript, now from +another, but corrected the errors of the manuscript by one or +other of the editions, most often by that of 1669. He made +no estimate of the relative value of either manuscripts or +editions, nor used them in any systematic fashion.</p> + +<p>The Grolier Club edition<a id="footnotetagt37" name="footnotetagt37"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet37"><sup>37</sup></a> was constructed on a different +principle. For all those poems which <i>1633</i> contains, that +edition was accepted as the basis; for other poems, the first +edition, whichever that might be. The text of <i>1633</i> is reproduced +very closely, even when the editor leans to the acceptance +of a later reading as correct. Only one or two corrections are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxiv" id="pageii.cxiv"></a>[pg cxiv]</span> +actually incorporated in the text. But the punctuation has +been freely altered throughout, and no record of these changes +is preserved in the textual notes even when they affect the +sense. In more than one instance the words of <i>1633</i> are +retained in this edition but are made to convey a different +meaning from that which they bear in the original.</p> + +<p>The edition of Donne's poems prepared by Mr. E. K. +Chambers<a id="footnotetagt38" name="footnotetagt38"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet38"><sup>38</sup></a> for the <i>Muses Library</i> was not based, like +Dr. Grosart's, on a casual use of individual manuscripts and +editions, nor like the Grolier Club edition on a rigid adherence +to the first edition, but on an eclectic use of all the seventeenth-century +editions, supplemented by an occasional reference to +one or other of the manuscript collections, either at first hand +or through Dr. Grosart.</p> + +<p>Of these three methods, that of the Grolier Club editor is, +there can be no doubt, the soundest. The edition of 1633 +comes to us, indeed, with no <i>a priori</i> authority. It was not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxv" id="pageii.cxv"></a>[pg cxv]</span> +published, or (like the sermons) prepared for the press<a id="footnotetagt39" name="footnotetagt39"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet39"><sup>39</sup></a> by +the author; nor (as in the case of the first folio edition of +Shakespeare's plays) was it issued by the author's executors.</p> + +<p>But if we apply to <i>1633</i> the <i>a posteriori</i> tests described by +Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante's +<i>Divina Commedia</i>, if we select a number of test passages, +passages where the editions vary, but where one reading can +be clearly shown to be intrinsically the more probable, by +certain definite tests,<a id="footnotetagt40" name="footnotetagt40"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet40"><sup>40</sup></a> we shall find that <i>1633</i> is, taken all over, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxvi" id="pageii.cxvi"></a>[pg cxvi]</span> +far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may +add at once, to any <i>single</i> manuscript.</p> + +<p>Moreover, any careful examination of the later editions, of +their variations from <i>1633</i>, and of the text of the poems which +they print for the first time, shows clearly that some method +more trustworthy than individual preference must be found if +we are to distinguish between those of their variations which +have, and those which have not, some authority behind them; +those which are derived from a fresh reference to manuscript +sources, and those which are due to carelessness, to misunderstanding, +or to unwarrantable emendation. Apart from some +such sifting, an edition of Donne based, like Mr. Chambers', on +an eclectic use of the editions is exactly in the same position as +would be an edition of Shakespeare based on an eclectic use +of the Folios, helped out by a quite occasional and quite +eclectic reference to a quarto. A plain reprint of <i>1633</i> like +Alford's (of such poems as he publishes) has fewer serious +errors than an eclectic text.</p> + +<p>It is here that the manuscripts come to our aid. To take, +indeed, any single manuscript, as Dr. Grosart did, and select +this or that reading from it as seems to you good, is not +a justifiable procedure. This is simply to add to the editions +one more possible source of error. There is no single manuscript +which could with any security be substituted for <i>1633</i>. +Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that +a manuscript resembling <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> was the source of +a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to prefer +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> as a whole to <i>1633</i>.<a id="footnotetagt41" name="footnotetagt41"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet41"><sup>41</sup></a> It corrects some +errors in +that edition; it has others of its own. Even <i>W</i>, which has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxvii" id="pageii.cxvii"></a>[pg cxvii]</span> +a completer version of some poems than <i>1633</i>, in these +poems makes some mistakes which <i>1633</i> avoids.</p> + +<p>If the manuscripts are to help us it must be by collating +them, and establishing what one might call the agreement of +the manuscripts whether universal or partial, noting in the +latter case the comparative value of the different groups. +When we do this we get at once an interesting result. We +find that in about nine cases out of ten the agreement of the +manuscripts is on the side of those readings of <i>1633</i> which are +supported by the tests of intrinsic probability referred to +above,<a id="footnotetagt42" name="footnotetagt42"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet42"><sup>42</sup></a> and on the other hand we find that sometimes the +agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of the later editions, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxviii" id="pageii.cxviii"></a>[pg cxviii]</span> +and that in such cases there is a good deal to be said for the +later reading.<a id="footnotetagt43" name="footnotetagt43"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet43"><sup>43</sup></a></p> + +<p>The first result of a collation of the manuscripts is thus to +vindicate <i>1633</i>, and to provide us with a means of distinguishing +among later variants those which have, from those which +have not, authority. But in vindicating <i>1633</i> the agreement +of the manuscripts vindicates itself. If <i>B</i>'s evidence is found +always or most often to support <i>A</i>, a good witness, on those +points on which <i>A</i>'s evidence is in itself most probably +correct, not only is <i>A</i>'s evidence strengthened but <i>B</i>'s own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxix" id="pageii.cxix"></a>[pg cxix]</span> +character as a witness is established, and he may be called in +when <i>A</i>, followed by <i>C</i>, an inferior witness, has gone astray. +In some cases the manuscripts <i>alone</i> give us what is obviously +the correct reading, e.g. p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.25">25</a>, l. 22, 'But wee no more' for +'But now no more'; p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.72">72</a>, l. 26, 'his first minute' for 'his +short minute'. These are exceptionally clear cases. There +are some where, I have no doubt, my preference of the +reading of the manuscripts to that of the editions will not +be approved by every reader. I have adopted no rigid rule, +but considered each case on its merits. All the circumstances +already referred to have to be weighed—which reading +is most likely to have arisen from the other, what is Donne's +usage elsewhere, what Scholastic or other 'metaphysical' dogma +underlies the conceit, and what is the source of the text of +a particular poem in <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p>For my analysis of this edition has thrown light upon what +of itself is evident—that of some poems or groups of poems +<i>1633</i> provides a more accurate text than of others, viz. of those +for which its source was a manuscript resembling <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, +but possibly more correct than any one of these, or revised by +an editor who knew the poems. But in printing some of the +poems, e.g. <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, a number of the +letters to noble ladies and others,<a id="footnotetagt44" name="footnotetagt44"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet44"><sup>44</sup></a> the <i>Epithalamion +made at Lincolns Inne</i>, <i>The Prohibition</i>, and a few +others, for which <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> was not available, +<i>1633</i> +seems to have followed an inferior manuscript, <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> +or one resembling it. In these cases it is possible to correct +<i>1633</i> by comparing it with a better single manuscript, as <i>G</i> or +<i>W</i>, or group of manuscripts, as <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. +Sometimes +even a generally inferior manuscript like <i>O'F</i> seems to offer +a better text of an individual poem, at least in parts, for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxx" id="pageii.cxx"></a>[pg cxx]</span> +occasionally the correct reading has been preserved in only +one or two manuscripts. Only <i>W</i> among eleven manuscripts +which I have recorded (and I have examined others) preserves +the reading in the <i>Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne</i>, +p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.143">143</a>, l. 57:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>His steeds nill be restrain'd</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>—which is quite certainly right. Only three manuscripts have +the, to my mind, most probably correct reading in <i>Satyre I</i>, +l. 58, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.147">147</a>:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The Infanta of London;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and only two, <i>Q</i> and the <i>Dyce MS.</i> which is its duplicate, +the tempting and, I think, correct reading in <i>Satyre IV</i>, l. 38, +p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.160">160</a>:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He speaks no language.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Lastly, there are poems for which <i>1633</i> is not available. +The authenticity of these will be discussed later. Their text +is generally very corrupt, especially of those added in <i>1650</i> +and <i>1669</i>. Here the manuscripts help us enormously. With +their aid I have been able to give an infinitely more readable +text of the fine <i>Elegie XII</i>, 'Since she must go'; the brilliant +though not very edifying <i>Elegies XVII</i>, <i>XVIII</i>, and <i>XIX</i>; as +well as of most of the poems in the Appendixes. The work +of correcting some of these had been begun by Dr. Grosart +and Mr. Chambers, but much was still left to do by a wider +collation. Dr. Grosart was content with one or two generally +inferior manuscripts, and Mr. Chambers mentions manuscripts +which time or other reasons did not allow him to examine, or +he could not have been content to leave the text of these poems +as it stands in his edition.</p> + +<p>One warning which must be borne in mind when making +a comparison of alternative readings has been given by +Mr. Chambers, and my examination of the manuscripts bears +it out: 'In all probability most of Donne's poems existed in +several more or less revised forms, and it was sometimes a +matter of chance which form was used for printing a particular +edition.' The examination of a large number of manuscripts +has shown that it is not probable, but certain, that of some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxi" id="pageii.cxxi"></a>[pg cxxi]</span> +poems (e.g. <i>The Flea</i>, <i>A Lecture upon the Shadow</i>, <i>The +Good-Morrow</i>, +<i>Elegie XI. The Bracelet</i>) more than one distinct version +was in circulation. Of the <i>Satyres</i>, too, many of the variants +represent, I can well believe, different versions of the poems +circulated by the poet among his friends. And the same may +possibly be true of variants in other poems. Our analysis of +<i>1633</i> has shown us what versions were followed by that edition. +What happened in later editions was frequently that the readings +of two different versions were combined eclectically. In the +present edition, when it is clear that there were two versions, +my effort has been to retain one tradition pure, recording the +variants in the notes, even when in individual cases the reading +of the text adopted seemed to me inferior to its rival, provided +it was not demonstrably wrong.</p> + +<p>In view of what has been said, the aim of the present edition +may be thus briefly stated:</p> + +<p>(1) To restore the text of <i>1633</i> in all cases where modern +editors have abandoned or disguised it, if there is no evidence, +internal or external, to prove its error or inferiority; and to +show, in the textual notes, how far it has the general support +of the manuscripts.</p> + +<p>(2) To correct <i>1633</i> when the meaning and the evidence of +the manuscripts point to its error and suggest an indubitable +or highly probable emendation.</p> + +<p>(3) To correct throughout, and more drastically, by help of +the manuscripts when such exist, the often carelessly and +erroneously printed text of those poems which were added in +<i>1635</i>, <i>1649</i>, <i>1650</i>, and <i>1669</i>.</p> + +<p>(4) By means of the commentary to vindicate or defend my +choice of reading, and to elucidate Donne's thought by +reference to his other works and (but this I have been able to +do only very partially) to his scholastic and other sources.</p> + +<p>As regards punctuation, it was my intention from the outset +to preserve the original, altering it only (<i>a</i>) when, judged by +its own standards, it was to my mind wrong—stops were displaced +or dropped, or the editor had misunderstood the poet; +(<i>b</i>) when even though defensible the punctuation was misleading, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxii" id="pageii.cxxii"></a>[pg cxxii]</span> +tested frequently by the fact that it had misled editors. In +doing this I frequently made unnecessary changes because it +was only by degrees that I came to understand all the subtleties +of older punctuation and to appreciate some of its nuances. +A good deal of my work in the final revision has consisted in +restoring the original punctuation. In doing this I have been +much assisted by the study of Mr. Percy Simpson's work +on <i>Shakespearian Punctuation</i>. My punctuation will not +probably in the end quite satisfy either the Elizabethan purist, +or the critic who would have preferred a modernized text. +I will state the principles which have guided me.</p> + +<p>I do not agree with Mr. Chambers that the punctuation, at +any rate of <i>1633</i>, is 'exceptionally chaotic'. It is sometimes +wrong, and in certain poems, as the <i>Satyres</i>, it is careless. +But as a rule it is excellent on its own principles. Donne, +indeed, was exceptionally fastidious about punctuation and +such typographical details as capital letters, italics, brackets, &c. +The <i>LXXX Sermons</i> of 1640 are a model of fine rhetorical +and rhythmical pointing, pointing which inserted stops to show +you where to stop. The sermons were not printed in his lifetime, +but we know that he wrote them out for the press, hoping +that they might be a source of income to his son.</p> + +<p>But Donne did not prepare his poems for the press. Their +punctuation is that of the manuscript from which they were +taken, revised by the editor or printer. One can often recognize +in <i>D</i> the source of a stop in <i>1633</i>, or can see what the pointing +and use of capitals would have been had Donne himself supervised +the printing. The printer's man was sometimes careless; +the printer or editor had prejudices of his own in certain +things; and Donne is a difficult and subtle poet. All these +circumstances led to occasional error.</p> + +<p>The printer's prejudice was one which Donne shared, but +not, I think, to quite the same extent. Compared, for example, +with the <i>Anniversaries</i> (printed in Donne's lifetime) <i>1633</i> shows +a fondness for the semicolon,<a id="footnotetagt45" name="footnotetagt45"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotet45"><sup>45</sup></a> not only within the sentence, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxiii" id="pageii.cxxiii"></a>[pg cxxiii]</span> +but separating sentences, instead of a full stop, when these are +closely related in thought to one another. In an argumentative +and rhetorical poet like Donne the result is excellent, once +one grows accustomed to it, as is the use of commas, where we +should use semicolons, within the sentence, dividing co-ordinate +clauses from one another. On the other hand this use of semicolons +leads to occasional ambiguity when one which separates +two sentences comes into close contact with another within the +sentence. For example, in <i>Satyre III</i>, ll. 69-72, how should +an editor, modernizing the punctuation, deal with the semicolons +in ll. 70 and 71? Should he print thus?—</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> But unmoved thou</p> +<p>Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow;</p> +<p>And the right. Ask thy father which is shee;</p> +<p>Let him ask his.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>With trifling differences that is how Chambers and the +Grolier Club editor print them. But the lines might run, to +my mind preferably—</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> But unmoved thou</p> +<p>Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow.</p> +<p>And the right; ask thy father which is shee,</p> +<p>Let him ask his.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'And the right' being taken as equivalent to 'And as to the +right'. One might even print—</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And the right? Ask, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>One of the semicolons is equivalent to a little more than a +comma, the other to a little less than a full stop.</p> + +<p>Another effect of this finely-shaded punctuation is that the +question is constantly forced upon an editor, is it correct? +Has the printer understood the subtler connexion of Donne's +thought, or has he placed the semicolon where the full stop +should be, the comma where the semicolon? My solution of +these difficulties has been to face and try to overcome them. +I have corrected the punctuation where it seemed to me, on its +own principles, definitely wrong; and I have, but more sparingly, +amended the pointing where it seemed to me to disguise +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxiv" id="pageii.cxxiv"></a>[pg cxxiv]</span> +the subtler connexions of Donne's thought or to disturb the rhetoric +and rhythm of his verse paragraphs. In doing so I have +occasionally taken a hint from the manuscripts, especially <i>D</i> +and <i>W</i>, which, by the kindness of Mr. Gosse and Professor +Dowden, I have had by me while revising the text. But if I +occasionally quote these manuscripts in support of my punctuation, +it is only with a view to showing that I have not departed +from the principles of Elizabethan pointing. I do not quote +them as authoritative. On questions of punctuation none of the +extant manuscripts could be appealed to as authorities. Their +punctuation is often erratic and chaotic, when it is not omitted +altogether. Finally, I have recorded every change that I have +made. A reader should be able to gather from the text +and notes combined exactly what was the text of the +first edition of each poem, whether it appeared in <i>1633</i> or +a subsequent edition, in every particular, whether of word, +spelling, or punctuation. My treatment of the last will not, as +I have said, satisfy every reader. I can only say that I have +given to the punctuation of each poem as much time and +thought as to any part of the work. In the case of Donne +this is justifiable. I am not sure that it would be in the case +of a simpler, a less intellectual poet. It would be an easier +task either to retain the old punctuation and leave a reader to +correct for himself, or to modernize. With all its refinements, +Elizabethan punctuation erred by excess. A reader who gives +thought and sympathy to a poem does not need all these commands +to pause, and they frequently irritate and mislead.</p> + +<p class="footnote1"><a id="footnotet1" name="footnotet1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt1"><sup>1</sup></a> +<i>Englands Parnassus; or The Choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets: +with their Poetical Comparisons. Descriptions of Bewties, Personages, +Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, Springs, Rivers etc. Whereunto +are annexed Other Various Discourses both Pleasaunt and Profitable. +Imprinted at London, For N. L. C. B. And T. H.</i> 1600.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet2" name="footnotet2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt2"><sup>2</sup></a> +<i>A Poetical Rhapsody Containing, Diuerse Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, +Madrigalls, and other Poesies, both in Rime and Measured Verse. Never +yet published.</i> &c. 1602. The work was republished in 1608, 1611, and +1621. It was reprinted by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges in 1814, by +Sir Harris Nicolas in 1826, and by A. H. Bullen in 1890.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><i>Englands Helicon</i>, printed in 1600, is a collection of songs almost without +exception in pastoral guise. The <i>Eclogue</i> introducing the Somerset +<i>Epithalamion</i> is Donne's only experiment in this favourite convention. +Donne's friend Christopher Brooke contributed an <i>Epithalamion</i> to this +collection, but not until 1614. It is remarkable that Donne's poem <i>The +Baite</i> did not find its way into <i>Englands Helicon</i> which contains Marlowe's +song and two variants on the theme. In 1600 Eleazar Edgar obtained a +licence to publish <i>Amours by J. D. with Certen Oyr.</i> (i.e. other) <i>sonnetes +by W. S.</i> Were Donne and Shakespeare to have appeared together? +The volume does not seem to have been issued.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet3" name="footnotet3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt3"><sup>3</sup></a> +e.g. Among Drummond of Hawthornden's miscellaneous papers; in +Harleian MS. 3991; in a manuscript in Emmanuel College, Cambridge.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet4" name="footnotet4"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt4"><sup>4</sup></a> +So on the first page, and the opening sentences of the letter defend +the use of the word 'Understanders'. Nevertheless the second and third +pages have the heading, running across from one to the other, 'The Printer +to the Reader.'</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet5" name="footnotet5"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt5"><sup>5</sup></a> +'Will: Marshall sculpsit' implies that Marshall executed the plate +from which the whole frontispiece is taken, including portrait and poem, +not that he is responsible for the portrait itself. To judge from its shape +the latter would seem to have been made originally from a medallion. +Marshall, the <i>Dictionary of National Biography</i> says, 'floruit c. 1630,' +so could have hardly executed a portrait of Donne in 1591. Mr. Laurence +Binyon, of the Print Department of the British Museum, thinks that the +original may have been by Nicholas Hilyard (see II. p. <a href="#pageii.134">134</a>) whom Donne +commends in <i>The Storme</i>. The Spanish motto suggests that Donne had +already travelled.</p> + +<p class="footnote">The portrait does not form part of the preliminary matter, which consists +of twelve pages exclusive of the portrait. It was an insertion and is +not found in all the extant copies. The paper on which it is printed is +a trifle smaller than the rest of the book.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet6" name="footnotet6"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt6"><sup>6</sup></a> +One or two copies seem to have got into circulation without the +<i>Errata</i>. One such, identical in other respects with the ordinary issue, +is preserved in the library of Mr. Beverley Chew, New York. I am +indebted for this information to Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, of St. Bartholomew's +Hospital, who is preparing a detailed bibliography of Donne's works.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet7" name="footnotet7"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt7"><sup>7</sup></a> +Some such arrangement may have been intended by Donne himself +when he contemplated issuing his poems in 1614, for he speaks, in a letter +to Sir Henry Goodyere (see II. pp. <a href="#pageii.144">144-5</a>), of including a letter in verse to +the Countess of Bedford 'amongst the rest to persons of that rank'. The +manuscripts, especially the later and more ambitious, e.g. <i>Stephens</i> and +<i>O'Flaherty</i>, show similar groupings; and in <i>1633</i>, though there is no consistent +sequence, the poems fall into irregularly recurring groups. The +order of the poems within each of these groups in <i>1633</i> is generally retained +in <i>1635</i>. In the <i>1633</i> arrangement there were occasional errors in the +placing of individual poems, especially <i>Elegies</i>, owing to the use of that +name both for love poems and for funeral elegies or epicedes. These +were sometimes corrected in later editions.</p> + +<p class="footnote">Modern editors have dealt rather arbitrarily and variously with the old +classification. Grosart shifted the poems about according to his own whims +in a quite inexplicable fashion. The Grolier Club edition preserves the +groups and their original order (except that the <i>Epigrams</i> and <i>Progresse +of the Soule</i> follow the <i>Satyres</i>), but corrects some of the errors in placing, +and assigns to their relevant groups the poems added in <i>1650</i>. Chambers +makes similar corrections and replacings, but he further rearranges the +groups. In his first volume he brings together—possibly because of their +special interest—the <i>Songs and Sonets</i>, <i>Epithalamions</i>, <i>Elegies</i>, and +<i>Divine Poems</i>, keeping for his second volume the <i>Letters to Severall +Personages</i>, <i>Funerall Elegies</i>, <i>Progresse of the Soul</i>, <i>Satyres</i>, and <i>Epigrams</i>. +There is this to be said for the old arrangement, that it does, as Walton +indicated, correspond generally to the order in which the poems were +written, to the succession of mood and experience in Donne's life. In the +present edition this original order has been preserved with these modifications: +(1) In the <i>Songs and Sonets</i>, <i>The Flea</i> has been restored to the +place which it occupied in <i>1633</i>; (2) the rearrangement of the misplaced +<i>Elegies</i> by modern editors has been accepted; (3) their distribution of the +few poems added in <i>1650</i> (in two sheets bound up with the body of the +work) has also been accepted, but I have placed the poem <i>On Mr. Thomas +Coryats Crudities</i> after the <i>Satyres</i>; (4) two new groups have been inserted, +<i>Heroical Epistles</i> and <i>Epitaphs</i>. It was absurd to class <i>Sappho +to Philaenis</i> with the <i>Letters to Severall Personages</i>. At the same time +it is not exactly an <i>Elegy</i>. There is a slight difference again between the +<i>Funerall Elegy</i> and the <i>Epitaph</i>, though the latter term is sometimes +loosely used. Ben Jonson speaks of Donne's <i>Epitaph on Prince Henry</i>. +(5) The <i>Letter, to E. of D. with six holy Sonnets</i> has been placed before +the <i>Divine Poems</i>. (6) The <i>Hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse +Hamylton</i> has been transferred to the <i>Epicedes</i>. (7) Some poems have +been assigned to an Appendix as doubtful.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet8" name="footnotet8"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt8"><sup>8</sup></a> +The edition of 1633 contained one Latin, and seven English, letters +to Sir Henry Goodyere, with one letter to the Countess of Bedford, +a copy of which had been sent to Goodyere. To these were added in <i>1635</i> +a letter in Latin verse, <i>De libro cum mutuaretur</i> (see p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.397">397</a>), and four +prose letters in English, one <i>To the La. G.</i> written from <i>Amyens</i> in February, +1611-2, and three <i>To my honour'd friend G. G. Esquier</i>, the first dated +April 14, 1612, the two last November 2, 1630, and January 7, 1630.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet9" name="footnotet9"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt9"><sup>9</sup></a> +In the copy of the 1633 edition belonging to the Library of Christ +Church, Oxford, which has been used for the present edition, and bears +the name 'Garrard att his quarters in ϑermyte' (<i>perhaps</i> Donne's friend +George Garrard or Gerrard: see Gosse: <i>Life and Letters &c.</i> i. 285), are +some lines, signed J. V., which seem to imply that the writer had some +hand in the publication of the poems; but the reference may be simply +to his gift:</p> + +<div class="poem1 width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>An early offer of him to yo<sup>r</sup> sight</p> +<p>Was the best way to doe the Author right</p> +<p>My thoughts could fall on; w<sup>ch</sup> his soule w<sup>ch</sup> knew</p> +<p>The weight of a iust Prayse will think't a true.</p> +<p>Our commendation is suspected, when</p> +<p>Wee Elegyes compose on sleeping men,</p> +<p>The Manners of the Age prevayling so</p> +<p>That not our conscience wee, but witts doe show.</p> +<p>And 'tis an often gladnes, that men dye</p> +<p>Of unmatch'd names to write more easyly.</p> +<p>Such my religion is of him; I hold</p> +<p>It iniury to have his merrit tould;</p> +<p>Who (like the Sunn) is righted best when wee</p> +<p>Doe not dispute but shew his quality.</p> +<p>Since all the speech of light is less than it.</p> +<p>An eye to that is still the best of witt.</p> +<p>And nothing can express, for truth or haste</p> +<p>So happily, a sweetnes as our taste.</p> +<p>W<sup>ch</sup> thought at once instructed me in this</p> +<p>Safe way to prayse him, and yo<sup>r</sup> hands to kisse.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i30">Affectionately y<sup>rs</sup></p> +<p class="i36">J. V.</p> +<p class="i22">tu longe sequere et vestigia</p> +<p class="i22">semper adora</p> +<p class="i30">Vaughani</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote">The name at the foot of the Latin line, scribbled at the bottom of the +page, seems to identify J. V. with a Vaughan, probably John Vaughan +(1603-74) who was a Christ Church man. In 1630 (<i>D.N.B.</i>) he was +a barrister at the Inner Temple, and a friend of Selden. He took an +active part in politics later, and in 1668 was created Sir John Vaughan +and appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet10" name="footnotet10"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt10"><sup>10</sup></a> +I am inclined to believe that Henry King, the poet, and later Bishop +of Chichester, assisted the printer. The 1633 edition bears more evidence +of competent editing by one who knew and understood Donne's poems +than any later edition. See p. 255.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet11" name="footnotet11"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt11"><sup>11</sup></a> +Professor Norton (Grolier Club edition, i, p. xxxviii) states that the +<i>Epistle Dedicatory</i> and the <i>Epigram</i> by Jonson are omitted in this edition. +This is an error, perhaps due to the two pages having been torn out of or +omitted in the copy he consulted. They are in the Christ Church, Oxford, +copy which I have used.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet12" name="footnotet12"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt12"><sup>12</sup></a> +In 1779 Donne's poems were included in Bell's <i>Poets of Great Britain</i>. +The poems were grouped in an eccentric fashion and the text is a reprint +of <i>1719</i>. In 1793 Donne's poems were reissued in a <i>Complete Edition of +the Poets of Great Britain</i>, published by Arthur Arch, London, and Bell +and Bradfute, Edinburgh, under the editorship of Robert Anderson. The +text and arrangement of the poems show that this is a reprint of Bell's +edition. The same is true of the text, so far as I have checked it, in +Chalmers's <i>English Poets</i>, vol. v, 1810. But in the arrangement of the +poems the editor has recurred to the edition of 1669, and has reprinted +some poems from that source. Southey printed selections from Donne's +poems in his <i>Select Works of the British Poets from Chaucer to Jonson</i> +(1831). The text is that of <i>1669</i>. In 1839 Dean Alford included some of +Donne's poems in his very incomplete edition of the <i>Works of Donne</i>. +He printed these from a copy of the 1633 edition.</p> + +<p class="footnote">There were two American editions of the poems before the Grolier Club +edition. Donne's poems were included in <i>The Works of the British Poets +with Lives of their Authors</i>, by Ezekiel Sanford, Philadelphia, 1819. The +text is based on the edition of 1719. A complete and separate edition +was published at Boston in 1850. This has an eclectic text, but the editor +has relied principally on the editions after <i>1633</i>. Variants are sparingly +and somewhat inaccurately recorded.</p> + +<p class="footnote">In 1802 F. G. Waldron printed in his <i>Shakespeare Miscellany</i> 'Two +Elegies of Dr. Donne not in any edition of his Works'. Of these, one, +'Loves War,' is by Donne. The other, 'Is Death so great a gamster,' is by +Lord Herbert of Cherbury. In 1856-7 Sir John Simeon printed in the +<i>Miscellanies</i> of the Philobiblon Society several 'Unpublished Poems of +Donne'. Very few of them are at all probably poems of Donne.</p> + +<p class="footnote">Of Grosart's edition (1873), the Grolier Club edition (1895), and +Chambers's edition (1896), a full account will be given later.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet13" name="footnotet13"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt13"><sup>13</sup></a> +Huyghens sent some translations with the letter. He translated into +Dutch (retaining the original metres, except that Alexandrines are +substituted for decasyllabics) nineteen pieces in all. An examination of +these shows that the text he used was a manuscript one, the readings he +translates being in more than one instance those of the manuscript, as +opposed to the printed, tradition. In a note which he prefixed to the +translations when he published them many years later in his <i>Korenbloemen</i> +(1672) he states that Charles I, having heard of his intention to translate +Dr. Donne, 'declared he did not believe that anyone could acquit himself +of that task with credit'—an interesting testimony to the admiration which +Charles felt for the poetry of Donne. A copy of the 1633 edition now in +the British Museum is said to have belonged to the King, and to bear the +marks of his interest in particular passages. Huyghens's comment on +Charles's criticism shows what it was in the English language which most +struck a foreigner speaking a tongue of a purer Germanic strain: 'I feel +sure that he would not have passed so absolute a sentence had he known +the richness of our language, a moderate command of which is sufficient +to enable one to render the thoughts of peoples of all countries with ease +and delight. From these I must, however, except the English; for their +language is all languages; and as it pleases them, Greek and Latin become +plain English. But since <i>we</i> do not thus admit foreign words it is easy to +understand in what difficulty we find ourselves when we have to express in +a pure German speech, <i>Ecstasis</i>, <i>Atomi</i>, <i>Influentiae</i>, <i>Legatum</i>, <i>Alloy</i>, +and the like. Set these aside and the rest costs us no great effort.'</p> + +<p class="footnote">At the end of his life Huyghens wrote a poem of reminiscences, +<i>Sermones de Vita Propria</i>, in which he recalls the impression that Donne +had left upon his mind:</p> + +<div class="poem1 width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Voortreffelyk Donn, o deugdzaam leeraer, duld</p> +<p>Dat ik u bovenal, daar'k u bij voorkeur noeme,</p> +<p>Als godlijk Dichter en welsprekend Reednaer roeme,</p> +<p>Uit uwen gulden mond, 'tzij ge in een vriendenzaal</p> +<p>Of van den kansel spraakt, klonk louter godentaal,</p> +<p>Wier nektar ik zoo vaak met harte wellust proefde.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote">'Suffer me, all-surpassing Donne, virtuous teacher, to name you first +and above all; and sing your fame as god-like poet and eloquent preacher. +From your golden mouth, whether in the chamber of a friend, or in the +pulpit, fell the speech of Gods, whose nectar I drank again and again with +heartfelt joy.'</p> + +<p class="footnote">Vondel did not share the enthusiasm of Huyghens and Hooft.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet14" name="footnotet14"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt14"><sup>14</sup></a> +That is, many poems of his early years.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet15" name="footnotet15"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt15"><sup>15</sup></a> +Tot verschiedene reizen meen ik U. E. onderhouden te hebben met +de gedachtenisse van Doctor Donne, tegenwoordigh Deken van St Pauls +tot Londen, ende, door dit rijckelick beroep, volgens 't Engelsch gebruyck, +in hooghen ansien, in veel hooger door den rijckdom van sijn gadeloos +vernuft ende noch onvergelijckerer welsprekentheit op stoel. Eertijts ten +dienst van de grooten ten hove gevoedt, in de werelt gewortelt, in de +studien geslepen, in de dictkonst vermaerdt, meer als yemand. Van die +groene tacken hebben veel weelderige vruchten onder de liefhebbers leggen +meucken, diese nu bynaer verrot van ouderdom uytdeylen, my synde voor +den besten slag van mispelen ter hand geraeckt by halve vijf en twintig, +door toedoen van eenighe mijne besondere Heeren ende vrienden van die +natie. Onder de onze hebb ick geene konnen uytkiesen, diese voor U. E. +behoorden medegedeelt te werden, slaende deze dichter ganschelijck op +U. E. manieren van invall ende uitspraeck.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet16" name="footnotet16"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt16"><sup>16</sup></a> +This is not the only manuscript in which this poem appears among +the <i>Elegies</i> following immediately on that entitled <i>The Picture</i>, 'Here +take my picture, though I bid farewell.' It is thus placed in <i>1633</i>. The +adhesion of two poems in a number of otherwise distinct manuscripts may +mean, I think, that they were written about the same time.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet17" name="footnotet17"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt17"><sup>17</sup></a> +There are, however, grounds for the conjecture besides the contents. +The Westmoreland MS. was secured, Mr. Gosse writes me, when the +library of the Earls of Westmoreland was disposed of, about the year 1892. +'The interest of this library was that it had not been disturbed since the +early part of the seventeenth century. With the Westmoreland MS. of +Donne's Poems was attached a very fine copy of Donne's <i>Pseudomartyr</i>, +which contained, in what was certainly Donne's handwriting, the words +"Ex dono authoris: Row: Woodward" and a motto in Spanish "De +juegos el mejor es con la hoja". There can be no doubt, I think, that +these two books belonged to Rowland Woodward and were given him by +Donne.' But is it likely that after 1617 Donne would give even to a friend +a manuscript containing the most reprehensible of his earlier <i>Elegies</i> and +the <i>Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn</i>? It seems to me more probable +that the manuscript contains two distinct collections, made at different +times. The one is a transcript from an early collection, quite probably +Woodward's, containing Satires, Elegies, and one Epithalamion. To +this the Divine Poems have been added.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet18" name="footnotet18"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt18"><sup>18</sup></a> +With the grouping of <i>1635</i> I have adopted generally its order within +the groups, but the reader will see quite easily what is the order of the +<i>Songs</i> in <i>1633</i> and in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, if he will turn to the Contents and, +beginning at <i>The Message</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.43">43</a>), will follow down to <i>A Valediction: forbidding +mourning</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.49a">49</a>). He must then turn back to the beginning and +follow the list down till he comes to <i>The Curse</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.41a">41</a>), and then resume at +<i>The Extasie</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.51a">51</a>). If the seven poems, <i>The Message</i> to <i>A Valediction</i>: +<i>forbidding mourning</i>, were brought to the beginning, the order of the +<i>Songs and Sonets</i> in <i>1635-69</i> would be the same as in <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote">The editor of <i>1633</i> began a process, which was carried on in <i>1635</i>, of +naming poems unnamed in the manuscripts, and re-naming some that +already had titles. The textual notes will give full details regarding the +names, and will show that frequently a poem unnamed in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> +remains unnamed in <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet19" name="footnotet19"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt19"><sup>19</sup></a> +There is one exception to this which I had overlooked. In <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, <i>The Undertaking</i> (p. 10) comes later, following <i>The Extasie</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet20" name="footnotet20"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt20"><sup>20</sup></a> +When in 1614 Donne contemplated an edition of his poems he wrote +to Goodyere: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own +rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, than it did to make +them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you,' &c. <i>Letters</i> +(1651), p. 197.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet21" name="footnotet21"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt21"><sup>21</sup></a> +Five are to the Countess of Bedford—'Reason is', 'Honour is', 'You +have refin'd', 'To have written then', and 'This Twy-light'. One is to +the Countess of Huntingdon, 'Man to Gods image'; one to the Countess +of Salisbury, 'Fair, great and good'; and one to Lady Carey, 'Here where +by all.'</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet22" name="footnotet22"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt22"><sup>22</sup></a> +In citing this collection I use <i>TC</i> for the two groups <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet23" name="footnotet23"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt23"><sup>23</sup></a> +Additional lines to the <i>Annuntiation and Passion</i>, 'The greatest and +the most conceald impostor', 'Now why should Love a footeboys place +despise', 'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', 'Pure link of +bodies where no lust controules', 'Whoso terms love a fire', <i>Upon his +scornefull Mistresse</i> ('Cruel, since that thou dost not fear the curse'), +<i>The Hower Glass</i> ('Doe but consider this small Dust'), 'If I freely may +discover', <i>Song</i> ('Now you have kill'd me with your scorn'), 'Absence, +heare thou my protestation', <i>Song</i> ('Love bred of glances'), 'Love if +a god thou art', 'Greate Lord of Love how busy still thou art', 'To sue +for all thy Love and thy whole hart'.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet24" name="footnotet24"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt24"><sup>24</sup></a> +'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', <i>On the death of +Mris Boulstred</i> ('Stay view this stone'), <i>Against Absence</i> ('Absence, +heare thou my protestation'), 'Thou send'st me prose and rhyme', +<i>Tempore Hen: 3</i> ('The state of Fraunce, as now it stands'), <i>A fragment</i> +('Now why shuld love a Footboyes place despise'), <i>To J. D. from Mr. +H. W.</i> ('Worthie Sir, Tis not a coate of gray,' see II. p. <a href="#pageii.141">141</a>), 'Love bred +of glances twixt amorous eyes', <i>To a Watch restored to its mystres</i> ('Goe +and count her better houres'), 'Deare Love continue nyce and chast', +'Cruell, since thou doest not feare the curse', <i>On the blessed virgin Marie</i> +('In that, ô Queene of Queenes').</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet25" name="footnotet25"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt25"><sup>25</sup></a> +Of 128 items in the volume 99 are by Donne, and I have excluded +some that might be claimed for him. The poems certainly not by Donne +are 'Wrong not deare Empresse of my heart', 'Good folkes for gold or +hire', 'Love bred of glances twixt amorous eyes', 'Worthy Sir, Tis not +a coat of gray' (here marked 'J. D'.), 'Censure not sharply then' (marked +'B. J.'), 'Whosoever seeks my love to know', 'Thou sendst me prose +and rimes' (see II. p. <a href="#pageii.166a">166</a>), 'An English lad long wooed a lasse of Wales', +'Marcella now grown old hath broke her glasse', 'Pretus of late had +office borne in London', <i>To his mistresse</i> ('O love whose power and +might'), <i>Her answer</i> ('Your letter I receaved'), <i>The Mar: B. to the +Lady Fe. Her.</i> ('Victorious beauty though your eyes')—a poem generally +attributed to the Earl of Pembroke, <i>A poem</i> ('Absence heare my protestation'), +'True love findes witt but hee whom witt doth move', Earle +of Pembroke 'If her disdain', Ben Ruddier 'Till love breeds love', 'Good +madam Fowler doe not truble mee', 'Oh faithlesse world; and the most +faithlesse part, A womans hart', 'As unthrifts greeve in straw for their +pawn'd beds' (marked 'J. D.'), 'Why shuld not pilgrimes to thy body +come' (marked 'F. B.'), <i>On Mrs. Bulstreed</i>, 'Mee thinkes death like one +laughing lies', 'When this fly liv'd shee us'd to play' (marked 'Cary'), +<i>The Epitaph</i> ('Underneath this sable hearse'), a couple of long heroical +epistles (with notes appended) entitled <i>Sir Philip Sidney to the Lady +Penelope Rich</i> and <i>The Lady Penelope Rich to Sir Philipe Sidney</i>. The +latter epistle after some lines gives way quite abruptly to a different poem, +a fragment of an elegy, which I have printed in Appendix C, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.462">462</a>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet26" name="footnotet26"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt26"><sup>26</sup></a> +The exceptions are one poor epigram:</p> + +<div class="poem1 width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Oh silly John surprised with joy</p> +<p>For Joy hath made thee silly</p> +<p>Joy to enjoy thy sweetest Jone</p> +<p>Jone whiter than the Lillie;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote">and two elegies, generally assigned to F. Beaumont, 'I may forget to eate' +and 'As unthrifts greive in straw'.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet27" name="footnotet27"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt27"><sup>27</sup></a> +The note may point to some connexion of the MS. with the Harington +family. The MS. contains an unusually large number of poems addressed +to the Countess of Bedford, and ascribes, quite probably, the Elegy 'Death +be not proud' to the Countess herself.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet28" name="footnotet28"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt28"><sup>28</sup></a> +The poems not by Donne are <i>A Satire: To Sr Nicholas Smith</i>, 1602 +('Sleep next society'); Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Each woman is a Breefe +of Womankind' and his epitaph 'The spann of my daies measurd, here +I rest'; a poem headed <i>Bash</i>, beginning 'I know not how it comes to pass'; +<i>Verses upon Bishop Fletcher who married a woman of France</i> ('If any aske +what Tarquin ment to marrie'); <i>Fletcher Bishop of London</i> ('It was a +question in Harroldrie'); 'Mistres Aturney scorning long to brooke'; +'Wonder of Beautie, Goddesse of my sence'; 'Faire eyes doe not thinke +scorne to read of Love'; two sonnets apparently by Sir Thomas Roe; six +consecutive poems by Sir John Roe (see pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.401">401-6</a>, <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.408">408-10</a>); 'Absence +heare thou,'; <i>To the Countess of Rutland</i> ('Oh may my verses pleasing +be'); <i>To Sicknesse</i> ('Whie disease dost thou molest'); 'A Taylor thought +a man of upright dealing'; 'Unto that sparkling wit, that spirit of fier'; +'There hath beene one that strove gainst natures power.'</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet29" name="footnotet29"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt29"><sup>29</sup></a> +<i>Satyra Sexta</i> ('Sleepe next Society'), <i>Elegia Undecima</i> ('True Love +findes wit'), <i>Elegia Vicesima</i> ('Behold a wonder': see Grosart ii. 249), +<i>Elegia Vicesima Secunda</i> ('As unthrifts mourne'), <i>Elegia vicesima +septima</i> ('Deare Tom: Tell her'), <i>To Mr. Ben: Jonson</i> 9<sup>o</sup> <i>Novembris +1603</i> ('If great men wronge me'), <i>To Mr. Ben: Jonson</i> ('The state and +mens affairs'), 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste', 'Wherefore +peepst thou envious Daye', 'Great and good, if she deride me', <i>To the +Blessed Virgin Marie</i> ('In that ô Queene of Queenes'), 'What if I come +to my Mistresse bed', 'Thou sentst to me a heart as sound', 'Believe +your glasse', <i>A Paradox of a Painted Face</i> ('Not kisse! By Jove +I will').</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet30" name="footnotet30"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt30"><sup>30</sup></a> +The poems not by Donne are not numerous, but they are assigned to +him without hesitation. They are 'As unthrifts grieve in straw', 'Thou +sentst me Prose', 'Dear Love continue', 'Madam that flea', <i>The Houre +Glass</i> ('Doe but consider this small dust'), <i>A Paradox of a Painted Face</i> +('Not kiss, by Jove'), 'If I freely may discover', 'Absence heare thou', +'Love bred of glances'.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet31" name="footnotet31"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt31"><sup>31</sup></a> +Note the readings I. 58 'The Infanta of London', IV. 38 'He speaks +no language'.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet32" name="footnotet32"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt32"><sup>32</sup></a> +The other poems here ascribed to J. D. are <i>To my Lo: of Denbrook</i> +(<i>sic.</i>, i.e. Pembroke), 'Fye, Fye, you sonnes of Pallas', <i>A letter written by +Sr H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus</i> ('Since every tree'), 'Why shuld not +Pillgryms to thy bodie come', 'O frutefull Garden and yet never till'd', +<i>Of a Lady in the Black Masque</i>. See Appendix C, pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.433">433-7</a>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet33" name="footnotet33"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt33"><sup>33</sup></a> +'The Heavens rejoice in motion', 'Tell her if she to hired servants +show', 'True love finds wit', 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', +'Shall I goe force an Elegie?', 'Men write that Love and Reason disagree', +'Come Fates: I feare you not', 'If her disdaine'. The authorship of +these is discussed later.</p> + +<p class="footnote">A note on the first page in a modern hand says, 'The pieces which I +have extracted for the "Specimens" are, Page 91, 211, 265.' What +'Specimens' are referred to I do not know: the pieces are 'You nimble +dreams', signed H. (i.e. John Hoskins); 'Upon his mistresses inconstancy' +('Thou art prettie but inconstant'); and <i>Cupid and the Clowne</i>. The +manuscript was purchased at Bishop Heber's sale in 1836.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet34" name="footnotet34"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt34"><sup>34</sup></a> +I refer to it occasionally as <i>TCD</i> (<i>II</i>), and (once it has been made plain +that this is the collection referred to throughout) as simply <i>TCD</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet35" name="footnotet35"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt35"><sup>35</sup></a> +Since Mr. Pearsall-Smith transcribed these poems, which I subsequently +collated, the house at Burley-on-the-Hill has been burned down and the +manuscript volume has perished.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet36" name="footnotet36"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt36"><sup>36</sup></a> +<i>The Complete Poems of John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. For +the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With The Original and +Early Editions And MSS. And Enlarged With Hitherto Unprinted +And Inedited Poems From MSS. &c.... By The Rev. Alexander B. +Grosart, &c. The Fuller Worthies' Library</i>, 1872-3. Dr. Grosart's favourite +manuscript was the Stephens (<i>S</i>). When that failed him he used Addl. MS. +18643 (<i>A18</i>), whose relation to the manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin +and Cambridge (<i>TCD</i>, <i>TCC</i>) he did not suspect, though he collated these. +Some poems he printed from the Hazlewood-Kingsburgh MS. or the +Farmer-Chetham MS. The first two are not good texts of Donne's +poems, the last two are miscellaneous collections. The three first <i>Satyres</i> +Dr. Grosart printed from Harleian MS. 5110 (<i>H51</i>); and he used other +sources for the poems he ascribed to Donne. It cannot be said that he +always recorded accurately the readings of the manuscript from which he +printed. I have made no effort to record all the differences between Grosart's +text and my own.</p> + +<p class="footnote">The description of the editions which Grosart gives at ii, p. liii is +amazingly inaccurate, considering that he claimed to have collated 'all +the early and later printed editions'. He describes <i>1639</i>, <i>1649</i>, <i>1650</i>, and +<i>1654</i> as identical with one another, and declares that the younger Donne +is responsible only for <i>1669</i>, which appeared after his death.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet37" name="footnotet37"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt37"><sup>37</sup></a> +<i>The Poems of John Donne From The Text of The Edition of 1633 +Revised By James Russell Lowell With The Various Readings of The +Other Editions Of The Seventeenth Century, And With A Preface, An +Introduction, And Notes By Charles Eliot Norton. New York.</i> 1895. +In preparing the text from Lowell's copy of <i>1633</i>, emended in pencil by +him, Professor Norton was assisted by Mrs. Burnett, the daughter of +Mr. Lowell. As I could not apportion the responsibility for the text +I have spoken throughout my textual notes and remarks of 'the Grolier +Club editor' (<i>Grolier</i> for short). I have accepted Professor Norton as +the sole author of the commentary. For instances where the punctuation +has been altered, and the meaning, in my opinion, obscured, I may refer +to the textual notes on <i>The Legacie</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.20">20</a>), <i>The Dreame</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.37">37</a>), +<i>A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.44">44</a>). But I have cited and discussed most +of the cases in which I disagree with the Grolier Club editors. It is for +readers to judge whether at times they may not be right, and I have +gone astray. The Grolier Club edition only came into my hands when +I had completed my first collation of the printed texts. Had I known it +sooner, or had the edition been more accessible, I should probably not +have ventured on the arduous task of editing Donne. It is based on +the best text, and the editors have been happier than most in their interpretation +and punctuation of the more difficult passages.</p> + +<p class="footnote">Professor Norton made no use of the manuscripts in preparing the +text, but he added in an appendix an account of the manuscript which, +following him, I have called <i>N</i>, and he gave a list of variants which +seemed to him possible emendations. Later, in the <i>Child Memorial +Volume</i> of <i>Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature</i> (1896), he gave +a somewhat fuller description of <i>N</i> and descriptions of <i>S</i> (the Stephens +MS.) and <i>Cy</i> (the Carnaby MS.). Of the readings which Professor Norton +noted, several have passed into my edition on the authority of a wider +collation of the manuscripts.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet38" name="footnotet38"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt38"><sup>38</sup></a> +<i>Poems of John Donne Edited By E. K. Chambers. With An Introduction +By George Saintsbury. London and New York. 1896.</i> Of the +editions Mr. Chambers says: 'Nor can it be said that any one edition +always gives the best text; even for a single poem, sometimes one, sometimes +another is to be preferred, though, as a rule, the edition of <i>1633</i> is +the most reliable, and the readings of <i>1669</i> are in many cases a return +to it' (vol. i, p. xliv). A considerable portion of Mr. Chambers' edition +would seem to have been 'set up' from a copy of the 1639 edition, the +earlier and later readings being then either incorporated or recorded. +The result is that the <i>1633</i> or <i>1633-35</i> readings have been more than +once overlooked. This applies especially to the <i>Epicedes</i> and the +<i>Divine Poems</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote">As with the Grolier Club edition, so with Mr. Chambers' edition, I have +recorded and discussed the chief differences between my text and his. +I have worked with his edition constantly beside me. I used it for my +collations on account of its convenient numbering of the lines. To +Mr. Chambers' commentary also I owe my first introduction to the wide +field of the manuscripts. His knowledge of seventeenth-century literature +and history, which even in 1896 was extensive, has directed me in taking +up most of the questions of canon and authorship which I have investigated. +It is easy to record one's points of disagreement with a predecessor; it is +more difficult to estimate accurately how much one owes to his labours.</p> + +<p class="footnote">Mr. Chambers, too, has 'modernized the spelling and corrected the +exceptionally chaotic punctuation of the old editions'. Of the latter changes +he has, with one or two exceptions, preserved no record, so that when, +as is sometimes the case, he has misunderstood the poet, it is impossible +to get back to the original text of which the stops as well as the words +are a part.]</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet39" name="footnotet39"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt39"><sup>39</sup></a> +It is very unlikely that Donne had in his possession when he died +manuscript copies of his early poems. (1) Walton makes no mention of +them when enumerating the works which Donne left behind in manuscript, +including 'six score sermons all written with his own hand; also +an exact and laborious treatise concerning self-murder, called <i>Biathanatos'</i>, +as well as elaborate notes on authors and events. (2) In 1614, when +Donne thought of publishing his poems, he found it necessary to beg +for copies from his friends: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder +of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, then it +did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you.' +<i>To Sir H. G., Vigilia St. Tho. 1614.</i> (3) Jonson and Walton both tell us +that Donne, after taking Orders, would have been glad to destroy his +early poems. The sincerity of this wish has been doubted because of +what he says in a letter regarding <i>Biathanatos</i>: 'I only forbid it the +press and the fire.' But <i>Biathanatos</i> is a very different matter from the +poems. It is a grave and devout, if daring, treatise in casuistry. No one +can enter into Donne's mind from 1617 onwards, as ascetic devotion +became a more and more sincere and consuming passion, and believe +that he kept copies of the early poems or paradoxes, prepared for the +press like his sermons or devotions.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet40" name="footnotet40"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt40"><sup>40</sup></a> +<i>Contributions To The Textual Criticism of The Divina Commedia, &c. +By the Rev. Edward Moore, D.D., &c. Cambridge, 1889.</i> The tests which +Dr. Moore lays down for the judgement, on internal grounds, of a reading +are—I state them shortly in my own words—(1) That is the best reading +which best explains the erroneous readings. I have sometimes recorded +a quite impossible reading of a manuscript because it clearly came from +one rather than another of two rivals, and thus lends support to that reading +despite its own aberration. (2) Generally speaking, 'Difficilior lectio +potior,' the more difficult reading is the more likely to be the original. This +applies forcibly in the case of a subtle and difficult author like Donne. +The majority of the changes made in the later editions arise from the +tendency to make Donne's thought more commonplace. Even in <i>1633</i> +errors have crept in. The obsolete words 'lation' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.94">94</a>, l. 47), +'crosse' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.43">43</a>, l. 14) have been altered; the old-fashioned and metaphorically +used idiom 'in Nature's gifts' has confused the editor's punctuation; the +subtle thought of the epistles has puzzled and misled. (3) 'Three minor +considerations may be added which are often very important, when +applicable, though they are from the nature of the case less frequently +available.' <i>Moore</i>. These are (<i>a</i>) the consistency of the reading with +sentiments expressed by the author elsewhere. I have used the <i>Sermons</i> +and other prose works to illustrate and check Donne's thought and +vocabulary throughout. (<i>b</i>) The relation of the reading to the probable +source of the poet's thought. A Scholastic doctrine often lurks behind +Donne's wit, ignorance of which has led to corruption of the text. +See <i>The Dreame</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.37">37</a>, ll. 7, 16; +<i>To Sr Henry Wotton</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.180a">180</a>, ll. 17-18. +(<i>c</i>) The relation of a reading to historical fact. In the letter <i>To Sr Henry +Wotton</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.187">187</a>, the editors, forgetting the facts, have confused Cadiz with +Calais, and the Azores with St. Michael's Mount.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet41" name="footnotet41"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt41"><sup>41</sup></a> +It is worth while to compare the kind of mistakes in which a manuscript +abounds with those which occur in a printed edition. The tendency +of the copyist was to write on without paying much attention to the sense, +dropping words and lines, sometimes two consecutive half-lines or whole +stanzas, ignoring or confounding punctuation, mistaking words, &c. He +was, if a professional copyist or secretary, not very apt to attempt emendation. +The kind of errors he made were easily detected when the proof +was read over, or when the manuscript was revised with a view to printing. +Words or half-lines could be restored, &c. But in such revision a new +and dangerous source of error comes into play, the tendency of the editor +to emend.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet42" name="footnotet42"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt42"><sup>42</sup></a> +Take a few instances where the latest editor, very naturally and +explicably, securing at places a reading more obvious and euphonious, +has departed from <i>1633</i> and followed <i>1635</i> or <i>1669</i>. I shall take them +somewhat at random and include a few that may seem still open to +discussion. In <i>The Undertaking</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.10">10</a>, l. 18), for 'Vertue attir'd in +woman see', <i>1633</i>, Mr. Chambers reads, with <i>1635-69</i>, 'Vertue in woman +see.' So:</p> + +<table summary="table of differences" border="0"> + +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Loves Vsury, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.13a">13</a>, l. 5:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">let my body raigne <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">let my body range <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Aire and Angels, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.22">22</a>, l. 19:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">Ev'ry thy hair <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">Thy every hair <i>1650-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">The Curse, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.41a">41</a>, ll. 3, 10:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">His only, and only his purse <i>1633-54</i></td> + <td class="left2a">Him, only for his purse <i>1669</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">who hath made him such <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">who hath made them such <i>1669</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">A Valediction, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.50">50</a>, l. 16:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">Those things which elemented it <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">The thing which elemented it <i>1669</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">The Relique, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.62a">62</a>, l. 13:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">mis-devotion <i>1633-54</i></td> + <td class="left2a">mass-devotion <i>1669</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Elegie II, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.80a">80</a>, l. 6:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">is rough <i>1633</i>, <i>1669</i></td> + <td class="left2a">is tough <i>1635-54</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Elegie VI, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.88">88</a>, ll. 24, 26:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">and then chide <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">and there chide <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">her upmost brow <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">her utmost brow <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers (an oversight)</i>.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Epithalamions, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.129">129</a>, l. 60:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">store, <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">starres, <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Ibid., p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.133">133</a>, l. 55:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">I am not then from Court <i>1633</i></td> + <td class="left2a">And am I then from Court? <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Satyres, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.169">169</a>, ll. 37-41:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">The Iron Age <i>that</i> was, when justice was sold, now<br /> +Injustice is sold deerer farre; allow<br /> +All demands, fees, and duties; gamsters, anon<br /> +The mony which you sweat, and sweare for, is gon<br /> +Into other hands:<br /> + <i>1633</i></td> + <td>The iron Age <i>that</i> was, when justice was sold (now<br /> +Injustice is sold dearer) did allow<br /> +All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters, anon<br /> +The mony which you sweat and swear for is gon<br /> +Into other hands.<br /> <i>1635-54</i>, <i>Chambers</i> (<i>no italics</i>;<br /> + 'that' <i>a relative +pronoun, I take it</i>)</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">The Calme, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.179">179</a>, l. 30:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">our brimstone Bath <i>1633</i></td> + <td>a brimstone bath <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">To Sr Henry Wotton, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.180">180</a>, l. 17:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">dung, and garlike <i>1633</i></td> + <td>dung, or garlike <i>1635-69</i>, <i>Chambers</i></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <th class="leftlz" colspan="2">Ibid., p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.181">181</a>, ll. 25, 26:</th> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="leftqz">The Country is a desert, where no good,<br /> +Gain'd, as habits, not borne, is understood. <i>1633</i></td> + <td>The Country is a desert, where the good,<br /> +Gain'd inhabits not, borne, is not understood. <i>1635-54, Chambers.</i></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p class="footnote">In all these passages, and I could cite others, it seems to me (I have +stated my reasons fully in the notes) that if the sense of the passage be +carefully considered, or Donne's use of words (e.g. 'mis-devotion'), or +the tenor of his thought, the reading of <i>1633</i> is either clearly correct or +has much to be said for it. Now in all these cases the reading has the +support of all the manuscripts, or of the most and the best.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet43" name="footnotet43"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt43"><sup>43</sup></a> +e.g. 'their nothing' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.31">31</a>, l. 53; 'reclaim'd' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.56">56</a>, l. 25; 'sport' +p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.56">56</a>, l. 27.]</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet44" name="footnotet44"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt44"><sup>44</sup></a> +The <i>1633</i> text of these letters, which is generally that of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, +is better than I was at one time disposed to think, though there are some +indubitable errors and perhaps some original variants. The crucial +reading is at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.197">197</a>, l. 58, where <i>1633</i> and <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> read 'not naturally +free', while <i>1635-69</i> and <i>O'F</i> read 'borne naturally free', at first sight +an easier and more natural text, and adopted by both Chambers and +Grosart. But consideration of the passage, and of what Donne says +elsewhere, shows that the <i>1633</i> reading is certainly right.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotet45" name="footnotet45"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagt45"><sup>45</sup></a> +The <i>1650</i> printer delighted in colons, which he generally substituted +for semicolons indiscriminately.</p> + +<h3>CANON.</h3> + +<p>The authenticity of all the poems ascribed to Donne in the +old editions is a question which has never been systematically +and fully considered by his editors and critics. A number +of poems not included in these editions have been attributed +to him by Simeon (1856), Grosart (1873), and others on very +insufficient grounds, whether of external evidence or internal +probability. Of the poems published in <i>1633</i>, one, Basse's <i>An +Epitaph upon Shakespeare</i>, was withdrawn at once; another, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxv" id="pageii.cxxv"></a>[pg cxxv]</span> +the metrical <i>Psalme 137</i>, has been discredited and Chambers +drops it.<a id="footnotetagc1" name="footnotetagc1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec1"><sup>1</sup></a> Of those which were added in <i>1635</i>, one <i>To Ben +Ionson. 6 Ian. 1603</i>, has been dropped by Grosart, the Grolier +Club edition, and Chambers on the strength of a statement made +to Drummond by Ben Jonson.<a id="footnotetagc2" name="footnotetagc2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec2"><sup>2</sup></a> But the editors have accepted +Jonson's statement without apparently giving any thought to +the question whether, if this particular poem is by Roe, the +same must not be true of its companion pieces, <i>To Ben. +Ionson. 9 Novembris, 1603</i>. and <i>To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603</i>. +They are inserted together in <i>1635</i>, and are strikingly similar +in heading, in style, and in verse. Nor has any critic, so far +as I know, taken up the larger question raised by rejecting one +of the poems ascribed to Donne in <i>1635</i>, namely, are not all the +poems then added made thereby to some extent suspect, and +if so can we distinguish those which are from those which are +not genuine? I propose then to discuss, in the light afforded +by a wider and more connected survey of the seventeenth-century +manuscript collections, the authenticity of the poems +ascribed to Donne in the old editions, and to ask what, if any, +poems may be added to those there published.</p> + +<p>For this discussion an invaluable starting-point is afforded +by the edition of 1633, the manuscript group <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, +and the manuscript group <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>. Taken +together, and used to check one another, these three collections provide +us with a <i>corpus</i> of indubitable poems which may be used as +a test by which to try other claimants. Of course, it must be +clearly understood that the only proof which can be offered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxvi" id="pageii.cxxvi"></a>[pg cxxvi]</span> +that Donne is the author of many poems is, that they are +ascribed to him in edition after edition and manuscript after +manuscript, and that they bear a strong family resemblance. +There is no edition issued by himself or in his lifetime.<a id="footnotetagc3" name="footnotetagc3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec3"><sup>3</sup></a></p> + +<p>Bearing this in mind we find that in the edition of 1633 there +are only two poems—Basse's <i>Epitaph on Shakespeare</i> and +the <i>Psalme 137</i>, both already mentioned—for the genuineness +of which there is not strong evidence, internal and external. +But these two poems are the <i>only</i> ones not contained in <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> or in <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>. In <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, on the other +hand, there are no poems which are not, on the same evidence, +genuine. There are, however, some which are not in <i>1633</i>, +seven in all. But of these, five are the <i>Elegies</i> which, we have +seen above, the editor of <i>1633</i> was prohibited from printing. +The others are the <i>Lecture upon the Shadow</i> (why omitted in +<i>1633</i> I cannot say) and the lines 'My fortune and my choice'. +There are poems in <i>1633</i> which are not in<i> D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>. +These, with the exception of poems previously printed, as the +<i>Anniversaries</i> and the <i>Elegie on Prince Henry</i>, are all in +<i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>. This last collection does contain some twelve poems +not by Donne, but of these the majority are found only in <i>N</i> +and <i>TCD</i>, and they make no pretence to be Donne's. Three +are initialled 'J. R.' (in <i>TCD</i>), and two of these, with some poems +by Overbury and Beaumont, are not part of the Donne collection +but are added at the end. Another poem is initialled +'R. Cor.' The only poems which are included among Donne's +poems as though by him are <i>The Paradox</i> ('Whoso terms Love +a fire') and the Letter or Elegy, 'Madam soe may my verses +pleasing be.' Of these, the first is in all four manuscripts, the +second only in <i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i>. Neither is in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, or <i>1633</i>. +The last is by Beaumont, and follows immediately a letter by +Donne to the same lady, the Countess of Bedford. Doubtless +the two poems have come from some collection in which they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxvii" id="pageii.cxxvii"></a>[pg cxxvii]</span> +were transcribed together, ultimately from a commonplace-book +of the Countess herself. The former <i>may</i> be by Donne, +but has probably adhered for a like reason to his paradox, +'No lover saith' (p. 302), which immediately precedes it.</p> + +<p>We have thus three collections, each of which has kept its +canon pure or very nearly so, and in which any mistake by one +is checked by the absence of the poem in the other two. It +cannot be by accident that these collections are so free from the +unauthentic poems which other manuscripts associate with +Donne's. Those who prepared them must have known what +they were about. Marriot must have had some help in securing +a text on the whole so accurate as that of <i>1633</i>, and in avoiding +spurious poems on the whole so well. When that guidance +was withdrawn he was only too willing to go a-gathering what +would swell the compass of his volume. If then a poem does +not occur in any of these collections it is not necessarily +unauthentic, but as no such poem has anything like the wide +support of the manuscripts that these have, it should present its +credentials, and approve its authenticity on internal grounds if +external are not available.</p> + +<p>We start then with a strong presumption, coming as close to +demonstration as the circumstances of the case will permit, in +favour of the absolute genuineness of all the poems in <i>1633</i> +(a glance down the list headed 'Source' in the 'Contents' will +show what these are) except the two mentioned, and of all the +poems added in <i>1635</i>, or later editions, which are also in +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>.<a id="footnotetagc4" name="footnotetagc4"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec4"><sup>4</sup></a> These +last (to which I prefix +the date of first publication) are—</p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li><i>1635.</i> A Lecture upon the Shadow.</li> +<li><i>1635.</i> Elegie XI. The Bracelet.</li> +<li><i>1635.</i> Elegie XVI. On his Mistris.</li> +<li><i>1669.</i> Elegie XVIII. Love's Progresse.</li> +<li><i>1669.</i> Elegie XIX. Going to Bed.</li> +<li><i>1802.</i><a id="footnotetagc5" name="footnotetagc5"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec5"><sup>5</sup></a> Elegie XX. Love's Warr.</li> +</ul> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxviii" id="pageii.cxxviii"></a>[pg cxxviii]</span></p> + +<p>(These are the five <i>Elegies</i> suppressed in <i>1633</i>—at such long +intervals did they find their way into print.)</p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li><i>1635.</i> On himselfe.</li> +</ul> + +<p>We may add to these, without lengthy investigation, the +four <i>Holy Sonnets</i> added in <i>1635</i>:—</p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li>I. 'Thou hast made me.'</li> +<li>III. 'O might those sighs and tears.'</li> +<li>V. 'I am a little world.'</li> +<li>VIII. 'If faithfull soules.'</li> + </ul> + +<p>For these (though in none of the three collections) we have, +besides internal probability, the evidence of <i>W</i>, clearly an +unexceptionable +manuscript witness. Walton, too, vouches for +the authenticity of the <i>Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse</i>, +which indeed no one but Donne could have written.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.cxxviiia" id="pageii.cxxviiia"></a>This leaves for investigation, of poems inserted in <i>1635</i>, +<i>1649</i>, <i>1650</i>, or <i>1669</i>, the following:—</p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li> 1. Song. 'Soules joy, now I am gone.'</li> +<li> 2. <i>Farewell to love.</i></li> +<li> 3. Song. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste.'</li> +<li> 4. Sonnet. <i>The Token.</i></li> +<li> 5. 'He that cannot chuse but love.'</li> +<li> 6. Elegie (XIII in <i>1635</i>). 'Come, Fates; I feare you not.'</li> +<li> 7. Elegie XII (XIIII in <i>1635</i>). <i>His parting from her.</i><br /> +<span class="ind">'Since she must goe, and I must mourne.'</span></li> +<li> 8. Elegie XIII (XV in <i>1635</i>). <i>Julia.</i><br /> +<span class="ind">'Harke newes, ô envy.'</span></li> +<li> 9. Elegie XIV (XVI in <i>1635</i>). <i>A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife.</i> 'I sing no harme.'</li> +<li>10. Elegie XVII. <i>Variety.</i> 'The heavens rejoice.'</li> +<li>11. Satyre (VI in <i>1635</i>, VII in <i>1669</i>).<br /> +<span class="ind">'Men write that love and reason disagree.'</span></li> +<li>12. Satyre (VI in <i>1669</i>).<br /> +<span class="ind">'Sleep, next society and true friendship.'</span></li> +<li>13. To the Countesse of Huntington.<br /> +<span class="ind">'That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime.'</span></li> +<li>14. A Dialogue between Sr Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne.<br /> +<span class="ind">'If her disdayne least change in you can move.'</span></li> +<li>15. To Ben Iohnson, 6. Jan. 1603.<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxix" id="pageii.cxxix"></a>[pg cxxix]</span><br /> +<span class="ind">'The state and mens affaires.'</span></li> +<li>16. To Ben Iohnson, 9. Novembris, 1603.<br /> +<span class="ind">'If great men wrong me.'</span></li> +<li>17. To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603.<br /> +<span class="ind">Deare Thom: 'Tell her, if she to hired servants shew.'</span></li> +<li>18. Elegie on Mistresse Boulstred.<br /> +<span class="ind">'Death be not proud.'</span></li> +<li>19. On the blessed Virgin Mary.<br /> +<span class="ind">'In that, ô Queene of Queenes.'</span></li> +<li>20. Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip +Sydney and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister.<br /> +<span class="ind">'Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare).'</span></li> +<li>21. Ode.<br /> +<span class="ind">'Vengeance will sit.'</span></li> +<li>22. To Mr. Tilman after he had taken Orders.<br /> +<span class="ind">'Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now.'</span></li> +<li>23. On the Sacrament.<br /> +<span class="ind">'He was the Word that spake it.'</span></li> +</ul> +<p>Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not +seem to me fairly open to question, though of some I think +Donne is certainly the author.</p> + +<p>Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have +gathered together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe +force' and 'True love finds witt', the first of which<a id="footnotetagc6" name="footnotetagc6"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec6"><sup>6</sup></a> was printed +in <i>Le Prince d'Amour</i>, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, +1856, and Grosart, 1872), as the work not of Donne but of +Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led me to do so are +not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they form +a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The +argument starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond +of Hawthornden regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): +'That Sir John Roe loved him; and that when they two were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxx" id="pageii.cxxx"></a>[pg cxxx]</span> +ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a Mask, Roe writt a moral +Epistle to him, which began. That next to playes the Court +and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings, Kings +Lords [as] Lords do us.' (<i>Drummond's Conversations with +Jonson</i>), ed. Laing.</p> + +<p>Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any +rate of the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual +notes) since these append the initials 'J. R.' But all the +manuscripts which contain the one poem contain also the next, +'If great men wrong me,' and though none have added the +initials 'J. R.', <i>B</i>, in which it has been separated from 'The +state and mens affairs' by two other poems, appends 'doubtfull +author' (the whole collection being professedly one of Donne's +poems). The third poem, <i>To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603</i> (p. 410), is in +the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which +are one, <i>H40</i> and <i>RP31</i>) which contain the epistles to Jonson, +generally in their immediate proximity, and in <i>B</i> initialled +'J. R.' In the others the poem is unsigned, and in <i>L74</i> a much +later hand has added 'J. D.'</p> + +<p>Of the other poems, the first—the poem which was in +<i>1669</i> printed as Donne's seventh <i>Satyre</i>, was dropped in <i>1719</i> +but restored by Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers—is said in <i>B</i> +to be 'By Sir John Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R.' in <i>TCD</i>. +Even an undiscriminating manuscript like <i>O'F</i> adds the note +'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th: Rowes', the more famous Sir +Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in 1632) forgotten +relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear Love, +continue nice and chaste' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.412a">412</a>) and 'Shall I goe force an +Elegie?' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.410a">410</a>) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts +in which I have found them.</p> + +<p>But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not +a conclusive argument. It depends on the character of the +manuscript. That 'Sleep next Society' is initialled 'J. R.' +in so carefully prepared a collection of Donne's poems as <i>TCD</i> +is valuable evidence, and the initials in a collection so well +vouched for as <i>HN</i>, Drummond's copy of a collection of +poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set aside by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxi" id="pageii.cxxxi"></a>[pg cxxxi]</span> +a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble. +But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement +of any other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these +poems occur, any more than on that of the 1635 and later +editions. The best of them (<i>H40</i>, <i>RP31</i>) are often silent, and +the others are too often mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If +we are to get the truth from them it must be by cross-examination.</p> + +<p>For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems +to Roe is based is the singular regularity with which they +adhere to one another. If a manuscript has one it generally +has the rest in close proximity. Thus <i>B</i>, after giving thirty-six +poems by Donne, of which only one is wrongly ascribed, +continues with a number that are clearly by other authors as well +as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are 'Sleep next +Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds witt,' +'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she.' A +fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes +rather later. <i>H40</i> and <i>RP31</i> give in immediate sequence +'The State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True +Love finds witt,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; +I fear you not.' <i>L74</i>, a collection not only of poems by +Donne but of the work of other wits of the day, transcribes in +immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The State and +mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force an +elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates, +I fear you not.' Lastly <i>A10</i>, a quite miscellaneous collection, +gives in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] +Tell her if she,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue +nice and chaste,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that +love and reason disagree.' 'Come Fates; I fear you not' +follows after a considerable interval.</p> + +<p>It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus +recur in manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common +origin.<a id="footnotetagc7" name="footnotetagc7"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec7"><sup>7</sup></a> And as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxii" id="pageii.cxxxii"></a>[pg cxxxii]</span> +(and) three on very strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne +out by a general resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, +that they are all by Roe.</p> + +<p>To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and +very little resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but +not with the subtle, brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they +are obscure at times, but not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift +and subtle transitions, and ingeniously applied erudition; +there are in them none of Donne's peculiar scholastic doctrines +of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm, of soul and body, or +of his chemical and medical allusions; they are coarse and +licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of witty +depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and +Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of +the tavern and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work +rests the trail of what was probably the most licentious and +depraving school in Europe, the professional armies serving +in the Low Countries.</p> + +<p>For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features +of his poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in +the Satire, 'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different +in tone, and in the aspects of that life which are presented, +from anything in Donne's <i>Satyres</i>. Roe has been hitherto +a mere name appearing in the notes to Jonson's and to +Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to identify +him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of +Sir Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in +1569. Mr. Chambers accepts this and when referring to +Jonson, <i>Epigram 98</i>, on Roe the ambassador, he adds, 'there +are others in the same collection to his uncles Sir John Roe +and William Roe.' Who this uncle was they do not tell us, +but Hunter in the <i>Chorus Vatum</i> notes that, if Gifford's +conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham +in Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxiii" id="pageii.cxxxiii"></a>[pg cxxxiii]</span></p> + +<p>It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's +uncle (he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)—a +kind of Sir Toby Belch, taking the pleasures of the town +with his nephew, and writing a satire which might make +a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of Clapham +was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before 1603, +when these poems were written.<a id="footnotetagc8" name="footnotetagc8"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec8"><sup>8</sup></a> Sir John Roe the poet was +the cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the +eldest son of William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near +Walthamstow, in the county of Essex.<a id="footnotetagc9" name="footnotetagc9"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec9"><sup>9</sup></a> William Roe was the +third son of the first Lord Mayor of the name Roe.<a id="footnotetagc10" name="footnotetagc10"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec10"><sup>10</sup></a> He had +two sons, John and William, the latter of whom is probably the +person addressed in Jonson's <i>Epigrammes</i>, cxxviii. John was +born, according to a statement in Morant's <i>History of Essex</i> +(1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the fact +that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still +a minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his +will, proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters +for his wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them +is) maie be prevented'. This probably refers to the chance +of a courtier being made ward and despoiling the lad. The +following year he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford.<a id="footnotetagc11" name="footnotetagc11"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec11"><sup>11</sup></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxiv" id="pageii.cxxxiv"></a>[pg cxxxiv]</span> +How long he stayed there is not known, probably not long. +The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his first service +was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he is +perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may +have gone thither later, for he evidently found a patron in +Mountjoy. In 1605 that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, +wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood, Ambassador to the United +Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as one wishing to +follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and then to +thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He +adds that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite +any favour Roe shall receive.<a id="footnotetagc12" name="footnotetagc12"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec12"><sup>12</sup></a> By 1608 he was dead, for +a list of captains discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the +following: 'Born in England and dead in 1608—Sir John Roe.'<a id="footnotetagc13" name="footnotetagc13"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec13"><sup>13</sup></a></p> + +<p>Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, +possibly between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, +appears in London as one, with his more famous cousin +Thomas, of the band of wits and poets whose leader was +Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's +epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the +colours wanting in the above outline. The most interesting +of these shows Roe to have been in Russia as well as Ireland +and the Low Countries, and tells us that he was, like 'Natta +the new knight' in his <i>Satyre</i>, a duellist:</p> + +<h3>XXXII.</h3> + +<p class="title1">ON SIR IOHN ROE.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>What two brave perills of the private sword</p> +<p class="i2">Could not effect, not all the furies doe,</p> +<p>That selfe-devided <i>Belgia</i> did afford;</p> +<p class="i2">What not the envie of the seas reach'd too,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxv" id="pageii.cxxxv"></a>[pg cxxxv]</span> +<p>The cold of <i>Mosco</i>, and fat <i>Irish</i> ayre,</p> +<p class="i2">His often change of clime (though not of mind)</p> +<p>What could not worke; at home in his repaire</p> +<p class="i2">Was his blest fate, but our hard lot to find.</p> +<p>Which shewes, where ever death doth please t' appeare,</p> +<p class="i2">Seas, serenes, swords, shot, sicknesse, all are there.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In his conversations with Drummond Jonson as usual gave +more intimate and less complimentary details: 'Sir John Roe +was an infinite spender, and used to say, when he had no +more to spend he could die. He died in his (i.e. Jonson's) +arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges 20lb., which +was given him back,' doubtless by his brother William. +Morant states that 'Sir John the eldest son, having no issue, +sold this Manor (i.e. Higham-hill) to his father-in-law Sir +Reginald Argall, of whom it was purchased by the second +son—Sir William Rowe'.</p> + +<p>Such a career is much more likely than Donne's to have +produced the satire 'Sleep, next Society', with its lurid +picture of cashiered captains, taverns, stews, duellists, hard +drinkers, and parasites. It is much more like a scene out of +<i>Bartholomew Fair</i> than any of Donne's five <i>Satyres</i>. Nor was +Donne likely at any time to have written of James I as Roe +does. He moved in higher circles, and was more politic. +But Roe had ability. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste' +is not quite in the taste of to-day, but it is a good example of +the paradoxical, metaphysical lyric; and there are both +feeling and wit in 'Come, Fates; I feare you not', unlike as it +is to Donne's subtle, erudite, intenser strain.</p> + +<p>Returning to the list of poems open to question on +pp. <a href="#pageii.cxxviiia">cxxviii</a>-ix we have sixteen left to consider. Of some of +these there is very little to say.</p> + +<p>Nos. 1 and 14 are most probably by the Earl of Pembroke, +and the Earl of Pembroke collaborating with Sir Benjamin +Rudyard. Both were wits and poets of Donne's circle. The +first song,</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>'Soules joy, now I am gone'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is ascribed to Donne only in <i>1635-69</i>, and is there inaccurately +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxvi" id="pageii.cxxxvi"></a>[pg cxxxvi]</span> +printed. It is assigned to Pembroke in the younger Donne's +edition of Pembroke and Ruddier's <i>Poems</i> (1660), a bad witness, +but also by Lansdowne MS. 777, which Mr. Chambers justly +calls 'a very good authority'.<a id="footnotetagc14" name="footnotetagc14"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec14"><sup>14</sup></a> The latter, however, believes the +poem to be Donne's because the central idea—the inseparableness +of souls—is his, and so is the contemptuous tone of</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Fooles have no meanes to meet,</p> +<p class="i2">But by their feet.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought +were growing common. We get it again in Lovelace's</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If to be absent were to be</p> +<p class="i2">Away from thee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, +or the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this +cheerful, confident strain. He consoles himself at times with +the doctrine of inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never +absent. He cannot cheat his passionate heart and senses with +metaphysical subtleties.</p> + +<p>The song <i>Farewell to love</i>, the second in the list of poems +added in <i>1635</i>, is found only in <i>O'F</i> and <i>S96</i>. There is +therefore +no weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, +but no one can read it without feeling that it is his. The +cynical yet passionate strain of wit, the condensed style, and the +metaphysical turn given to the argument, are all in his manner. +As printed in <i>1635</i> the point of the third stanza is obscured. +As I have ventured to amend it, an Aristotelian doctrine is +referred to in a way that only Donne would have done in +quite such a setting.</p> + +<p>The three <i>Elegies</i>, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), +must also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable +candidate can be advanced on really convincing grounds. The +first of the three, <i>His parting from her</i>, is so fine a poem that it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxvii" id="pageii.cxxxvii"></a>[pg cxxxvii]</span> +is difficult to think any unknown poet could have written it. In +sincerity and poetic quality it is one of the finest of the <i>Elegies</i>,<a id="footnotetagc15" name="footnotetagc15"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec15"><sup>15</sup></a> +and in this sincerer note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs +from poems like <i>The Bracelet</i> and <i>The Perfume</i> and resembles +the fine elegy called <i>His Picture</i> and two other pieces that +stand somewhat apart from the general tenor of the <i>Elegies</i>, +namely, the famous elegy <i>On his Mistris</i>, in which he dissuades +her from travelling with him as a page:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>By our first strange and fatal interview,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and that rather enigmatical poem <i>The Expostulation</i>, which +found its way into Jonson's <i>Underwoods</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To make the doubt clear that no woman's true,</p> +<p>Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, +and to this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative +rareness with which <i>His parting from her</i> is found in manuscripts, +and that it finally appeared in a mutilated form. The +poet may have given copies only to a few friends and desired +that it should not be circulated. In the Second Collection of +poems in <i>TCD</i> it is signed at the close, 'Sir Franc: Wryothlesse.' +Who is intended by this I do not know. The ascriptions +in this collection are many of them purely fanciful. Still, +that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.</p> + +<p>Of the other two elegies, <i>Julia</i>, which is found in only two +manuscripts, <i>B</i> and <i>O'F</i>, is quite the kind of thing Donne +might have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style +of Horace's invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxviii" id="pageii.cxxxviii"></a>[pg cxxxviii]</span> +Mantuan and other Humanists. The chief difficulty with +regard to the second, <i>A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife</i>, is to +find Donne writing in this vein at so late a period as 1609 or +1610, the date implied in several of the allusions. He was +already the author of religious poems, including probably <i>La +Corona</i>. In 1610 he wrote his <i>Litanie</i>, and, as Professor +Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of the +writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature, +the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, +and says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask +and have his comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn +in myself that I have given my wit such evaporations as those, +if they be free from profaneness, or obscene provocations.' +Whether this would cover the elegy in question is a point on +which perhaps our age and Donne's would not decide alike. +Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne and the +grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a little +time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice +rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. +But once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in +this case been made responsible for what is another's. Every +one wrote this occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.</p> + +<p>There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign +to or from Donne than the long letter headed <i>To the Countesse +of Huntington</i>, 13 on the list, which, for the time being, I +have placed in the Appendix B. On internal grounds there +is more to be said for ascribing it to Donne than any other +single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I have resolved +to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it deserves.<a id="footnotetagc16" name="footnotetagc16"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec16"><sup>16</sup></a> +The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are +these:</p> + +<p>(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxxxix" id="pageii.cxxxix"></a>[pg cxxxix]</span> +found in either of the groups <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and <i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, +<i>TCD</i>. It was added in <i>1635</i> with four other spurious poems, +the dialogue ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by +the great majority of manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and +Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two epistles to Ben Jonson, and the +Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe, which we have assigned, +for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The poem is found +in only two manuscript collections, viz. <i>P</i> and the second, +miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in <i>TCD</i>. +In both of these it is headed <i>Sr Walter Ashton</i> (or <i>Aston</i>) <i>to +the Countesse of Huntingtone</i>, and no reference whatsoever is +made to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. +Imaginary headings were quite common in the case of poems +circulating in manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been +written by the Earl of Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night +before he died, or as found in the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. +Editors have occasionally taken these too seriously. +Drayton's <i>Heroicall Epistles</i> made it a fashion to write such +letters in the case of any notorious love affair or intrigue. +The manuscript <i>P</i> contains a long imaginary letter from Sir +Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. +In the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of +Pembroke, 'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed +<i>The Mar: B to the Lady Fe: Her.</i>, i.e. the Marquis of +Buckingham to—I am not sure what lady is intended. The +only thing which the title given to the letter in question suggests +is that it was not an actual letter to the Countess but an +imaginary one.</p> + +<p>(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 +became the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not +been able to tell us very much. He must have met her at the +house of Sir Thomas Egerton when her mother, the dowager +Countess of Derby, married that statesman in 1600. Donne +says:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I was your Prophet in your yonger dayes,</p> +<p>And now your Chaplaine, God in you to praise.</p> +<p class="i28">(p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.203">203</a>, ll. 69-70.)</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxl" id="pageii.cxl"></a>[pg cxl]</span></p> + +<p>Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had +relations with her either directly or through her first cousin, the +Countess of Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, +'I remember that about this time you purpose a journey to +fetch, or meet the Lady <i>Huntington</i>.' This fact lends support +to the view of Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the +Countesse' referred to in the following extract from a letter to +Goodyere, which has an important bearing on the poem under +consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and +Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in +which it may have been written. The latter places it in April, +1615, when Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was +approaching his noble patronesses for help in clearing himself of +debt. But Mr. Chambers points to the closing reference to 'a +Christning at <i>Peckam</i>', and dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne +was at Peckham after leaving Pyrford and before settling at +Mitcham. I am not sure that this is conclusive, for in Donne's +unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might at any time +have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival to the +house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the +tone of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the +letters to Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme +of the letter, a comparison of the different Churches, is that of +other letters of the same period. The one in question (<i>Letters</i> +1651, p. 100; Gosse, <i>Life</i>, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation +of another (<i>Letters</i>, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, <i>Life</i>, i. +225). Whatever be its date, this is what Donne says: 'For +the other part of your Letter, spent in the praise of the +Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of her, and can +never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when it is +averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort +as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline +it. That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the +beginning of a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that +I may also keep my dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. +The Spanish proverb informes me, that he is a fool which +cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad which makes two. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxli" id="pageii.cxli"></a>[pg cxli]</span> +The other strong reason is my integrity to the other Countesse' +(i.e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which +follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible +with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though +I swallowed your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, +and now a knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends +to them) I had reserved not only all the verses which I should +make, but all the thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because +I hope she will not disdain, that I should write well of her +Picture, I have obeyed you thus far as to write; but intreat +you by your friendship, that by this occasion of versifying, +I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that Tribe, and that +house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved you +to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant +not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, +or too good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; +I pray receive them as a companion and supplement of this +Letter to you,' &c. If this was written in 1615 it is incompatible +with the fact (supposing the poem under consideration to be +by Donne) that he had already written to the Countess of +Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone of amatory +compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable, earlier, +the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere +thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and +did not present it.</p> + +<p>(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty +in declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical +wit and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment +suggest that only he could have written it; in parts, on the other +hand, the tone does not seem to me to be his. It is certainly +very different from that of the other letters to noble ladies. It +carries one back to the date of the <i>Elegies</i>. If Donne's, it is +a further striking proof how much of the tone of a lover even +a married poet could assume in addressing a noble patroness. +Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess of +Huntingdon in the vein of p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.418">418</a>, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph, +ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlii" id="pageii.cxlii"></a>[pg cxlii]</span> +or some one on a level of equality socially with the Countess, +writing so; not a dependent addressing a patroness. The +only points of style and verse which might serve as clues are +(1) the peculiar use of 'young', e.g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', +l. 13 'younger formes'. With which compare in the <i>Letter</i> +to Wotton, here added, at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.188a">188</a>:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh +drew my attention:</p> + +<ul class="none"> +<li>35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.</li> +<li>61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.</li> +<li>88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.</li> +<li>113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.</li> + </ul> + +<p>I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the +versification throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. +Donne's decasyllabic couplets have two quite distinctive +patterns. The one is that of the <i>Satyres</i>. In these the +logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across the metrical +scheme—that is, the sense overflows from line to line, and the +pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is +the paragraph beginning at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.156">156</a>, l. 65.</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Graccus loves all as one, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In the <i>Elegies</i> and in the <i>Letters</i> the structure is not so +irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i.e. +the lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit +together by a single sentence or some closely connected +sentences, the full meaning or emphasis being well sustained +to the close. Good examples are <i>Elegie I.</i> ll. 1 to 16, +<i>Elegie IV.</i> ll. 13 to 26, <i>Elegie V.</i> l. 5 to the end, <i>Elegie +VIII.</i> ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also the letter <i>To the +Countesse of Salisbury</i> and the <i>Hymn to the Saints and the +Marquesse Hamylton</i>. Each of these is composed of three +or four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under +consideration there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs +which suggest Donne's manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxliii" id="pageii.cxliii"></a>[pg cxliii]</span> +ll. 37 to 46. But the rest of the poem is almost monotonously +regular in its couplet structure. To my mind the poem is not +unlike what Rudyard might have written. Indeed a fine piece +of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue between him +and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed +to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open +one, but had I realized in time the weakness of the positive +external evidence I should not have moved the poem. I have +been able to improve the text materially.</p> + +<p>With regard to the <i>Elegie on Mistris Boulstred</i> (18 on the +list) I cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture +I have ventured to put forward regarding the authorship, for +I have changed my own mind regarding it. Two Elegies, +both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne certainly did write, viz.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee</p> +<p>What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and another, entitled <i>Death</i>, beginning</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Language thou art too narrow, and too weake</p> +<p>To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of +manuscripts and are very characteristic of his poetry in this +kind, highly charged with ingenious wit and extravagant +eulogy. It is worth noting that in the Hawthornden MS. the +second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D.'), and that it is not +included in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. It is certainly Donne's; it is not +quite certain that it was written on Mris. Boulstred. Indeed, +as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to Judith in a +verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford +with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady +Markham is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of +Mris. Boulstred, says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points +to a single poem; but he may have been speaking loosely, or +be loosely reported.</p> + +<p>In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be +not proud' is found in only five manuscripts, <i>B</i>, <i>H40</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>P</i>, <i>RP31</i>. Of these <i>H40</i> and <i>RP31</i> are really one, and in them +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxliv" id="pageii.cxliv"></a>[pg cxliv]</span> +the poem is not ascribed to Donne. In two others, <i>O'F</i> and +<i>P</i>, the poem is given in a very interesting and suggestive +manner, viz. as a continuation of 'Death I recant'. What this +suggests is the fairly obvious fact that the second poem is to +some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I recant' is answered +by 'Death be not proud'. If <i>O'F</i> and <i>P</i> are right in their +arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in one +mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost +rebellious he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was +the view I put forward in a note to the Cambridge <i>History of +Literature</i> (iv. 216). I had hardly, however, sent off my +proofs before I felt that there was more than one objection to +this view. There is in the first place nothing to show that +'Death I recant' is not a poem complete in itself; there is no +preparation for the recantation. In the second place, 'Death +be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer in +thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's +own <i>Epicedes</i>. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for +Mris. Boulstred than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. +This suggested to me that the poem was indeed an +answer to 'Death I recant', but by another person, another +member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I came +on the ascription in <i>H40</i>, viz. 'By C. L. of B.' This indicated +no one whom I knew; but in <i>RP31</i> it appeared as 'By L. C. +of B.,' i.e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the +Countess did write verses, for Donne refers to them. In +a letter which Mr. Gosse dates 1609 (Gosse's <i>Life</i>, &c., i. 217; +<i>Letters</i>, 1651, p. 67) he speaks of some verses written to himself: +'They must needs be an excellent exercise of your wit, +which speak so well of so ill.' That the Countess of Bedford +could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot prove in +the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could +she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for +some verses on the death of her friend. He replied with +'Death I recant'. The tone, which if not pagan is certainly +not Christian, while it is untouched by any real feeling for the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlv" id="pageii.cxlv"></a>[pg cxlv]</span> +subject of the elegy, displeased her, and she replied in lines at +once more ardent and more resigned. At any rate, whether +by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like Donne's work, +and the external evidence is against its being his. <i>B</i> attributes +it to 'F. B.', i.e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the +other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the <i>Holy +Sonnets</i> with the exclamation used here:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Death be not proud!</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally +I cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.</p> + +<p>The sonnet <i>On the Blessed Virgin Mary</i> (19 on the list), 'In +that O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included +among Donne's poems in <i>1635</i> and in <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S</i>, +<i>S96</i>. There +is little doubt that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It +is found in a series of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C., in Harl. MS. +7553, f. 41, which were first published by T. Park in <i>Heliconia</i>, +ii. 1815, and unless all of these are to be given to Donne this +cannot. It is not in his style, and Donne more than once +denies the Immaculate Conception in the full Catholic sense of +the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly contradict this +sonnet than the lines in the <i>Second Anniversarie</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid</p> +<p>Joy in not being that, which men have said.</p> +<p>Where she is exalted more for being good,</p> +<p>Then for her interest of Mother-hood.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, +the <i>Ode</i> beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems +to me very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have +re-transferred it from the Appendix to the place among the +<i>Divine Poems</i> which it occupies in <i>1635</i>. Against its authenticity +are the following considerations: (1) It is not at all in +the style of Donne's other specifically religious poems. The +elevated, stoical tone is more like Jonson's occasional religious +pieces than Donne's personal, tormented, Scholastic <i>Divine +Poems</i>. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears, <i>B</i>, <i>Cy</i>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlvi" id="pageii.cxlvi"></a>[pg cxlvi]</span> +<i>H40</i>, <i>RP31</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>P</i>, <i>S</i>, the best, <i>RP31</i>, +assigns it, not to +Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i.e. Lord Herbert of +Cherbury.<a id="footnotetagc17" name="footnotetagc17"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec17"><sup>17</sup></a> Mr. Chambers, indeed, inadvertently stated that +in this manuscript 'it is said to have been written to George +Herbert'. The name 'Sr Edw. Herbert' is written beside +the poem, and that in such cases is meant to indicate the +author of the poem. It seems to me quite possible that it was +written by Lord Herbert, but until more evidence be forthcoming +I have let it stand, because (1) the letters 'I. D.' printed +after the poem show that the poem must have been so initialled +in the manuscript from which it was printed, and (2) because, +though not in the style of Donne's later religious poems, it is +somewhat in the style of the philosophical, stoical letter which +Donne addressed to Sir Edward Herbert at the siege of Juliers +in 1610. The poem was possibly composed at the same time. +(3) The thought of the last verse, our ignorance of ourselves, +recurs in Donne's poems and prose. Compare <i>Negative Love</i> +(p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.66a">66</a>):</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If any who deciphers best,</p> +<p>What we know not, our selves,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and the passage quoted in the note to this poem.</p> + +<p>The poem <i>Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir +Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister</i>, if +by Donne, was probably written late in his life and never +widely circulated. It occurred to me that the author might be +John Davies of Hereford, who was a dependent of the Countess +and her two sons, and who made a calligraphic copy of +the <i>Psalms</i> of Sidney and his sister, from which they were +printed by Singer in 1823. But Professor Saintsbury considers, +I think justly, that the 'wit' of the opening lines,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Eternall God (for whom who ever dare</p> +<p>Seeke new expressions, doe the Circle square,</p> +<p>And thrust into strait corners of poore wit</p> +<p>Thee who art cornerlesse and infinite),</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlvii" id="pageii.cxlvii"></a>[pg cxlvii]</span></p> +<p>is above Davies' level, and indeed the whole poem is. The +lines <i>To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders</i> (22 on the +list) were also probably privately communicated to the person +to whom they were addressed. The best argument for their +genuineness is that Walton seems to quote from them when +he describes Donne's preaching.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> For they doe</p> +<p>As Angels out of clouds, from Pulpits speake,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>must have suggested 'always preaching to himself, like an +angel from a cloud, but in none'. This does not, however, +carry us very far. Walton had seen the editions of 1635 and +1639 before he wrote these lines in 1640.</p> + +<p>The verse <i>On the Sacrament</i> (23 on the list) is probably +assigned to Donne by a pure conjecture. It is very frequently +attributed to Queen Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>Of the two poems added in <i>1649</i> the lines <i>Upon Mr. +Thomas Coryats Crudities</i> are of course Donne's. They +appeared with his name in his lifetime, and Donne is one of +the friends mentioned by Coryat in his letters from India. +<i>The Token</i> (4 on the list) may or may not be Donne's. It +is found in several, but no very good, manuscripts. Its wit +is quite in Donne's style, though not absolutely beyond the +compass of another. The poems which the younger Donne +added in <i>1650</i> are in much the same position. 'He that cannot +chose but love' (5 on the list) is a trifle, whoever wrote it. +'The heavens rejoice in motion' (10 on the list) is in a much +stronger strain of paradox, and if not Donne's is by an ambitious +and witty disciple. If genuine, it is strange that it did not find +its way into more collections. It is found in <i>A10</i>, where a few +of Donne's poems are given with others by Roe, Hoskins, and +other wits of his circle. It is also, however, given in <i>JC</i>, a +manuscript containing in its first part few poems that are not +demonstrably genuine. As things stand, the balance of evidence +is in favour of Donne's authorship.</p> + +<p>Besides the <i>Elegies XVIII</i> and <i>XIX</i>, which are Donne's, as +we have seen, and the <i>Satyre</i> 'Sleep next Society', which is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlviii" id="pageii.cxlviii"></a>[pg cxlviii]</span> +not Donne's, the edition of 1669 prefixed to the song <i>Breake +of Day</i> a fresh stanza:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Stay, O sweet, and do not rise.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It appears in the same position in <i>S96</i>, but is given as a separate +poem in <i>A25</i>, <i>C</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and <i>P</i>. It certainly has no +connexion +with Donne's poem, for the metre is entirely different and the +strain of the poetry less metaphysical.</p> + +<p>The separate stanza was a favourite one in Song-Books of +the seventeenth century. It was printed apparently for the +first time in 1612, in <i>The First Set of Madrigals and Motets +of five Parts: apt for Viols and Voices. Newly composed +by Orlando Gibbons</i>. Here it begins</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ah, deare hart why doe you rise?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In the same year it was printed in <i>A Pilgrimes Solace. +Wherein is contained Musicall Harmonie of 3, 4 and 5 +parts, to be sung and plaid with the Lute and Viols. By +John Dowland.</i> The stanza begins</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Mr. Chambers conjectures that the affixing of Dowland's +initials to the verse in some collection led to Donne being +credited with it, which is quite likely; but we are not sure +that Dowland wrote it, and the common theme appears to have +drawn the poems together. In <i>The Academy of Complements, +Wherein Ladies, Gentlewomen, Schollers, and Strangers may +accomodate their Courtly practice with gentile Ceremonies, +Complemental amorous high expressions, and Formes of +speaking or writing of Letters most in fashion</i> (1650) the +verse is connected with a variation of the first stanza of Donne's +poem so as to make a consistent song:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Lie still, my dear, why dost thou rise?</p> +<p>The light that shines comes from thine eyes.</p> +<p>The day breaks not, it is my heart,</p> +<p>Because that you and I must part.</p> +<p class="i2">Stay or else my joys will die,</p> +<p class="i2">And perish in their infancy.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cxlix" id="pageii.cxlix"></a>[pg cxlix]</span> +<p>'Tis time, 'tis day, what if it be?</p> +<p>Wilt thou therefore arise from me?</p> +<p>Did we lie down because of night,</p> +<p>And shall we rise for fear of light?</p> +<p>No, since in darkness we came hither,</p> +<p>In spight of light we'll lye together.</p> +<p>Oh! let me dye on thy sweet breast</p> +<p>Far sweeter than the Phœnix nest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It was probably some such combination as this which +suggested to the editor of <i>1669</i> to prefix the stanza to Donne's +poem. The poem in <i>The Academy of Compliments</i> was +repeated in <i>Wits Interpreter, the English Parnassus, a +sure guide to those Admirable Accomplishments that +compleat our English Gentry in the most acceptable Qualifications +of Discourse or Writing</i> (1655). But the first stanza +is given again in this collection as a separate poem.</p> + +<p>The translation of the <i>Psalme 137</i>, which was inserted in +<i>1633</i> and never withdrawn (as the <i>Epitaph on Shakespeare</i> +was) is pretty certainly not by Donne. The only manuscript +which ascribes it to him is <i>A25</i> followed by <i>C</i>. On the other +hand it is assigned to Francis Davison, editor of the <i>Poetical +Rhapsody</i>, in <i>RP61</i> (Bodleian Library). In one manuscript, +Addl. MS. 27407, the poem is accompanied with a letter, unsigned +and undirected, which speaks of this as one out of several +translations made by the author. The handwriting and style +of the letter are not Donne's, but the letter explains why this +one Psalm is found floating around by itself. It was, the +translator says, a freer paraphrase than the others. Apparently +it proved a favourite.</p> + +<p>When one turns from the poems attributed to Donne in the +old editions to those which some of the more recent editors +have added, one launches into a sea which I have no intention +of attempting to navigate in its entirety. Both Sir John +Simeon and Dr. Grosart were disposed to cry 'Eureka' too +readily, and assigned to Donne a number of poems culled from +various manuscripts for the genuineness of which there is no +evidence external or internal. I shall confine my remarks to +the few poems I have myself incorporated for the first time in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cl" id="pageii.cl"></a>[pg cl]</span> +an edition of Donne's poems; to the Song 'Absence hear +my protestation', which it is now the fashion to ascribe to +Donne absolutely, letting evidence 'go hang'; and to the four +poems which Mr. Chambers printed from <i>A25</i>. I have added +some more in my Appendix C, because they are interesting +<ins title="Greek: adespota">ἀδέσποτα</ins> illustrative of the influence in seventeenth-century +poetry of Donne's realistic passion and his paradoxical wit.</p> + +<p>Of the poems which appear here for the first time in a +collected edition, it is not necessary to say much of those which +are taken from <i>W</i>, the Westmoreland MS. now in the possession +of Mr. Gosse, who with the greatest and most spontaneous +kindness has permitted me to print them all. These include +two Epigrams, four additional Letters, and three Holy Sonnets. +The Epigrams, the Holy Sonnets, and two of the Letters have +been already printed by Mr. Gosse in his <i>Life of John Donne</i>, +1899. There can be no doubt of their genuineness. They enlarge +a series of Letters and a series of Sonnets which appear in <i>1633</i> +and in all the best manuscript collections. In their arrangement +I have followed <i>W</i> in preference to <i>1633</i>, which is based on +<i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>. Of the letter taken from the Burley MS. there may +be greater doubt in some minds. To me it seems unquestionably +Donne's (aut Donne aut Diabolus), an addition to the series of +letters which he wrote to Sir Henry Wotton between the return +of the Islands Expedition and Essex's return from Ireland. The +Burley MS. is a commonplace-book of Wotton's and includes +poems which we know as Donne's, e.g. 'Come, Madam, come'; +some of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; other letters +which from their substance and style seem to be Donne's; and +a number of poems, including this which alone of all the +doubtful poems in the manuscript is initialled 'J. D.' The +manuscript contains work by Donne. Does this come under +that head? Only internal evidence can decide. Of the other +poems in the manuscript, most of which I print in Appendix C, +none are certainly Donne's.</p> + +<p>'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's +lifetime in Davison's <i>A Poetical Rhapsody</i> (1602, 1608, 1621), +but with no reference to Donne's authorship, although his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cli" id="pageii.cli"></a>[pg cli]</span> +name was yearly growing a more popular hostel for wandering, +unclaimed poems.<a id="footnotetagc18" name="footnotetagc18"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotec18"><sup>18</sup></a> It was not printed in any edition of his +poems from <i>1633</i> to <i>1719</i>. It is not found in either of the most +trustworthy manuscript collections, <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, or +<i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<i>TC</i>. It <i>is</i> found in <i>B</i>, <i>Cy</i>, <i>L74</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>P</i>, <i>S96</i>, but none of +these can be counted an authority. In 1711 it was for the +first time ascribed to Donne in <i>The Grove</i>, a miscellaneous +collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old Manuscript +of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'. On the +other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, <i>HN</i>, it is +transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what +he describes as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' +(not '<i>by</i> Donne'), and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H.' +That other poem called</p> + +<p class="title1"><i>His Melancholy.</i></p> +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Love is a foolish melancholy, &c.,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is by a Manchester manuscript (Farmer-Chetham MS., ed. +Grosart, <i>Chetham Society Publications</i>, lxxxix, xc) assigned +to 'Mr. Hoskins', and in another manuscript (<i>A10</i>) it is signed +'H' with the left leg of H so written as to suggest JH run +together. Clearly at any rate the <i>onus probandi</i> lies with +those who say the poem is by Donne. Internally it has never +seemed to me so since I came to know Donne well. The +metaphysical, subtle strain is like Donne, as it is in <i>Soules Joy</i>, +but here as there (though there is more feeling in <i>Absence</i>, the +closing line has a very Donne-like note of sudden anguish, 'and +so miss her') the tone is airier, the prosody more tripping. +The stressed syllables are less weighted emotionally and vocally. +Compare</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sweetest love, I do not goe,</p> +<p class="i2">For wearinesse of thee</p> +<p>Nor in hope the world can show</p> +<p class="i2">A fitter Love for me;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>or</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,</p> +<p>Weepe me not dead, in thine armes, but forbeare</p> +<p>To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone;</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.clii" id="pageii.clii"></a>[pg clii]</span></p> + +<p>with the more tripping measure, in which one touches the +stressed syllables as with tiptoe, of</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>By absence this good means I gaine,</p> +<p class="i4">That I can catch her</p> +<p class="i4">Where none can watch her,</p> +<p>In some close corner of my braine.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript +volume of poems which he left behind ('bigger than those +of Dr. Donne') was lost in 1653.</p> + +<p>Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers +(op. cit., Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. +25707 (<i>A25</i>), and, so far as I know, there only. I have placed +them first in Appendix C, as the only pieces in that Appendix +which are at all likely to be by Donne. <i>A25</i> is a manuscript +written in a number of different hands, some six within the +portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative age +of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence. +What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three +poems, viz. Donne's <i>Elegye</i>: 'What [<i>sic</i>] that in Color it was +like thy haire,' his <i>Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt +last died</i>, and the <i>Elegie of Loves progresse</i>. It is in Elizabethan +secretary's hand, and seems to me identical with the +writing in which the same poems are copied in C, the Cambridge +University Library MS. A second hand, B, inserts the +larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in close +succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne +along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A +fourth hand, D, seems to be the latest because it is the +handwriting in which the Index was made out, and the poems +inserted in this hand are inserted in odd spaces left by the other +writers. Now of the poems in question, one, <i>A letter written +by S<sup>r</sup> H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus</i>, is copied by D, and +the same hand adds immediately <i>An Elegie on the Death of +my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First</i>, +by Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was +therefore not entered here till after 1649. But of course it may +have come from an older source, and it has quite the appearance +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cliii" id="pageii.cliii"></a>[pg cliii]</span> +of being genuine. Whoever made the collection would seem +to have had access to some of Goodyere's work, for this poem +is almost immediately preceded by an <i>Epithalamion of the +Princess Mariage</i>, by S<sup>r</sup> H. G., and a little earlier the <i>Good +Friday</i> poem by Donne is headed <i>Mr J. Dun goeing from +Sir H. G. on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the +waye</i>. That reads like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be +what happened, the copyist may have ascribed to Donne some +of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly there is nothing in the +other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,' 'Fie, fie, you sons of +Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the handwriting C) +which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later in +the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy +body come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D., but <i>P</i> assigns it to +F. B., and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on +Beaumont occupy a considerable space in <i>A25</i>. He is a quite +possible candidate for the authorship of some of the poems +assigned to Donne in the hand C.</p> + +<p>Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (<i>General Index to Hazlitt's +Handbook, &c.</i>, p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip +Stanhope, who died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not +been able to find the volume in which it appears; but, as it is +said to be by John Donne <i>Alumnus</i>, the author must be the +younger Donne.</p> + +<p class="footnote1"><a id="footnotec1" name="footnotec1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc1"><sup>1</sup></a> +Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these, but only in an +Appendix and under the title of <i>Doubtful Poems</i>. He has added a few +more from <i>A25</i>, from <i>Coryats Crudities</i>, and from some manuscripts in +the Bodleian Library. If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were +not reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much the +worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has, I presume, +taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and Grosart.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec2" name="footnotec2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc2"><sup>2</sup></a> +All three editors have also dropped the song 'Deare Love continue +nice and chaste', David Laing having pointed out (<i>Archaeologia Scotica</i>, +iv. 73-6) that this poem occurs in the Hawthornden MSS. with the +signature 'J. R.' Chambers also rejects the sonnet <i>On the Blessed Virgin +Mary</i>, probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the +lines <i>On the Sacrament</i>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec3" name="footnotec3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc3"><sup>3</sup></a> +I have given with each poem a list of the editions and manuscripts +(known to me) in which it is contained. A glance at these will show the +weight of the external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be +judge for himself.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec4" name="footnotec4"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc4"><sup>4</sup></a> +To these must of course be added poems already published in Donne's +name. See II. lvi.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec5" name="footnotec5"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc5"><sup>5</sup></a> +In F. G. Waldron's <i>A Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry</i>. 1802.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec6" name="footnotec6"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc6"><sup>6</sup></a> +Chambers includes it in his Appendix A, <i>Doubtful Poems</i>, but seems +to lean to the view that it is by Roe. The second is printed as Donne's +by Grosart and as presumably Donne's by Chambers.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec7" name="footnotec7"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc7"><sup>7</sup></a> +In <i>O'F</i> and <i>S</i>, where they also occur, they are more dispersed; but +these manuscripts have, like <i>1635</i>, adopted a classification of the poems +they contain which involves their distribution as songs, elegies, letters and +satires. <i>A10</i> is the most significant witness. This manuscript contains +very few poems by Donne. Why should it select just this suspicious group?</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec8" name="footnotec8"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc8"><sup>8</sup></a> +Among the marriage licences granted by the Bishop of London in +1601 (<i>Harleian Society Publications</i>) is the following: 'Henry Sackford +the younger, of the Charter House, Gent; 27, father dead, and Sarah Rowe +of St Johns in St John's Street, co. Middlesex, Maiden, dau. of John Rowe +of Clapham, Beds, Esq. decd (i.e. deceas'd) about 9 years since,' &c.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec9" name="footnotec9"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc9"><sup>9</sup></a> +See the genealogies given in the <i>Harleian Society Publications</i>, vol. +xiii, 1878, from the <i>Visitation of Essex</i> 1612 (pp. 282-3) and the <i>Visitation +of Essex</i> 1634 (p. 479).</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec10" name="footnotec10"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc10"><sup>10</sup></a> +The oldest was the John Rowe of Clapham, Beds. The second, +Henry, was also Mayor of London and was knighted in 1603. The fourth, +Robert, was the father of the ambassador, and died while his son was +a child. There were two daughters—Mary, who married Thomas Randall, +and Elizabeth, who married William Garret of Dorney, co. Bucks. The son +of the latter couple was Donne's intimate friend George Gerrard or Garrard.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec11" name="footnotec11"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc11"><sup>11</sup></a> +Row, John, of Essex. arm. matric. 14 Oct., 1597, aged 16. (Joseph +Foster, <i>Alumni Oxonienses</i>, iii, 1284). The Provost of Queen's has +kindly informed me that in the College books his name is entered simply +as 'Rowe' and as having entered 'Ter. Mich. 1597'. He tells me further +that in Andrew Clark's edition of the University Matriculation Registers +it is stated that the date of his matriculation was between Oct. 14 and +Dec. 2, 1597. There can be no doubt, I think, that this is our Roe. +There are not likely to have been two in the County of Essex with the +right to be called 'armiger'. Had his father still lived he would have +been entered as 'fil. gen.' or 'fil. arm.'</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec12" name="footnotec12"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc12"><sup>12</sup></a> +<i>Hist. MSS. Com.</i>: <i>Buccleugh MSS.</i> (Montague House), vol. i, pp. +56, 58. The letters are dated May 13, Nov. 7.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec13" name="footnotec13"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc13"><sup>13</sup></a> +<i>Calendar of State Papers.</i> Ireland, 1606-8, p. 538. I owe this and +the last reference to Mr. Murray L. R. Beavan, University Assistant in +History, Aberdeen University.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec14" name="footnotec14"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc14"><sup>14</sup></a> +Other poems by Pembroke are found in the manuscript collections of +Donne's poems. A scholarly edition of the poems of Pembroke and +Rudyard would be a boon. Many ascribed to them by the younger Donne +in his edition of 1660 could be removed and others added from manuscript +sources.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec15" name="footnotec15"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc15"><sup>15</sup></a> +It is one of the worst printed in <i>1635</i> and <i>1669</i> (where it first appeared +in full), and has admitted of many emendations from the manuscripts. +Grosart has already introduced some from the Hazlewood-Kingsborough +MS., but he left some gross errors. In the lines,</p> + +<div class="poem1 width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That I may grow enamoured on your mind,</p> +<p>When my own thoughts I there reflected find,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote">all the three modern editions are content still to read,</p> + +<div class="poem1 width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>When my own thoughts I there neglected find</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote">—a strange reason for being enamoured. Some difficult and perhaps +corrupt lines still remain.]</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec16" name="footnotec16"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc16"><sup>16</sup></a> +In forming this Appendix it was not my intention to remove these +poems dogmatically from under the aegis of Donne's name. I wished rather +to separate them from those which are indubitably his and facilitate +comparison. Further evidence may show that I have erred as to one or +other. This letter is the only one about which I feel any doubt myself. +I have taken as much trouble with their text as with the rest of the poems.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec17" name="footnotec17"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc17"><sup>17</sup></a> +<i>H40</i> has no ascription. In the poem just discussed the ascription +made correctly, at least intelligibly, in <i>RP31</i>, was transposed in <i>H40</i>. +This must be the later collection. See II. p. <a href="#pageii.cxiv">cxiv</a>.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotec18" name="footnotec18"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagc18"><sup>18</sup></a> +<i>Absence</i> is printed, again unsigned, in <i>Wit Restored in severall Select +Poems not formerly published</i>. (1658.)</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.cliv" id="pageii.cliv"></a>[pg cliv]</span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.clv" id="pageii.clv"></a>[pg clv</span></p> + +<hr /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.1" id="pageii.1"></a>[pg 1]</span></p> + +<h2>COMMENTARY.</h2> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Metaphysical<br /> +Poetry.</i></p> + +<p>Donne is a 'metaphysical' poet. The term was perhaps first applied +by Dryden, from whom Johnson borrowed it: 'He' (Donne) 'affects +the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, +where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair +sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their +hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.' <i>Essay on +Satire</i>. 'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to +show their learning was their whole endeavour.' Johnson, <i>Life of +Cowley</i>. The parade of learning, and a philosophical or abstract +treatment of love had been a strain in mediaeval poetry from +the outset, manifesting itself most fully in the Tuscan poets of +the 'dolce stil nuovo', but never altogether absent from mediaeval +love-poetry. The Italian poet Testi (1593-1646), describing his +choice of classical in preference to Italian models (he is thinking +specially of Marino), says: 'poichè lasciando quei concetti metafisici +ed ideali di cui sono piene le poesie italiane, mi sono +provato di spiegare cose più domestiche, e di maneggiarle con effetti +più famigliari a imitazione d'Ovidio, di Tibullo, di Properzio, e degli +altri migliori.' Donne's love-poetry is often classical in spirit; his +conceits are the 'concetti metafisici' of mediaeval poetry given a +character due to his own individuality and the scientific interests +of his age.</p> + +<p>A metaphysical poet in the full sense of the word is a poet who +finds his inspiration in learning; not in the world as his own +and common sense reveal it, but in the world as science and +philosophy report of it. The two greatest metaphysical poets of +Europe are Lucretius and Dante. What the philosophy of Epicurus +was to Lucretius, that of Thomas Aquinas was to Dante. Their +poetry is the product of their learning, transfigured by the imagination, +and it is not to be understood without some study of their thought +and knowledge.</p> + +<p>Donne is not a metaphysical poet of the compass of Lucretius and +Dante. He sets forth in his poetry no ordered system of the universe. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.2" id="pageii.2"></a>[pg 2]</span> +The ordered system which Dante had set forth was breaking in pieces +while Donne lived, under the criticism of Copernicus, Galileo, and +others, and no poet was so conscious as Donne of the effect on the +imagination of that disintegration. In the two <i>Anniversaries</i> +mystical religion is made an escape from scientific scepticism. Moreover, +Donne's use of metaphysics is often frivolous and flippant, at +best simply poetical. But he is a learned poet, and he is a philosophical +poet, and without some attention to the philosophy and science +underlying his conceits and his graver thought it is impossible to +understand or appreciate either aright. Failure to do so has led +occasionally to the corruption of his text.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Donne's<br /> +Learning.</i></p> + +<p>Walton tells us that Donne's learning, in his eleventh year when he +went to Oxford, 'made one then give this censure of him, "That this +age had brought forth another Picus Mirandula; of whom story says +that he was rather born than made wise by study."' 'In the most +unsettled days of his youth', the same authority reports, 'his bed was +not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and +it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till +past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took +great liberty after it.' 'He left the resultances of 1,400 authors, most +of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' The lists of +authors prefixed to his prose treatises and the allusions and definite +references in the sermons corroborate Walton's statement regarding +the range of Donne's theological and controversial reading.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Classical<br /> +Literature.</i></p> + +<p>Confining attention here to Donne's poetry, and the spontaneous +evidence of learning which it affords, one would gather that his +reading was less literary and poetic in character than was Milton's +during the years spent at Horton. It is clear that he knew the +classical poets, but there are few specific allusions. Ovid, Horace, +and Juvenal one can trace, not any other with certainty, nor in +his sermons do references to Virgil, Horace, or other poets abound.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Italian.</i></p> + +<p>Like Milton, Donne had doubtless read the Italian romances. +One reference to Angelica and an incident in the <i>Orlando Furioso</i> +occur in the <i>Satyres</i>, and from the same source as well as from an +unpublished letter we learn that he had read Dante. Aretino is +the only other Italian to whom he makes explicit reference.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>French.</i></p> + +<p>One of Régnier's satires opens in a manner resembling the fourth +of Donne's, and in a letter written from France apparently in 1612 he +refers to 'a book of French Satires', which Mr. Gosse conjectures to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.3" id="pageii.3"></a>[pg 3]</span> +be Régnier's. The resemblance may be accidental, for Donne's <i>Satyres</i> +were written before the publication of Régnier's (1608, 1613), and +Donne makes no explicit mention of him or any other French poet. +We learn, however, from his letters that he had read Montaigne and +Rabelais; and it is improbable that he did not share the general +interest of his contemporaries in the poetry of the <i>Pléiade</i>. The one +poet to whom recent criticism has pointed as the inspiration of Donne's +metaphysical verse is the Protestant poet Du Bartas. Mr. Alfred +Horatio Upham (<i>The French Influence in English Literature.</i> New +York, 1908), and following him Sir Sidney Lee (<i>The French Renaissance +in England.</i> Oxford, 1910), have insisted strongly on the +importance of this influence. The latter goes so far as to say that +'Donne clothed elegies, eclogues, divine poems, epicedes, obsequies, +satires, in a garb barely distinguishable from the style of Du Bartas +and Sylvester', and that the metaphysical style in English poetry is a +heritage from Du Bartas.</p> + +<p>I confess this seems to me a somewhat exaggerated statement. +When I turn from Donne's passionate and subtle songs and elegies to +Sylvester's hum-drum and yet 'conceited' work, I find their styles +eminently distinguishable. Mr. Upham indeed allows that Donne's +genius makes 'vital and impressive' what in the original is 'vapid and +commonplace'. He pleads for no more than an 'element of French +suggestion'.</p> + +<p>Of the most characteristic features of Du Bartas's rhetoric, his +affected antitheses, his studied alliterative effects, and especially his +double-epithets 'aime-carnage', 'charme-souci', 'blesse-honneur', +Sylvester's 'forbidden-Bit-lost-glory', 'the Act-simply-pure', &c., Mr. +Upham admits that Donne makes sparing use. Donne uses a fair +number of compounds but the majority of these are nouns and verbs. +Of the epithets only one or two are of the sentence-compressing +character which the French poet cultivated. The most like is +'full-on-both-side-written rolls'. The real link between Du Bartas +and Donne is that they are metaphysical poets. Following +Lucretius, whom he often translates, the Frenchman set himself +to give a scientific account of the creation of the universe as +outlined in <i>Genesis</i>. He describes with the utmost minuteness of +detail, and necessarily uses similes better fitted to elucidate and +illustrate than to give poetic pleasure, drawn from the most everyday +sources as well as arts and sciences. It was part of the programme +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.4" id="pageii.4"></a>[pg 4]</span> +of the <i>Pléiade</i> thus to annex the vocabulary of learning and the +crafts. Now Donne may have read Du Bartas in the original, or he may +have seen some parts of Sylvester's translation (it did not appear till +1598), as it was in preparation, though to a Catholic, as Donne was, +the poem would not have the attraction it had for Protestant poets +in England, Holland, and Germany. The bent of his own mind was +to metaphysics, to erudition, and also to figures realistic and surprising +rather than beautiful. It would be rash to deny that he may have +found in Du Bartas a style which he preferred to the Italianate +picturesqueness of sonneteers and idyllists, and been encouraged +to follow his bent. That he borrowed his style from Du Bartas +is <i>non proven</i>: and there are in his work strains of feeling, thought, +and learning which cannot be traced to the French poet. Two +poets more essentially unlike it would be difficult to imagine. There +are very few passages where one can trace or conjecture echoes or +borrowings (see note, II. p. 193). I agree indeed with Mr. Upham that +the poems which most strongly suggest that Donne had been reading +Du Bartas are the First and Second <i>Anniversaries</i>, which Sir Sidney Lee +inadvertently calls early poems. Here at least he is often dealing with +the same themes. One can illustrate his thought from Du Bartas. +Perhaps it was the latter's poem which suggested the use of marginal +notes, giving the argument of the poem.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Spanish.</i></p> + +<p>We know from Donne's explicit statement that his library was full +both of Spanish poets and Spanish theologians, and there has been +some talk of Spanish influence in his poetry. But no one has adduced +evidence. Gongora is out of the question, for Gongora did not begin +to cultivate the extravagant conceits of his later poetry till he came +under the influence of Carillo's posthumous poems in 1611 +(Fitzmaurice Kelly: <i>Spanish Literature</i>, 283-5); nor is there much +resemblance between his high-flown Marinism and Donne's metaphysical +subtleties. It is possible that Spanish mysticism and +religious eloquence have left traces in Donne's <i>Divine Poems</i> and +sermons. The subject awaits investigation.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Scholastic<br /> +Philosophy.</i></p> + +<p>A commentator on Donne is, therefore, not called on to trace +literary echoes in his poetry as Bishop Newton and others have done +in Milton's poems. It is reading of another kind, though a kind also +traceable in Milton, that he has to note. Donne was steeped in +Scholastic Philosophy and Theology. Often under his most playful +conceits lurk Scholastic definitions and distinctions. The question +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.5" id="pageii.5"></a>[pg 5]</span> +of the influence of Plato on the poets of the Renaissance has been +discussed of recent years, but generally without a sufficient preliminary +inquiry as to the Scholastic inheritance of these poets. Doctrines +that derive ultimately, it may be, from Plato and Aristotle were familiar +to Donne and others in the first place from Aquinas and the theology +of the Schools, and, as Professor Picavet has insisted (<i>Esquisse d'une +histoire générale et comparée des philosophies médiévales.</i> Paris, 1907), +they entered the Scholastic Philosophy through Plotinus and were +modified in the passage.<a id="footnotetagiimp1" name="footnotetagiimp1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnoteiimp1"><sup>1</sup></a> +The present editor is in no way a specialist +in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given here +concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text and +to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this as +far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further investigation +must follow. An expert will doubtless note many allusions +that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have endeavoured +to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.</p> + +<p class="footnote1"><a id="footnoteiimp1" name="footnoteiimp1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagiimp1"><sup>1</sup></a> +The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and Theology in English poetry +deserves attention. When Milton states that</p> + +<div class="poem1 width21"> <div class="stanza"> +They also serve who only stand and wait, +</div> </div> + +<p class="footnote2">he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the Areopagite (adopted by +Aquinas), that the four highest orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, +and Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>The Fathers,<br /> +&c.</i></p> + +<p>Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen, +especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes +use in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton +had familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy +from Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and +casuists. <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i> reveals his acquaintance with +Jewish apocryphal legends.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Law.</i></p> + +<p>But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student +he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an +hydroptic immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; +but his legal studies have left their mark in his <i>Songs and Sonets</i>. +Of Medicine he had made an extensive study, and the poems abound +in allusions to both the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new +Paracelsian medicine with its chemical drugs and homoeopathic +cures.<a id="footnotetagiimp2" name="footnotetagiimp2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnoteiimp2"><sup>2</sup></a> +In Physics he knows, like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.6" id="pageii.6"></a>[pg 6]</span> +their concentric arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c., +and at the same time is acutely interested in the speculations of the +newer science, of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect +of their doctrines on the traditional views.</p> + +<p class="footnote3"><a id="footnoteiimp2" name="footnoteiimp2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagiimp2"><sup>2</sup></a> +In the <i>Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c.</i> (1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, +Donne gives a short sketch of the history of medical doctrines from Hippocrates +through Galen to Paracelsus, but declares that the new principles are attributed +to the latter 'too much to his honour'.</p> + +<p class="rightnote"><i>Travels.</i></p> + +<p>A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn +from the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh +has not included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering +the influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination +(<i>The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century.</i> Glasgow, 1906, iii), but +perhaps none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my +America, my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at +least in imagination,</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> a Tenarif, or higher Hill</p> +<p>Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke</p> +<p>The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the +North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.</p> + +<p>In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's +erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not +so much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the +form in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to +his own works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or +but slightly later works, as Burton's <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i> and +Browne's <i>Pseudodoxia Epidemica</i>. I have made constant use of +the <i>Summa Theologiae</i> of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition +in Migne's <i>Patrologiae Cursus Completus</i> (1845). By Professor +Picavet my attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's +<i>Enneads</i> with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of +Neo-Platonic thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's +<i>Philosophie der Griechen</i>, on Plotinus, and Harnack's <i>History of +Dogma</i>. +Throughout, my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and +suggest, than to accumulate parallels.</p> + +<p><sup>*</sup><sub>*</sub><sup>*</sup> In the following notes the <i>LXXX Sermons &c.</i> (1640), <i>Fifty +Sermons &c.</i> (1649), and <i>XXVI Sermons &c.</i> (1669/70) are referred to +thus:—80. 19. 189, i.e. the <i>LXXX Sermons</i>, the nineteenth sermon, +page 189. References to page and line simply of the poems are to +the first volume of this edition. References to the second are given +thus, II. p. 249.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.7" id="pageii.7"></a>[pg 7]</span></p> + +<h3>THE PRINTER TO &c.</h3> + +<p>See <i>Text and Canon of Donne's Poems</i>, p. <a href="#pageii.lix">lix</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">1</span>, ll. 17-18. <i>it would have come to us from beyond the +Seas</i>: e.g. from Holland.</p> + +<p>ll. 19-20. <i>My charge and pains in procuring of it</i>: A significant +statement as to the source of the edition.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 3. <i>Hexastichon Bibliopolae.</i> </h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>his last preach'd, and printed Booke</i>, i.e. <i>Deaths Duell or a +Consolation to the Soule against the dying Life and living Death of the body. +Delivered in a sermon at Whitehall, before the Kings Majesty in the +beginning of Lent 1630, &c. ... Being his last Sermon and called by +his Majesties household the Doctors owne Funerall Sermon. 1632, 1633.</i></p> + +<p>This has for frontispiece a bust of Donne in his shroud, engraved +by Martin Dr[oeshout] from the drawing from which Nicholas Stone +cut the figure on Donne's tomb (Gosse's <i>Life, &c.</i> ii. 288). Walton's +account of the manner in which this picture was prepared is well +known. See II. p. <a href="#pageii.249">249</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">4</span>. <i>William, Lord Craven, &c.</i> +This is the younger Donne's dedication. See <i>Text and Canon, &c.</i>, p. <a href="#pageii.lxx">lxx</a>.</p> + +<p>William Craven (1606-1697) entered the service of Maurice, +Prince of Nassau in 1623. He served later, 1631, under Gustavus +Adolphus; and became a devoted adherent of Elizabeth of Bohemia +and the cause of the Palatine house. He lost his estates in the +Rebellion, but after the Restoration was created successively Baron +Craven of Hampsted-Marsham, Viscount Craven of Uffington, and +Earl of Craven. He was an early member of the Royal Society.</p> + +<p>Of the younger John Donne, D.C.L., whose life was dissolute and +poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem +addressed to his father. It is found in <i>O'F</i> and has been printed by +Mr. Warwick Bond:</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">A Letter.</span></h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>No want of duty did my mind possesse,</p> +<p>I through a dearth of words could not expresse</p> +<p>That w<sup>ch</sup> I feare I doe too soone pursue</p> +<p>W<sup>ch</sup> is to pay my duty due to you.</p> +<p>For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way</p> +<p>I shall diminish what I hope to pay.</p> +<p>And this consider, T'was the sonne of May</p> +<p>And not Apollo that did rule the day.</p> +<p>Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;</p> +<p>In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose</p> +<p>I would have told you (father) by my hand</p> +<p>That I yo<sup>r</sup> sonne am prouder of yo<sup>r</sup> band</p> +<p>Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.8" id="pageii.8"></a>[pg 8]</span></p> +<p>Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.</p> +<p class="i26">Yo<sup>r</sup> obedient sonne</p> +<p class="i32"><span class="sc">Jo. Donne</span>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">5</span>, <span class="bb">6</span>. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the +sheets hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of +Donne's poems prepared for the press in 1649. See <i>Text and Canon, +&c.</i> They were taken from Jonson's <i>Epigrams</i> (1616), where they +are Nos. xxiii., xciv., and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered +three memorable criticisms in his <i>Conversations with Drummond</i> +(ed. Laing, Shakespeare Society, 1842):</p> + +<p>'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some +things.'</p> + +<p>'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging.'</p> + +<p>'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish.'</p> + +<h2>SONGS AND SONETS.<a name="pageii.8a" id="pageii.8a"></a></h2> + +<p>Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any +definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have +written all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that +would be before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to +Sir Thomas Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications +of date as are discoverable in the <i>Elegies</i>, poems similar in +theme and tone to the <i>Songs and Sonets</i>. Mr. Chambers pushes the +more daring and cynical of these poems in both these groups further +back. He says, 'All Donne's Love-poems ... seem to me to fall +into two divisions. There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity +and a somewhat deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe +to be his earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the +period before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with +Anne More, whom he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever +after. And therefore from 1596 onwards I place the second division, +with its emphasis of the spiritual, and deep insight into the real +things of love.' This is a little too early. Anne More was only +twelve years old in 1596, and it is unlikely that she and Donne were +known to each other before 1598. Their affection probably ripened +later. It almost seems from Donne's letters to his friends as though +about 1599 he was proffering at least courtly adoration to some other +lady.</p> + +<p>Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's +complex nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his +gayer, more cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. +The truth about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's +"better angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.9" id="pageii.9"></a>[pg 9]</span> +continual contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery +in his</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth.'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till +he took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' +of outlook on men and women. The <i>Elegie XIV</i> (if it be Donne's, +and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines <i>Upon +Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities</i>, the two frankly pagan <i>Epithalamia</i> +on the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say +nothing of <i>Ignatius his Conclave</i>, were all written long after his +marriage and when he was already the author of moral epistles and +'divine poems'. Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the +'contest' a little. These things were evaporations of wit, and even a +serious man in the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric +gambols which disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. +I am quite at one with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage +as a turning-point in the history of Donne's life and mind. But it +would be rash to affirm that <i>none</i> of his wittier lyrics were written +after this date.</p> + +<p>Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather +than two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. +Donne's wit is always touched with passion; his passion is always +witty. In the first class I would place those which are frankly +'evaporations' of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he +parades his own inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, +poems such as 'Goe and catche', <i>Womans constancy</i>, <i>The Indifferent</i>, +<i>Loves Vsury</i>, <i>The Legacie</i>, <i>Communitie</i>, <i>Confined Love</i>, +<i>Loves Alchymie</i>, +<i>The Flea</i>, <i>The Message</i>, <i>Witchcraft by a picture</i>, <i>The +Apparition</i>, <i>Loves Deitie</i>, <i>Loves diet</i>, <i>The Will</i>, <i>A Jeat Ring +sent</i>, <i>Negative love</i>, +<i>Farewell to love</i>. In another group the wit in Donne, whether gaily +or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the lover, pure and simple, +singing, at times with amazing simplicity and intensity of feeling, the +joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such are <i>The good-morrow</i>, +<i>The Sunne Rising</i>, <i>The Canonization</i>, <i>Lovers infiniteness</i>, +'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' <i>A Feaver</i>, <i>Aire and Angells</i> (touched with +cynical humour at the close), <i>Breake of day</i>, <i>The Anniversarie</i>, <i>A +Valediction: of the booke</i>, <i>Loves growth</i>, <i>The Dreame</i>, <i>A Valediction: of +weeping</i>, <i>The Baite</i>, <i>A Valediction: forbidding mourning</i>, <i>The Extasie</i>, +<i>The Prohibition</i>, <i>The Expiration</i>, <i>Lecture upon the Shadow</i>. It +would, of course, be rash to say that all such poems were addressed to +his wife. Some, like <i>The Baite</i>, are purely literary in origin; others +present the obverse side of the passion portrayed in the first group, +its happier moments. But one must believe that those in which +ardour is combined with elevation and delicacy of feeling were +addressed to Anne More before and after their marriage.</p> + +<p>In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.10" id="pageii.10"></a>[pg 10]</span> +examples of his subtler moods as <i>The Funerall</i>, <i>The Blossome</i>, +<i>The Primrose</i>, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the +case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain +him or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, +I think, have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one +or two bear connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of +Bedford. The two most enigmatical poems in the <i>Songs and Sonets</i> +are <i>Twicknam Garden</i> and <i>A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day</i>. Yet +the very names 'Twicknam Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a +reference to the Countess of Bedford. It is possible that the last +was written when Lady Bedford was ill in December, 1612? 'My +Lady Bedford last night about one of the clock was suddenly, and +has continued ever since, speechless, and is past all hopes though +yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on November 23, 1612. It is +probable that on December 13 she was still in a critical condition, +supposing the illness to have been that common complaint of an age +of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne may have written in +anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is hazardous. The +third verse speaks a stronger language than that of Petrarchian +adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright all that was +allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention. It is noteworthy +that the poem is not included in any known MS. collection +made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 7. <span class="sc">The Good-morrow.</span><a name="pageii.10a" id="pageii.10a"></a></h3> + +<p>The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one +which is given in the group of MSS. <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and in +<i>1633</i>, reads, +3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better. +The other, which is the most common in the MSS., reads, 3. childish +pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of +1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the +printer 'set up' from <i>1633</i>, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. +collection, probably <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>. In <i>TCD</i> the second +recension is +given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the +MS.; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the +poem is given again, but according to the other version. It does not +seem to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of +the two versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> +seems the more racy and characteristic. It probably represents +the first version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible +for the alterations. The only point of importance to be decided +is whether 'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet +meant to say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably +that the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find +two hemispheres that fit one another more exactly?' But this is +not, I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the +lovers is implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.11" id="pageii.11"></a>[pg 11]</span> +other. Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this +world. The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could +either find a <i>better</i> hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither +'sharpe North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>Let Maps to other.</i> The edition may have dropped the 's', +which occurs in most of the MSS., but the plural without 's' is +common even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty +things.' Bunyan, <i>The Life and Death of Mr. Badman</i>, p. 106 +(Cambridge English Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect +That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile.' Shakespeare, +<i>Merchant of Venice</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i. 54.</p> + +<p>ll. 20-1. <i>If our two loves be one, &c.</i> If our two loves are <i>one</i>, +dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though <i>two</i>, they +are always alike. What is simple—as God or the soul—cannot be +dissolved; nor compounds, e.g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose +elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma +separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens +desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et forma composita, +ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam incorruptibilem. +Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur contrarietas; generationes +enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in contraria sunt' &c., +Aquinas, <i>Summa</i> I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 6. The body, being composed +of contrary elements, has not this essential immortality: +'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest their +mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they shall +have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish; +but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they +shall alwaies know they shall never dye.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 19. 189.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 8. <span class="sc">Song.</span><a name="pageii.11a" id="pageii.11a"></a></h3> + +<p>The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition +of the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title <i>A Raritie</i>. It is set +to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that +Habington's poem, <i>Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of +Women</i> (<i>Castara</i>, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>They meet but with unwholesome springs</p> +<p class="i2">And summers which infectious are:</p> +<p>They hear but when the meremaid sings,</p> +<p class="i2">And only see the falling starre:</p> +<p class="i6">Who ever dare</p> +<p>Affirme no woman chaste and faire.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say</p> +<p class="i2">The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:</p> +<p>In copper mines no longer stay,</p> +<p class="i2">But travel to the west, and there</p> +<p class="i6">The right ones see,</p> +<p>And grant all gold's not alchimie.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.12" id="pageii.12"></a>[pg 12]</span></p> + +<p>A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and +in <i>The Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others.</i> (1669)</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,</p> +<p>Cause an immortal creature for to die;</p> +<p>Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,</p> +<p>Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;</p> +<p>Cause times return and call back yesterday,</p> +<p>Cloake January with the month of May;</p> +<p class="i2">Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:</p> +<p class="i2">And then find faith within a womans minde.</p> +<p class="i30"><span class="sc">John Dunne.</span></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 2. <i>Get with child a mandrake root.</i> 'Many Mola's and false +conceptions there are of <i>Mandrakes</i>, the first from great Antiquity, +conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man.... Now +whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting +many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived +similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of +the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs.' +Sir Thomas Browne's <i>Vulgar Errors</i> (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare +also <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, st. xv, p. 300.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 10. <span class="sc">The Undertaking.</span><a name="pageii.12a" id="pageii.12a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>the Worthies</i>. The nine worthies usually named are Joshua, +David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur, +Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of +Warwick is mentioned by Gerard Legh, <i>Accedens of Armorye</i>. Nash +mentions Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules +and Pompey in <i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>. <i>All the Worthies</i> therefore +covers a wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative +designs and pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was +enammeled in gold the seven [<i>sic</i>] Worthies, worth seven or eight +hundred guilders'. Vere's <i>Commentaries</i> (1657), p. 174.</p> + +<p>l. 6. <i>The skill of specular stone.</i> Compare <i>To the Countesse of +Bedford</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.219">219</a>, ll. 28-30:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne</p> +<p>To our late times, the use of specular stone,</p> +<p>Through which all things within without were shown.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take +'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes +Holinshed's <i>Chronicle</i>, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the +specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i.e. +glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare not +affirm for certain.' This is the 'pierre spéculaire' or 'pierre à miroir' +which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent stone, +easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians (among whom +it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the Moon, and even +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.13" id="pageii.13"></a>[pg 13]</span> +increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely Donne refers +to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the <i>Coelum +Philosophorum</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may</p> +<p class="i18">be seen in it.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to +know and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air. +Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears +also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and +the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror in +which an inverted copy of an object is seen.' The old name for +crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably +that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone', +but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the +stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the +other.</p> + +<p>l. 16. <i>Loves but their oldest clothes.</i> The 'her' of <i>B</i> is a +tempting +reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their' is the +common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro +between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic +use of the pronoun is striking in either case.</p> + +<p>Compare <i>To Mrs. M. H.</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.217">217</a>, ll. 31-2.</p> + +<p>l. 18. <i>Vertue attir'd in woman see.</i> The reading of the 1633 +edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's +characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in +woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible +form of woman and love that.'</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 11. The Sunne Rising.</span><a name="pageii.13a" id="pageii.13a"></a></h3> + +<p>Compare Ovid, <i>Amores</i>, I. 13.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,</p> +<p class="i2">Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.</p> +<p>Quo properas, Aurora?</p> +<p class="i8"><big>. . .</big></p> +<p>Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?</p> +<p class="i8"><big>. . .</big></p> +<p>Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,</p> +<p class="i2">Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections +with Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly +what Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical +and the metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.</p> + +<p>l. 17. <i>both th' India's of spice and Myne.</i> A distinction that Donne +is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines +of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.' +Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O.E.D. does not contradict this, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.14" id="pageii.14"></a>[pg 14]</span> +for the word had a wider connotation. Compare <i>Loves exchange</i>, +p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.35">35</a>, ll. 34-35:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> and make more</p> +<p>Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.295">295</a>, l. 17:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>thy Western land of Myne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in +Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the +East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 15. 123. And +'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the +land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that +is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. <i>To Sir Robert Ker.</i> +Gosse's <i>Life, &c.</i>, ii. 191.</p> + +<p>l. 24. <i>All wealth alchimie</i>: i.e. imposture or 'glittering dross' +(O.E.D.). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it +was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage.' Harrington, +<i>Orlando Furioso</i> (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 12. <span class="sc">The Indifferent.</span><a name="pageii.14a" id="pageii.14a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 7. <i>dry corke.</i> Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was +dry and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or +tragic poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his +corky arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (<i>King Lear</i>, +<span class="sc">III.</span> +vii. 31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from +Harsnett's <i>Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c.</i> (1603): +'It would pose all the cunning exorcists ... to teach an old corkie +woman to writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 13. <span class="sc">Loves Usury.</span><a name="pageii.14b" id="pageii.14b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 5. <i>My body raigne.</i> Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', +from <i>1635-69</i>. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All +the best MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and +the reign of lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A +lover might range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover +could</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">mistake by the way</p> +<p>The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's paradoxical +thesis:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,</p> +<p>But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;</p> +<p>Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,</p> +<p>Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;</p> +<p class="i2">Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;</p> +<p class="i2">Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.</p> +<p class="i16">Shakespeare, <i>Venus and Adonis</i>, <span class="sc">v.</span> cxxxiv.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.15" id="pageii.15"></a>[pg 15]</span></p> + +<p>ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some +modification of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and +the lines are frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Only let me love none; no, not the sport</p> +<p>From country-grass to confitures of court,</p> +<p>Or city's quelque-choses; let not report</p> +<p class="i8">My mind transport.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them. +Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive +lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental +dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which +the 1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' +is clear enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's +play' (<i>Loves Alchimie</i>), 'as she would man should despise +the sport' (<i>Farewell to Love</i>). The prayer that report <i>may</i> ('let', +not 'let not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping +with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has +the punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw +that edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not +report'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 14. <span class="sc">The Canonization.</span><a name="pageii.15a" id="pageii.15a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 7. <i>Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate.</i> Donne's +conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in +Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we +his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into +his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get you +to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to +remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in +his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you +can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the +Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see the +face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is +counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that +brings the mony in the mouth (as he did to <i>Peter</i>) that mony is ill +fished for.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 12. 122.</p> + +<p>l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. except <i>Lec</i>, which here +as in several other little details appears to resemble <i>1633</i> more +closely than either of the other MSS., <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>. It is quite +possible +that 'man' is correct—a vivid and concrete touch, but in view of +the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words are +frequently interchanged in the MSS.</p> + +<p>ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, +though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The +editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first (l. 24) +to a semicolon and connects</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.16" id="pageii.16"></a>[pg 16]</span></p> +<p>with the two preceding lines. To me it seems the line <i>must</i> go with +what follows, and that 'so' (which should have no comma) is not an +illative conjunction but a subordinate conjunction of effect. 'Both +sexes fit <i>so</i> entirely into one neutral thing that we die and rise the +same,' &c. The Grolier Club editor, like Chambers, connects the +line with what has gone before, but drops the comma after 'so', +making it an adverb of degree.</p> + +<p>ll. 37-45. <i>And thus invoke us, &c.</i> Grosart and Chambers have +disguised and altered the sense of this stanza. Grosart, indeed, by +printing 'Who did the whole world's extract', has made it completely +unintelligible. Chambers's version gives a meaning, but a wrong one. +He prints the last six lines thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove</p> +<p class="i4">Into the glasses of your eyes;</p> +<p class="i4">So made such mirrors, and such spies,</p> +<p>That they did all to you epitomize—</p> +<p class="i2">Countries, towns, courts beg from above</p> +<p class="i2">A pattern of your love.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>These harsh constructions are not Donne's. The object of 'drove' +is not the 'world's soul', but 'Countries, towns, courts'; and 'beg' +is not in the indicative but the imperative mood. For clearness' sake +I have bracketed ll. 42-3 and printed 'love!' otherwise leaving the +punctuation unchanged.</p> + +<p>Donne as usual is pedantically accurate in the details of his +metaphor. The canonized lovers are invoked as saints, i.e. <i>their +prayers are requested</i>. They are asked to beg from above a pattern +of their love for those below. Of prayers to saints Donne speaks in +one of his <i>Letters</i>, p. 181: 'I see not how I can admit that circuit of +sending them' (i.e. letters) 'to you to be sent hither; that seems a kinde +of praying to Saints, to whom God must tell first, that such a man +prays to them to pray to him.'</p> + +<p>l. 40. The 'contract' of the printed editions is doubtless correct, despite +the preference of the MSS. for 'extract'. This goes in several MSS. +with other errors which show confusion. <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> read 'and drawe', +a bad rhyme; and <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i> (the verse is lost in <i>TCD</i>) drop +'soule', reading 'the world extract'. The reading 'extract' is due to what +Dr. Moore calls 'the extraordinary short-sightedness of the copyists +in respect of a construction. Their vision seems often to be bounded +by a single line.' To 'extract the soul' of things is a not uncommon +phrase with Donne. Here it does not suit the thought which is +coming so well as 'contract': 'As the spirit and soule of the whole +booke of Psalmes is contracted into this psalme, so is the spirit and +soule of this whole psalme contracted into this verse.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. <i>Because thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore +in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.</i>)</p> + +<p>l. 45. <i>A patterne of your love.</i> The 'of our love' of 1633 <i>might</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.17" id="pageii.17"></a>[pg 17]</span> +mean 'for our love', but it is clear from the manner in which this +stanza is given in <i>D</i> that the copyist has misunderstood the +construction—'our +love' follows from the assumption that 'Countries, +Townes, Courts' is the subject to 'Beg'. The colon and the capital +letter would not make such a view impossible, as they might be given +a merely emphasizing value; or if regarded as imperative the 'Beg' +might be taken as in the third person: 'Countries, Townes, Courts—let +them beg,' &c. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">The God of Souldiers:</p> +<p>With the consent of supreame Jove, informe</p> +<p>Thy thoughts with Noblenesse.</p> +<p class="i6">Shakespeare, <i>Cor.</i> <span class="sc">v.</span> iii. 70-2</p> +<p class="i12">(Simpson, <i>Shakespearian Punctuation</i>, p. 98).</p> +</div> </div> + +<p>But clearly here 'Beg' is in the second person plural, predicate to +'You whom reverend love', and 'your love' is the right reading.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 16. <span class="sc">The Triple Foole.</span><a name="pageii.17a" id="pageii.17a"></a></h3> + +<p>He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love +in verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music +and by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had +lulled to sleep.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 17. <span class="sc">Lovers Infiniteness.</span><a name="pageii.17b" id="pageii.17b"></a></h3> + +<p>This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is +not included in the <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> collection, would seem to +have undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in <i>A25</i>, +from which <i>Cy</i> is copied, would seem to be the original, at least the +readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like corruptions. The +reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to 'yet' than 'admit'. +In l. 29 <i>A25</i> has obviously interchanged 'thine' and 'mine'. The +slightly different version of <i>JC</i> gives the correct order. The generally +careful <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> group has an unusually faulty text of +this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with <i>S96</i>) 'Thee' for 'them' +in l. 32.</p> + +<p>'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any of +the MSS., and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the +'Lovers' suits the closing thought:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">so we shall</p> +<p>Be one, and one anothers All.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see <i>Appendix C</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.439a">439</a>.</p> + +<p>ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas +depends a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt +to correct that of <i>1633</i> without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' +is obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. +The first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.18" id="pageii.18"></a>[pg 18]</span> +poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with +'Yet no more', &c.</p> + +<p>l. 9. <i>generall</i> is the reading of two MSS. which are practically one. +I have recorded it because (1) ll. 29-30 (see textual note) would +seem to suggest that their version of the poem is an early one (revised +by Donne), and this may be an early reading; (2) because in l. 20 +this epithet is used as though repeated, 'thy gift being generall.' It +would be not unlike Donne to quibble with the word, making it mean +first a gift made generally to all, and secondly a gift general in its +content, not limited or defined in any way. The whole poem is a +piece of legal quibbling not unlike Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,</p> +<p>And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:</p> +<p>The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;</p> +<p>My bonds in thee are all determinate, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 18. <span class="sc">Song.</span><a name="pageii.18a" id="pageii.18a"></a></h3> + +<p><i>Sweetest love, &c.</i> Of the music to this and 'Send home my long +stray'd eyes' I can discover no trace. <i>The Baite</i> was doubtless sung +to the same air as Marlowe's 'Come live with me'. See II. p. <a href="#pageii.57">57</a>.</p> + +<p>ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of <i>1633</i>, which has the support of +all the MSS. That of <i>1635-54</i> is an attempt to accommodate the +lines, by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in +the other stanzas.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 20. <span class="sc">The Legacie.</span><a name="pageii.18b" id="pageii.18b"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 9-16. <span class="sc">I heard me say, &c.</span> The construction of this verse has +proved rather a difficulty to editors. I give it as printed by Chambers +and by the Grolier Club editor. Chambers's modernized version +runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I heard me say, 'Tell her anon,</p> +<p class="i2">That myself', that is you not I,</p> +<p class="i2">'Did kill me', and when I felt me die,</p> +<p>I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;</p> +<p>But I alas! could there find none;</p> +<p class="i2">When I had ripp'd and search'd where hearts should lie,</p> +<p>It killed me again, that I who still was true</p> +<p>In life, in my last will should cozen you.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The Grolier Club version has no inverted commas, and runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I heard me say, Tell her anon,</p> +<p class="i2">That myself, that's you not I,</p> +<p class="i2">Did kill me; and when I felt me die,</p> +<p>I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;</p> +<p>But I alas! could there find none.</p> +<p class="i2">When I had ripped me and searched where hearts did lie,</p> +<p>It killed me again that I, who still was true</p> +<p>In life, in my last will should cozen you.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.19" id="pageii.19"></a>[pg 19]</span></p> +<p>In my own version the only departure which I have made from +the punctuation of the 1633 version is the substitution of a semicolon +for a comma after 'lye' (l. 14). If inverted commas are to be +used at all it seems to me they would need to be extended to 'gone' +(l. 12) or to 'lie' (l. 14). As Donne is addressing the lady throughout +it is difficult to distinguish what he says to her now from what he +said on the occasion imagined.</p> + +<p>But the point in which both Chambers and the Grolier Club +editor seem to me in error is in connecting l. 14, <i>When I had ripp'd, +&c.</i>, with what follows instead of with the immediately preceding +line. There is no justification for changing the comma after 'none' +either to a semicolon or a full stop. The meaning of ll. 13-14 is, +'But alas! when I had ripp'd me and search'd where hearts did +(i.e. used to) lie, I could there find none.' It is so that the Dutch +translator understands the lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Maer, oh, ick vond er geen, al scheurd ick mijn geraemt,</p> +<p>En socht door d'oude plaets die 't Hert is toegeraemt.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The last two lines are a comment on the whole incident, the making +of the will and the poet's inability to implement it.</p> + +<p>l. 20. <i>It was intire to none</i>: i.e. 'It was tied to no one lover.' The +word 'entire' in this sense is still found on public-house signs, and +misled the American Pinkerton in Stevenson's <i>The Wrecker</i>. Compare: +'But this evening I will spie upon the B[ishop] and give you an +account to-morrow morning of his disposition; when, if he cannot be +intire to you, since you are gone so farre downwards in your favours +to me, be pleased to pursue your humiliation so farre as to chuse +your day, and either to suffer the solitude of this place, or to change +it, by such company, as shall waite upon you.' <i>Letters</i>, p. 315 (To +... Sir Robert Karre). This seems to mean, 'if the Bishop cannot +fulfill, be faithful to, his engagement to you, come and dine here.'</p> + +<p>ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading +fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The +former, following <i>1669</i>, but altering the punctuation, prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As good as could be made by art</p> +<p>It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.</p> +<p>I meant to send that heart instead of mine,</p> +<p>But O! no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'for our loss be sad' comes in very strangely before the end, +nor is the force of 'and therefore' very clear.</p> + +<p>The Grolier Club editor, following the words of <i>1633</i>, but altering +the punctuation, reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As good as could be made by art</p> +<p class="i2">It seemed, and therefore for our losses sad;</p> +<p>I meant to send this heart instead of mine</p> +<p>But oh! no man could hold it, for twas thine.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.20" id="pageii.20"></a>[pg 20]</span></p> + +<p>Apparently the heart was sad for our losses because it was no +better than might be made by art. The confusion arises from +deserting the punctuation of <i>1633</i>. 'For our losses sad' is an adjectival +qualification of 'I'. 'I, sad to have lost my heart, which by +legacy was yours, resolved as a <i>pis aller</i> to send this, which seemed +as good as could be made by art. But to send it was impossible, +for no man could hold it. It was thine.'</p> + +<p>Huyghens translates:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Soo meenden ick 't verlies dat ick vergelden most</p> +<p>Te boeten met dit Hert, en doen 't u toebehooren:</p> +<p>Maer, oh, 't en kost niet zijn, 't was uw al lang te voren.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But this does not appear to be quite accurate. Huyghens appears +to think that Donne could not give his heart to the lady, because it +was hers already. What he really says is, that no one could keep +this heart of hers, which had taken the place of his own in his +bosom, because, being hers, it was too volatile.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 21. <span class="sc">A Feaver.</span><a name="pageii.20a" id="pageii.20a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 13-14.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>O wrangling schooles, that search what fire</i></p> +<p><i>Shall burne this world.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'I cannot but marvel from what <i>Sibyl</i> or Oracle they' (the Ancients) +'stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan +learned to say,</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra</p> +<p>Misturus.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>There yet remaines to th'World one common fire</p> +<p>Wherein our Bones with Stars shall make one pyre.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I believe the World grows near its end, yet is neither old nor +decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles. +As the work of Creation was above nature, so is its adversary annihilation; +without which the World hath not its end, but its mutation. +Now what force should be able to consume it thus far, without the +breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my Philosophy +cannot inform me.' Browne's <i>Religio Medici</i>, sect. 45.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 22. <span class="sc">Aire and Angels.</span><a name="pageii.20b" id="pageii.20b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 19. <i>Ev'ry thy haire.</i> This, the reading of <i>1633-39</i> and the +MSS., is, I think, preferable to the amended 'Thy every hair', &c., of +the 1650-69 editions (which Chambers adopts, ascribing it to <i>1669</i> +alone), though the difference is slight. 'Every thy hair' has the +force of 'Thy every hair' with the additional suggestion of 'even thy +least hair' derived from the construction with a superlative adjective. +'Every the least remembrance.' J. King, <i>Sermons</i> 28. 'Every, the +most complex, web of thought may be reduced to simple syllogisms.' +Sir W. Hamilton. See note to <i>The Funerall</i>, l. 3.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.21" id="pageii.21"></a>[pg 21]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 23-4. <i>Then as an Angell face and wings</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i>Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>St. Thomas (<i>Summa Theol.</i> I. li. 2) discusses the nature of the +body assumed by Angels when they appear to men, seeing that +naturally they are incorporeal. There being four elements, this body +must consist of one of these, but 'Angeli non assumunt corpora de +terrâ vel aquâ: quia non subito disparerent. Neque iterum de igne: +quia comburerent ea quae contingerent. Neque iterum ex aere: quia +aer infigurabilis est et incolorabilis'. To this Aquinas replies, 'Quod +licet aer in sua raritate manens non retineat figuram neque colorem: +quando tamen condensatur, et figurari et colorari potest: sicut patet +in nubibus. Et sic Angeli assumunt corpora ex aere, condensando +ipsum virtute divina, quantum necesse est ad corporis assumendi +formationem.'</p> + +<p>Tasso, familiar like Donne with Catholic doctrine, thus clothes his +angels:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Così parlògli, e Gabriel s' accinse</p> +<p>Veloce ad eseguir l' imposte cose.</p> +<p><i>La sua forma invisibil d'aria cinse</i>,</p> +<p><i>Ed al senso mortal la sottopose</i>:</p> +<p>Umane membra, aspetto uman si finse,</p> +<p>Ma di celeste maestà il compose.</p> +<p>Tra giovane e fanciullo età confine</p> +<p><span class="right1a"><i>Gerus. Lib.</i> I. 13. </span>Prese, ed ornò di raggi il biondo crine.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Fairfax translates the relevant lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In form of airy members fair imbared,</p> +<p>His spirits pure were subject to our sight.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Milton's language is vague and inconsistent, but his angels are +indubitably corporeal. When Satan is wounded,</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">the ethereal substance closed,</p> +<p>Not long divisible; and from the gash</p> +<p>A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed</p> +<p>Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed.</p> +<p><big>. . . . + . . . + . . .</big></p> +<p>Yet soon he healed; for Spirits that live throughout</p> +<p>Vital in every part, (not as frail man</p> +<p>In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,)</p> +<p>Cannot but by annihilating die;</p> +<p>Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound</p> +<p>Receive, <i>no more than can the fluid air</i>.</p> +<p>All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,</p> +<p>All intellect, all sense; <i>and as they please</i>,</p> +<p><i>They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size</i></p> +<p><i>Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare</i>.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.22" id="pageii.22"></a>[pg 22]</span></p> + +<p>The lines italicized indicate that Milton is familiar with the doctrine +of the schools, and is giving it a turn of his own. Milton's angels, +apparently, do not <i>assume</i> a body of air but, remaining in their own +ethereal substance, assume what form and colour they choose. Raphael, +thus having passed through the air like a bird,</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">to his proper shape returns</p> +<p>A Seraph winged, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Nash says, speaking of Satan, 'Lucifer (before his fall) an Archangel, +was a cleere body, compact of the purest and brightest of the +ayre, but after his fall hee was vayled with a grosser substance, and +tooke a new forme of darke and thicke ayre, which he still reteyneth.' +<i>Pierce Penniless</i> (Grosart), ii. 102. The popular mind had difficulty +in appreciating the scholastic doctrine of the purely spiritual nature +of angels who do not possess but only assume bodies; who do not +occupy any point in space but are <i>virtually</i> present as operating at +that point. 'Per applicationem igitur virtutis angelicae ad aliquem +locum qualitercumque dicitur Angelus esse in loco corporeo.' The +popular mind gave them thin bodies and wondered how many could +stand on a needle.</p> + +<p>The Scholastic doctrine of Angelic bodies was an inheritance +from the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the bodies of demons, the beings +intermediary between gods and men. According to Plotinus these +could assume a body of air or of fire, but the generally entertained +view of the school was, that their bodies were of air. Apuleius +was the author of a definition of demons which was transmitted +through the Middle Ages: 'Daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio +rationalia, animo passiva, corpore aeria, tempore aeterna.' See also +Dante, <i>Purgatorio</i>, xv. The aerial or aetherial body is a tenet of +mysticism. It has been defended by such different thinkers as +Leibnitz and Charles Bonnet. See Bouillet's note to Plotinus's +<i>Enneads</i>, I. 454.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 23. <span class="sc">Breake of day.</span><a name="pageii.22a" id="pageii.22a"></a></h3> + +<p>This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not +<i>vice versa</i>, though the fact has eluded some of the copyists, who have +tried to change the pronouns. It is strange to find the subtle and +erudite Donne in his quest of realism falling into line with the popular +song-writer. Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his learned and +delightful essay on the mediaeval lyric (<i>Early English Lyrics</i>, 1907) +that the popular as opposed to the courtly love-song was frequently +put into the mouth of the woman. One has only to turn to Burns +and the Scotch lyrists to find the same thing true. This song, +indeed, is clearly descended from the popular <i>aube</i>, or lyric dialogue +of lovers parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened +by the punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Why should we rise? Because 'tis light?</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.23" id="pageii.23"></a>[pg 23]</span></p> + +<p>ll. 13-18. <i>Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c.</i> 'It is a +good definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is <i>Animae +vacantis passio</i>, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind. For fill +a man with business, and he hath no room for such love.' <i>Sermons</i> +26. 384.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 24. <span class="sc">The Anniversarie.</span><a name="pageii.23a" id="pageii.23a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe</i>: i.e. which +makes times and seasons as they pass.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd.</p> +<p class="i22"><i>The Second Anniversary</i>, l. 23.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone +being given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be +supplied with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers, +inadvertently or from some copy of <i>1633</i>, reads 'time', and this +makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not +improve the construction.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>But wee no more, then all the rest.</i> The 'wee' of every MS. +which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading. +The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of +<i>1633</i> imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. +But he was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we +are in heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven +indeed we shall be 'throughly blest', but <i>all</i> in heaven are equally +happy, whereas here on earth,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">we'are kings and none but we</p> +<p>Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more +than all the rest'.</p> + +<p>The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are +equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves +on the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John +xiv. 2, they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according +to their merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision +of God:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">Only who have enjoy'd</p> +<p>The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it;</p> +<p>For it is both the object and the wit.</p> +<p>This is essential joy, where neither hee</p> +<p>Can suffer diminution, nor wee;</p> +<p>'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;</p> +<p>Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood.</p> +<p class="i12"><i>The Second Anniversary</i>, ll. 440-6 (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.264">264</a>).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to +understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and +each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.24" id="pageii.24"></a>[pg 24]</span> +in gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De +hoc August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo +erunt, scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia +in omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod +habebunt singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis +omnium erit per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod +par gaudium omnes habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, +quia per charitatem quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque +gaudebit de bono alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. +Sed si par erit cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium +beatitudo; quod constat omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest +quod beatitudo par esset si ita esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset +cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit, non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem +beatitudinis. Potest etiam sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur +paritas ad intensionem affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem +rerum de quibus laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, +gaudebunt omnes.' Petri Lombardi ... <i>Sententiarum</i> Lib. IV, +Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare Aquinas, <i>Summa, Supplement.</i> Quaest. xciii.</p> + +<p>All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, +is Piccardo's answer to Dante (<i>Paradiso</i>, iii. 70-88): 'So that our +being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is +a joy to all the realm, as to the King, who draweth our wills to what +he willeth: and his will is our peace.'</p> + +<p>ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that <i>1633</i> has in this +poem followed not <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> but <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<i>TC</i>.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 25. <span class="sc">A Valediction: of my name in the window.</span><a name="pageii.24a" id="pageii.24a"></a></h3> + +<p>I have adopted from the title of this poem in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> +the +correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions +the titles run straight on, <i>A Valediction of my name, in the window</i>. +This has led in the case of the next of these poems, <i>A Valediction of +the booke</i>, to the mistake expressed in the title of <i>1633</i>, +<i>Valediction to +his Booke</i>, and repeated by Grosart, that the latter was a dedication, +'formed the concluding poem of the missing edition of his poems.' +This is a complete mistake. <i>Valediction</i> is the general title of a +poem bidding farewell. <i>Of the Booke</i>, <i>Of teares</i>, &c., indicate the +particular themes. This is clearly brought out in <i>O'F</i>, where they +are brought together and numbered. <i>Valediction 2. of Teares</i>, &c.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">26</span>, l. 28. <i>The Rafters of my body, bone.</i> Compare: +'First, <i>Ossa</i>, bones, We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation, what +they are; They are these Beames, and Timbers, and Rafters of these +Tabernacles, these Temples of the Holy Ghost, these bodies of ours.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 51. 516.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">27</span>, ll. 31-2.</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Till my returne, repaire</i></p> +<p><i>And recompact my scattered body so.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.25" id="pageii.25"></a>[pg 25]</span> +it went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent +editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but +corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' +was changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption +that 'so' pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, +'so' refers <i>back</i> to the preceding verse. Donne has described how +from his anatomy or skeleton, i.e. his name scratched in the glass, +the lady may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens +the new verse by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter +... we have Job's Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he +was reduced.... Job felt the hand of destruction upon him, and +he felt the hand of preservation too; and it was all one hand: This +is God's Method ... even God's demolitions are super-edifications, +his Anatomies, his dissections are so many recompactings, so many +resurrections; God winds us off the Skein, that he may weave us up +into the whole peece, and he cuts us out of the whole peece into +peeces, that he may make us up into a whole garment.' <i>Sermons</i> +80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce and no super-induction, it +is a separating, and no redintegration.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 55. 552. With +the third line, 'As all the virtuous powers,' Donne begins a new +comparison which is completed in the next stanza. Therefore the +sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text with a colon. The full +stop of the later editions, which Chambers adopts, is obviously +wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains the comma at +'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous stanza, the +sense becomes very obscure.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 28. <span class="sc">Twicknam Garden.</span><a name="pageii.25a" id="pageii.25a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>surrounded with tears</i>: i.e. overflowed with tears, the root idea +of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which +are so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures +themselves, and suppresse and surround them.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +59. 599.</p> + +<p>With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and +season where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent +some of my meditations to you.... The pleasantnesse of the season +displeases me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older +and not better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being +to pass more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out +all my ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and +so am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught +myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary +wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. <i>Letters</i> (1651), pp. 78-9 (<i>To +Sir Henry Goodyere</i>).</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.26" id="pageii.26"></a>[pg 26]</span></p> + +<p>l. 15. <i>Indure, nor yet leave loving.</i> This is at first sight a strange +reading, and I was disposed to think that <i>1635-69</i>, which has the +support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority), must be +right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is probably +addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving' as +though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden' +suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to +linger here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and <i>H40</i> omit this +half line. +If the same omission was in the MS. from which <i>1633</i> printed, the +present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older than +that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet +Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce +the effect of the alliteration:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Maer, om my noch te decken</p> +<p>Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min</p> +<p class="i2">Te voeren in mijn zin,</p> +<p>Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet +to be ever the faithful lover.' Compare <i>Loves Deitie</i>, l. 24. 'Love +might make me leave loving.' The remainder of the verse may have +been suggested by Jonson's</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.</p> +<p class="i28"><i>Cynthias Revels</i> (1600).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and +'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>; +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>; +and <i>H40</i>. It is surely much more in Donne's style than the colourless +and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with the next +line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the mandrake, +then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or 'flow'. +The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that the mandrake +is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to +groan:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">I prethee yet remember</p> +<p>Millions are now in graves, which at last day</p> +<p>Like mandrakes shall rise shreeking.</p> +<p class="i18">Webster, <i>The White Devil</i>, V. vi. 64.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>On the other hand the lover most often groans:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thy face hath not the power to make love grone.</p> +<p class="i24">Shakespeare, <i>Sonnets</i>, 131. 6.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane.</p> +<p class="i24">Shakespeare, <i>Sonnets</i>, 133. 1.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Ros.</i> I would be glad to see it. (<i>i.e.</i> <i>his heart</i>)</p> +<p><i>Bir.</i> I would you heard it groan.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Love's Labour's Lost.</i></p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.27" id="pageii.27"></a>[pg 27]</span></p> + +<p>In a metaphor where two objects are identified such a transference +of attributes is quite permissible. Moreover, although 'shriek' is the +more common word, 'groan' is used of the mandrake:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,</p> +<p>I would invent as bitter searching terms, &c.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>2 Hen. VI</i>, III. ii. 310.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In the <i>Elegie upon ... Prince Henry</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.269">269</a>, ll. 53-4) Donne writes:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">though such a life wee have</p> +<p>As but so many mandrakes on his grave.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>i.e. a life of groans.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 29. <span class="sc">A Valediction: of the Booke.</span><a name="pageii.27a" id="pageii.27a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>Esloygne.</i> Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good +English form.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>From worldly care himself he did esloyne.</p> +<p class="i30">Spenser, <i>F. Q.</i> I. iv. 20.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that +with 's' disappears after the seventeenth century.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">30</span>, l. 7. <i>Her who from Pindar could allure.</i> Corinna, +who five +times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, <i>Var. Hist.</i> xiii. 25, referred +to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix. 22.</p> + +<p>l. 8. <i>And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame.</i> His wife, +Polla Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three +first books of his <i>Pharsalia</i>'. Lemprière. The source of this tradition +I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to +Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among +a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe +versum ... complevit ... Argentaria cum Lucano.'</p> + +<p>l. 9. <i>And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name.</i> +I owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers +to the <i>Myriobiblon</i> or <i>Bibliotheca</i> of Photius, of which the first +edition +was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an abstract of +a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that Musaeus' +daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her work +Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers +to Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work +Homer got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This +last source is mentioned by Lemprière, who knows nothing of the +other. Probably, therefore, it is the better known tradition.</p> + +<p>ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of +l. 21 and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines +of the stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, +in cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the +only instruments for Loves clergy—their Missal and Breviary.' I +presume this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier +Club editor, who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.28" id="pageii.28"></a>[pg 28]</span> +to me that with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be +better at the end of l. 22.</p> + +<p>l. 25. <i>Vandals and Goths inundate us.</i> This, the reading of quite +a number of independent MSS., seems to me greatly preferable to +that of the printed texts:</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Vandals and the Goths invade us.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for +any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are +errors due to misunderstanding, e.g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb' +show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving, or +conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor +mistook 'in[~u]date' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the +metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why +the epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not +extended to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by +Donne in the sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which +invasive Armies pour upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name +of Law, <i>The Law of Armes</i>.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 3. 36. Milton too +uses it:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>A multitude like which the populous North</p> +<p>Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass</p> +<p>Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons</p> +<p>Came like a deluge on the South, and spread</p> +<p>Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Paradise Lost</i>, i. 351-4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of +the Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here: +'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes +et multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet +super omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per +Iudam, <i>inundans</i>, et transiens usque ad collum veniet.' Isaiah viii. 7-8.</p> + +<p>Donne uses the word exactly as here in the <i>Essays in Divinity</i>: +'To which foreign sojourning ... many have assimilated and compared +the Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded +in Avignon seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of +the Goths in Italy.' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">31</span>, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very +characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the whole +mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our mistresses, +what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They will +find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour or +confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by +transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which +we pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood, +and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going +beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.29" id="pageii.29"></a>[pg 29]</span> +who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or +"conscience".'</p> + +<p>'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and +statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of +"bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman +and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness +or inspiring fear in those who descry it.'</p> + +<p>l. 53. <i>In this thy booke, such will their nothing see.</i> After some +hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that +of 1633 and 1669, 'there something.' I do so because (1) the MSS. +support it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no +importance; (2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an +emphatic enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both +the more difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The +art of a statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same +way of his own Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them +to Sir Henry Wotton, and with the same emphatic stress on the first +syllable: 'having this advantage to escape from being called ill things +that they are nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the +<i>Cambridge History of Literature</i>, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was +pronounced with a fully rounded 'no'. Compare <i>Negative Love</i>, l. 16.</p> + +<p>With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde +their whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, +but in Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation +into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for +Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 78. 791.</p> + +<p>'Un personnage de grande dignité, me voulant approuver par +authorité cette queste de la pierre philosophale où il est tout plongé, +m'allegua dernièrement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur lesquels +il disoit s'estre premièrement fondé pour la descharge de sa +conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, à la verité, +l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien +proprement accommodée à la défence de cette belle science.' +Montaigne, <i>Apologie de Raimond Sebond</i> (<i>Les Essais</i>, ii. 12).</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">32</span>, ll. 59-61. <i>To take a latitude, &c.</i> The latitude +of a spot may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith +of a star whose altitude, i.e. distance from the equator, is known. +The words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis +with the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.</p> + +<p>ll. 61-3.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i20"> <i>but to conclude</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Of longitudes, what other way have wee</i>,</p> +<p><i>But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered +by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela +was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.30" id="pageii.30"></a>[pg 30]</span> +instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at +Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the time +of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the +difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn +have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a +practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to +observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. +In certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another +method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the +most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted +and carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.</p> + +<p>The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis. +'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore +longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love +will be.' There is no real appropriateness.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 33. <span class="sc">Loves Growth.</span><a name="pageii.30a" id="pageii.30a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 7-8. <i>But if this medicine, &c.</i> 'The quintessence then is a +certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced, +and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter most +subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from all +the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is, so to +say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut up within +things but now free from any domicile and from all outward +incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties of +things.... Now the fact <i>that this quintessence cures all diseases</i> does +not +arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely its great +cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner, it alters +the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it.... When +therefore the quintessence is separated from that which is not the +quintessence, as the soul from its body, and itself is taken into the +body, what infirmity is able to withstand this so noble, pure, and +powerful nature, or to take away our life save death, which being +predestined separates our soul and body, as we teach in our treatise +on Life and Death. But by whatsoever method it takes place, the +quintessence should not be extracted by the mixture or the addition +of incongruous matters; but the element of the quintessence must be +extracted from a separated body, and in like manner by that separated +body which is extracted.' Paracelsus, <i>The Fourth Book of the +Archidoxies. Concerning the Quintessence</i>.</p> + +<p>The O.E.D. quotes the first sentence of this passage to illustrate +its first sense of the word—'the "fifth essence" of ancient and +mediaeval philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the +heavenly bodies were composed, and to be actually latent in all +things, the extraction of it ... being one of the great objects of +Alchemy.' But Paracelsus expressly denies 'that the quintessence +exists as a fifth element beyond the other four'; and as he goes on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.31" id="pageii.31"></a>[pg 31]</span> +to discuss the different quintessences of different things (each thing +having in its constitution the four elements, though one may be +predominant) it would seem that he is using the word rather in the +second sense given in the O.E.D.—'The most essential part of any +substance, extracted by natural or artificial processes.' Probably the +two meanings ran into each other. There was a real and an ideal +quintessence of things. A specific sense given to the word in older +Chemistry is a definite alcoholic tincture obtained by digestion at +a gentle heat. This is probably the 'soule of simples' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.186">186</a>, l. 26), +unless that also is the quintessence in Paracelsus's full sense of the +word.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 10em; margin-bottom: -2.2em;"> ll. 17-20.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> <i>As, in the firmament</i>,</p> +<p class="i2"><i>Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg'd, but showne.</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough</i>,</p> +<p class="i2"><i>From loves awakened root do bud out now</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><i>P</i> reads here:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">As in the firmament</p> +<p>Starres by the sunne are not enlarg'd but showne</p> +<p>Greater; Loves deeds, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This certainly makes the verse clearer. As it stands l. 18 is rather +an enigma. The stars are not revealed by the sun, but hidden. +Grosart's note is equally enigmatical: 'a curious phrase meaning that +the stars that show in daylight are not enlarged, but showne to be +brighter than their invisible neighbours, and to be comparatively +brighter than they appear to be when all are seen together in the +darkness of the night.' <i>P</i> is so carelessly written that an occasional +good reading may be an old one because there is no evidence of any +editing. The copyist seems to have written on without paying any +attention to the sense of what he set down. Still, 'Gentle' is the +reading of all the other MSS. and editions, and I do not think it is +necessary or desirable to change it. But <i>P</i>'s emendation shows what +Donne meant. By 'showne' he does not mean 'revealed'—an +adjectival predicate 'larger' or 'greater' must be supplied from the +verb 'enlarg'd'. 'The stars at sunrise are not really made larger, +but they are made to seem larger.' It is a characteristically elliptical +and careless wording of a characteristically acute and vivid image. +Mr. Wells has used the same phenomenon with effect:</p> + +<p>'He peered upwards. "Look!" he said.</p> + +<p>"What?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"In the sky. Already. On the blackness—a little touch of blue. +See! <i>The stars seem larger.</i> And the little ones and all those dim +nebulosities we saw in empty space—they are hidden."</p> + +<p>Swiftly, steadily the day approached us.' <i>The first Men in the +Moon.</i> (Chap. vii. Sunrise on the Moon.)</p> + +<p>A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty +night, seemeth greater then in a clear.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 36. 326.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.32" id="pageii.32"></a>[pg 32]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 34. <span class="sc">Loves Exchange.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 11. <i>A non obstante</i>: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour +of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any +modification, any <i>Non obstante</i> upon his law in my behalf, when he +comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made.' +<i>Sermons</i> 50. 12. 97. 'A <i>Non obstante</i> and priviledge to doe a sinne +before hand.' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.</p> + +<p>l. 14. <i>minion</i>: i.e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest +friend' &c. O.E.D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. '<i>John</i> the +Minion of <i>Christ</i> upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose +books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which +ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. <i>Sermons</i> 50. +33. 309.</p> + +<p>ll. 29 f. Dryden borrows:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Great God of Love, why hast thou made</p> +<p class="i2">A Face that can all Hearts command,</p> +<p>That all Religions can invade,</p> +<p class="i2">And change the Laws of ev'ry Land?</p> +<p class="i8"><i>A Song to a fair Young Lady Going out of Town in</i></p> +<p class="i18"><i>the Spring.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 36. <span class="sc">Confined Love.</span><a name="pageii.32a" id="pageii.32a"></a></h3> + +<p>Compare with this the poem <i>Loves Freedome</i> in Beaumont's <i>Poems</i> +(1652), sig. E. 6:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Why should man be only ty'd</p> +<p class="i2">To a foolish Female thing,</p> +<p>When all Creatures else beside,</p> +<p class="i2">Birds and Beasts, change every Spring?</p> +<p>Who would then to one be bound,</p> +<p>When so many may be found?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The third verse runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Would you think him wise that now</p> +<p class="i2">Still one sort of meat doth eat,</p> +<p>When both Sea and Land allow</p> +<p class="i2">Sundry sorts of other meat?</p> +<p>Who would then, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which +more than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.</p> + +<p>l. 16. <i>And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall.</i> I have, +after some consideration, adhered to the <i>1633</i> reading. Chambers has +adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man +builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all +lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form +'withal' is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it +governs. 'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.33" id="pageii.33"></a>[pg 33]</span> +seek new lands with, and to trade with.' The MS. evidence is not +of much assistance, because it is not clear in all cases what 'w<sup>th</sup> all' +stands for. The words were sometimes separated even when the +simple preposition was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt +with all in their marchaundyse.' Berners' <i>Froissart</i>, I. cclxvii. 395 +(O.E.D.). But <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> read 'w<sup>th</sup> All', supporting +Chambers.</p> + +<p>For the sentiment compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>A stately builded ship well rig'd and tall</p> +<p>The Ocean maketh more majesticall:</p> +<p>Why vowest thou to live in Sestos here,</p> +<p>Who on Loves seas more glorious would appeare.</p> +<p class="i6">Marlowe, <i>Hero and Leander</i>: <i>First Sestiad</i> 219-222.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>For 'deale withall' compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For ye have much adoe to deale withal.</p> +<p class="i20">Spenser's <i>Faerie Queene</i>, VI. i. 10.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 37. <span class="sc">The Dreame.</span><a name="pageii.33a" id="pageii.33a"></a></h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6"><span class="outdent2">ll. 1-10.</span> <i>Deare love, for nothing lesse then thee</i></p> +<p class="i8"> <i>Would I have broke this happy dreame</i>,</p> +<p class="i14"><i>It was a theame</i></p> +<p class="i8"> <i>For reason, much too strong for phantasie</i>,</p> +<p class="i8"> <i>Therefore thou wak'dst me wisely; yet</i></p> +<p class="i8"> <i>My Dreame thou brok'st not, but continued'st it</i>,</p> +<p class="i8"> <i>Thou art so truth, that thoughts of thee suffice</i>,</p> +<p class="i8"> <i>To make dreames truths; and fables histories;</i></p> +<p class="i8"> <i>Enter these armes, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The +sense is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers +places a semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. +The last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. +is connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore +thou waked'st me wisely.' In like manner Chambers's full stop +after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two +following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation or +reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou +art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after +'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.</p> + +<p>l. 7. <i>Thou art so truth.</i> The evidence of the MSS. shows that +both 'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration +of <i>1635-69</i>. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and +the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious +emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's +'Love' is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as +opposed to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. +She is essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod ... +veritas invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.34" id="pageii.34"></a>[pg 34]</span> +est; et in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. +Hoc autem maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est +conforme suo intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa +omnis alterius esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum +esse et intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, +sed quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. <i>Summa</i> I. vi. 5.</p> + +<p>To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry; +Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology +at his finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady +addressed two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, +(2) the power of reading the thoughts directly.</p> + +<p>The Dutch poet keeps this point:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">de Waerheyt is so ghy, en</p> +<p>Ghy zijt de Waerheyt so.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 11-12. <i>As lightning, or a Tapers light</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Thine eyes, and not thy noise wak'd mee.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but +yet a noise does it better.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 38. 344.</p> + +<p>'A candle wakes some men as well as a noise.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +61. 617.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 15-16. <i>But when I saw thou sawest my heart</i>,</p> +<p class="i4"> <i>And knew'st my thoughts, beyond an Angels art.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have +altered the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his +thoughts better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a +power which is not granted to Angels.</p> + +<p>St. Thomas (<i>Summa Theol.</i> Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses +'Utrum angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, +'Cognoscunt Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut +autem in se ipsis sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae.' +Angels may read our thoughts by subtler signs than our words and +acts, or even those changes of countenance and pulsation which we +note in each other, 'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas +corporales perpendunt.' But to know them as they are in the intellect +and will belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the +human will is subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. +'Manifestum est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod +aliquis actu aliqua consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum +scientiae, vel species intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum +vult. Et ideo dicit Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod <i>quae sunt +hominis, nemo novit nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est</i>.'</p> + +<p>Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole +dispute infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of +salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late); let +Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.35" id="pageii.35"></a>[pg 35]</span> +naturall power to understand thoughts ... And let Aquinas present his +arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power +to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself +thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees, +and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. <i>Eadem Maiestate +et potentia</i> sayes <i>S. Hierome</i>, Since you see I proceed as God, +in knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive +his sins as God too?' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 11. 111; and compare also +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 9. 92.</p> + +<p>This point is also preserved in the Dutch version:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Maer als ick u sagh sien wat om mijn hertje lagh</p> +<p>En weten wat ick docht (dat Engel noyt en sagh).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>M. Legouis in a recent French version has left it ambiguous:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Mais quand j'ai vu que tu voyais mon coeur</p> +<p>Et savais mes pensées au dela du savoir d'un ange.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The MS. reading, 14 'but an Angel', heightens the antithesis.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 27-8. <i>Perchance as torches which must ready bee</i></p> +<p class="i6"> <i>Men light and put out.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'If it' (i.e. a torch) 'have <i>never</i> been <i>lighted</i>, it does not +easily take light, but it must be <i>bruised</i> and <i>beaten</i> first; if it have been +lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire <i>of it self</i>, yet it does easily +conceive fire, if it be presented within any convenient distance.' <i>Sermons</i> +50. 36. 332.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 38. <span class="sc">A Valediction: of Weeping.</span><a name="pageii.35a" id="pageii.35a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the +first image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full +stop at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with +what follows—wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, +coined, stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to +a couple of new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but +they are symbols of more to come. For, as your image perishes in +each tear that falls, so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us +rolls the "salt, estranging sea".'</p> + +<p>It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers' +unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to +'a diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as +here:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen,</p> +<p>Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt,</p> +<p>En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt</p> +<p>Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen,</p> +<p>Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen,</p> +<p>Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen</p> +<p>Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.36" id="pageii.36"></a>[pg 36]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 39. <span class="sc">Loves Alchymie.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 7. <i>th'Elixar</i>: i.e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease and +indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the philosopher's +stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of quintessences +(see note, II. p. <a href="#pageii.30">30</a>) Paracelsus declares that there are certain +quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious stones, +&c., 'of more importance than that they should be called a quintessence. +It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and mystery ... Among +these arcana we here put forward four. Of these arcana the first is +the mercury of life, the second is the primal matter, the third is the +Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the tincture. But although these +arcana are rather angelical than human to speak of we shall not shrink +from them.' From the description he gives they all seem to operate +more or less alike, purging metals and other bodies from disease.</p> + +<p>ll. 7-10. <i>And as no chymique yet, &c.</i> 'My Lord Chancellor gave +me so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly +advice that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries +by the way, though I attain not mine end.' To ... Sir H. G., +Gosse's <i>Life, &c.</i>, ii. 49.</p> + +<p>ll. 23-4.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i30"> <i>at their best</i></p> +<p><i>Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The punctuation of these lines in <i>1633-54</i> is ambiguous, and +Chambers has altered it wrongly to</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sweetness and wit they are, but Mummy possest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The MSS. generally support the punctuation which I have adopted, +which is that of the Grolier Club edition.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 40. <span class="sc">The Flea.</span><a name="pageii.36a" id="pageii.36a"></a></h3> + +<p>I have restored this poem to the place it occupied in <i>1633</i>. In +<i>1635</i> +it was placed first of all the <i>Songs and Sonets</i>. A strange choice to +our mind, but apparently the poem was greatly admired as a masterpiece +of wit. It is the first of the pieces translated by Huyghens:</p> + +<h3>De Vloy.</h3> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Slaet acht op deze Vloy, en leert wat overleggen,</p> +<p>Hoe slechten ding het is dat ghy my kont ontzeggen, &c.,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and was selected for special commendation by some of his correspondents. +Coleridge comments upon it in verse:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Be proud as Spaniards. Leap for pride, ye Fleas!</p> +<p>In natures <i>minim</i> realm ye're now grandees.</p> +<p>Skip-jacks no more, nor civiller skip-johns;</p> +<p>Thrice-honored Fleas! I greet you all as <i>Dons</i>.</p> +<p>In Phoebus' archives registered are ye,</p> +<p>And this your patent of nobility.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It will be noticed that there are two versions of Donne's poem.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.37" id="pageii.37"></a>[pg 37]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 41. <span class="sc">The Curse.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>His only, and only his purse.</i> This, the reading of all the +editions except the last, and of the MSS., is obviously right. What is +to dispose 'some dull heart to love' is his <i>only</i> purse and <i>his</i> +alone, +no one's but his purse. Chambers adopts the <i>1669</i> conjecture, 'Him +only for his purse,' but in that case there is no subject to 'may +dispose', or if 'some dull heart' be subject then 'itself' must be +supplied—a harsh construction. 'Dispose' is not used intransitively +in this sense.</p> + +<p>l. 27. <i>Mynes.</i> I have adopted the plural from the MSS. It brings +it into line with the other objects mentioned.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 43. <span class="sc">The Message.</span><a name="pageii.37a" id="pageii.37a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 11. <i>But if it be taught by thine.</i> It seems incredible that Donne +should have written 'which if it' &c. immediately after the 'which' of +the preceding line. I had thought that the <i>1633</i> printer had accidentally +repeated from the line above, but the evidence of the MSS. points +to the mistake (if it is a mistake) being older than that. 'Which' was +in the MS. used by the printer. If 'But' is not Donne's own reading +or emendation it ought to be, and I am loath to injure a charming +poem by pedantic adherence to authority in so small a point. <i>De +minimis non curat lex</i>; but art cares very much indeed. <i>JC</i> and +<i>P</i> +read 'Yet since it hath learn'd by thine'.</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 14 f. <i>And crosse both</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i>Word and oath, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'crosse' of all the MSS. is pretty certainly what Donne wrote. +An editor would change to 'break' hardly the other way. To +'crosse' is, of course, to 'cancel'. Compare Jonson's <i>Poetaster</i>, Act +II, Scene i:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">Faith, sir, your mercer's Book</p> +<p>Will tell you with more patience, then I can</p> +<p>(For I am crost, and so's not that I thinke.)</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Examine well thy beauty with my truth,</p> +<p>And cross my cares, ere greater sums arise.</p> +<p class="i32">Daniel, <i>Delia</i>, i.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 44. <span class="sc">A Nocturnall</span>, &c.<a name="pageii.37b" id="pageii.37b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 12. <i>For I am every dead thing.</i> I have not thought it right to +alter the <i>1633</i> 'every' to the 'very' of <i>1635-69</i>. 'Every' has some +MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of +course 'a very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think +that 'every' expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' +because he is the quintessence of all negations—'absence, darkness, +death: things which are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing.'</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.38" id="pageii.38"></a>[pg 38]</span></p> + +<p>ll. 14-18. <i>For his art did expresse ... things which are not.</i> This +is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable +hesitation adopted the punctuation of <i>1719</i>, which is followed by all +the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse' +expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. +I am not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions +and of the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull +privations' goes with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining +from Heaven'. 'From me, who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love +extracted the very quintessence of nothingness—made me more +nothing than I already was. My state was already one of "dull +privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced it still further, +making me once more the non-entity I was before I was created.' +Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and extravagant subtlety. +But probably this is to refine too much. There is no example of +'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion. A feature of the +MS. collection from which this poem was probably printed is the +omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next verse Donne +pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love, by the +death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i.e. the quintessence) +not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing', the nothing +which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns upon +the thought of degrees in nothingness.</p> + +<p>For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict., +<i>Elixir</i>, † iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd +quintessence, +a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all.' Milton, <i>Church Govt.</i></p> + +<p>Of the 'first Nothing' Donne speaks in the <i>Essays in Divinity</i> +(Jessop, 1855), pp. 80-1, but in a rather different strain: 'To speak +truth freely there was no such Nothing as this' (the nothing which +a man might wish to be) 'before the beginning: for he that hath +refined all the old definitions hath put this ingredient <i>Creabile</i> (which +cannot be absolutely nothing) into his definition of creation; and +that Nothing which was, we cannot desire; for man's will is not +larger than God's power: and since Nothing was not a pre-existent +matter, nor mother of this all, but only a limitation when any thing +began to be; how impossible it is to return to that first point of +time, since God (if it imply contradiction) cannot reduce yesterday? +Of this we will say no more; for this Nothing being no creature; is +more incomprehensible than all the rest.'</p> + +<p>ll. 31-2. The Grolier Club edition reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">I should prefer</p> +<p>If I were any beast; some end, some means;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>which is to me unintelligible. 'If I were a beast, I should prefer +some end, some means' refers to the Aristotelian and Schools doctrine +of the soul. The soul of man is rational and self-conscious; of beasts +perceptive and moving, therefore able to select ends and means; the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.39" id="pageii.39"></a>[pg 39]</span> +vegetative soul of plants selects what it can feed on and rejects what +it cannot, and so far detests and loves. Even stones, which have no +souls, attract and repel. But even of stones Donne says: 'We are +not sure that stones have not life; stones may have life; neither (to +speak humanely) is it unreasonably thought by them, that thought the +whole world to be inanimated by one soule, and to be one intire living +creature; and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before +the Sun, because a fly hath life, and the Sun hath not.' <i>Sermons</i> +80. 7. 69-70.</p> + +<p>l. 35. <i>If I an ordinary nothing were.</i> 'A shadow is nothing, yet, if +the rising or falling sun shines out and there be no shadow, I will +pronounce there is no body in that place neither. Ceremonies are +nothing; but where there are no ceremonies, order, and obedience, +and at last (and quickly) religion itself will vanish.' <i>Sermons</i> +(quoted in <i>Selections from Donne</i>, 1840).</p> + +<p>l. 41. <i>Enjoy your summer all</i>; This is Grosart's punctuation. +The old editions have a comma. Chambers, obviously quite wrongly, +retains the comma, and closes the sentence in the next line. The +clause 'Since she enjoys her long night's festival' explains 43 'Let me +prepare towards her', &c., <i>not</i> 41 'Enjoy your summer all'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 47. <span class="sc">The Apparition.</span><a name="pageii.39a" id="pageii.39a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a +colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's +division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of the +thought to the climax,</p> + +<div class="poem width15"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>A verier ghost than I.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The original punctuation preserves the rapid, crowded march of the +clauses.</p> + +<p>l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the <i>1669</i> text. The +correct reading of <i>1633</i> was spoiled in <i>1635</i> by accidentally +dropping +'will', and this error continued through <i>1639-54</i>. The 1669 editor, +detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by interpolating +'a' and 'even'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 48. <span class="sc">The Broken Heart.</span><a name="pageii.39b" id="pageii.39b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 8. <i>A flaske of powder burne a day.</i> The 'flash' of later editions +is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (<i>1633</i> and many +MSS.) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of +powder seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what +happened to the heart which love inflamed</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> but Love, alas,</p> +<p>At one first blow did shiver it as glasse.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Shakespeare uses the same simile in a different connexion:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,</p> +<p>Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both:</p> +<p>Like powder in a skilless soldiers flaske,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.40" id="pageii.40"></a>[pg 40]</span></p> +<p>Is set a fire by thine own ignorance,</p> +<p>And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.</p> +<p class="i24"><i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <span class="sc">III</span>. iii. 130.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 14. <i>and never chawes</i>: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses: +'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow; +but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before +he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +18. 178.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 49. <span class="sc">A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.</span><a name="pageii.40a" id="pageii.40a"></a></h3> + +<p>This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which +Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers +farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will conclude +mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by +Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and +I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in +languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did +ever equal them.' The critics probably included Wotton,—perhaps +also Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness +to find our own poets as good as the Ancients.</p> + +<p>The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the +same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the +tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the +epithet 'tender' can be applied. The <i>Valediction: of weeping</i> is +more passionate.</p> + +<p>An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a +volume in the Bodleian Library.</p> + +<p>ll. 9-12. <i>Moving of th'earth, &c.</i> 'The "trepidation" was the +precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic +astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline +Sphere.' Chambers.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>First you see fixt in this huge mirrour blew,</p> +<p>Of trembling lights, a number numberlesse:</p> +<p>Fixt they are nam'd, but with a name untrue,</p> +<p>For they all moove and in a Daunce expresse</p> +<p>That great long yeare, that doth contain no lesse</p> +<p class="i2">Then threescore hundreds of those yeares in all,</p> +<p class="i2">Which the sunne makes with his course naturall.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>What if to you those sparks disordered seem</p> +<p>As if by chaunce they had beene scattered there?</p> +<p>The gods a solemne measure doe it deeme,</p> +<p>And see a iust proportion every where,</p> +<p>And know the points whence first their movings were;</p> +<p class="i2">To which first points when all returne againe,</p> +<p class="i2">The axel-tree of Heav'n shall breake in twain.</p> +<p class="i22">Sir John Davies, <i>Orchestra</i>, 35-6.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.41" id="pageii.41"></a>[pg 41]</span></p> + +<p>l. 16. <i>Those things which elemented it.</i> Chambers follows <i>1669</i> and +reads 'The thing'—wrongly, I think. 'Elemented' is just 'composed', +and the things are enumerated later, 20. 'eyes, lips, hands.' Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But neither chance nor compliment</p> +<p class="i2">Did element our love.</p> +<p class="i4">Katharine Phillips (Orinda), <i>To Mrs. M. A. at parting</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This and the fellow poem <i>Upon Absence</i> may be compared with +Donne's poems on the same theme. See Saintsbury's <i>Caroline Poets</i>, +i, pp. 548, 550.</p> + +<p>l. 20. <i>and hands</i>: 'and' has the support of <i>all</i> the MSS. The +want of it is no great loss, for though without it the line moves a little +irregularly, 'and hands' is not a pleasant concatenation.</p> + +<p>ll. 25-36. <i>If they be two, &c.</i> Donne's famous simile has a close +parallel in Omar Khayyam. Whether Donne's 'hydroptic immoderate +thirst of humane learning and languages' extended to Persian I do +not know. Captain Harris has supplied me with translations and +reference:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In these twin compasses, O Love, you see</p> +<p>One body with two heads, like you and me,</p> +<p class="i2">Which wander round one centre, circle wise,</p> +<p>But at the last in one same point agree.</p> +<p class="i8">Whinfield's edition of <i>Omar Khayyam</i> (Kegan Paul,</p> +<p class="i12">Trübner, 1901, Oriental Series, p. 216).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Oh my soul, you and I are like a compass. We form but one +body having two points. Truly one point moves from the other +point, and makes the round of the circle; but the day draws near when +the two points must re-unite.' J. H. M<sup>c</sup>Carthy (D. Nutt, 1898).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 51. <span class="sc">The Extasie.</span><a name="pageii.41a" id="pageii.41a"></a></h3> + +<p>This is one of the most important of the lyrics as a statement of +Donne's metaphysic of love, of the interconnexion and mutual +dependence of body and soul. It is printed in <i>1633</i> from <i>D</i>, +<i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> or a MS. resembling it, and from this and the other MSS. +I have introduced some alterations in the text: and two rather vital +emendations, ll. 55 and 59. <i>The Extasie</i> is probably the source of +Lord Herbert of Cherbury's best known poem, <i>An Ode Upon a +Question Moved Whether Love Should Continue For Ever</i>. Compare +with the opening lines of Donne's poem:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>They stay'd at last and on the grass</p> +<p class="i2">Reposed so, as o're his breast</p> +<p class="i2">She bowed her gracious head to rest,</p> +<p>Such a weight as no burden was.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>While over eithers compass'd waist</p> +<p class="i2">Their folded arms were so compos'd</p> +<p class="i2">As if in straightest bonds inclos'd</p> +<p>They suffer'd for joys they did taste</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Long their fixt eyes to Heaven bent,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.42" id="pageii.42"></a>[pg 42]</span></p> +<p class="i2">Unchanged they did never move,</p> +<p class="i2">As if so great and pure a love</p> +<p>No glass but it could represent.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In a letter to Sir Thomas Lucy, Donne writes: 'Sir I make account +that this writing of letters, when it is with any seriousness, is a kind of +extasie, and a departing, and secession, and suspension of the soul, +which doth then communicate itself to two bodies.' Ecstasy in +Neo-Platonic philosophy was the state of mind in which the soul, +escaping from the body, attained to the vision of God, the One, the +Absolute. Plotinus thus describes it: 'Even the word vision (<ins title="Greek: theama">θέαμα</ins>) +does not seem appropriate here. It is rather an ecstasy (<ins title="Greek: ekstasis">ἔκστασις</ins>), +a simplification, an abandonment of self, a perfect quietude (<ins title="Greek: stasis">στάσις</ins>), +a desire of contact, in short a wish to merge oneself in that which +one contemplates in the Sanctuary.' <i>Sixth Ennead</i>, ix. 11 (from the +French translation of Bouillet, 1857-8). Readers will observe how +closely Donne's poem agrees with this—the exodus of the souls +(ll. 15-16), the perfect quiet (ll. 18-20), the new insight (ll. 29-33), +the contact and union of the souls (l. 35). Donne had probably read +Ficino's translation of Plotinus (1492), but the doctrine of ecstasy +passed into Christian thought, connecting itself especially with the +experience of St. Paul (2 Cor. xii. 2). St. Paul's word is <ins title="Greek: harpagenta">ἁρπαγέντα</ins>, +and Aquinas distinguishes between 'raptus' and 'ecstasis': 'Extasis +importat simpliciter excessum a seipso ... raptus super hoc addit +violentiam quandam.' Another word for 'ecstasy' was 'enthusiasm'.</p> + +<p>l. 9. <i>So to entergraft our hands.</i> All the later editions read 'engraft', +which makes the line smoother. But to me it seems more probable +that Donne wrote 'entergraft' and later editors changed this to +'engraft', than that the opposite should have happened. Moreover, +'entergraft' gives the reciprocal force correctly, which 'engraft' does +not. Donne's precision is as marked as his subtlety. 'Entergraft' +has the support of all the best MSS.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">52</span>, l. 20. +<i>And wee said nothing all the day.</i> 'En amour un +silence vaut mieux qu'un langage. Il est bon d'être interdit; il y a une +éloquence de silence qui pénètre plus que la langue ne saurait faire. +Qu'un amant persuade bien sa maîtresse quand il est interdit, et que +d'ailleurs il a de l'esprit! Quelque vivacité que l'on ait, il est bon dans +certaines rencontres qu'elle s'éteigne. Tout cela se passe sans règle +et sans réflexion; et quand l'esprit le fait, il n'y pensait pas auparavant. +C'est par nécessité que cela arrive.' Pascal, <i>Discours sur les +passions de l'amour</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 32. <i>Wee see, wee saw not what did move.</i> Chambers inserts a +comma after 'we saw not', perhaps rightly; but the punctuation of +the old editions gives a distinct enough sense, viz., 'We see now, that +we did not see before the true source of our love. What we thought +was due to bodily beauty, we perceive now to have its source in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.43" id="pageii.43"></a>[pg 43]</span> +soul.' Compare, 'But when I wakt, I saw, that I saw not.' <i>The +Storme</i>, l. 37.</p> + +<p>l. 42. <i>Interinanimates two soules.</i> The MSS. give the word which +the metre requires and which I have no doubt Donne used. The +verb <i>inanimates</i> occurs more than once in the sermons. 'One that +quickens and inanimates all, and is the soul of the whole world.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 29. 289. 'That universall power which sustaines, and +inanimates the whole world.' Ibid. 80. 31. 305. 'In these bowels, +in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares; The +blood with which we were fed then, was the blood of the Sacrifices, +and the quickening which we had there, was an inanimation, by the +often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets.' +Ibid. 80. 38. 381. 'Hee shews them Heaven, and God in Heaven, +sanctifying all their Crosses in this World, inanimating all their worldly +blessings.' Ibid. 80. 44. 436.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">53</span>, l. 51. <i>They'are ours though they'are not wee, Wee +are</i> The +line as given in all the MSS. is metrically, in the rhetorically +effective position of the stresses, superior to the shortened form of the +editions:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>They'are ours, though not wee, wee are</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 52. <i>the spheare.</i> The MSS. all give the singular, the editions the +plural. Donne is not incapable of making a singular rhyme with a +plural, or at any rate a form with 's' with one without:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Then let us at these mimicke antiques jeast,</p> +<p>Whose deepest projects, and egregious gests</p> +<p>Are but dull Moralls of a game of Chests.</p> +<p class="i18"><i>To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Wotton</i>, p. 188, ll. 22-4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Still, I think 'spheare' is right. The bodies made one are the +Sphere in which the two Intelligences meet and command. This +suits all that followes:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Wee owe them thanks, because they thus, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The Dutch translation runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Het Hemel-rond zijn sy,</p> +<p>Wy haren <i>Hemel-geest</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 55. <i>forces, sense</i>, This reading of all the MSS. is, I think, certainly +right; the 'senses force' of the editions being an emendation. +(1) It is the more difficult reading. It is inconceivable that an +ordinary copyist would alter 'senses force' to 'forces sense', which, +unless properly commaed, is apt to be read as 'forces' sense' and make +nonsense. (2) It is more characteristic of Donne's thought. He is, +with his usual scholastic precision, distinguishing the functions of soul +and body. Perception is the function (the <ins title="Greek: dynamis">δύναμις</ins>, power or force) +of soul:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">thy faire goodly soul, which doth</p> +<p><span class="right1a"><i>Satyre III.</i></span>Give this flesh power to taste joy.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.44" id="pageii.44"></a>[pg 44]</span></p> + +<p>But the body has its function also, without which the soul could not +fulfil its; and that function is 'sense'. It is through this medium +that human souls must operate to obtain knowledge of each other. +The bodies must yield their forces or faculties ('sense' in all its forms, +especially sight and touch—hands and eyes) to us before our souls +can become one. The collective term 'sense' recurs:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">T'affections, and to faculties,</p> +<p>Which sense may reach and apprehend.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 57-8. <i>On man heavens influence workes not so</i>,</p> +<p class="i8"><i>But that it first imprints the ayre.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Aucuns ont escrit que l'air a aussi cette vertu de faire decouler +avec le feu elementaire les influences et proprietez secrettes des +estoilles et planettes: alleguans que l'efficace des corps celestes ne +peut s'estendre aux inferieurs et terrestres, que par les moyens et +elemens qui sont entre deux. Mais cela soit au iugement des lecteurs +que nous renvoyons aux disputes de ceux qui ont escrit sur la philosophie +naturelle. Voyez aussi <i>Pline au 5 ch. du 2 liu.</i>, <i>Plutarque au 5 +& 2 liu. des opinions des Philosophes</i>, <i>Platon en son Timee</i>, +<i>Aristote</i> en ses disputes de physique, specialement au i. liu. de la generation et +corruption, et ceux qui ont escrit depuis luy touchant les elemens.' +Du Bartas, <i>La Sepmaine, &c.</i> (1581), <i>Indice</i>. Air.</p> + +<p>l. 59. <i>Soe soule into the soule may flow.</i> The 'Soe' of the MSS. +must, I think, be right rather than the 'For' of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, and +the editions. It corresponds to the 'So' in l. 65, and it expresses +the simpler and more intelligible thought. In references to the +heavenly bodies and their influence on men one must remember +certain aspects of older thought which have become unfamiliar to us. +They were bodies of great dignity, 'aeterna corpora,' not composed +of any of the four elements, and subject to no change in time but +movement, change of position. If not as the older philosophers and +some of the Fathers had held, 'animata corpora,' having a soul united +to the body, yet each was guided by an Intelligence operating by +contact: 'Ad hoc autem quod moveat, non opportet quod uniatur ei +ut forma, sed per contactum virtutis, sicut motor unitur mobili.' +Aquinas, <i>Summa</i> I. lxx. 3. Such bodies, it was claimed, influence +human actions: 'Corpora enim coelestia, cum moveantur a spiritualibus +substantiis ... agunt in virtute earum quasi instrumenta. Sed +illae substantiae spirituales sunt superiores animabus nostris. Ergo +videtur quod possint <i>imprimere in animas nostras</i>, et sic causare +actus humanos.' Aquinas, however, disputes this, as Plotinus had +before him, and distinguishes: As bodies, the stars affect us only +indirectly, in so far namely as the mind and will of man are subject +to the influence of physical and corporeal disturbances. But man's +will remains free. '<i>Sapiens homo dominatur astris</i> in quantum scilicet +dominatur suis passionibus.' As Intelligences, the stars do not operate +on man thus mediately and controllingly: 'sed in intellectum +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.45" id="pageii.45"></a>[pg 45]</span> +humanum agunt <i>immediate illuminando</i>: voluntatem autem immutare +non possunt.' Aquinas, <i>Summa</i> I. cxv. 4.</p> + +<p>Now if 'Soe' be the right reading here then Donne is thinking of +the heavenly bodies without distinguishing in them between soul or +intelligence and body. 'As these high bodies or beings operate on +man's soul through the comparatively low intermediary of air, so +lovers' souls must interact through the medium of body.'</p> + +<p>If 'For' be the right reading, then Donne is giving as an example +of soul operating on soul through the medium of body the influence +of the heavenly intelligences on our souls. But this is not the +orthodox view of their interaction. I feel sure that 'Soe' is the right +reading. The thought and construction are simpler, and 'Soe' and +'For' are easily interchanged.</p> + +<p>Of noblemen Donne says: 'They are <i>Intelligences</i> that move great +<i>Spheares</i>.' <i>Sermon</i>, Judges xv. 20, p. 20 (1622).</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4"><span class="outdent2"> ll. 61-4.</span> <i>As our blood labours to beget</i></p> +<p class="i10"><i>Spirits, as like soules as it can</i>,</p> +<p class="i8"><i>Because such fingers need to knit</i></p> +<p class="i10"><i>That subtile knot, which makes us man.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, +and the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common +tye or <i>medium</i> betwixt the body and the soule, as some will +have it; or as <i>Paracelsus</i>, a fourth soule of itselfe. <i>Melancthon</i> +holds the fountaine of these spirits to be the <i>Heart</i>, begotten there; +and afterward convayed to the Braine, they take another nature to +them. Of these spirits there be three kindes, according to the three +principall parts, <i>Braine</i>, <i>Heart</i>, <i>Liver</i>; <i>Naturall</i>, +<i>Vitall</i>, <i>Animall</i>. +The <i>Naturall</i> are begotten in the <i>Liver</i>, and thence dispersed +through +the Veines, to performe those naturall actions. The <i>Vitall Spirits</i> +are made in the Heart, of the <i>Naturall</i>, which by the Arteries are +transported to all the other parts: if these <i>Spirits</i> cease, then life +ceaseth, as in a <i>Syncope</i> or Swowning. The <i>Animall spirits</i> formed +of the <i>Vitall</i>, brought up to the Braine, and diffused by the Nerves, +to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.' +Burton, <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i> (1638), p. 15. 'The spirits in a man +which are the thin and active part of the blood, and so are of a kind +of middle nature, between soul and body, those spirits are able +to doe, and they doe the office, to unite and apply the faculties of +the soul to the organs of the body, and so there is a man.' <i>Sermons</i> +26. 20. 291.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 55. <span class="sc">Loves Diet.</span><a name="pageii.45a" id="pageii.45a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 19-24. This stanza, carefully and correctly printed in the 1633 +edition, which I have followed, was mangled in that of 1635, and has +remained in this condition, despite conjectural emendations, in subsequent +editions, including those of Grosart and Chambers. What +Donne says is obvious: 'Whatever Love dictated I wrote, but burned +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.46" id="pageii.46"></a>[pg 46]</span> +the letters. When she wrote to me, and when (correctly resumed by +'that') that favour made him (i.e. Love) fat, I said,' &c. The 1650-54 +'Whate'er might him distaste,' &c. is obviously an attempt to put +right what has gone wrong. No reading but that of the 1633 edition +gives <i>any</i> sense to 'that favour' and 'convey'd by this'.</p> + +<p>ll. 25-7. <i>reclaim'd ... sport.</i> In <i>1633</i> 'reclaim'd' became +'redeem'd', +probably owing to the frequent misreading of 'cl' as 'd'. +The mistake here increases the probability that 'sports' is an error +for 'sport' or 'sporte'. It is doubtful if 'sports' was used as now.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 56. <span class="sc">The Will.</span><a name="pageii.46a" id="pageii.46a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 19-27. This verse is omitted in most of the MSS. +Probably in James's reign its references to religion were thought too +outspoken and flippant. Charles admired in Donne not only the +preacher but also the poet, as Huyghens testifies.</p> + +<p>The first three lines turn on a contrast that Donne is fond of +elaborating between the extreme Protestant doctrine of justification +by faith only and the Catholic, especially Jesuit, doctrine of co-operant +works. It divided the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The Jansenists +had not yet emerged, but their precursors in the quarrel (as readers of +<i>Les Provinciales</i> will recall) were the Dominicans, to whom Donne +refers: 'So also when in the beginning of S. Augustines time, Grace +had been so much advanced that mans Nature was scarce admitted +to be so much as any means or instrument (not only no kind of +cause) of his own good works: And soon after in S. Augustines time +also mans free will (by fierce opposition and arguing against the +former error) was too much overvalued, and admitted into too near +degrees of fellowship with Grace; those times admitted a doctrine +and form of reconciliation, which though for reverence to the time, +both the Dominicans and Jesuits at this day in their great quarrell +about Grace and Free Will would yet seem to maintaine, yet indifferent +and dispassioned men of that Church see there is no +possibility in it, and therefore accuse it of absurdity, and almost of +heresie.' <i>Letters</i> (1651), pp. 15-16. As an Anglican preacher Donne +upheld James's point of view, that the doctrine of grace and free-will +was better left undiscussed: 'Resistibility, and Irresistibility of +Grace, which is every Artificers wearing now, was a stuff that our +Fathers wore not, a language that pure antiquity spake not.... They +knew Gods law, and his Chancery: But for Gods prerogative, what +he could do of his absolute power, they knew Gods pleasure, <i>Nolumus +disputari</i>: It should scarce be disputed of in Schools, much less +serv'd in every popular pulpit to curious and itching ears; least of all +made table-talke, and houshold-discourse.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 1. 4.</p> + +<p>The 'Schismaticks of Amsterdam' were the extreme Puritans. See +Jonson's <i>The Alchemist</i> for Tribulation Wholesome and 'We of the +separation'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.47" id="pageii.47"></a>[pg 47]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 58. <span class="sc">The Funerall.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>That subtile wreath of haire, which crowns my arme</i>; 'And +Theagenes presented her with a diamond ring which he used to +wear, entreating her, whensoever she did cast her eyes upon it, to +conceive that it told her in his behalf, that his heart would prove as +hard as that stone in the admittance of any new affection; and that +his to her should be as void of end as that circular figure was;' (compare +<i>A Ieat Ring sent</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.65a">65</a>) 'and she desired him to wear for her +sake a lock of hair which she gave him; the splendour of which can +be expressed by no earthly thing, but it seemed as though a stream +of the sun's beams had been gathered together and converted into +a solid substance. With this precious relique about his arm,' (compare +<i>The Relique</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.62a">62</a>) 'whose least hair was sufficient' (compare <i>Aire +and Angels</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.22">22</a>, 'Ev'ry thy hair' and note) 'to bind in bonds of +love the greatest heart that ever was informed with life, Theagenes +took his journey into Attica.' Kenelm Digby's <i>Private Memoirs</i> +(1827), pp. 80-1. When later Theagenes heard that Stelliana +(believing Theagenes to be dead) was to wed Mardonius, 'he tore +from his arm the bracelet of her hair ... and threw it into the fire +that was in his chamber; when that glorious relic burning shewed +by the wan and blue colour of the flame that it had sense and took +his words unkindly in her behalf.'</p> + +<p>Theagenes was Sir Kenelm Digby himself, Stelliana being Lady +Venetia Stanley, afterwards his wife. Mardonius was probably Edward, +Earl of Dorset, the brother of Donne's friend and patron.</p> + +<p>It is probable that this sequence of poems, <i>The Funerall</i>, <i>The +Blossome</i>, <i>The Primrose</i> and <i>The Relique</i>, was addressed to Mrs. +Herbert in the earlier days of Donne's intimacy with her in Oxford +or London.</p> + +<p>l. 24. <i>That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you.</i> +I have hesitated a good deal over this line. The reading of the +editions is 'have none of me'; and in the group of MSS. <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i>, while <i>H49</i> reads 'save', <i>D</i> has corrected 'have' to what +<i>may</i> be +'save', and <i>Lec</i> reads 'have'. The reading of the editions is the +full form of the construction, which is more common without the +'have'. 'It's four to one she'll none of me,' <i>Twelfth Night</i>, I. iii. +113; 'She will none of him,' Ibid. II. ii. 9, are among Schmidt's +examples (<i>Shakespeare Lexicon</i>), in none of which 'have' occurs. +The reading of the MSS., 'save none of me,' is also quite idiomatic, +resembling the 'fear none of this' (i.e. 'do not fear this') of <i>Winter's +Tale</i>, IV. iv. 601; and I have preferred it because: (1) It seems +difficult to understand how it could have arisen if 'have none' was +the original. (2) It gives a sharper antithesis, 'You would not save +me, keep me alive. Therefore I will bury, not you indeed, but a part +of you.' (3) To be saved is the lover's usual prayer; and the idea +of the poem is that his death is due to the lady's cruelty.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.48" id="pageii.48"></a>[pg 48]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Come not, when I am dead,</p> +<p>To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,</p> +<p>To trample round my fallen head,</p> +<p>And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.</p> +<p>There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;</p> +<p class="i4">But thou go by.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare also the Letter <i>To M<sup>rs</sup> M. H.</i> (pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.216a">216</a>-8), where the +same idea recurs:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>When thou art there, if any, whom we know,</p> +<p>Were sav'd before, and did that heaven partake, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 59. <span class="sc">The Blossome.</span><a name="pageii.48a" id="pageii.48a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 10. <i>labour'st.</i> The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS., and +'t' is restored in <i>1635</i>. The 'labours' of <i>1633</i> represents a common +dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz, +<i>Shakespeare-Grammatik</i>, +§ 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne +would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that +he wrote the word so, and not some copyist.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p> ll. 21-4. <i>You goe to friends, whose love and meanes present</i></p> +<p class="i16"><i>Various content</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>To your eyes, eares, and tongue, and every part:</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>If then your body goe, what need you a heart?</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have adopted the MS. readings 'tongue' and 'what need +you a heart?' because they seem to me more certainly what Donne +wrote. He may have altered them, but so may an editor. 'Tongue' +is more exactly parallel to eyes and ears, and the whole talk is of +organs. 'What need you a heart?' is more pointed. 'With these +organs of sense, what need have you of a heart?' The idiom was +not uncommon, the verb being used impersonally. The O.E.D. +gives among others:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>What need us so many instances abroad.</p> +<p class="i28"><i>Andros Tracts</i>, 1691.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'What need your heart go' is of course also idiomatic. The latest +example the O.E.D. gives is from Hall's <i>Satires</i>, 1597: 'What needs +me care for any bookish skill?'</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 61. <span class="sc">The Primrose, &c.</span><a name="pageii.48b" id="pageii.48b"></a></h3> + +<p>It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', +&c. was made in <i>1635</i>. It is unknown to <i>1633</i> and the MSS. +It may be unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably +addressed to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical +description of Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently +five petals, but more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize +his love, he fears to find either more or less. What can be +less than woman? But if more than woman she becomes that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.49" id="pageii.49"></a>[pg 49]</span> +unreal thing, the object of Platonic affection and Petrarchian +adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Love's not so pure and abstract as they use</p> +<p>To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Let woman be content to be herself. Since five is half ten, united +with man she will be half of a perfect life; or (and the cynical +humour breaks out again) if she is not content with that, since five +is the first number which includes an even number (2) and an odd (3), +it may claim to be the perfect number, and she to be the whole in +which we men are included and absorbed. We have no will of our +own.</p> + +<p>'From Sarai's name He took a letter which expressed the number +ten, and reposed one which made but five; so that she contributed +that five which man wanted before, to show a mutual indigence and +support.' <i>Essays in Divinity</i> (Jessop, 1855), p. 118.</p> + +<p>'Even for this, he will visite to the third, and fourth generation; +and three and foure are seven, and seven is infinite. <i>Sermons</i> 50. +47. 440.</p> + +<p>l. 30. <i>this, five,</i> I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show +what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions +drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and +a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written +'this' alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference +too remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it +crept into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support +which the MSS. lend to <i>1633</i> make it dangerous to remove +either word now, but I have thought it well to show that 'this' +<i>is</i> 'five'. In the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under +it and the substituted word placed in the margin.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 62. The Relique.</span><a name="pageii.49a" id="pageii.49a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 13. <i>Where mis-devotion doth command.</i> The unanimity of the +earlier editions and the MSS. shows clearly that 'Mass-devotion' +(which Chambers adopts) is merely an ingenious conjecture of the +<i>1669</i> editor. Donne uses the word frequently, e.g.:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Here in a place, where miss-devotion frames</p> +<p>A thousand Prayers to Saints, whose very names</p> +<p>The ancient Church knew not, &c.</p> +<p class="i10"><i>Of the Progresse of the Soule</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.266">266</a>, ll. 511-13.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and: 'This mis-devotion, and left-handed piety, of praying for the +dead.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 77. 780.</p> + +<p>l. 17. <i>You shalbe.</i> I have recorded this reading of several MSS. +because the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and Donne +may have so written. His discrimination of 'thou' and 'you' is +very marked throughout the poems. 'Thou' is the pronoun of feeling +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.50" id="pageii.50"></a>[pg 50]</span> +and intimacy, 'you' of respect. Compare 'To Mrs. M. H.', +and remember that Mrs. Herbert's name was Magdalen.</p> + +<p>ll. 27-8. <i>Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not +between those meales</i>: i.e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a +sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne +enumerates the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this +among them: 'Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last +branch of our first part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, +though defamed by treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, +since God invites us to it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. +It is an imputation laid upon <i>Nero</i>, that <i>Neque adveniens neque +proficiscens</i>, +That whether comming or going he never kissed any: And +Christ himself imputes it to <i>Simon</i>, as a neglect of him, That when he +<i>came into his house</i> he did not <i>kisse</i> him. This then was in use', +&c. +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 41. 407.</p> + +<p>The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later eighteenth +century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's <i>Confessions</i>, Bk. 9, and +Byron's <i>Childe Harold</i>, III. lxxix.</p> + +<p>But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English +custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo +venis, omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris; +redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; +disceditur abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur +affatim; denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia.'</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 64. <span class="sc">The Dissolution.</span><a name="pageii.50a" id="pageii.50a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 10. <i>earthly sad despaire.</i> Cf. O.E.D.: 'Earthly. 3. Partaking +of the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of +earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete.' The form was +used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne +indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare, 'A young +man of a softly disposition.' Camden's <i>Reign of Elizabeth</i> (English +transl.).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 66. <span class="sc">Negative Love.</span><a name="pageii.50b" id="pageii.50b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 15. <i>What we know not, our selves.</i> 'All creatures were brought to +Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures, +he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to +himselfe it may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe +lesse then he did other creatures.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 50. 563.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 67. <span class="sc">The Prohibition.</span><a name="pageii.50c" id="pageii.50c"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 18. <i>So, these extreames shall neithers office doe.</i> The 'neithers' of +<i>D</i>, <i>H40</i>, <i>JC</i>, supported by 'neyther' in <i>O'F</i> and +'neyther their' in +<i>Cy</i>, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and more likely +to have been altered than to have been substituted for 'ne'er their'. +The reading of <i>Cy</i> shows how the phrase puzzled an ordinary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.51" id="pageii.51"></a>[pg 51]</span> +copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other prevent +either from fulfilling his function.' Compare, 'As two yoke-devils +sworn to either's purpose' (i.e. each to the other's purpose). Shakespeare, +<i>Hen. V</i>, <span class="sc">II</span>. ii. 107.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee.</i> I have placed a +comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not the +verb. The 'stay' of <i>1633</i> is defensible, but the <i>1633</i> editor was +somewhat +at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced while +the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting of l. 5. +All the MSS. I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives the best +meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which your +victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph, a thing +achieved once, never to be repeated.' Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And cause her leave to triumph in this wise</p> +<p>Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!</p> +<p>That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,</p> +<p>And must their glory to the world impart. Daniel, <i>Delia</i>, <span class="sc">x</span>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which +the later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from +<i>1633</i>. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,</p> +<p>O let me live, O love and hate me too.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as +printed are quite intelligible. As given in the editions <i>1635-69</i> they +are nonsensical.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 68. <span class="sc">The Expiration.</span><a name="pageii.51a" id="pageii.51a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 5. <i>We ask'd.</i> The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis and +sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin +with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting.'</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p> ll. 7 f. <i>Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee</i>,</p> +<p class="i6"><i>Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Val.</i> No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st</p> +<p class="i2">Have some malignant power upon my life:</p> +<p class="i2">If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,</p> +<p class="i2">As ending anthem of my endless dolour.</p> +<p class="i16"><i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>, <span class="sc">III</span>. i. 236 f.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 70. <span class="sc">The Paradox.</span><a name="pageii.51b" id="pageii.51b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 14. <i>lights life.</i> The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of +the editions, 'lifes light.' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun. +In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to +an epitaph. This poem is not in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and +<i>1633</i> has printed +it from <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.52" id="pageii.52"></a>[pg 52]</span></p> + +<p>In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by +another of the same kind, which is found also in <i>H40</i>, <i>RP31</i>, and +<i>O'F</i>, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from <i>TCC</i>:</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">A Paradox.</span></h3> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet</p> +<p>Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.</p> +<p>For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare</p> +<p>But Love doth at most distance most appeare.</p> +<p>Yet out of fire water did never goe,</p> +<p>But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.</p> +<p>Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.</p> +<p>Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.</p> +<p>Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.</p> +<p>Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.</p> +<p>The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came</p> +<p>Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,</p> +<p>Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine</p> +<p>Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.</p> +<p>Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow</p> +<p>Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.</p> +<p>What is Love, water then? it may be soe;</p> +<p>But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="title1">FINIS.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 71. <span class="sc">Farewell to Love.</span><a name="pageii.52a" id="pageii.52a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 12. <i>His highnesse &c.</i> 'Presumably his highness was made of +gilt gingerbread.' Chambers. See Jonson, <i>Bartholomew Fair</i>, <span class="sc">III</span>. +i.</p> + +<p>ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are +unintelligible:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Because that other curse of being short,</p> +<p class="i2">And only for a minute made to be</p> +<p>Eager, desires to raise posterity.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Because that other curse of being short</p> +<p class="i2">And—only-for-a-minute-made-to-be—</p> +<p>Eager desires to raise posterity.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible +than the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: +Unless Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) +as she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a +sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise +posterity.' Surely this is Abracadabra!</p> + +<p>What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used +an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. +The copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.53" id="pageii.53"></a>[pg 53]</span> +and made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing +'desire' to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had +in mind was the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget +children is an expression of man's craving for immortality. The +most natural function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing +which is not maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like +itself, that so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This +participation is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But +perishable individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by +continuous existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue +always one and the same individual. Each, therefore, participates +as best he may, some more, some less; remaining the same in a way, +i.e. in the species, not in the individual.' (<i>De Anima</i>, B. 4. 415 A-B.) +Donne's argument then is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone +this feeling of depression and remorse after the act of love? Is it a +device of nature to restrain us from an act which shortens the life of +the individual (he refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious +effect of the act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam +brought upon man, the curse of mortality,</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14"> of being short,</p> +<p>And only for a minute made to be,</p> +<p>Eagers [i.e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity.'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O.E.D. is from +Mulcaster's <i>Positions</i> (1581), where the sense is that of imitating +physically: +'They that be gawled ... may neither runne nor wrastle for +eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's: +'The nature of som men is so ... unconvenable that ... poverte +myhte rather egren hym to don felonies.' Chaucer, Boëth. <i>De Consol. +Phil.</i> In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram +on Bancroft appears:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>A learned Bishop of this land</p> +<p>Thinking to make religion stand,</p> +<p>In equall poise on every syde</p> +<p>The mixture of them thus he tryde:</p> +<p>An ounce of protestants he singles</p> +<p>And a dramme of papists mingles,</p> +<p>Then adds a scruple of a puritan</p> +<p>And melts them down in his brayne pan,</p> +<p>But where hee lookes they should digest</p> +<p>The scruple eagers all the rest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That scruple troubles all the rest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 71. <span class="sc">A Lecture upon the Shadow.</span><a name="pageii.53a" id="pageii.53a"></a></h3> + +<p>The text of this poem in the editions is that of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> +among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.54" id="pageii.54"></a>[pg 54]</span> +the other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for +'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for +'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'. +It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation +from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the +MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an +obvious blunder.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Note on the music to which certain of Donne's songs were set.</span></h3> + +<p>A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung, +generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no +thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">But when I have done so,</p> +<p>Some man his art and voice to show</p> +<p class="i2">Doth set and sing my paine.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's +<i>Songs and Sonets</i> as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and +rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged +periods of the <i>Elegies</i>, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic +verse-paragraph, suggest speech,—impassioned, rhythmical speech +rather than the melody of song. We are not haunted by a sense of +the tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics +of the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of +Donne's songs <i>were</i> set to music. A note in one group of MSS. +describes three of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres +which were made before'. One of these is <i>The Baite</i>, which must +have been set to the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here +a lute-accompaniment found in William Corkine's <i>Second Book of +Ayres</i> (1612). The airs of the other two (see p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.18a">18</a> (note)) I have not been +able to find, nor are they known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has +kindly helped and guided me in this matter of the music. With his +aid I have reproduced here the music of two other songs, and, at +another place, that of one of Donne's great <i>Hymns</i>.</p> + +<h3 class="lsp"><span class="sc">Page</span> 8. <span class="sc">Song.</span><a name="pageii.54a" id="pageii.54a"></a></h3> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<p>The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. +As given here it has been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:<br /><br /></p> +<img src="images/music_054-500.png" width="500" height="355" alt="music" /></div> +<div class="figcenter1"> +<a href="music/page_8_song.mid">midi file</a> +<a href="music/page_8_song.pdf">.pdf file</a></div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="dropcap">G</span><span class="sp4"> O, and catch a falling star,</span></p> +<p class="i4"> Get with child a mandrake roote,</p> +<p>Tell me where all past times are,</p> +<p class="i2">Or who cleft the Devils foot,</p> +<p><span class="right1"> 5</span>Teach me to hear mermaid's singing,</p> +<p class="i2">Or to keep of Envy's singing,</p> +<p class="i4">And find</p> +<p class="i4">What wind</p> +<p>Serves to advance an honest mind.</p> + </div></div> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.55" id="pageii.55"></a>[pg 55]</span></p> + +<h3 class="lsp"><span class="sc">Page</span> 23. <span class="sc">Breake of Day.</span></h3> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<p>This is set to the following air in Corkine's <i>Second Book of Ayres</i> +(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire, +omitting the lute accompaniment:<br /><br /></p> + +<img src="images/music_055-500.png" width="500" height="505" alt="music" /><br /> +<img src="images/music_056-500.png" width="500" height="834" alt="music" /> + +</div> +<div class="figcenter1"> +<a href="music/page_23_breakofday.mid">midi file</a> +<a href="music/page_23_breakofday.pdf">.pdf file</a></div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="dropcap">'T</span><span class="sp5"> IS true, 'tis day; What though it be?</span></p> +<p class="i4"> And wilt thou therefore rise from me?</p> +<p>What, will you rise, What, will you rise, because 'tis light?</p> +<p>Did we lie downe, because 'twas night?</p> +<p>Love which in spight of darknesse brought us hether,</p> +<p>In spight of light should keepe us still together.</p> +<p>In spight of light should keepe us still together.</p> +<p>In spight of light should keepe us still together.</p> + </div></div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.56" id="pageii.56"></a></span></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.57" id="pageii.57"></a>[pg 57]</span></p> + +<h3 class="lsp"><span class="sc">Page</span> 46. <span class="sc">The Baite.</span></h3> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> + +<p class="center">From Corkine's <i>Second Book of Ayres</i> (1612).<br /><br /></p> + +<img src="images/music_057-500.png" width="500" height="816" alt="music" /></div> +<div class="figcenter1"> +<a href="music/baite.mid">midi file</a> +<a href="music/baite.pdf">.pdf file</a></div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"><p><span class="dropcap">C</span><span class="sp4"> OME live with mee, and bee my love,</span></p> +<p class="i4"> And wee will some new pleasures prove</p> +<p>Of golden sands, and christall brookes,</p> +<p>With silken lines, and silver hookes.</p> + </div></div> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.58" id="pageii.58"></a>[pg 58]</span></p> + +<h2>EPIGRAMS.</h2> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">75-8</span>. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the +editions, +<i>1633-69</i>. Of these, thirteen are in <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, none +in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. +Of the remaining three, two are in <i>W</i>, one in <i>HN</i>, both good +authorities. +I have added three of interest from <i>W</i>, of which one is in <i>HN</i>, +and all three are in <i>O'F</i>. <i>W</i> includes among the <i>Epigrams</i> the +short poem <i>On a Jeat Ring Sent</i>, printed generally with the <i>Songs +and Sonets</i>. In <i>HN</i> there is one and in the Burley MS. are three +more. Of these the one in <i>HN</i> and two of those in <i>Bur</i> are merely +coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of this kind +than he is already responsible for. The last in <i>Bur</i> runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?</p> +<p>Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies +were classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond +says: 'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist +we have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come +near the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas +against beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best.' The stanzas +referred to are entitled <i>Sopra la bellezza</i>, and begin:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">75</span>. <a name="pageii.58a" id="pageii.58a"></a><span class="sc">Pyramus and Thisbe.</span> +The Grolier Club edition prints the first line of this epigram,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Two by themselves each other love and fear,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in +<i>1633</i> the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by +themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in +one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought +them together here.' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the +incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>, iv. 55-165. +The closing line runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><a name="pageii.58b" id="pageii.58b"></a><span class="sc">A Burnt Ship.</span> In <i>W</i> the title is given in Italian, in <i>O'F</i> +in Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands +for assistance against Spain;—'Should I ruin myself for maintaining +them.... I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to +pay me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either +in peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that +case surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: <i>a man will leap +out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea</i>; and it is doubtless +a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands +of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall +upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.59" id="pageii.59"></a>[pg 59]</span> +with putting the meat in their mouth.' <i>The King to Salisbury</i>, 1607, +Hatfield MSS., quoted in Gardiner's <i>History of England</i>, ii. 25.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">76</span>. <span class="sc">A Lame Begger.</span> Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width30"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,</p> +<p>Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.</p> +<p class="i14">Finis quoth R.</p> +</div> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Thomas Deloney, <i>Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Gentlemen. Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c.</i>,</p> +<p class="i8">1607.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">76</span>. <a name="pageii.59a" id="pageii.59a"></a><span class="sc">Sir John Wingefield.</span> <i>In that late +Island.</i> Mr. Gosse has inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of +<i>O'F</i> is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It +is, of course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme +point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. +'Then we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says +Captain Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's <i>Annals</i>, iv. 398. +Another account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of +Cadiz and at the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. +Here the severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to +Cadiz'. What does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island +we lately visited so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets +late, that western island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It +would not be unlike Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed +force. Compare (if the reading be right) 'far faith' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.189a">189</a>, l. 4) and +the note.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">75-6</span>. <a name="pageii.59b" id="pageii.59b"></a>The series of Epigrams <i>A burnt ship</i>, <i>Fall +of a wall</i>, <i>A lame begger</i>, <i>Cales and Guyana</i>, <i>Sir John Wingefield</i> seem +to me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first +suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour +when so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The <i>Fall of a wall</i> +may mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced +its way into the city. <i>A lame begger</i> records a common spectacle in +a Spanish and Catholic town. <i>Cales and Guyana</i> must clearly have +been written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the +leaders were debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on +Essex's side) urged that the fleet should sail west and intercept the +silver fleet, but Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate +return to England. The last of the series chronicles the one death +to which every account of the expedition refers.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">77</span>. <a name="pageii.59c" id="pageii.59c"></a><span class="sc">Antiquary.</span> +Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is +evidently the subject of this epigram and is referred to in <i>Satyre V</i>, l. +87, I cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, +LL.D., the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's +chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist +and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.60" id="pageii.60"></a>[pg 60]</span> +the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the +examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in +Strype's <i>Annals</i> collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Phryne.</span> An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond, +<i>Conversations</i>, ed. Laing, 842.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">78</span>. <span class="sc">Raderus.</span> 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German +Jesuit, published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in +1602.' Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though +Raderus and others of his order did use to geld Poets and other +authors (and here I could not choose but wonder why they have not +gelded their Vulgar Edition which in some places hath such obscene +words, as the Hebrew tongue which is therefore called holy, doth so +much abhorre that no obscene thing can be uttered in it)....' The +reason which Donne gives is that 'They reserve to themselves the +divers forms, and the secrets, and mysteries in this latter which they +find in the authors whom they gelde.' <i>Ignatius his Conclave</i> (1610), +pp. 94-6. The epigram is therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus.</span><a name="pageii.60a" id="pageii.60a"></a> A journal or register of news started +at Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and +was entitled: <i>Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus</i>; <i>sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia +potissimum</i>: <i>Hispania quoque</i>, <i>Italia</i>, <i>Anglia</i>, +<i>Germania</i>, <i>Polonia</i>, +<i>vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594 +gestarum, nuncius</i>. In the seventeenth century it was published half-yearly +and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable +(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', <i>Poetaster</i>, <span class="sc">v.</span> i), nor its news +always trustworthy.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">The Lier.</span> <a name="pageii.60b" id="pageii.60b"></a>This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's <i>Unpublished +Poems of Donne</i> (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his +Appendix A. It is given the title <i>Supping Hours</i>. Its inclusion in +<i>HN</i> (whence the present title) and <i>W</i> strengthens its claim to be +genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and +contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish +fare.</p> + +<p>l. 3. <i>Like Nebuchadnezar.</i> Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, +sir; I have not much skill in grass.' Shakespeare, <i>All's Well</i>, +<span class="sc">IV</span>. v.</p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<h2>THE ELEGIES.<a name="pageii.60c" id="pageii.60c"></a></h2> + +<p>Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated +before the larger collections were made or publication took place. +Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being +made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow +who to this house,' afterwards called <i>Elegie on the L. C.</i> The order in +the one group, as we find it in e.g. <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, is <i>The +Bracelet</i>,<a id="footnotetagiie1" name="footnotetagiie1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnoteiie1"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Going</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.61" id="pageii.61"></a>[pg 61]</span> +<i>to Bed</i>, <i>Jealousie</i>, <i>The Anagram</i>, <i>Change</i>, <i>The Perfume</i>, <i>His Picture</i>, +'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let mee not serve,' <i>Loves Warr</i>, +<i>On his Mistris</i>, 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' <i>Loves Progress</i>. +The second group, as we find it in <i>A25</i>, <i>JC</i>, and <i>W</i>, contains +<i>The Bracelet</i>, <i>The Comparison</i>, <i>The Perfume</i>, <i>Jealousie</i>, 'Oh, let not me +(<i>sic</i> <i>W</i>) serve,' 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' <i>Loves Warr</i>, <i>Going to Bed</i>, +<i>Change</i>, <i>The Anagram</i>, <i>On his Mistris</i>, <i>His Picture</i>, +'Sorrow, who to this house.' The last is not given in <i>A25</i>. It will be noticed that +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> drops <i>The Comparison</i>; <i>A25</i>, +<i>JC</i>, <i>W</i>, <i>Loves Progress</i>; +and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups together, +apart from the Funeral Elegy.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnoteiie1" name="footnoteiie1"></a><a class="footnote" href="#footnotetagiie1"><sup>1</sup></a> +I take the titles given in the editions for ease of reference to the reader of this +edition. The only title which <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> have is <i>On Loves Progresse</i>; <i>A25</i>, <i>JC</i>, +and <i>W</i> have none. Other MSS. give one or other occasionally.</p> + +<p>These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of +Donne's <i>Elegies</i>, taken as such. Of the rest <i>The Dreame</i> is given +in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, but among the songs, and <i>The +Autumnall</i> is placed +by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed +to get into general circulation.</p> + +<p>Can we to any extent date the <i>Elegies</i>? There are some hints +which help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably +belong. In <i>The Bracelet</i> Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> slily made</p> +<p>Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;</p> +<p>Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:</p> +<p>mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean that +it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us very +far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between the +League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly +subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV +in 1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence +gained the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After +1593 is the only determinable date. In <i>Loves Warre</i> we are brought +nearer to a definite date.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>France in her lunatique giddiness did hate</p> +<p>Ever our men, yea and our God of late;</p> +<p>Yet shee relies upon our Angels well</p> +<p>Which nere retorne</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God +of late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in +1598. The line,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring</p> +<p>I feare, &c., p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.210">210</a>),</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the +fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.62" id="pageii.62"></a>[pg 62]</span> +expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference +to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of +1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated +joining it.</p> + +<p>To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their +paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly conjecture +that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and +Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in +1598.</p> + +<p>The twelfth (<i>His parting from her</i>) and fifteenth (<i>The +Expostulation</i>) +Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not <i>likely</i> that they were +written after his marriage. <i>Julia</i> is quite undatable, a witty sally +Donne might have written any time before 1615. But the fourteenth +(<i>A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife</i>) was certainly written after 1609, +probably in 1610.</p> + +<p><i>The Autumnall</i> raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has +argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's +dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (<i>Life of Mr. George +Herbert</i>, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance +of Mrs. Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at +Oxford with her son Edward, Donne being then near to (about +<i>First Ed.</i>) the Fortieth year of his Age'; 'both he and she were +then past the Meridian of man's life.' But according to Lord +Herbert his mother left Oxford and brought him to town about 1600, +shortly before the insurrection of Essex, i.e. when Donne was twenty-seven +years old, and secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady +Herbert was about thirty-five or thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible +that Donne visited Oxford between 1596 and 1600, but he +was not then the grave person Walton portrays. The period which +the latter has in view is that in which Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. +Herbert living in London. 'This day', he writes in a letter to her, +dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to the best part of it your +house.' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John Danvers. We know +that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs. Herbert and +was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's evidence +points to its being about the same time that he wrote this poem.</p> + +<p>Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded <i>a priori</i>, very +persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and +beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity; +to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become +the bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach +of taste and good manners' (<i>Life, &c.</i>, ii. 228). It is, however, +somewhat hazardous to fix a standard of taste for the age of +James I, and above all others for John Donne. To the taste of the +time and the temper of Donne such a poem might more becomingly +be addressed to a widow of forty, the mother of ten children, one +already an accomplished courtier, than it might be written by a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.63" id="pageii.63"></a>[pg 63]</span> +priest in orders. Donne would have been startled to hear that in +1625 he had spent any time in such a vain amusement as composing +a secular elegy. The poem he wrote to Mrs. Herbert before 1609 +was probably thought by her and him an exquisite compliment. He +expressly disclaims speaking of the old age which disfigures. He +writes of one whose youthful beauty has flown. Forty seemed old for +a woman, even to Jane Austen, and in Montaigne's opinion it is old +for a man: 'J'estois tel, car je ne me considère pas à cette heure, +que je suis engagé dans les avenues de la vieillesse, ayant pieça +franchy les quarante ans:</p> + +<div class="poem width30"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Minutatim vires et robur adultum</p> +<p>Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas.</p> + </div></div> + +<p>Ce que je seray doresnevant ce ne sera plus qu'un demy estre, ce ne +sera plus moy; je m'eschappe les jours et me desrobe a moy mesme:</p> + +<div class="poem width30"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.' + <i>Essais</i>, ii. 17.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Mrs. Herbert's marriage was due to no 'heyday of the blood'. +It was the gravity of Danvers' temper which attracted her, and he +became the steady friend and adviser of her children.</p> + +<p>There are, moreover, some items of evidence which go to support +Walton's testimony. The poem is found in one MS., <i>S</i>, dated +1620, which gives us a downward date; and in 1610 occurs what +looks very like an allusion to Donne's poem in Ben Jonson's <i>Silent +Woman</i>. Clerimont and True-wit are speaking of the Collegiate +ladies, and the former asks,</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> Who is the president?</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>True.</i> The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Cler.</i> A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no</p> +<p>man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has</p> +<p>painted and perfumed ... I have made a song (I pray thee</p> +<p>hear it) on the subject</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">Still to be neat, still to be drest...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which +the poem is dubbed <i>An Autumnal Face</i> or <i>The Autumnall</i> shows that +the phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such +allusions, and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's +paradoxes, perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' +Lady Danvers. We cannot <i>prove</i> that the poem was written so early, +but the evidence on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 79. Elegie I.</span><a name="pageii.63a" id="pageii.63a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' +is clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and +from the vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which +Donne uses more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to +bruises,' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.64" id="pageii.64"></a>[pg 64]</span> +Ibid. 80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' +would be to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' +with which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. +Both Chambers and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's +poisoned father:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">a most instant tetter barked about,</p> +<p class="i8">Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,</p> +<p class="i8">All my smooth body.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">ll. 19-20. <i>Nor, at his board together being sat</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i> With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate.</i></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Quum premit ille torum, vultu comes ipsa modesto</p> +<p class="i6">Ibis, ut adcumbas; clam mihi tange pedem,</p> +<p class="i4">Me specta, nutusque meos, vultumque loquacem:</p> +<p class="i6">Excipe furtivas, et refer ipsa, notas.</p> +<p class="i4">Verba superciliis sine voce loquentia dicam:</p> +<p class="i6">Verba leges digitis, verba notata mero.</p> +<p class="i4">Quum tibi succurrit Veneris lascivia nostrae,</p> +<p class="i6">Purpureas tenero pollice tange genas.</p> +<p class="i4">Si quid erit, de me tacita quod mente queraris,</p> +<p class="i6">Pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus:</p> +<p class="i4">Quum tibi, quae faciam, mea lux, dicamve placebunt,</p> +<p class="i6">Versetur digitis annulus usque tuis,</p> +<p class="i4">Tange manu mensam, quo tangunt more precantes,</p> +<p class="i6">Optabis merito quum mala multa viro.</p> +<p class="i4">Quod tibi miscuerit sapias, bibat ipse iubeto;</p> +<p class="i6">Tu puerum leviter posce, quod ipsa velis.</p> +<p class="i4">Quae tu reddideris, ego primus pocula sumam,</p> +<p class="i6">Et qua tu biberis, hac ego parte bibam.</p> +<p class="i28"> Ovid, <i>Amores</i>, I. iv. 15-32.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate</p> +<p class="i6">His inward grief, by meanes to him well knowne:</p> +<p class="i6">Now Bacchus fruit out of the silver plate</p> +<p class="i6">He on the table dasht as overthrowne,</p> +<p class="i6">Or of the fruitfull liquor overflowne,</p> +<p class="i6">And by the dancing bubbles did divine,</p> +<p class="i6">Or therein write to let his love be showne;</p> +<p class="i6">Which well she red out of the learned line;</p> +<p class="i4">(A sacrament profane in mysterie of wine.)</p> +<p class="i26"> Spenser, <i>Faerie Queene</i>, III. ix.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">ll. 21 f. <i>Nor when he, swoln and pamper'd with great fare</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair, &c.</i></p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Vir bibat usque roga: precibus tamen oscula desint;</p> +<p class="i6">Dumque bibit, furtim, si potes, adde merum.</p> +<p class="i4">Si bene compositus somno vinoque iacebit;</p> +<p class="i6">Consilium nobis resque locusque dabunt.</p> +<p class="i28"> Ovid, <i>Amores</i>, I. iv. 51-4.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.65" id="pageii.65"></a>[pg 65]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 80. <span class="sc">Elegie II.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 4. <i>Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth be jeat</i>: i.e. 'Though her +eyes be yellow as ivory, her teeth are black as jet.' The edition of +1669 substitutes 'theirs' for 'they', referring back to 'others'. +Grosart follows.</p> + +<p>l. 6. <i>rough</i> is the reading of <i>1633</i>, <i>1669</i>, and all the best +MSS. +Chambers and Grosart prefer the 'tough' of <i>1635-54</i>, but 'rough' +means probably 'hairy, shaggy, hirsute'. O.E.D., <i>Rough</i>, B. I. 2. +Her hair is in the wrong place. To have hair on her face and none +on her head are alike disadvantageous to a woman's beauty.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> 81, ll. 17-21. <i>If we might put the letters, &c.</i> +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As six sweet Notes, curiously varied</p> +<p>In skilfull Musick, make a hundred kindes</p> +<p>Of Heav'nly sounds, that ravish hardest mindes;</p> +<p>And with Division (of a choice device)</p> +<p>The Hearers soules out at their ears intice:</p> +<p>Or, as of twice-twelve Letters, thus transpos'd,</p> +<p>The World of Words, is variously compos'd;</p> +<p>And of these Words, in divers orders sow'n</p> +<p>This sacred <i>Volume</i> that you read is grow'n</p> +<p>(Through gracious succour of th'Eternal Deity)</p> +<p>Rich in discourse, with infinite Variety.</p> +<p class="i10">Sylvester, <i>Du Bartas</i>, First Week, Second Day.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Sylvester follows the French closely. Du Bartas' source is probably:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis</p> +<p>Multa elementa vides multis communia verbis,</p> +<p>Cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest</p> +<p>Confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti,</p> +<p>Tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo.</p> +<p class="i16">Lucretius, <i>De Rerum Natura</i>, I. 824-7.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare Aristotle, <i>De Gen. et Corr.</i> I. 2.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>unfit.</i> I have changed the semicolon after this word to a +full stop. The former suggests that the next two lines are an expansion +or explanation of this statement. But the poet is giving a +series of different reasons why Flavia may be loved.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 41-2. <i>When Belgias citties, the round countries drowne,</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i> That durty foulenesse guards, and armes the towne:</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers, adopting a composite text from editions and MSS., +reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,</p> +<p>That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the +relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.66" id="pageii.66"></a>[pg 66]</span> +the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. +agree with <i>1633-54</i>, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is +probably correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their +foes, drown (i.e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus +produced is their protection.' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. +The reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's <i>Rise of +the Dutch Republic</i>, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden. +'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given +to land overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 82. <span class="sc">Elegie III.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 5. <i>forc'd unto none</i> is a strange expression, and the 'forbid to +none' of <i>B</i> is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none' probably +means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In woman's +love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from a +favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a +monopoly:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Is sibi responsum hoc habeat, in medio omnibus</p> +<p>Palmam esse positam, qui artem tractant musicam.</p> +<p class="i26">Ter. <i>Phorm.</i> Prol. 16-17.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 8. <i>these meanes, as I,</i> It is difficult to say whether the 'these' +of the editions and of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> or the 'those' of the +rest of the +MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of 'the +same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Under these hard conditions as this time</p> +<p>Is like to lay upon us. Shakespeare, <i>Jul. Caes.</i> I. ii. 174.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 17. <i>Who hath a plow-land, &c.</i> This has nothing to do, as +Grosart seems to think, with the name for a certain measurement of land +in the north of England corresponding to a hide in the south. A +'plow-land' here is an arable or cultivated field. Possibly the 'a' has +crept in and one should read simply 'plow-land', or, like <i>P</i>, +'plow-lands.' +Otherwise 'Who hath' is to be slurred in reading the line. +The meaning of the passage seems to be that though a man puts all his +own seed into his land, he is quite willing to reap the corn which has +sprung from others' seed, brought thither, it may be, by wind or birds.</p> + +<p>l. 30. <i>To runne all countries, a wild roguery.</i> The Oxford English +Dictionary quotes this line, giving to 'roguery' the meaning of 'a +knavish, rascally act'. But Grosart is certainly right in explaining it +as 'vagrancy'. In love, Donne does not wish to be a captive bound +to one, but he does not wish on the other hand to be a vagrant with +no settled abode. The O.E.D. dates the poem c. 1620, which is +much too late. Donne was not writing in this manner after he took +orders. It cannot be later than 1601, and is probably earlier.</p> + +<p>l. 32. <i>more putrifi'd</i>, or, as in the MSS., 'worse putrifi'd.' +The latter is probably correct, but the difference is trifling. By +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.67" id="pageii.67"></a>[pg 67]</span> +'putrifi'd' Donne means 'made salt' and so less fit for drinking. +The 'purifi'd' of some editions points to a misunderstanding of Donne's +meaning; for saltness and putrefaction were not identical: 'For +Salt as incorruptible was the Symbol of friendship, and before the +other service was offered unto their guests.' Browne, <i>Vulgar Errors</i>, +v. 22.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 84. <span class="sc">Elegie IV.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>All thy suppos'd escapes.</i> He is addressing the lady. All her +supposed transgressions (e.g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's charge. +'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo, venial error. +(In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous transgression.) +Applied <i>esp.</i> to breaches of chastity.' O.E.D. It is probably in +Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Brabantio.</i> For your sake, jewel,</p> +<p>I am glad at soul I have no other child;</p> +<p>For thy escape would teach me tyranny,</p> +<p>To hang clogs on them. Shakespeare, <i>Othello</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 195-8.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 7-8. <i>Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes</i>,</p> +<p class="i6"><i>As though he came to kill a Cockatrice</i>,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>i.e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of +the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i20"> I met a lion</p> +<p>Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,</p> +<p>Without annoying me. Shakespeare, <i>Jul. Caes.</i> <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 20-2.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's +deformed hand' (<i>Com. of Err.</i> <span class="sc">V.</span> i. 298), i.e. 'deforming hand'; +'deserved children' (<i>Cor.</i> <span class="sc">III.</span> i. 292), i.e. 'deserving'. See +Franz, <i>Shakespeare-Grammatik</i>, § 661.</p> + +<p>The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye</p> +<p>He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.</p> +<p class="i24">Shakespeare, <i>Lucrece</i>, 540-1.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with +terror lest he be stricken himself.</p> + +<p>If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement +would be needed:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.</p> +<p class="i22">Shakespeare, <i>Rich. II</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> ii. 16.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 9, 15. <i>have ... take.</i> I have noted the subjunctive forms +found in certain MSS., because this is undoubtedly Donne's +usual construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's +syntax in the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive +against seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. +In these ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e.g.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.68" id="pageii.68"></a>[pg 68]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.</p> +<p class="i34"><i>Elegie II</i>, 3 ff.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though poetry indeed be such a sin. + <i>Satire II</i>, 5.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where +the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 10-11. <i>Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Hope of his goods.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as +'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c.). I fear +that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his +mistress is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The +whole poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not +be taken too seriously.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats.</i> All the MSS. read +'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two +singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns +as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell +upon increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce +but so deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come +home to your Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a +palenesse or blushing here.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 61. 611.</p> + +<p>l. 29. <i>ingled</i>: i.e. fondled, caressed. O.E.D.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 33-4. <i>He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i> As the great Rhodian Colossus stride.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: +'Those big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having +bellies bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks.' Dekker.</p> + +<p>l. 37. <i>were hir'd to this.</i> All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to' is +quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was +not taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for +this piece of work:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16"> This naughty man</p> +<p>Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,</p> +<p>Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,</p> +<p>Hir'd to it by your brother.</p> +<p class="i20">Shakespeare, <i>Much Ado</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> i. 307.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 44. <i>the pale wretch shivered.</i> I have (with the support of the +best MSS.) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as the +punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is +ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club +editor. By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 +an adverbial clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had +it beene some bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought ... had +wrought'. This seems to me out of the question. The 'when' +links the statement 'the pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.69" id="pageii.69"></a>[pg 69]</span> +to what follows. As soon as the perfume reached his nose he +shivered, knowing what it meant. A new thought begins with 'Had +it been some bad smell'.</p> + +<p>The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less +than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads +occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have +made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to +obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating the +principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.</p> + +<p>l. 49. <i>The precious Vnicornes.</i> See Browne, <i>Vulgar Errors</i>, iii. 23: +'Great account and much profit is made of <i>Unicornes horn</i>, at least +of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the +various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet +doubtless has the same application, i.e. to the horns.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 86. <span class="sc">Elegie V.</span><a name="pageii.69a" id="pageii.69a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 8. <i>With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread.</i> I have let the +<i>1633</i> reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not responsible +for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, in which +probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or printer +supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it because +I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has undergone +some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is +suggested by <i>B</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>With Cares rash sudden storms o'rpressed,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>where 'o'erpress' means 'conquer, overwhelm'. Compare Shakespeare's</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> but in my sight</p> +<p>Deare heart forbear to glance thine eye aside.</p> +<p>What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might</p> +<p>Is more than my o'erprest defence can bide.</p> +<p class="i34"><i>Sonnets</i>, 139. 8.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He bestrid an o'erpressed Roman. <i>Coriolanus</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> ii. 97.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold +synecdoche, leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed, +o'ermastered by Cares storms.' But 'o'erpressed' was +harshly used and was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was +made more appropriate by substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the +cause, 'Cares storms.' This is what we find in <i>JC</i> and such a good +MS. as <i>W</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>With cares rash sudden horiness o'erspread.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In <i>B</i> and <i>P</i> 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse when +'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to 'o'erspread'. +In <i>1635-69</i> the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been altered to +'harsh'.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>With cares harsh, sodaine horinesse o'rspread.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.70" id="pageii.70"></a>[pg 70]</span> +The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's +final version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and +more in the style of Shakespeare's</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,</p> +<p>When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange</p> +<p>Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,</p> +<p>Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.</p> +<p class="i34"><i>Sonnets</i>, 72. 1-4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 16. <i>Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see.</i> Here again +there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor. +Most MSS. read:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Should like and love less what hee did love to see.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>To 'like and love' was an Elizabethan combination:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And yet we both make shew we like and love.</p> +<p class="i14">Farmer, <i>Chetham MS.</i> (ed. Grosart), i. 90.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Yet every one her likte, and every one her lov'd.</p> +<p class="i18"> Spenser, <i>Faerie Queene</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> ix. 24.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne or his editor has made the line smoother.</p> + +<p>l. 20. <i>To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough.</i> I have +made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs +in <i>A25</i> and <i>B</i>, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. +The 'weak' of <i>1650-69</i> adjusts the metre, but for that very reason +one a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or +'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. The meaning +of 'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed.' The O.E.D. quotes: 'I +can nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused.' Palsgr. +(1530). 'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests +in secret.' Baxter, <i>Reformed Pastor</i> (1656).</p> + +<p>It seems to me probable that <i>P</i> preserves an early form of these +lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">who now is grown tough enough</p> +<p>To feed on that which to disused tastes seems rough.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's +mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the +recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O.E.D. +quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583). +'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, <i>Antony +and Cleopatra</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> iv. 64 (1608).</p> + +<p>Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the +monotonous sound of 'tough enough ... rough', and this ultimately +led to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close +of the last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem +tough to the taste? Even meat does not <i>taste</i> tough: and it is not +of meat that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.71" id="pageii.71"></a>[pg 71]</span> +to return to the reading of <i>P</i>, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as +improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 87. <span class="sc">Elegie VI.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 6. <i>Their Princes stiles, with many Realmes fulfill.</i> This is the +reading of all the best MSS. The 'which' for 'with' of the editions +is due to an easy confusion of two contractions invariably used in the +MSS. Grosart and Chambers accept 'with' from <i>S</i> and <i>A25</i>, +but further alter 'styles' to 'style', following these generally inferior +MSS. The plural is correct. Donne refers to more than one +prince and style. The stock instance is</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">the poor king Reignier, whose large style</p> +<p>Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.</p> +<p class="i26"><i>2 Henry VI</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i. 111-12.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But the English monarchs themselves bore in their 'style' the +kingdom of France, and for some years (1558-1566) Mary, Queen of +Scots, bore in her 'style' the arms of England and Ireland.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">88</span>, ll. 21-34. These lines evidently suggested Carew's +poem, <i>To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side, An Eddy</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Mark how yon eddy steals away</p> +<p>From the rude stream into the bay;</p> +<p>There, locked up safe, she doth divorce</p> +<p>Her waters from the channel's course,</p> +<p>And scorns the torrent that did bring</p> +<p>Her headlong from her native spring, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p style="margin-left: 10em; margin-bottom: -2.2em;"> ll. 23-4.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i26"> <i>calmely ride</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Her wedded channels bosome, and then chide.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The number of MSS. and editions is in favour of 'there', but the +quality (e.g. <i>1633</i> and <i>W</i>) of those which read 'then', and the +sense +of the lines, favour 'then'. The stream is at one moment in +'speechless slumber', and the next chiding. She cannot in the same +place do both at once:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The current that with gentle murmur glides,</p> +<p>Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;</p> +<p>But when his fair course is not hindered,</p> +<p>He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,</p> +<p>Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge</p> +<p>He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;</p> +<p>And so by many winding nooks he strays,</p> +<p>With willing sport to the wild ocean.</p> +<p class="i6">Shakespeare, <i>Two Gentlemen of Verona</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> vii. 25-32.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 27-8. <i>Yet if her often gnawing kisses winne</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i>The traiterous banke to gape, and let her in.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.72" id="pageii.72"></a>[pg 72]</span> +than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final +'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its +course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks +through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for +another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak +or treacherous spot in its bank'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 89. <span class="sc">Elegie VII.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>Natures lay Ideot.</i> Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant', +as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the +meaning of 'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That +word has a different origin from 'lay' (Lat. <i>laicus</i>), and the earliest +example of it given in O.E.D. is dated 1688.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 7-8. <i>Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i>Desperately hot, or changing feaverously.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'call' of <i>1633</i> is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is +dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads +'cast', from <i>S</i>; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows +how little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the +phrase 'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the +O.E.D. gives one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be +the right word here:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Able to cast his disease without his water.</p> +<p class="i32">Greene's <i>Menaphon</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken in +close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the eyes +water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing +feverously.'</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If thou couldst, Doctor, cast</p> +<p>The water of my land, find her disease.</p> +<p class="i22">Shakespeare, <i>Macbeth</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> iii. 50.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease, +calling it this or that.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 9 f. <i>I had not taught thee then, the Alphabet</i></p> +<p class="i4"><i> Of flowers, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'<i>Posy</i>, in both its senses, is a contraction of <i>poesy</i>, the flowers +of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that +engraved on a ring.' Weekly, <i>Romance of Words</i>, London, 1912, +p. 134. She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>Remember since, &c.</i> For the idiom compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">Beseech you, sir,</p> +<p>Remember since you owed no more to time</p> +<p>Than I do now. Shakespeare, <i>Winter's Tale</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> i. 219.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>See Franz, <i>Shakespeare-Grammatik</i>, § 559.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.73" id="pageii.73"></a>[pg 73]</span></p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Inlaid thee.</i> The O.E.D. cites this line as the only example +of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or +preservation.' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word +has perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in +another substance.' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such +a setting as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined +and heightened those charms.'</p> + +<p>l. 25. <i>Thy graces and good words my creatures bee.</i> I was tempted +to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of <i>1669</i> and some MSS., +the theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the +kind of conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of <i>1633-54</i> +has the support of so good a MS. as <i>W</i>, and 'good words' is an +Elizabethan idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i20"> He that will give,</p> +<p>Good words to thee will flatter neath abhorring.</p> +<p class="i18">Shakespeare, <i>Coriolanus</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i. 170-1.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In your bad strokes you give good words.</p> +<p class="i18">Shakespeare, <i>Julius Caesar</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> i. 30.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces +and commendations are my work', i.e. either the commendations you +receive, or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with +which you can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of +conversation did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne +sentences'. Compare, in <i>Elegie IX: The Autumnall</i>, the description +of Lady Danvers' conversation:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In all her words, unto all hearers fit,</p> +<p class="i2">You may at Revels, you at Counsaile, sit.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And again, <i>Elegie XVIII: Loves Progresse</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So we her ayres contemplate, words and heart,</p> +<p>And virtues.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 28. <i>Frame and enamell Plate.</i> Compare: 'And therefore they +that thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions +of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good, +will make God bad.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of +course, 'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The +elaborate enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as +common as in the case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. +Britten's <i>Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers</i>, 1904.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 90. <span class="sc">Elegie VIII.</span><a name="pageii.73a" id="pageii.73a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>Muskats</i>, i.e. 'Musk-cats.' The 'muskets' of <i>1669</i> is only +a misprint.</p> + +<p>ll. 5-6. In these lines as they stand in the editions and most of the +MSS. there is clearly something wrong:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.74" id="pageii.74"></a>[pg 74]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,</p> +<p>They seeme no sweat drops but pearle coronets.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>A 'coronet' is not an ornament of the neck, but of the head. The +obvious emendation is that of <i>A25</i>, <i>C</i>, <i>JC</i>, and <i>W</i>, +which Grosart and +Chambers have adopted. A 'carcanet' is a necklace, and carcanets +of pearl were not unusual: see O.E.D., <i>s. v.</i> But why then do the +editions and so many MSS. read 'coronets'? Consideration of this +has convinced me that the original error is not here but in the word +'neck'. Article by article, as in an inventory, Donne contrasts his +mistress and his enemy's. But in the next line he goes on:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ranke sweaty froth thy Mistresse's <i>brow</i> defiles,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>contrasting her brow with that of his mistress, where the sweat drops +seem 'no sweat drops but pearle coronets'.</p> + +<p>The explanation of the error is, probably, that an early copyist +passed in his mind from breast to neck more easily than to brow. +Another explanation is that Donne altered 'brow' to 'neck' +and forgot to alter 'coronets' to 'carcanets'. I do not think this +likely. The force of the poem lies in its contrasts, and the brow +is proverbially connected with sweat. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' &c. +Possibly Donne himself in the first version, or a copy of it, wrote 'neck', +meaning to write 'brow', misled by the proximity and associations of +'breast'. Mr. J. C. Smith has shown that Spenser occasionally +wrote a word which association brought into his mind, but which was +clearly not the word he intended to use, as it is destructive of the +rhyme-scheme. Oddly enough the late Francis Thompson used +'carcanet' in the sense of 'coronet':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Who scarfed her with the morning? and who set</p> +<p class="i2">Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet?</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Ode to the Setting Sun.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">91</span>, l. 10. <i>Sanserra's starved men.</i> 'When I consider +what God did for Goshen in Egypt ... How many Sancerraes he hath +delivered from famines, how many Genevas from plots and machinations.' +<i>Sermons.</i></p> + +<p>The Protestants in Sancerra were besieged by the Catholics for +nine months in 1573, and suffered extreme privations. Norton quotes +Henri Martin, <i>Histoire de France</i>, ix. 364: 'On se disputa les débris +les plus immondes de toute substance animale ou végétale; on +créa, pour ainsi dire, des aliments monstrueux, impossibles.'</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 13-14. <i>And like vile lying stones in saffrond tinne,</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Or warts, or wheales, they hang upon her skinne.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Following the MSS. I have made 'lying' an epithet attached to +'stones' and substituted 'they hang' for the superficially more +grammatical 'it hangs'. The readings of <i>1633</i>, 'vile stones lying' +and 'it hangs', seem to me just the kind of changes a hasty editor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.75" id="pageii.75"></a>[pg 75]</span> +would make, the kind of changes which characterize the Second +Folio of Shakespeare. The stones are not only 'vile'; they are 'lying', +inasmuch as they pretend to be what they are not, as the 'saffron'd +tinne' pretends to be gold.</p> + +<p>l. 19. <i>Thy head</i>: i.e. 'the head of thy mistress.' Donne continues +this construction in ll. 25, 32, 39, and I have restored it from the +later editions and MSS. at l. 34, 'thy gouty hand.'</p> + +<p>l. 34. <i>thy gouty hand</i>: 'thy' is the reading of all the editions except +<i>1633</i> and of all the MSS. except <i>JC</i> and <i>S</i>. It is probably +right, +corresponding to l. 19 'Thy head' and l. 32 'thy tann'd skins'. +Donne uses 'thy' in a condensed fashion for 'the head of thy +mistress', &c.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">92</span>, l. 51. <i>And such.</i> The 'such' of the MSS. is +doubtless right, the 'nice' of the editions being repeated from l. 49.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 92. <span class="sc">Elegie IX.</span><a name="pageii.75a" id="pageii.75a"></a></h3> + +<p>For the date, &c., of this poem, see the introductory note on the +<i>Elegies</i>.</p> + +<p>The text of <i>1633</i> diverges in some points from that of all the +MSS., in some others it agrees with <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. In the +latter case I have retained it, but where <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> agree with +the rest of the MSS. I have corrected <i>1633</i>, e.g.:</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">93</span>, l. 6. <i>Affection here takes Reverences name</i>: +where 'Affection' +seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. <i>But now +shee's gold</i>: where 'They are gold' of <i>1633</i> involves a very loose use +of 'they'. Possibly <i>1633</i> here gives a first version afterwards corrected.</p> + +<p>ll. 29-32. <i>Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c.</i> Herodotus (vii. 31) +tells how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree +which for its beauty (<ins title="Greek: kalleos heineka">κάλλεος +εἵνεκα</ins>) he decked with gold ornaments, +and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, <i>Variae Historiae</i>, ii. 14, <i>De +platano Xerxe amato</i>, attributes his admiration to its size: +<ins title="Greek: en Lydia goun, phasin, idôn phyton eumegethes platanou">ἐν Λυδίᾳ +γοῦν, φασίν, +ἰδὼν φυτὸν +εὐμέγεθες πλατάνου</ins>, +&c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858) size is taken as equivalent to +height, 'quum vidisset proceram platanum,' but the reference is more +probably to extent. Pliny, <i>N. H.</i> 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size +of certain planes under which companies of men camped and slept.</p> + +<p>The quotation from Aelian confirms the <i>1633</i> reading, 'none being +so large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow. +The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do +not understand.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">94</span>, l. 47. <i>naturall lation.</i> This, the reading of the +great majority of the MSS., is obviously correct and explains the vacillation +of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The O.E.D. +quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to another.' +Fotherby (1619);</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Make me the straight and oblique lines,</p> +<p>The motions, lations, and the signs. (Herrick, <i>Hesper.</i> 64);</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.76" id="pageii.76"></a>[pg 76]</span> +and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially +astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of <i>1633</i> is an unusual +order in Donne; the 'natural station' of <i>1635-69</i> is the opposite of +motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the +editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a +misreading of 'lation'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 95. <span class="sc">Elegie X.</span></h3> + +<p>The title of this Elegy, <i>The Dream</i>, was given it in <i>1635</i>, perhaps +wrongly. <i>S96</i> seems to come nearer with <i>Picture</i>. The 'Image of +her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a +picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams +come to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat +obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be +strengthened if the lady herself were present.</p> + +<p>l. 26. <i>Mad with much heart, &c.</i> Aristotle made the heart the +source of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these +to the brain. See note to p. <a href="#pageii.79a">99</a>, l. 100.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">96</span>. <a name="pageii.76a" id="pageii.76a"></a><span class="sc">Elegie XI.</span></h3> + +<p>Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a +metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite +Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond +of the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; +she hath a legion of angels' (<i>Merry Wives</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 60). But +Donne +knows more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can +pursue the analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun +on angels the only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, +pistolets, and gold are all played with in turn. The poem was a +favourite with Ben Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by +heart' (<i>Drummond's Conversations</i>, ed. Laing).</p> + +<p>The text of the poem, which was first printed in <i>1635</i> (Marriot +having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633), is +based on a MS. closely resembling <i>Cy</i> and <i>P</i>, and differing in +several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS., +including <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and <i>W</i>. I have endeavoured +rather to give +this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either to +substitute another or contaminate the two. When <i>Cy</i> and <i>P</i> go over +to the side of the other MSS. it is a fair inference that the editions +have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more open one.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">97</span>, l. 24. <i>their naturall Countreys rot</i>: i.e. 'their +native Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of +that Countrey', Greene, <i>News from Hell</i> (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This +is the reading of <i>Cy</i>, and the order of the words in the other MSS. +points to its being the reading of the MS. from which <i>1635</i> was +printed.</p> + +<p>l. 26. <i>So pale, so lame, &c.</i> The chipping and debasement of the +French crown is frequently referred to, and Shakespeare is fond of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.77" id="pageii.77"></a>[pg 77]</span> +punning on the word. But two extracts from Stow's <i>Chronicle</i> +(<i>continued ... by</i> Edmund Howes), 1631, will throw some light on the +references to coins in this poem: In the year 1559 took place the +last abasement of English money whereby testons and groats were +lowered in value and called in, 'and according to the last valuation of +them, she gave them fine money of cleane silver for them commonly +called Sterling money, and from this time there was no manner of +base money coyned or used in England ... but all English monies +were made of gold and silver, which is not so in any other nation +whatsoever, but have sundry sorts of copper money.'</p> + +<p>'The 9. of November, the French crowne that went currant for six +shillings foure pence, was proclaimed to be sixe shillings.'</p> + +<p>In 1561, 'The fifteenth of November, the Queenes Maiestie +published a Proclamation for divers small pieces of silver money to +be currant, as the sixe pence, foure pence, three pence, 2 pence and +a peny, three half-pence, and 3 farthings: and also forbad all +forraigne coynes to be currant within the same Realme, as well gold +as silver, calling them all into her Maiesties Mints, except two sorts +of crownes of gold, the one the French crowne, the other the Flemish +crowne.' The result was the bringing in of large sums in 'silver plates: +and as much or more in pistolets, and other gold of Spanish coynes, +and one weeke in pistolets and other Spanish gold 16000 pounds, all +these to be coyned with the Queenes stamps.'</p> + +<p>l. 29. <i>Spanish Stamps still travelling.</i> Grosart regards this as an +allusion to the wide diffusion of Spanish coins. The reference is more +pointed. It is to the prevalence of Spanish bribery, the policy of +securing paid agents in every country. It was by money that Parma +secured his first hold on the revolted provinces. Gardiner has shown +that Lord Cranborne, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, accepted a +pension from the Spanish king (<i>Hist. of England</i>, i, p. 215). The +discovery of the number of his Court who were in Spanish pay came +as a profound shock to James at a later period. The invariable +charge brought by one Dutch statesman against another was of being +in the pay of the Spaniard.</p> + +<p>'It is his Indian gold,' says Raleigh, speaking of the King of Spain +in 1596, 'that endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it +creeps into councils, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty at +liberty in the greatest monarchies thereof.'</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 40-1. <i>Gorgeous France ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;</i></p> +<p class="i6"> <i>Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day:</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The punctuation of <i>1669</i> has the support generally of the MSS., +but in matters of punctuation these are not a very safe guide. As +punctuated in <i>1635</i>, 'ragged and decay'd' are epithets of Scotland, +contrasting her with 'Gorgeous France'. I think, however, that the +antithesis to 'gorgeous' is 'ruin'd, ragged and decay'd', describing +the condition of France after the pistolets of Spain had done their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.78" id="pageii.78"></a>[pg 78]</span> +work. The epithet applied to Scotland is 'which knew no state', the +antithesis being 'proud in one day'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">98</span>, ll. 51-4. <i>Much hope which they should nourish, +&c.</i> Professor Norton proposed that the last two of these lines should run:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Will vanish if thou, Love, let them alone,</p> +<p>For thou wilt love me less when they are gone;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>but that 'alone' is a misprint for 'atone.' This is unnecessary, +and there is no authority for 'atone'. What Donne says, in +the cynical vein of <i>Elegie VI</i>, 9-10, is: 'If thou love me let +my crowns alone, for the poorer I grow the less you will love me. +I shall lose the qualities which you admired in me when you saw +them through the glamour of wealth.'</p> + +<p>l. 55. <i>And be content.</i> The majority of the MSS. begin a new +paragraph here and read:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Oh, be content, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne would almost seem to have read or seen (he was a frequent +theatre-goer) the old play of <i>Soliman and Perseda</i> (pr. 1599). There +the lover, having lost a carcanet, sends a cryer through the street and +offers one hundred crowns reward. Chambers notes a similar case +in <i>The Puritan</i> (1607). Lost property is still cried by the bellman in +northern Scottish towns. The custom of resorting in such cases to +'some dread Conjurer' is frequently referred to. See Jonson's <i>Alchemist</i> +for the questions with which their customers approached conjurers.</p> + +<p>ll. 71-2. <i>So in the first falne angels, &c.</i> Aquinas discusses the +question: 'Utrum intellectus daemonis sit obtenebratus per privationem +cognitionis omnis veritatis.' After stating the arguments for such +privation he replies: 'Sed contra est quod Dionysius dicit ... quod +"data sunt daemonibus aliqua dona, quae nequaquam mutata esse +dicimus, sed sunt integra et splendidissima." Inter ista, autem, naturalia +dona est cognitio veritatis.' Aquinas then explains that knowledge +is twofold, that which comes by nature, and that which comes by +grace: and that the latter again is twofold, that which is purely +speculative, and that which is 'affectiva, producens amorem Dei'. +'Harum autem trium cognitionum prima in daemonibus nec est +ablata nec diminuta: consequitur enim ipsam naturam Angeli, qui +secundum suam naturam est quidam intellectus vel mens. Propter +simplicitatem autem suae substantiae a natura eius aliquid subtrahi +non potest.' Devils, therefore, have natural knowledge in an +eminent degree (<i>splendidissima</i>); they have even the knowledge +which comes by grace in so far as God chooses to bestow it, for His +own purposes, by the mediation of angels or 'per aliqua temporalia +divinae virtutis effecta' (Augustine). But of the knowledge which +leads to good they have nothing: 'tenendum est firmiter secundum +fidem catholicam, quod et voluntas bonorum Angelorum confirmata +est in bono, et voluntas daemonum obstinata est in malo.' <i>Summa</i> I.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.79" id="pageii.79"></a>[pg 79]</span></p> + +<p>lxiv. 1-2. They have 'wisdom and knowledge', but it is immovably +set to do ill.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 77-8. <i>Pitty these Angels; yet their dignities</i></p> +<p class="i6"> <i>Passe Vertues, Powers and Principalities.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>There is a good deal of vacillation in the MSS. as to the punctuation +of 'Angels yet', some placing the semicolon before, others after +'yet'. The difference is not great, but that which I have adopted, +though it has least authority, brings out best what I take to be the +meaning of these somewhat difficult lines. 'Pity these Angels, for +yet (i.e. until they are melted down and lose their form) they, as +good angels, are superior in dignity to Vertues, Powers, and Principalities +among the bad angels.' The order of the Angelic beings, +which the Middle Ages took from Pseudo-Dionysius, consisted of +nine Orders in three Hierarchies. The first and highest Hierarchy +included (beginning with the highest Order) Seraphim, Cherubim, and +Thrones; the second, Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; the third, +Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Thus the three Orders mentioned +by Donne are all in rank superior to mere Angels; but the lowest +Order of Good Angels is superior to the highest Order of Evil Spirits, +although before their fall these belonged to the highest Orders. +Probably, however, there is a second and satiric reference in Donne's +words which explains his choice of Vertues, Powers, and Principalities. +In the other sense of the words Angels are coins, money; and the +power of money surpasses that of earthly Vertues, Powers, and +Principalities. This may explain, further, why Donne singles out +'Vertues, Powers, and Principalities'. One would expect that, to +make the antithesis between good and bad angels as complete as +possible, he would have named the three highest orders, Seraphim, +Cherubim, and Thrones. But the three orders which he does mention +are the highest Orders which travel, as money does. The angels are +divided into <i>Assistentes</i> and <i>Administrates</i>. To the former class +belong all the Orders of the first Hierarchy, and the Dominions of +the second. The Vertues are thus the highest Order of <i>Administrantes</i>. +Aquinas, <i>Summa</i>, cxii. 3, 4. The <i>Assistentes</i> are those who +'only stand and wait'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">99</span>, <a name="pageii.79a" id="pageii.79a"></a>l. 100. <i>rot thy moist braine</i>: So Sylvester's +<i>Du Bartas</i>, +<span class="sc">I.</span> ii. 18:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i24"> the Brain</p> +<p>Doth highest place of all our Frame retain,</p> +<p>And tempers with its moistful coldness so</p> +<p>Th'excessive heat of other parts below.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This was Aristotle's opinion (<i>De Part. Anim.</i> II. 7), refuted by +Galen, who, like Plato, made the brain the seat of the soul and the +generator of the animal spirits. See II. p. <a href="#pageii.45">45</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">100</span>, ll. 112, 114. <i>Gold is Restorative ... 'tis +cordiall.</i> 'Most +men say as much of gold, and some other minerals, as these have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.80" id="pageii.80"></a>[pg 80]</span> +done of precious stones. Erastus still maintaineth the opposite part, +Disput. in Paracelsum, cap. 4, fol. 196, he confesseth of gold, that it +makes the heart merry, but in no other sense but as it is in a miser's +chest:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>——at mihi plaudo</p> +<p>——simulac nummos contemplor in arcâ</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>as he said in the poet: it so revives the spirits, and is an excellent +receipt against melancholy,</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For gold in phisik is a cordial,</p> +<p>Therefore he lovede gold in special.'</p> +<p class="i12">Burton, <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, Pt. 2, Sub. 4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Elegie XII.</span><a name="pageii.80a" id="pageii.80a"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">101</span>, l. 37. <i>And mad'st us sigh and glow</i>: 'sigh and +blow' has been the somewhat inelegant reading of all editions hitherto.</p> + +<p>l. 42. <i>And over all thy husbands towring eyes.</i> The epithet +'towring' is strange and the MSS. show some vacillation. Most of +them read 'towred', probably the past participle of the same verb, +though Grosart alters to 'two red'—not a very poetical description. +<i>RP31</i> here diverges from <i>H40</i> and reads 'loured', perhaps for +'lurid', but both these MSS. alter the order of the words and attach +the epithet to 'husbands', which is manifestly wrong, and the Grolier +Club edition prints 'lowering' without comment, regarding, I suppose, +'t' as a mistake for 'l'.</p> + +<p>The 'towring' of <i>1669</i> and <i>TCD</i> is probably correct, being a bold +metaphor from hawking, and having the force practically of 'threatening'. +The hawk towers threateningly above its prey before it +'sousing kills with a grace'. If 'towring' is not right, 'lowring' is +the most probable emendation.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">102</span>, l. 43. <i>That flam'd with oylie sweat of +jealousie.</i> This +is the reading of all the MSS., and as on the whole their text is superior +I have followed it. If 'oylie' is, as I think, the right epithet, it +means 'moist', as in 'an oily palm', with perhaps a reference to the +inflammability of oil. If 'ouglie '(i.e. ugly) be preferred it is a forcible +transferred epithet.</p> + +<p>l. 49. <i>most respects?</i> This is the reading of all the MSS., and +'best' in <i>1669</i> is probably an emendation. The use of 'most' as an +adjective, superlative of 'great', is not uncommon:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>God's wrong is most of all.</p> +<p class="i20">Shakespeare, <i>Rich. III</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> iv. 377.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though in this place most master wear no breeches.</p> +<p class="i24">Ibid., <i>2 Hen. VI</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 144.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 54. I can make no exact sense of this line either as it stands +in <i>1669</i> or in the MSS. One is tempted to combine the versions +and read:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Yea thy pale colours, and thy panting heart,</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.81" id="pageii.81"></a>[pg 81]</span> +the 'secrets of our Art' being all the signs by which they communicated +to one another their mutual affection. But it is necessary to +explain the presence of 'inwards' or 'inward' in both the versions.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">103</span>, l. 79. <i>The Summer how it ripened in the eare</i>; +This fine passage has been rather spoiled in all editions hitherto by printing in +this line 'yeare' for 'eare', even in modernized texts. The MSS. +and the sense both show that 'eare' is the right word, and indeed +I have no doubt that 'year' in <i>1635</i> was simply due to a compositor's +or copyist's pronunciation. It occurs again in the 1669 edition in +the song <i>Twicknam Garden</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.28a">28</a>, l. 3):</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And at mine eyes, and at mine years,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>These forms in 'y' are common in Sylvester's <i>Du Bartas</i>, e.g. +'yerst'. The O.E.D. gives the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries +as those in which 'yere' was a recognized pronunciation of 'ear', but +it is found sporadically later and has misled editors. Thus in Sir +George Etherege's letter to the Earl of Middleton from Ratisbon, +printed in Dryden's <i>Works</i> (Scott and Saintsbury), xi, pp. 38-40, some +lines run:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>These formed the jewel erst did grace</p> +<p>The cap of the first Grave o' the race,</p> +<p>Preferred by Graffin Marian</p> +<p>To adorn the handle of her fan;</p> +<p>And, as by old record appears,</p> +<p>Worn since in Kunigunda's years;</p> +<p>Now sparkling in the Froein's hair,</p> +<p>No rocket breaking in the air</p> +<p>Can with her starry head compare.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In a modernized text, as this is, surely 'Kunigunda's years' should be +'Kunigunda's ears'.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 93-4. <i>That I may grow enamoured on your mind</i>,</p> +<p class="i6"> <i>When my own thoughts I there reflected find.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'I there neglected find' has been the reading of all editions +hitherto—a strange reason for being enamoured.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">104</span>, l. 96. <i>My deeds shall still be what my words are +now</i>: +'words' suits the context better than either the 'deeds' of <i>1635-69</i> +or 'thoughts' of <i>A25</i>.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 104. <span class="sc">Elegie XIII.</span><a name="pageii.81a" id="pageii.81a"></a></h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">105</span>, ll. 13-14. <i>Liv'd Mantuan now againe,</i></p> +<p class="i4"><i> That foemall Mastix, to limme with his penne</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers, following the editions from <i>1639</i> onwards, drops the +comma after 'Mastix', which suggests that Julia is the 'foemall +Mastix', not Mantuan. By Mantuan he understands Virgil, and +supposes there is a reference to the 'flammis armataque Chimaera' +of <i>Aen.</i> vi. 289. The Mantuan of the text is the 'Old Mantuan' of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.82" id="pageii.82"></a>[pg 82]</span> +<i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>, iv. 2. 92. Donne calls Mantuan the scourge +of women because of his fourth eclogue <i>De natura mulierum</i>. Norton +quotes from it:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Femineum servile genus, crudele, superbum.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The O.E.D. quotes from S. Holland, <i>Zara</i> (1656): 'It would +have puzzell'd that Female Mastix Mantuan to have limn'd this she +Chymera'—obviously borrowed from this poem. The dictionary +gives examples of 'mastix' in other compounds.</p> + +<p>The reference to Mantuan as a woman-hater is a favourite one +with the prose-pamphleteers: 'To this might be added <i>Mantuans</i> +invective against them, but that pittie makes me refraine from +renewing his worne out complaints, the wounds whereof the former +forepast feminine sexe hath felt. I, but here the <i>Homer</i> of Women +hath forestalled an objection, saying that <i>Mantuans</i> house holding +of our Ladie, he was enforced by melancholic into such vehemencie +of speech', &c. Nash, <i>The Anatomy of Absurdity</i> (ed. McKerrow, +i. 12).</p> + +<p>'Where I leave you to consider, Gentlemen, how far unmeete +women are to have such reproches laid upon them, as sundrye large +lipt fellows have done: who when they take a peece of work in hand, +and either for want of matter, or lack of wit, are half gravelled, then +they must fill up the page with slaundering of women, who scarsly +know what a woman is: but if I were able either by wit or arte to +be their defender, or had the law in my hand to dispose as I list, +which would be as unseemely, as an Asse to treade the measures: +yet, if it were so, I would correct <i>Mantuans Egloge</i>, intituled +<i>Alphus</i>: +or els if the Authour were alive, I would not doubt to persuade him +in recompence of his errour, to frame a new one,' &c. Greene, +<i>Mamillia</i> (ed. Grosart), 106-7. Greene is probably the '<i>Homer</i> of +Women' referred to in the first extract.</p> + +<p>l. 19. <i>Tenarus.</i> In the <i>Anatomy of the World</i> 'Tenarif' is thus +spelt in the editions of 1633 to 1669, and Grosart declared that the +reference here is to that island. It is of course to 'Taenarus' in +Laconia. There was in that headland a sulphurous cavern believed +to be a passage to Hades. Through it Orpheus descended to recover +Eurydice. Ovid, <i>Met.</i> x. 13; Paus. iii. 14, 25.</p> + +<p>l. 28. <i>self-accusing oaths</i>: 'oaths' is the reading of the MSS., +'loaths' of the editions. The word 'loaths' in the sense of 'dislike, +hatred, ill-will' is found as late as 1728 (O.E.D.). 'If your Horse +... grow to a loath of his meat.' Topsell (1607). A self-accusing +loath may mean a hatred, e.g. of good, which condemns yourself. +In the context, however, 'cavils, untroths,' I am inclined to think +that 'oaths' is right. Among the malevolent evils with which her +breast swarms are oaths accusing others of crimes, which accuse herself, +either because she is willing to implicate herself so long as she +secures her enemy's ruin, or because the information is of a kind +that could be got only by complicity in crime.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.83" id="pageii.83"></a>[pg 83]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 105. <span class="sc">Elegie XIV.</span></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">106</span>, l. 6. <i>I touch no fat sowes grease.</i> Probably 'I +say nothing libellous as to the way in which this or that rich man has acquired +his wealth'. I cannot find the proverb accurately explained, or given +in quite this form, in any collection.</p> + +<p>l. 10. <i>will redd or pale.</i> The reading of <i>1669</i> and the two MSS. +is doubtless correct, 'looke' being an editorial insertion as the use of +'red' as a verb was growing rare. If 'looke' had belonged to the +original text 'counsellor' would probably have had the second syllable +elided. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Roses out-red their [i.e. women's] lips and cheeks,</p> +<p class="i2">Lillies their whiteness stain.</p> +<p class="i32">Brome, <i>The Resolve</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 21. <i>the number of the Plaguy Bill</i>: i.e. the weekly bill of deaths +by the plague. By a Privy Council order of April 9, 1604, the +theatres were permitted to be open 'except ther shall happen +weeklie to die of the Plague above the number of thirtie'. The +number was later raised to forty. The theatres were repeatedly +closed for this reason between July 10, 1606, and 1610. In 1609 +especially the fear of infection made it difficult for the companies, +driven from London, to gain permission to act anywhere. There +were no performances at Court during the winter 1609-10. Murray, +<i>English Dramatic Companies</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>the Custome Farmers.</i> The Privy Council registers abound +in references to the farmers of the customs and their conflicts with +the merchants. As they had to pay dearly for their farm, they were +tempted to press the law against the merchants in exacting dues.</p> + +<p>l. 23. <i>Of the Virginian plot.</i> Two expeditions were sent to Virginia +in 1609, in May under Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, +and Captain Newport, and at the end of the year under Lord de la +Warr, 'who by free election of the Treasurer and counsell of Virginia, +and with the full consent of the generality of that company was constituted +and authorized, during his natural life to be Lord Governor +and Captaine Generall of all the English Collonies planted, or to be +planted in Virginia, according to the tenor of his Majesties letters +patents granted that yeare 1609.' Stow. Speculation in Virginia +stock was encouraged: 'Besides many noblemen, knights, gentlemen, +merchants, and wealthy tradesmen, most of the incorporated trades +of London were induced to take shares in the stock.' Hildreth, +<i>History of the United States</i>, i. 108, quoted by Norton.</p> + +<p>The meaning of 'plot' here is 'device, design, scheme' +(O.E.D.), as 'There have beene divers good plottes devised, and +wise counsells cast allready about reformation of that realme': +Spenser, <i>State of Ireland</i>. Donne uses the word also in the more +original sense of 'a piece of ground, a spot'. See p. <a href="#pageii.94">132</a>, l. 34.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.84" id="pageii.84"></a>[pg 84]</span></p> + +<p>l. 23-4. <i>whether Ward ... the I(n)land Seas.</i> I have taken +'Iland' <i>1635-54</i> as intended for 'Inland', perhaps written 'Ĩland', +not for 'Island'. The edition of 1669 reads 'midland', and there is +no doubt that the Mediterranean was the scene of the career and +exploits of the notorious Ward, whose head-quarters were at Tunis. +The Mediterranean is called the Inland sea in Holland's translation +of Pliny (<i>Hist. of the World</i>, III. <i>The Proeme</i>); and Donne uses the +phrase (with a different application but one borrowed from this +meaning) in the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.308">308</a>, ll. 317-8:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8"> as if his vast wombe were</p> +<p>Some Inland sea.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Previous editors read 'Island seas' but do not explain the reference, +except Grosart, who declares that the 'Iland seas are those around the +West Indian and other islands. The Midland seas (as in <i>1669</i>) were +probably the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Seas'. He cites no +authority; nor have we proof that Ward was ever in these seas. +Writing to Salisbury on the 7th of March, 1607-8, Wotton says: +'The voice is here newly arrived that Warde hath taken another +Venetian vessel of good value, so as the hatred of him increaseth +among them and fully as fast as the fear of him. These are his +effects. Now to give your Lordship some taste of his language. One +Moore, captain of an English ship that tradeth this way ... was hailed +by him not long since a little without the Gulf, and answering that he +was bound for Venice, "Tell those flat caps" (said he) "who have +been the occasion that I am banished out of my country that before +I have done with them I will make them sue for pardon." In this +style he speaketh.' Pearsall Smith, <i>Life and Letters of ... Wotton</i>, ii. +415. Mr. Pearsall Smith adds in a note that Ward hoped to 'buy or +threaten the English Government into pardoning him', and that some +attempt was also made by the Venetian Government to procure his +assassination.</p> + +<p>If 'Island' be the right reading the sea referred to must be the +Adriatic. The Islands of the Illyrian coast were at various times the +haunt of pirates. But I have found no instance of the phrase in this +sense.</p> + +<p>l. 25. <i>the Brittaine Burse.</i> This was built by the Earl of Salisbury +on the site of an 'olde long stable' in the Strand on the north side of +Durham House: 'And upon Tuesday the tenth of Aprill this yeere, +one thousand sixe hundred and nine, many of the upper shoppes were +richly furnished with wares, and the next day after that, the King, +Queene, and Prince, the Lady Elizabeth and the Duke of Yorke, +with many great Lords, and chiefe Ladies, came thither, and were +there entertained with pleasant speeches, giftes, and ingenious +devices, and then the king gave it a name, and called it Brittaines +Burse.' Stow, <i>Chronicle</i>, p. 894.</p> + +<p>l. 27. <i>Of new built Algate, and the More-field crosses.</i> Aldgate, one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.85" id="pageii.85"></a>[pg 85]</span> +of the four principal gates in the City wall, was taken down in 1606 +and rebuilt by 1609: Stow, <i>Survey</i>. Norton refers to Jonson's +<i>Silent Woman</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i: 'How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? +Were the people suffered to see the city's Love and Charity while +they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished?'</p> + +<p>'The More-field crosses' are apparently the walks at Moor-field. +Speaking of the embellishment of London which ensued from the +long duration of peace, Stow says, 'And lastly, whereof there is a +more generall, and particular notice taken by all persons resorting and +residing in London, the new and pleasant walks on the north side of +the city, anciently called More fields, which field (untill the third +yeare of King James) was a most noysome and offensive place, being +a generall laystall, a rotten morish ground, whereof it tooke first the +name.' Stow, <i>Chronicle</i>. For the ditches which crossed the field +were substituted 'most faire and royall walkes'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">107</span>, l. 41. The '(<i>quoth Hee</i>)' of the 1669 edition is +obviously correct. 'Hee' is required both by rhyme and reason. Mr. Chambers +has ingeniously put '"True" quoth I' into a parenthesis, as a remark +interjected by the poet. But apart from the rhyme the 'quoth Hee' +is needed to explain the transition to direct speech. Without it the +long speech of the citizen begins very awkwardly.</p> + +<p>ll. 42-44. These lines seem to echo the Royal Proclamation +of 1609, though the reference is different: 'in this speciall Proclamation +his Majestic declared how grievously, the people of this +latter age and times are fallen into verball profession, as well of +religion, as of all commendable morall vertues, but wanting the actions +and deeds of so specious a profession, and the insatiable and +immeasurable itching boldnesse of the spirits, tongues and pens of +most men.' Stow, <i>Chronicle</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 46. <i>Bawd, Tavern-keeper, Whore and Scrivener</i>; The singular +number of the MS. gives as good a sense as the plural and a better +rhyme.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>l. 47. <i>The much of Privileg'd kingsmen, and the store</i></p> +<p class="i4"><i> Of fresh protections, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'We have many bankrupts daily, and as many protections, which +doth marvellously hinder all manner of commerce.' Chamberlain to +Carleton, Dec. 31, 1612. By 'kingsmen' I understand noblemen +holding monopolies from the King. I do not understand the +'kinsmen' of the editions. By 'protections' is meant 'exemptions +from suits in law', especially suits for debt. The London tradesmen +were much cheated by the protections granted to the servants and +followers of members of Parliament.</p> + +<p>l. 65. <i>found nothing but a Rope.</i> I cannot identify this Rope. +In the <i>Aulularia</i> of Plautus, when Euclio finds his treasure gone he +laments in the usual manner. At l. 721 he says, 'Heu me miserum, +misere perii, male perditu', <i>pessume ornatus eo</i>.' The last words may +have been taken as meaning 'I have the rope round my neck'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.86" id="pageii.86"></a>[pg 86]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 108. Elegie XV.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 12. Following <i>RP31</i> and also Jonson's <i>Underwoods</i> I have taken +'at once' as going with 'Both hot and cold', not with 'make life, and +death' as in <i>1633-69</i>. This is one of the poems which <i>1633</i> derived +from some other source than <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>.</p> + +<p>ll. 16-18 (<i>all sweeter ... the rest</i>) Chambers has overlooked +altogether the <i>1633</i> reading 'sweeter'. He prints 'sweeten'd' from +<i>1635-69</i>. It is clear from the MSS. that this is an editor's amendment +due to Donne's 'all sweeter' suggesting, perhaps intentionally, 'all +the sweeter'. By dropping the bracket Chambers has left at least +ambiguous the construction of 17-18: <i>And the divine impression of +stolne kisses That sealed the rest.</i> Does this, as in <i>1633</i>, belong to +the +parenthesis, or is 'the divine impression' to be taken with 'so many +accents sweet, so many sighes' and 'so many oathes and teares' as +part subject to 'should now prove empty blisses'. I prefer the <i>1633</i> +arrangement, which has the support of the MSS., though the punctuation +of these is apt to be careless. The accents, sighs, oaths, and tears +were all made sweeter by having been stolen with fear and trembling. +This is how the Grolier Club editor takes it; Grosart and Chambers +prefer to follow <i>1635-69</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page 109</span>, l. 34. I do not know whence Chambers derived his +reading 'drift' for 'trust'—perhaps from an imperfect copy of <i>1633</i>. +He attributes it to all the editions prior to 1669. This is an +oversight.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">110</span>, ll. 59 f. <i>I could renew, &c.</i> Compare Ovid, +<i>Amores</i>, +III. ii. 1-7.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Non ego nobilium sedeo studiosus equorum;</p> +<p> Cui tamen ipsa faves, vincat ut ille precor.</p> +<p>Ut loquerer tecum veni tecumque sederem,</p> +<p> Ne tibi non notus, quem facis, esset amor.</p> +<p>Tu cursum spectas, ego te; spectemus uterque</p> +<p> Quod iuvat, atque oculos pascat uterque suos.</p> +<p>O, cuicumque faves, felix agitator equorum!</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 111. Elegie XVI.</span><a name="pageii.86a" id="pageii.86a"></a></h3> + +<p>A careful study of the textual notes to this poem will show that +there is a considerable difference between the text of this poem as +given for the first time in <i>1635</i>, and that of the majority of the MSS. +It is very difficult, however, to decide between them as the differences +are not generally such as to suggest that one reading is necessarily +right, the other wrong. The chief variants are these: 7 'parents' and +'fathers'. Here I fancy the 'parents' of the MSS. is right, and that +'fathers' in the editions and in a late MS. like <i>O'F</i> is due to the +identification +of Donne's mistress with his wife. Only the father of Anne More +was alive at the time of their first acquaintance. It is not at all certain, +however, that this poem is addressed to Anne More, and in any case +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.87" id="pageii.87"></a>[pg 87]</span> +Donne would probably have disguised the details. The change of +'parents' to 'fathers' is more likely than the opposite. In l. 12 'wayes' +(edd.) and 'meanes' (MSS.) are practically indistinguishable; nor +is there much to choose between the two versions of l. 18: 'My soule +from other lands to thee shall soare' (edd.) and 'From other lands +my soule towards thee shall soare' (MSS.). In each case the version of +the editions is slightly the better. In l. 28, on the other hand, I have +adopted 'mindes' without hesitation although here the MSS. vary. +There is no question of changing the mind, but there is of changing +the mind's habit, of adopting a boy's cast of thought and manner: +as Rosalind says,</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16"> and in my heart</p> +<p>Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,</p> +<p>We'll have a swashing and a martial outside,</p> +<p>As many other mannish cowards have</p> +<p>That do outface it with their semblances.</p> +<p class="i24"> <i>As You Like It</i>, I. iii. 114-18.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In l. 35 the reading 'Lives fuellers', i.e. 'Life's fuellers', which +is found in such early and good MSS. as <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and +<i>W</i>, is +very remarkable. If I were convinced that it is correct I should +regard it as decisive and prefer the MS. readings throughout. But +'Loves fuellers', though also a strange phrase, seems more easy of +interpretation, and applicable.</p> + +<p>In l. 37 there can, I think, be no doubt that the original reading is +preserved by <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>TCD</i>, and <i>W</i>.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Will quickly knowe thee, and knowe thee, and, alas!</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The sudden, brutal change in the sense of the word 'knowe' is +quite in Donne's manner. The reasons for omitting or softening it +are obvious, and may excuse my not restoring it. The whole of these +central lines reveal that strange bad taste, some radical want of +delicacy, which mars not only Donne's poems and lighter prose but +even at times the sermons. In l. 49 the reading of the MSS. <i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>; <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and <i>W</i> is also +probably original:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Nor praise, nor dispraise me; Blesse nor curse.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is not uncommon in Donne's poetry to find a syllable dropped +with the effect of increasing the stress on a rhetorically emphatic word, +here 'Blesse'. An editor would be sure to supply 'nor'.</p> + +<p>Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and +Fletcher's <i>Philaster</i> (<i>Specimens of English Dramatic Poets</i>, 1808). +It is clear that he used a copy of the 1669 edition, for he reads 35 'Lives +fuellers', and also 42 'Aydroptique' for 'Hydroptique'. Both these +mistakes were corrected in <i>1719</i>. Donne speaks in his sermons of +'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. <i>Sermons</i> 80. 10. 99.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">112</span>, l. 44. <i>England is onely a worthy Gallerie</i>: i.e. +entrance hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.88" id="pageii.88"></a>[pg 88]</span> +this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a +better Country: for, <i>if in this life only</i>,' &c. <i>Sermons</i> 50. 30. +270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not <i>two Worlds</i>;... +They are not <i>two Houses</i>; This is the <i>Gallery</i>, and that the +<i>Bedchamber</i> of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no ruine.' +<i>Sermons</i> 50. 43. 399.</p> + +<p>In connexion with the general theme of this poem it may be noted +that in 1605 Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of the Earl of +Leicester, who like Donne served in the Cadiz and Islands expeditions, +left England accompanied by the beautiful Elizabeth Southwell disguised +as a page. At this period the most fantastic poetry was never +more fantastic than life itself.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 113. Elegie XVII.</span><a name="pageii.88a" id="pageii.88a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 12. <i>wide and farr.</i> The MSS. here correct an obvious error of +the editions.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">114</span>, l. 24. This line is found only in <i>A10</i>, which omits the +next eleven lines. It may belong to a shorter version of the poem, but +it fits quite well into the context.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">115</span>, l. 58. <i>daring eyes.</i> The epithet looks as though it had +been repeated from the line above, and perhaps 'darling' or 'darting' +may have been the original reading. However, both the MSS. agree +with the editions, and the word is probably used in two distinct senses, +'bold, adventurous' with 'armes' and 'dazzling' with 'eyes'. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12"> O now no more</p> +<p>Shall his perfections, like the sunbeams, dare</p> +<p>The purblind world; in heaven those glories are.</p> +<p class="i2">Campion, <i>Elegie upon the Untimely Death of Prince Henry</i>.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">Let his Grace go forward</p> +<p>And dare us with his cap like larks.</p> +<p class="i16"> Shakespeare, <i>Henry VIII</i>, III. ii. 282.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This refers to the custom of 'daring' or dazzling larks with a mirror.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page 116. Elegie XVIII.</span><a name="pageii.88b" id="pageii.88b"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">117</span>, ll. 31-2. <i>Men to such Gods, &c.</i> Donne has in view +here the different kinds of sacrifice described by Porphyry:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>How to devote things living in due form</p> +<p>My verse shall tell, thou in thy tablets write.</p> +<p>For gods of earth and gods of heaven each three;</p> +<p>For heavenly pure white; for gods of earth</p> +<p>Cattle of kindred hue divide in three,</p> +<p class="i2">And on the altar lay thy sacrifice.</p> +<p class="i2">For gods infernal bury deep, and cast</p> +<p class="i2">The blood into a trench. For gentle Nymphs</p> +<p class="i2">Honey and gifts of Dionysus pour.</p> +<p class="i16">Eusebius: <i>Praeparatio Evangelica</i>, iv. 9</p> +<p class="i20"> (trans. E. H. Gifford, 1903).</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.89" id="pageii.89"></a>[pg 89]</span></p> + +<p>l. 47. <i>The Nose</i> (<i>like to the first Meridian</i>) 'In the state of +nature +we consider the light, as the sunne, to be risen at the Moluccae, +in the farthest East; In the state of the law we consider it as +the sunne come to Ormus, the first Quadrant; but in the Gospel to +be come to the Canaries, the fortunate Ilands, the first Meridian. +Now whatsoever is beyond this, is Westward, towards a Declination.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 68. 688.</p> + +<p>'Longitude is length, and in the heavens it is understood the distance +of any starre or Planet, from the begining of Aries to the place of +the said Planet or Starre ... Otherwise, longitude in the earth, is the +distance of the Meridian of any place, from the Meridian which passeth +over the Isles of Azores, where the beginning of longitude is said to +be.' <i>The Sea-mans Kalender</i>, 1632. But ancient Cosmographers +placed the first meridian at the Canaries. See note to p. <a href="#pageii.150">187</a>, l. 2.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">118</span>, l. 52. <i>Not faynte Canaries but Ambrosiall.</i> The +'Canary' of several MSS. is probably right—an adjective, like 'Ambrosiall'. +By 'faynte' is meant 'faintly odorous' as opposed to 'Ambrosial', i.e. +'divinely fragrant; perfumed as with Ambrosia' (O.E.D.). 'Fruit +that ambrosial smell diffus'd': Milton, <i>Par. Lost</i>, ix. 852. The text +gives an earlier use of both these words in this meaning than any +indicated by the O.E.D. William Morris uses the same adjective in +a somewhat ambiguous way but meaning, I suppose, 'weak, ready +to die':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Where still mid thoughts of August's quivering gold</p> +<p>Folk hoed the wheat, and clipped the vine in trust</p> +<p>Of faint October's purple-foaming must.</p> +<p class="i20"><i>Earthly Paradise, Atalanta's Race.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">119</span>. <span class="sc">Elegie XIX.</span><a name="pageii.89a" id="pageii.89a"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">120</span>, l. 17. <i>then safely tread.</i> The 'safely' of so +many MSS., including <i>W</i>, seems to me a more likely reading than 'softly'. +The latter was probably suggested by the 'soft' of the following line. +The 'safely' means of course that even without her shoes she will +not be hurt.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Ill spirits.</i> It is not easy to decide between the 'Ill' of +<i>1669</i> and some MSS. and the 'All' of some other MSS. Besides those +enumerated, two lesser MSS., viz. the Sloane MSS. 542 and 1792, +read 'all'.</p> + +<p>In <i>Elegie IV</i>, l. 68, 'all' is written for 'ill' in <i>B</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">121</span>, l. 30. <i>How blest am I in this discovering thee!</i> +The 'this' of almost all the MSS. is supported by the change of 'discovering' +into 'discovery' of <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, one way of evading the rather +unusual construction, 'this' with a verbal noun followed by an object. +The alteration of 'this' to 'thus' in <i>1669</i> is another. But the construction, +though bold, is not inexcusable, and Donne wishes to lay the +stress not on the manner of the discovery, but on the discovery itself, +comparing it (in a very characteristic manner) to the discovery of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.90" id="pageii.90"></a>[pg 90]</span> +America. This figure alone is sufficient to establish Donne's authorship, +for he is peculiarly fond of these allusions to voyages, using them +again and again in his sermons. For the use of 'this' with the gerund +compare: 'Sir,—I humbly thank you for this continuing me in your +memory, and enlarging me so far, as to the memory of my Sovereign, +and (I hope) my Master.' <i>Letters</i>, p. 306.</p> + +<p>l. 32. <i>Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.</i> Chambers +reads 'my soul'—I do not know from what source. The metaphor +is from signing and sealing.</p> + +<p>ll. 35-8. <i>Gems which you women use, &c.</i> I have adopted several +emendations from the MSS. In the edition of 1669 the lines are +printed thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">Jems which you women use</p> +<p>Are like Atlantas ball: cast in men's views,</p> +<p>That when a fools eye lighteth on a Jem</p> +<p>His earthly soul may court that, not them:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have adopted 'balls' from several MSS. as agreeing with the story +and with the plural 'Gems'. I have taken 'are' with 'cast in mens +views', regarding 'like Atlantas balls' as parenthetic. Both the metre +and the sense of l. 38 are improved by reading 'covet' for 'court', +though the latter has considerable support. The two words are easily +confused in writing. I have adopted 'theirs' too in preference to +'that' because it is more in Donne's manner as well as strongly supported. +'A man who loves dress and ornaments on a woman loves +not her but what belongs to her; what is accessory, not what is +essential.' Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For he who colour loves, and skin,</p> +<p class="i2">Loves but their oldest clothes.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The antithesis 'theirs not them' is much more pointed than 'that +not them'.</p> + +<p>l. 46. <i>There is no pennance due to innocence.</i> I suspect that the +original cast of this line was that pointed to by the MSS.,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Here is no penance, much less innocence:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Penance and innocence alike are clothed in white. The version in +the text is a softening of the original to make it compatible with the +suggestion that the poem could be read as an epithalamium. 'Why', +says a note in the margin of the Bridgewater MS., 'may not a man +write his own epithalamium if he can do it so modestly?'</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">122</span>. <span class="sc">Elegie XX.</span><a name="pageii.90a" id="pageii.90a"></a></h3> + +<p>Though not printed till 1802 there can be no doubt that this poem +is by Donne. The MS. which Waldron used is the Dyce fellow of +<i>JC</i>. Compare Ovid, <i>Amor.</i> i. 9: 'Militat omnis amans, et habet sua +castra Cupido.'</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.91" id="pageii.91"></a>[pg 91]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 124. <span class="sc">Heroicall Epistle.</span> <i>Sapho to Philaenis.</i></h3> + +<p>I have transferred this poem hither from its place in <i>1635-69</i> +among the sober <i>Letters to Severall Personages</i>. It has obviously +a closer relation to the Elegies, and must have been composed +about the same time. Its genus is the Heroical Epistle modelled on +Ovid, of which Drayton produced the most popular English imitations +in 1597. Donne's was possibly evoked by these and written in +1597-8, but there is no means of dating it exactly. 'Passionating' +and 'conceited' eloquence is the quality of these poems modelled on +Ovid, and whatever one may think of the poem on moral grounds it +is impossible to deny that Donne has caught the tone of the kind, +and written a poem passionate and eloquent in its own not altogether +admirable way. The reader is more than once reminded of Mr. +Swinburne's far less conceited but more diffuse <i>Anactoria</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>As Down, as Stars, &c.</i> 'Down' is probably correct, but +the 'Dowves' (i.e. doves) of <i>P</i> gives the plural as in the other nouns, +and a closer parallel in poetic vividness. We get a series of pictures—doves, +stars, cedars, lilies. The meaning conveyed would be the +same:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i20"> this hand</p> +<p>As soft as doves-downe, and as white as it.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Wint. Tale</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> iv. 374.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But of course swan's down is also celebrated:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i4">Heaven with sweet repose doth crowne</p> +<p>Each vertue softer than the swan's fam'd downe.</p> +<p class="i30">Habington, <i>Castara</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">125</span>, l. 33. Modern editors separate 'thorny' and 'hairy' by +a comma. They should rather be connected by a hyphen as in <i>TCD</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 40. <i>And are, as theeves trac'd, which rob when it snows.</i> This +is doubtless the source of Dryden's figurative description of Jonson's +thefts from the Ancients: 'You track him everywhere in their snow.' +<i>Essay of Dramatic Poesy</i>.</p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<h2>EPITHALAMIONS.<a name="pageii.91a" id="pageii.91a"></a></h2> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">127</span>. The dates of the two chief Marriage Songs are: the +Princess Elizabeth, Feb. 14, 1613; the Earl of Somerset, Dec. 26, 1613. +The third is an earlier piece of work, dating from the years when +Donne was a student at Lincoln's Inn. It is found in <i>W</i>, following +the <i>Satyres</i> and <i>Elegies</i> and preceding the <i>Letters</i>, being +probably +the only one written when the collection in the first part of that +MS. was made.</p> + +<p>While quite himself in his treatment of the theme of this kind of +poem, Donne comes in it nearer to Spenser than in any other +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.92" id="pageii.92"></a>[pg 92]</span> +kind. In glow and colour nothing he has written surpasses the +Somerset Epithalamion:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>First her eyes kindle other Ladies eyes,</p> +<p class="i2">Then from their beams their jewels lusters rise,</p> +<p>And from their jewels torches do take fire,</p> +<p class="i2">And all is warmth and light and good desire.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><i>An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song, &c.</i> 'In February following, +the Prince Palatine and that lovely Princess, the Lady Elizabeth, +were married on Bishop Valentine's Day, in all the Pomp and Glory +that so much grandeur could express. Her vestments were white, +the Emblem of Innocency; her Hair dishevel'd hanging down her +Back at length, an Ornament of Virginity; a Crown of pure Gold +upon her Head, the Cognizance of Majesty, being all over beset with +precious Gems, shining <i>like a Constellation</i>; her Train supported by +Twelve young Ladies in White Garments, so adorned with Jewels, +that her passage looked like a Milky-way. She was led to Church by +her Brother Prince Charles, and the Earl of Northampton; the +young Batchelor on the Right Hand, and the old on the left.' +Camden, <i>Annales</i>.</p> + +<p>A full description of the festivities will be found in Nichol's +<i>Progresses of King James</i>, in Stow's <i>Chronicle</i>, and other works. In +a letter to Mrs. Carleton, Chamberlain gives an account of what he +saw: 'It were long and tedious to tell you all the particulars of the +excessive bravery, both of men and women, but you may conceive +the rest by one or two. The Lady Wotton had a gown that cost +fifty pounds a yard the embroidery.... The Viscount Rochester, the +Lord Hay, and the Lord Dingwall were exceeding rich and costly; +but above all, they speak of the Earl of Dorset. But this extreme +cost and riches makes us all poor.' <i>Court and Times of James I</i>, i. 226. +The princess had been educated by Lord and Lady Harington, the +parents of Donne's patroness, the Countess of Bedford. They +accompanied her to Heidelberg, but Lord Harington died on his +way home, Lady Harington shortly after her return. Donne had +thus links with the Princess, and these were renewed and strengthened +later when with Lord Doncaster he visited Heidelberg in 1619, and +preached before her and her husband. He sent her his first printed +sermon and his <i>Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c.</i> (1624), and +to the latter she, then in exile and trouble, replied in a courteous strain.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">128</span>. Compare with the opening stanzas Chaucer's +<i>Parliament +of Foules</i> and Skeat's note (<i>Works of Chaucer</i>, i. 516). Birds +were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).</p> + +<p>l. 42. <i>this, thy Valentine.</i> This is the reading of all the editions +except <i>1669</i> and of all the MSS. except two of no independent +value. I think it is better than 'this day, Valentine', which +Chambers adopts from <i>1669</i>. The bride is addressed throughout the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.93" id="pageii.93"></a>[pg 93]</span> +stanza, and it would be a very abrupt change to refer 'thou' in l. 41 +to Valentine. I take 'this, thy Valentine' to mean 'this which is +thy day, <i>par excellence</i>', 'thy Saint Valentine's day', 'the day which +saw you paired'. But 'a Valentine' is a 'true-love': 'to be your Valentine' +(<i>Hamlet</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> v. 50), and the reference may be to +Frederick,—Frederick's +Day is to become an era.</p> + +<p>ll. 43-50. The punctuation of these lines requires attention. That +of the editions, which Chambers follows, arranges them thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame</p> +<p>Meeting Another growes the same,</p> +<p>So meet thy Fredericke, and so</p> +<p>To an unseparable union goe,</p> +<p class="i4">Since separation</p> +<p>Falls not on such things as are infinite,</p> +<p>Nor things which are but one, can disunite.</p> +<p>You'are twice inseparable, great, and one.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In this it will be seen that the clause 'Since separation ... can +disunite' is attached to the <i>previous</i> verb. It gives the reason why +they should 'go to an unseparable union'. In that which I have +adopted, which is that of several good MSS., the clause 'Since separation +... can disunite' goes with what <i>follows</i>, explains 'You are +twice inseparable, great, and one.' This is obviously right. My +attention was first called to this emendation by the punctuation of the +Grolier Club editor, who changes the comma after 'goe' (l. 46) to +a semicolon.</p> + +<p>l. 46. <i>To an unseparable union growe.</i> I have adopted 'growe' +from the MSS. in place of 'goe' from the editions. The former are +unanimous with the strange exception of <i>Lec</i>. This MS., which in +several respects seems to be most like that from which <i>1633</i> was +printed, varies here from its fellows <i>D</i> and <i>H49</i>, probably for the +same +reason that the editor of <i>1633</i> did, because he did not quite understand +the phrase 'growe to' as used here, and 'goe' follows later. But +it is unlikely that 'goe' would have been changed to 'growe', and</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To an unseparable union growe</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is, I think, preferable, because (1) both the words used in l. 44 are +thus echoed.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Meeting</i> Another, <i>growes</i> the same,</p> +<p>So <i>meet</i> thy Fredericke, and so</p> +<p>To an unseparable union <i>growe</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>(2) 'To an unseparable union growe', meaning 'Become inseparably +incorporated with one another', is a slightly violent but not unnatural +application of the phrase 'grow to' so common in Elizabethan +English:</p> + +<p>'I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.' <i>All's Well that +Ends Well</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> i. 36.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.94" id="pageii.94"></a>[pg 94]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>First let our eyes be rivited quite through</p> +<p>Our turning brains, and both our lips grow to.</p> +<p class="i26">Donne, <i>Elegie XII</i>, 57-8.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 56. The 'or' of the MSS. must, I think, be right. 'O Bishop +Valentine' does not make good sense. Chambers's ingenious emendation +of <i>1669</i>, by which he connects 'of Bishop Valentine' with +'one way left', lacks support. Bishop Valentine has paired them; +the Bishop in church has united them; the consummation is their +own act.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 131. <span class="sc">Ecclogue.</span> 1613. <i>December</i> 26, &c.<a name="pageii.94a" id="pageii.94a"></a></h3> + +<p>It is unnecessary to detail all the ugly history of this notorious +marriage. See Gardiner, <i>History of England</i>, ii. 16 and 20. Frances +Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk, was +married in 1606 to the youthful Earl of Essex, the later Parliamentary +general. In 1613, after a prolonged suit she was granted a divorce, +or a decree of nullity, and was at once married to King James's ruling +favourite, Robert Carr, created Viscount Rochester in 1611, and Earl of +Somerset in 1613. Donne, like every one else, had sought assiduously +to win the favour of the all-powerful favourite. Mr. Gosse was in +error in attributing to him a report on 'the proceedings in the nullity +of the marriage of Essex and Lady Frances Howard' (Harl. MS. 39, +f. 416), which was the work of his namesake, Sir Daniell Dunn. None +the less, Donne's own letters show that he was quite willing to lend a +hand in promoting the divorce; and that before the decree was granted +he was already busy polishing his epithalamium. One of these letters +is addressed to Sir Robert Ker, afterwards Earl of Ancrum, a friend of +Donne's and a protégé of Somerset's. It seems to me probable that +Sir Robert Ker is the 'Allophanes' of the Induction. Donne is of +course 'Idios', the private man, who holds no place at Court. 'Allophanes' +is one who seems like another, who bears the same name as +another, i.e. the bridegroom. The name of both Sir Robert and the +Earl of Somerset was Robert Ker or Carr.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">132</span>, l. 34. <i>in darke plotts.</i> Here the reading of +<i>1635</i>, 'plotts,' has the support of all the MSS., and the 'places' of +<i>1633</i>, to which <i>1669</i> returns, is probably an emendation accidental +or intentional of the editor or printer. It disturbs the metre. The +word 'plot' of a piece of ground was, and is, not infrequent, and here +its meaning is only a little extended. In the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, +l. 129, Donne speaks of 'a darke and foggie plot'.</p> + +<p><i>fire without light.</i> Compare: 'Fool, saies Christ, this night they +will fetch away thy soul; but he neither tells him, who they be that +shall fetch it, nor whither they shall carry it; he hath no light but +lightnings; a sodain flash of horror first, and then he goes into fire +without light.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 19. 273. 'This dark fire, which was not +prepared for us.' Ibid.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.95" id="pageii.95"></a>[pg 95]</span></p> + +<p>l. 57. <i>In the East-Indian fleet.</i> The MSS. here give us back +a word which <i>1633</i> had dropped, the other editions following +suit. It was the East-Indian fleet which brought spices, the West-Indian +brought 'plate', i.e. gold or (more properly) silver, to which +there is no reference here.</p> + +<p>l. 58. <i>or Amber in thy taste?</i> 'Amber' is here of course 'Ambergris', +which was much used in old cookery, in which considerable +importance was attached to scent as well as flavour. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">beasts of chase, or foul of game,</p> +<p>In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd,</p> +<p>Gris-amber steam'd;</p> +<p class="i20">Milton, <i>Paradise Regained</i>, ii. 344.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16"> Be sure</p> +<p>The wines be lusty, high, and full of spirit,</p> +<p>And amber'd all.</p> +<p class="i4">Beaumont and Fletcher, <i>The Custom of the Country</i>, iii. 2.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This was the original meaning of the word 'amber', which was extended +to the yellow fossil resin through some mistaken identification +of the two substances. Mr. Gosse has called my attention to +some passages which seem to indicate that the other amber was also +eaten. Tallemant des Réaux says of the Marquise de Rambouillet, +'Elle bransle un peu la teste, et cela lui vient d'avoir trop mangé +d'ambre autrefois.' This may be ambergris; but Olivier de Serres, in +his <i>Théâtre d'Agriculture</i> (1600), speaks of persons who had formed +a taste for drinking 'de l'ambre jaune subtilement pulvérisé'.</p> + +<div class="poem width30"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">134</span>, ll. 85-6. <i>Thou hast no such; yet here was this, and more</i>,</p> +<p class="i16"> <i>An earnest lover, wise then, and before.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is the reading of <i>1633</i> and gives, I think, Donne's meaning. +Missing this, later editions placed a full stop after 'more', so that each +line concludes a sentence. Mr. Chambers emends by changing the +full stop after 'before' into a comma, and reading:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou hast no such; yet here was this and more.</p> +<p>An earnest lover, wise then, and before,</p> +<p>Our little Cupid hath sued livery.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This looks ingenious, but I confess I do not know what it means. +When was Cupid wise? When had he been so before? And +with what special propriety is Cupid here called 'an earnest lover'? +What Donne says is: 'Here <i>was</i> all this,—a court such as I have +described, and more—an earnest lover (viz. the Earl of Somerset), +wise in love (when most men are foolish), and wise before, as is +approved by the King's confidence. In being admitted to that breast +Cupid has ceased to be a child, has attained his majority, and the +right to administer his own affairs.' Compare: '<i>I love them that love +me, &c.</i>... The Person that professes love in this place is Wisdom +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.96" id="pageii.96"></a>[pg 96]</span> +herself ... so that <i>sapere et amare</i>, to be wise and to love, which +perchance never met before nor since, are met in this text.' <i>Sermons</i> +26. 18, Dec. 14, 1617.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Then, sweetest Silvia, let's no longer stay;</p> +<p>True love we know, precipitates delay.</p> +<p>Away with doubts, all scruples hence remove;</p> +<p>No man at one time can be wise and love.</p> +<p class="i26">Herrick, <i>To Silvia to Wed</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">135</span>. I have inserted the title <i>Epithalamion</i> after +the <i>Ecclogue</i> +from <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S96</i>, as otherwise the +latter title is extended +to the whole poem. This poem is headed in two different ways in +the MSS. In <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, the title at the beginning is: +<i>Eclogue +Inducing an Epithalamion at the marriage of the E. of S.</i> The proper +titles of the two parts are thus given at once, and no second title is +needed later. In the other MSS. the title at the beginning is <i>Eclogue. +1613. Decemb. 26.</i> Later follows the title <i>Epithalamion</i>. As +<i>1633</i> +follows this fashion at the beginning, it should have done so +throughout.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">136</span>, l. 126. <i>Since both have both th'enflaming eyes.</i> +This is the +reading of all the MSS. and it explains the fact that 'th'enflaming' is +so printed in <i>1633</i>. Without the 'both' this destroys the metre and, +accordingly, the later editions read 'the enflaming'. It was natural +to bring 'eye' into the singular and make 'th'enflaming eye' balance +'the loving heart'. Moreover 'both th'enflaming eyes' may have +puzzled a printer. It is a Donnean device for emphasis. He has +spoken of <i>her</i> flaming eyes, and now that he identifies the lovers, that +identity must be complete. Both the eyes of both are lit with the +same flame, both their hearts kindled at the same fire. Compare +later: 225. 'One fire of foure inflaming eyes,' &c.</p> + +<p>l. 129. <i>Yet let</i> <i>A23</i>, <i>O'F</i>. The first of these MSS. is an +early copy of the poem. 'Yet' improves both the sense and the metre. +It would be easily dropped from its likeness to 'let' suggesting a +duplication of that word.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">137</span>, l. 150. <i>Who can the Sun in water see.</i> The +Grolier Club edition alters the full stop here to a semicolon; and Chambers quotes +the reading of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, 'winter' for 'water', as worth noting. +Both the change and the suggestion imply some misapprehension of +the reference of these lines, which is to the preceding verse:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For our ease, give thine eyes th'unusual part</p> +<p>Of joy, a Teare.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The opening of a stanza with two lines which in thought belong +to the previous one is not unprecedented in Donne's poems. Compare +the sixth stanza of <i>A Valediction: of my name in the window</i>, and +note.</p> + +<p>Dryden has borrowed this image—like many another of Donne's:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.97" id="pageii.97"></a>[pg 97]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Muse down again precipitate thy flight;</p> +<p>For how can mortal eyes sustain immortal light?</p> +<p>But as the sun in water we can bear,</p> +<p>Yet not the sun, but his reflection there,</p> +<p>So let us view her here in what she was,</p> +<p>And take her image in this watery glass.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Eleonora</i>, ll. 134-9.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 156. <i>as their spheares are.</i> The crystalline sphere in which +each planet is fixed.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">138</span>, ll. 171-81. <i>The Benediction.</i> The accurate +punctuation +of Donne's poetry is not an easy matter. In the 1633 edition the last +five lines of this stanza have no stronger stop than a comma. This +may be quite right, but it leaves ambiguous what is the exact force and +what the connexion of the line—</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Nature and grace doe all, and nothing Art.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The editions of 1635-69, by placing a full stop after 'give' (l. 178), +connect 'Nature and grace' with what follows, and Chambers and +the Grolier Club editor have accepted this, though they place a semicolon +after 'Art'. It seems to me that the line must go with what precedes. +The force of 'may' is carried on to 'doe all':</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">may here, to the worlds end, live</p> +<p>Heires from this King, to take thanks, you, to give,</p> +<p>Nature and grace doe all and nothing Art.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'May there always be heirs of James to receive thanks, of you two to +give; and may this mutual relation owe everything to nature and +grace, the goodness of your descendants, the grace of the king, nothing +to art, to policy and flattery.' That is the only meaning I can give to +the line. The only change in <i>1633</i> is that of a comma to a full stop, +a big change in value, a small one typographically.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">139</span>, l. 200. <i>they doe not set so too</i>; I have changed +the full +stop after 'too' to a semicolon, as the 'Therefore thou maist' which +follows is an immediate inference from these two lines. 'You rose at +the same hour this morning, but you (the bride) must go first to bed.'</p> + +<p>ll. 204-5. <i>As he that sees, &c.</i> 'I have sometimes wondered in +the reading what was become of those glaring colours which amazed +me in <i>Bussy D'Ambois</i> upon the theatre; but when I had taken up +what I supposed a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a +jelly; nothing but a cold, dull mass, which glittered no longer than +it was a-shooting.' Dryden, <i>The Spanish Friar</i>. In another place +Dryden uses the figure in a more poetic or at least ambitious fashion:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">The tapers of the gods,</p> +<p>The sun and moon, run down like waxen globes;</p> +<p>The shooting stars end all in purple jellies,</p> +<p>And chaos is at hand.</p> +<p class="i36"><i>Oedipus</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> i.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The idea was a common one, but I have no doubt that Dryden +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.98" id="pageii.98"></a>[pg 98]</span> +owed his use of it as an image to Donne. There is no poet from +whom he pilfers 'wit' more freely.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">140</span>, ll. 215-16. <i>Now, as in Tullias tombe</i>, i.e. +Cicero's daughter. +'According to a ridiculous story, which some of the moderns report, in +the age of Pope Paul III a monument was discovered on the Appian +road with the superscription <i>Tulliolae filiae meae</i>; the body of a +woman was found in it, which was reduced to ashes as soon as touched; +there was also a lamp burning, which was extinguished as soon as the air +gained admission there, and which was supposed to have been lighted +above 1500 years.' Lemprière. See Browne, <i>Vulgar Errors</i>, iii. 21.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">141</span>, l. 17. <a name="pageii.98a" id="pageii.98a"></a><i>Help with your presence and devise to +praise.</i> +I have dropped the comma after 'presence' because it suggests to us, +though it did not necessarily do so to seventeenth-century readers, that +'devise' here is a verb—both Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers have +taken it as such—whereas it is the noun 'device' = fancy, invention. +Their fancy and invention is to be shown in the attiring of the bride:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Conceitedly dresse her, and be assign'd</p> +<p>By you, fit place for every flower and jewell,</p> +<p class="i2">Make her for love fit fewell</p> +<p class="i2">As gay as Flora, and as rich as Inde.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Devise to praise' would be a very awkward construction.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">142</span>, l. 26. <i>Sonns of these Senators wealths deep +oceans.</i> +The corruption of the text here has arisen in the first place from the +readily explicable confusion of 'sonnes' or 'sonns' as written and +'sonne', the final 's' being the merest flourish and repeatedly overlooked +in copying and printing, while 'sonne' easily becomes 'some', +and secondly from a misapprehension of Donne's characteristic pun. +The punctuation of the 1633 edition is supported by almost every MS.</p> + +<p>The 'frolique Patricians' are of course not the sons of 'these +Senators' by birth. 'I speak not this to yourselves, you Senators +of London,' says Donne in the <i>Sermon Preached at Pauls Cross ... +26 Mart. 1616</i>, 'but as God hath blessed you in your ways, and in +your callings, so put your children into ways and courses too, in +which God may bless them.... The Fathers' former labours shall +not excuse their Sons future idleness.' The sons of wealthy citizens +might grow idle and extravagant; they could not be styled 'Patricians'. +It is not of them that Donne is thinking, but of the young +noblemen who are accompanying their friend on his wedding-day. +They are, or are willing to be, the sons, by marriage not by blood, +of 'these Senators', or rather of their money-bags. In a word, they +marry their daughters for money, as the hero of the <i>Epithalamion</i> is +doing. It is fortunate for the Senators if the young courtiers do not +find in their wives as well as their daughters, like Fastidious Brisk in +Jonson's comedy, 'Golden Mines and furnish'd Treasurie.' But they +are 'Sunnes' as well as Sonnes'—suns which drink up the deep +oceans of these Senators' wealth:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.99" id="pageii.99"></a>[pg 99]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i20"> it rain'd more</p> +<p>Then if the Sunne had drunk the sea before. <i>Storme</i>, 43-4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Hence the metaphor 'deep oceans', and hence the appropriateness +of the predicate 'Here shine'. This pun on 'sunne' and 'sonne' is +a favourite with Donne:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Mad paper stay, and grudge not here to burne</p> +<p>With all those sonnes [sunnes <i>B</i>, <i>S96</i>] whom my braine did create.</p> +<p class="i26"><i>To Mrs. M. H. H.</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.216a">216</a>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I am thy sonne, made with thyself to shine.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Holy Sonnets</i>, II. 5.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Sweare by thyself, that at my death thy sonne</p> +<p>Shall shine as hee shines now, and heretofore.</p> +<p class="i26"><i>A Hymn to God the Father.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'This day both Gods Sons arose: The Sun of his Firmament, and +the Son of his bosome.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 26. 255. 'And when thy Sun, +thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed, the Son of Grace shall suck +it up into glory.' Ibid. 80. 45. 450.</p> + +<p>Correctly read the line has a satiric quality which Donne's lines +rarely want, and in which this stanza abounds. I have chosen the +spelling 'Sonns' as that which is most commonly used in the MSS. +for 'sonnes' and 'sunnes'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">143</span>, l. 57. <i>His steeds nill be restrain'd.</i> I had +adopted the reading 'nill' for 'will' conjecturally before I found it in <i>W</i>. +There can be no doubt it is right. As printed, the two clauses +(57-8) simply contradict each other. The use of 'nill' for 'will' +was one of Spenser's Chaucerisms, and Donne comes closer to Spenser +in the <i>Epithalamia</i> than anywhere else. Sylvester uses it in his +translation +of Du Bartas:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For I nill stiffly argue to and fro</p> +<p>In nice opinions, whether so or so.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And it occurs in Davison's <i>Poetical Rhapsody</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And therefore nill I boast of war.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In Shakespeare, setting aside the phrase 'nill he, will he', we +have:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">in scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether.</p> + </div> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 81-2. <i>Till now thou wast but able</i></p> +<p class="i6"><i> To be what now thou art</i>;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>She has realized her potentiality; she is now actually what hitherto +she has been only <ins title="Greek: en dynamei">ἐν δυνάμει</ins>, +therefore she 'puts on perfection'. +'Praeterea secundum Philosophum ... <i>qualibet potentiâ melior est +eius actus</i>; nam forma est melior quam materia, et actio quam +potentia activa: est enim finis eius.' Aquinas, <i>Summa</i>, xxv. i. +See also Aristotle, <i>Met.</i> 1050 <i>a</i> 2-16. This metaphysical doctrine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.100" id="pageii.100"></a>[pg 100]</span> +is not contradicted by the religious exaltation of virginity, for it +is not virginity as such which is preferred to marriage by the +Church, but the virgin's dedication of herself to God: 'Virginitas +inde honorata, quia Deo dicata.... Virgines ideo laudatae, quia +Deo dicatae. Nec nos hoc in virginibus praedicamus, quod +virgines sunt; sed quod Deo dicatae piâ continentiâ virgines. +Nam, quod non temere dixerim, felicior mihi videtur nupta mulier +quam virgo nuptura: habet enim iam illa quod ista adhuc cupit.... +Illa uni studet placere cui data est: haec multis, incerta cui danda +est,' &c.; August. <i>De Sanct. Virg.</i> I. x, xi. Compare Aquinas, +<i>Summa</i> II. 2, Quaest. clii. 3. Wedded to Christ the virgin puts on +a higher perfection.</p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<h2>SATYRES.</h2> + +<p>The earliest date assignable to any of the <i>Satyres</i> is 1593, or more +probably 1594-5. On the back of the Harleian MS. 5110 (<i>H51</i>), +in the British Museum, is inscribed:<a id="footnotetags1" name="footnotetags1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotes1"><sup>1</sup></a></p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Jhon Dunne his Satires</p> +<p>Anno Domini 1593</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The handwriting is not identical with that in which the poems are +transcribed, and it is impossible to say either when the poems were +copied or when the title and date were affixed. One may not build +too absolutely on its accuracy; but there are in the three first <i>Satires</i> +(which alone the MS. contains) some indications that point to 1593-5 +as the probable date. Mr. Chambers notes the reference in I., 80, 'the +wise politic horse,' to Banks' performing horse, and says: 'A large +collection of them' (i.e. allusions to the horse) 'will be found in +Mr. Halliwell-Phillips's Memoranda on <i>Love's Labour's Lost</i>. Only +one of these allusions is, however, earlier than 1593. It is in 1591, +and refers not to an exhibition in London, but in the provinces, +and not to Morocco, which was a bay, but to a white horse. It is +probable, therefore, that by 1591 Banks had not yet come to London, +and if so the date 1593 on the Harl. MS. 5110 of Donne's <i>Satires</i> +cannot be far from that of their composition.' But this is not the +only allusion. The same lines run on:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Or thou O Elephant or Ape wilt doe.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This has been passed by commentators as a quite general reference; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.101" id="pageii.101"></a>[pg 101]</span> +but the Ape and Elephant seem to have been animals actually +performing, or exhibited, in London about 1594. Thus in <i>Every +Man out of his Humour</i>, acted in 1599, Carlo Buffone says (<span class="sc">IV.</span> 6): +''S heart he keeps more ado with this monster' (i.e. Sogliardo's dog) +'than ever Banks did with his horse, or the fellow with the elephant.' +Further, all three are mentioned in the <i>Epigrams</i> of Sir John Davies, +e.g.:</p> + +<h3>In Dacum.</h3> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Amongst the poets Dacus numbered is</p> +<p>Yet could he never make an English rime;</p> +<p>But some prose speeches I have heard of his,</p> +<p>Which have been spoken many an hundred time:</p> +<p>The man that keepes the Elephant hath one,</p> +<p>Wherein he tells the wonders of the beast:</p> +<p>Another Bankes pronounced long agon,</p> +<p>When he his curtailes qualities exprest:</p> +<p>Hee first taught him that keepes the monuments</p> +<p>At Westminster his formall tale to say:</p> +<p>And also him which Puppets represents,</p> +<p>And also him that w<sup>th</sup> the Ape doth play:</p> +<p class="i2">Though all his poetry be like to this,</p> +<p class="i2">Amongst the poets Dacus numbred is.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And again:</p> + +<h3>In Titum</h3> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Titus the brave and valorous young gallant</p> +<p>Three years together in the town hath beene,</p> +<p>Yet my Lo. Chancellors tombe he hath not seene,</p> +<p>Nor the new water-worke, nor the Elephant.</p> +<p>I cannot tell the cause without a smile:</p> +<p>Hee hath been in the Counter all the while.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Colonel Cunningham has pointed out another reference in Basse's +<i>Metamorphosis of the Walnut Tree</i> (1645), where he tells how 'in our +youth we saw the Elephant'. Grosart's suggestion that the Elephant +was an Inn is absurd.</p> + +<p>Davies' <i>Epigrams</i> were first published along with Marlowe's version +of Ovid's <i>Elegies</i>, but no date is affixed to any of the three editions +which followed one another. But a MS. in the Bodleian which contains +forty-five of the Epigrams describes them as <i>English Epigrammes +much like Buckminsters Almanacke servinge for all England but +especially for the meridian of the honourable cittye of London calculated +by John Davies of Grayes Inne gentleman An<sup>o</sup> 1594 in November</i>.<a id="footnotetags2" name="footnotetags2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotes2"><sup>2</sup></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.102" id="pageii.102"></a>[pg 102]</span> +This seems much too exact to be a pure invention, and if it be correct +it is very unlikely that the allusions would be to ancient history. +Banks' Horse, the performing Ape, and the Elephant were all among +the sights of the day, like the recently erected tomb of Lord Chancellor +Hatton, who died in 1591. The atmosphere of the first <i>Satyre</i>, +as of Davies' <i>Epigrams</i>, is that of 1593-5. The phrase 'the Infanta +of London, Heire to an India', in which commentators have found +needless difficulty, contains possibly, besides its obvious meaning, an +allusion to the fact that since 1587 the Infanta of Spain had become +in official Catholic circles heir to the English throne. In 1594 Parsons' +tract, <i>A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England. +By R. Doleman</i>, defended her claim, and made the Infanta's name a +byword in England.</p> + +<p>If <i>H51</i> is thus approximately right in its dating of the first Satire it +may be the better trusted as regards the other two, and there is at +least nothing in them to make this date impossible. The references +to poetry in the second acquire a more vivid interest when their date +or approximate date is remembered. In 1593 died Marlowe, the +greatest of the brilliant group that reformed the stage, giving</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> ideot actors means</p> +<p>(Starving 'themselves') to live by 'their' labour'd sceanes;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and Shakespeare was one of the 'ideot actors'. Shakespeare, too, +was one of the many sonneteers who 'would move Love by rithmes', +and in 1593 and 1594 he appeared among those 'who write to Lords, +rewards to get'.</p> + +<p>It would be interesting if we could identify the lawyer-poet, +Coscus, referred to in this Satire. Malone, in a MS. note to +his copy of <i>1633</i> (now in the Bodleian Library), suggested John +Hoskins or Sir Richard Martin. Grosart conjectured that Donne +had in view the <i>Gullinge Sonnets</i> preserved in the Farmer-Chetham +MS., and ascribed with probability to Sir John Davies, the poet of +the <i>Epigrams</i> just mentioned. Chambers seems to lean to this +view and says, 'these sonnets are couched in legal terminology.' +Donne is supposed to have mistaken Davies' 'gulling' for serious +poetry. This is very unlikely. Moreover, only the last two of Davies' +sonnets are 'couched in legal terminology':</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>My case is this, I love Zepheria bright,</p> +<p>Of her I hold my harte by fealty:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To Love my lord I doe knights service owe</p> +<p>And therefore nowe he hath my wit in ward.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Nor, although Davies' style parodies the style of the sonneteers +(not of the anonymous <i>Zepheria</i> only), is it particularly harsh. It is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.103" id="pageii.103"></a>[pg 103]</span> +much more probable that Donne, like Davies, has chiefly in view +this anonymous series of sonnets—<i>Zepheria</i>. <i>Ogni dì viene la sera. +Mysus et Haemonia juvenis qui cuspide vulnus senserat, hac ipsa cuspide +sensit opem. At London: Printed by the Widow Orwin, for N. L. +and John Busby.</i> 1594. The style of <i>Zepheria</i> exactly fits Donne's +description:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">words, words which would teare</p> +<p>The tender labyrinth of a soft maids eare.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'The verbs "imparadize", "portionize", "thesaurize", are some +of the fruits of his ingenuity. He claims that his Muse is capable of +"hyperbolised trajections"; he apostrophizes his lady's eyes as +"illuminating lamps" and calls his pen his "heart's solicitor".' +Sidney Lee, <i>Elizabethan Sonnets</i>. The following sonnet from the +series illustrates the use of legal terminology which both Davies and +Donne satirize:</p> + +<h3>Canzon 20.</h3> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>How often hath my pen (mine heart's Solicitor)</p> +<p>Instructed thee in Breviat of my case!</p> +<p>While Fancy-pleading eyes (thy beauty's visitor)</p> +<p>Have pattern'd to my quill, an angel's face.</p> +<p>How have my Sonnets (faithful Counsellors)</p> +<p>Thee without ceasing moved for Day of Hearing!</p> +<p>While they, my Plaintive Cause (my faith's Revealers!),</p> +<p>Thy long delay, my patience, in thine ear ring.</p> +<p>How have I stood at bar of thine own conscience</p> +<p>When in Requesting Court my suit I brought!</p> +<p>How have the long adjournments slowed the sentence</p> +<p>Which I (through much expense of tears) besought!</p> +<p>Through many difficulties have I run,</p> +<p>Ah sooner wert thou lost, I wis, than won.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>We do not know who the author of <i>Zepheria</i> was, so cannot tell +how far Donne is portraying an individual in what follows. It can +hardly be Hoskins or Martin, unless <i>Zepheria</i> itself was intended to +be a burlesque, which is possible. Quite possibly Donne has taken +the author of <i>Zepheria</i> simply as a type of the young lawyer who writes +bad poetry; and in the rest of the poem portrays the same type when +he has abandoned poetry and devoted himself to 'Law practice for +mere gain', extorting money and lands from Catholics or suspected +Catholics, and drawing cozening conveyances. If <i>Zepheria</i> be the +poems referred to, then 1594-5 would be the date of this Satire.</p> + +<p>The third <i>Satyre</i> has no datable references, but its tone reflects the +years in which Donne was loosening himself from the Catholic Church +but had not yet conformed, the years between 1593 and 1599, and +probably the earlier rather than the later of these years. On the +whole 1593 is a little too early a date for these three satires. They +were probably written between 1594 and 1597.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.104" id="pageii.104"></a>[pg 104]</span></p> + +<p>The long fourth <i>Satyre</i> is in the Hawthornden MS. (<i>HN</i>) headed +<i>Sat. 4. anno 1594</i>. But this is a mistake either of Drummond, who +transcribed the poems probably as late as 1610, or of Donne himself, +whose tendency was to push these early effusions far back in his life. +The reference to 'the losse of Amyens' (l. 114) shows that the poem +must have been written after March 1597, probably between that +date and September, when Amiens was re-taken by Henry IV. +These lines <i>may</i> be an insertion, but there is no extant copy of the +<i>Satyre</i> without them. It belongs to the period between the 'Calis-journey' +and the 'Island-voyage', when first Donne is likely to have +appeared at court in the train of Essex.</p> + +<p>The fifth <i>Satyre</i> is referred by Grosart and Chambers to 1602-3 +on the ground that the phrase 'the great Carricks pepper' is a reference +to the expedition sent out by the East India Company under +Captain James Lancaster to procure pepper, the price of which +commodity was excessively high. Lancaster captured a Portuguese +Carrick and sent home pepper and spice. There is no proof, however, +that this ship was ever known as 'the Carrick' or 'the great Carrick'. +That phrase <i>was</i> applied to 'that prodigious great carack called the +<i>Madre de Dios</i> or <i>Mother of God</i>, one of the greatest burden +belonging to the crown of Portugal', which was captured by Raleigh's +expedition and brought to Dartmouth in 1592. 'This prize was +reckoned the greatest and richest that had ever been brought into +England' and 'daily drew vast numbers of spectators from all parts +to admire at the hugeness of it' (Oldys, <i>Life of Raleigh</i>, 1829, +pp. 154-7). Strype states that she 'was seven decks high, 165 foot +long, and manned with 600 men' (<i>Annals</i>, iv. 177-82). That +pepper formed a large part of the Carrick's cargo is clear from the +following order issued by the Privy Council: <i>A letter to Sir Francis +Drake, William Killigrewe, Richard Carmarden and Thomas Midleton +Commissioners appointed for the Carrique</i>. 'Wee have received your +letter of the 23<sup>rd</sup> of this presente of your proceeding in lading of +other convenient barkes with the pepper out of the Carrique, and +your opinion concerning the same, for answere whereunto we do +thinke it meete, and so require you to take order, so soone as the +goods are quite dischardged, that Sir Martin Frobisher be appointed +to have the charge and conduction of those shippes laden with the +pepper and other commodities out of the Carrique to be brought +about to Chatham.' 27 Octobris, 1592. See also under October 1. +The reference in 'the great Carricks pepper' is thus clear. The +words 'You Sir, whose righteousness she loves', &c., ll. 31-3, show +that the poem was written after Donne had entered Sir Thomas +Egerton's service, i.e. between 1598, if not earlier, and February +1601-2 when he was dismissed, which makes the date suggested by +Grosart and Chambers (1602-3) impossible. The poem was +probably written in 1598-9. There is a note of enthusiasm in these +lines as of one who has just entered on a service of which he is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.105" id="pageii.105"></a>[pg 105]</span> +proud, and the occasion of the poem was probably Egerton's +endeavour to curtail the fees claim'd by the Clerk of the Star +Chamber (see note below). With Essex's return from Ireland in +1599 began a period of trouble and anxiety for Egerton, and probably +for Donne too. The more sombre cast of his thought, and the +modification in his feelings towards Elizabeth, after the fatal February +of 1600-1, are reflected in the satirical fragment <i>The Progresse of +the Soule</i>.</p> + +<p>The so-called sixth and seventh <i>Satyres</i> (added in 1635 and +1669) I have relegated to the <i>Appendix B</i>, and have given elsewhere +my reasons for assigning them to Sir John Roe. That Donne +wrote only five regular <i>Satyres</i> is very definitely stated by Drummond +of Hawthornden in a note prefixed to the copy of the fourth in <i>HN</i>: +'This Satyre (though it heere have the first place because no more +was intended to this booke) was indeed the authors fourth in number +and order he having written five in all to using which this caution +will sufficientlie direct in the rest.'</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotes1" name="footnotes1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetags1"><sup>1</sup></a> +Attention was first called to this inscription by J. Payne Collier in his <i>Poetical +Decameron</i> (1820). He uses the date to vindicate the claim for Donne's priority +as a satirist to Hall. 'Dunne' is of course one of the many ways in which the +poet's name is spelt, and 'Jhon' is a spelling of 'John'. The poet's own signature +is generally 'Jo. Donne.' 'Jhon Don' is Drummond's spelling on the title-page +of <i>HN</i>. In <i>Q</i> the first page is headed 'M^r John Dunnes Satires'.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotes2" name="footnotes2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetags2"><sup>2</sup></a> +Of the forty-five which the MS. contains, some thirty-three were published in +the edition referred to above. On the other hand the edition contains some which +are not in the MS. Of these, one, 47, 'Meditations of a gull,' alone refers to events +which are certainly later than 1594. As this is not in the MS. there is nothing to +contradict the assertion that it (and the Epigrams cited above) belong to 1594. +Davies' Epigrams are referred to in Sir John Harrington's <i>Metamorphosis of Ajax</i>, +1596.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 145. <span class="sc">Satyre I.</span><a name="pageii.105a" id="pageii.105a"></a></h3> + +<p>This <i>Satyre</i> is pretty closely imitated in the <i>Satyra Quinta</i> of +<i>SKIALETHEIA. or, A shadowe of Truth in certaine Epigrams and +Satyres. 1598</i>. attributed to Edward Guilpin (or Gilpin), to whom +extracts from it are assigned in <i>Englands Parnassus</i> (1600). Who +Guilpin was we do not know. Besides the work named he wrote two +sonnets prefixed to Gervase Markham's <i>Devoreux. Vertues tears for the +losse of the most Christian King Henry, third of that name; and the +untimely death of the most noble and heroical Gentleman, Walter +Devoreux, who was slain before Roan in France. First written in +French by the most excellent and learned Gentlewoman, Madame +Geneuefe Petan Maulette. And paraphrastically translated into +English by Jervis Markham.</i> 1597. See Grosart's Introduction to his +reprint of <i>Skialetheia</i> in <i>Occasional Issues</i>. 6. (1878). Donne +addresses a letter to <i>Mr. E. G.</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.208b">208</a>), which Gosse conjectures to +be addressed to Guilpin. That Guilpin knew Donne is probable in +view of this early imitation of a privately circulated MS. poem. +Guilpin's poem begins:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Let me alone I prethee in thys Cell,</p> +<p>Entice me not into the Citties hell;</p> +<p>Tempt me not forth this <i>Eden</i> of content,</p> +<p>To tast of that which I shall soone repent:</p> +<p>Prethy excuse me, I am hot alone</p> +<p>Accompanied with meditation,</p> +<p>And calme content, whose tast more pleaseth me</p> +<p>Then all the Citties lushious vanity.</p> +<p>I had rather be encoffin'd in this chest</p> +<p>Amongst these bookes and papers I protest,</p> +<p>Then free-booting abroad purchase offence,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.106" id="pageii.106"></a>[pg 106]</span></p> +<p>And scandale my calme thoughts with discontents.</p> +<p>Heere I converse with those diviner spirits,</p> +<p>Whose knowledge, and admire, the world inherits:</p> +<p>Heere doth the famous profound <i>Stagarite</i>,</p> +<p>With Natures mistick harmony delight</p> +<p>My ravish'd contemplation: I heere see</p> +<p>The now-old worlds youth in an history:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 1. <i>Away thou fondling, &c.</i> The reading of the majority of +editions and MSS. is 'changeling', but this is a case not of a right and +wrong reading but of two versions, both ascribable to the author. +Which was his emendation it is impossible to say. He may have +changed 'fondling' (a 'fond' or foolish person) thinking that the idea +was conveyed by 'motley', which, like Shakespeare's epithet 'patch', +is a synecdoche from the dress of the professional fool or jester. On the +other hand the idea of 'changeling' is repeated in 'humorist', which +suggests changeable and fanciful. I have, therefore, let the <i>1633</i> text +stand. 'Changeling' has of course the meaning here of 'a fickle +or inconstant person', not the common sense of a person or thing or +child substituted for another, as 'fondling' is not here a 'pet, +favourite', as in modern usage.</p> + +<p>l. 3. <i>Consorted.</i> Grosart, who professes to print from <i>H51</i>, reads +<i>Consoled</i>, without any authority.</p> + +<p>l. 6. <i>Natures Secretary</i>: i.e. Aristotle. He is always 'the Philosopher' +in Aquinas and the other schoolmen. Walton speaks of 'the great +secretary of nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon'.</p> + +<p>l. 7. <i>jolly Statesmen.</i> All the MSS. except <i>O'F</i> agree with +<i>1633</i> in reading 'jolly', though 'wily' is an obvious emendation. +Chambers adopts it. By 'jolly' Donne probably meant 'overweeningly +self-confident ... full of presumptuous pride ... arrogant, over-bearing' +(O.E.D.). 'Evilmerodach, a jolly man, without Iustyse +and cruel.' Caxton (1474). 'It concerneth every one of us ... not +to be too high-minded or jolly for anything that is past.' Sanderson +(1648).</p> + +<p>l. 10. <i>Giddie fantastique Poets of each land.</i> In a letter Donne tells +Buckingham, in Spain, how his own library is filled with Spanish +books 'from the mistress of my youth, Poetry, to the wife of mine age, +Divinity'. This line in the Satires points to the fact, which Donne +was probably tempted later to obscure a little, that his first prolonged +visit to the Continent had been made before he settled in London in +1592 and probably without the permission of the Government. The +other than Spanish poets would doubtless be French and Italian. Donne +had read Dante. He refers to him in the fourth <i>Satyre</i> ('who +dreamt he saw hell'), and in an unpublished letter in the Burley MS. +he dilates at some length, but in no very creditable fashion, on an +episode in the <i>Divina Commedia</i>. Of French poets he probably knew +at any rate Du Bartas and Regnier.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.107" id="pageii.107"></a>[pg 107]</span></p> + +<p>l. 12. <i>And follow headlong, wild uncertain thee?</i> I have retained +the <i>1633</i> punctuation instead of, with Chambers, comma-ing 'wild' as +well as 'headlong'. The latter is possibly an adverb here, going with +'follow'. The use of 'headlong' as an adjective with persons was not +common. The earliest example in the O.E.D. is from <i>Hudibras</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The Friendly Rug preserv'd the ground,</p> +<p>And headlong Knight from bruise or wound.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne's line is, however, ambiguous; and the subsequent description +of the humorist would justify the adjective.</p> + +<p>l. 18. <i>Bright parcell gilt, with forty dead mens pay.</i> Compare: +'Captains some in guilt armour (unbatt'red) some in buffe jerkins, +plated o'r with massy silver lace (raz'd out of the ashes of dead pay).' +Dekker, <i>Newes from Hell</i>, ii. 119 (Grosart). So many 'dead pays' +(i.e. men no longer on the muster roll) were among the perquisites +allowed to every captain of a company, but the number was constantly +exceeded: 'Moreover where' (i.e. whereas) 'there are 15 dead paies +allowed ordinarily in every bande, which is paid allwaies and taken +by the captaines, althogh theire nombers be greatly dyminished in +soche sorte as sometimes there are not fower score or fewer in a company, +her Majestys pleasure is that from hence the saide 15 dead +paies shall not be allowed unlesse the companies be full and compleate, +but after the rate of two dead paies for everie twenty men that +shalbe in the saide bande where the companies are dyminished.' +Letter to Sir John Norreyes, Knighte. <i>Acts of the Privy Council</i>, 1592.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">146</span>, l. 27. <i>Oh monstrous, superstitious puritan.</i> The +'Monster' of the MSS. is of course <i>not</i> due to the substitution of the +noun for the adjective, but is simply an older form of the adjective. +Compare 'O wonder Vandermast', Greene's <i>Friar Bacon and Friar +Bungay</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 32. <i>raise thy formall</i>: 'raise' is probably right, but 'vaile' is a +common metaphor. 'A Player? Call him, the lousie slave: what +will he saile by, and not once strike or vaile to a Man of Warre.' +Captain Tucca in Jonson's <i>Poetaster</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> 3.</p> + +<p>l. 33. <i>That wilt consort none, &c.</i> It is unnecessary to alter +'consort none' to 'consort with none', as some MSS. do. The +construction is quite regular. 'Wilt thou consort me, bear me company?' +Heywood. The 'consorted with these few books' of l. 3 +is classed by the O.E.D. under a slightly different sense of the word—not +'attended on by' these books, but 'associated in a common lot +with' them.</p> + +<p>l. 39. <i>The nakednesse and barenesse, &c.</i> The reading 'barrennesse' +of all the editions and some MSS. is due probably to similarity of +pronunciation (rather than of spelling) and a superficial suggestion +of appropriateness to the context. A second glance shows that +'bareness' is the correct reading. The MSS. give frequent evidence +of having been written to dictation.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.108" id="pageii.108"></a>[pg 108]</span></p> + +<p>l. 46. The 'yet', which the later editions and Chambers drop, is +quite in Donne's style. It is heavily stressed and 'he was' is slurred, +'h' was.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">147</span>, l. 58. <i>The Infanta of London, Heire to an +India.</i> +It is not necessary to suppose a reference to any person in particular. +The allusion is in the first place to the wealth of the city, and the +greed of patricians and courtiers to profit by that wealth. 'No one +can tell who, amid the host of greedy and expectant suitors, will carry +off whoever is at present the wealthiest minor (and probably the +king's ward) in London, i.e. the City.' Compare the <i>Epithalamion +made at Lincolns Inn</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Daughters of London, you which be</p> +<p>Our Golden Mines, and furnish'd Treasury,</p> +<p class="i2">You which are Angels, yet still bring with you</p> +<p>Thousands of Angels on your marriage days</p> +<p class="i4"><big>. . . +. . . . .</big></p> +<p class="i2">Make her for Love fit fuel,</p> +<p class="i2">As gay as Flora, and as rich as Inde.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare also: 'I possess as much in your wish, Sir, as if I were +made Lord of the Indies.' Jonson, <i>Every Man out of his Humour</i>, +II. iii.</p> + +<p>The 'Infanta' of <i>A25</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>Q</i> is pretty certainly right, +though +'Infant' can be applied, like 'Prince', to a woman. There is +probably a second allusion to the claim of the Infanta of Spain to be +heir to the English throne.</p> + +<p>l. 60. <i>heavens Scheme</i>: 'Scheme' is certainly the right reading. +The common MS. spelling, 'sceame' or 'sceames', explains the +'sceanes' which <i>1633</i> has derived from <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>. For the +<i>Satyres</i> the editor did not use his best MS. See <i>Text and Canon, &c.</i>, +p. <a href="#pageii.xcv">xcv</a>. It is possible that a slurred definite article ('th'heavens') +has been lost.</p> + +<p>In preparing his 'theme' or horoscope the astrologer had five +principal things to consider, (1) the heavenly mansions, (2) the +signs of the zodiac, (3) the planets, (4) the aspects and configurations, +(5) the fixed stars. With this end in view the astrologer +divided the heavens into twelve parts, called mansions, to which he +related the positions occupied at the same moment by the stars +in each of them ('drawing the horoscope'). There were several +methods of doing this. That of Ptolemy consisted in dividing the +zodiac into twelve equal parts. This was called the equal manner. +To represent the mansions the astrologers constructed twelve triangles +between two squares placed one within the other. Each of +the twelve mansions thus formed had a different name, and determined +different aspects of the life and fortune of the subject of the +horoscope. From the first was foretold the general character of +his life, his health, his habits, morals. The second indicated his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.109" id="pageii.109"></a>[pg 109]</span> +wealth; and so on. The different signs of the zodiac and the +planets, in like manner, had each its special influence. But sufficient +has been said to indicate what Donne means by 'drawing forth +Heavens scheme'.</p> + +<p>l. 62. <i>subtile-witted.</i> There is something to be said for the +'supple-witted' of <i>H51</i> and some other MSS. 'Subtle-witted' means 'fantastic, +ingenious'; 'supple-witted' means 'variable'. Like Fastidious +Brisk in <i>Every Man out of his Humour</i>, they have a fresh fashion in +suits every day. 'When men are willing to prefer their friends, we +heare them often give these testimonies of a man; He hath good +parts, and you need not be ashamed to speak for him; he understands +the world, he knowes how things passe, and he hath a discreet, +a supple, and an appliable disposition, and hee may make a fit instrument +for all your purposes, and you need not be afraid to speake for +him.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 74. 750. A 'supple disposition' is one that +changes easily to adapt itself to circumstances.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">148</span>, l. 81. <i>O Elephant or Ape</i>, See Introductory Note +to <i>Satyres</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 89. <i>I whispered let'us go.</i> I have, following the example of +<i>1633</i> in other cases, indicated the slurring of 'let'us' or 'let's', which +is necessary metrically if we are to read the full 'whispered' +which <i>1669</i> first contracts to 'whisperd'. <i>Q</i> shows that 'let's' is +the +right contraction. Donne's use of colloquial slurrings must be constantly +kept in view when reading especially his satires. They are +not always indicated in the editions: but note l. 52:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I shut my chamber doore, and come, lets goe.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">149</span>, ll. 100-4. My punctuation of these lines is a slight +modification of that indicated by <i>W</i> and <i>JC</i>, which give the proper +division of the speeches. The use of inverted commas would make +this clearer, but Chambers' division seems to me (if I understand it) +to give the whole speech, from 'But to me' to 'So is the Pox', to +Donne's companion, which is to deprive Donne of his closing repartee. +The Grolier Club editor avoids this, but makes 'Why he hath travelled +long?' a part of Donne's speech beginning 'Our dull comedians +want him'. I divide the speeches thus:—</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Donne.</i> Why stoop'st thou so?</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Companion.</i> Why? he hath travail'd.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Donne.</i> Long?</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Companion.</i> No: but to me (<i>Donne interpolates</i></p> +<p class="i6">'which understand none') he doth seem to be</p> +<p class="i2">Perfect French and Italian.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Donne.</i> So is the Pox.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The brackets round 'which understand none' I have taken from +<i>Q</i>. I had thought of inserting them before I came on this MS. Of +course brackets in old editions are often used where commas would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.110" id="pageii.110"></a>[pg 110]</span> +be sufficient, and one can build nothing on their insertion here in one +MS. But it seems to me that these words have no point unless +regarded as a sarcastic comment interpolated by Donne, perhaps <i>sotto +voce</i>. 'To you, who understand neither French nor Italian, he may +seem perfect French and Italian—but to no one else.' Probably an +eclectic attire was the only evidence of travel observable in the person +in question. 'How oddly is he suited!' says Portia of her English +wooer; 'I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in +France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' +Brackets are thus used by Jonson to indicate a remark interjected +<i>sotto voce</i>. See the quotation from the <i>Poetaster</i> in the note on +<i>The Message</i> (II. p. <a href="#pageii.37">37</a>). Modern editors substitute for the brackets +the direction 'Aside', which is not in the Folio (1616).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 149. <span class="sc">Satyre II.</span><a name="pageii.110a" id="pageii.110a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 1-4. It will be seen that <i>H51</i> gives two alternative versions of +these lines. The version of the printed text is that of the majority of +the MSS.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">150</span>, ll. 15-16. <i>As in some Organ, &c.</i> Chambers +prints these lines with a comma after 'move', connecting them with what +follows about love-poetry. Clearly they belong to what has been said +about dramatic poets. It is Marlowe and his fellows who are the +bellows which set the actor-puppets in motion.</p> + +<p>ll. 19-20. <i>Rammes and slings now, &c.</i> The 'Rimes and songs' of +<i>P</i> is a quaint variant due either to an accident of hearing or to an +interpretation of the metaphor: 'As in war money is more effective +than rams and slings, so it is more effective in love than songs.' But +there is a further allusion in the condensed stroke, for 'pistolets' means +also 'fire-arms'. Money is as much more effective than poetry in love as +fire-arms are than rams and slings in war. Donne is Dryden's teacher +in the condensed stroke, which 'cleaves to the waist', lines such as</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>They got a villain, and we lost a fool.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">151</span>, l. 33. <i>to out-sweare the Letanie.</i> 'Letanie,' +the reading of all the MSS., is indicated by a dash in <i>1633</i> and is omitted without +any indication by <i>1635-39</i>. In <i>1649-50</i> the blank was supplied, +probably conjecturally, by 'the gallant'. It was not till <i>1669</i> that +'Letanie' was inserted. In 'versifying' Donne's <i>Satyres</i> Pope altered +this to 'or Irishmen out-swear', and Warburton in a note explains +the original: 'Dr. Donne's is a low allusion to a licentious quibble +used at that time by the enemies of the English Liturgy, who, disliking +the frequent invocations in the Litanie, called them the <i>taking +God's name in vain</i>, which is the Scripture periphrasis for swearing.'</p> + +<p>l. 36. <i>tenements.</i> Drummond in <i>HN</i> writes 'torments', probably +a conjectural emendation. Drummond was not so well versed in +Scholastic Philosophy as Donne.</p> + +<p>l. 44. <i>But a scarce Poet.</i> This is the reading of the best MSS., and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.111" id="pageii.111"></a>[pg 111]</span> +I have adopted it in preference to 'But scarce a Poet', which is an +awkward phrase and does not express what the writer means. Donne +does not say that he is barely a poet, but that he is a bad poet. +Donne uses 'scarce' thus as an adjective again in <i>Satyre IV</i>, l. 4 (where +see note) and l. 240. It seems to have puzzled copyists and editors, +who amend it in various ways. By 'jollier of this state' he means +'prouder of this state', using the word as in 'jolly statesmen', I. 7.</p> + +<p>l. 48. '<i>language of the Pleas and Bench.</i>' See Introductory Note +for legal diction in love-sonnets.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">152</span>, ll. 62-3. <i>but men which chuse</i></p> +<p><i>Law practise for meere gaine, bold soule, repute.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The unpunctuated 'for meere gaine bold soule repute' of <i>1633-69</i> +and most MSS. has caused considerable trouble to the editors and +copyists. One way out of the difficulty, 'bold souls repute,' appears +in Chambers' edition as an emendation, and before that in Tonson's +edition (1719), whence it was copied by all the editions to Chalmers' +(1810). Lowell's conjecture, 'hold soules repute,' had been anticipated +in some MSS. There is no real difficulty. I had comma'd the words +'bold soule' before I examined <i>Q</i>, which places them in brackets, a +common means in old books of indicating an apostrophe. The 'bold +soule' addressed, and invoked to esteem such worthless people aright, +is the 'Sir' (whoever that may be) to whom the whole poem is +addressed. A note in <i>HN</i> prefixed to this poem says that it is taken +from 'C. B.'s copy', i.e. Christopher Brooke's. It is quite possible +that this <i>Satyre</i>, like <i>The Storme</i>, was addressed to him.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 71-4. <i>Like a wedge in a block, wring to the barre,</i></p> +<p><i>Bearing-like Asses; and more shamelesse farre, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>These lines are printed as in <i>1633</i>, except that the comma after +'Asses' is raised to a semicolon, and that I have put a hyphen +between 'Bearing' and 'like'. The lines are difficult and have +greatly puzzled editors. Grosart prints from <i>H51</i> and reads 'wringd', +which, though an admissible form of the past-participle, makes no +sense here. The Grolier Club editor prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Like a wedge in a block, wring to the bar,</p> +<p>Bearing like asses, and more shameless far</p> +<p>Than carted whores; lie to the grave judge; for ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers adopts much the same scheme:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Like a wedge in a block, wring to the bar,</p> +<p>Bearing like asses, and more shameless far</p> +<p>Than carted whores; lie to the grave judge, for ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>By retaining the comma after 'bar' in a modernized text with +modern punctuation these editors leave it doubtful whether they do +or do not consider that 'asses' is the object to 'wring'. Further, they +connect 'and more shameless far than carted whores' closely with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.112" id="pageii.112"></a>[pg 112]</span> +'asses', separating it by a semicolon from 'lie to the grave judge'. +I take it that 'more shameless far' is regarded by these editors as a +qualifying adjunct to 'asses'. This is surely wrong. The subject of +the long sentence is 'He' (l. 65), and the infinitives throughout are +complements to 'must': 'He must walk ... he must talk ... [he +must] lie ... [he must] wring to the bar bearing-like asses; [he must], +more shameless than carted whores, lie to the grave judge, &c.' This +is the only method in which I can construe the passage, and it carries +with it the assumption that 'bearing like' should be connected by a +hyphen to form an adjective similar to 'Relique-like', which is the +MS. form of 'Relique-ly' at l. 84. Certainly it is 'he', Coscus, who +is 'more shameless, &c.,' not his victims. These are the 'bearing-like +asses', the patient Catholics or suspected Catholics whom he wrings +to the bar and forces to disgorge fines. Coscus, a poet in his youth, +has become a Topcliffe in his maturer years. 'Bearing,' 'patient' is +the regular epithet for asses in Elizabethan literature:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Asses are made to bear and so are you.</p> +<p class="i22"><i>Taming of the Shrew</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> i. 200.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In Jonson's <i>Poetaster</i>, v. i, the ass is declared to be the hieroglyphic of</p> + +<p class="center">Patience, frugality, and fortitude.</p> + +<p>Possibly, but it is not very likely, Donne refers not only to the +stupid patience of the ass but to her fertility: 'They be very gainefull +and profitable to their maisters, yielding more commodities than +the revenues of good farmers.' Holland's <i>Pliny</i>, 8. 43, <i>Of Asses</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">153</span>, l. 87. <i>In parchments.</i> The plural is the reading +of the better MSS. and seems to me to give the better sense. The +final 's' is so easily overlooked or confounded with a final 'e' that +one must determine the right reading by the sense of the passage.</p> + +<p>ll. 93-6. <i>When Luther was profest, &c.</i> The 'power and glory +clause' which is not found in the Vulgate or any of the old Latin +versions of the New Testament (and is therefore not used in Catholic +prayers, public or private), was taken by Erasmus (1516) from all the +Greek codices, though he does not regard it as genuine. Thence it +passed into Luther's (1521) and most Reformed versions. In his +popular and devotional <i>Auslegung deutsch des Vaterunsers</i> (1519) +Luther makes no reference to it.</p> + +<p>l. 105. <i>Whereas th'old ... In great hals.</i> The line as I have +printed it combines the versions of <i>1633</i> and the later editions. It is +found in several MSS. Some of these, on the other hand, like <i>1633-69</i>, +read 'where'; but 'where's' with a plural subject following was quite +idiomatic. Compare: 'Here needs no spies nor eunuchs,' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.81">81</a>, +l. 39; 'With firmer age returns our liberties,' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.115">115</a>, l. 77.</p> + +<p>At p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.165">165</a>, l. 182, the MSS. point to 'cryes his flatterers' as the +original version. See Franz, <i>Shak.-Gram.</i> § 672; Knecht, <i>Die +Kongruenz zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat</i> (1911), p. 28.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.113" id="pageii.113"></a>[pg 113]</span></p> + +<p>Donne has other instances of irregular concord, or of the plural +form in 's', and 'th':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> by thy fathers wrath</p> +<p>By all paines which want and divorcement hath. P. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.111">111</a>, l. 8.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Had'st thou staid there, and look'd out at her eyes,</p> +<p>All had ador'd thee that now from thee flies. P. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.285">285</a>, l. 17.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Those unlick't beare-whelps, unfil'd pistolets</p> +<p>That (more than Canon shot) availes or lets. P. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.97">97</a>, l. 32.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The rhyme makes the form here indisputable. The MSS. point to +a more frequent use of 'hath' with a plural subject than the editions +have preserved. The above three instances seem all plurals. In other +cases the individuals form a whole, or there is ellipsis:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">All Kings, and all their favorites,</p> +<p class="i2">All glory of honors, beauties, wits,</p> +<p>The Sunne it selfe which makes times, as they passe,</p> +<p>Is elder by a year, now, then it was.</p> +<p class="i22"> <i>The Anniversarie</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.24">24</a>, ll. 1-4.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>He that but tasts, he that devours,</p> +<p>And he that leaves all, doth as well.</p> +<p class="i24"> <i>Communitie</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.33">33</a>, ll. 20-1.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page 154</span>, l. 107. <i>meanes blesse</i>. The reading of <i>1633</i> has +the support of the best MSS. Grosart and Chambers prefer the reading +of the later editions, 'Meane's blest.' This, it would seem to me, +needs the definite article. The other reading gives quite the same +sense, 'in all things means (i.e. middle ways, moderate measures) bring +blessings':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum</p> +<p>Semper urgendo neque, dum procellas</p> +<p>Cautus horrescis, nimium premendo</p> +<p class="i6">Litus iniquum.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Auream quisquis mediocritatem</p> +<p>Diligit, tutus caret obsoleti</p> +<p>Sordibus tecti, caret invidenda</p> +<p class="i6">Sobrius aula.</p> +<p class="i30"> Horace, <i>Odes</i>, ii. 10.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The general tenor of the closing lines recalls Horace's treatment of +the same theme in <i>Sat.</i> ii. 2. 88, 125, more than either Juvenal, +<i>Sat.</i> +ix, or Persius, <i>Sat.</i> vi.</p> + +<p>Grosart states that 'means, then as now, meant riches, possessions, +but never the mean or middle'. But see O.E.D., which quotes for +the plural in this sense: 'Tempering goodly well Their contrary dislikes +with loved means.' Spenser, <i>Hymns</i>. In the singular Bacon has, +'But to speake in a Meane.' <i>Of Adversitie</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.114" id="pageii.114"></a>[pg 114]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 154. <span class="sc">Satyre III.</span></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">155</span>, l. 19. <i>leaders rage.</i> This phrase might tempt +one to date +the poem after the Cadiz expedition and Islands voyage, in both of +which 'leaders' rage', i.e. the quarrels of Howard and Essex, and +of Essex and Raleigh, militated against success; but it is too little +to build upon. Donne may mean simply the arbitrary exercise of +arbitrary power on the part of leaders.</p> + +<p>ll. 30-2. <i>who made thee to stand Sentinell, &c.</i> 'Souldier' is the +reading of what is perhaps the older version of the <i>Satyres</i>. It +would do as well: 'Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus +est animus in custodia corporis; nec iniussu eius a quo ille est +vobis datus ex hominum vita migrandum est, ne munus assignatum +a Deo defugisse videamini.' Cicero, <i>Somnium Scipionis</i>.</p> + +<p>'Veteres quidem philosophiae principes, Pythagoras et Plotinus, +prohibitionis huius non tam creatores sunt quam praecones, omnino +illicitum esse dicentes <i>quempiam militiae servientem a praesidio et +commissa sibi statione discedere</i> contra ducis vel principis iussum. +Plane eleganti exemplo usi sunt eo quod militia est vita hominis +super terram.' John of Salisbury, <i>Policrat.</i> ii. 27.</p> + +<p>Donne considers the rashness of those whom he refers to as +a degree of, an approach to, suicide. To expose ourselves to these +perils we abandon the moral warfare to which we are appointed. +In his own work on suicide (<ins title="Greek: BIATHANATOS">ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ</ins>, &c.) Donne discusses +the permissible approaches to suicide. An unpublished <i>Problem</i> +shows his knowledge of John of Salisbury.</p> + +<p>ll. 33-4. <i>Know thy foes, &c.</i> I have followed the better MSS. +here against <i>1633</i> and <i>L74</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>. The dropping of +'s' after 'foe' has probably led to the attempt to regularize the construction +by interjecting 'h'is'. Donne has three foes in view—the devil, the +world, and the flesh.</p> + +<p>l. 35. <i>quit.</i> Whether we read 'quit' or 'rid' the construction is +difficult. The phrase seems to mean 'to be free of his whole Realm'—an +unparalleled use of either adjective.</p> + +<p>l. 36. <i>The worlds all parts.</i> Here 'all' means 'every', but +Shakespeare would make 'parts' singular: 'All bond and privilege +of nature break,' <i>Cor.</i> <span class="sc">V.</span> iii. 25. Donne blends two +constructions.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">156</span>, l. 49. <i>Crantz.</i> I have adopted the spelling of +<i>W</i>, which emphasizes the Dutch character of the name. The 'Crates ' of +<i>Q</i> is tempting as bringing the name into line with the other classical +ones, but all the other MSS. have an 'n' in the word. Donne has in +view the 'schismatics of Amsterdam' (<i>The Will</i>) and their followers. +The change to Grant or Grants shows a tendency in the copyists to +substitute a Scotch for a Dutch name.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">157</span>, ll. 69-71. <i>But unmoved thou, &c.</i> As punctuated +in the old editions these lines are certainly ambiguous. The semicolon +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.115" id="pageii.115"></a>[pg 115]</span> +after 'allow' has a little less value than that of a full stop; that after +'right' a little more than a comma, or contrariwise. Grosart, +Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor all connect 'and the right' +with what precedes:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> But unmoved thou</p> +<p>Of force must one, and forced but one allow;</p> +<p>And the right.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>So Chambers,—Grosart and the Grolier Club editor place a comma +after 'allow'. It seems to me that 'And the right' goes rather with +what follows:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> But unmoved thou</p> +<p>Of force must one, and forced but one allow.</p> +<p>And the right, ask thy father which is she.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>If the first arrangement be right, then 'And' seems awkward. The +second marks two stages in the argument: a stable judgement compels +us to acknowledge religion, and that there can be only one. This +being so, the next question is, Which is the true one? As to that, +we cannot do better than consult our fathers:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way</p> +<p>To learn what unsuspected ancients say;</p> +<p>For 'tis not likely we should higher soar</p> +<p>In search of Heaven than all the Church before;</p> +<p>Nor can we be deceived unless we see</p> +<p>The Scriptures and the Fathers disagree.</p> +<p class="i30">Dryden, <i>Religio Laici</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: +ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell +thee.' Deut. xxxii. 7.</p> + +<p>l. 76. <i>To adore, or scorne an image, &c.</i> Compare: 'I should +violate my own arm rather than a Church, nor willingly deface the +name of Saint or Martyr. At the sight of a Cross or Crucifix I can +dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my +Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of +Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of Friars; for though +misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of Devotion. I +could never hear the <i>Ave-Mary</i> Bell without an elevation, or think it +a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me +to err in all, that is in silence and dumb contempt.... At a solemn +Procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts blind with +opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and +laughter.' Sir Thomas Browne, <i>Religio Medici</i>, sect. 3. Compare +also Donne's letter To Sir H. R. (probably to Goodyere), (<i>Letters</i>, +p. 29), 'You know I have never imprisoned the word Religion; not +straightning it Friarly <i>ad religiones factitias</i>, (as the Romans call +well their orders of Religion), nor immuring it in a Rome, or a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.116" id="pageii.116"></a>[pg 116]</span> +Geneva; they are all virtual beams of one Sun.... They are not so +contrary as the North and South Poles; and they are connaturall +pieces of one circle. Religion is Christianity, which being too +spirituall to be seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent body of +good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian.'</p> + +<p>l. 80. <i>Cragged and steep.</i> The three epithets, 'cragged', 'ragged', +and 'rugged', found in the MSS., are all legitimate and appropriate. +The second has the support of the best MSS. and is used by Donne +elsewhere: 'He shall shine upon thee in all dark wayes, and rectifie +thee in all ragged ways.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 52. 526. Shakespeare uses it +repeatedly: 'A ragged, fearful, hanging rock,' <i>Gent. of Ver.</i> <span class="sc">I.</span> +ii. 121; +'My ragged prison walls,' <i>Rich. II</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> v. 21; and +metaphorically, +'Winter's ragged hand,' <i>Sonn.</i> <span class="sc">VI.</span> i.</p> + +<p>ll. 85-7. <i>To will implyes delay, &c.</i> I have changed the 'to' of +<i>1633</i> to 'too'. It is a mere change of spelling and has the support +of both <i>H51</i> and <i>W</i>. Grosart and Chambers take it as the preposition +following the noun it governs, 'hard knowledge to'—an unexampled +construction in the case of a monosyllabic preposition. +Franz (<i>Shak.-Gram.</i> § 544) gives cases of inversion for metrical +purposes, but only with 'mehrsilbigen Präpositionen', e.g. 'For fear +lest day should look their shapes upon.' <i>Mid. N. Dream</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> ii. +385.</p> + +<p>Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and Chambers have all, I think, +been misled by the accidental omission in <i>1633</i> of the full stop or +colon after 'doe', l. 85. Chambers prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To will implies delay, therefore now do</p> +<p>Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge to</p> +<p>The mind's endeavours reach.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The Grolier Club version is:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To will implies delay, therefore now do</p> +<p>Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too</p> +<p>The mind's endeavours reach.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The latter is the better version, but in each 'the body's pains' is +a strange apposition to 'deeds' taken as object to 'do'. We do +not 'do pains'. The second clause also has no obvious relation to +the first which would justify the 'too'. If we close the first sentence at +'doe', we get both better sense and a better balance: 'Act <i>now</i>, for +the night cometh. Hard deeds are achieved by the body's pains (i.e. +toil, effort), and hard knowledge is attained by the mind's efforts.' +The order of the words, and the condensed force given to 'reach' +produce a somewhat harsh effect, but not more so than is usual in +the <i>Satyres</i>, and less so than the alternative versions of the editors. +The following lines continue the thought quite naturally: 'No +endeavours of the mind will enable us to <i>comprehend</i> mysteries, but +all eyes can <i>apprehend</i> them, dazzle as they may.' Compare: 'In all +Philosophy there is not so darke a thing as light; As the sunne which +is <i>fons lucis naturalis</i>, the beginning of naturall light, is the most +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.117" id="pageii.117"></a>[pg 117]</span> +evident thing to be seen, and yet the hardest to be looked upon, so +is naturall light to our reason and understanding. Nothing clearer, +for it is <i>clearnesse</i> it selfe, nothing darker, it is enwrapped in so many +scruples. Nothing nearer, for it is round about us, nothing more +remote, for wee know neither entrance, nor limits of it. Nothing more +<i>easie</i>, for a child discerns it, nothing more <i>hard</i> for no man +understands it. It is apprehensible by <i>sense</i>, and not comprehensible by +<i>reason</i>. If wee winke, wee cannot chuse but see it, if wee stare, wee +know it never the better.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 36. 324.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">158</span>, ll. 96-7. <i>a Philip, or a Gregory, &c.</i> Grosart +and Norton conjecture that by Philip is meant Melanchthon, and for +'Gregory' Norton conjectures Gregory VII; Grosart either Gregory +the Great or Gregory of Nazianzus. But surely Philip of Spain is +balanced against Harry of England, one defender of the faith against +another, as Gregory against Luther. What Gregory is meant we cannot +say, but probably Donne had in view Gregory XIII or Gregory +XIV, post-Reformation Popes, rather than either of those mentioned +above. Satire does not deal in Ancient History. The choice is +between Catholic and Protestant Princes and Popes.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 158. <span class="sc">Satyre IIII.</span><a name="pageii.117a" id="pageii.117a"></a></h3> + +<p>This satire, like several of the period, is based on Horace's <i>Ibam forte +via Sacra</i> (<i>Sat.</i> i. 9), but Donne follows a quite independent line. +Horace's theme is at bottom a contrast between his own friendship +with Maecenas and 'the way in which vulgar and pushing people +sought, and sought in vain, to obtain an introduction'. Donne, like +Horace, describes a bore, but makes this the occasion for a general +picture of the hangers-on at Court. A more veiled thread running +through the poem is an attack on the ways and tricks of informers. +The bore's gossip is probably not without a motive:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">I ... felt my selfe then</p> +<p>Becoming Traytor, and mee thought I saw</p> +<p>One of our Giant Statutes ope his jaw</p> +<p>To sucke me in.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The manner in which the stranger accosts him suggests the +'intelligencer': 'Two hungry turns had I scarce fetcht in this wast +gallery when I was encountered by a neat pedantical fellow, in the +forme of a Cittizen, who thrusting himself abruptly into my companie, +like an Intelligencer, began very earnestly to question me.' +Nash, <i>Pierce Penniless</i>.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Satyres</i> Donne is always, though he does not state his position +too clearly, one with links attaching him to the persecuted +Catholic minority. He hates informers and pursuivants.</p> + +<p>ll. 1-4. These lines resemble the opening of Régnier's imitation +of Horace's satire:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.118" id="pageii.118"></a>[pg 118]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Charles, de mes peches j'ay bien fait penitence;</p> +<p>Or, toy qui te cognois aux cas de conscience,</p> +<p>Juge si j'ay raison de penser estre absous.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I can trace no further resemblance.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>A recreation to, and scarse map of this.</i> I have ventured here +to restore, from <i>Q</i> and its duplicate among the Dyce MSS., what +I think must have been the original form of this line. The adjective +'scarse' or 'scarce' used in this way ('a scarce poet', 'a scarce +brook') is characteristic of Donne, and it always puzzled his copyists, +who tried to correct it in one way or another, e.g. 'scarce a poet', +II. 44; 'a scant brooke', IV. 240. It is inconceivable that they +would have introduced it. The preposition 'to' governing 'such as' +regularizes the construction, but would very easily be omitted by +a copyist who wished to smooth the metre or did not at once catch +its reference. Donne's use of 'scarse', like his use of 'Macaron' +in this poem, is probably an Italianism; in Italian 'scarso' means +'wanting, scanty, poor'—'stretta e scarsa fortuna', 'E si riduce +talvolta nell' Estate con si scarsa acqua', 'Veniva bellissima tanto +quanto ogni comparazione ci saria scarsa', 'Ma l'ingegno e le rime +erano scarse' (Petrarch).</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">159</span>, l. 21. <i>seaven Antiquaries studies.</i> Donne has +more than one hit at Antiquaries. See the <i>Epigrams</i> and <i>Satyre V</i>. The +reign of Elizabeth witnessed a great revival of antiquarian studies and +the first formation of an Antiquarian society: 'There was a time, +most excellent king,' says a later writer addressing King James, 'when +as well under Queen Elizabeth, as under your majesty, certain choice +gentlemen, men of known proof, were knit together, <i>statis temporibus</i>, +by the love of these studies, upon contribution among themselves: +which company consisted of an elective president and of clarissimi, +of other antiquaries and a register.' Oldys, <i>Life of Raleigh</i>, p. 317. +He goes on to describe how the society was dissolved by death. In +the list of names he gives there are more than seven, but it is just +possible that Donne refers to some such society in its early stages.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Africks monsters, Guianaes rarities.</i> Africa was famous as the +land of monsters. The second reference is to the marvels described +in Sir Walter Raleigh's <i>The discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful +Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden City of +Manoa which the Spaniards call El Dorado, performed in the year +1595</i> (pub. 1596). Among the monsters were Amazons, Anthropophagi,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">and men whose heads</p> +<p>Do grow beneath their shoulders.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 23. <i>Stranger then strangers, &c.</i> The 'Stranger then strangest' +of some MSS. would form a natural climax to the preceding list of +marvels. But 'strangers' is the authoritative reading, and forms the +transition to the next few lines. The reference is to the unpopularity +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.119" id="pageii.119"></a>[pg 119]</span> +in London of the numerous strangers whom wars and religious persecution +had collected in England. Strype (<i>Annals</i>, iv) prints a paper +of 1568 in which the Lord Mayor gives to the Privy Council an +account of the strangers in London. In 1593 there were again +complaints of their presence and threats to attack them. 'While +these inquiries were making, to incense the people against them +there were these lines in one of their libels: Doth not the world +see that you, beastly brutes, the Belgians, or rather drunken drones +and faint-hearted Flemings; and you fraudulent father (<i>sic. Query</i> +'faitor[s]'), Frenchmen, by your cowardly flight from your own +natural countries, have abandoned the same into the hands of your +proud, cowardly enemies, and have by a feigned hypocrisy and +counterfeit show of religion placed yourself here in a most fertile soil, +under a most gracious and merciful prince; who hath been contented, +to the great prejudice of her own natural subjects, to suffer you to +live here in better case and more freedom then her own people—Be +it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that it is best for them to +depart out of the realm of England between this and the 9th of July +next. If not then to take that which follows: for that there shall be +many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. +And all the apprentices and journeymen will down with the Flemings +and strangers.'</p> + +<p>Another libel was in verse, and after quoting it the official document +proceeds: 'The court upon these seditious motives took the most +prudent measures to protect the poor strangers, and to prevent any +riot or insurrection.' Among other provisions, 'Orders to be given +to appoint a strong watch of merchants and others, and like-handicrafted +masters, to answer for their apprentices' and servants' +misdoing.' Strype's <i>Annals</i>, iv. 234-5.</p> + +<p>In the same year a bill was promoted in Parliament <i>against aliens +selling foreign wares among us by retail</i>, which Raleigh supported: +'Whereas it is pretended that for strangers it is against charity, against +honour, against profit to expel them: in my opinion it is no matter +of charity to relieve them. For first, such as fly hither have forsaken +their own king: and religion is no pretext for them; for we have +no Dutchmen here, but such as come from those princes where +the gospel is preached; yet here they live disliking our church,' &c. +Birch, <i>Life of Raleigh</i>, p. 163.</p> + +<p>I have thought it worth while to note these more recent references +as Grosart refers to the rising against strangers on May-day, +1517.</p> + +<p>l. 29. <i>by your priesthood, &c.</i> In 1581 a proclamation was issued +imposing the penalty of death on any Jesuits or seminary priests who +entered the Queen's dominions, and in 1585 Parliament again decreed +that all Jesuits and seminary priests were to leave the kingdom +within forty days under the capital penalty of treason. The detection, +imprisonment, torture, and execution of disguised priests form a considerable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.120" id="pageii.120"></a>[pg 120]</span> +chapter in Elizabethan history. Donne's companion looks +so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest from +Rome, or Douay. See Strype's <i>Annals</i>, passim, and Meyer, <i>Die +Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth</i>, 1910.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">160</span>, l. 35. <i>and saith</i>: 'saith' is the reading of all +the earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor silently alter +it to an exclamatory 'faith'—turning it into a statement which +Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a harshly interpolated +'so he says'. One MS. adds 'he', and possibly the pronoun in some +form has been dropped, e.g. 'sayth a speakes'.</p> + +<p>ll. 37-8. <i>Made of the Accents, &c.</i> It is perhaps rash to accept +the 'no language' of <i>A25</i>, <i>Q</i>, and the Dyce MS. But the last two +represent, I think, an early version of the <i>Satyres</i>, and 'no language' +(like 'nill be delayed', <i>Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn</i>) is just the +sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated transmission. +It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But +its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better +sense; and it is echoed by Jonson in his <i>Discoveries</i>: 'Spenser in +affecting the ancients writ no language.' In like manner Donne's +companion, in affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, +spoke none. I confess that seems to me a more pointed remark +than that he spoke one made up of these.</p> + +<p>l. 48. <i>Jovius or Surius</i>: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, +among many other works wrote <i>Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV. +1553</i>. Chambers quotes from the <i>Nouvelle Biographie +Générale</i>: 'Ses œuvres sont pleines des +mensonges dont profita sa cupidité.'</p> + +<p>Laurentius Surius (1522-78) was a Carthusian monk who wrote +ecclesiastical history. Among his works are a <i>Commentarius brevis +rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno 1550</i> (1568), and a <i>Vitae Sanctorum, +1570 et seq.</i> He was accused of inaccuracy by Protestant writers. +It is worth while noting that <i>Q</i> and <i>O'F</i> read 'Sleydan', i.e. +Sleidanus. John Sleidan (1506-56) was a Protestant historian who, like Surius, +wrote both general and ecclesiastical history, e.g. <i>De quatuor Summis +Imperiis, Babylonico, Persico, Graeco, et Romano</i>, 1556 (an English +translation appeared in 1635), and <i>De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae, +Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii</i> (1555-9). The latter is a history +of the Reformation written from the Protestant point of view, to +which Surius' work is a reply. Sleidan's history did not give entire +satisfaction to the reformers. It is quite possible that Donne's first +sneer was at the Protestant historian and that he thought it safer +later to substitute the Catholic Surius.</p> + +<p>l. 54. <i>Calepines Dictionarie.</i> A well-known polyglot dictionary +edited by Ambrose Calepine (1455-1511) in 1502. It grew later +to a <i>Dictionarium Octolingue</i>, and ultimately to a <i>Dictionarium XI +Linguarum</i> (Basel, 1590).</p> + +<p>l. 56. <i>Some other Jesuites.</i> The 'other' is found only in <i>HN</i>, +which is no very reliable authority. Without it the line wants +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.121" id="pageii.121"></a>[pg 121]</span> +a whole foot, not merely a syllable. Donne more than once drops +a syllable, compensating for it by the length and stress which is +given to another. Nothing can make up for the want of a whole +foot, though in dramatic verse an incomplete line may be effective. +To me, too, it seems very like Donne to introduce this condensed and +sudden stroke at Beza and nothing more likely to have been dropped +later, either by way of precaution or because it was not understood. +No one of the reformers was more disliked by Catholics than Beza. +The licence of his early life, his loose Latin verses, the scurrilous wit +of his own controversial method—all exposed him to and provoked +attack. The <i>De Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezae, Omnium Haereticorum +nostri temporis facile principis, &c.: Authore Jacobo Laingaeo +Doctore Sorbonico</i> (1585), is a bitter and calumnious attack. +There was, too, something of the Jesuit, both in the character +of the arguments used and in the claim made on behalf of the +Church to direct the civil arm, in Beza's defence of the execution +of Servetus. Moreover, the <i>Vindiciae contra Tyrannos</i> was sometimes +attributed to Beza, and the views of the reformers regarding +the rights of kings put forward there, and those held by the Jesuits, +approximate closely. (See <i>Cambridge Modern History</i>, iii. 22, +<i>Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century</i>, pp. 759-66.) In his +subsequent attacks upon the Jesuits, Donne always singles out the +danger of their doctrines and practice to the authority of kings. +Throughout the <i>Satyres</i> Donne's veiled Catholic prejudices have to +be constantly borne in mind.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">161</span>, l. 59. <i>and so Panurge was.</i> See Rabelais, +<i>Pantagruel</i> ii. 9. One day that Pantagruel was walking with his friends he met +'un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineaments de corps, +mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux, et tant mal en ordre qu'il +sembloit estre eschappe es chiens'. Pantagruel, convinced from his +appearance that 'il n'est pauvre que par fortune', demands of him +his name and story. He replies; but, to the dismay of Pantagruel and +his friends, his answer is couched first in German, then in Arabic (?), +then in Italian, in English (or what passes as such), in Basque, in +Lanternoy (an Esperanto of Rabelais's invention), in Dutch, in Spanish, +in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in the language of Utopia, and +finally in Latin. '"Dea, mon amy," dist Pantagruel, "ne sçavez-vous +parler françoys?" "Si faict tresbien, Seigneur," respondit le compaignon; +"Dieu mercy! c'est ma langue naturelle et maternelle, car je +suis né et ay esté nourry jeune au jardin de France: c'est +Touraine."—"Doncques," +dist Pantagruel, "racomtez nous quel est votre nom +et dont vous venez."... "Seigneur," dist le compagnon, "mon vray +et propre nom de baptesmes est Panurge."' Panurge was not much +behind Calepine's Dictionary, and if Donne's companion spoke in the +'accent and best phrase' of all these tongues he certainly spoke 'no +language'.</p> + +<p>l. 69. <i>doth not last</i>: 'last' has the support of several good MSS., +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.122" id="pageii.122"></a>[pg 122]</span> +'taste' (i.e. savour, go down, be acceptable) of some. It is impossible +to decide on intrinsic grounds between them.</p> + +<p>l. 70. <i>Aretines pictures.</i> The lascivious pictures of Giulio Romano, +for which Aretino wrote sonnets.</p> + +<p>l. 75. <i>the man that keepes the Abbey tombes.</i> See Davies' epigram, +<i>On Dacus</i>, quoted in the general note on the <i>Satyres</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 80. <i>Kingstreet.</i> From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at +Westminster. +It was for long the only way to Westminster from the +north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government +offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's <i>Survey of London</i>, ed. +Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.</p> + +<p>ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p><i>Companion.</i> Are not your Frenchmen neat?</p> + +<p><i>Donne.</i> Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, +look he follows me.</p> + +<p><i>Companion (ignoring this impertinence).</i> Certes they (i.e. +Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only +wearing is your grogaram.</p> + +<p><i>Donne.</i> Not so Sir, I have more.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's +colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne +applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only +one suit.' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to +'he follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes ... grogaram' to +Donne, and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted +commas, and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new +speech at 'Mine'.</p> + +<p>For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in +<i>A Midsummer Nights Dream</i>: 'I will discharge it in either your +straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not a more +fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances quoted by +Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making fun of an +affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant appears +from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this Letter ... +and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according to your +addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it.' To Sir G. B., +<i>Letters</i>, p. 201.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">162</span>, l. 97. <i>ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes.</i> +Every reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their account of +the greater events of each year mention of trifling events, strange +births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is reflected +in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these 'lay-chroniclers +that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and the +deere yere and the great frost'. <i>Pierce Penniless.</i></p> + +<p>ll. 98. <i>he knowes; He knowes.</i> I have followed <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.123" id="pageii.123"></a>[pg 123]</span> +triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne +does not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">163</span>, l. 113-4. <i>since The Spaniards came, &c.</i>: i.e. +from 1588 to 1597.</p> + +<p>l. 117. <i>To heare this Makeron talke.</i> This is the earliest instance of +this Italian word used in English which the O.E.D. quotes, and is a +proof of Donne's Italian travels. The <i>Vocabolario degli Accademici +della Crusca</i> (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this +meaning, <i>homo crassâ Minerva</i>, in Italian:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O maccheron, ben hai la vista corta.</p> +<p class="i30">Bellina, <i>Sonetti</i>, 29.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one +of the <i>Elegies to the Author</i>, and led to the absurd substitution, in +the editions after <i>1633</i>, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in +the epistle prefixed to <i>The Progress of the Soule</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 124. <i>Perpetuities.</i> 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because +they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised daily +from fines and recoveries.' <i>Manningham's Diary</i>, April 22, 1602. +Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many +centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights, +i.e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable +rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's +or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic +went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.</p> + +<p>l. 133. <i>To sucke me in; for</i>.... I have, with some of the MSS. and +with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' +with what follows. But <i>1633</i> and the better MSS. read:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>To sucke me in for hearing him. I found....</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for hearing +him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the superstition +about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as ... leachers, +&c., ... so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he free.' 'I should +be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy who had spoken +treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of trials of suspected +traitors before Walsingham and others. It is on this passage I base +my view that Donne's companion is not merely a bore, but a spy, or +at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a crown or two.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">164</span>, l. 148. <i>complementall thankes.</i> The word +'complement' +or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened +and brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the +most part, in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth +not answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire +tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives an +addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the heart, +by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his condemnation +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.124" id="pageii.124"></a>[pg 124]</span> +that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me +a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and +in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions +well too.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 18. 176.</p> + +<p>l. 164. <i>th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility.</i> I have followed the MSS. +in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be more +easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is +commoner as a noun. The O.E.D. gives no example of the +adjectival use earlier than 1613. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The huft, puft, curld, purld, wanton Pride.</p> +<p class="i26">Sylvester, <i>Du Bartas</i>, i. 2.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">165</span>, l. 169. <i>your waxen garden</i> or <i>yon waxen +garden</i>—it is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the +artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or +'motion' exhibitors. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>I smile to think how fond the Italians are,</p> +<p>To judge their artificial gardens rare,</p> +<p>When London in thy cheekes can shew them heere</p> +<p>Roses and Lillies growing all the yeere.</p> +<p class="i2">Drayton, <i>Heroical Epistles</i> (1597), <i>Edward IV to Jane Shore</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 176. <i>Baloune.</i> A game played with a large wind-ball or football +struck to and fro with the arm or foot.</p> + +<p>l. 179. <i>and I, (God pardon mee.)</i> This, the reading of the <i>1633</i> +edition, is obviously right. Mr. Chambers, misled by the dropping of +the full stop after 'me' in the editions from <i>1639</i> onwards, has +adopted a reading of his own:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12"> and aye—God pardon me—</p> +<p>As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be</p> +<p>The fields they sold to buy them.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But what, in this case, does Donne ask God's pardon for? It is +not <i>his</i> fault that their apparels are fresh or costly. 'God pardon +them!' would be the appropriate exclamation. What Donne asks +God's pardon for is, that he too should be found in the 'Presence' +again, after what he has already seen of Court life and 'the wretchedness +of suitors': as though Dante, who had seen Hell and escaped, +should wilfully return thither.</p> + +<p>l. 189. <i>Cutchannel</i>: i.e. Cochineal. The ladies' painted faces suggest +the comparison. In or shortly before 1603 an English ship, the +<i>Margaret and John</i>, made a piratical attack on the Venetian ship, <i>La +Babiana</i>. An indemnity was paid, and among the stolen articles are +mentioned 54 weights of cochineal, valued at £50-7. Our school +Histories tell us of Turkish and Moorish pirates, not so much of +the piracy which was conducted by English merchant ships, not +always confining themselves to the ships of nations at war with their +country.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.125" id="pageii.125"></a>[pg 125]</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">166</span>, ll. 205-6. <i>trye ... thighe.</i> I have, with the +support of <i>Ash.</i> 38, printed thus instead of <i>tryes ... thighes</i>. If we retain +'tryes', then we should also, with several MSS., read (l. 204) 'survayes'; and if +'thighes' be correct we should expect 'legges'. The regular construction +keeps the infinitive throughout, 'refine', 'lift', 'call', 'survay', +'trye'. If we suppose that Donne shifted the construction as he got +away from the governing verb, the change would naturally begin with +'survayes'.</p> + +<p>ll. 215-6. <i>A Pursevant would have ravish'd him away.</i> The +reading of three independent MSS., <i>Q</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and <i>JC</i>, of +'Topcliffe' for 'Pursevant' is a very interesting clue to the Catholic point of +view from which Donne's <i>Satyres</i> were written. Richard Topcliffe +(1532-1609) was one of the cruellest of the creatures employed to +ferret out and examine by torture Catholics and Jesuits. It was he +who tortured Southwell the poet. In 1593 he was on the commission +against Jesuits, and in 1594-5 was in prison. John Hammond, +the civilist, who is possibly referred to in <i>Satyre V</i>, l. 87, sat with +him on several inquiries. See <i>D.N.B.</i> and authorities quoted there; also +Meyer, <i>Die Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth</i>, 1910.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">167</span>, ll. 233-4. <i>men big enough to throw</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Charing Crosse for a barre.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Of one of Harvey's pamphlets Nash writes: 'Credibly it was once +rumoured about the Court, that the Guard meant to try masteries +with it before the Queene, and, instead of throwing the sledge or the +hammer, to hurle it foorth at the armes end for a wager.' <i>Have with +you, &c.</i> (M<sup>c</sup>Kerrow, iii, p. 36.)</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 235-6.</p> +<p class="i16"><i>Queenes man, and fine</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Living, barrells of beefe, flaggons of wine.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare Cowley's <i>Loves Riddle</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> i:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Apl.</i> He shew thee first all the coelestial signs,</p> +<p class="i6"> And to begin, look on that horned head.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Aln.</i> Whose is't? Jupiters?</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Apl.</i> No, tis the Ram!</p> +<p class="i6"> Next that the spacious Bull fills up the place.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Aln.</i> The Bull? Tis well the fellows of the Guard</p> +<p class="i6"> Intend not to come thither; if they did</p> +<p class="i6"> The Gods might chance to lose their beef.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The name 'beefeater' has, I suppose, some responsibility for the +jest. Nash refers to their size: 'The big-bodied Halbordiers that +guard her Majesty,' Nash (Grosart), i. 102; and to their capacities +as trenchermen: 'Lies as big as one of the Guardes chynes of beefe,' +Nash (M<sup>c</sup>Kerrow), i. 269.</p> + +<p>'Ascapart is a giant thirty feet high who figures in the legend of +Sir Bevis of Southampton.' Chambers.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.126" id="pageii.126"></a>[pg 126]</span></p> + +<p>l. 240. <i>a scarce brooke</i>. Donne uses 'scarce' in this sense, i.e. +'scanty'. It is not common. See note to l. 4.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">168</span>, l. 242. <i>Macchabees modestie.</i> 'And if I have +done well, +and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired; but if +slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.' 2 Maccabees +xv. 38.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 168. <span class="sc">Satyre V.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 9. <i>If all things be in all.</i> 'All things are concealed in all. One +of them all is the concealer of the rest—their corporeal vessel, external, +visible and movable.' Paracelsus, <i>Coelum Philosophorum: +The First Canon, Concerning the Nature and Properties of Mercury</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">169</span>, l. 31. <i>You Sir, &c.</i>: i.e. Sir Thomas Egerton, +whose service Donne entered probably in 1598 and left in 1601-2. Norton +says 1596 to 1600. In 1596 Egerton was made Lord Keeper. In +1597 he was busy with the reform of some of the abuses connected +with the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and this is probably what +Donne has in view throughout the Satyre. 'For some years the +administration of this office had given rise to complaints. In the +last Parliament a bill had been brought in ... for the reformation of +it; but by a little management on the part of the Speaker had been +thrown out on the second reading. Upon this I suppose the complainants +addressed themselves to the Queen. For it appears that +the matter was under inquiry in 1595, when Puckering was Lord +Keeper; and it is certain that at a later period some of the fees +claimed by the Clerk of Council were by authority of the Lord +Keeper Egerton restrained.' Spedding, <i>Letters and Life of Francis +Bacon</i>, ii. 56. In the note Spedding refers to a MS. at Bridgewater +House containing 'The humble petition of the Clerk of the Council +concerning his fees restrained by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Keeper'. +Bacon held the reversion to this Clerkship and in a long letter to +Egerton he discusses in detail the nature of the 'claim'd fees'. The +question was not settled till 1605. It will be noticed that in several +editions and MSS. the reading is 'claim'd fees'.</p> + +<p>ll. 37-41. These lines are correctly printed in <i>1633</i>, though the +old use of the semicolon to indicate at one time a little less than +a full stop, at another just a little more than a comma, has caused +confusion. I have, therefore, ventured to alter the first (after 'farre') +to a full stop, and the second (after 'duties') to a comma. '<i>That</i>', +says Donne (the italics give emphasis), 'was the iron age when justice +was sold. Now' (in this 'age of rusty iron') 'injustice is sold dearer. +Once you have allowed all the demands made on you, you find, +suitors (and suitors are gamblers), that the money you toiled for +has passed into other hands, the lands for which you urged your +rival claims has escaped you, as Angelica escaped while Ferrau and +Rinaldo fought for her.'</p> + +<p>To the reading of the editions <i>1635-54</i>, which Chambers has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.127" id="pageii.127"></a>[pg 127]</span> +adopted (but by printing in roman letters he makes 'that' a relative +pronoun, and 'iron age' subject to 'did allow'), I can attach no +meaning:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The iron Age <i>that</i> was, when justice was sold (now</p> +<p>Injustice is sold dearer) did allow</p> +<p>All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters anon.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>How did the iron age allow fees and duties? The text of <i>1669</i> +reverts to that of <i>1633</i> (keeping the 'claim'd fees' of <i>1635-54</i>), +but +does not improve the punctuation by changing the semicolon after +'farre' to a comma.</p> + +<p>Mr. Allen (<i>Rise of Formal Satire, &c.</i>) points out that the +allusion to the age of 'rusty iron', which deserves some worse +name, is obviously derived from Juvenal XIII. 28 ff.:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Nunc aetas agitur, peioraque saecula ferri</p> +<p>Temporibus: quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa</p> +<p>Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>With Donne's</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> so controverted lands</p> +<p>Scape, like Angelica, the strivers hands</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>compare Chaucer's</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>We strive as did the houndes for the boon</p> +<p>Thei foughte al day and yet hir parte was noon:</p> +<p>Ther cam a kyte, whil that they were so wrothe,</p> +<p>And bar away the boon betwixt hem bothe.</p> +<p>And therfore at the kynges country brother</p> +<p>Eche man for himself, there is noon other.</p> +<p class="i28"><i>Knightes Tale</i>, ll. 319 ff.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 45-6. <i>powre of the Courts below Flow.</i> Grosart and Chambers +silently alter to 'Flows', but both the editions and MSS. have the +plural form. Franz notes the construction in Shakespeare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,</p> +<p>Have lost their quality.</p> +<p class="i32"> <i>Hen. V</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span> ii. 18.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience.</p> +<p class="i36"><i>Lear</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> v. 4.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The last is a very close parallel. The proximity of the plural noun +in the prepositional phrase is the chief determining factor, but in +some cases the combined noun and qualifying phrase has a plural +force—'such venomous looks', 'his mental powers or faculties.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">170</span>, l. 61. <i>heavens Courts.</i> There can be no doubt +that +the plural is right: 'so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and +refine our wills from earthly Drugs, and Lees, more then the +Reformed, and so seems to bring us nearer heaven, but then that +carries heaven farther from us, by making us pass so many Courts, +and Offices of Saints in this life, in all our petitions,' &c. <i>Letters</i>, +102.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.128" id="pageii.128"></a>[pg 128]</span></p> + +<p>ll. 65-8. Compare: 'If a Pursevant, if a Serjeant come to thee +from the King, in any Court of Justice, though he come to put thee +in trouble, to call thee to an account, yet thou receivest him, thou +entertainest him, thou paiest him fees.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 52. 525. +Gardiner, writing of the treatment of Catholics under Elizabeth, +says: 'Hard as this treatment was, it was made worse by the misconduct +of the constables and pursevants whose business it was to +search for the priests who took refuge in the secret chambers which +were always to be found in the mansions of the Catholic gentry. +These wretches, under pretence of discovering the concealed fugitives, +were in the habit of wantonly destroying the furniture or of carrying +off valuable property.' <i>Hist. of England</i>, i. 97.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">171</span>, l. 91. The right reading of this line must be either +(<i>a</i>) that which we have taken from <i>N</i> and <i>TCD</i>, which differs +only by a letter from that of <i>1633-69</i>; or (<i>b</i>) that of <i>A25</i>, +<i>B</i>, and +other MSS.:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And div'd neare drowning, for what vanished.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The first refers to the suitor. He, like the dog, dives for what +<i>has</i> vanished; goes to law for what is irrecoverable. The second +reading would refer to the dog and continue the illustration: 'Thou +art the dog whom shadows cozened and who div'd for what vanish'd.' +The ambiguity accounts for the vacillation of the MSS. and editions. +The reading of <i>1669</i> is a conjectural emendation. The 'div'd'st' of +some MSS. is an endeavour to get an agreement of tenses after +'what's' had become 'what'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 172. <span class="sc">Vpon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities.</span><a name="pageii.128a" id="pageii.128a"></a></h3> + +<p>These verses were first published in 1611 with a mass of witty and +scurrilous verses by all the 'wits' of the day, prefixed to Coryats +<i>Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travells in France, Savoy, +Italy, Rhaetia ... Newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe, in +the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the +travelling members of this Kingdom</i>. Coryat was an eccentric and +a favourite butt of the wits, but was not without ability as well as +enterprise. In 1612 he set out on a journey through the East which +took him to Constantinople, Jerusalem, Armenia, Mesopotamia, +Persia, and India. In his letters to the wits at home he sends +greetings to, among others, Christopher Brooke, John Hoskins (as +'Mr. Ecquinoctial Pasticrust of the Middle Temple'), Ben Jonson, +George Garrat, and 'M. John Donne, the author of two most elegant +Latine Bookes, <i>Pseudomartyr</i> and <i>Ignatius Conclave</i>' He died at +Surat in 1617.</p> + +<p>l. 2. <i>leavened spirit.</i> This is the reading of <i>1611</i>. It was altered +in <i>1649</i> to 'learned', and modern editors have neglected to correct +the error. A glance at the first line shows that 'leavened' is right. +It is leaven which raises bread. A 'leavened spirit' is one easily +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.129" id="pageii.129"></a>[pg 129]</span> +puffed up by the 'love of greatness'. There is much more of satire +in such an epithet than in 'learned'.</p> + +<p>l. 17. <i>great Lunatique</i>, i.e. probably 'great humourist', whose +moods and whims are governed by the changeful moon. See O.E.D., +which quotes:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ther (i.e. women's) hertys chaunge never ...</p> +<p>Ther sect ys no thing lunatyke.</p> +<p class="i36">Lydgate.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'By nativitie they be lunaticke ... as borne under the influence of +Luna, and therefore as firme ... as melting waxe.' Greene, +<i>Mamillia</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Munster.</i> The <i>Cosmographia Universalis</i> (1541) of Sebastian +Munster (1489-1552).</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Gesner.</i> The <i>Bibliotheca Universalis, siue Catalogus +Omnium Scriptorum in Linguis Latina, Graeca, et Hebraica</i>, 1545, by +Conrad von Gesner of Zurich (1516-1565). Norton quotes from +Morhof's <i>Polyhistor</i>: 'Conradus Gesner inter universales et perpetuos +Catalogorum scriptores principatum obtinet'; and from Dr. Johnson: +'The book upon which all my fame was originally founded.'</p> + +<p>l. 23. <i>Gallo-belgicus.</i> See <i>Epigrams</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">173</span>, l. 56. <i>Which casts at Portescues.</i> Grosart +offers the only intelligible explanation of this phrase. He identifies the +'Portescue' with the 'Portaque' or 'Portegue', the great crusado of +Portugal, worth £3 12<i>s.</i>, and quotes from Harrington, <i>On Playe</i>: +'Where lords and great men have been disposed to play deep play, +and not having money about them, have cut cards instead of counters, +with asseverance (on their honours) to pay for every piece of card so +lost a portegue.' Donne's reference to the use which is to be made +of Coryat's books shows clearly that he is speaking of some such +custom as this. Chambers asks pertinently, would the phrase not be +'for Portescues'? but 'to cast at Portescues' may have been a term, +perhaps translated. A greater difficulty is that 'Portescue' is not +given as a form of 'Portague' by the O.E.D., but a false etymology +connecting it with 'escus', crowns, may have produced it.</p> + +<p>The following poem is also found among the poems prefixed to +Coryat's <i>Crudities</i>. It may be by Donne, but was not printed in any +edition of his poems:</p> + +<h3><i>Incipit Ioannes Dones.</i></h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="dropcap">L</span><span class="sp3">OE her's a Man, worthy indeede to trauell;</span></p> +<p class="i4"> Fat Libian plaines, strangest Chinas grauell.</p> +<p>For Europe well hath scene him stirre his stumpes:</p> +<p>Turning his double shoes to simple pumpes.</p> +<p>And for relation, looke he doth afford</p> +<p>Almost for euery step he tooke a word;</p> +<p>What had he done had he ere hug'd th'Ocean</p> +<p>With swimming <i>Drake</i> or famous <i>Magelan</i>?</p> +<p>And kis'd that <i>vnturn'd</i><a id="footnotetagtc1" name="footnotetagtc1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetc1"><sup>1</sup></a> +<i>cheeke</i> of our old mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.130" id="pageii.130"></a>[pg 130]</span></p> +<p>Since so our Europes world he can discouer?</p> +<p>It's not that <i>French</i><a id="footnotetagtc2" name="footnotetagtc2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetc2"><sup>2</sup></a> +which made his <i>Gyant</i><a id="footnotetagtc3" name="footnotetagtc3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetc3"><sup>3</sup></a> see</p> +<p>Those vncouth Ilands where wordes frozen bee,</p> +<p>Till by the thaw next yeare they'r voic't againe;</p> +<p>Whose <i>Papagauts</i>, <i>Andoüelets</i>, and that traine</p> +<p>Should be such matter for a Pope to curse</p> +<p>As he would make; make! makes ten times worse,</p> +<p>And yet so pleasing as shall laughter moue:</p> +<p>And be his vaine, his game, his praise, his loue.</p> +<p class="i2">Sit not still then, keeping fames trump vnblowne:</p> +<p class="i2">But get thee <i>Coryate</i> to some land vnknowne.</p> +<p class="i2">From whẽce proclaime thy wisdom with those wõders,</p> +<p class="i2">Rarer then sommers snowes, or winters thunders.</p> +<p class="i2">And take this praise of that th'ast done alreadie:</p> +<p class="i2">T'is pitty ere they <i>flow</i> should haue an <i>eddie</i>.</p> +<p class="i28"><i>Explicit Ioannes Dones.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">174</span>. <a name="pageii.130a" id="pageii.130a"></a><span class="sc">In Eundem Macaronicum.</span></h3> + +<p>A writer in <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 3rd Series, vii, 1865, gives the +following translation of these lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As many perfect linguists as these two distichs make,</p> +<p>So many prudent statesmen will this book of yours produce.</p> +<p>To me the honour is sufficient of being understood: for I leave</p> +<p>To you the honour of being believed by no one.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotetc1" name="footnotetc1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagtc1"><sup>1</sup></a> <i>Terra incognita.</i></p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotetc2" name="footnotetc2"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagtc2"><sup>2</sup></a> <i>Rablais.</i></p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotetc3" name="footnotetc3"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagtc3"><sup>3</sup></a> <i>Pantagruel.</i></p> + +<p class="footnote">(These notes are given in the margin of the original, opposite the words explained.)</p> + +<h2>LETTERS TO SEVERALL PERSONAGES.<a name="pageii.130b" id="pageii.130b"></a></h2> + +<p>Of Donne's <i>Letters</i> the earliest are the <i>Storms</i> and <i>Calme</i> +which were written in 1597. The two letters to Sir Henry Wotton, 'Sir, +More then kisses' and 'Heres no more newes, then vertue', belong +to 1597-8. The fresh letter here published, <i>H: W: in Hiber: +belligeranti</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.188a">188</a>), was sent to Wotton in 1599. That <i>To Mr Rowland +Woodward</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.185">185</a>) was probably written about the same time, and to +these years—1598 to about 1608—belong also, I am inclined to think, +the group of short letters beginning with <i>To Mr T. W.</i> at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.205a">205</a>. +There are very few indications of date. In that to Mr. R. W. +(pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.209a">209</a>-10) an allusion is made to the disappointment of hopes in +connexion with Guiana:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring,</p> +<p>I feare; And with us (me thinkes) Fate deales so</p> +<p>As with the Jewes guide God did; he did show</p> +<p>Him the rich land, but bar'd his entry in:</p> +<p>Oh, slownes is our punishment and sinne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart and Chambers refer this, and 'the Spanish businesse' below, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.131" id="pageii.131"></a>[pg 131]</span> +to 1613-14. The more probable reference is to the disappointment +of Raleigh's hopes, in 1596 and the years immediately following, that +the Government might be persuaded to make a settlement in Guiana, +both on account of its wealth and as a strategic point to be used in +harassing the King of Spain. Coolly received by Burleigh, Raleigh's +scheme excited considerable enthusiasm, and Chapman wrote his <i>De +Guiana: Carmen Epicum</i>, prefixed to Lawrence Keymis's <i>A Relation +of the Second Voyage to Guiana</i> (1596), to celebrate Raleigh's achievement +and to promote his scheme. The 'Spanish businesse', i.e. +businesses, which, Donne complains,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">as the Earth between the Moone and Sun</p> +<p>Eclipse the light which Guiana would give,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>are probably the efforts in the direction of peace made by the party +in the Government opposed to Essex. Guiana is referred to in the +<i>Satyres</i> which certainly belong to these years, and in <i>Elegie XX: Loves +War</i>, which cannot be dated so late as 1613-14. In 1598 Chamberlain +writes to Carleton: 'Sir John Gilbert, with six or seven saile, one +and other, is gone for Guiana, and I heare that Sir Walter Raleigh +should be so deeply discontented because he thrives no better, that he +is not far off from making that way himself'. Chamberlain's <i>Letters</i>, +Camd. Soc. 1861. Compare also: 'The Queene seemede troubled +to-daye; Hatton came out from her presence with ill countenance, +and pulled me aside by the gyrdle and saide in a secrete waie; If +you have any suite to-day praie you put it aside, The sunne doth not +shine. Tis <i>this accursede Spanish businesse</i>; so will I not adventure +her Highnesse choler, lest she should collar me also.' Sir John +Harington's <i>Nugae Antiquae</i>, i. 176. (Note dated 1598.) All these +letters are found in the Westmoreland MS. (<i>W</i>), whose order I have +adopted, and the titles they bear—'To Mr H. W.', 'To Mr C. B.'—suggest +that they belong to a period before either Wotton or Brooke was +well known, at least before Wotton had been knighted. The tone +throughout points to their belonging to the same time. They are full +of allusions now difficult or impossible to explain. They are written to +intimate friends. 'Thou' is the pronoun used throughout, whereas +'You' is the formula in the letters to noble ladies. Wotton, Christopher +and Samuel Brooke, Rowland and Thomas Woodward are among +the names which can be identified, and they are the names of Donne's +most intimate friends in his earlier years. Probably there were answers +to Donne's letters. He refers to poems which have called forth his +poems. One of these has been preserved in the Westmoreland MS., +though we cannot tell who wrote it. A Bodleian MS. contains another +verse letter written to Donne in the same style as these letters, a little +crabbed and enigmatical, and it is addressed to him as Secretary to +Sir Thomas Egerton. This whole correspondence, then, I should be +inclined to date from 1597 to about 1607-8. The last is probably the +date of the letter <i>To E. of D.</i> or <i>To L. of D.</i> (so in <i>W</i>), +beginning:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.132" id="pageii.132"></a>[pg 132]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame</p> +<p>Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This I have transferred to the <i>Divine Poems</i>, and shall give +reasons later for ascribing it to about this year, and for questioning +the identification of its recipient with Viscount Doncaster, later Earl +of Carlisle.</p> + +<p>Of the remaining <i>Letters</i> some date themselves pretty definitely. +Donne formed the acquaintance of Lady Bedford about 1607-8 when +she came to Twickenham, and the two letters to her—'Reason is our +Soules left hand' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.189a">189</a>) and 'You have refin'd mee' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.191">191</a>)—probably +belong to the early years of their friendship. The second suggests that +the poet is himself at Mitcham. The long, difficult letter, 'T'have +written then' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.195a">195</a>), belongs probably to some year following 1609. +There is an allusion to Virginia, in which there was a quickening of +interest in 1609 (see <i>Elegie XIV</i>, Note), and the 'two new starres' sent +'lately to the firmament' may be Lady Markham (died May 4, 1609) +and Mris Boulstred (died Aug. 4, 1609). This is Chambers's conjecture; +but Norton identifies them with Prince Henry (died Nov. 6, 1612) +and the Countess's brother, Lord Harington, who died early in 1614. +Public characters like these are more fittingly described as stars, so +that the poem probably belongs to 1614, to which year certainly belongs +the letter <i>To the Countesse of Salisbury</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.224">224</a>). What New Year +called forth the letter to Lady Bedford, beginning 'This twilight of two +years' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.198a">198</a>), we do not know, nor the date of the long letter in +triplets, 'Honour is so sublime perfection' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.218a">218</a>). But the latter +was most probably written from France in 1611-12, like the fragmentary +letter which follows, and the letter, similar in verse and in +'metaphysics', <i>To the Lady Carey and Mrs Essex Riche</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.221a">221</a>). +Donne had a little shocked his noble lady friends by the extravagance +of his adulation of the dead child Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, in 1611, and +these letters are written to make his peace and to show the pitch he +is capable of soaring to in praise of their maturer virtues.</p> + +<p>To Sir Henry Wotton (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.214a">214</a>), Donne wrote in a somewhat more +elevated and respectful strain than that of his earlier letters, when +the former set out on his embassy to Venice in 1604. The letter to +Sir Henry Goodyere (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.183">183</a>) belongs to the Mitcham days, 1605-8. +To Sir Edward Herbert (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.193a">193</a>) he wrote 'at Julyers', therefore in +1610. The letter <i>To the Countesse of Huntingdon</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.201a">201</a>) was probably +written just before Donne took orders, 1614-15. The date of +the letter <i>To Mris M. H.</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.216a">216</a>), that is, to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, +not yet Lady Danvers, must have been earlier than her second +marriage in 1608—the exact day of that marriage I do not know—probably +in 1604, as the verse, style and tone closely resemble that of +the letter to Wotton of that year. This suits the tenor of the +letter, which implies that she had not yet married Sir John Danvers.</p> + +<p>The last in the collection of the letters to Lady Bedford, 'You that +are she and you' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.227">227</a>), seems from its position in <i>1633</i> and several +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.133" id="pageii.133"></a>[pg 133]</span> +MSS. to have been sent to her with the elegy called <i>Death</i>, and +to have been evoked by the death of Lady Markham or Mrs. +Boulstred in 1609.</p> + +<p>The majority of the letters thus belong to the years 1596-7 to +1607-8, the remainder to the next six years. With the <i>Funerall +Elegies</i> and the earlier of the <i>Divine Poems</i> they represent the middle +and on the whole least attractive period of Donne's life and work. +The <i>Songs and Sonets</i> and <i>Elegies</i> are the expression of his +brilliant and stormy youth, the <i>Holy Sonnets</i> and the hymns are the utterance +of his ascetic and penitent last years. In the interval between the +two, the wit, the courtier, the man of the world, and the divine jostle +each other in Donne's works in a way that is not a little disconcerting +to readers of an age and temper less habituated to strong contrasts.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 175. <span class="sc">The Storme.</span><a name="pageii.133a" id="pageii.133a"></a></h3> + +<p>After the Cadiz expedition in 1596, the King of Spain began the +preparation of a second Armada. With a view to destroying this +Elizabeth fitted out a large fleet under the command of Essex, +Howard, and Raleigh. The storm described in Donne's letter so +damaged the fleet that the larger purpose was abandoned and a +smaller expedition, after visiting the Spanish coast, proceeded to the +Azores, with a view to intercepting the silver fleet returning from +America. Owing to dissensions between Raleigh and Essex, it +failed of its purpose. This was the famous 'Islands Expedition'.</p> + +<p>The description of the departure and the storm which followed +was probably written in Plymouth, whither the ships had to put back, +and whence they sailed again about a month later; therefore in July-August, +1597. 'We imbarked our Army, and set sayle about the +ninth of July, and for two dayes space were accompanied with a faire +leading North-easterly wind.' (Mildly it kist our sailes, &c.)...... +'Wee now being in this faire course, some sixtie leagues onwards our +journey with our whole Fleet together, there suddenly arose a fierce +and tempestuous storme full in our teethe, continuing for foure dayes +with so great violence, as that now everyone was inforced rather to +looke to his own safetie, and with a low saile to serve the Seas, then +to beate it up against the stormy windes to keep together, or to follow +the directions for the places of meeting.' <i>A larger Relation of the +said Iland Voyage written by Sir Arthur Gorges, &c. Purchas his +Pilgrimes.</i> Glasg. <span class="sc">mcmvii</span>. While at Plymouth Donne wrote +a prose letter, to whom is not clear, preserved in the Burley Commonplace +Book. There he speaks of 'so very bad wether y<sup>t</sup> even some +of y<sup>e</sup> mariners have been drawen to think it were not altogether amiss +to pray, and myself heard one of them say, God help us'.</p> + +<p><i>To Mr. Christopher Brooke.</i> Donne's intimate friend and chamber-fellow +at Lincoln's Inn. He was Donne's chief abetter in his +secret marriage, his younger brother Samuel performing the ceremony. +They were the sons of Robert Brooke, Alderman of and once M.P. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.134" id="pageii.134"></a>[pg 134]</span> +for York, and his wife Jane Maltby. The Alderman had other sons +who followed in his footsteps and figure among the Freemen of York, +but Christopher and Samuel earned a wider reputation. At Lincoln's +Inn, Christopher wrote verses and cultivated the society of the wits. +Wood mentions as his friends and admirers Selden and Jonson, +Drayton and Browne, Wither and Davies of Hereford. Browne sings +his praises in the second song of the second book of <i>Britannia's +Pastorals</i>, and in <i>The Shepherds Pipe</i> (1614) urges him to sing a +higher +strain. His poems, which have been collected and edited by the late +Dr. Grosart, include an Elegy on Prince Henry, and a long poem of no +merit, <i>The Ghost of Richard the Third</i> (<i>Miscellanies</i> of the +<i>Fuller Worthies Library</i>, vol. iv, 1872). In 1614 he became a bencher and +Summer Reader at Lincoln's Inn. He died February 7, 162⅞.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>By Hilliard drawne.</i> Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619), the first +English miniature painter. He was goldsmith, carver, and limner to +Queen Elizabeth, and engraved her second great seal in 1586. He +drew a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, at eighteen, and executed +miniatures of many contemporaries. He also wrote a treatise on +miniature painting. Mr. Laurence Binyon thinks it is quite possible +that the miniature from which Marshall, about 1635, engraved the +portrait of Donne as a young man, was by Hilliard. It is, he says, +quite in his style.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>From out her pregnant intrailes.</i> The ancients attributed +winds to the effect of exhalations from the earth. Seneca, <i>Quaestiones +Naturales</i>, v. 4, discusses various causes but mentions this first: +'Sometimes the earth herself emits a great quantity of air, which she +breathes out of her hidden recesses ... A suggestion has been made +which I cannot make up my mind to believe, and yet I cannot pass +over without mention. In our bodies food produces flatulence, the +emission of which causes great offence to ones nasal susceptibilities; +sometimes a report accompanies the relief of the stomach, sometimes +there is more polite smothering of it. In like manner it is supposed +the great frame of things when assimilating its nourishment emits air. +It is a lucky thing for us that nature's digestion is good, else we might +apprehend some less agreeable consequences.' (<i>Q. N. translated by +John Clarke, with notes by Sir Archibald Geikie</i>, 1910.) These exhalations, +according to one view, mounting up were driven back by +the violence of the stars, or by inability to pass the frozen middle +region of the air—hence commotions. (Pliny, <i>Nat. Hist.</i> ii. 38, 45, +47, 48.) This explains Donne's 'middle marble room', where +'marble' may mean 'hard', or <i>possibly</i> 'blue' referring to the colour +of the heavens. It is so used by Studley in his translations of +Seneca's tragedies: 'Whereas the marble sea doth fleete,' <i>Hipp.</i> i. 25; +'When marble skies no filthy fog doth dim,' <i>Herc. Oet.</i> ii. 8; 'The +monstrous hags of marble seas' (monstra caerulei maris), <i>Hipp.</i> v. 5, +I owe this suggestion to Miss Evelyn Spearing (<i>The Elizabethan +'Tenne Tragedies of Seneca'.</i> <i>Mod. Lang. Review</i>, iv. 4). But the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.135" id="pageii.135"></a>[pg 135]</span> +peripatetic view was that the heavens were made of hard, solid, +though transparent, concentric spheres: 'Tycho will have two distinct +matters of heaven and ayre; but to say truth, with some small modifications, +they' (i.e. Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman) 'have +one and the self same opinion about the essence and matter of +heavens; that it is not hard and impenetrable, as Peripateticks hold, +transparent, of a <i>quinta essentia</i>, but that it is penetrable and soft as +the ayre itself is, and that the planets move in it', (according to the +older view each was fixed in its sphere) 'as birds in the ayre, fishes +in the sea.' Burton, <i>Anat. of Melancholy</i>, part ii, sect. 2, Men. 3.</p> + +<p>'Wind', says Donne elsewhere, 'is a mixt Meteor, to the making +whereof, diverse occasions concurre with exhalations.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +31. 305.</p> + +<p>The movement which Donne has in view is described by +Du Bartas:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">If heav'ns bright torches, from earth's Kidneys, sup</p> +<p>Som somwhat dry and heatfull Vapours up,</p> +<p>Th' ambitious lightning of their nimble Fire</p> +<p>Would suddenly neer th' Azure Cirques aspire:</p> +<p>But scarce so soon their fuming crest hath raught,</p> +<p>Or toucht the Coldness of the middle Vault,</p> +<p>And felt what force their mortall Enemy</p> +<p>In Garrison keeps there continually;</p> +<p>When down again towards their Dam they bear,</p> +<p>Holp by the weight which they have drawn from her.</p> +<p>But in the instant, to their aid arrives</p> +<p>Another new heat, which their heart revives,</p> +<p>Re-arms their hand, and having staied their flight,</p> +<p>Better resolv'd brings them again to fight.</p> +<p class="i2">Well fortifi'd then by these fresh supplies,</p> +<p>More bravely they renew their enterprize:</p> +<p>And one-while th' upper hand (with honor) getting,</p> +<p>Another-while disgracefully retreating,</p> +<p>Our lower Aire they tosse in sundry sort,</p> +<p>As weak or strong their matter doth comport.</p> +<p>This lasts not long; because the heat and cold,</p> +<p>Equall in force and fortune, equall bold</p> +<p>In these assaults; to end this sudden brall,</p> +<p>Th' one stops their mounting, th' other stayes their fall:</p> +<p>So that this vapour, never resting stound,</p> +<p>Stands never still, but makes his motion round,</p> +<p>Posteth from Pole to Pole, and flies amain</p> +<p>From <i>Spain</i> to <i>India</i>, and from <i>Inde</i> to <i>Spain</i>.</p> +<p class="i8">Sylvester, <i>Du Bartas</i>, First Week, Second Day.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 18. <i>prisoners, which lye but for fees</i>, i.e. the fees due to the +gaoler. +'And as prisoners discharg'd of actions may lye for fees; so when,' &c.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.136" id="pageii.136"></a>[pg 136]</span></p> + +<p><i>Deaths Duell</i> (1632), p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.9">9</a>. Thirty-three years after this poem was +written, Donne thus uses the same figure in the last sermon he +ever preached.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">176</span>, l. 38. <i>I, and the Sunne.</i> The 'Yea, and the +Sunne' +of <i>Q</i> shows that 'I' here is probably the adverb, not the pronoun, +though the passage is ambiguous. Modern editors have all taken 'I' +as the pronoun.</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 10em; margin-bottom: -2.2em;">ll. 49-50.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> <i>And do hear so</i></p> +<p><i>Like jealous husbands, what they would not know.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Crede mihi; nulli sunt crimina grata marito;</p> +<p class="i2">Nec quemquam, quamvis audiat illa, iuvant.</p> +<p>Seu tepet, indicium securas perdis ad aures;</p> +<p class="i2">Sive amat, officio fit miser ille tuo.</p> +<p>Culpa nec ex facili, quamvis manifesta, probatur:</p> +<p class="i2">Iudicis illa sui tuta favore venit.</p> +<p>Viderit ipse licet, credet tamen ipse neganti;</p> +<p class="i2">Damnabitque oculos, et sibi verba dabit.</p> +<p>Adspiciet dominae lacrimas; plorabit et ipse:</p> +<p class="i2">Et dicet, poenas garrulus iste dabit.</p> +<p class="i26">Ovid, <i>Amores</i>, II. ii. 51-60.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">177</span>, l. 60. <i>Strive.</i> Later editions and Chambers read +'strives', +but 'ordinance' was used as a plural: 'The goodly ordinance which +were xii great Bombardes of brasse', and 'these six small iron ordinance.' +O.E.D. The word in this sense is now spelt 'ordnance'.</p> + +<p>l. 66. <i>the'Bermuda</i>. It is probably unnecessary to change this to +'the'Bermudas.' The singular without the article is quite regular.</p> + +<p>l. 67. <i>Darknesse, lights elder brother.</i> The 'elder' of the MSS. +is grammatically more correct than the 'eldest' of the editions. +'We must return again to our stronghold, faith, and end with this, +that this beginning was, and before it, nothing. It is elder than +darkness, which is elder than light; and was before confusion, which +is elder than order, by how much the universal Chaos preceded forms +and distinctions.' <i>Essays in Divinity</i> (ed. Jessop, 1855), p. 46.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 178. <span class="sc">The Calme.</span><a name="pageii.136a" id="pageii.136a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 4. <i>A blocke afflicts, &c.</i> Aesop's <i>Fables</i>. Sir Thomas Rowe +recalled Donne's use of the fable, when he was Ambassador at the +Court of the Mogul. Of Ibrahim Khan, the Governor of Surat +after Zufilkhar Khan, he writes: 'He was good but soe easy that he +does no good; wee are not lesse afflicted with a block then before with +a storck.' <i>The Embassy, &c.</i> (Hakl. Soc.), i. 82.</p> + +<p>l. 8. <i>thy mistresse glasse.</i> This poem, like the last, is <i>probably</i> +addressed to Christopher Brooke, but it is not so headed in any +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.137" id="pageii.137"></a>[pg 137]</span> +edition or MS. The Grolier Club editor ascribes the first heading +to both.</p> + +<p>l. 14. <i>or like ended playes.</i> This suggests that the Elizabethan +stage was not so bare of furniture as used to be stated, and also that +furniture was not confined to the curtained-off rear-stage. What +Donne recalls is a stage deserted by the actors but cumbered with +furniture and decorations.</p> + +<p>l. 16. <i>a frippery</i>, i.e. 'A place where cast-off clothes are sold', +O.E.D. 'Oh, ho, Monster; wee know what belongs to a frippery.' +<i>Tempest</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> i. 225. Here the rigging has the appearance of an +old-clothes +shop.</p> + +<p>l. 17. <i>No use of lanthornes.</i> The reference is to the lanterns in +the high sterns of the ships, used to keep the fleet together. 'There +is no fear now of our losing one another.' Each squadron of a fleet +followed the light of its Admiral. Essex speaks of having lost, or +missing, 'Sir Walter Raleigh with thirty sailes that in the night +followed his light.' <i>Purchas</i>, xx. 24-5.</p> + +<p>l. 18. <i>Feathers and dust.</i> 'He esteemeth John Done the first +poet in the world for some things: his verses of the Lost Chaine +he hath by heart; and that passage of the Calme, That dust and +feathers doe not stirre, all was soe quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have +written all his best peeces ere he was twenty-five yeares old.' <i>Jonson's +Conversations with Drummond.</i> When Donne wrote <i>The Calme</i> he +was in his twenty-fifth year.</p> + +<p>l. 21. <i>lost friends.</i> Raleigh and his squadron lost the main fleet +while off the coast of Spain, before they set sail definitely for the +Azores. He rejoined the fleet at the Islands. Donne's poem was +probably written in the interval.</p> + +<p>The reading of some MSS., 'lefte friends,' is quite a possible one. +Carleton, writing from Venice to Chamberlain, says: 'Let me tell you, +for your comfort (for I imagine what is mine is yours) that my last +news from the left island ... took knowledge of my vigilancy and +diligency.' The 'left island' is Great Britain, and Donne may mean +no more than that 'we can neither get back to our friends nor on to +our enemies.' There may be no allusion to Raleigh's ships.</p> + +<p>l. 23. <i>the Calenture.</i> 'A disease incident to sailors within the +tropics, characterized by delirium in which the patient, it is said, +fancies the sea to be green fields, and desires to leap into it.' +O.E.D. Theobald had the Calenture in mind when he conjectured +that Falstaff 'babbled o' green fields'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">179</span>, l. 33. <i>Like Bajazet encaged, &c.</i>: an echo of +Marlowe's +<i>Tamburlaine</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>There whiles he lives shall Bajazet be kept;</p> +<p>And where I go be thus in triumph drawn:</p> +<p class="i2"><big>. . . . + . . . + .</big></p> +<p>This is my mind, and I will have it so.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.138" id="pageii.138"></a>[pg 138]</span> +<p>Not all the kings and emperors of the earth,</p> +<p>If they would lay their crowns before my feet,</p> +<p>Shall ransom him or take him from his cage:</p> +<p>The ages that shall talk of Tamburlaine,</p> +<p>Even from this day to Plato's wondrous year,</p> +<p>Shall talk how I have handled Bajazet.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>There are frequent references to this scene in contemporary +literature.</p> + +<p>ll. 35-6. <i>a Miriade Of Ants, &c.</i> 'Erat ei' (i.e. Tiberius) 'in +oblectamentis serpens draco, quem ex consuetudine manu sua +cibaturus, cum consumptum a formicis invenisset, monitus est ut +vim multitudinis caveret.' Suetonius, <i>Tib.</i> 72.</p> + +<p>l. 37. <i>Sea-goales</i>, i.e. sea-gaols. 'goale' was a common spelling. +See next poem, l. 52, 'the worlds thy goale.' Strangely enough, +neither the Grolier Club editor nor Chambers seems to have recognized +the word here, in <i>The Calme</i>, though in the next poem they +change 'goale' to 'gaol' without comment. The Grolier Club +editor retains 'goales' and Chambers adopts the reading of the later +editions, 'sea-gulls.' A gull would have no difficulty in overtaking the +swiftest ship which ever sailed. Grosart takes the passage correctly. +'Sea-goales' is an accurate definition of the galleys.' Finny-chips' is +a vivid description of their appearance. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">One of these small bodies fitted so,</p> +<p>This soul inform'd, and abled it to row</p> +<p>Itselfe with finnie oars.</p> +<p class="i24"><i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, I. 23.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Never again shall I with finny oar</p> +<p>Put from, or draw unto the faithful shore.</p> +<p class="i22">Herrick, <i>His Tears to Thamesis</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 38. <i>our Pinnaces.</i> 'Venices' is the reading of <i>1633</i> and most of +the MSS., where, as in <i>1669</i>, the word is often spelt 'Vinices'. But +I can find no example of the word 'Venice' used for a species of ship, +and Mr. W. A. Craigie of the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> tells me that he +has no example recorded. The mistake probably arose in a confusion +of P and V. The word 'Pinnace' is variously spelt, 'pynice', 'pinnes', +'pinace', &c., &c. The pinnaces were the small, light-rigged, quick-sailing +vessels which acted as scouts for the fleet.</p> + +<p>l. 48. <i>A scourge, 'gainst which wee all forget to pray.</i> The 'forgot' +of <i>1669</i> and several MSS. is tempting—'a scourge against which we +all in setting out forgot to pray.' I rather think, however, that what +Donne means is 'a scourge against which we all at sea always forget +to pray, for to pray for wind at sea is generally to pray for cold under +the poles, for heat in hell'. The 'forgot' makes the reference too +definite. At the same time, 'forgot' is so obvious a reading that it +is difficult to account for 'forget' except on the supposition that it is +right.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.139" id="pageii.139"></a>[pg 139]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 51-4.</p> +<p class="i18"><i>How little more alas,</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Is man now, then before he was? he was</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Nothing; for us, wee are for nothing fit;</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>Chance, or ourselves still disproportion it.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne is here playing with an antithesis which apparently he owes +to the rhetoric of Tertullian. 'Canst thou choose', says the poet in +one of his later sermons, 'but think God as perfect now, at least as +he was at first, and can he not as easily make thee up againe of +nothing, as he made thee of nothing at first? <i>Recogita quid fueris +antequam esses.</i> Think over thyselfe; what wast thou before thou +wast anything? <i>Meminisses utique, si fuisses</i>: if thou had'st been +anything than, surely thou would'st remember it now. <i>Qui non +eras, factus es; cum iterum non eris, fies.</i> Thou that wast once +nothing, wast made this that thou art now; and when thou shalt +be nothing again, thou shalt be made better then thou art yet.' +<i>Sermons</i> 50. 14. 109. A note in the margin indicates that the +quotations are from Tertullian, and Donne is echoing here the +antithetical <i>Recogita quid fueris antequam esses</i>.</p> + +<p>This echo is certainly made more obvious to the ear by the +punctuation of <i>1669</i>, which Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and +Chambers all follow. The last reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">How little more, alas,</p> +<p>Is man now, than, before he was, he was?</p> +<p>Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit;</p> +<p>Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This may be right; but after careful consideration I have retained +the punctuation of <i>1633</i>. In the first place, if the <i>1669</i> text be +right +it is not clear why the poet did not preserve the regular order:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Is man now than he was before he was.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>To place 'he was' at the end of the line was in the circumstances +to court ambiguity, and is not metrically requisite. In the second +place, the rhetorical question asked requires an answer, and that is +given most clearly by the punctuation of <i>1633</i>. 'How little more, +alas, is man now than [he was] before he was? He was nothing; +and as for us, we are fit for nothing. Chance or ourselves still throw +us out of gear with everything.' To be nothing and to be fit for +nothing—there is all the difference. In the <i>1669</i> version it is not +easy to see the relevance of the rhetorical question and of the line +which follows: 'Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit.' This seems +to introduce a new thought, a fresh antithesis. It is not quite true. +A breeze would fit them very well.</p> + +<p>The use of 'for' in 'for us', as I have taken it, is quite idiomatic:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For me, I am the mistress of my fate.</p> +<p class="i18">Shakespeare, <i>Rape of Lucrece</i>, 1021.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.140" id="pageii.140"></a>[pg 140]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For the rest o' the fleet, they all have met again.</p> +<p class="i26">Id., <i>The Tempest</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i. 232.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 180. <span class="sc">To S</span><sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Henry Wotton.</span></h3> + +<p>The occasion of this letter was apparently (see my article, <i>Bacon's +Poem, The World: Its Date And Relation to Certain Other Poems</i>: +<i>Mod. Lang. Rev.</i>, April, 1911) a literary <i>débat</i> among some of the +wits of Essex's circle. The subject of the <i>débat</i> was 'Which kind +of life is best, that of Court, Country, or City?' and the suggestion +came from the two epigrams in the Greek Anthology attributed +to Posidippus and Metrodorus respectively. In the first (<ins title="Greek: Poiên tis biotoio tamê tribon?">Ποίην τις +βιότοιο +τάμῃ +τρίβον;</ins>) +each kind of life in turn is condemned; in the +second each is defended. These epigrams were paraphrased in +<i>Tottel's Miscellany</i> (1557) by Nicholas Grimald, and again in the +<i>Arte of English Poesie</i> (1589), attributed to George Puttenham. +Stimulated perhaps by the latter version, in which the Court first +appears as one of the principal spheres of life, or by Ronsard's +French version in which also the 'cours des Roys', unknown to the +Greek poet, are introduced, Bacon wrote his well-known paraphrase:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The world's a bubble: and the life of man</p> +<p class="i18"> Less than a span.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is just possible too that he wrote a paraphrase, similar in verse, +of the second epigram, which I have printed in the article referred to. +A copy of <i>The World</i> was found among Wotton's papers and was +printed in the <i>Reliquiae Wottonianae</i> (1651) signed 'Fra. Lord Bacon'. +It had already been published by Thomas Farnaby in his <i>Florilegium +Epigrammatum Graecorum &c.</i> (1629). Bacon probably gave Wotton +a copy and he appears to have shown it to his friends. Among these +was Thomas Bastard, who, to judge by the numerous epigrams he +addressed to Essex, belonged to the same circle as Bacon, Donne, and +Wotton,—if we may so describe it, but probably every young man of +letters looked to Essex for patronage. Bastard's poem runs:</p> + +<h3>Ad Henricum Wottonum.</h3> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Wotton, the country, and the country swayne,</p> +<p>How can they yeeld a Poet any sense?</p> +<p>How can they stirre him up or heat his vaine?</p> +<p>How can they feed him with intelligence?</p> +<p>You have that fire which can a witt enflame</p> +<p>In happy London Englands fayrest eye:</p> +<p>Well may you Poets have of worthy name</p> +<p>Which have the foode and life of Poetry.</p> +<p>And yet the Country or the towne may swaye</p> +<p>Or beare a part, as clownes do in a play.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne was one of those to whom Wotton showed Bacon's poem, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.141" id="pageii.141"></a>[pg 141]</span> +and the result was the present letter which occasionally echoes Bacon's +words. Wotton replied to it in some characteristic verses preserved +in <i>B</i> (Lord Ellesmere's MS.) and <i>P</i> (belonging to Captain Harris). +I print it from the former:</p> + +<h3><i>To J: D: from M<sup>r</sup> H: W:</i></h3> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Worthie Sir:</p> +<p class="i2">Tis not a coate of gray or Shepheards life,</p> +<p class="i4">Tis not in feilds or woods remote to live,</p> +<p class="i2">That adds or takes from one that peace or strife,</p> +<p class="i4">Which to our dayes such good or ill doth give:</p> +<p class="i2"><span class="right1">5</span>It is the mind that make the mans estate</p> +<p class="i2">For ever happy or unfortunate.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Then first the mind of passions must be free</p> +<p class="i4">Of him that would to happiness aspire;</p> +<p class="i2">Whether in Princes Pallaces he bee,</p> +<p class="i4"><span class="right1">10</span>Or whether to his cottage he retire;</p> +<p class="i2">For our desires that on extreames are bent</p> +<p class="i2">Are frends to care and traitors to content.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Nor should wee blame our frends though false they bee</p> +<p class="i4">Since there are thousands false, for one that's true,</p> +<p class="i2"><span class="right1">15</span>But our own blindness, that we cannot see</p> +<p class="i4">To chuse the best, although they bee but few:</p> +<p class="i2">For he that every fained frend will trust,</p> +<p class="i2">Proves true to frend, but to himself unjust.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">The faults wee have are they that make our woe,</p> +<p class="i4"><span class="right1">20</span>Our virtues are the motives of our joye,</p> +<p class="i2">Then is it vayne, if wee to desarts goe</p> +<p class="i4">To seek our bliss, or shroud us from annoy:</p> +<p class="i2">Our place need not be changed, but our Will,</p> +<p class="i2">For every where wee may do good or ill.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2"><span class="right1">25</span>But this I doe not dedicate to thee,</p> +<p class="i4">As one that holds himself fitt to advise,</p> +<p class="i2">Or that my lines to him should precepts be</p> +<p class="i4">That is less ill then I, and much more wise:</p> +<p class="i2">Yet 'tis no harme mortality to preach,</p> +<p class="i2">For men doe often learne when they do teach.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The date of the <i>débat</i> is before April 1598, when Bastard's +<i>Chrestoleros</i> +was entered on the Stationers' Register, probably 1597-8, the +interval between the return of the Islands Expedition and Donne's +entry into the household of Sir Thomas Egerton. Mr. Chambers has +shown that during this interval Donne was occasionally employed by +Cecil to carry letters to and from the Commanders of the English +forces still in France. But it was not till about April 1598 that he +found permanent employment.</p> + +<p>l. 8. <i>Remoraes</i>; Browne doubts 'whether the story of the remora be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.142" id="pageii.142"></a>[pg 142]</span> +not unreasonably amplified'. The name is given to any of the fish +belonging to the family Echeneididae, which by means of a suctorial +disk situated on the top of the head adhere to sharks, other large +fishes, vessels, &c., letting go when they choose. The ancient naturalists +reported that they could arrest a ship in full course. See +Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lib. xiii, <i>De Aqua et ejus Ornatu</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 11. <i>the even line</i> is the reading of all the MS. copies, and must +have been taken from one of these by the 1669 editor. The use of +the word is archaic and therefore more probably Donne's than an +editor's emendation. Compare Chaucer's 'Of his stature he was of +even length', i.e. 'a just mean between extremes, of proper magnitude +or degree'. The 'even line' is, as the context shows, the exact mean +between the 'adverse icy poles'. I suspect that 'raging' is an editorial +emendation. There are several demonstrable errors in the 1633 text +of this poem. The 'other' of <i>P</i>, and 'over' of <i>S</i>, are errors which +point to 'even' rather than 'raging'.</p> + +<p>l. 12. <i>th'adverse icy poles.</i> The 'poles' of most MSS. is obviously +necessary if we are to have <i>two</i> temperate regions. The expression +is a condensed one for 'either of the adverse icy poles'. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He that at sea prayes for more winde, as well</p> +<p>Under the poles may begge cold, heat in hell.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>One cannot be under both the poles at once. One is 'under' the +pole in Donne's cosmology because the poles are not the termini of +the earth's axis but of the heavens'. 'For the North and Southern +Pole, are the invariable terms of that Axis whereon the Heavens do +move.' Browne, <i>Pseud. Epidem.</i> vi. 7.</p> + +<div class="poem width30"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> Tristior illa</p> +<p class="i4">Terra sub ambobus non iacet ulla polis. Ovid, <i>Pont.</i> ii. 7. 64.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 17. <i>Can dung and garlike, &c.</i> This is the text of the 1633 +edition made consistent with itself, and it has the support of several +MSS. Clearly if we are to read 'or' in one line we must do so in both, +and adopt the <i>1635-69</i> text. It is tempting at first sight to do so, +but I believe the MSS. are right. What Donne means is, 'Can we +procure a perfume, or a medicine, by blending opposite stenches or +poisons?' This is his expansion of the question, 'Shall cities, built +of both extremes, be chosen?' The change to 'or' obscures the +exact metaphysical point. It would be an improvement perhaps to +bracket the lines as parenthetical.</p> + +<p>According to Donne's medical science the scorpion (probably its +flesh) was an antidote to its own poison: 'I have as many Antidotes +as the Devill hath poisons, I have as much mercy as the Devill hath +malice; There must be scorpions in the world; <i>but the Scorpion shall +cure the Scorpion</i>; there must be tentations; but tentations shall adde +to mine and to thy glory, and <i>Eripiam</i>, I will deliver thee.' +<i>Sermons</i> +80. 52. 527. Obviously Donne could not ask in surprise, 'Can a +Scorpion or Torpedo cure a man?' Each can; it is their combination +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.143" id="pageii.143"></a>[pg 143]</span> +he deprecates. In <i>Ignatius his Conclave</i> he writes, 'and two Poysons +mingled might do no harme.'</p> + +<p>In speaking of scent made from dung Donne has probably the +statement of Paracelsus in his mind to which Sir Thomas Browne also +refers: 'And yet if, as Paracelsus encourageth, Ordure makes the +best Musk, and from the most fetid substances may be drawn the +most odoriferous Essences; all that had not Vespasian's nose, might +boldly swear, here was a subject fit for such extractions.' <i>Pseudodoxia +Epidemica</i>, iii. 26.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page 181</span>, ll. 19-20. <i>Cities are worst of all three; of all three</i></p> +<p class="i18"> <i>(O knottie riddle) each is worst equally.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is the punctuation of <i>1633</i> and of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, +and <i>W</i>. The +later punctuation which Chambers has adopted and modernized, is not +found to be an improvement if scrutinized. He reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Cities are worst of all three; of all three?</p> +<p>O knotty riddle! each is worst equally.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The mark of interrogation after 'three' would be justifiable only if +the poet were going to expatiate upon the badness of cities. 'Of all +three? that is saying very little, &c., &c.' But this is not the tenor of +the passage. From one thought he is led to another. 'Cities are +worst of all three (i.e. Court, City, Country). Nay, each is equally +the worst.' The interjected 'O knottie riddle' does not mean, 'Who +is to say which is the worst?' but 'How can it come that each is +worst? This is a riddle!' Donne here echoes Bacon:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And where's the citty from foul vice so free</p> +<p>But may be term'd the worst of all the three?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 25-6. <i>The country is a desert, &c.</i> The evidence for this reading +is so overwhelming that it is impossible to reject it. I have modified +the punctuation to bring out more clearly what I take it to mean. +'The country is a desert where no goodness is native, and therefore +rightly understood. Goodness in the country is like a foreign language, +a faculty not born with us, but acquired with pain, and never +thoroughly understood and mastered.' Only Dr. Johnson could stigmatize +in adequate terms so harsh a construction, but the <i>1635-54</i> +emendation is not less obscure. Does it mean that any good which +comes there quits it with all speed, while that which is native and +must stay is not understood? This is not a lucid or just enough +thought to warrant departure from the better authorized text.</p> + +<p>l. 27. <i>prone to more evills</i>; The reading 'mere evils' of several +MSS., including <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, is tempting and <i>may</i> be +right. In that +case 'meere' has the now obsolete meaning of 'pure, unadulterated', +'meere English', 'meere Irish', &c. in O.E.D., or more fully, +'absolute, entire, sheer, perfect, downright', as in 'Th'obstinacie, +willfull disobedience, meere lienge and disceite of the countrie +gentlemen,' <i>Hist. MSS. Com.</i> (1600), quoted in O.E.D.; 'the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.144" id="pageii.144"></a>[pg 144]</span> +mere perdition of the Turkish fleet,' Shakespeare, <i>Othello</i>, <span class="sc">II.</span> +ii. 3. +Such a strong adjective would however come better after 'devills' in +the next line. Placed here it disturbs the climax. What Donne says +here is that men in the country become beasts, and more prone to evil +than beasts because of their higher faculties:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If lecherous goats, if serpents envious</p> +<p>Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should I bee?</p> +<p>Why should intent or reason, borne in mee,</p> +<p>Make sinnes, else equall, in mee more heinous?</p> +<p class="i26"><i>Holy Sonnets</i>, IX, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.326">326</a>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And in this same letter, ll. 41-2, he develops the thought further.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">182</span>, ll. 59-62. <i>Only in this one thing, be no Galenist, +&c.</i> +The Galenists perceived in the living body four humours; hot, cold, +moist, and dry, and held that in health these were present in fixed +proportions. Diseases were due to disturbance of these proportions, +and were to be cured by correction of the disproportion by drugs, +these being used as they were themselves hot, cold, moist, or dry; to +add to whichever humours were defective. The chymiques or school of +Paracelsus, held that each disease had an essence which might be got rid +of by being purged or driven from the body by an antagonistic remedy.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 183. <span class="sc">To S</span><sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Henry Goodyere.</span><a name="pageii.144a" id="pageii.144a"></a></h3> + +<p>Goodyere and Walton form between them the Boswell to whom we +owe our fullest and most intimate knowledge of the life of Donne. To +the former he wrote apparently a weekly letter in the years of his +residence at Pyrford, Mitcham, and London. And Goodyere preserved +his letters and his poems. Of the letters published by Donne's son +in 1651-4, the greatest number, as well as the most interesting +and intimate, are addressed to Goodyere. Some appeared with the +first edition of the poems, and it is ultimately to Goodyere that we +probably owe the generally sound text of that edition.</p> + +<p>Sir Henry Goodyere was the son of Sir William Goodyere of Monks +Kirby in Warwickshire, who was knighted by James in 1603, and +was the nephew of Sir Henry Goodyere (1534-95) of Polesworth in +Warwickshire. The older Sir Henry had got into trouble in connexion +with one of the conspiracies on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, +but redeemed his good name by excellent service in the Low +Countries, where he was knighted by Leicester. He married Frances, +daughter of Hugh Lowther of Lowther, Westmoreland, and left two +daughters, Frances and Anne. The latter, who succeeded the Countess +of Bedford as patroness to the poet Michael Drayton and as the 'Idea' +of his sonnets, married Sir Henry Raynsford. The former married her +cousin, the son of Sir William, and made him proprietor of Polesworth, +to which repeated allusion is made in Donne's <i>Letters</i>. He was +knighted, in 1599, in Dublin, by Essex. He is addressed as a knight +by Donne in 1601, and appears as such in the earliest years of +King James. (See Nichol's <i>Progresses of King James</i>.)</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.145" id="pageii.145"></a>[pg 145]</span></p> + +<p>He was a friend of wits and poets and himself wrote occasional +verses in rivalry with his friends. Like Donne he wrote satirical +congratulatory verses for <i>Coryats Crudities</i> (1611) and an elegy +on Prince Henry for the second edition of Sylvester's <i>Lachrymae +Lachrymarum</i> (1613), and there are others in MS., including an +<i>Epithalamium</i> on Princess Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>The estate which Goodyere inherited was apparently encumbered, +and he was himself generous and extravagant. He was involved all +his life in money troubles and frequently petitioned for relief and +appointments. It was to him probably that Donne made a present +of one hundred pounds when his own fortunes had bettered. The +date of the present letter was between 1605 and 1608, when Donne +was living at Mitcham. These were the years in which Goodyere +was a courtier. In 1604-5 £120 was stolen from his chamber +'at Court', and in 1605 he participated in the jousting at the Barriers. +Life at the dissolute and glittering Court of James I was ruinously +extravagant, and the note of warning in Donne's poem is very audible. +Sir Henry Goodyere died in March 1627-8.</p> + +<p>Additional MS. 23229 (<i>A23</i>) contains the following:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Funerall Verses sett on the hearse</p> +<p>of Henry Goodere knighte; late of Polesworth.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<h3>[March 18. 162⅞ c.]</h3> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Esteemed knight take triumph over deathe,</p> +<p class="i2">And over tyme by the eternal fame</p> +<p>Of Natures workes, while God did lende thee breath;</p> +<p class="i2">Adornd with witt and skill to rule the same.</p> +<p>But what avayles thy gifts in such degrees</p> +<p>Since fortune frownd, and worlde had spite at these.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Heaven be thy rest, on earth thy lot was toyle;</p> +<p class="i2">Thy private loss, ment to thy countryes gayne,</p> +<p>Bredde grief of mynde, which in thy brest did boyle,</p> +<p class="i2">Confyning cares whereof the scarres remayne.</p> +<p>Enjoy by death such passage into lyfe</p> +<p>As frees thee quyte from thoughts of worldly stryfe.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Wm. Goodere.</span></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Camden transcribes his epitaph:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>An ill yeare of a Goodyere us bereft,</p> +<p>Who gon to God much lacke of him here left;</p> +<p>Full of good gifts, of body and of minde,</p> +<p>Wise, comely, learned, eloquent and kinde.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The Epitaph is probably by the same author as the <i>Verses</i>, a nephew +perhaps. Sir Henry's son predeceased him.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">183</span>, l. 1. It is not necessary to change 'the past' of +<i>1633-54</i> +to 'last' with <i>1669</i>. 'The past year' is good English for 'last year'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">184</span>, l. 27. <i>Goe; whither? Hence; &c.</i> My punctuation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.146" id="pageii.146"></a>[pg 146]</span> +which is that of some MSS., follows Donne's usual arrangement in +dialogue, dividing the speeches by semicolons. Chambers's textual +note misrepresents the earlier editions. He attributes to <i>1633-54</i> +the reading, 'Go whither? hence you get'. But they have all 'Goe, +whither?', and <i>1633</i> has 'hence;' <i>1635-54</i> drop this semicolon. In +<i>1669</i> the text runs, 'Goe, whither. Hence you get,' &c. The +semicolon, however, is better than the full stop after 'Hence', as +the following clause is expansive and explanatory: 'Anywhere will +do so long as it is out of this. In such cases as yours, to forget is +itself a gain.'</p> + +<p>l. 34. The modern editors, by dropping the comma after +'asham'd', have given this line the opposite meaning to what Donne +intended. I have therefore, to avoid ambiguity, inserted one before. +Sir Henry Goodyere is not to be asham'd to imitate his hawk, but is, +<i>through shame</i>, to emulate that noble bird by growing more sparing of +extravagant display. 'But the sporte which for that daie Basilius would +principally shewe to Zelmane, was the mounting at a Hearne, which +getting up on his wagling wings with paine ... was now growen +to diminish the sight of himself, and to give example to greate +persons, that the higher they be the lesse they should show.' Sidney's +<i>Arcadia</i>, ii. 4.</p> + +<p>Goodyere's fondness for hawking is referred to in one of Donne's +prose letters, 'God send you Hawks and fortunes of a high pitch' +(<i>Letters</i>, p. 204), and by Jonson in <i>Epigram LXXXV</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 44. <i>Tables, or fruit-trenchers.</i> I have let the 'Tables' of +<i>1633-54</i> +stand, although 'Fables' has the support of <i>all</i> the MSS. T is +easily confounded with F. In the very next poem <i>1633-54</i> read +'Termers' where I feel sure that 'Farmers' (spelt 'Fermers') is +the correct reading. Moreover, Donne makes several references to +the 'morals' of fables:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The fable is inverted, and far more</p> +<p>A block inflicts now, then a stork before.</p> +<p class="i30"> <i>The Calme</i>, ll. 4-5.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O wretch, that thy fortunes should moralize</p> +<p>Aesop's fables, and make tales prophesies.</p> +<p class="i38"><i>Satyre V.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>If 'Tables' is the correct reading, Donne means, I take it, not +portable memorandum books such as Hamlet carried (this is Professor +Norton's explanation), but simply pictures (as in 'Table-book'), +probably Emblems.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 185. To M<sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Rowland Woodward.</span><a name="pageii.146a" id="pageii.146a"></a></h3> + +<p>Rowland Woodward was a common friend of Donne and Wotton. +The fullest account of Woodward is given by Mr. Pearsall Smith +(<i>The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton</i>, 1907). Of his early life +unfortunately he can tell us little or nothing. He seems to have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.147" id="pageii.147"></a>[pg 147]</span> +gone to Venice with Wotton in 1604, at least he was there in 1605. +This letter was, therefore, written probably before that date. One MS., +viz. <i>B</i>, states that it was written 'to one that desired some of his +papers'. It is quite likely that Woodward, preparing to leave England, +had asked Donne for copies of his poems, and Donne, now a married +man, and, if not disgraced, yet living in 'a retiredness' at Pyrford or +Camberwell, was not altogether disposed to scatter his indiscretions +abroad. He enjoins privacy in like manner on Wotton when he +sends him some Paradoxes. Donne, it will be seen, makes no +reference to Woodward's going abroad or being in Italy.</p> + +<p>While with Wotton he was sent as a spy to Milan and imprisoned +by the Inquisition. In 1607, while bringing home dispatches, he was +attacked by robbers and left for dead. On Feb. 2, 1608, money +was paid to his brother, Thomas Woodward (the T. W. of several +of Donne's <i>Letters</i>), for Rowland's 'surgeons and diets'. In 1608 +he entered the service of the Bishop of London. For subsequent +incidents in his career see Pearsall Smith, op. cit. ii. 481. He died +sometime before April 1636.</p> + +<p>It is clear that the MSS. <i>Cy</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>P</i>, <i>S96</i> have +derived this +poem from a common source, inferior to that from which the <i>1633</i> +text is derived, which has the general support of the best MSS. +These MSS. agree in the readings: 3 'holiness', but <i>O'F</i> corrects, 10 +'to use it,' 13 'whites' <i>Cy</i>, <i>O'F</i>, 14 'Integritie', but <i>O'F</i> +corrects, 33 +'good treasure'. It is clear that a copy of this tradition fell into the +hands of the <i>1635</i> editor. His text is a contamination of the better +and the inferior versions. The strange corruption of 4-6 began by the +mistake of 'flowne' for 'showne'. In <i>O'F</i> and the editions <i>1635-54</i> +the sense is adjusted to this by reading, 'How long loves weeds', and +making the two lines an exclamation. The 'good treasure' (l. 33) +of <i>1635-69</i>, which Chambers has adopted, comes from this source +also. The reading at l. 10 is interesting; 'to use it', for 'to us, it', +has obviously arisen from 'to use and love Poetrie' of the previous +verse. In the case of 'seeme but light and thin' we have an +emendation, even in the inferior version, made for the sake of the +metre (which is why Chambers adopted it), for though <i>Cy</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and +<i>P</i> +have it, <i>S96</i> reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thoughe to use it, seeme and be light and thin.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 2. <i>a retirednesse.</i> This reading of some MSS., including <i>W</i>, +which is a very good authority for these Letters, is quite possibly +authentic. It is very like Donne to use the article; it was very +easy for a copyist to drop it. Compare the dropping of 'a' before +'span' in <i>Crucifying</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.320a">320</a>), l. 8. The use of abstracts as common +nouns with the article, or in the plural, is a feature of Donne's +syntax. He does so in the next line: 'a chast fallownesse'. Again: +'Beloved, it is not enough to awake out of an ill sleepe of sinne, or +of ignorance, or out of a good sleep, <i>out of a retirednesse</i>, and take +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.148" id="pageii.148"></a>[pg 148]</span> +some profession, if you winke, or hide your selves, when you are +awake.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 11. 90. 'It is not that he shall have no +adversary, nor that that adversary shall be able to doe him no +harm, but that he should have a refreshing, a respiration, <i>In velamento +alarum</i>, under the shadow of Gods wings.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 66. +670—where also we find 'an extraordinary sadnesse, a predominant +melancholy, a faintnesse of heart, a chearlessnesse, a joylessnesse of +spirit' (Ibid. 672). Donne does not mean to say that he is 'tied +to retirednesse', a recluse. The letter was not written after he was +in orders, but probably, like the preceding, when he was at Pyrford +or Mitcham (1602-8). He is tied to a degree of retirednesse (compared +with his early life) or a period of retiredness. He does not +compare himself to a Nun but to a widow. Even a third widowhood +is not necessarily a final state. 'So all retirings', he says in a letter +to Goodyere, 'into a shadowy life are alike from all causes, and alike +subject to the barbarousnesse and insipid dulnesse of the Country.' +<i>Letters</i>, p. 63. But the phrase here applies primarily to the Nun and +the widow.</p> + +<p>l. 3. <i>fallownesse</i>; I have changed the full stop of <i>1633-54</i> to +a semicolon here because I take the next three lines to be an +adverbial clause giving the reason why Donne's muse 'affects ... +a chast fallownesse'. The full stop disguises this, and Chambers, +by keeping the full stop here but changing that after 'sown' (l. 6), +has thrown the reference of the clause forward to 'Omissions of +good, ill, as ill deeds bee.'—not a happy arrangement.</p> + +<p>ll. 16-18. <i>There is no Vertue, &c.</i> Donne refers here to the +Cardinal Virtues which the Schoolmen took over from Aristotle. +There are, Aquinas demonstrates, four essential virtues of human +nature: 'Principium enim formale virtutis, de qua nunc loquimur, +est rationis bonum. Quod quidem dupliciter potest considerari: +uno modo secundum quod in ipsa consideratione consistit; et +sic erit una virtus principalis, quae dicitur <i>prudentia</i>. Alio modo +secundum quod circa aliquid ponitur rationis ordo; et hoc vel circa +operationes, et sic est <i>justitia</i>; vel circa passiones, et sic necesse +est esse duas virtutes. Ordinem enim rationis necesse est ponere +circa passiones, considerata repugnantia ipsarum ad rationem. Quae +quidem potest esse dupliciter: uno modo secundum quod passio +impellit ad aliquid contrarium rationi; et sic necesse est quod passio +reprimatur, et ab hoc denominatur <i>temperantia</i>; alio modo secundum +quod passio retrahit ab eo quod ratio dictat, sicut timor periculorum +vel laborum; et sic necesse est quod homo firmetur in eo quod est +rationis, ne recedat; et ab hoc denominatur <i>fortitudo</i>.' <i>Summa, +Prima Secundae</i>, 61. 2. Since the Cardinal Virtues thus cover the +whole field, what place is reserved for the Theological Virtues, viz., +Faith, Hope, and Charity? Aquinas's reply is quite definite: 'Virtutes +theologicae sunt supra hominem ... Unde non proprie dicuntur +virtutes <i>humanae</i> sed <i>suprahumanae</i>, vel <i>divinae</i>.' Ibid., 61. 1. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.149" id="pageii.149"></a>[pg 149]</span> +Donne here exclaims that the cardinal virtues themselves are non-existent +without religion. They are, isolated from religion, habits +which any one can assume who has the discretion to cover his vices. +Religion not only gives us higher virtues but alone gives sincerity to +the natural virtues. Donne is probably echoing St. Augustine, <i>De +Civ. Dei</i>, xviiii. 25: '<i>Quod non possint ibi verae esse virtutes, +ubi non est vera religio</i>. Quamlibet enim videatur animus +corpori et ratio vitiis laudibiliter imperare, si Deo animus et ratio +ipsa non servit, sicut sibi esse serviendum ipse Deus precepit, +nullo modo corpori vitiisque recte imperat. Nam qualis corporis +atque vitiorum potest esse mens domina veri Dei nescia nec eius +imperio subjugata, sed vitiosissimis daemonibus corrumpentibus +prostituta? Proinde virtutes quas habere sibi videtur per quas +imperat corpori et vitiis, ad quodlibet adipiscendum vel tenendum +rettulerit nisi ad Deum, etiam ipsae vitia sunt potius quam virtutes. +Nam licet a quibusdam tunc verae atque honestae esse virtutes cum +referentur ad se ipsas nec propter aliud expetuntur: etiam tunc +inflatae et superbae sunt, et ideo non virtutes, sed vitia iudicanda +sunt. Sicut enim non est a carne sed super carnem quod carnem facit +vivere; sic non est ab homine sed super hominem quod hominem +facit beate vivere: nec solum hominem, sed etiam quamlibet potestatem +virtutemque caelestem.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">186</span>, ll. 25-7. <i>You know, Physitians, &c.</i> Paracelsus +refers more than once to the heat of horse-dung used in 'separations', e.g. +<i>On the Separations of the Elements from Metals</i> he enjoins that when +the metal has been reduced to a liquid substance you must 'add to +one part of this oil two parts of fresh <i>aqua fortis</i>, and when it is +enclosed in glass of the best quality, set it in horse-dung for a month'.</p> + +<p>l. 31. <i>Wee are but farmers of our selves.</i> The reading of <i>1633</i> +is 'termers', and as in 'Tables' 'Fables' of the preceding poem it is +not easy to determine which is original. 'Termer' of course, in the +sense of 'one who holds for a term' (see O.E.D.), would do. It is the +more general word and would include 'Farmer'. A farmer generally +is a 'termer' in the land which he works. I think, however, that the +rest of the verse shows that 'farmer' is used in a more positive sense +than would be covered by 'termer'. The metaphor includes not +only the terminal occupancy but the specific work of the farmer—stocking, +manuring, uplaying.</p> + +<p>Donne's metaphor is perhaps borrowed by Benlowes when he says +of the soul:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">She her own farmer, stock'd from Heav'n is bent</p> +<p class="i2">To thrive; care 'bout the pay-day's spent.</p> +<p>Strange! she alone is farmer, farm, and stock, and rent.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne in a sermon for the 5th of November speaks of those who +will have the King to be 'their Farmer of his Kingdome.' <i>Sermons</i> +50. 43. 403.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.150" id="pageii.150"></a>[pg 150]</span></p> + +<p>It must be remembered that in MS. 'Fermer' and 'Termer' would +be easily interchanged.</p> + +<p>l. 34. <i>to thy selfe be approv'd.</i> There is no reason to prefer the +<i>1669</i> 'improv'd' here. To be 'improv'd to oneself' is not a very +lucid phrase. What Donne bids Woodward do is to seek the approval +of his own conscience. His own conscience is contrasted with 'vaine +outward things'. Donne has probably Epictetus in mind: 'How then +may this be attained?—Resolve now if never before, to approve +thyself to thyself; resolve to show thyself fair in God's sight; long +to be pure with thine own pure self and God.' <i>Golden Sayings</i>, lxxvi., +trans. by Crossley.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 187. <span class="sc">To S</span><sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Henry Wootton.</span><a name="pageii.150a" id="pageii.150a"></a></h3> + +<p>The date of this letter is given in two MSS. as July 20, 1598. Its +tone is much the same as that of the previous letter (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.180a">180</a>) and of +both the fourth and fifth <i>Satyres</i>. The theme of them all is the Court.</p> + +<p>l. 2. <i>Cales or St Michaels tale.</i> The point of this allusion was +early lost and has been long in being recovered. The spelling 'Calis' +is a little misleading, as it was used both for Calais and for Cadiz. +In Sir Francis Vere's <i>Commentaries</i> (1657) he speaks of 'The +Calis-journey' +and the 'Island voiage'. I have taken 'Cales' from some +MSS. as less ambiguous. All the modern editors have printed +'Calais', and Grosart considers the allusion to be to the Armada, +Norton to the 'old wars with France'. The reference is to the Cadiz +expedition and the Island voyage: 'Why should I tell you what we +both know?' In speaking of 'St. Michaels tale' Donne may be +referring to the attack on that particular island, which led to the loss +of the opportunity to capture the plate-fleet. But the 'Islands of St. +Michael' was a synonym for the Azores. 'Thus the ancient +Cosmographers do place the division of the East and Western +Hemispheres, that is, the first term of longitude, in the <i>Canary</i> or +fortunate Islands; conceiving these parts the extreamest habitations +Westward: But the Moderns have altered that term, and translated +it unto the <i>Azores</i> or Islands of St Michael; and that upon a plausible +conceit of the small or insensible variation of the Compass in those +parts,' &c. Browne, <i>Pseud. Epidem.</i> vi. 7.</p> + +<p>ll. 10-11. <i>Fate</i>, (<i>Gods Commissary</i>): i.e. God's Deputy or Delegate. +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Fate, which God made, but doth not control.</p> +<p class="i16"> <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.295">295</a>, l. 2.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Great Destiny the Commissary of God</p> +<p>That hast mark'd out a path and period</p> +<p>For every thing ...</p> +<p class="i32">Ibid., p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.296"></a>296, ll. 31 f.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The idea that Fate or Fortune is the deputy of God in the sphere +of external goods (<ins title="Greek: ta ektos agatha">τὰ ἐκτὸς +ἀγαθά</ins>, i beni del mondo) is very clearly +expressed by Dante in the <i>Convivio</i>, iv. 11, and in the <i>Inferno</i>, +vi. 67 f.: +'"Master," I said to him, "now tell me also: this Fortune of which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.151" id="pageii.151"></a>[pg 151]</span> +thou hintest to me; what is she, that has the good things of the world +thus within her clutches?" And he to me, "O foolish creatures, how +great is this ignorance that falls upon ye! Now I wish thee to +receive my judgement of her. He whose wisdom is transcendent +over all, made the heavens" (i.e. the nine moving spheres) "and gave +them guides" (Angels, Intelligences); "so that every part may shine to +every part equally distributing the light. In like manner, for worldly +splendours, he ordained a general minister and guide (ministro e +duce); to change betimes the vain possessions, from people to people, +and from one kindred to another, beyond the hindrance of human +wisdom. Hence one people commands, another languishes; obeying +her sentence, which is hidden like the serpent in the grass. Your +knowledge cannot withstand her. She provides, judges, and maintains +her kingdom, as the other gods do theirs. Her permutations have +no truce. Necessity makes her be swift; so oft come things requiring +change. This is she, who is so much reviled, even by those who +ought to praise her, when blaming her wrongfully, and with evil words. +But she is in bliss, and hears it not. With the other Primal Creatures +joyful, she wheels her sphere, and tastes her blessedness."' Dante +finds in this view the explanation of the want of anything like +distributive justice in the assignment of wealth, power, and worldly +glory. Dante speaks here of Fortune, but though in its original +conception at the opposite pole from Fate, Fortune is ultimately +included in the idea of Fate. 'Necessity makes her be swift.' +'Sed talia maxime videntur esse contingentia quae Fato attribuuntur.' +Aquinas. The relation of Fate or Destiny to God or Divine +Providence is discussed by Boethius, <i>De Cons. Phil.</i> IV. <i>Prose</i> III, +whom Aquinas follows, <i>Summa</i>, I. cxvi. Ultimately the immovable +Providence of God is the cause of all things; but viewed in the +world of change and becoming, accidents or events are ascribed to +Destiny. 'Uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio; ad id quod est, id +quod gignitur; ad aeternitatem, tempus; ad punctum medium, +circulus; ita est fati series mobilis ad Providentiae stabilem simplicitatem.' +Boethius. This is clearly what Donne has in view when +he calls Destiny the Commissary of God or declares that God made +but doth not control her. The idea of Fate in Greek thought which +Christian Philosophy had some difficulty in adjusting to its doctrines +of freedom and providence came from the astronomico-religious ideas +of the Chaldaeans. The idea of Fate 'arose from the observation +of the regularity of the sidereal movements'. Franz Cumont, <i>Astrology +and Religion among the Greeks and Romans</i>, 1912, pp. 28, 69.</p> + +<p>l. 14. <i>wishing prayers.</i> This may be a phrase corresponding to +'bidding prayers', but 'wishing' is comma'd off as a noun in some +MSS. and 'wishes' may be the author's correction.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">188</span>, l. 24. <i>dull Moralls of a game at Chests.</i> The +comparison +of life and especially politics to a game of chess is probably +an old one. Sancho Panza develops it with considerable eloquence.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.152" id="pageii.152"></a>[pg 152]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 188. <span class="sc">H: W: in Hiber: belligeranti.</span></h3> + +<p>This poem is taken from the Burley MS., where it is found along +with a number of poems some of which are by Donne, viz.: the +<i>Satyres</i>, one of the <i>Elegies</i>, and several of the <i>Epigrams</i>. +Of the +others this alone has the initials 'J. D.' added in the margin. There +can be little doubt that it is by Donne,—a continuation of the correspondence +of the years 1597-9 to which the last letter and 'Letters +more than kisses' belong. In <i>Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton</i> +Mr. Pearsall Smith prints what he takes to be a reply to this letter +and the charge of indolence. 'Sir, It is worth my wondering that +you can complain of my seldom writing, when your own letters come +so fearfully as if they tread all the way upon a bog. I have received +from you a few, and almost every one hath a commission to speak +of divers others of their fellows, like you know who in the old comedy +that asks for the rest of his servants. But you make no mention +of any of mine, yet it is not long since I ventured much of my +experience unto you in a long piece of paper, and perhaps not of +my credit; it is that which I sent you by A. R., whereof till you +advertise me I shall live in fits or agues.' After referring to the +malicious reports in circulation regarding the Irish expedition he +concludes in the style of the previous letters: 'These be the wise +rules of policy, and of courts, which are upon earth the vainest +places.'</p> + +<p>l. 11. <i>yong death</i>: i.e. early death, death that comes to you while +young.</p> + +<p>ll. 13-15. These lines are enough of themselves to prove Donne's +authorship of this poem. Compare <i>To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Goodyere</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.183">183</a>, +ll. 17-20.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 189. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Bedford.</span><a name="pageii.152a" id="pageii.152a"></a></h3> + +<p>Lucy, Countess of Bedford, occupies the central place among +Donne's noble patrons and friends. No one was more consistently +his friend; to none does he address himselfe in terms of sincerer and +more respectful eulogy.</p> + +<p>The eldest child of John Harington, created by James first Baron +Harington of Exton, was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, +in 1594 and was a lady in waiting under Elizabeth. She was one of +the group of noble ladies who hastened north on the death of the +Queen to welcome, and secure the favour of, James and Anne of +Denmark. Her father and mother were granted the tutorship of the +young Princess Elizabeth, and she herself was admitted at once as +a Lady of the Chamber. Her beauty and talent secured her a distinguished +place at Court, and in the years that Donne was a prisoner +at Mitcham the Countess was a brilliant figure in more than one of +Ben Jonson's masques. 'She was "the crowning rose" in that garland +of English beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired Madame +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.153" id="pageii.153"></a>[pg 153]</span> +Beaumont, the Lady of the French ambassador, to bring with her to +an entertainment on the 8th of December, 1603: the three others +being Lady Rich, Lady Susan Vere, and Lady Dorothy (Sidney); +"and", says the Lady Arabella Stewart, "great cheer they had."' +Wiffen, <i>Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell</i>, 1833. She figured +also in Daniel's Masque, <i>The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses</i>, which was +published (1604) with an explanatory letter addressed to her. In +praising her beauty Donne is thus echoing 'the Catholic voice'. The +latest Masque in which she figured was the <i>Masque of Queens</i>, 2nd of +February, 1609-10.</p> + +<p>In Court politics the Countess of Bedford seems to have taken +some part in the early promotion of Villiers as a rival to the Earl of +Somerset; and in 1617 she promoted the marriage of Donne's patron +Lord Hay to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, +against the wish of the bride's father. Match-making seems to have +been a hobby of hers, for in 1625 she was an active agent in arranging +the match between James, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, +and Lady Charlotte de la Trémouille, the heroic Countess of Derby +who defended Lathom House against the Roundheads.</p> + +<p>An active and gay life at Court was no proof of the want of a more +serious spirit. Lady Bedford was a student and a poet, and the patron +of scholars and poets. Sir Thomas Roe presented her with coins +and medals; and Drayton, Daniel, Jonson, and Donne were each in turn +among the poets whom she befriended and who sang her praises. She +loved gardens. One of Donne's finest lyrics is written in the garden +of Twickenham Park, which the Countess occupied from 1608 to 1617; +and the laying out of the garden at Moore Park in Hertfordshire, +where she lived from 1617 to her death in 1627, is commended by +her successor in that place, Sir William Temple.</p> + +<p>Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir +Henry Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions +the death of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his +intimacy with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his +verse letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises +her beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part +of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the +religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she +herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of a +simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier +phase.</p> + +<p>In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November +22-3 (II. p. <a href="#pageii.10">10</a>). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies +attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 161⅔), but +Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her behaviour. +After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he continues: +'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of money, +shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a manner +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.154" id="pageii.154"></a>[pg 154]</span> +vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, <i>Nemo ex +morbo melior</i>. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and +forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely +among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered +hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from +another at the first view.' Birch, <i>The Court and Times of James the +First</i>, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems +to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis +which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious +and pious verses after this crisis.</p> + +<p>See notes on <i>Twicknam Garden</i> and the <i>Nocturnall on St. Lucies +Day</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">189</span>, ll. 4-5. <i>light ... faire faith.</i> I have retained +the 'light' and 'faire faith' of the editions, but the MS. readings 'sight' and 'farr +Faith' are quite possibly correct. There is not much to choose +between 'light' and 'sight', but 'farr' is an interesting reading. +Indeed at first sight 'fair' is a rather otiose epithet, a vaguely +complimentary adjective. There is, however, probably more in it than +that. 'Fair' as an epithet of 'Faith' is probably an antithesis to the +'squint ungracious left-handedness' of understanding. If 'farr' be +the right reading, then Donne is contrasting faith and sight: 'Now +faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not +seen.' Heb. xi. 1. The use of 'far' as an adjective is not uncommon: +'Pulling far history nearer,' Crashaw; 'His own far blood,' Tennyson; +'Far travellers may lie by authority,' Gataker (1625), are some +examples quoted in the O.E.D. But there is no parallel to Donne's +use of 'far faith' for 'faith that lays hold on things at a distance'. +'These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having +seen them afar off', Heb. xi. 13, is probably the source of the phrase. +Such a condensed elliptical construction is quite in Donne's manner. +Compare 'Neere death', p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.28">28</a>, l. 63. Both versions may be original. +The variants in l. 19 point to some revision of the poem.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">190</span>, l. 22. <i>In every thing there naturally grows, +&c.</i> 'Every thing hath in it as, as Physicians use to call it, <i>Naturale Balsamum</i>, a +naturall Balsamum, which, if any wound or hurt which that creature +hath received, be kept clean from extrinseque putrefaction, will heal +of itself. We are so far from that naturall Balsamum, as that we have +a naturall poyson in us, Originall sin:' &c. <i>Sermons</i> 80. 32. 313.</p> + +<p>'Now Physitians say, that man hath in his Constitution, in his +Complexion, a naturall Vertue, which they call <i>Balsamum suum</i>, his +owne Balsamum, by which, any wound which a man could receive in +his body, would cure itself, if it could be kept cleane from the +annoiances of the aire, and all extrinseque encumbrances. Something +that hath some proportion and analogy to this Balsamum of the body, +there is in the soul of man too: The soule hath <i>Nardum suum</i>, her +Spikenard, as the Spouse says, <i>Nardus mea dedit odorem suum</i>, she +hath a spikenard, a perfume, a fragrancy, a sweet savour in her selfe. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.155" id="pageii.155"></a>[pg 155]</span> +For <i>virtutes germanius attingunt animam, quam corpus sanitas</i>, +vertuous inclinations, and disposition to morall goodness, is more +naturall to the soule of man, and nearer of kin to the soule of man, +then health is to the body. And then if we consider bodily health, +<i>Nulla oratio, nulla doctrinae formula nos docet morbum odisse</i>, sayes +that Father: There needs no Art, there needs no outward Eloquence, +to persuade a man to be loath to be sick: <i>Ita in anima inest naturalis +et citra doctrinam mali evitatio</i>, sayes he: So the soule hath a naturall +and untaught hatred, and detestation of that which is evill,' &c. +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 51. 514.</p> + +<p>Paracelsus has a great deal to say about this natural balsam, though +he declares that 'the spirit is <i>most</i> truly the life and balsome of all +Corporeal things'. It was to supply the want of this balsam that +mummy was used as a medicine. Of a man suddenly slain Paracelsus +says: 'His whole body is profitable and good and may be prepared +into a most precious Mummie. For, although the spirit of life went +out of such a Body, yet the Balsome, in which lies the Life, remains, +which doth as Balsome preserve other mens.'</p> + +<p>l. 27. <i>A methridate</i>: i.e. an antidote. See note to p. <a href="#pageii.197a">255</a>, l. 127.</p> + +<p>ll. 31-2. <i>The first good Angell, &c.</i> 'Our first consideration is +upon the persons; and those we finde to be Angelicall women and +Evangelicall Angels: ... And to recompense that observation, that +never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman, here are good +women made Angels, that is, Messengers, publishers of the greatest +mysteries of our Religion.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 25. 242.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 35-6. <i>Make your returne home gracious; and bestow</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>This life on that; so make one life of two.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Make a present of this life to the next, by living now as you will +live then; and so make this life and the next one'—or, as another +poet puts it:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And so make life, death, and that vast forever</p> +<p class="i2">One grand, sweet song.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This I take to be Donne's meaning. The 'This' of <i>1635-69</i> and the +MSS., which Chambers also has adopted, seems required by the +antithesis. If one recalls that 'this' is very commonly written 'thys', +and that final 's' is little more than a tail, it is easy to account for +'Thy' in <i>1633</i>. The meaning too is not clear at a glance, and 'Thy' +might seem to an editor to make it easier. The thought is much the +same as in the <i>Obsequies to the Lord Harrington</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.279">279</a>.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">And I (though with paine)</p> +<p>Lessen our losse, to magnifie thy gaine</p> +<p>Of triumph, when I say, It was more fit,</p> +<p>That all men should lacke thee, then thou lack it.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.156" id="pageii.156"></a>[pg 156]</span> +the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place +upon earth.' <i>Letters</i>, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to +p. <a href="#pageii.88">112</a>, l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 191. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Bedford.</span></h3> + +<p>ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in +the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of +a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct +punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent +editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions +(which the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers +completed the confusion by printing the lines thus,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>You have refined me, and to worthiest things—</p> +<p>Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and +enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as +of the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6">Spirits are not finely touch'd,</p> +<p>But to fine issues.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man +is refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to +boast of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, +and strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and +sharpened my judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things +owe their value to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but +depends on circumstances.' This, the next two verses add, explains +why at Court it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your +beauty. To Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court +the focus of wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative +nature of all goodness he has touched in the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, +p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.316">316</a>, ll. 518-20:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;</p> +<p>Of every quality Comparison</p> +<p>The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>With the sentiment regarding Courts compare: 'Beauty, in courts, is +so necessary to the young, that those who are without it, seem to be +there to no other purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair; +to attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon and stars do the +sun by day; or at best to be the refuge of those hearts which others +have despised; and by the unworthiness of both to give and take +a miserable comfort.' Dryden, Dedication of the <i>Indian Emperor</i>.</p> + +<p>ll. 8-9.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>(<i>Where a transcendent height, (as lownesse mee)</i></p> +<p><i>Makes her not be, or not show</i>)</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have completed the enclosure of (Where ... show) in brackets +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.157" id="pageii.157"></a>[pg 157]</span> +which <i>1633</i> began but forgot to carry out. The statement is parenthetical, +and it is of the essence of Donne's wit to turn aside in one +parenthesis to make another, dart from one distracting thought to +a further, returning at the end to the main track. He has left the +Countess for a moment to explain why the Court 'is not Vertues +clime'. She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen +there, as I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low. Then taking up +again the thought of the first line he continues: 'all my rhyme is +claimed there by your vertues, for <i>there</i> rareness gives them value. +I am the comment on what <i>there</i> is a dark text; the usher who +announces one that is a stranger.'</p> + +<p>For brackets within brackets compare: 'And yet it is imperfect +which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense (I +dare not say to reason (though it have appearance of that too) because +none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is reasonablest) +That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all Christians +one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and every civill +coagulation or society one other; and every man one other.' <i>Letters</i>, +p. 43.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>To this place</i>: i.e. Twickenham. <i>O'F</i> heads the poem <i>To +the Countesse of Bedford, Twitnam</i>. The poem is written to welcome +her home. See l. 70.</p> + +<p>The development of Donne's subtle and extravagant conceits is +a little difficult. The Countess is the sun which exhales the sweetness +of the country when she comes thither (13-18). Apparently +the Countess has returned to Twickenham in Autumn, perhaps +arriving late in the evening. When she emerges from her chariot it +is the breaking of a new day, the beginning of a new year or new +world. Both the Julian and the Gregorian computations are thus +falsified (19-22). It shows her truth to nature that she will not +suffer a day which begins at a stated hour, but only one that begins +with the actual appearance of the light (23-4: a momentary digression). +Since she, the Sun, has thus come to Twickenham, the Court +is made the Antipodes. While the 'vulgar sun' is an Autumnal one, +this Sun which is in Spring, receives our sacrifices. Her priests, or +instruments, we celebrate her (25-30). Then Donne draws back +from the religious strain into which he is launching. He will not +sing Hymns as to a Deity, but offer petitions as to a King, that he may +view the beauty of this Temple, and not as Temple, but as Edifice. +The rest of the argument is simpler.</p> + +<p>l. 60. <i>The same thinge.</i> The singular of the MSS. seems to be +required by 'you cannot two'. The 's' of the editions is probably +due to the final 'e'. But 'things' is the reading of <i>Lec</i>, the MS. +representing most closely that from which <i>1633</i> was printed.</p> + +<p>ll. 71-2. <i>Who hath seene one, &c.</i> 'Who hath seen one, e.g. +Twickenham, which your dwelling there makes a Paradise, would +fain see you too, as whoever had been in Paradise would not have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.158" id="pageii.158"></a>[pg 158]</span> +failed to seek out the Cherubim.' The construction is elliptical. +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="right1a">P. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.286">286</a>, l. 44.</span>Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday.</p> + + </div> </div> + +<p>The Cherubim are specially mentioned (although the Seraphim +are the highest order) because they are traditionally the beautiful +angels: 'The Spirit of Chastity ... in the likenesse of a faire beautifull +Cherubine.' Bacon, <i>New Atlantis</i> (1658), 22 (O.E.D.).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 193. <span class="sc">To S</span><sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Edward Herbert. at Iulyers.</span></h3> + +<p>Edward Herbert, first Baron of Cherbury (1563-1648), the eldest +son of Donne's friend Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, had not long returned +from his first visit to France when he set out again in 1610 with Lord +Chandos 'to pass to the city of Juliers which the Prince of Orange +resolved to besiege. Making all haste thither we found the siege +newly begun; the Low Country army assisted by 4,000 English +under the command of Sir Edward Cecil. We had not long been +there when the Marquis de la Chartre, instead of Henry IV, who was +killed by that villain Ravaillac, came with a brave French army +thither'. <i>Autobiography</i>, ed. Sidney Lee. The city was held by the +Archduke Leopold for the Emperor. The Dutch, French, and +English were besieging the town in the interest of the Protestant +candidates, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Palatine of Neuburg. +The siege marked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. Herbert +was a man of both ability and courage but of a vanity which outweighed +both. Donne's letter humours both his Philosophical pose +and his love of obscurity and harshness in poetry. His own poems +with a few exceptions are intolerably difficult and unmusical, and +Jonson told Drummond that 'Donne said to him he wrote that +Epitaph upon Prince Henry, <i>Look to me Faith</i>, to match Sir Ed. +Herbert in obscureness'. (Jonson's <i>Conversations</i>, ed. Laing.) The +poems have been reprinted by the late Professor Churton Collins. +In 1609 when Herbert was in England he and Donne both wrote +Elegies on Mistress Boulstred.</p> + +<p>l. 1. <i>Man is a lumpe, &c.</i> The image of the beasts Donne has +borrowed from Plato, <i>The Republic</i>, ix. 588 <span class="sc">B-E</span>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">194</span>, ll. 23-6. A food which to chickens is harmless poisons +men. Our own nature contributes the factor which makes a food +into a poison either corrosive or killing by intensity of heat or cold: +'Et hic nota quod tantus est ordo naturae, ut quod est venenosum et +inconveniens uni est utile et conveniens alteri; sicut jusquiamus qui est +cibus passeris licet homini sit venenosus; et sicut napellus interficit +hominem solum portatus, et mulierem praegnantem non laesit manducatus, +teste Galieno; et mus qui pascitur napello est tiriaca contra +napellum.' Benvenuto on Dante, <i>Div. Comm.</i>: <i>Paradiso</i>, i. The +plants here mentioned are henbane and aconite. Concerning hemlock +the O.E.D. quotes Swan, <i>Spec. M.</i> vi. § 4 (1643), 'Hemlock ... +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.159" id="pageii.159"></a>[pg 159]</span> +is meat to storks and poison to men.' Donne probably uses the word +'chickens' as equivalent to 'young birds', not for the young of the +domestic fowl. For the cold of the hemlock see Persius, <i>Sat.</i> v. 145; +Ovid, <i>Amores</i>, iii. 7. 13; and Juvenal, <i>Sat.</i> vii. 206, a reference +to Socrates' gift from the Athenians of 'gelidas ... cicutas'.</p> + +<p>ll. 31-2. <i>Thus man, that might be'his pleasure, &c.</i> These lines are +condensed and obscure. The 'his' must mean 'his own'. 'Man +who in virtue of that gift of reason which makes him man might be +to himself a source of joy, becomes instead, by the abuse of reason, +his own rod. Reason which should be the God directing his life +becomes the devil which misleads him.' Chambers prints 'His +pleasure', 'His rod', referring 'his' to God—which seems hardly +possible.</p> + +<p>ll. 34-8. <i>wee'are led awry, &c.</i> Chambers's punctuation of this +passage is clearly erroneous:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> we're led awry</p> +<p>By them, who man to us in little show,</p> +<p>Greater than due; no form we can bestow</p> +<p>On him, for man into himself can draw</p> +<p>All;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This must mean that we are led astray by those who, in their +abridgement of man, still show him to us greater than he really is. +But this is the opposite of what Donne says. 'Greater than due' +goes with 'no form'. Compare:</p> + +<p>'And therefore the Philosopher draws man into too narrow a table, +when he says he is <i>Microcosmos</i>, an Abridgement of the world in +little: <i>Nazianzen</i> gives him but his due, when he calls him <i>Mundum +Magnum</i>, a world to which all the rest of the world is but subordinate: +For all the world besides, is but God's Foot-stool; Man sits down +upon his right-hand,' &c. <i>Sermons</i> 26. 25. 370.</p> + +<p>'It is too little to call Man a little world; Except God, Man is a +diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, +than the world; than the world doth, nay than the world is.' +<i>Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c.</i> (1624), p. 64.</p> + +<p>On the other hand the Grolier Club editor has erroneously +followed <i>1635-69</i> in altering the full stop after 'chaw' to a comma; +and has substituted a semicolon for the comma after 'fill' (l. 39), +reading:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">for man into himself can draw</p> +<p>All; all his faith can swallow or reason chaw,</p> +<p>All that is filled, and all that which doth fill;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But 'All that is fill'd,' &c. is not <i>object</i> to 'can draw'. It is +<i>subject</i> +(in apposition with 'All the round world') to 'is but a pill'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">195</span>, l. 47. <i>This makes it credible.</i> I have changed +the comma after 'credible' to a semicolon to avoid the misapprehension, into +which the Grolier Club editor seems to have fallen, that what is credible +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.160" id="pageii.160"></a>[pg 160]</span> +is 'that you have dwelt upon all worthy books'. It is because Lord +Herbert has dwelt upon all worthy books that it is credible that he +knows man.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 195. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Bedford.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>T'have written then, &c.</i> This is one of the most difficult +of Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment +Donne has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way +theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the +poem is one of those for which the MS. resembling <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, +<i>Lec</i> was not available. The text of <i>1633</i> was taken from a MS. belonging +to the group <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>, and contains several +errors. Some of these were corrected in <i>1635</i> from <i>O'F</i> or a MS. resembling it, +but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in +<i>1633</i> was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.</p> + +<p>The emendations which I have accepted from <i>1635</i> are—</p> + +<p>l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.</p> + +<p>l. 7. '<i>nothings</i>' for '<i>nothing</i>'.</p> + +<p>l. 20. 'or all It; You.' for 'or all, in you.' There is not much to +choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very logical +expression. But the <i>1633</i> reading may mean 'the world's best part, +or the world's all,—you.' The alteration of <i>1635</i> is not necessary, +but looks to me like the author's own emendation.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse.</i> 'Naturall and morall +men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of thankesgiving, +before they come to the Scriptures, then they are with the +other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all <i>Solomons</i> +bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of thankefulnesse, +as you shall in <i>Seneca</i> and in <i>Plutarch</i>. No book of Ethicks, +of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost in every +leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude.' <i>Sermons</i> +80. 55. 550.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">197</span>, l. 54. <i>Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) +remove.</i> Following +the hint of <i>O'F</i>, I have bracketed all these words to show that the +verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 57-8. <i>For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Soules but preserved, not naturally free.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction +has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But <i>1633</i> is right. If +'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne +free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a +form of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the +Penitential Psalms (<i>Sermons</i> 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full +cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above +those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.161" id="pageii.161"></a>[pg 161]</span> +Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere understanding +in that point, whether the soule were immortall by nature, +or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die or only +should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being preserved' +and 'being naturally free' (i.e. immortal) is presented as sharply as +in this line of the verse <i>Letter</i>. But Donne states the doctrine +tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any constant +cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for the +Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by preservation, +then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying, then, +that it cannot dye.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 27. 269. This makes the correct +reading of the line quite certain.</p> + +<p>The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He +is speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body +which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well as +labour (ll. 43-8). He returns in ll. 49-52 to the main theme of the +body's corrupting influence, and this leads him to a new thought. +It is not only the soul which suffers by this absorption in the body, but +the body itself:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>What hate could hurt our bodies like our love?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>By this descent of the soul into the body we deprive the latter of its +proper dignity, to be the Casket, Temple, Palace of the Soul. Then +Donne turns aside to enforce the dignity of the Body. It will be +redeemed from death, and the Soul is only preserved. No more than +the Body is the Soul naturally immortal. These lines are almost +a parenthesis. The poet returns once more to his main theme, the +degradation of the soul by our exclusive regard for the body.</p> + +<p>Thus the deepest thought of Donne's poetry, his love poetry and +his religious poetry, emerges here again. He will not accept the +antithesis between soul and body. The dignity of the body is hardly +less than that of the soul. But we cannot exalt the body at the +expense of the soul. If we immerse the soul in the body it is not +the soul alone which suffers but the body also. In the highest +spiritual life, as in the fullest and most perfect love, body and soul are +complementary, are merged in each other; and after death the life +of the soul is in some measure incomplete, the end for which it was +created is not obtained until it is reunited to the body. 'Yet have not +those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text, acknowledged +a Resurrection of the soule, mistaken nor miscalled the matter. +Take <i>Damascens</i> owne definition of Resurrection: <i>Resurrectio est ejus +quod cecidit secunda surrectio</i>: A Resurrection is a second rising to +that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now though by +death, the soule do not fall into any such state, as that it can complaine, +(for what can that lack, which God fils?) yet by death, the +soule fals from that, for which it was infused, and poured into man at +first; that is to be the forme of that body, the King of that Kingdome; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.162" id="pageii.162"></a>[pg 162]</span> +and therefore, when in the generall Resurrection, the soule returns +to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath had an +affection, and a desire, even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven, +then, when the soule returns to her office, to make up the man, +because the whole man hath, therefore the soule hath a Resurrection: +not from death, but from a deprivation of her former state; that state +which she was made for, and is ever enclined to.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 19. 189.</p> + +<p>Here, as before, Donne is probably following St. Augustine, who +combats the Neo-Platonic view (to which mediaeval thought tended +to recur) that a direct source of evil was the descent of the soul into +the body. The body is not essentially evil. It is not the body as +such that weighs down the soul (aggravat animam), but the body +corrupted by sin: 'Nam corruptio corporis ... non peccati primi est +causa, sed poena; nec caro corruptibilis animam peccatricem, sed +anima peccatrix fecit esse corruptibilem carnem.' In the Resurrection +we desire not to escape from the body but to be clothed with a new +body,—'nolumus corpore exspoliari, sed ejus immortalitate vestiri.' +Aug. <i>De Civ. Dei</i>, xiv. 3, 5. He cites St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1-4.</p> + +<p>l. 59. <i>As men to our prisons, new soules to us are sent, &c.</i>: +'new' is the reading of <i>1633</i> only, 'now' followed or preceded +by a comma of the other editions and the MSS. It is difficult +to decide between them, but Donne speaks of 'new souls' elsewhere: +'The Father creates new souls every day in the inanimation of +Children, and the Sonne creates them with him.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 12. +100. 'Our nature is Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) +both earth and heaven; for as our bodies glorified shall be capable +of spirituall joy, so our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed +to partake earthly pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go +back again; we have some errand to do here; nor is it sent into +prison, because it comes innocent; and he which sent it, is just.' +<i>Letters</i> (1651), p. 46.</p> + +<p>l. 68. <i>Two new starres.</i> See Introductory Note to <i>Letters</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">198</span>, l. 72. <i>Stand on two truths</i>: i.e. the wickedness +of the world and your goodness. You will believe neither.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 198. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Bedford</span>.<a name="pageii.162a" id="pageii.162a"></a><br /><br /> + <span class="sc">On New-yeares day. </span></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>of stuffe and forme perplext</i>: i.e. whose matter and form are +a perplexed, intricate, difficult question:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Whose <i>what</i>, and <i>where</i> in disputation is.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne cannot mean that the matter and form are 'intricately intertwined +or intermingled', using the words as in Bacon: 'The formes +of substances (as they are now by compounding and transplanting +multiplied) are so perplexed.' Bacon, <i>Adv. Learn.</i> ii. 7. § 5. The +question +of meteors in all their forms was one of great interest and great +difficulty to ancient science. Seneca, who gathers up most of what has +been said before him, recurs to the subject again and again. See the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.163" id="pageii.163"></a>[pg 163]</span> +<i>Quaestiones Naturales</i>, i. 1, and elsewhere. Aristotle, he says, +attributes +them to exhalations from the earth heated by the sun's rays. +They are at any rate not falling stars, or parts of stars, but 'have their +origin below the stars, and—being without solid foundation or fixed +abode—quickly perish'. But there was great uncertainty as to their +<i>what</i> and <i>where</i>. Donne compares himself to them in the uncertainty +of his position and worldly affairs. 'Wind is a mixt Meteor, to the +making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations.' <i>Sermons</i> +80. 31. 305.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">199</span>, l. 19. <i>cherish, us doe wast.</i> The punctuation of +<i>1633</i> +is odd at the first glance, but accurate. If with all the later +editions one prints 'cherish us, doe wast', the suggestion is that +'wast' is intransitive—'in cherishing us they waste themselves,' +which is not Donne's meaning. It is us they waste.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">200</span>, l. 44. <i>Some pitty.</i> I was tempted to think that +Lowell's conjecture of 'piety' for 'pitty' must be right, the more so +that the spelling of the two words was not always differentiated. But +it is improbable that Donne would say that 'piety' in the sense of +piety to God could ever be out of place. What he means is probably +that at Court pity, which elsewhere is a virtue, may not be so if it +induces a lady to lend a relenting ear to the complaint of a lover.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Beware faire maides of musky courtiers oathes</p> +<p>Take heed what giftes and favors you receive,</p> +<p class="i2"><big>. . . . + . . . + . .</big></p> +<p>Beleeve not oathes or much protesting men,</p> +<p>Credit no vowes nor no bewayling songs.</p> +<p class="i16">Joshua Sylvester (<i>attributed to</i> Donne).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>What follows is ambiguous. As punctuated in <i>1633</i> the lines run:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> some vaine disport,</p> +<p>On this side, sinne: with that place may comport.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This must mean, practically repeating what has been said: 'Some vain +amusements which, on this side of the line separating the cloister from +the Court, would be sin; are on that side, in the Court, becoming—amusements, +sinful in the cloister, are permissible at Court.' The last +line thus contains a sharp antithesis. But can 'on this side' mean +'in the cloister'? Donne is not writing from the cloister, and if he +had been would say 'In this place'. 'Faith', he says elsewhere, 'is +not on this side Knowledge but beyond it.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 36. 325. +This is what he means here, and I have so punctuated it, following +<i>1719</i> and subsequent editions: 'Some vain disport, so long as it +falls short of actual sin, is permissible at Court.'</p> + +<p>l. 48. <i>what none else lost</i>: i.e. innocence. Others never had it.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 201. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Huntingdon.</span><a name="pageii.163a" id="pageii.163a"></a></h3> + +<p>Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby, +married Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, in 1603. Her +mother's second husband was Sir Thomas Egerton, whom Lady +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.164" id="pageii.164"></a>[pg 164]</span> +Derby married in 1600. Donne was then Egerton's secretary, and +in lines 57-60 he refers to his early acquaintance with her, then +Lady Alice Stanley. If the letter in <i>Appendix A</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.417a">417</a>, 'That unripe +side', &c., be also by Donne, and addressed to the Countess of +Huntingdon, it must have been written earlier than this letter, which +belongs probably to the period immediately before Donne's ordination.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>the Magi.</i> The MSS. give <i>Magis</i>, and in <i>The First +Anniversary</i> (l. 390) Donne writes, 'The Aegyptian Mages'. The +argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi +to the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your +fame guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are +so bad that they may not be thus led. Your light can illumine and +guide the darkest.'</p> + +<p>l. 18. <i>the Sunnes fall.</i> In Autumn? or does Donne refer to the +fall of the sun to the centre in the new Astronomy? In the <i>Letters</i>, +p. 102, he says that 'Copernicisme in the Mathematiques hath carried +earth farther up from the stupid Center; and yet not honoured it, +because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so +much higher from it'. Compare <i>An Anatomie of the World</i>, <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.239">l. 274</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page 202</span>, l. 25. <i>She guilded us: But you are gold, and Shee;</i> The +<i>1633</i> reading is the more pregnant, and therefore the more characteristic +of Donne. 'She guilded us, but you she changed into <i>her own</i> +substance.' The <i>1635</i> reading implies transubstantiation, but does +not indicate so clearly the identity of the new substance with virtue's +own essence.</p> + +<p>ll. 33-6. <i>Else being alike pure, &c.</i> This verse follows in the +closest way on what has gone before, and should not be separated +from it by a full stop as in Chambers and Grolier. The last line of +this stanza concludes the whole argument which began at l. 29. 'The +high grace of virginity indeed is not yours, because virtue, having +made you one with herself, wished in you to reveal herself. Virtue and +Virginity are each too pure for earthly vision. As air and aqueous +vapour are each invisible till both are changed into thickened air or +cloud, so virtue becomes manifest in you as mother and wife. It is +for <i>our</i> sake you take these low names.'</p> + +<p>ll. 41-4. <i>So you, as woman, one doth comprehend, &c.</i> 'One, your +husband, comprehends your being. To others it is revealed, but +under the veil of kindred; to still others of friendship; to me, who +stand more remote, under the relationship of prince to subject.'</p> + +<p>l. 47. <i>I, which doe soe.</i> The edition of 1633 reads, 'I, which to +you', making a logical and grammatical construction of the sentence +impossible. The editor has failed to note that the personal reference +of 'owe' is supplied in l. 45, 'To whom'. 'I, which doe so' means +'I, who contemplate you'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 203. To M<sup>r</sup> T. W.<a name="pageii.164a" id="pageii.164a"></a></h3> + +<p><i>To M<sup>r</sup> T. W.</i> The group of letters which begins with this I have +arranged according to the order in which they are found in <i>W</i>, Mr. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.165" id="pageii.165"></a>[pg 165]</span> +Gosse's Westmoreland MS. In this MS. a better text of these poems +is given than that of <i>1633</i>; lines are supplied which have been +dropped, and a few whole letters. The series contains also a reply +to one of Donne's letters. For these reasons it seems to me +preferable to follow an order which <i>may</i> correspond to the order of +composition.</p> + +<p>In <i>1633</i>, which follows <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>, the +letters are headed +M. T. W., M. R. W., &c., 'M' standing, as often, for 'Mr.' Seeing, +however, that 'Mr.' is the general form in <i>W</i>, I have used it as clearer.</p> + +<p>The first of the letters has been headed hitherto To M. I. W., and +Mr. Chambers conjectured that the person addressed <i>might</i> be Izaak +Walton. It is clear from the other MSS. that <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, +which <i>1633</i> follows, is wrong and that I. W. should be T. W., Thomas +Woodward. The T and I of this MS. are very similar, though +distinguishable. Unfortunately we know nothing more of Thomas +Woodward than that he was Rowland's brother and Donne's friend. +The 'sweet Poet' must not be taken too seriously. Donne and his +friends were corresponding with one another in verse, and complimenting +each other in the polite fashion of the day.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">204</span>, ll. 13-16. <i>But care not for me, &c.</i> These lines +form a crux in the textual criticism of Donne's poetry. I shall print them +as they stand in <i>W</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But care not for mee: I y<sup>t</sup> ever was</p> +<p>In natures & in fortunes guifts alas</p> +<p>Before thy grace got in the Muses schoole</p> +<p>A monster & a begger, am now a foole.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Some copies of the 1633 edition (including those used by myself and +by the Grolier Club editor) print these words, but obscure the meaning +by bracketing 'alas ... schoole'. Other copies (e.g. that used by +Chambers) insert after 'Before' a 'by', which the Grolier Club editor +also does as a conjecture. The 1635 editor, probably following +<i>O'F</i>, resorted to another device to clear up the sense and changed +'Before' to 'But for', which Grosart and Chambers follow. The +majority of the MSS., however, agree with <i>W</i>, and the case illustrates +well the difficulties which beset an eclectic use of the editions.</p> + +<p>If the bracket in <i>1633</i> is dropt, or rearranged as in the text, the +reading is correct and intelligible. The printers and editors have +been misled by Donne's phrase, 'In Natures, and in Fortunes gifts'. +They took this to go with 'A monster and a beggar': 'I that ever was +a monster and a beggar in Natures and in Fortunes gifts.' This is a +strange expression, taken, I suppose, to mean that Donne never +enjoyed the blessings either of Nature or of Fortune. But what +Donne says is somewhat different. The phrase 'I that ever was in +Natures and in Fortunes gifts' means 'I that ever was the Almsman +of Nature and Fortune'. Donne is using metaphorically a phrase of +which the O.E.D. quotes a single instance: 'I live in Henry the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.166" id="pageii.166"></a>[pg 166]</span> +7th's Gifts' (i.e. his Almshouses). T. Barker, <i>The Art of Angling</i> (1651). +The whole sentence might be paraphrased thus: 'I, who was ever +the Almsman of Nature and Fortune, am now a fool.' Parenthetically +he adds, 'Till thy grace begot me, a monster and a beggar, in the +Muses' school'. Possibly 'and a beggar' should be left outside the +brackets and taken with 'In Natures and in Fortunes gifts': 'I, that +<i>was</i> an almsman and beggar, was by you begotten a poet, though a +monstrous one;' ('monster' goes properly with 'got') 'and am now a +fool'—possibly the last allusion is to his rash marriage. Donne's prose +and verse of the years following 1601 are full of this melancholy +depreciation of himself and his lot. Daniel calls himself the</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="right1a"><i>Delia</i>, 26.</span>Orphan of Fortune, borne to be her scorne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare also:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>O I am fortune's fool.</p> +<p class="i14">Shakespeare, <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> i. 129.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10"> Let your study</p> +<p>Be to content your lord, who hath received you</p> +<p class="i2"><span class="right1a">Shakespeare, <i>King Lear</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> i. 277-9.</span>At fortune's alms.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So shall I clothe me in a forced content,</p> +<p class="i2">And shut myself up in some other course,</p> +<p><span class="right1a">Shakespeare, <i>Othello</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> iv. 120-2.</span>To fortune's alms.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In <i>W</i> 'All haile sweet Poet' is followed at once by these lines, +presumably written by Thomas Woodward and possibly in reply to +the above. They are found standing by themselves in <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>P</i>, <i>S96</i>. +In these they are apparently ascribed to Donne. I print from <i>W</i>:</p> + +<h3>To M<sup>r</sup> J. D.<a name="pageii.166a" id="pageii.166a"></a></h3> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou sendst me prose and rimes, I send for those</p> +<p>Lynes, which, being neither, seem or verse or prose.</p> +<p>They'are lame and harsh, and have no heat at all</p> +<p>But what thy Liberall beams on them let fall.</p> +<p>The nimble fyre which in thy braynes doth dwell</p> +<p>Is it the fyre of heaven or that of hell?</p> +<p>It doth beget and comfort like Heavens eye,</p> +<p>And like hells fyre it burnes eternally.</p> +<p>And those whom in thy fury and judgment</p> +<p>Thy verse shall skourge like hell it will torment.</p> +<p>Have mercy on mee and my sinfull Muse</p> +<p>Which rub'd and tickled with thine could not chuse</p> +<p>But spend some of her pith, and yeild to bee</p> +<p>One in that chaste and mistique Tribadree.</p> +<p>Bassaes adultery no fruit did Leave,</p> +<p>Nor theirs, which their swollen thighs did nimbly weave,</p> +<p>And with new armes and mouths embrace and kiss,</p> +<p>Though they had issue was not like to this.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.167" id="pageii.167"></a>[pg 167]</span> +<p>Thy muse, Oh strange and holy Lecheree</p> +<p>Being a mayde still, gott this song on mee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 25. <i>Now if this song, &c.</i> By interchanging the stops at 'evill' and +at 'passe' the old editions have obscured these lines. Mr. Chambers, +accepting the full stop at 'evill', prints:—</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If thou forget the rhyme as thou dost pass,</p> +<p>Then write;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The reason for writing is not clear. 'If thou forget,' &c. explains +''Twill be good prose'. 'Read this without attending to the rhymes +and you will find it good prose.' If we drop the epithet 'good', this +criticism will apply to a considerable portion of metaphysical poetry.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">205</span>, l. 30. <i>thy zanee</i>, i.e. thy imitator, as the +Merry-Andrew +imitates the Mountebank:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He's like the Zani to a tumbler</p> +<p>That tries tricks after him to make men laugh.</p> +<p class="i12">Jonson, <i>Every Man out of his Humour</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> i.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 205. To M<sup>r</sup> T. W.<a name="pageii.167a" id="pageii.167a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>Haste thee, &c.</i> By the lines 5-6, supplied from <i>W</i>, this poem +is restored to the compass of a sonnet, though a very irregular one in +form. The letter is evidently written from London, where the plague +is prevalent. The letter is to be (l. 14) Donne's pledge of affection +if he lives, his testament if he dies.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 206. To M<sup>r</sup> T. W.<a name="pageii.167b" id="pageii.167b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 5. <i>hand and eye</i> is the reading of all the MSS., including <i>W</i>. It +is written in the latter with a contraction which could easily be +mistaken for 'or'.</p> + +<h3>To M<sup>r</sup> T. W.<a name="pageii.167c" id="pageii.167c"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>I to the Nurse, they to the child of Art.</i> The 'Nurse of Art' +is probably Leisure, 'I to my soft still walks':</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And add to these retired Leisure,</p> +<p>That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>According to Aristotle, all the higher, more intellectual arts, as +distinct from those which supply necessities or add to the pleasures +of life, are the fruits of leisure: 'At first he who invented any +art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally +admired by men, not only because there was something useful in +the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to +the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed +to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of +the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors +of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim +at utility. Hence when all such inventions were already established, +the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.168" id="pageii.168"></a>[pg 168]</span> +of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began +to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in +Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.' +<i>Met.</i> A. 981<sup>b</sup> (translated by W. D. Ross).</p> + +<p>l. 12. <i>a Picture, or bare Sacrament.</i> The last word would seem to be +used in the legal sense: 'The <i>sacramentum</i> or pledge which each of the +parties deposited or became bound for before a suit.' O.E.D. The +letter is a picture of his mind or pledge of his affection.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 207. To M<sup>r</sup> R. W.<a name="pageii.168a" id="pageii.168a"></a></h3> + +<p><i>Muse not that by, &c.</i> l. 7. <i>a Lay Mans Genius</i>: i.e. his Guardian +Angel. The 'Lay Man' is opposed to the 'Poet'. Donne is very +familiar with the Catholic doctrine of Guardian Angels and recurs to +it repeatedly. Compare Shakespeare, <i>Macbeth</i>, <span class="sc">III.</span> i. 55.</p> + +<p>l. 11. <i>Wright then.</i> The version of this poem in <i>W</i> is probably +made from Donne's autograph. One of his characteristic spellings is +'wright' for 'write'. The <i>Losely Manuscripts</i> (ed. Kempe, 1836), +in which some of Donne's letters are printed from the originals, show +this spelling on every page. It is perhaps worth noting that the +irregular past participle similarly spelt, i.e. 'wrought', has occasionally +misled editors by its identity of form with the past participle of the verb +'work', which has 'gh' legitimately. Thus Mr. Beeching (<i>A Selection +from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton</i>, 1899) prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Read in my face a volume of despairs,</p> +<p class="i2">The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe,</p> +<p>Drawn with my blood, and painted with my cares,</p> +<p class="i2">Wrought by her hand that I have honoured so.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here 'wrought' should be 'wrote', used, as frequently, for 'written'. +In Professor Saintsbury's <i>Patrick Carey</i> (Caroline Poets, II.) we +read:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Who writ this song would little care</p> +<p>Although at the end his name were wrought.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>i.e. 'wrote'.</p> + +<p>See also Donne's <i>The Litanie</i>, i. p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.342">342</a>, l. 112.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 208. To M<sup>r</sup> C. B.<a name="pageii.168b" id="pageii.168b"></a></h3> + +<p>Pretty certainly Christopher Brooke, to whom <i>The Storme</i> and <i>The +Calme</i>, are addressed. Chambers takes 'the Saint of his affection' to +be Donne's wife, and dates the letter after 1600. But surely the last +two lines would not have been written of a wife. They are in the +conventional tone of the poet to his cruel Mistress. If Ann More is +the 'Saint' referred to, she was not yet Donne's wife. Possibly it is +some one else. Writing from Wales in 1599, Wotton says (in a letter +which Mr. Pearsall Smith thinks is addressed to Donne, but this is not +at all certain), 'May I after these, kiss that fair and learned hand of +your mistress, than whom the world doth possess nothing more +virtuous.' (<i>Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton</i>, i. 306.)</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.169" id="pageii.169"></a>[pg 169]</span></p> + +<p>l. 10. <i>Heavens liberall and earths thrice fairer Sunne.</i> I prefer the +<i>1633</i> and <i>1669</i> reading, amended from <i>W</i> which reads 'fairer', +to that +of the later editions, 'the thrice faire Sunne', which Chambers adopts. +There are obviously <i>two</i> suns in question—the Heavens' liberal sun, +and the earth's thrice-fairer one, i.e. the lady. Exiled from both, Donne +carries with him sufficient fire to melt the ice of the wintry regions he +must visit—not 'that which walls her heart'. Commenting on a similar +conceit in Petrarch:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ite caldi sospiri al freddo core,</p> +<p>Rompete il ghiaccio, che pietà contende,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Tassoni tells how while writing he found himself detained at an +Inn by a severe frost, and that sighs were of little use to melt it. +<i>Considerazioni, &c.</i> (1609), p. 228.</p> + +<h3>To M<sup>r</sup> E. G.<a name="pageii.169a" id="pageii.169a"></a></h3> + +<p>Gosse conjectures that the person addressed is Edward Guilpin, or +Gilpin, author of <i>Skialetheia</i> (1598), a collection of epigrams and +satires. Guilpin imitates one of Donne's <i>Satyres</i>, which may imply +acquaintance. He makes no traceable reference to Donne in his +works, and we know so little of Guilpin that it is impossible to affirm +anything with confidence. Whoever is meant is in Suffolk. There +were Gilpins of Bungay there in 1664. It is worth noting that Sir +Henry Goodyere begins one of his poems (preserved in MS. at the +Record Office, <i>State Papers Dom.</i>, 1623) with the line: 'Even as lame +things thirst their perfection.' Goodyere's poem was written before +the issue of Donne's poems in 1633, and that edition does not +contain this letter. One suspects that E. G. may be a Goodyere.</p> + +<p>ll. 5-6. <i>oreseest ... overseene.</i> Donne is probably punning: 'Thou +from the height of Parnassus lookest down upon London; I in +London am too much overlooked, disregarded.' But it is not clear. +He may mean 'am too much in men's eye, or kept too strictly under +observation'. The first meaning seems to me the more probable.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 209. To M<sup>r</sup> R. W.<a name="pageii.169b" id="pageii.169b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 3. <i>brother.</i> <i>W</i> reads 'brethren', and Morpheus <i>had</i> many +brothers; but of these only two had with himself the power of assuming what +form they would, and of these two Phantasus took forms that lack life. +Donne, therefore, probably means Phobetor, but a friend copying the +poem thought to amend his mythology. See Ovid, <i>Metam.</i> xi. 635-41.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 210. To M<sup>r</sup> R. W.<a name="pageii.169c" id="pageii.169c"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 18. <i>Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring.</i> See introductory note +to the <i>Letters</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 23. <i>businesse.</i> The use of 'businesse' as a trisyllable with plural +meaning is quite legitimate: 'Idle and discoursing men, that were +not much affected, how businesse went, so they might talke of them.' +<i>Sermon</i>, Judges <span class="sc">XX.</span> 15. p. 7.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.170" id="pageii.170"></a>[pg 170]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 211. To M<sup>r</sup> S. B.</h3> + +<p>Probably Samuel Brooke, the brother of Christopher. He officiated +at Donne's marriage and was imprisoned. He was later Chaplain to +Prince Henry, to James I, and to Charles I; professor of Divinity at +Gresham College (1612-29) and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, +1629. He wrote Latin plays, poems, and religious treatises. The +tone of Donne's letter implies that he is a student at Cambridge. It +was written therefore before 1601, probably, like several of these +letters, while Donne was Egerton's secretary, and living in chambers +with Christopher Brooke. A poem by Samuel Brooke, <i>On Tears</i>, is +printed in Hannah's <i>Courtly Poets</i>.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 212. To M<sup>r</sup> J. L.<a name="pageii.170a" id="pageii.170a"></a></h3> + +<p>Of the J. L. of this and the letter which follows the next, nothing +has been unearthed. He clearly belonged to the North of +England, beyond the Trent.</p> + +<h3>To M<sup>r</sup> B. B.<a name="pageii.170b" id="pageii.170b"></a></h3> + +<p>Grosart conjectures that this was Basil Brooke (1576-1646?), +a Catholic, who was knighted in 1604. In 1644 he was committed +to the Tower by Parliament and in 1646 imprisoned in the King's +Bench. He translated <i>Entertainments for Lent</i> from the French. +He was not a brother of Christopher and Samuel. The identification +is only a conjecture. The tenor of the poem is very similar to +that addressed to Mr. S. B.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">213</span>, l. 18. <i>widowhed.</i> <i>W</i> here clearly gives us +the form which +Donne used. The rhyme requires it and the poet has used it elsewhere:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="right1a"><i>The Litanie</i>, xii. 108.</span>And call chast widowhead Virginitie.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 19-22. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are somewhat +ambiguous:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>My Muse, (for I had one) because I'am cold,</p> +<p>Divorc'd her self, the cause being in me,</p> +<p>That I can take no new in Bigamye,</p> +<p>Not my will only but power doth withhold.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, by putting a full stop or semi-colon +after 'the cause being in me', connect these words with what +precedes. This makes the first two lines verbose ('the cause being in +me' repeating 'because I'am cold') and the last two obscure. I regard +'the cause being in me' as an explanatory participial phrase qualifying +what follows. 'My Muse divorc'd me because of my coldness. The +cause of this divorce, coldness, being in me, the divorced one, I lack +not only the will but the power to contract a new marriage'. I have +therefore, following <i>W</i>, placed a colon after 'selfe'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.171" id="pageii.171"></a>[pg 171]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 213. To M<sup>r</sup> I. L.</h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>My Sun is with you.</i> Here, as in the letter 'To Mr. C. B.' +(p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.208a">208</a>), reference is made to some lady whose 'servant' Donne is. +See the note to that poem and the quotation from Sir Henry Wotton. +It seems to me most probable that the person referred to was neither +Ann More nor any predecessor of her in Donne's affections, but some +noble lady to whom the poet stood in the attitude of dependence +masking itself in love which Spenser occupied towards Lady Carey, +and so many other poets towards their patronesses. But in regard to +all the references in these letters we can only grope in darkness. As +Professor Saintsbury would say, we do not <i>really know</i> to whom one of +the letters was addressed.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">214</span>, ll. 11-12. These lines from <i>W</i> make the sense +more complete and the transition to the closing invocation less abrupt. +'Sacrifice my heart to that beauteous Sunne; and since being with +her you are in Paradise where joy admits of no addition, think of me +at the sacrifice'; and then begins the prayer to his friend as an interceding +saint. See note to p. <a href="#pageii.23">24</a>, l. 22.</p> + +<p>The lines seem to have been dropped, not in printing, but at some +stage in transcription, for I have found them in no MS. but <i>W</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 20. <i>Thy Sonne ne'r Ward</i>: i.e. 'May thy son never become a +royal ward, to be handed over to the guardianship of some courtier who +will plunder his estate.' Sir John Roe's father, in his will, begs his +wife to procure the wardship of his son that he be not utterly ruined.</p> + +<p>The series of letters which this to Mr. I. L. closes was probably +written during the years 1597 to 1608 or 1610. Donne's first Letters +were <i>The Storme</i> and <i>The Calme</i>. These were followed by Letters to +Wotton before and after he went to Ireland, and this series continues +them during the years of Donne's secretaryship and his subsequent +residence at Pyrford and Mitcham. They are written to friends of his +youth, some still at college. Clearly too, what we have preserved +is Donne's side of a mutual correspondence. Of Letters to Donne +I have printed one, probably from Thomas Woodward. Chance +has preserved another probably in the form in which it was sent. +Mr. Gosse has printed it (<i>Life, &c.</i>, i, p. 91). I reproduce it from the +original MS., Tanner 306, in the Bodleian Library:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">To my ever to be respected friend</p> +<p class="i10">M<sup>r</sup> John Done secretary to my</p> +<p class="i14">Lord Keeper give these.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant</p> +<p>Thir Tideast lambs or kids for sacrefize</p> +<p>Vnto thir gods, sincear beinge thir intent</p> +<p>Thoughe base thir gift, if that shoulde moralize</p> +<p>thir loves, yet noe direackt discerninge eye</p> +<p>Will judge thir ackt but full of piety.</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.172" id="pageii.172"></a>[pg 172]</span> +<p>Soe offir I my beast affection</p> +<p>Apparaled in these harsh totterd rimes.</p> +<p>Think not they want love, though perfection</p> +<p>or that my loves noe truer than my lyens</p> +<p>Smothe is my love thoughe rugged be my years</p> +<p>Yet well they mean, thoughe well they ill rehears.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>What tyme thou meanst to offir Idillnes</p> +<p>Come to my den for heer she always stayes;</p> +<p>If then for change of howers you seem careles</p> +<p>Agree with me to lose them at the playes.</p> +<p>farewell dear freand, my love, not lyens respeackt,</p> +<p>So shall you shewe, my freandship you affeckt.</p> +<p class="i24"> Yours</p> +<p class="i22"> William Cornwaleys.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The writer is, Mr. Gosse says, Sir William Cornwallis, the eldest son +of Sir Charles Cornwallis of Beeston-in-Sprouston, Norfolk. Like +Wotton, Goodyere, Roe, and others of Donne's circle he followed Essex +to Ireland and was knighted at Dublin in 1599. The letter probably +dates from 1600 or 1601. I have reproduced the original spelling, +which is remarkable.</p> + +<p>This letter and that to Mr. E. G. show that Donne was a frequenter +of the theatre in these interesting years, 1593 to 1610, the greatest +dramatic era since the age of Pericles. Sir Richard Baker, in his +<i>Chronicle of the Kings of England</i> (1730, p. 424), recalls his 'Old +Acquaintance ... Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, liv'd at the +Inns of Court, not dissolute but very neat: a great Visiter of Ladies, +a great Frequenter of Plays, a great Writer of conceited Verses'. +But of the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's +poetry. The theatres are an amusement for idle hours: 'Because +I am drousie, I will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities +of a Comedy, or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy.' <i>Sermons</i> +80. 38. 383.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 214. <span class="sc">To Sir H. W. at his going Ambassador to Venice.</span><a name="pageii.172a" id="pageii.172a"></a></h3> + +<p>On July 8 O.S., 1604, Wotton was knighted by James, and on the +13th sailed for Venice. 'He is a gentleman', the Venetian ambassador +reported, 'of excellent condition, wise, prudent, able. Your serenity, +it is to be hoped, will be very well pleased with him.' Mr. Pearsall +Smith adds, 'It is worth noting that while Wotton was travelling to +Venice, Shakespeare was probably engaged in writing his great +Venetian tragedy, <i>Othello</i>, which was acted before James I in +November of this year.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">215</span>, ll. 21-4. <i>To sweare much love, &c.</i> The meaning +of this verse, accepting the 1633 text, is: 'Admit this honest paper to +swear much love,—a love that will not change until with your elevation +to the peerage (or increasing eminence) it must be called <i>honour</i> +rather than <i>love</i>.' (We <i>honour</i>, not <i>love</i>, those who are high above us.) +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.173" id="pageii.173"></a>[pg 173]</span> +'But when that time comes I shall not more honour your fortune, the +rank that fortune gives you, than I have honoured your honour ["nobleness +of mind, scorn of meanness, magnanimity" (Johnson)], your high +character, magnanimity, without it, i.e. when yet unhonoured.' Donne +plays on the word 'honour'.</p> + +<p>Walton's version, and the slight variant of this in <i>1635-69</i>, give +a different thought, and this is perhaps the correct reading, more +probably either another (perhaps an earlier) version of the poet or an +attempt to correct due to a failure to catch the meaning of the rather +fanciful phrase 'honouring your honour'. The meaning is, 'I shall +not then more honour your fortune than I have your wit while it was +still unhonoured, or (<i>1635-69</i>) unennobled.' The 1633 version seems +to me the more likely to be the correct or final form of the text, +because a reference to character rather than 'wit' or intellectual +ability is implied by the following verse:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But 'tis an easier load (though both oppresse)</p> +<p class="i2">To want then governe greatnesse, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This stress on character, too, and indifference to fortune, is quite in +the vein of Donne's and Wotton's earlier verse correspondence and +all Wotton's poetry.</p> + +<p>For the distinction between love and honour compare Lyly's +<i>Endimion</i>, <span class="sc">v.</span> iii. 150-80:</p> + +<blockquote><p> +'<i>Cinthia.</i> Was there such a time when as for my love thou did'st +vow thyself to death, and in respect of it loth'd thy life? Speake +Endimion, I will not revenge it with hate ...</p> + +<p><i>Endimion.</i> My unspotted thoughts, my languishing bodie, my discontented +life, let them obtaine by princelie favour that, which to +challenge they must not presume, onelie wishing of impossibilities: +with imagination of which I will spend my spirits, and to myselfe +that no creature may heare, softlie call it love. And if any urge to +utter what I whisper, then will I name it honor....</p> + +<p> ... <i>Cinthia.</i> Endimion, this honourable respect of thine, shalbe +christened love in thee, and my reward for it favor.' +</p></blockquote> + +<p>With the lines,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Nor shall I then honour your fortune, &c.,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>compare in the same play:</p> + +<blockquote><p> +'O Endimion, Tellus was faire, but what availeth Beautie without +wisdom? Nay, Endimion, she was wise, but what availeth wisdom +without honour? She was honourable, Endimion, belie her not. +I, but how obscure is honour without fortune?' <span class="sc">II.</span> iii. 11-17. +</p></blockquote> + +<p>The antithesis here between 'honour' and 'fortune' is exactly +that which Donne makes.</p> + +<p>If we may accept 'noble-wanting-wit' as Donne's own phrase (and +Walton's authority pleads for it) and interpret it as 'wit that yet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.174" id="pageii.174"></a>[pg 174]</span> +wants ennoblement' it forms an interesting parallel to a phrase of +Shakespeare's in <i>Macbeth</i>, when Banquo addresses the witches:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">My noble partner</p> +<p>You greet with present grace and great prediction,</p> +<p>Of noble having and of royal hope.</p> +<p class="i32"><i>Macbeth</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 55-7.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Some editors refer 'present grace' to the first salutation, 'Thane +of Glamis'. This is unlikely as there is nothing startling in a salutation +to which Macbeth was already entitled. The Clarendon +Press editors refer the line, more probably, to the two prophecies, +'thane of Cawdor' and 'that shalt be King hereafter'. The word +'having' is then not <i>quite</i> the same as in the phrases 'my having is +not great', &c., which these editors quote, but is simply opposed to +'hope'. You greet him with 'nobility in possession', with 'royalty +in expectation', as being already thane of Cawdor, as to be king +hereafter. Shakespeare's 'noble having' is the opposite of Donne's +'noble wanting'.</p> + +<p>One is tempted to put, as Chambers does, an emphasizing comma +after 'honour' as well as 'fortune'; but the antithesis is between +'fortune' and 'honour wanting fortune'.</p> + +<p>'Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which +he affected was built upon true Worth, esteeming Fame more than +Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.' Fulke +Greville's <i>Life of Sidney</i>, c. iii. p. 38 (<i>Tudor and Stuart +Library</i>).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 216. <span class="sc">To M</span><sup>rs</sup> M. H.<a name="pageii.174a" id="pageii.174a"></a></h3> + +<p>I.e. Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, +mother of Sir Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), and of +George Herbert the poet. For her friendship with Donne, see +Walton's <i>Life of Mr. George Herbert</i> (1670), Gosse's <i>Life and Letters +of John Donne</i>, i. 162 f., and what is said in the <i>Introduction</i> to +this +volume and the Introductory Note to the <i>Elegies</i>. In 1608 she +married Sir John Danvers. Her funeral sermon was preached by +Donne in 1627.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">217</span>, l. 27. <i>For, speech of ill, and her, thou must +abstaine.</i> +The O.E.D. gives no example of 'abstain' thus used without 'from' +before the object, and it is tempting with <i>1635-69</i> and all the MSS. +to change 'For' to 'From'. But none of the MSS. has great +authority textually, and the 'For' in <i>1633</i> is too carefully comma'd +off to suggest a mere slip. Probably Donne wrote the line as it +stands. One does not miss the 'from' so much when the verb comes +so long after the object. 'Abstain' acquires the sense of 'forgo'.</p> + +<p>ll. 31-2. <i>And since they'are but her cloathes, &c.</i> Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For he who colour loves and skinne,</p> +<p class="i2">Loves but their oldest clothes.</p> +<p class="i28"><i>The Undertaking</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.10">10</a>.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.175" id="pageii.175"></a>[pg 175]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 218. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Bedford.</span></h3> + +<p>l. 13. <i>Care not then, Madam,'how low your praysers lye.</i> I cannot +but think that the 'praysers' of the MSS. is preferable to the 'prayses' +of the editions. It is difficult to construe or make unambiguous +sense of 'how low your prayses lie'. Donne does not wish to +suggest that the praise is poor in itself, but that the giver is a 'low +person'. The word 'prayser' he has already used in a letter to the +Countess (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.200">200</a>), and there also it has caused some trouble to editors +and copyists.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 20-1. <i>Your radiation can all clouds subdue;</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>But one, 'tis best light to contemplate you.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate these lines so as to +connect 'But one' with what precedes.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Your radiation can all clouds subdue</p> +<p>But one; 'tis best light to contemplate you.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I suppose 'death' in this reading is to be regarded as the one +cloud which the radiation of the Countess cannot dispel. There +is no indication, however, that this is the thought in Donne's mind. +As punctuated (i.e. with a comma after 'subdue', which I have +strengthened to a semicolon), 'But one' goes with what follows, +and refers to God: 'Excepting God only, you are the most +illuminating object we can contemplate.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">219</span>, l. 27. <i>May in your through-shine front your hearts +thoughts see.</i> All the MSS. agree in reading 'your hearts thoughts', which is +obviously correct. <i>N</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and <i>TCD</i> give the line otherwise +exactly as in the editions. <i>B</i> drops the 'shine' after 'through'; and +<i>S96</i> reads:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>May in you, through your face, your hearts thoughts see.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne has used 'through-shine' already in '<i>A Valediction: of my +name in the window</i>':</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">'Tis much that glasse should bee</p> +<p>As all confessing, and through-shine as I,</p> +<p class="i2">'Tis more that it shewes thee to thee,</p> +<p class="i2">And cleare reflects thee to thine eye.</p> +<p>But all such rules, loves magique can undoe,</p> +<p class="i2">Here you see mee, and I am you.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>If there were any evidence that Donne was, as in this lyric, playing +with the idea of the identity of different souls, there would be reason +to retain the 'our hearts thoughts' of the editions; but there is no +trace of this. He is dwelling simply on the thought of the Countess's +transparency. Donne is fond of compounds with 'through'. Other +examples are 'through-light', 'through-swome', 'through-vaine', +'through-pierc'd'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.176" id="pageii.176"></a>[pg 176]</span></p> + +<p>ll. 36-7. <i>They fly not, &c.</i> Chambers and the Grolier Club editor +have here injured the sense by altering the punctuation. 'Nature's +first lesson' does not complete the previous statement about the +relation of the different souls, but qualifies 'discretion'. 'Just as +the souls of growth and sense do not claim precedence of the rational +soul, so the first lesson taught us by Nature, viz. <i>discretion</i>, must not +grudge a place to zeal.' 'Anima rationalis est perfectior quam +sensibilis, et sensibilis quam vegetabilis,' Aquinas, <i>Summa</i>, ii. 57. 2.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">220</span>, l. 46. <i>In those poor types, &c.</i> The use of the +circle as an emblem of infinity is very old. 'To the mystically inclined the +perpendicular was the emblem of unswerving rectitude and purity; +but the circle, "the foremost, richest, and most perfect of curves" was +the symbol of completeness and eternity, of the endless process of +generation and renascence in which all things are ever becoming +new.' W. B. Frankland, <i>The Story of Euclid</i>, p. 70. God was described +by St. Bonaventura as 'a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose +circumference nowhere'. See also supplementary note.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 221. <a name="pageii.176a" id="pageii.176a"></a><span class="sc">A Letter to the Lady Carey, and +M</span><sup>rs</sup> <span class="sc">Essex Riche, from Amyens</span>.</h3> + +<p>Probably written when Donne was abroad with Sir Robert Drury in +1611-12. 'The two ladies', Mr. Chambers says, 'were daughters +of Robert, third Lord Rich, by Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter, +Earl of Essex, the Stella of Sidney's <i>Astrophel and Stella</i>.' Lady Rich +abandoned her husband after five years' marriage and declared that +the true father of her children was Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, +to whom, after her divorce in 1605, she was married by Laud. +Lettice, the eldest daughter, married Sir George Carey, of Cockington, +Devon. Essex, the younger, was married, subsequently to this letter, +to Sir Thomas Cheeke, of Pirgo, Essex.</p> + +<p>ll. 10-12. <i>Where, because Faith is in too low degree, &c.</i> Donne +refers to the Catholic doctrine of good works as necessary to salvation +in opposition to the Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. +He is fond of the antithesis. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>My faith I give to Roman Catholiques;</p> +<p>All my good workes unto the Schismaticks</p> +<p>Of Amsterdam;...</p> +<p>Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee</p> +<p>Love her that holds my love disparity,</p> +<p>Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.</p> +<p class="i32"> <i>The Will</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.57">57</a>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">222</span>, l. 14. <i>where no one is growne or spent.</i> Like +the stars in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to +Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not +temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not +eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', +their life is measured by ages.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.177" id="pageii.177"></a>[pg 177]</span></p> + +<p>l. 19. <i>humilitie</i> has such general support that the 'humidity' of +<i>1669</i> seems to be merely a conjecture.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 224. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Salisbury.</span> 1614.</h3> + +<p>Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, +married in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the +greater earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues +died with them, and their children only inherited their titles'. +Clarendon.</p> + +<p>It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the +Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's +letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's +poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon +the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the +beginning of a graver course, then of a Poet'. <i>Letters, &c.</i>, p. 103. +Donne made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he +was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as +a wit before his graver days. Nor would he have apologized for +writing to such an old friend whose prophet he had been in her +younger days.</p> + +<p>The punctuation of this poem repays careful study. The whole is a +fine example of that periodic style, drawn out from line to line, and +forming sonorous and impressive verse-paragraphs, in which Donne +more than any other poet anticipated Milton. The first sentence +closes only at the thirty-sixth line. The various clauses which lead +up to the close are separated from one another by the full-stop +(ll. 8, 24), the colon (ll. 2, 7 (sonnets:), 34), and the semicolon +(ll. 18, 21, 30 where the old edition had a colon), all with distinct +values. The only change I have made (and recorded) is at l. 30 (fantasticall), +where a careful consideration of the punctuation throughout shows +that a semicolon is more appropriate than a colon. The clause which +begins with 'Since' in l. 25 does not close till l. 34, 'understood'.</p> + +<p>In the rest of the poem the punctuation is also careful. The only +changes I have made are—ll. 42 'that day;' and 46 'yesterday;' (a semi-colon +for a colon in each case), 61 'mee:' (a colon for a full stop), +and 63 'good;' (a semicolon for a comma).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 227. <span class="sc">To the Lady Bedford.</span><a name="pageii.177a" id="pageii.177a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 1. <i>You that are she and you, that's double shee</i>: The old punctuation +suggests absurdly that the clause 'and you that's double she' is +an independent co-ordinate clause.</p> + +<p>l. 7. <i>Cusco.</i> I note in a catalogue, 'South America, a very early Map, +with view of Cusco, the capital of Peru'.</p> + +<p>l. 44. <i>of Iudith.</i> 'There is not such a woman from one end of the +earth to the other, both for beauty of face and wisdom of words.' +Judith xi. 21.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.178" id="pageii.178"></a>[pg 178]</span></p> + +<h2>AN ANATOMIE OF THE WORLD.</h2> + +<p>The <i>Anatomie of the World</i> and <i>Of The Progresse of the Soule</i> were +the first poems published in Donne's lifetime. The former was issued +in 1611. It is exceedingly rare. The copy preserved in Lord +Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House is a small octavo volume +of 26 pages (<i>Praise of the Dead, &c.</i> 3 pp., <i>Anatomy</i> 19 pp., and +<i>Funerall Elegie</i> 4 pp., all unnumbered), with title-page as given on +the page opposite.</p> + +<p>In 1612 the poem was reissued along with the <i>Second Anniversary</i>. +A copy of this rare volume was sold at the Huth sale on the thirteenth +of June this year. With the kind permission of Mr. Edward Huth and +Messrs. Sotheby, Mr. Godfrey Keynes made a careful collation for me, +the results of which are embodied in my notes. The separate title-pages +of the two poems which the volume contains are here reproduced.</p> + +<p>Mr. Keynes supplies the following description of the volume: +<i>A</i> first title, <i>A-A4 To the praise of the Dead</i> (in italics), +<i>A5-D2</i> (pp. 1-44) <i>The First Anniversary</i> (in roman), <i>D3-D7</i> (pp. 45-54) +<i>A funerall Elegie</i> (in italics), <i>D8</i> blank except for rules in +margins; <i>E1</i> second title, <i>E2-E4</i> recto <i>The Harbinger</i> (in italics), +<i>E4</i> verso blank, <i>E5-H5</i> recto (pp. 1-49) <i>The Second Anniversarie</i> (in roman), +<i>H5</i> verso—<i>H6</i> blank except for rules in margins. A fresh title-page +introduces the second poem.</p> + +<p>In 1611 the introductory verses entitled <i>To the praise of the Dead, +and the Anatomy</i>, and the <i>Anatomy</i> itself, are printed in italic, <i>A +Funerall Elegie</i> following in roman type. This latter arrangement was reversed +in 1612. In the second part, only the poem entitled <i>The Harbinger +to the Progresse</i> is printed throughout in italic. Donne's own poem +is in roman type.</p> + +<p>The reason of the variety of arrangement is, I suppose, this: The +<i>Funerall Elegie</i> was probably, as Chambers suggests, the first part of +the poem, composed probably in 1610. When it was published in +1611 with the <i>Anatomie</i>, the latter was regarded as introductory and +subordinate to the <i>Elegie</i>, and accordingly was printed in italic. Later, +when the idea of the Anniversary poems emerged, and <i>Of The Progresse +of the Soule</i> was written as a complement to <i>An Anatomy of the +World</i>, these became the prominent parts of the whole work in +honour of Elizabeth Drury, and the <i>Funerall Elegie</i> fell into the +subordinate position.</p> + +<p>The edition of 1612 does not strike one as a very careful piece of +printing. It was probably printed while Donne was on the Continent. +It supplies only two certain emendations of the later text.</p> + +<p>The reprints of this volume made in 1621 and 1625 show increasing +carelessness. They were issued after Donne took orders +and probably without his sanction. The title-pages of the editions +are here reproduced.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.179" id="pageii.179"></a>[pg 179]</span></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger"><i>AN</i><br /> +<span class="spaced">ANATOMY</span><br /> +<small>of the World.</small></h2> + +<p class="centerc1 space-above">WHEREIN,</p> + +<p class="centertb1">BY OCCASION OF</p> + +<p class="centerc1">the vntimely death of Mistris</p> + +<p class="centerch"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span></p> +<p class="centerc">the frailty and the decay<br /> +of this whole world<br /> +is represented.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON,</i></p> + +<p class="centerh1"><span class="more">Printed for <i>Samuel Macham</i>.</span><br /> +and are to be solde at his shop in<br /> +Paules Church-yard, at the<br /> +signe of the Bul-head.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="center"><span class="sc">An. Dom.</span></p> +<p class="center">1611.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p179-310.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.180" id="pageii.180"></a>[pg 180]</span></p> + +<p class="centertb1"><i>The First Anniuersarie.</i></p> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced"><small>AN</small></span><br /> +<span class="spaced">ANATOMY</span><br /> +<small>of the VVorld.</small></h2> + +<p class="centerc1 space-above"><i>Wherein</i>,</p> + +<p class="centertb1"><span class="spaced">By Occasion Of</span></p> + +<p class="centerc1"><i>the vntimely death of Mistris</i></p> + +<p class="centerch"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span></p> +<p class="centerc">the frailtie and the decay<br /> +of this whole world<br /> +is represented.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_p180-glyph-230.png" width="230" height="71" alt="glyph" /></div> + +<p class="centerc"><i>LONDON,</i></p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by <i>M. Bradwood</i> for <i>S. Macham</i>, and are<br /> +to be sold at his shop in Pauls Church-yard at the<br /> +signe of the Bull-head. 1612.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p180-320.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.181" id="pageii.181"></a>[pg 181]</span></p> + +<p class="centertb1"><i>The Second Anniuersarie.</i></p> + +<p class="centert2">OF</p> + +<h2 class="bigger1"><span class="spaced">THE PROGRES</span><br /> +<span class="less">of the Soule.</span></h2> + +<p class="centerc1 space-above"><i>Wherein:</i></p> + +<p class="centerc1">By Occasion Of The</p> + +<p class="centerc1">Religious death of Mistris</p> +<p class="centerch1"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span></p> + +<p class="centerch">the incommodities of the Soule<br /> +<i>in this life and her exaltation in</i><br /> +the next, are Contem-<br /> +<i>plated</i>.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p class="centerc"><span class="sc">London</span>,</p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by M. <i>Bradwood</i> for <i>S. Macham</i>, and are<br /> +to be sould at his shop in Pauls Church-yard at<br /> +the signe of the Bull-head.<br /> +1612.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p181-340.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center">The above title is not an exact facsimile.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.182" id="pageii.182"></a>[pg 182]</span></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p class="centertb"><i>The First Anniuersarie.</i></p> +<hr class="mid" /> + +<h2 class="bigger1a"><span class="spaced"><small>AN</small></span><br /> +<span class="spaced">ANATOMY</span><br /> +<span class="spaced"><small>of the World</small></span>.</h2> + +<p class="centerc space-above"><i>Wherein</i>,</p> + +<p class="centertb1"><span class="spaced">By Occasion Of</span></p> + +<p class="centertb1"><i>the vntimely death of Mistris</i></p> +<p class="centerch"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span><br /> +the frailtie and the decay<br /> +of this whole world<br /> +is represented.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_p182-glyph-230.png" width="230" height="72" alt="glyph" /></div> + +<p class="centerc"><span class="sc">London</span>,</p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by <i>A. Mathewes</i> for <i>Tho: Dewe</i>, and are<br /> +to be sold at his shop in Saint <i>Dunstons</i> Church-yard in<br /> +Fleetestreete. 1621.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p182-310.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.183" id="pageii.183"></a>[pg 183]</span></p> + + +<p class="centertb"><i>The second Anniuersarie.</i></p> +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="centert1">OF</p> + +<h2 class="bigger1"><span class="spaced">THE PROGRES</span><br /> +<span class="less">of the Soule.</span></h2> + +<p class="centerc1 space-above"><i>Wherein,</i></p> + +<p class="centerc1"><span class="spaced">By Occasion Of</span></p> + +<p class="centerc1"><i>the Religious death of Mistris</i></p> +<p class="centerch1"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span></p> + +<p class="centerch">the incommodities of the Soule<br /> +<i>in this life and her exaltation in</i><br /> +the next, are Contem-<br /> +<i>plated</i>.</p> + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_p183-glyph-230.png" width="230" height="73" alt="glyph" /></div> + +<p class="centerc"><span class="sc">London</span>,</p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by <i>A. Mathewes</i> for <i>Tho: Dewe</i>, and are<br /> +to be sold at his shop in Saint <i>Dunstons</i> Church-yard<br /> +in Fleetestreete. 1621.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p183-325.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.184" id="pageii.184"></a>[pg 184]</span></p> + +<h2 class="bigger"><span class="spaced"><small>AN</small></span><br /> +<span class="spaced">ANATOMY</span><br /> +<span class="spaced">OF THE</span><br /> +<small><i>World.</i></small></h2> + +<p class="centert space-above"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Wherein,</span></span></p> + +<p class="centertb1"><i>By Occasion Of the vn-</i><br /> +<i>timely death of Mistris</i></p> +<p class="centerch"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span><br /> +<i>the frailtie and the decay</i><br /> +of this whole world is<br /> +<i>represented</i>.</p> +<p class="centertb">The first Anniuersarie.</p> +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="centerc"><span class="sc">London</span></p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by <i>W. Stansby</i> for <i>Tho. Dewe</i>,<br /> +and are to be sold in S. <i>Dunstanes</i><br /> +Church-yard. 1625</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p184-345.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.185" id="pageii.185"></a>[pg 185]</span></p> + +<p class="centert2">OF</p> + +<h2 class="bigger1"><span class="spaced">THE PROGRES</span><br /> +<span class="less">of the</span><br /> +<span class="spaced"><i>SOVLE</i></span></h2> + +<p class="centerc1 space-above"><span class="sc">Wherein,</span></p> + +<p class="centertb1"><i>By Occasion Of The Re-</i><br /> +<i>ligious death of Mistris</i></p> +<p class="centerch"><span class="spaced"><span class="sc">Elizabeth Drvry</span></span><br /> +the incommodities of the Soule in<br /> +this life, and her exaltation in the<br /> + <i>next, are Contemplated</i>.</p> + +<p class="centertb"><i>The Second Anniuersarie.</i></p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="centerc">LONDON</p> + +<p class="centerh1">Printed by <i>W. Stansby</i> for <i>Tho. Dewe</i>,<br /> +and are to be sold in S. <i>Dunstanes</i><br /> +Church-yard. 1625.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p class="center"><a class="ask1" href="images/i_p185-350.png">Title Page</a></p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.186" id="pageii.186"></a>[pg 186]</span></p> + +<p>The symbolic figures in the title-pages of 1625 probably represent +the seven Liberal Arts. A feature of the editions of <i>1611</i>, <i>1612,</i> +and <i>1625</i> is the marginal notes. These are reproduced in <i>1633</i>, but +a little carelessly, for some copies do not contain them all. They +are omitted in the subsequent editions.</p> + +<p>The text of the <i>Anniversaries</i> in <i>1633</i> has been on the whole +carefully edited. It is probable, judging from several small circumstances +(e.g. the omission of the first marginal note even in copies where all +the rest are given), that <i>1633</i> was printed from <i>1625</i>, but it is +clear that the editor compared this with earlier editions, probably those of +<i>1611-12</i>, and corrected or amended the punctuation throughout. My collation +of <i>1633</i> with <i>1611</i> has throughout vindicated the former as against +<i>1621-5</i> on the one hand and the later editions on the other.<a id="footnotetagaw1" name="footnotetagaw1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnoteaw1"><sup>1</sup></a> Of +mistakes other than of punctuation I have noted only three: l. 181, +thoughts <i>1611-12</i>; thought <i>1621-33</i>. This was corrected, from the +obvious sense, in later editions (<i>1635-69</i>), and Grosart, Chambers, and +Grolier make no note of the error in <i>1621-33</i>. l. 318, proportions +<i>1611-12</i>; proportion <i>1621</i> and all subsequent editions without +comment. +l. 415, Impressions <i>1611</i>; Impression <i>1612-25</i>: impression +<i>1633</i> and all subsequent editions. All three cases are examples of the +same error, the dropping of final 's'.</p> + +<p>In typographical respects <i>1611</i> shows the hand of the author more +clearly than the later editions. Donne was fastidious in matters of +punctuation and the use of italics and capital letters, witness the +<i>LXXX Sermons</i> (1640), printed from MSS. prepared for the press by the +author. But the printer had to be reckoned with, and perfection was +not obtainable. In a note to one of the separately published sermons +Donne says: 'Those Errors which are committed in mispointing, or +in changing the form of the Character, will soone be discernd, and +corrected by the Eye of any deliberate Reader'. The <i>1611</i> text shows +a more consistent use in certain passages of emphasizing capitals, and +at places its punctuation is better than that of <i>1633</i>. My text reproduces +<i>1633</i>, corrected where necessary from the earlier editions; and +I have occasionally followed the typography of <i>1611</i>. But every case +in which <i>1633</i> is modified is recorded.</p> + +<p>Of the <i>Second Anniversarie</i>, in like manner, my text is that of +<i>1633</i>, corrected in a few details, and with a few typographical features +borrowed, from the edition of <i>1612</i>. The editor of <i>1633</i> had rather +definite views of his own on punctuation, notably a predilection for +semicolons in place of full stops. The only certain emendations +which <i>1612</i> supplies are in the marginal note at p. 234 and in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.187" id="pageii.187"></a>[pg 187]</span> +l. 421 of the <i>Second Anniversarie</i> 'this' for 'his'. The spelling is less +ambiguous in ll. 27 and 326.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnoteaw1" name="footnoteaw1"></a><a class="ask" href="#footnotetagaw1"><sup>1</sup></a> +<i>1621-25</i> abound in misplaced full stops which are not in <i>1611</i> and are generally +corrected in <i>1633</i>. The punctuation of the later editions (<i>1635-69</i>) is the work of +the printer. Occasionally a comma is dropped or introduced with advantage to +the sense, but in general the punctuation grows increasingly careless. Often the +correction of one error leads to another.</p> + +<p>The subject of the <i>Anniversaries</i> was the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth +Drury, who died in 1610. Her father, Sir Robert Drury, of Hawsted +in the county of Suffolk, was a man of some note on account of his +great wealth. He was knighted by Essex when about seventeen years +old, at the siege of Rouen (1591-2). He served in the Low Countries, +and at the battle of Nieuport (1600) brought off Sir Francis Vere when +his horse was shot under him. He was courtier, traveller, member of +Parliament, and in 1613 would have been glad to go as Ambassador +to Paris when Sir Thomas Overbury refused the proffered honour and +was sent to the Tower. Lady Drury was the daughter of Sir Nicholas +Bacon, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper. She and +her brother, Sir Edmund Bacon, were friends and patrons of Joseph +Hall, Donne's rival as an early satirist. From 1600 to 1608 Hall was rector +of Hawsted, and though he was not very kindly treated by Sir Robert +he dedicated to him his <i>Meditations Morall and Divine</i>. This tie +explains the fact, which we learn from Jonson's conversations with +Drummond, that Hall is the author of the <i>Harbinger to the Progresse</i>. +As he wrote this we may infer that he is also responsible for <i>To the +praise of the dead, and the Anatomie</i>.</p> + +<p>Readers of Donne's <i>Life</i> by Walton are aware of the munificence +with which Sir Robert rewarded Donne for his poems, how he opened +his house to him, and took him abroad. Donne's letters, on the +other hand, reveal that the poem gave considerable offence to the +Countess of Bedford and other older patrons and friends. In his +letters to Gerrard he endeavoured to explain away his eulogies. In +verse-letters to the Countess of Bedford and others he atoned for his +inconstancy by subtle and erudite compliments.</p> + +<p><i>The Funerall Elegie</i> was doubtless written in 1610 and sent to Sir +Robert Drury. He and Donne may already have been acquainted +through Wotton, who was closely related by friendship and marriage +with Sir Edmund Bacon. (See Pearsall Smith, <i>Life and Letters of +Sir Henry Wotton</i> (1907). <i>The Anatomie of the World</i> was composed in +1611, <i>Of the Progresse of the Soule</i> in France in 1612, at some time +prior to the 14th of April, when he refers to his <i>Anniversaries</i> in +a letter to George Gerrard.</p> + +<p>Ben Jonson declared to Drummond 'That Donnes Anniversaries +were profane and full of blasphemies: that he told Mr. Done if it +had been written of the Virgin Marie it had been something; to which +he answered that he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she +was'. This is a better defence of Donne's poems than any which he +advances in his letters, but it is not a complete description of his +work. Rather, he interwove with a rapt and extravagantly conceited +laudation of an ideal woman two topics familiar to his catholic and +mediaeval learning, and developed each in a characteristically subtle +and ingenious strain, a strain whose occasional sceptical, disintegrating +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.188" id="pageii.188"></a>[pg 188]</span> +reflections belong as obviously to the seventeenth century as the +general content of the thought is mediaeval.</p> + +<p>The burden of the whole is an impassioned and exalted <i>meditatio +mortis</i> based on two themes common enough in mediaeval devotional +literature—a <i>De Contemptu Mundi</i>, and a contemplation of the +Glories of Paradise. A very brief analysis of the two poems, omitting +the laudatory portions, may help a reader who cannot at once see the +wood for the trees, and be better than detailed notes.</p> + +<h3><i>The Anatomie of the World.</i></h3> + +<p><i>l. 1.</i> The world which suffered in her death is now fallen into the +worse lethargy of oblivion. <i>l. 60.</i> I will anatomize the world for the +benefit of those who still, by the influence of her virtue, lead a kind of +glimmering life. <i>l. 91.</i> There is no health in the world. We are still +under the curse of woman. <i>l. 111.</i> How short is our life compared +with that of the patriarchs! <i>l. 134.</i> How small is our stature compared +with that of the giants of old! <i>l. 147.</i> How shrunken of soul we are, +especially since her death! <i>l. 191.</i> And as man, so is the whole world. +The new learning or philosophy has shattered in fragments that +complete scheme of the universe in which we rested so confidently, +and (<i>l. 211</i>) in human society the same disorder prevails. +<i>l. 250.</i> There is no beauty in the world, for, first, the beauty of +proportion is lost, alike in the movements of the heavenly bodies, +and (<i>l. 285</i>) in the earth with its mountains and hollows, and (<i>l. +302</i>) +in the administration of justice in society. <i>l. 339.</i> So is Beauty's +other element, Colour and Lustre. <i>l. 377.</i> Heaven and earth are at +variance. We can no longer read terrestrial fortunes in the stars. +But (<i>l. 435</i>) an Anatomy can be pushed too far.</p> + +<h3><i>The Progresse of the Soule.</i></h3> + +<p><i>l. 1.</i> The world's life is the life that breeds in corruption. Let +me, forgetting the rotten world, meditate on death. <i>l. 85.</i> Think, my +soul, that thou art on thy death-bed, and consider death a release. +<i>l. 157.</i> Think how the body poisoned the soul, tainting it with +original sin. Set free, thou art in Heaven in a moment. <i>l. 250.</i> Here +all our knowledge is ignorance. The new learning has thrown all in +doubt. We sweat to learn trifles. In Heaven we know all we need +to know. <i>l. 321.</i> Here, our converse is evil and corrupting. There +our converse will be with Mary; the Patriarchs; Apostles, Martyrs +and Virgins (compare <i>A Litany</i>). Here in the perpetual flux of +things is no essential joy. Essential joy is to see God. And even +the accidental joys of heaven surpass the essential joys of earth, were +there such joys here where all is casual:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Only in Heaven joys strength is never spent,</p> +<p>And accidental things are permanent.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>One of the most interesting strands of thought common to the +twin poems is the reflection on the disintegrating effect of the New +Learning. Copernicus' displacement of the earth, and the consequent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.189" id="pageii.189"></a>[pg 189]</span> +disturbance of the accepted mediaeval cosmology with its concentric +arrangement of elements and heavenly bodies, arrests and disturbs +Donne's imagination much as the later geology with its revelation of +vanished species and first suggestion of a doctrine of evolution +absorbed and perturbed Tennyson when he wrote <i>In Memoriam</i> and +throughout his life. No other poet of the seventeenth century +known to me shows the same sensitiveness to the consequences of the +new discoveries of traveller, astronomer, physiologist and physician +as Donne.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">To the Praise of the Dead.</span></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">231</span>, l. 43. <i>What high part thou bearest in those best +songs.</i> The +contraction of 'bearest' to 'bear'st' in the earliest editions (<i>1611-25</i>) +led to the insertion of 'of' after 'best' in the later ones (<i>1633-69</i>).</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">An Anatomie of the World.</span><a name="pageii.189a" id="pageii.189a"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">235</span>, ll. 133-6. Chambers alters the punctuation of these +lines in such a way as to connect them more closely:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So short is life, that every peasant strives,</p> +<p>In a torn house, or field, to have three lives;</p> +<p>And as in lasting, so in length is man,</p> +<p>Contracted to an inch, who was a span.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But the punctuation of <i>1633</i> is careful and correct. A new paragraph +begins with 'And as in lasting, so, &c.' From length of years +Donne passes to physical stature. The full stop is at 'lives', the +semicolon at 'span'. Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate +correctly.</p> + +<p>l. 144. <i>We'are scarce our Fathers shadowes cast at noone</i>: Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But now the sun is just above our head,</p> +<p class="i2">We doe those shadowes tread;</p> +<p>And to brave clearnesse all things are reduc'd.</p> +<p class="i26"><i>A Lecture upon the Shadowe.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">236</span>, l. 160. <i>And with new Physicke</i>: i.e. the new +mineral drugs of the Paracelsians.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">237</span>, l. 190. <i>Be more then man, or thou'rt lesse then an +Ant.</i> Compare <i>To M<sup>r</sup> Rowland Woodward</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.185">185</a>, ll. 16-18 and +note.</p> + +<p>l. 205. <i>The new Philosophy calls all in doubt, &c.</i> The philosophy +of Galileo and Copernicus has displaced the earth and discredited the +concentric arrangement of the elements,—earth, water, air, fire. +Norton quotes: 'The fire is an element most hot and dry, pure, +subtill, and so clear as it doth not hinder our sight looking through +the same towards the stars, and is placed next to the Spheare of the +Moon, under the which it is turned about like a celestial Spheare'. +<i>M. Blundeville His Exercises</i>, 1594.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.190" id="pageii.190"></a>[pg 190]</span></p> + +<p>When the world was formed from Chaos, then—</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Earth as the Lees, and heavie dross of All</p> +<p>(After his kinde) did to the bottom fall:</p> +<p>Contrariwise, the light and nimble Fire</p> +<p>Did through the crannies of th'old Heap aspire</p> +<p>Unto the top; and by his nature, light</p> +<p>No less than hot, mounted in sparks upright:</p> +<p>But, lest the Fire (which all the rest imbraces)</p> +<p>Being too near, should burn the Earth to ashes;</p> +<p>As Chosen Umpires, the great All-Creator</p> +<p>Between these Foes placed the Aire and Water:</p> +<p>For, one suffiz'd not their stern strife to end.</p> +<p>Water, as Cozen did the Earth befriend:</p> +<p>Aire for his Kinsman Fire, as firmly deals &c.</p> +<p class="i14">Du Bartas, <i>The second Day of the first Week</i></p> +<p class="i22">(trans. Joshua Sylvester).</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Burton, in the <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, Part 2, Sect. 2, Mem. 3, tells +how the new Astronomers Tycho, Rotman, Kepler, &c. by their +new doctrine of the heavens are 'exploding in the meantime that +element of fire, those fictitious, first watry movers, those heavens I +mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius +and many of the fathers affirm'. They have abolished, that is to say, +the fire which surrounded the air, as that air surrounded the water +and the earth (all below the moon); and they have also abolished the +Crystalline Sphere and the Primum Mobile which were supposed +to surround the sphere of the fixed stars, or the firmament.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">238</span>, l. 215. <i>Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things +forgot.</i> +Donne has probably in mind the effect of the religious wars in +Germany, France, the Low Countries, &c.</p> + +<p>l. 217. <i>that then can be.</i> This is the reading of all the editions +before <i>1669</i>, and there is no reason to change 'then' to 'there': +'Every man thinks he has come to be a Phoenix (preferring private +judgement to authority) and that then comparison ceases, for there +is nothing of the same kind with which to compare himself. There +is nothing left to reverence.'</p> + +<p style="margin-left: 11em; margin-bottom: -2.2em;"><span class="sc"> Page</span> <span class="bb">239</span>, l. 258.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i28"><i>It teares</i></p> +<p class="i2"><i>The Firmament in eight and forty sheires.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Norton says that in the catalogue of Hipparchus, preserved in the +Almagest of Ptolemy, the stars were divided into forty-eight +constellations.</p> + +<p>l. 260. <i>New starres.</i> Norton says: 'It was the apparition of a +new star in 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that turned +Tycho Brahe to astronomy: and a new bright star in Ophiuchus, in +1604, had excited general wonder, and afforded Galileo a text for an +attack on the Ptolemaic system'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.191" id="pageii.191"></a>[pg 191]</span></p> + +<p>At p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.247">247</a>, l. 70, Donne notes that the 'new starres' went out again.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">240</span>, l. 286. <i>a Tenarif, or higher hill.</i> 'Tenarif' is +the <i>1611</i> spelling, 'Tenarus' that of <i>1633-69</i>. Donne speaks of +'Tenarus' elsewhere, but it is not the same place.</p> + +<p>It is not probable that Donne ever saw the Peak of Teneriffe, +although biographers speak of this line as a descriptive touch drawn +from memory. The Canary Isles are below the 30th degree of +latitude. The fleet that made the Islands Exhibition was never +much if at all further south than 43 degrees. After coasting off +Corunna 43° N. 8° W., and some leagues south of that port, the fleet +struck straight across to the Azores, 37° N. 25° W. Donne was somewhat +nearer in the previous year when he was at Cadiz, 36° N. 6° W., +but too far off to descry the Peak. His description, though vivid, is +'metaphysical', like that of Hell which follows: 'The Pike of +Teneriff, how high is it? 79 miles or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9 as +Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes'. Burton, <i>Anatomy of +Melancholy</i>, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8">On the other side, Satan, alarm'd,</p> +<p>Collecting all his might, dilated stood,</p> +<p>Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremov'd.</p> +<p class="i20">Milton, <i>Par. Lost</i>, iv. 985-7.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 295 f. <i>If under all, a Vault infernall bee, &c.</i> Hell, according to +mediaeval philosophy, was in the middle of the earth. 'If this +be true,' says Donne, 'and if at the same time the Sea is in places +bottomless, then the earth is neither solid nor round. We use these +words only approximately. But you may hold, on the other hand, +that the deepest seas we know are but pock-holes, the highest hills but +warts, on the face of the solid earth. Well, even in that case you +must admit that in the moral sphere at any rate the world's proportion +is disfigured by the want of all proportioning of reward and punishment +to conduct.' The sudden transition from the physical to the moral +sphere is very disconcerting. Compare: 'Or is it the place of hell, as +Virgil in his Aeneides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically +describe it, and as many of our divines think. In good earnest, +Antony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian college in Millan, +in his great volume <i>de Inferno</i>, lib. i, cap. 47, is stiffe in this +tenent.... +Whatsoever philosophers write (saith Surius) there be certaine mouthes +of Hell, and places appointed for the punishment of mens souls, as at +Hecla in Island, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and +sometimes talk with the living. God would have such visible places, +that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such +punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God,' &c. Burton, +<i>Anat. of Melancholy</i>, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.</p> + +<p>ll. 296-8. <i>Which sure is spacious, &c.</i> 'Franciscus Ribera will have +hell a materiall and locall fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian +miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words <i>Exivit sanguis</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.192" id="pageii.192"></a>[pg 192]</span> +<i>de terra ... per stadia mille sexcenta, &c.</i> But Lessius (lib. 13, <i>de +moribus divinis</i>, cap. 24) will have this locall hell far less, one Dutch +mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone; because, as he +there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a +sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned +bodies (allowing each body six foot square); which will abundantly +suffice, '<i>cum certum sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies +mille milliones damnandorum</i>.' Burton, <i>Anat. of Melancholy</i>, <i>ut +sup.</i> +Eschatology was the 'dismal science' of those days and was studied +with astonishing gusto and acumen. 'For as one Author, who is +afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the Earth, lest then the +Earth might not be said to be solid, pronounces that Hell cannot +possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse, (and then one +of the torments of Hell will be the throng, for their bodies must +be there in their dimensions, as well as their soules) so when the +Schoole-men come to measure the house in heaven (as they will +measure it, and the Master, God, and all his Attributes, and tell +us how Allmighty, and how Infinite he is) they pronounce that every +soule in that house shall have more roome to it selfe, then all this +world is.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 73. 747. The reference in the margin is to +Munster.</p> + +<p>l. 311. <i>that Ancient, &c.</i> 'Many erroneous opinions are about the +essence and originall of it' (i.e. the rational soul), 'whether it be +fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates,' +&c. Burton, <i>Anat. of Melancholy</i>, Part i, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subsec. +9. Probably Donne has the same 'Ancient' in view. It is from +Cicero (<i>Tusc. Disp.</i> i. 10) that we learn that Aristoxenus held the soul +to be a harmony of the body. Though a Peripatetic, Aristoxenus +lived in close communion with the latest Pythagoreans, and the +doctrine is attributed to Pythagoras as a consequence of his theory +of numbers. Simmias, the disciple of the Pythagorean Philolaus, +maintains the doctrine in Plato's <i>Phaedo</i>, and Socrates criticizes it. +Aristotle states and examines it in the <i>De Anima</i>, 407b. 30. Two +classes of thinkers, Bouillet says (Plotinus, <i>Fourth Ennead</i>, <i>Seventh +Book</i>, note), regarded the soul as a harmony, doctors as Hippocrates +and Galen, who considered it a harmony of the four elements—the +hot, the cold, the dry and the moist (as the definition of health +Donne refers to this more than once, e.g. <i>The good-morrow</i>, l. 19, +and <i>The Second Anniversary</i>, ll. 130 f.); and musicians like Aristoxenus, +who compared the soul to the harmony of the lyre. Donne leaves the +sense in which he uses the word quite vague; but l. 321 suggests +the medical sense.</p> + +<p>l. 312. <i>at next.</i> This common Anglo-Saxon construction is very +rare in later English. The O.E.D. cites no instance later than +1449, Pecock's <i>Repression</i>. The instance cited there is prepositional +in character rather than adverbial: 'Immediatli at next to the now +bifore alleggid text of Peter this proces folewith.' Donne's use seems +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.193" id="pageii.193"></a>[pg 193]</span> +to correspond exactly to the Anglo-Saxon: 'Johannes ða ofhreow +þaēre mēden and ðaera licmanna drēorignysse, and āstrehte his +licaman tō eorðan on langsumum gebēde, and ða <i>aet nēxtan</i> +āras, and eft upahafenum handum langlice baed.' Aelfric (Sweet's <i>Anglo-Saxon +Reader</i>, 1894, p. 67). But 'at next' in the poem possibly +does not mean simply 'next', but 'immediately', i.e. 'the first thing +he said would have been ...'</p> + +<p>l. 314. <i>Resultances</i>: i.e. productions of, or emanations from, her. +'She is the harmony from which proceeds that harmony of our bodies +which is their soul.' Donne uses the word also in the sense of 'the +sum or gist of a thing': 'He speakes out of the strength and +resultance of many lawes and Canons there alleadged.' <i>Pseudo-martyr</i>, +p. 245; and Walton says that Donne 'left the resultance of +1400 Authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own +hand.' <i>Life</i> (1675), p. 60. He is probably using Donne's own title.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">241</span>, l. 318. <i>That th'Arke to mans proportions was made.</i> +The following quotation from St. Augustine will show that the plural +of <i>1611-12</i> is right, and what Donne had in view. St. Augustine is +speaking of the Ark as a type of the Church: 'Procul dubio figura +est peregrinantis in hoc seculo Civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae, quae +fit salva per lignum in quo pependit Mediator Dei et hominum, homo +Iesus Christus. (1 Tim. ii. 5.) Nam et mensurae ipsae longitudinis, +altitudinis, latitudinis eius, significant corpus humanum, in cuius veritate +ad homines praenuntiatus est venturus, et venit. Humani quippe +corporis longitudo a vertice usque ad vestigia sexies tantum habet, +quam latitudo, quae est ab uno latere ad alterum latus, et decies +tantum, quam altitudo, cuius altitudinis mensura est in latere a dorso +ad ventrem: velut si iacentem hominem metiaris supinum, seu pronum, +sexies tantum longus est a capite ad pedes, quam latus a +dextra in sinistram, vel a sinistra in dextram, et decies, quam altus +a terra. Unde facta est arca trecentorum in longitudine cubitorum, +et quinquaginta in latitudine, et triginta in altitudine.' <i>De Civitate +Dei</i>, <span class="sc">XV.</span> 26.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">242</span>, ll. 377-80. <i>Nor in ought more, &c.</i> 'The father' +is the Heavens, i.e. the various heavenly bodies moving in their spheres; +'the mother', the earth:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As the bright Sun shines through the smoothest Glasse</p> +<p>The turning Planets influence doth passe</p> +<p>Without impeachment through the glistering Tent</p> +<p>Of the tralucing (<i>French</i> diafane) Fiery Element,</p> +<p>The Aires triple Regions, the transparent Water;</p> +<p>But not the firm base of this faire Theater.</p> +<p>And therefore rightly may we call those Trines</p> +<p>(Fire, Aire and Water) but Heav'ns Concubines:</p> +<p>For, never Sun, nor Moon, nor Stars injoy</p> +<p>The love of these, but only by the way,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.194" id="pageii.194"></a>[pg 194]</span> +<p>As passing by: whereas incessantly</p> +<p>The lusty Heav'n with Earth doth company;</p> +<p>And with a fruitfull seed which lends All life,</p> +<p>With childes each moment, his own lawfull wife;</p> +<p>And with her lovely Babes, in form and nature</p> +<p>So divers, decks this beautiful Theater.</p> +<p class="i12">Sylvester, <i>Du Bartas, Second Day, First Week.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">243</span>, l. 389. <i>new wormes</i>: probably serpents, such as +were described in new books of travels.</p> + +<p>l. 394. <i>Imprisoned in an Hearbe, or Charme, or Tree.</i> Compare +<i>A Valediction: of my name, in the window</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.27">27</a>, ll. 33-6:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">As all the vertuous powers which are</p> +<p class="i2">Fix'd in the starres, are said to flow</p> +<p>Into such characters, as graved bee</p> +<p class="i6">When these starres have supremacie.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 409. <i>But as some Serpents poyson, &c.</i> Compare: 'But though +all knowledge be in those Authors already, yet, as some poisons, and +some medicines, hurt not, nor profit, except the creature in which +they reside, contribute their lively activitie and vigor; so, much of +the knowledge buried in Books perisheth, and becomes ineffectuall, +if it be not applied, and refreshed by a companion, or friend. Much +of their goodnesse hath the same period which some Physicians of +<i>Italy</i> have observed to be in the biting of their <i>Tarentola</i>, that +it affects no longer, then the flie lives.' <i>Letters</i>, p. 107.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">245</span>, l. 460. <i>As matter fit for Chronicle, not verse.</i> +Compare <i>The Canonization</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.15">15</a>, ll. 31-2:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove</p> +<p>We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song +in Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.</p> + +<p>l. 467. <i>Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c.</i> The bracket +of <i>1611</i> makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of <i>1633</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Such an opinion, in due measure, made.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus +comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me ... invade'. The +bracket shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion +(with all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing +to himself the same thoughts as God.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">A Funerall Elegie.</span><a name="pageii.194a" id="pageii.194a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>to confine her in a marble chest.</i> The 'Funerall Elegie' +was probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's +parents erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">246</span>, l. 41. <i>the Affrique Niger.</i> Grosart comments on +this: +'A peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken +of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.195" id="pageii.195"></a>[pg 195]</span> +Pliny (<i>N. H.</i> v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the second +time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris.' Probably +Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa +written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and +brought up in Barbarie ... Translated and collected by Iohn Porie, +late of Gonevill and Caius College in Cambridge, 1600.' Of the +Niger he says: 'This land of Negros hath a mighty river, which +taking his name of the region is called Niger: this river taketh his +originall from the east out of a certain desert called by the foresaide +Negros <i>Sen</i> ... Our Cosmographers affirme that the said river of +Niger is derived out of Nilus, which they imagine for some certaine +space to be swallowed up of the earth, and yet at last to burst forth +into such a lake as is before mentioned.' Pory is mentioned occasionally +in Donne's correspondence.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">247</span>, l. 50. <i>An Angell made a Throne, or Cherubin.</i> +See <i>Elegy XI</i>, ll. 77-8 and note. Donne, like Shakespeare, uses 'Cherubin' +as a singular. There can be no doubt that the lines in <i>Macbeth</i>, +<span class="sc">I.</span> vii. 21-3, should read:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And pity, like a naked new-born babe</p> +<p>Striding the blast, or heavens cherubins horsed</p> +<p>Upon the sightless couriers of the air, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is an echo of:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He rode upon the cherubins and did fly;</p> +<p>He came flying upon the wings of the wind. Psalm xviii. 10.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Cherubin' is a singular in Shakespeare, and 'cherubim' as +a plural he did not know.</p> + +<p>l. 73. <i>a Lampe of Balsamum</i>, i.e. burning balsam instead of +ordinary oil: 'And as <i>Constantine</i> ordained, that upon this day' +(Christmas Day), 'the Church should burne no Oyle, but Balsamum +in her Lamps, so let us ever celebrate this day, with a thankfull +acknowledgment, that Christ who is <i>unctus Domini</i>, The Anointed +of the Lord, hath anointed us with the Oyle of gladnesse above our +fellowes.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 7. 72.</p> + +<p>ll. 75-7. <i>Cloath'd in, &c.</i> Chambers's arrangement of these lines is +ingenious but, I think, mistaken because it alters the emphasis of the +sentences. The stress is not laid by Donne on her purity, but on +her early death: 'She expir'd while she was still a virgin. She went +away before she was a woman.' Line 76:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For marriage, though it doe not staine, doth dye.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is a sudden digression. Dryden filches these lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>All white, a Virgin-Saint, she sought the skies</p> +<p>For Marriage, tho' it sullies not, it dies.</p> +<p class="i16"><i>The Monument of a Faire Maiden Lady.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">248</span>, l. 83. <i>said History</i> is a strange phrase, but it +has the support of all the editions which can be said to have any authority.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.196" id="pageii.196"></a>[pg 196]</span></p> + +<p>l. 92. <i>and then inferre.</i> Compare: 'That this honour might be inferred +on some one of the blood and race of their ancient king.' Raleigh +(O.E.D.). Donne's sense of 'commit', 'entrust', is not far from +Raleigh's of 'confer', 'bestow', and both are natural extensions of +the common though now obsolete sense, 'bring on, occasion, cause':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Inferre faire Englands peace by this Alliance.</p> +<p class="i20">Shakespeare, <i>Rich. III</i>, <span class="sc">IV.</span> iv. 343.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 94. <i>thus much to die.</i> To die so far as this life is concerned.</p> + +<h2>OF THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.<a name="pageii.196a" id="pageii.196a"></a><br /> + +THE SECOND ANNIVERSARIE.</h2> + +<p style="margin-left: 8em; margin-bottom: -2.2em;"><span class="sc"> Page</span> <span class="bb">252</span>, l. 43.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14"><i>These Hymnes thy issue, may encrease so long,</i></p> +<p class="i14"><i>As till Gods great Venite change the song</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is the punctuation of the editions <i>1612</i> to <i>1633</i>. Grosart, +Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions, +<i>1635-69</i>, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes +object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so +long, &c.' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with +l. 44 as the older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which +are thy issue, may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase +'increase and multiply') 'so long as till, &c.' This suggests that +the Hymns themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening +in them virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater +music of God's <i>Venite</i>. The modern version is compatible with +the death of the hymns, but the survival of their issue.</p> + +<p>l. 48. <i>To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so.</i> Here again Grosart, +Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the +editions <i>1625-69</i> against the earlier ones, <i>1612</i> and <i>1621</i>. +These +have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12"> to be hydroptic so,</p> +<p>Forget this rotten world ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But surely the full stop after 'so' in <i>1612</i> is right, and 'to be +Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst +is the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing +bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health.'</p> + +<p>'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou +commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will +give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary +and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the +Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But for +the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his +leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee.' <i>Sermons, &c.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">253</span>, l. 72. <i>Because shee was the forme, that made it live</i>: +i.e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.197" id="pageii.197"></a>[pg 197]</span> +Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form, that +in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo +primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur ... +Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. +Et cum vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis +gradibus viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum +operum vitae, est anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et +sentimus, et movemur secundum locum, et similiter quo primo +intelligimus. Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive +dicatur intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et +haec est demonstratio Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24.' Aquinas +goes on to show that any other relation as of part to whole, or mover +to thing moved, is unthinkable, <i>Summa</i> I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth +Drury in like manner was the form of the world, that in virtue of +which it lived and functioned.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">254</span>, l. 92. <i>Division</i>: a series of notes forming one +melodic sequence:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18">and streightway she</p> +<p>Carves out her dainty voice as readily,</p> +<p>Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd Tones,</p> +<p>And reckons up in soft divisions</p> +<p><span class="right1a">Crashaw, <i>Musicks Duell</i>.</span>Quicke volumes of wild Notes.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 102. <i>Satans Sergeants</i>, i.e. bailiffs, watching to arrest for debt. +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i8"> as this fell Sergeant, Death,</p> +<p><span class="right1a">Shakespeare, <i>Hamlet</i>, <span class="sc">V.</span></span>Is strict in his arrest.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 120. <i>but a Saint Lucies night.</i> Compare p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.44">44</a>. 'Saint Lucies +night' is the longest in the year, yet it too passes, is only a night. +Death is a long sleep, yet a sleep from which we shall awaken. So +the Psalmist compares life to 'a watch in the night', which <i>seems</i> +so long and <i>is</i> so short.</p> + +<p>ll. 123-6. <i>Shee whose Complexion, &c.</i>: i.e. 'in whose temperaments +the humours were in such perfect equilibrium that no one +could overgrow the others and bring dissolution':</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>What ever dyes, was not mixt equally.</p> +<p class="i34"><i>The good-morrow.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And see the note to p. <a href="#pageii.144">182</a>, ll. 59-62.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.197a" id="pageii.197a"></a><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">255</span>, l. 127. <i>Mithridate</i>: a universal antidote or +preservative against poison and infectious diseases, made by the compounding +together of many ingredients. It was also known as 'Theriaca' and +'triacle': 'As it is truly and properly said, that there are more +ingredients, more simples, more means of restoring in our dram of +triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup, in +which there may be 3 or 4, in the other perchance, so many +hundred.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 20. 286-7. Vipers were added to the other +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.198" id="pageii.198"></a>[pg 198]</span> +ingredients by Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero, whence +the name 'theriaca' or 'triacle': 'Can an apothecary make a +sovereign triacle of Vipers and other poysons, and cannot God admit +offences and scandalls into his physick.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 17. 143. See +<i>To S<sup>r</sup> Henry Wotton</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.180a">180</a>, l. 18 and note.</p> + +<p>ll. 143-6. Compare p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.269">269</a>, ll. 71-6.</p> + +<p>l. 152. <i>Heaven was content, &c.</i> 'And from the days of John the +Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the +violent take it by force.' Matthew xi. 12.</p> + +<p>l. 158. <i>wast made but in a sinke.</i> Compare: 'Formatus est homo +... de spurcissimo spermate.' Pope Innocent, <i>De Contemptu +Mundi</i>; and</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>With Goddes owene finger wroght was he,</p> +<p>And nat begeten of mannes sperme unclene.</p> +<p class="i30">Chaucer, <i>Monkes Tale</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">256</span>, ll. 159-62. <i>Thinke that ... first of growth.</i> +According +to Aquinas, who follows Aristotle, the souls of growth, of sense, and +of intelligence are not in man distinct and (as Plato had suggested) +diversely located in the liver, heart, and brain, but are merged in one: +'Sic igitur anima intellectiva continet in sua virtute quidquid habet +anima sensitiva brutorum et nutritiva plantarum,' <i>Summa</i> I. lxxvi. 3. +He cites Aristotle, <i>De Anima</i>, ii. 30-1.</p> + +<p>l. 190. <i>Meteors.</i> See note to <i>The Storme</i>, l. 13. A meteor was +regarded as due to the effect of the air's cold region on exhalations +from the earth:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If th'Exhalation hot and oily prove,</p> +<p>And yet (as feeble) giveth place above</p> +<p>To th'Airy Regions ever-lasting Frost,</p> +<p>Incessantly th'apt-tinding fume is tost</p> +<p>Till it inflame: then like a Squib it falls,</p> +<p>Or fire-wing'd shaft, or sulphry Powder-Balls.</p> +<p>But if this kind of Exhalation tour</p> +<p>Above the walls of Winters icy bowr</p> +<p>'T-inflameth also; and anon becomes</p> +<p>A new strange Star, presaging wofull dooms.</p> +<p class="i4">Sylvester's <i>Du Bartas</i>. <i>Second Day of the First Weeke.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>i.e. a Meteor below the middle region, it becomes a Comet above.</p> + +<p>l. 189 to <span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">257</span>, l. 206. Donne summarizes in these lines the +old concentric arrangement of the Universe as we find it in Dante. +Leaving the elements of earth and water the soul passes through the +regions of the air (including the central one where snow and hail and +meteors are generated), and through the element of fire to the Moon, +thence to Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Firmament +of the fixed stars. He has already indicated (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.237">237</a>, ll. 205 f.) +how this arrangement is being disturbed by 'the New Philosophy'.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.199" id="pageii.199"></a>[pg 199]</span></p> + +<p>l. 192. <i>Whether th'ayres middle region be intense.</i> Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="right1a"><i>The Storme</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.175">175</a>, l. 14.</span>th'ayres middle marble roome.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">257</span>, ll. 219-20. <i>This must, my Soule, &c.</i> This is +the +punctuation of <i>1612-25</i>: <i>1633</i> and all the later editions change as +in the note. Chambers and Grolier follow suit. It is clearly a +corruption. The 'long-short Progresse' is the passage to heaven +which has been described. A new thought begins with 'T'advance +these thoughts'. Grosart puts a colon after (l. 219) 'bee', but as he +also places a semicolon after (l. 220) 'T'advance these thoughts' it is +not quite clear how he reads the lines. The mistake seems to have +arisen from forgetting that the 'she' whose progress has been described +is not Elizabeth Drury but the poet's own soul emancipated by death.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">258</span>, ll. 236-40. <i>The Tutelar Angels, &c.</i> 'And it is +as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate +to sense ... That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all +Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and +every civill coagulation of society one other; and every man one +other.' <i>Letters</i>, p. 43. Aquinas insists (<i>Summa</i> I. cxiii) on the +assignment of a guardian angel to every individual. He mentions +also, following St. Gregory, the guardian angel assigned to the +Kingdom of the Persians (Dan. x. 13).</p> + +<p>l. 242. <i>Her body was the Electrum.</i> 'The ancient Electrum', +Bacon says, 'had in it a fifth of silver to the Gold.' Her body, +then, is not pure gold, but an alloy in which are many degrees of +gold. In Paracelsus' works, Electrum is the middle substance +between ore and metal, neither wholly perfect nor altogether imperfect. +It is on the way to perfection. <i>The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings +of ... Paracelsus</i>, Arthur E. Waite, 1894. 'Christ is not that Spectrum +that <i>Damascene</i> speaks of, nor that Electrum that <i>Tertullian</i> +speakes +of ... a third metall made of two other metals.' Donne, <i>Sermons</i> +80. 40. 397.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">259</span>, l. 270. <i>breake.</i> Here—as at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.260">260</a>, l. 326, +'choose'—I have reverted to the spelling of <i>1612</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 292. <i>by sense, and Fantasie</i>: i.e. by sense and the phantasmata +which are conveyed by the senses to the intellect to work upon. +See Aristotle, <i>De Anima</i>, iii. and Aquinas, <i>Summa</i> I. lxxxv. i. +Angels obtain their knowledge of material things through immaterial, +i.e. through Ideas. Their knowledge is immediate, not as ours +mediate, by sense and ratiocination, 'collections'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">261</span>, l. 342. <i>Joy in not being that, which men have +said</i> +'Joy in not being "sine labe concepta", for then she would have had +no virtue in being good.' Norton. Her own goodness has gained +for her a higher exaltation than the adventitious honour of being the +Mother of God.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 343-4. <i>Where she is exalted more for being good,</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i> Then for her interest of Mother-hood.</i></p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.200" id="pageii.200"></a>[pg 200]</span></p> + +<p>'Scriptum est in Evangelio, quod mater et fratres Christi, hoc est +consanguinei carnis eius, cum illi nuntiati fuissent, et foris exspectarent, +quia non possent eum adire prae turba, ille respondit: <i>Quae est +mater mea, aut qui sunt fratres mei? Et extendens manum super +discipulos suos, ait: Hi sunt fratres mei; et quicumque fecerit voluntatem +Patris mei, ipse mihi frater, et mater, et soror est</i> (Matt. xii. 46-50). +Quid aliud nos docens, nisi carnali cognationi genus nostrum +spirituale praeponere; nec inde beatos esse homines, si iustis et sanctis +carnis propinquitate iunguntur, sed si eorum doctrinae ac moribus +obediendo atque imitando cohaerescunt? <i>Beatior ergo Maria percipiendo +fidem Christi, quam concipiendo carnem Christi.</i> Nam et +dicenti cuidam, <i>Beatus venter qui te portavit</i>; ipse respondit, <i>Imo +beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt</i>' (Luc. xi. 27, 28), +Augustini <i>De Sancta Virginitate</i>, I. 3. (Migne, 40. 397-8.) If a +Protestant in the previous two lines, Donne is here as sound a +Catholic as St. Augustine.</p> + +<p>l. 354. <i>joyntenants with the Holy Ghost.</i> 'We acknowledge the +Church to be the house <i>onely</i> of God, and that we admit no Saint, +no Martyr, to be a <i>Iointenant</i> with him.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 21. 86.</p> + +<p>l. 360. <i>royalties</i>: i.e. the prerogatives, rights, or privileges +pertaining to the sovereign. Donne here enumerates them as the power to +make war and conclude peace, uncontrolled authority ('the King can +do no wrong'), the administration of justice, the dispensing of pardon, +coining money, and the granting of protection against legal arrest.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">262</span>, l. 369. <i>impressions.</i> The plural of the first +edition must, I think, be accepted. Her stamp is set upon each of our +acts as the impression of the King's head on a coin: 'Ignoraunce +maketh him unmeete metall for the impressions of vertue.' Fleming, +<i>Panopl. Epist.</i> 372 (O.E.D.).</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Your love and pitty doth th'impression fill,</p> +<p>Which vulgar scandall stampt upon my brow.</p> +<p class="i26"> Shakespeare, <i>Sonnets</i> cxii.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 397-9. <i>So flowes her face, and thine eyes, neither now</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i> That Saint, nor Pilgrime, which your loving vow</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i> Concern'd, remaines ...</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I have kept the comma after 'eyes' of <i>1621</i> (<i>1612</i> seems to +have no stop) rather than change it with later and modern +editions to a semicolon, because I take it that the clauses are <i>not</i> +co-ordinate; the second is a subordinate clause of degree after 'so'. +'Her face and thine eyes so flow that now neither that Saint nor that +Pilgrim which your loving vow concern'd remains—neither you nor the +lady you adore remain the same.' The lady is the Saint, the lover +the Pilgrim, as in <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Rom.</i> If I profane with my unworthiest hand</p> +<p class="i6">This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.201" id="pageii.201"></a>[pg 201]</span> +<p class="i6">My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand</p> +<p class="i6">To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Jul.</i> Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,</p> +<p class="i6">Which mannerly devotion shows in this;</p> +<p class="i6">For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch,</p> +<p class="i6">And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Punctuated as the sentence is in modern editions 'so' must mean +'in like manner', referring back to the statement about the river.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">263</span>, l. 421. <i>this Center</i>, is the reading of the +first edition and is doubtless correct, the 't' having been dropped accidentally +in <i>1621</i> and so in all subsequent editions. 'This Center' is 'this +Earth.' The Earth could neither support such a tower nor provide +material with which to build it. Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The Heavens themselves, the Planets, and this Center,</p> +<p>Observe degree, priority, and place.</p> +<p class="i16"> Shakespeare, <i>Troil. and Cress.</i> <span class="sc">I.</span> iii. 85.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n</p> +<p>As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.</p> +<p class="i30">Milton, <i>Par. Lost</i>, i. 74.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">264</span>, l. 442. <i>For it is both the object and the wit.</i> +God, the Idea of Good, is the source of both being and knowing—the ultimate +object of knowledge and the source of the knowledge by which +Himself is known.</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 445-6. <i>'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;</i></p> +<p class="i8"><i>Had th' Angels once look'd on him they had stood.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>After discussion Aquinas concludes (I. lxiii. 5) that the devil was +not evil through fault of his own will in the first instant of his creation, +because this would make God the cause of evil: 'Illa operatio quae +simul incipit cum esse rei est ei ab agente a quo habet esse ... +Agens autem quod Angelos in esse produxit, scilicet Deus, non +potest esse causa peccati.' He then considers whether there was +any delay between his creation and his fall, and concludes that the +most probable conclusion and most consonant with the words of the +Saints is that there was none, otherwise by his first good act he +would have acquired the merit whose reward is the happiness which +comes from the sight of God and is enduring: 'Si diabolus in primo +instanti, in gratiâ creatus, meruit, statim post primum instans +<i>beatitudinem</i> +accepisset, nisi statim impedimentum praestitisset peccando.' +This 'beatitudo' is the sight of God: 'Angeli beati sunt per hoc +quod Verbum vident.' And endurance is of the essence of this +blessedness: 'Sed contra de ratione beatitudinis est stabilitas, sive +confirmatio in bono.' Thus, as Donne says, 'Had th' Angells,' &c. +<i>Summa</i> lxii. 1, 5; lxiii. 6.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">265</span>, l. 479. <i>Apostem</i>: i.e. Imposthume, deep-seated +abscess.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.202" id="pageii.202"></a>[pg 202]</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">266</span>, l. 509. <i>Long'd for, and longing for it, &c.</i> So +Dante of Beatrice:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Angelo chiama in divino intelletto,</p> +<p>E dice: 'Sire, nel mondo si vede</p> +<p>Meraviglia nell' atto, che procede</p> +<p>Da un' anima, che fin quassù risplende.</p> +<p>Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto</p> +<p>Che d'aver lei, al suo Signor la chiede,</p> +<p>E ciascun santo ne grida mercede.'</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>An Angel, of his blessed knowledge, saith</p> +<p>To God: 'Lord, in the world that Thou hast made,</p> +<p>A miracle in action is display'd</p> +<p>By reason of a soul whose splendors fare</p> +<p>Even hither: and since Heaven requireth</p> +<p>Nought saving her, for her it prayeth Thee,</p> +<p>Thy Saints crying aloud continually.'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and again:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Madonna è desiata in l'alto cielo.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>My lady is desired in the high Heaven.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Donne, one thinks, must have read the <i>Vita Nuova</i> as well as the +<i>Divina Commedia</i>. It is possible that in the eulogy of Elizabeth +Drury he is following its transcendental manner without fully +appreciating the transfiguration through which Beatrice passed in +Dante's mind.</p> + +<p>ll. 511-18. <i>Here in a place, &c.</i> These lines show that <i>The +Second Anniversary</i> was written while Donne was in France with +Sir Robert and Lady Drury. Compare <i>A Letter to the Lady +Carey, &c.</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.221a">221</a>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Here where by All All Saints invoked are, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h2>EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES, &c.,<a name="pageii.202a" id="pageii.202a"></a></h2> + +<p>Of all Donne's poems these are the most easy to date, at least +approximately. The following are the dates of the deaths which +called forth the poems, arranged in chronological order:</p> + +<table summary="chronological order of death" border="0"> +<tr> + <td>Lady Markham (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.279a">279</a>), May 4, 1609.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td>Mris Boulstred (pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.282">282</a>, <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.284a">284</a>), Aug. 4, 1609.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td>Prince Henry (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.267a">267</a>), Nov. 6, 1612.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td>Lord Harington (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.271">271</a>), Feb. 27, 1614.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td>Marquis Hamilton (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.288">288</a>), March 22, 1625.</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p>Those about whose date and subject there is uncertainty are that +entitled in 1635 <i>Elegie on the L. C.</i> and that headed <i>Death</i>. If +with Chambers and Norton we assume that the former poem is an Elegy on +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.203" id="pageii.203"></a>[pg 203]</span> +the death of the Lord Chancellor, Baron Ellesmere, it will have been +written in 1617. The conjecture is a natural one and may be correct, +but there are difficulties, (1) This title is affixed to <i>Elegie</i> in +<i>1635</i> for the first time. The poem bears no such heading in <i>1633</i> or in +any MS. in which I have found it. Probably 'L. C.' stands for +Lord Chancellor (though this is not certain); but on what authority +was the poem given this reference? (2) The position which it +occupies in <i>1633</i> is due to its position in the MS. from which it was +printed. Now in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and in <i>W</i>, it is +included among the <i>Elegies</i>, i.e. Love Elegies. But in the last of these, <i>W</i>, it +appears with a collection of poems (Satyres, Elegies, the Lincoln's Inn +Epithalamium, and a series of letters to Donne's early friends) which +has the appearance of being, or being derived from, an early collection, +a collection of poems written between 1597 and 1608 to 1610 at the +latest. (3) The poem is contained, but again without any title, in +<i>HN</i>, the Hawthornden MS. in Edinburgh. Now we know that +Drummond was in London in 1610, and there is no poem, of those +which he transcribed from a collection of Donne's, that is demonstrably +later than 1609, though the two <i>Obsequies</i>, 'Death, I recant' +and 'Language, thou art too narrowe and too weak', must have +been written in that year. Drummond <i>may</i> have been in London +at some time between 1625 and 1630, during which years his movements +are undetermined (David Masson: <i>Drummond of Hawthornden</i>, +ch. viii), but if he had made a collection of Donne's poems at +this later date it would have been more complete, and would certainly +have contained some of the religious poems. At a later date he +seems to have been given a copy of the <i>Hymn to the Saints and to +Marquesse Hamylton</i>, for a MS. of this poem is catalogued among the +books presented to the Edinburgh University Library by Drummond. +Unfortunately it has disappeared or was never actually handed over. +Most probably, Drummond's small collection of poems by Donne, +Pembroke, Roe, Hoskins, Rudyerd, and other 'wits' of King James's +reign, now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, was made in +1610.</p> + +<p>All this points to the <i>Elegie</i> in question being older than 1617. It +is very unlikely that a poem on the death of his great early patron +would have been allowed by him to circulate without anything +to indicate in whose honour it was written. Egerton was as great +a man as Lord Harington or Marquis Hamilton, and if hope of +reward from the living was the efficient cause of these poems quite +as much as sorrow for the dead, Lord Ellesmere too left distinguished +and wealthy successors. Yet the MS. of Donne's poems +which belonged to the first Earl of Bridgewater contains this poem +without any indication to whom it was addressed.</p> + +<p>In 1610 Donne sent to the Lord Chancellor a copy of his <i>Pseudo-Martyr</i>, +and the following hitherto unpublished letter shows in what +high esteem he held him:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.204" id="pageii.204"></a>[pg 204]</span></p> + +<p>'As Ryvers though in there Course they are content to serve publique +uses, yett there end is to returne into the Sea from whence they issued. +So, though I should have much Comfort that thys Booke might give +contentment to others, yet my Direct end in ytt was, to make it a +testimony of my gratitude towards your Lordship and an acknowledgement +that those poore sparks of Vnderstandinge or Judgement +which are in mee were derived and kindled from you and owe themselves +to you. All good that ys in ytt, your Lordship may be pleased +to accept as yours; and for the Errors I cannot despayre of your +pardon since you have long since pardond greater faults in mee.'</p> + +<p>If Donne had written an <i>Elegie</i> on the death of Lord Ellesmere it +would have been as formally dedicated to his memory as his Elegies to +Lord Harington and Lord Hamilton. But by 1617 he was in orders. +His Muse had in the long poem on Lord Harington, brother to the +Countess of Bedford, 'spoke, and spoke her last'. It was only at the +express instance of Sir Robert Carr that he composed in 1625 his +lines on the death of the Marquis of Hamilton, and he entitled it not +an Elegy but <i>A Hymn to the Saints and to Marquesse Hamylton</i>.</p> + +<p>It seems to me probable that the <i>Elegie</i>, 'Sorrow, who to this house', +was an early and tentative experiment in this kind of poetry, on the +death of some one, we cannot now say whom, perhaps the father of the +Woodwards or some other of his earlier correspondents and friends.</p> + +<p>The <i>Elegie</i> headed <i>Death</i> is also printed in a somewhat puzzling +fashion. In <i>1633</i> it follows the lyrics abruptly with the bald title +<i>Elegie</i>. It is not in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, nor was it in the +MS. resembling this which <i>1633</i> used for the bulk of the poems. In <i>HN</i> +also it bears no title indicating the subject of the poem. The other +MSS. all describe it as an <i>Elegie upon the death of M<sup>ris</sup> Boulstred</i>, +and from <i>1633</i> and several MSS. it appears that it was sent to the +Countess of Bedford with the verse <i>Letter</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.227">227</a>), 'You that are +shee and you, that's double shee'. It is possible that the MSS. are +in error and that the dead friend is not Miss Bulstrode but Lady +Markham, for the closing line of the letter compares her to Judith:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Yet but of <i>Judith</i> no such book as she.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But Judith was, like Lady Markham, a widow. The tone of the poem +too supports this conclusion. The Elegy on Miss Bulstrode lays stress +on her youth, her premature death. In this and the other Elegy (whose +title assigns it to Lady Markham) the stress is laid on the saintliness +and asceticism of life becoming a widow.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> <b>267</b>. <span class="sc">Elegie upon ... Prince Henry.</span><a name="pageii.204a" id="pageii.204a"></a></h3> + +<p>The death of Prince Henry (1594-1612) evoked more elegiac +poetry Latin and English than the death of any single man has +probably ever done. See Nichols's <i>Progresses of James I</i>, pp. 504-12. +He was the hope of that party, the great majority of the nation, +which would fain have taken a more active part in the defence of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.205" id="pageii.205"></a>[pg 205]</span> +Protestant cause in Europe than James was willing to venture upon. +Donne's own <i>Elegie</i> appeared in a collection edited by Sylvester: +'<i>Lachrymae Lachrymarum, or The Spirit of Teares distilled from the +untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince Panaretus</i>. By Joshua +Sylvester. The Third Edition, with Additions of His Owne and Elegies. +1613. Printed by Humphrey Lownes.' Sylvester's own poem is +followed by poems in Latin, Italian, and English by Joseph Hall and +others, and then by a separate title-page: <i>Sundry Funerall Elegies +... Composed by severall Authors</i>. The authors are G. G. (probably +George Gerrard), Sir P. O., Mr. Holland, Mr. Donne, Sir William +Cornwallis, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyere, and Henry +Burton. Jonson told Drummond 'That Done said to him, he wrott +that Epitaph on Prince Henry <i>Look to me, Faith</i> to match Sir Ed: +Herbert in obscurenesse' (Drummond's <i>Conversations</i>, ed. Laing). +Donne's elegy was printed with some carelessness in the <i>Lachrymae +Lachrymarum</i>. The editor of <i>1633</i> has improved the punctuation in +places.</p> + +<p>The obscurity of the poem is not so obvious as its tasteless +extravagance: 'The death of Prince Henry has shaken in me both +Faith and Reason, concentric circles or nearly so (l. 18), for Faith +does not contradict Reason but transcend it.' See <i>Sermons</i> 50. 36. +'Our Faith is shaken because, contemplating his greatnesse and its +influence on other nations, we believed that with him was to begin +the age of peace:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas,</p> +<p>Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But by his death this faith becomes heresy. Reason is shaken +because reason passes from cause to effect. Miracle interrupts this +progress, and the loss of him is such a miracle as brings all our +argument to a standstill. We can predict nothing with confidence.' +In his over-subtle, extravagant way Donne describes the shattering of +men's hopes and expectations.</p> + +<p>At the end he turns to her whom the Prince loved,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The she-Intelligence which mov'd this sphere.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Could he but tell who she was he would be as blissful in singing her +praises as they were in one another's love.</p> + +<p>A short epitaph on Prince Henry by Henry King (1592-1669), the +friend and disciple of Donne, bears marks of being inspired by this +poem. It is indeed ascribed to 'J. D.' in <i>Le Prince d'Amour</i> +(1660), but is contained in King's <i>Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and +Sonnets</i> (1657).</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">269</span>, ll. 71-6. These lines are printed as follows in the +<i>Lachrymae Lachrymarum</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If faith have such a chaine, whose diverse links</p> +<p>Industrious man discerneth, as hee thinks</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.206" id="pageii.206"></a>[pg 206]</span></p> +<p>When Miracle doth joine; and to steal-in</p> +<p>A new link Man knowes not where to begin:</p> +<p>At a much deader fault must reason bee,</p> +<p>Death having broke-off such a linke as hee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But compare <i>The Second Anniversary</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.255">255</a>, ll. 143-6.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 271. <span class="sc">Obsequies to the Lord Harrington</span>, &c.</h3> + +<p>The MS. from which <i>1633</i> printed this poem probably had the +title as above. It stands so in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. By a pure +accident it was changed to <i>Obsequies to the Lord Harringtons brother. To the +Countesse of Bedford.</i> There was no Lord Harington after the death +of the subject of this poem.</p> + +<p>John Harington, the first Baron of Exton and cousin of Sir John +Harington the translator of the <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, died at Worms in +1613, when returning from escorting the Princess Elizabeth to her new +home at Heidelberg. His children were John, who succeeded him +as Second Baron of Exton, and Lucy, who had become Countess of +Bedford in 1594. The young Baron had been an intimate friend of +Prince Henry. In 1609 he visited Venice and was presented to the +Doge as likely to be a power in England when Henry should succeed. +'He is learned', said Wotton, 'in philosophy, has Latin and Greek to +perfection, is handsome, well-made as any man could be, at least +among us.' His fate was as sudden and tragic as that of his patron. +Travelling in France and Italy in 1613 he grew ill, it was believed he +had been poisoned by accident or design, and died at his sister's house +at Twickenham on the 27th of February, 1614.</p> + +<p>There is not much in Donne's ingenious, tasteless poem which +evinces affection for Harington or sorrow for his tragic end, nor is +there anything of the magnificent poetry, 'ringing and echoing with +music,' which in <i>Lycidas</i> makes us forgetful of the personality of King. +Donne's poem was written to please Lady Bedford:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And they who write to Lords rewards to get,</p> +<p>Are they not like singers at dores for meat?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Apparently it served its purpose, for in a letter written a year or two +later Donne says to Goodyere: 'I am almost sorry, that an Elegy +should have been able to move her to so much compassion heretofore, +as to offer to pay my debts; and my greater wants now, and for so +good a purpose, as to come disingaged into that profession, being +plainly laid open to her, should work no farther but that she sent me +£30,' &c. <i>Letters, &c.</i>, p. 219.</p> + +<p>Of Harington, Wiffen, in his <i>Historical Memoirs of the House of +Russell</i>, says: 'Whilst he devoted much of his time to literary study he +is reported to have uniformly begun and closed the day with prayer +... and to have been among the first who kept a diary wherein his +casual faults and errors were recorded, for his surer advancement in +happiness and virtue.' Wiffen's authority is probably <i>The Churches</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.207" id="pageii.207"></a>[pg 207]</span> +<i>Lamentation for the losse of the Godly Delivered in a Sermon at the +funerals of that truly noble, and most hopefull young Gentleman Iohn +Lord Harington, Baron of Exton, Knight of the noble order of the +Bath etc. by R. Stock</i>. 1614. To this verses Latin and English by I. P., +F. H. D. M., and Sir Thomas Roe are appended. The preacher +gives details of Harington's religious life. The D. N. B. speaks of +two memorial sermons. This is a mistake.</p> + +<p>l. 15. <i>Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest;</i> Chambers by +placing a semicolon after 'midnight' makes 'now all rest' an independent, +rhetorical statement:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The Grolier Club editor varies it:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Thou seest me here at midnight now, all rest;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But surely as punctuated in the old editions the line means 'at +midnight, now when all rest', 'the time when all rest'. 'I watch, +while others sleep.'</p> + +<p>Donne's description of his midnight watch recalls that of Herr +Teufelsdroeckh: 'Gay mansions, with supper rooms and dancing +rooms are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts, but in the +Condemned Cells the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and +bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness which is around and +within, for the light of a stern last morning,' &c. <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, +i. 3.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">272</span>, l. 38. <i>Things, in proportion fit, by +perspective.</i> It is by an +accident, I imagine, that <i>1633</i> drops the comma after 'fit', and I have +restored it. The later punctuation, which Chambers adopts, is +puzzling if not misleading:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Things, in proportion, fit by perspective.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is with 'proportion' that 'fit' goes. Deeds of good men show +us by perspective things in a proportion fitted to our comprehension. +They bring the goodness or essence of things, which is seen aright +only in God, down to our level. The divine is most clearly revealed +to <i>us</i> in the human.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">274</span>, l. 102. <i>Sent hither, this worlds tempests to +becalme.</i> I have adopted the reading to which the MSS. point in preference +to that of the editions. Both the chief groups read 'tempests', and +'this' (for 'the') has still more general support. Now if the 's' in +'tempests' were once dropped, 'this' would be changed to 'the', the +emphasis shifting from 'this' to 'world'. I think the sense is better. +If but one tempest is contemplated, then either so many 'lumps of +balm' are not needed, or they fail sadly in their mission. They +come rather to allay the storms with which human life is ever and +again tormented. Moreover, in Donne's cosmology 'this world' is +frequently contrasted with other and better worlds. Compare <i>An +Anatomie of the World</i>, pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.255">225</a> et seq.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.208" id="pageii.208"></a>[pg 208]</span></p> + +<p>l. 110. <i>Which the whole world, or man the abridgment hath.</i> The +comma after 'man' in <i>1633</i> gives emphasis. The absence of a comma, +however, after 'abridgment' gives a reader to-day the impression that +it is object to 'hath'. I have, therefore, with <i>1635-69</i>, dropped the +comma after 'man'. The omission of commas in appositional phrases +is frequent. 'Man the abridgment' means of course 'Man the +microcosm': 'the Macrocosme and Microcosme, the Great and the +Lesser World, man extended in the world, and the world contracted +and abridged into man.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 31. 304.</p> + +<p>ll. 111-30. <i>Thou knowst, &c.</i> The circles running parallel to +the equator are all equally circular, but diminish in size as they +approach the poles. But the circles which cut these at right angles, +and along which we measure the distance of any spot from the +equator, from the sun, are all of equal magnitude, passing round the +earth through the poles, i.e. meridians are great circles, their planes +passing through the centre of the earth.</p> + +<p>Harington's life would have been a Great Circle had it completed +its course, passing through the poles of youth and age. In that case +we should have had from him lessons for every phase of life, +medicines to cure every moral malady.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Crosse</i> Donne writes:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>All the Globes frame and spheares, is nothing else</p> +<p>But the Meridians crossing Parallels.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And in the <i>Anatomie of the World</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.239">239</a>, ll. 278-80:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>For of Meridians, and Parallels,</p> +<p>Man hath weav'd out a net, and this net throwne</p> +<p>Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">275</span>, l. 133. <i>Whose hand, &c.</i> The singular is the +reading of all the MSS., and is pretty certainly right. The minute and +second hands were comparatively rare at the beginning of the seventeenth +century. See the illustrations in F. J. Britten's <i>Old Clocks +and Watches and their Makers, &c.</i> (1904); and compare: 'But yet, +as he that makes a Clock, bestowes all that labour upon the severall +wheeles, that thereby the Bell might give a sound, and that thereby +the hand might give knowledge to others how the time passes,' &c. +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 55. 550.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">276</span>, l. 154. <i>And great Sun-dyall to have set us All.</i> +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>The lives of princes should like dyals move,</p> +<p>Whose regular example is so strong,</p> +<p>They make the times by them go right or wrong.</p> +<p class="i26">Webster, <i>White Devil</i>, <span class="sc">I.</span> ii. 313.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">279</span>, l. 250. <i>French soldurii.</i> The reading of the +editions is a misprint. The correct form is given in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, and +is used by Donne elsewhere: 'And we may well collect that in Caesars time, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.209" id="pageii.209"></a>[pg 209]</span> +in France, for one who dyed naturally, there dyed many by this +devout violence. For hee says there were some, whom hee calls +<i>Devotos</i>, and <i>Clientes</i> (the latter Lawes call them +<i>Soldurios</i>) which enjoying many benefits, and commodities, from men of higher ranke, +alwaies when the Lord dyed, celebrated his Funerall with their owne. +And Caesar adds, that in the memorie of man, no one was found +that ever refused it.' <i>Biathanatos</i>, Part I, Dist. 2, Sect. 3. The +marginal note calls them 'Soldurii', and refers to Caes., <i>Bell. Gall.</i> +3, and <i>Tholosa. Sym.</i> lib. 14, cap. 10, N. 14.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 279. <span class="sc">Elegie on the Lady Marckham.</span></h3> + +<p>The wife of Sir Anthony Markham, of Sedgebrook in the county of +Notts. She was the daughter of Sir James Harington, younger +brother of John, first Baron Harington of Exton. See note to last +poem. She was thus first cousin to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and +died at her home at Twickenham on May 4, 1609. On her tombstone +it is recorded that she was 'inclytae Luciae Comitissae de +Bedford sanguine (quod satis) sed et amicitia propinquissima'. It is +probably to this friendship of a great patroness of poets that she +owes this and other tributes of verse. Francis Beaumont wrote one +which is found in several MS. collections of Donne's poems, +sometimes with his, sometimes with Beaumont's initials. In it he +frankly confesses that he never knew Lady Markham. I quote a +few lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As unthrifts grieve in strawe for their pawnd Beds,</p> +<p>As women weepe for their lost Maidenheads</p> +<p>(When both are without hope of Remedie)</p> +<p>Such an untimelie Griefe, have I for thee.</p> +<p>I never sawe thy face; nor did my hart</p> +<p>Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert,</p> +<p>But being lifted hence, that which to thee</p> +<p>Was Deaths sad dart, prov'd Cupids shafte to me.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The taste of Beaumont's poem is execrable. Elegies like this, and +I fear Donne's among them, were frankly addressed not so much to +the memory of the dead as to the pocket of the living.</p> + +<p>According to two MSS.(<i>RP31</i> and <i>H40</i>) the <i>Elegie</i>, 'Death be +not proud', was written by Lady Bedford herself on the death of her +cousin. It is much simpler and sincerer in tone than Donne's or +Beaumont's, but the tenor of the thought seems to connect it with +the <i>Elegie on M<sup>ris</sup> Boulstred</i>, 'Death I recant'. The same MSS. +contain the following <i>Epitaph uppon the Ladye Markham</i>, which +shows that she was a widow when she died:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>A Mayde, a Wyfe shee liv'd, a Widdowe dy'd:</p> +<p>Her vertue, through all womans state was varyed.</p> +<p>The widdowes Bodye which this vayle doth hide</p> +<p>Keepes in, expecting to bee justlie [highly <i>H40</i>] marryed,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.210" id="pageii.210"></a>[pg 210]</span> +<p>When that great Bridegroome from the cloudes shall call</p> +<p>And ioyne, earth to his owne, himself to all.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 7. <i>Then our land waters, &c.</i> 'That hand which was wont <i>to +wipe all teares from all our eyes</i>, doth now but presse and squeaze us +as so many spunges, filled one with one, another with another cause of +teares. Teares that can have no other banke to bound them, but the +declared and manifested <i>will of God</i>: For, till our teares flow to that +heighth, that they might be called a <i>murmuring</i> against the declared +will of God, it is against our Allegiance, it is <i>Disloyaltie</i>, to give our +teares any stop, any termination, any measure.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 33. 303: +<i>On the Death of King James</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">280</span>, l. 11. <i>And even these teares, &c.</i>: i.e. the</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Teares which our Soule doth for her sins let fall,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>which are the waters <i>above</i> our firmament as opposed to the <i>land</i> or +<i>earthly</i> waters which are the tears of passion. The 'these' of the +MSS. seems necessary for clearness of references: 'For, <i>Lacrymae +sunt sudor animae maerentis</i>, Teares are the sweat of a labouring +soule, ... Raine water is better then River water; The water of +Heaven, teares for offending thy God, are better then teares for +worldly losses; But yet come to teares of any kinde, and whatsoever +occasion thy teares, <i>Deus absterget omnem lacrymam</i>, there is the +largeness of his bounty, <i>He will wipe all teares from thine eyes</i>; But +thou must have teares first: first thou must come to this weeping, or +else God cannot come to this wiping; God hath not that errand to +thee, to wipe teares from thine eyes, if there be none there; If thou +doe nothing for thy selfe, God finds nothing to doe for thee.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 54. 539-40.</p> + +<p>The waters above the firmament were a subject of considerable difficulty +to mediaeval philosophy—so difficult indeed that St. Augustine +has to strengthen himself against sceptical objections by reaffirming +the authority of Scripture: <i>Maior est Scripturae huius auctoritas quam +omnis humani ingenii capacitas. Unde quoquo modo et qualeslibet +aquae ibi sint, eas tamen ibi esse, minime dubitamus.</i> Aquinas, who +quotes these words from Augustine, comes to two main conclusions, +himself leaning to the last. If by the firmament be meant either the +firmament of fixed stars, or the ninth sphere, the <i>primum mobile</i>, then, +since heavenly bodies are not made of the elements of which earthly +things are made (being incorruptible, and unchangeable except in position), +the waters above the firmament are not of the same <i>kind</i> as those +on earth (<i>non sunt eiusdem speciei cum inferioribus</i>). If, however, by the +firmament be meant only the upper part of the air where clouds are +condensed, called firmament because of the thickness of the air in +that part, then the waters above the firmament are simply the +vaporized waters of which rain is formed (<i>aquae quae vaporabiliter +resolutae supra aliquam partem aeris elevantur, ex quibus pluviae</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.211" id="pageii.211"></a>[pg 211]</span> +<i>generantur</i>). <i>Above</i> the firmament waters are generated, <i>below</i> they +rest. <i>Summa</i> <span class="sc">I.</span> 68.</p> + +<p>If I follow him, Donne to some extent blends or confounds these +views. Tears shed for our sins differ in <i>kind</i> from tears shed for +worldly losses, as the waters above from those below. But the +extract from the sermon identifies the waters above the firmament +with rain-water. 'Rain water is better than River-water.' It is +purer; but it does <i>not</i> differ from it in kind.</p> + +<p>l. 12. <i>Wee, after Gods Noe, drowne our world againe.</i> I think +the 'our' of the majority of the MSS. must be correct. From the +spelling and punctuation both, it is clear that the source from which +<i>1633</i> printed closely resembled <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>, which +read 'our'. The change to 'the' was made in the spirit which prompted the grosser +error of certain MSS. which read 'Noah'. Donne has in view the +'microcosm' rather than the 'macrocosm'. There is, of course, an +allusion to the Flood and the promise, but the immediate reference is +to Christ and the soul. 'After Christ's work of redemption and his +resurrection, which forbid despair, we yet yield to the passion of +sorrow.' We drown not <i>the</i> world but <i>our</i> world, the world within +us, or which each one of us is. This sense is brought out more +clearly in <i>Cy</i>'s version, which is a paraphrase rather than a version:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Wee after Gods mercy drowne our Soules againe.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Porcelane, where they buried Clay.</i> 'We are not thoroughly +resolved concerning <i>Porcelane</i> or <i>China</i> dishes, that according to +common belief they are made of Earth, which lieth in preparation +about an hundred years under ground; for the relations thereof are +not only divers, but contrary, and Authors agree not herein.' Browne, +<i>Vulgar Errors</i>, ii. 5. Browne quotes some of the older opinions and +then points out that a true account of the manufacture of porcelain +had been furnished by Gonzales de Mendoza, Linschoten, and +Alvarez the Jesuit, and that it was confirmed by the Dutch Embassy +of 1665. The old physical theories were retained for literary purposes +long after they had been exploded.</p> + +<p>l. 29. <i>They say, the sea, when it gaines, loseth too.</i> 'But we passe +from the circumstance of the time, to a second, that though Christ +thus despised by the <i>Gergesens</i>, did, in his Justice, depart from them; +yet, as the sea gaines in one place, what it loses in another, his +abundant mercy builds up more in <i>Capernaum</i>, then his Justice +throwes downe among the <i>Gergesens</i>: Because they drave him away, +in Judgement he went from them, but in Mercy he went to the +others, who had not intreated him to come.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 11. 103.</p> + +<p>'They flatly say that he eateth into others dominions, as the sea +doth into the land, not knowing that in swallowing a poore Iland as +big as Lesbos he may cast up three territories thrice as big as Phrygia: +for what the sea winneth in the marshe, it looseth in the sand.' +Lyly, <i>Midas</i> v. 2. 17.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.212" id="pageii.212"></a>[pg 212]</span></p> + +<p>Compare also Burton's <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, Part 2, Sect 2, +Mem. 3.</p> + +<p>Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in <i>An Essay on +Criticism</i>, ll. 54-9:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>As on the land while here the ocean gains,</p> +<p>In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;</p> +<p>Thus in the soul while memory prevails,</p> +<p>The solid power of understanding fails;</p> +<p>Where beams of warm imagination play,</p> +<p>The memory's soft figures melt away.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 34. <i>For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust.</i> The +modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes +this line clearer—'both Deaths' dust.' 'Graves are our trophies, their +dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger death, +i.e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought in its +train.' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same thing, +but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">281</span>, ll. 57-8.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> <i>this forward heresie</i>,</p> +<p><i>That women can no parts of friendship bee.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay +le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymée de moy beaucoup plus que +paternellement, et enveloppée en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une +des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle +au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque +jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection +de <i>cette tressaincte amitié ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait pu +monter encores</i>: la sincerité et la solidité de ses moeurs y sont desja +bastantes.' <i>Essais</i> (1590), ii. 17.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 282. <span class="sc">Elegie on M</span><sup>ris</sup> <span class="sc">Boulstred</span>.<a name="pageii.212a" id="pageii.212a"></a></h3> + +<p>Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley +Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12, +158¾, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at +Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James +Whitelocke's <i>Liber Famelicus</i> (Camden Society). He quotes also from +the Twickenham Registers: 'M<sup>ris</sup> Boulstred out of the parke, was +buried ye 6th of August, 1609.' In a letter to Goodyere Donne +speaks of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that +Mistresse Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours +at this time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, +and the return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by +the strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her +fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her pulse, +and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all her +sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.213" id="pageii.213"></a>[pg 213]</span> +justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you +receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.' +Poor Miss Bulstrode, whose</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i24"> voice was</p> +<p>Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>has not lived to fame in an altogether happy fashion, as the subject of +some tortured and tasteless <i>Epicedes</i>, a coarse and brutal Epigram by +Jonson (<i>An Epigram on the Court Pucell</i> in <i>Underwoods</i>,—Jonson told +Drummond that the person intended was Mris Boulstred), a complimentary, +not to say adulatory, <i>Epitaph</i> from the same pen, and a +dubious <i>Elegy</i> by Sir John Roe ('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.410a">410</a>). +It was an ugly place, the Court of James I, as full of cruel libels as of +gross flattery, a fit subject for Milton's scorn. The epitaph which +Jonson wrote is found in more than one MS., and in some where +Donne's poems are in the majority. Chambers very tentatively +suggested that it might be by Donne himself, and I was inclined for +a time to accept this conjecture, finding it in other MSS. besides +those he mentioned, and because the sentiment of the closing lines is +quite Donnean. But in the Farmer-Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart) it is +signed B. J., and Mr. Percy Simpson tells me that a letter is extant +from Jonson to George Gerrard which indicates that the epitaph +was written by Jonson while Gerrard's man waited at the door. I quote +it from <i>B</i>:</p> + +<h4><i>On the death of M<sup>rs</sup> Boulstred.</i></h4> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such</p> +<p>Reade here a little, that thou mayest know much.</p> +<p>It covers first a Virgin, and then one</p> +<p>That durst be so in Court; a Virtue alone</p> +<p>To fill an Epitaph; but shee hath more:</p> +<p>Shee might have claym'd to have made the Graces foure,</p> +<p>Taught Pallas language, Cynthia modesty;</p> +<p>As fit to have encreas'd the harmonye</p> +<p>Of Spheares, as light of Starres; she was Earths eye,</p> +<p>The sole religious house and votary</p> +<p>Not bound by rites but Conscience; wouldst thou all?</p> +<p>She was Sil. Boulstred, in which name I call</p> +<p>Up so much truth, as could I here pursue,</p> +<p>Might make the fable of good Woemen true.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The name is given as 'Sal', but corrected to 'Sil' in the margin. Other +MSS. have 'Sell'. It is doubtless 'Cil', a contraction for 'Cecilia'. +Chambers inadvertently printed 'still'.</p> + +<p>The language of Jonson's <i>Epitaph</i> harmonizes ill with that of his +<i>Epigram</i>. Of all titles Jonson loved best that of 'honest', but +'honest', in a man, meant with Jonson having the courage to tell +people disagreeable truths, not to conceal your dislikes. He was a +candid friend to the living; after death—<i>nil nisi bonum</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.214" id="pageii.214"></a>[pg 214]</span></p> + +<p>For the relation of this <i>Elegie</i> to that beginning 'Death, be not +proud' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.422">422</a>) see <i>Text and Canon, &c.</i>, p. <a href="#pageii.cxliii">cxliii</a>.</p> + +<p>The <i>1633</i> text of this poem is practically identical with that of +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i>. With these MSS. it reads in l. 27 'life' for the 'lives' +of other MSS. and editions, and 'but' for 'though' in the last line. +The only variant in <i>1633</i> is 'worke' for 'workes' in l. 45. The latter +reading has the support of other MSS. and is very probably what +Donne wrote. Such use of a plural verb after two singular subjects +of closely allied import was common. See Franz, <i>Shakespeare-Grammatik</i>, +§ 673, and the examples quoted there, e.g. 'Both wind +and tide stays for this gentleman,' <i>Com. of Err</i>. IV. i. 46, where Rowe +corrects to 'stay'; 'Both man and master is possessed,' <i>ibid.</i> IV. +iv. 89.</p> + +<p>l. 10. <i>Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last.</i> The 'fruite' or +'fruites' of <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, which is as old as <i>P</i> +(1623), is probably a genuine variant. The reference is to the elaborate dainties of the +second course at Elizabethan banquets, the dessert. Sleep, in +Macbeth's famous speech, is</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>great Nature's second course,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>and Donne uses the same metaphor of the Eucharist: 'This fasting +then ... is but a continuation of a great feast: where the first course +(that which we begin to serve in now) is Manna, food of Angels,—plentiful, +frequent preaching; but the second course is the very body +and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us and given to us, in that +Blessed Sacrament, of which himself makes us worthy receivers at that +time.' <i>Sermons</i>. 'The most precious and costly dishes are always +reserved for the last services, but yet there is wholesome meat before +too.' <i>Ibid.</i></p> + +<p>l. 18. <i>In birds, &c.</i>: 'birds' is here in the possessive case, 'birds' +organic throats'. I have modified the punctuation so as to make +this clearer.</p> + +<p>l. 24. <i>All the foure Monarchies</i>: i.e. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and +Rome. John Sleidan, mentioned in a note on the <i>Satyres</i>, wrote +<i>The Key of Historie: Or, A most Methodicall Abridgement of the +foure chiefe Monarchies &c.</i>, to quote its title in the English translation.</p> + +<p>l. 27. <i>Our births and lives, &c.</i> <i>1633</i> and the two groups of MSS. +<i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> and <i>A18</i>, <i>L74</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> +read 'life'. If this be correct, +then 'births' would surely need to be 'birth'. <i>HN</i> shows, I think, +what has happened. The voiced 'f' was not always distinguished +from the breathed sound by a different spelling ('v' for 'f'), and +'lifes' would very easily become 'life'. On the other hand 'v' was +frequently written where we now have 'f', and sometimes misleads. +Peele's <i>The Old Wives Tale</i> is not necessarily, as usually printed, +<i>Wives'</i>. It is just an <i>Old Woman's Tale</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.215" id="pageii.215"></a>[pg 215]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 284. <span class="sc">Elegie.</span></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">285</span>, l. 34. <i>The Ethicks speake, &c.</i> A rather strange +expression +for 'Ethics tell'. The article is rare. Donne says, 'No +booke of Ethicks.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 55. 550. In <i>HN</i> Drummond has +altered to 'Ethnicks' a word Donne uses elsewhere: 'Of all nations +the Jews have most chastely preserved that ceremony of abstaining +from Ethnic names.' <i>Essays in Divinity.</i> It does not, however, +seem appropriate here, unless Donne means to say that she had all +the cardinal virtues of the heathen with the superhuman, theological +virtues which are superinduced by grace:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Her soul was Paradise, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But this is not at all clear. Apparently there is no more in the line +than a somewhat vaguely expressed hyperbole: 'she had all the +cardinal virtues of which we hear in Ethics'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">286</span>, l. 44. <i>Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday</i>: +i.e. +'We should have had a saint and should have now a holiday'—her +anniversary. The MS. form of the line is probably correct:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>We hád had á Saint, nów a hólidáy.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 48. <i>That what we turne to</i> feast, <i>she turn'd to</i> pray. As printed +in the old editions this line, if it be correctly given, is one of the +worst Donne ever wrote:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>i.e. apparently 'That, the day which we turn into a feast or festival +she turned into a day of prayer, a fast'. But 'she turn'd to pray' in +such a sense is a hideously elliptical construction and cannot, I think, +be what Donne meant to write. Two emendations suggest themselves. +One occurs in <i>HN</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That when we turn'd to feast, she turn'd to pray.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>When we turn'd aside from the routine of life's work to keep holiday, +she did so also, but it was to pray. This is better, but it is difficult +to understand how, if this be the correct reading, the error arose, +and only <i>HN</i> reads 'when'. The emendation I have introduced +presupposes only careless typography or punctuation to account for +the bad line. I take it that Donne meant 'feast' and 'pray' to be +imperatives, and that the line would be printed, if modernized, thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That what we turn to 'feast!' she turn'd to 'pray!'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>That the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, which we, especially +Roman Catholics and Anglicans of the Catholic school, interpret as to +the Christian Church a command to feast, to keep holiday, she interpreted +as a command to fast and pray. Probably both Lady +Markham and Lady Bedford belonged to the more Calvinist wing of the +Church. There is a distinctly Calvinist flavour about Lady Bedford's +own <i>Elegy</i>, which reads also as though it were to some extent a rebuke +to Donne for the note, either too pagan or too Catholic for her taste, of +his poems on Death. See p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.422">422</a>, and especially:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.216" id="pageii.216"></a>[pg 216]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Goe then to people curst before they were,</p> +<p>Their spoyles in triumph of thy conquest weare.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>l. 58. <i>will be a Lemnia.</i> All the MSS. read 'Lemnia' without +the article, probably rightly, 'Lemnia' being used shortly for 'terra +Lemnia', or 'Lemnian earth'—a red clay found in Lemnos and +reputed an antidote to poison (Pliny, <i>N. H.</i> xxv. 13). It was one +of the constituents of the theriaca. It may be here thought of as an +antiseptic preserving from putrefaction. But Norton points out that +by some of the alchemists the name was given to the essential component +of the Philosopher's stone, and that what Donne was thinking +of was transmuting power, changing crystal into diamond. The +alchemists, however, dealt more in metals than in stones. The +thought in Donne's mind is perhaps rather that which he expresses +at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.280">280</a>, l. 21. As in some earths clay is turned to porcelain, so +in this Lemnian earth crystal will turn to diamond.</p> + +<p>The words 'Tombe' and 'diamond' afford so bad a rhyme that +G. L. Craik conjectured, not very happily,'a wooden round'. Craik's +criticism of Donne, written in 1847, <i>Sketches of the History of Literature +and Learning in England</i>, is wonderfully just and appreciative.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 287. <span class="sc">Elegie on the L. C.</span><a name="pageii.216a" id="pageii.216a"></a></h3> + +<p>Whoever may be the subject of this <i>Elegie</i>, Donne speaks as though +he were a member of his household. In 1617 Donne had long ceased +to be in any way attached to the Lord Chancellor's retinue. The +reference to his 'children' also without any special reference to his +son the new earl, soon to be Earl of Bridgewater, is very unlike +Donne. Moreover, Sir Thomas Egerton never had more than two +sons, one of whom was killed in Ireland in 1599.</p> + +<p>ll. 13-16. <i>As we for him dead: though, &c.</i> Both Chambers and +the Grolier Club editor connect the clause 'though no family ... with +him in joy to share' with the next, as its principal clause, 'We +lose what all friends lov'd, &c.' To me it seems that it must go with +the preceding clause, 'As we [must wither] for him dead'. I take it +as a clause of concession. 'With him we, his family, must die (as +the briar does with the tree on which it grows); but no family could +die with a more certain hope of sharing the joy into which their head +has entered; with none would so many be willing to "venture estates" +in that great voyage of discovery.' With the next lines,'We lose,' &c., +begins a fresh argument. The thought is forced and obscure, but the +figure, taken from voyages of discovery, is characteristic of Donne.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 288. <a name="pageii.216b" id="pageii.216b"></a><span class="sc">An hymne to the Saints, and to +Marquesse Hamylton.</span></h3> + +<p>In the old editions this is placed among the <i>Divine Poems</i>, and +Donne meant it to bear that character. For it was rather unwillingly +that Donne, now in Orders, wrote this poem at the instance of his friend +and patron Sir Robert Ker, or Carr, later (1633) Earl of Ancrum.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.217" id="pageii.217"></a>[pg 217]</span></p> + +<p>James Hamilton, b. 1584, succeeded his father in 1604 as Marquis +of Hamilton, and his uncle in 1609 as Duke of Chatelherault and Earl +of Arran. He was made a Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber and held +other posts in Scotland. On the occasion of James I's visit to Scotland +in 1617 he played a leading part, and thereafter became a favourite +courtier, his name figuring in all the great functions described in Nichol's +<i>Progresses</i>. In 1617 Chamberlain writes: 'I have not heard a man +generally better spoken of than the Marquis, even by all the English; +insomuch that he is every way held as the gallantest gentleman of both +the nations.' He was High Commissioner to the Parliament held at +Edinburgh in 1624, where he secured the passing of the Five Articles +of Perth. In 1624 he opposed the French War policy of Buckingham, +and when he died on March 2, 162<small><sup>4</sup></small>⁄<small>5</small>, it was maintained that +the latter had poisoned him.</p> + +<p>The rhetoric and rhythm of this poem depend a good deal on getting +the right punctuation and a clear view of what are the periods. I have +ventured to make a few emendations in the arrangement of <i>1633</i>. The +first sentence ends with the emphatic 'wee doe not so' (l. 8), where +'wee' might be printed in italics. The next closes with 'all lost a +limbe' (l. 18), and the effect is marred if, with Chambers and the +Grolier Club editor, one places a full stop after 'Music lacks a song', +though a colon might be most appropriate. The last two lines clinch +the detailed statement which has preceded. The next sentence again +is not completed till l. 30, 'in the form thereof his bodie's there', but, +though <i>1633</i> has only a semicolon here, a full stop is preferable, or +at least a colon. Chambers's full stops at l. 22, 'none', and l. 28, +'a resurrection', have again the effect of breaking the logical and +rhythmical structure. Lines 23-4 are entirely parenthetical and would +be better enclosed in brackets. Four sustained periods compose the +elegy.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">289</span>, ll. 6-7. <i>If every severall Angell bee A kind +alone.</i> Ea enim quae conveniunt specie, et differunt numero, conveniunt in +formâ sed distinguuntur materialiter. Si ergo Angeli non sunt +compositi ex materiâ et formâ ... sequitur quod <i>impossibile sit esse +duos Angelos unius speciei</i>: sicut etiam impossibile esset dicere quod +essent plures albedines (whitenesses) separatae aut plures humanitates: ... +Si tamen Angeli haberent materiam nec sic possent esse +plures Angeli unius speciei. Sic enim opporteret quod principium +distinctionis unius ab alio esset materia, non quidem secundum +divisionem quantitatis, cum sint incorporei, sed secundum diversitatem +potentiarum: quae quidem diversitas materiae causat diversitatem +non solum speciei sed generis. Aquinas, <i>Summa</i> I. l. 4.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 293. INFINITATI SACRUM, <i>&c.</i><a name="pageii.217a" id="pageii.217a"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">294</span>, l. 11. <i>a Mucheron</i>: i.e. a mushroom, here +equivalent to a fungus. Chambers adopts without note the reading of the later +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.218" id="pageii.218"></a>[pg 218]</span> +editions, 'Maceron', but spells it 'Macaron'. Grosart prints +'Macheron', taking 'Mucheron' as a mis-spelling. Captain Shirley +Harris first pointed out, in <i>Notes and Queries</i>, that 'Mucheron' +must be correct, for Donne has in view, as so often elsewhere, the +threefold division of the soul—vegetal, sensitive, rational. Captain +Harris quoted the very apt parallel from Burton, where, speaking +of metempsychosis, he says: 'Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, +a captain:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ille ego (nam memini Troiani tempore belli)</p> +<p>Panthoides Euphorbus eram,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>a horse, a man, a spunge.' <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, Part 1, Sect. 1, +Mem. 2, Subs. 10. Donne's order is, a man, a horse, a fungus. +But to Burton a sponge was a fungus. The word fungus is cognate +with or derived from the Greek <ins title="Greek: spongos">σπόγγος</ins>.</p> + +<p>As for the form 'mucheron' (n. b. 'mushrome' in <i>G</i>) the O.E.D. +gives it among different spellings but cites no example of this exact +spelling. From the <i>Promptorium Parvulorum</i> it quotes, 'Muscheron, +toodys hatte, <i>boletus</i>, <i>fungus</i>.' Captain Harris has supplied me +with the following delightful instance of the word in use as late as 1808. +It is from a catalogue of Maggs Bros. (No. 263, 1910):</p> + +<p>'THE DISAPPOINTED KING OF SPAIN, or the downfall of +the Mucheron King Joe Bonaparte, late Pettifogging Attorney's +Clerk. Between two stools the Breech comes to the Ground.'</p> + +<p>The caricature is etched by G. Cruikshank and is dated 1808.</p> + +<p>The 'Maceron' which was inserted in <i>1635</i> is not a misprint, but +a pseudo-correction by some one who did not recognize 'mucheron' +and knew that Donne had elsewhere used 'maceron' for a fop or +puppy (see p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.163">163</a>, l. 117).</p> + +<p>'Mushrome', the spelling of the word in <i>G</i>, is found also in the +<i>Sermons</i> (80. 73. 748).</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>which Eve eate</i>: 'eate' is of course the past tense, and +should be 'ate' in modernized editions, not 'eat' as in Chambers's +and the Grolier Club editions.</p> + +<h2>THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.<a name="pageii.218a" id="pageii.218a"></a></h2> + +<p>The strange poem <i>The Progresse of the Soule</i>, or <i>Metempsychosis</i>, is +dated by Donne himself, 16 Augusti 1601. The different use of the +same title which Donne made later to describe the progress of the +soul heavenward, after its release from the body, shows that he had +no intention of publishing the poem. How widely it circulated in +MS. we do not know, but I know of three copies only which are +extant, viz. <i>G</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and that given in the group <i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, <i>TCD</i>. +It was from the last that the text of <i>1633</i> was printed, the editor +supplying the punctuation, which in the MS. is scanty. In some copies of +<i>1633</i> the same omissions of words occur as in the MS. but the poem was +corrected in several places as it passed through the press. <i>G</i>, though +not without mistakes itself, supplies some important emendations.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.219" id="pageii.219"></a>[pg 219]</span></p> + +<p>The sole light from without which has been thrown upon the poem +comes from Ben Jonson's conversations with Drummond: 'The conceit +of Dones Transformation or <ins title="Greek: Metempsychôsis">Μετεμψύχωσις</ins> was that he sought +the soule of that aple which Eve pulled and thereafter made it the +soule of a bitch, then of a shee wolf, and so of a woman; his generall +purpose was to have brought in all the bodies of the Hereticks from +the soule of Cain, and at last left in the bodie of Calvin. Of this he +never wrotte but one sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, +repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems.'</p> + +<p>Jonson was clearly recalling the poem somewhat inaccurately, and +at the same time giving the substance of what Donne had told him. +Probably Donne mystified him on purpose, for it is evident from the +poem that in his first intention Queen Elizabeth herself was to be +the soul's last host. It is impossible to attach any other meaning to +the seventh stanza; and that intention also explains the bitter tone +in which women are satirized in the fragment. Women and courtiers +are the chief subject of Donne's sardonic satire in this poem, as of +Shakespeare's in <i>Hamlet</i>.</p> + +<p>I have indicated elsewhere what I think is the most probable +motive of the poem. It reflects the mood of mind into which Donne, +like many others, was thrown by the tragic fate of Essex in the spring +of the year. In <i>Cynthia's Revels</i>, acted in the same year as Donne's +poem was composed, Jonson speaks of 'some black and envious +slanders breath'd against her' (i.e. Diana, who is Elizabeth) 'for her +divine justice on Actaeon', and it is well known that she incurred +both odium and the pangs of remorse. Donne, who was still a +Catholic in the sympathies that come of education and association, +seems to have contemplated a satirical history of the great heretic in +lineal descent from the wife of Cain to Elizabeth—for private circulation. +See <i>The Poetry of John Donne</i>, II. pp. <a href="#pageii.xvii">xvii</a>-xx.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">295</span>, l. 9. <i>Seths pillars.</i> Norton's note on this +runs: 'Seth, the son of Adam, left children who imitated his virtues. 'They were +the discoverers of the wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies +and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost they made +two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their +discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be +destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit +these discoveries to mankind.... Now this remains in the land of +Siriad to this day.' Josephus, <i>Antiquities of the Jews</i> (Whiston's +translation), I. 2, §3.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">296</span>, l. 21. <i>holy Ianus.</i> 'Janus, whom Annius of +Viterbo and the chorographers of Italy do make to be the same with +Noah.' Browne, <i>Vulgar Errors</i>, vi. 6. The work referred to is +the <i>Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII</i> (1498, reprinted and +re-arranged 1511), by Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), a Dominican +friar, Fra Giovanni Nanni. Each of the books, after the first, consists +of a digest with commentary of various works on ancient history, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.220" id="pageii.220"></a>[pg 220]</span> +aim being apparently to reconcile Biblical and heathen chronology +and to establish the genealogy of Christ. <i>Liber XIIII</i> is a digest, or +'defloratio', of Philo (of whom later); <i>Liber XV</i> of Berosus, a reputed +Chaldaean historian ('patria Babylonicus; et dignitate Chaldaeus'), +cited by Josephus. From him Annius derives this identification of +Janus with Noah: 'Hoc vltimo loco Berosus de tribus cognominibus +rationes tradit: Noa: Cam & Tythea. De Noa dicit quod fuit illi +tributum cognomen Ianus a Iain: quod apud Aramaeos et Hebraeos +sonat vinum: a quo Ianus id est vinifer et vinosus: quia primus +vinum invenit et inebriatus est: vt dicit Berosus: et supra insinuavit +Propertius: et item Moyses Genesis cap ix. vbi etiam Iain vinum Iani +nominat: vbi nos habemus: Cum Noa evigilasset a vino. Cato +etiam in fragmentis originum; et Fabius Pictor in de origine vrbis +Romae dicunt Ianum dictum priscum Oenotrium: quia invenit +vinum et far ad religionem magis quam ad vsum,' &c., XV, Fo. cxv. +Elsewhere the identity is based not on this common interest in wine +but on their priestly office, they being the first to offer 'sacrificia et +holocausta', VII, Fo. lviii. Again, 'Ex his probatur irrevincibiliter +a tempore demonstrato a Solino et propriis Epithetis Iani: eundem +fuisse Ogygem: Ianum et Noam ... Sed Noa fuit proprium: Ogyges +verum Ianus et Proteus id est Vertumnus sunt solum praenomina ejus,' +XV, Fo. cv. No mention of the ark as a link occurs, but a ship +figured on the copper coins distributed at Rome on New Year's day, +which was sacred to Janus. The original connexion is probably +found in Macrobius' statement (<i>Saturn.</i> I. 9) that among other titles +Janus was invoked as 'Consivius ... a conserendo id est a propagine +generis humani quae Iano auctore conseritur'. Noah is the father of +the extant human race.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">299</span>, ll. 114-17. There can be no doubt, I think, that the +1633 text is here correct, though for clearness a comma must be +inserted after 'reasons'. The emendation of the 1635 editor which +modern editors have followed gives an awkward and, at the close, +an absurdly tautological sentence. It is not the reason, the rational +faculty, of sceptics which is like the bubbles blown by boys, that +stretch too thin, 'break and do themselves spill.' What Donne says, +is that the reasons or arguments of those who answer sceptics, like +bubbles which break themselves, injure their authors, the apologists. +The verse wants a syllable—not a unique phenomenon in Donne's +satires; but if one is to be supplied 'so' would give the sense better +than 'and'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">300</span>, l. 129. <i>foggie Plot.</i> The word 'foggie' has here +the in English obsolete, in Scotch and perhaps other dialects, still known +meaning of 'marshy', 'boggy'. The O.E.D. quotes, 'He that is +fallen into a depe foggy well and sticketh fast in it,' Coverdale, <i>Bk. +Death</i>, I. xl. 160; 'The foggy fens in the next county,' Fuller, +<i>Worthies</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 137. <i>To see the Prince, and have so fill'd the way.</i> The grammatically +and metrically correct reading of <i>G</i> appears to me to explain the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.221" id="pageii.221"></a>[pg 221]</span> +subsequent variation. 'Prince' struck the editor of the 1633 edition +as inconsistent with the subsequent 'she', and he therefore altered it +to 'Princess'. He may have been encouraged to do so by the fact +that the copy from which he printed had dropped the 'have', or he +may himself have dropped the 'have' to adjust the verse to his +alteration. The former is, I think, the more likely, because what +would seem to be the earlier printed copies of <i>1633</i> read 'Prince': +unless he himself overlooked the 'have' and then amended by +'Princess'. The 1635 editor restored 'Prince' and then amended the +verse by his usual device of padding, changing 'fill'd' to 'fill up'. Of +course Donne's line may have read as we give it, with 'Princess' for +'Prince', but the evidence of the MSS. is against this, so far as it goes. +The title of 'Prince' was indeed applicable to a female sovereign. +The O.E.D. gives: 'Yea the Prince ... as she hath most of yearely +Revenewes ... so should she have most losse by this dearth,' W. +Stafford, 1581; 'Cleopatra, prince of Nile,' Willobie, <i>Avisa</i>, 1594; +'Another most mighty prince, Mary Queene of Scots,' Camden +(Holland), 1610.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">301</span>, ll. 159-160. <i>built by the guest,</i></p> +<p><i>This living buried man, &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The comma after guest is dropped in the printed editions, the +editor regarding 'this living buried man' as an expansion of 'the +guest'. But the man buried alive is the 'soul's second inn', the +mandrake. 'Many Molas and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, +the first from great Antiquity conceiveth the Root thereof +resembleth the shape of Man which is a conceit not to be made out +by ordinary inspection, or any other eyes, than such as regarding the +clouds, behold them in shapes conformable to pre-apprehensions.' +Browne, <i>Vulgar Errors</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">303</span>, ll. 203-5. The punctuation of this stanza is in the +editions very chaotic, and I have amended it. A full stop should +be placed at the end of l. 203, 'was not', <i>because</i> these lines complete +the thought of the previous stanza. Possibly the semicolon after 'ill' +was intended to follow 'not', but a full stop is preferable. Moreover, +the colon after 'soule' (l. 204) suggests that the printer took ''twas +not' with 'this soule'. The correct reading of l. 204 is obviously:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So jolly, that it can move, this soul is.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers prefers:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So jolly, that it can move this soul, is</p> +<p>The body ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to +make the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">thy fair goodly soul, which doth</p> +<p>Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.</p> +<p class="i30"><i>Satyre III</i>, ll. 41-2.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.222" id="pageii.222"></a>[pg 222]</span></p> +<p>'The soul is so glad to be at last able to move (having been imprisoned +hitherto in plants which have the soul of growth, not of +locomotion or sense), and the body is so free of its kindnesses to +the soul, that it, the sparrow, forgets the duty of self-preservation.'</p> + +<p>l. 214. <i>hid nets.</i> In making my first collation of the printed +texts I had queried the possibility of 'hid' being the correct reading +for 'his', a conjecture which the Gosse MS. confirms.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">305</span>, l. 257. <i>None scape, but few, and fit for use, to +get.</i> +I have added a comma after 'use' to make the construction a little +clearer; a pause is needed. 'The nets were not wrought, as now, +to let none scape, but were wrought to get few and those fit for use; +as, for example, a ravenous pike, &c.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">306</span>, ll. 267-8. '<i>To make the water thinne, and airelike +faith cares not.</i>' What Chambers understands by 'air like faith', I +do not know. What Donne says is that the manner in which +fishes breathe is a matter about which faith is indifferent. Each man +may hold what theory he chooses. There is not much obvious +relevance in this remark, but Donne has already in this poem +touched on the difference between faith and knowledge:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10">better proofes the law</p> +<p>Of sense then faith requires.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>A vein of restless scepticism runs through the whole.</p> + +<p>l. 280. <i>It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food.</i> If with +<i>1650-69</i>, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor, we alter the full +stop which separates this line from the last to a comma, 'It' must +mean the same as 'she', i.e. the fish. This is a harsh construction. +The line is rather to be taken as an aphorism. 'To be exalted is +often to become the instrument and prey of him who has exalted +you.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">307</span>, l. 296. <i>That many leagues at sea, now tir'd hee +lyes.</i> The reading of <i>G</i> represents probably what Donne wrote. It is +quite clear that <i>1633</i> was printed from a MS. identical with <i>A18</i>, +<i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, and underwent considerable correction as it passed through the +press. In no poem does the text of one copy vary so much from +that of another as in this. Now in this MS. a word is dropped. +The editor supplied the gap by inserting 'o're-past', which simply +repeats 'flown long and fast'. <i>G</i> shows what the dropped word was. +'Many leagues at sea' is an adverbial phrase qualifying 'now tir'd +he lies'.</p> + +<p>ll. 301-10. I owe the right punctuation of this stanza to the +Grolier Club edition and Grosart. The 'as' of l. 303 requires to +be followed by a comma. Missing this, Chambers closes the +sentence at l. 307, 'head', leaving 'This fish would seem these' +in the air. The words 'when all hopes fail' play with the idea of +'the hopeful Promontory', or Cape of Good Hope.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.223" id="pageii.223"></a>[pg 223]</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">308</span>, ll. 321-2.</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>He hunts not fish, but as an officer,</i></p> +<p><i>Stayes in his court, at his owne net.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare: 'A confidence in their owne strengths, a sacrificing to +their own Nets, an attributing of their securitie to their own wisedome +or power, may also retard the cause of God.' <i>Sermons</i>, +Judges xv. 20 (1622).</p> + +<p>'And though some of the Fathers pared somewhat too neare the +quick in this point, yet it was not as in the Romane Church, to lay +snares, and spread nets for gain.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 22. 216.</p> + +<p>'The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of comfort comes to him' (the +courtier) 'but hee will die in his old religion, which is to sacrifice to +his owne Nets, by which his portion is plenteous.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 70. 714.</p> + +<p>The image of the net is probably derived from Jeremiah v. 26: +'For among my people are found wicked men; they lay wait as he +that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.' Compare also: +'he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor when he +draweth him into his net.' Psalm x. 9.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">310-11</span>, ll. 381-400. Compare: 'Amongst <i>naturall +Creatures</i>, because howsoever they differ in bignesse, yet they +have some proportion to one another, we consider that some very +little creatures, contemptible in themselves, are yet called enemies +to great creatures, as the Mouse is to the Elephant.' <i>Sermons</i> +50. 40. 372. 'How great an Elephant, how small a Mouse destroys.' +<i>Devotions</i>, p. 284.</p> + +<p>ll. 405-6.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Who in that trade, of Church, and kingdomes, there</i></p> +<p><i>Was the first type.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The <i>1635</i> punctuation of this passage is right, though it is better +to drop the comma after 'Kingdoms' and obviate ambiguity. +The trade is the shepherd's; in it Abel is type both of Church and +Kingdom, Emperor and Pope. As a type of Christ Donne refers +to Abel in <i>The Litanie</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.341">341</a>, l. 86.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">312</span>, l. 419. <i>Nor</i> ⟨<i>make</i>⟩ <i>resist.</i> I have substituted +'make' for the 'much' of the editions, confident that it is the right reading +and explains the vacillation of the MSS. The proper alternative to +'show' is 'make'. The error arose from the obsolescence of 'resist' +used as a noun. But the O.E.D. cites from Lodge, <i>Forbonius and +Priscilla</i> (1585), 'I make no resist in this my loving torment', and +other examples dated 1608 and 1630. Donne is fond of verbal nouns +retaining the form of the verb unchanged.</p> + +<p>l. 439. <i>soft Moaba.</i> 'Moaba', 'Siphatecia' (l. 457), 'Tethlemite' +(l. 487), and Themech' (l. 509) are not creatures of Donne's invention, +but derived from his multifarious learning. It is, however, a +little difficult to detect the immediate source from which he drew. +The ultimate source of all these additions to the Biblical narrative +and persons was the activity of the Jewish intellect and imagination +in the interval between the time at which the Old Testament closes and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.224" id="pageii.224"></a>[pg 224]</span> +the dispersion under Titus and Vespasian, the desire of the Jews +in Palestine and Alexandria to 'round off the biblical narrative, +fill up the lacunae, answer all the questions of the inquiring mind of +the ancient reader'. Of the original Hebrew writings of this period +none have survived, but their traditions passed into mediaeval works +like the <i>Historia Scholastica</i> of Petrus Comestor and hence into +popular works, e.g. the Middle English <i>Cursor Mundi</i>. Another compendium +of this pseudo-historical lore was the <i>Philonis Judaei +Alexandrini. Libri Antiquitatum. Quaestionum et Solutionum in +Genesin. de Essaeis. de Nominibus hebraicis. de Mundo. Basle.</i> 1527. +An abstract of this work is given by Annius of Viterbo in the book +referred to in a previous note. Dr. Cohn has shown that this Latin +work is a third- or fourth-century translation of a Greek work, itself a +translation from the Hebrew. More recently Rabbi M. Gaster has +brought to light the Hebrew original in portions of a compilation of +the fourteenth century called the <i>Chronicle of Jerahmeel</i>, of which he +has published an English translation under the 'Patronage of the Royal +Asiatic Society', <i>Oriental Translation Fund</i>. New Series, iv. 1899. +In chapter xxvi of this work we read: 'Adam begat three sons and +three daughters, Cain and his twin wife Qualmana, Abel and his +twin wife Deborah, and Seth and his twin wife Nōba. And +Adam, after he had begotten Seth, lived seven hundred years, and there +were eleven sons and eight daughters born to him. These are the +names of his sons: Eli, Shēēl, Surei, 'Almiel, Berokh, Ke'al, Nabath, +Zarh-amah, Sisha, Mahtel, and Anat; and the names of his daughters +are: Havah, Gitsh, Harē, Bikha, Zifath, Hēkhiah, Shaba, and 'Azin.' +In Philo this reappears as follows: 'Initio mundi Adam genuit tres +filios et unam filiam, Cain, Noaba, Abel, et Seth: Et vixit Adam, +postquam genuit Seth, annos DCC., et genuit filios duodecim, et +filias octo: Et haec sunt nomina virorum, Aeliseel, Suris, Aelamiel, +Brabal, Naat, Harama, Zas-am, Maathal, et Anath: Et hae filiae +eius, Phua, Iectas, Arebica, Siphatecia, Sabaasin.' It is clear there +are a good many mistakes in Philo's account as it has come to us. +His numbers and names do not correspond. Clearly also some of +the Latin names are due to the running together of two Hebrew ones, +e.g. Aeliseel, Arebica, and Siphatecia. Of the names in Donne's +poem two occur in the above lists—Noaba (Heb. Nobā) and Siphatecia. +But Noaba has become Moaba: Siphatecia is 'Adams fift +daughter', which is correct according to the Hebrew, but not according +to Philo's list; and there is no mention in these lists of Tethlemite +(or Thelemite) among Adam's sons, or of Themech as Cain's +wife. In the Hebrew she is called Qualmana. Doubtless since two +of the names are traceable the others are so also. We have not +found Donne's immediate source. I am indebted for such information +as I have brought together to Rabbi Gaster.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">314</span>, l. 485. (<i>loth</i>). I have adopted this reading +from the insertion in <i>TCC</i>, not that much weight can be allowed to this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.225" id="pageii.225"></a>[pg 225]</span> +anonymous reviser (some of whose insertions are certainly wrong), +but because 'loth' or 'looth' is more likely to have been changed to +'tooth' than 'wroth'. The occurrence of 'Tooth' in <i>G</i> as well as +in <i>1633</i> led me to consult Sir James Murray as to the possibility of a +rare adjectival sense of that word, e.g. 'eager, with tooth on edge +for'. I venture to quote his reply: 'We know nothing of <i>tooth</i> as +an adjective in the sense <i>eager</i>; or in any sense that would fit here. +Nor does <i>wroth</i> seem to myself and my assistants to suit well. In +thinking of the possible word for which <i>tooth</i> was a misprint, or rather +misreading ... the word <i>loth</i>, <i>loath</i>, <i>looth</i>, occurred to +myself and an assistant independently before we saw that it is mentioned in the +foot-note.... <i>Loath</i> seems to me to be exactly the word wanted, the +true antithesis to willing, and it was a very easy word to write as +<i>tooth</i>.' Sir James Murray suggests, as just a possibility, that 'wroth' +(<i>1635-69</i>) may have arisen from a provincial form 'wloth'. He +thinks, however, as I do, that it is more probably a mere editorial +conjecture.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">315</span>, ll. 505-9.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i18"> <i>these limbes a soule attend;</i></p> +<p><i>And now they joyn'd: keeping some quality</i></p> +<p><i>Of every past shape, she knew treachery,</i></p> +<p><i>Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow</i></p> +<p><i>To be a woman.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have erroneously followed +<i>1635-69</i> in their punctuation and attached 'keeping some quality of +every past shape' to the preceding 'they'. The force of Donne's +bitter comment is thus weakened. It is with 'she', i.e. the soul, that +the participial phrase goes. 'She, retaining the evil qualities of all the +forms through which she has passed, has thus "ills enow" (treachery, +rapine, deceit, and lust) to be a woman.'</p> + +<h2>DIVINE POEMS.<a name="pageii.225a" id="pageii.225a"></a></h2> + +<p>The dating of Donne's <i>Divine Poems</i> raises some questions that +have not received all the consideration they deserve. They fall into +two groups—those written before and those written after he took +orders. Of the former the majority would seem to belong to the +years of his residence at Mitcham. The poem <i>On the Annunciation +and Passion</i> was written on March 25, 160<small><sup>8</sup></small>⁄<small>9</small>. <i>The Litanie</i> was written, +we gather from a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere, about the same +time. <i>The Crosse</i> we cannot date, but I should be inclined with Mr. +Gosse to connect it rather with the earlier than the later poems. It is +in the same somewhat tormented, intellectual style. On the other +hand the <i>Holy Sonnets</i> were composed, we know now from Sonnet +XVII, first published by Mr. Gosse, after the death of Donne's wife +in 1617; and <i>The Lamentations of Jeremy</i> appear to have been written +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.226" id="pageii.226"></a>[pg 226]</span> +at the same juncture. The first sermon which Donne preached after +that event was on the text (Lam. iii. 1): 'I am the man that hath +seen affliction,' and Walton speaks significantly of his having ended +the night and begun the day in <i>lamentations</i>.</p> + +<p>The more difficult question is the date of the <i>La Corona</i> group of +sonnets. It is usual to attribute them to the later period of Donne's +ministry. This is not, I think, correct. It seems to me most +probable that they too were composed at Mitcham in or before 1609.</p> + +<p>Dr. Grosart first pointed out that one of Donne's short verse-letters, +headed in <i>1663</i> and later editions <i>To E. of D. with six holy +Sonnets</i>, must have been sent with a copy of six of these sonnets, the seventh +being held back on account of some imperfection. It appears with +the same heading in <i>O'F</i>, but in <i>W</i> it is entitled simply <i>To L. +of D.</i>, and is placed immediately after the letter <i>To Mr. T. W.</i>, 'Haste thee +harsh verse' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.205a">205</a>), and before the next to the same person, 'Pregnant +again' (p. 206). It thus belongs to this group of letters written +apparently between 1597 and 1609-10.</p> + +<p>Who is the E. of D.? Dr. Grosart, Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Gosse +assume that it must be Lord Doncaster, though admitting in the same +breath that the latter was not Earl of, but Viscount Doncaster, and +that only between 1618 and 1622, four short years. The title 'L. of +D.' might indicate Doncaster because the title 'my Lord of' is +apparently given to a Viscount. In his letters from Germany Donne +speaks of 'my Lord of Doncaster'. It may, therefore, be a mistake of +the printer or editor of <i>1633</i>; which turned 'L. of D.' into 'E. of D.'; +but Hay was still alive in 1633, and the natural thing for the printer +to do would have been to alter the title to 'E. of C.' or 'Earl of +Carlisle'. Before 1618 Donne speaks of the 'Lord Hay' or 'the L. +Hay' (see <i>Letters</i>, p. 145),<a id="footnotetagdp1" name="footnotetagdp1"></a><a href="#footnotedp1"><sup>1</sup></a> and this or 'the L. H.' is the title the +poem would have borne if addressed to him in any of the years to +which the other letters in the Westmoreland MS. (<i>W</i>) seem to +belong.</p> + +<p>Moreover, there is another of Donne's noble friends who might +correctly be described as either E. of D. or L. of D. and that is +Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. Donne generally speaks of +him as 'my Lord of Dorset': 'I lack you here', he writes to Goodyere, +'for my L. of Dorset, he might make a cheap bargain with me now, +and disingage his honour, which in good faith, is a little bound, +because he admitted so many witnesses of his large disposition +towards me.' Born in 1589, the grandson of the great poet of +Elizabeth's early reign, Richard Sackville was educated at Christ +Church, Oxford. He succeeded as third Earl of Dorset on February +27, 160<small><sup>8</sup></small>⁄<small>9</small>, having two days previously married Anne, Baroness Clifford +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.227" id="pageii.227"></a>[pg 227]</span> +in her own right, the daughter of George Clifford, the buccaneering +Earl of Cumberland, and Margaret, daughter of Francis, second Earl of +Bedford. The Countess of Dorset was therefore a first cousin to +Edward, third Earl of Bedford, the husband of Donne's patroness Lucy, +Countess of Bedford.</p> + +<p>The earliest date at which the letter could have been addressed to +Dorset as L. of D. or E. of D. is 1609, just after his marriage into the +circle of Donne's friends. Now in Harleian MS. 4955 (<i>H49</i>) we find +the heading,</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Holy Sonnets: written 20 yeares since.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is followed at once by 'Deign at my hands', and then the title +<i>La Corona</i> is given to the six sonnets which ensue. Thereafter +follow, without any fresh heading, twelve of the sonnets belonging to +the second group, generally entitled <i>Holy Sonnets</i>. It will be noticed +that in the editions this last title is used twice, first for both groups +and then, in italics, for the second alone. The question is, did the +copyist of <i>H49</i> intend that the note should apply to all the sonnets +he transcribed or only to the <i>La Corona</i> group? If to all, he was +certainly wrong as to the second lot, which were written later; but he +was quite possibly right as to the first. Now twenty years before 1629, +which is the date given to some of Andrewes' poems in the MS., +would bring us to 1609, the year of the Earl of Dorset's accession and +marriage, and the period when most of the letters among which that +to L. of D. in <i>W</i> appears were written.</p> + +<p>Note, moreover, the content of the letter <i>To L. of D.</i> Most of +the letters in this group, to Thomas and Rowland Woodward, to +S. B., and B. B., are poetical replies to poetical epistles. Now that <i>To +L. of D.</i> is in the same strain:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame</p> +<p class="i2">Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime,</p> +<p class="i2">In me, your fatherly yet lusty Ryme</p> +<p>(For, these songs are their fruits) have wrought the same.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is in the vein of the letter <i>To Mr. R. W.</i>, 'Muse not that by thy +mind,' and of the epistle <i>To J. D.</i> which I have cited in the notes (p. +166). We hear nowhere that Lord Hay wrote verses, and it is very unlikely +that he, already when Donne formed his aquaintance a rising courtier, +should have joined with the Woodwards, and Brookes, and Cornwallis, +in the game of exchanging bad verses with Donne. It is quite +likely that the young Lord of Dorset, either in 1609, or earlier when +he was still an Oxford student or had just come up to London, may +have burned his pinch of incense to the honour of the most brilliant +of the wits, now indeed a grave <i>épistolier</i> and moralist, but still +capable of 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness'. We +gather from Lord Herbert of Cherbury that the Earl of Dorset must +have been an enthusiastic young man. When Herbert returned to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.228" id="pageii.228"></a>[pg 228]</span> +England after the siege of Julyers (whither Donne had sent him +a verse epistle), 'Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom otherwise I was +a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, where bringing me +into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, he at last brought me +to a frame covered with green taffeta, and asked me who I thought +was there; and therewithal presently drawing the curtain showed me +my own picture; whereupon demanding how his Lordship came to +have it, he answered, that he had heard so many brave things of me, +that he got a copy of a picture which one Larkin a painter drew for +me, the original whereof I intended before my departure to the Low +Countries for Sir Thomas Lucy.' <i>Autobiography</i>, ed. Lee. A man so +interested in Herbert may well have been interested in Donne even +before his connexion by marriage with Lucy, Countess of Bedford. +He became later one of Donne's kindest and most practical patrons. +The grandson of a great poet may well have written verses.<a id="footnotetagdp2" name="footnotetagdp2"></a><a href="#footnotedp2"><sup>2</sup></a></p> + +<p>But there is another consideration besides that of the letter <i>To +E. of D.</i> which seems to connect the <i>La Corona</i> sonnets with the +years 1607-9. That is the sonnet <i>To the Lady Magdalen Herbert: +of St. Mary Magdalen</i>, which I have prefixed, with that <i>To E. of D.</i>, +to the group. This was sent with a prose letter which says, 'By this messenger +and on this good day, I commit the inclosed holy hymns and +sonnets (which for the matter not the workmanship, have yet escaped +the fire) to your judgment, and to your protection too, if you think +them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed sonnet to usher +them to your happy hand.' This letter is dated 'July 11, 1607', +which Mr. Gosse thinks must be a mistake, because another letter bears +the same date; but the date is certainly right, for July 11 is, making +allowance for the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian +Calendars, July 22, i.e. St. Mary Magdalen's day, 'this good day.'</p> + +<p>What were the 'holy hymns and sonnets', of which Donne says:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16"> and in some recompence</p> +<p>That they did harbour Christ himself, a Guest,</p> +<p>Harbour these Hymns, to his dear name addrest?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Walton says: 'These hymns are now lost; but doubtless they were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.229" id="pageii.229"></a>[pg 229]</span> +such as they two now sing in heaven.' But Walton was writing long +afterwards and was probably misled by the name 'hymns'. By +'hymns and sonnets' Donne possibly means the same things, as he +calls his love-lyrics 'songs and sonets'. The sonnets are hymns, i.e. +songs of praise. Mr. Chambers suggests—it is only a suggestion—that +they are the second set, the <i>Holy Sonnets</i>. But these are not +addressed to Christ. In them Donne addresses The Trinity, the +Father, Angels, Death, his own soul, the Jews—Christ only in one +(Sonnet XVIII, first published by Mr. Gosse). On the other hand, +'Hymns to his dear name addrest' is an exact description of the <i>La +Corona</i> sonnets.</p> + +<p>I venture to suggest, then, that the Holy Sonnets sent to +Mrs. Herbert and to the E. of D. were one and the same group, viz. +the <i>La Corona</i> sequence. Probably they were sent to Mrs. Herbert +first, and later to the E. of D. Donne admits their imperfection in +his letter to Mrs. Herbert. One of them seems to have been +criticized, and in sending the sequence to the E. of D. he held it back +for correction. If the E. of D. be the Earl of Dorset they may have +been sent to him before he assumed that title. Any later transcript +would adopt the title to which he succeeded in 1609. We need not, +however, take too literally Donne's statement that the E. of D.'s +poetical letter was 'the only-begetter' of his sonnets.</p> + +<p>My argument is conjectural, but the assumptions that they were +written about 1617 and sent to Lord Doncaster are equally so. The +last is untenable; the former does not harmonize so well as that of +an earlier date with the obvious fact, which I have emphasized in the +essay on Donne's poetry, that these sonnets are more in the +intellectual, tormented, wire-drawn style of his earlier religious verse +(excellent as that is in many ways) than the passionate and plangent +sonnets and hymns of the years which followed the death of his +wife.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotedp1" name="footnotedp1"></a><a class="footnote" href="#footnotetagdp1"><sup>1</sup></a> +This letter was written in November or December, 1608, and seems to be the +first in which Donne speaks of Lord Hay as a friend and patron. The kindness +he has shown in forwarding a suit seems to have come somewhat as a surprise to +Donne.</p> + +<p class="footnote"><a id="footnotedp2" name="footnotedp2"></a><a class="footnote" href="#footnotetagdp2"><sup>2</sup></a> +Lord Dorset is thus described by his wife: 'He was in his own nature of a +just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person: He had +a great advantage in his breeding by the wisdom and discretion of his grandfather, +Thomas, Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer of England, who was then held one +of the wisest men of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all +manner of learning, that in his youth when he lived in the University of Oxford, +there was none of the young nobility then students there, that excelled him. He +was also a good patriot to his country ... and so great a lover of scholars and +soldiers, as that with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth +that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate; As also, with excessive +prodigality in house-keeping and other noble ways at Court, as tilting, masking, +and the like; Prince Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to these +noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.' Collins's <i>Peerage</i>, ii. 194-5. +quoted in Zouch's edition of Walton's <i>Lives</i>, 1817.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 317. <span class="sc">To E. of D.</span><a name="pageii.229a" id="pageii.229a"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 3-4. <i>Ryme ... their ... have wrought.</i> The concord here seems +to require the plural, the rhyme the singular. Donne, I fear, does +occasionally rhyme a word in the plural with one in the singular, +ignoring the 's'. But possibly Donne intended 'Ryme' to be taken +collectively for 'verses, poetry'. Even so the plural is the normal +use.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, &c.</span><a name="pageii.229b" id="pageii.229b"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 1-2.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14"><i>whose faire inheritance</i></p> +<p><i>Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Mary Magdalene had her surname of magdalo a castell | and was +born of right noble lynage and parents | which were descended +of the lynage of kynges | And her fader was named Sinus and her +moder eucharye | She wyth her broder lazare and her suster martha +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.230" id="pageii.230"></a>[pg 230]</span> +possessed the castle of magdalo: whiche is two myles fro nazareth +and bethanye the castel which is nygh to Iherusalem and also +a gret parte of Iherusalem whiche al thise thynges they departed +amonge them in suche wyse that marye had the castelle magdalo +whereof she had her name magdalene | And lazare had the parte of +the cytee of Iherusalem: and martha had to her parte bethanye' +<i>Legenda Aurea</i>. See Ed. (1493), f. 184, ver. 80.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>more than the Church did know</i>, i.e. the Resurrection. John +xx. 9 and 11-18.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 318. <span class="sc">La Corona.</span><a name="pageii.230a" id="pageii.230a"></a></h3> + +<p>The MSS. of these poems fall into three well-defined groups: +(1) That on which the 1633 text is based is represented by <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>; +<i>Lec</i> does not contain these poems. (2) A version different in several +details is presented by the group <i>B</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, <i>W</i>, of +which <i>W</i> is the +most important and correct. <i>O'F</i> has apparently belonged originally +to this group but been corrected from the first. (3) <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, +<i>TC</i> +agrees now with one, now with another of the two first groups. +When all the three groups unite against the printed text the case for +an emendation is a strong one.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 319. <span class="sc">Annunciation.</span><a name="pageii.230b" id="pageii.230b"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 10. <i>who is thy Sonne and Brother.</i></p> + +<p>'Maria ergo faciens voluntatem Dei, corporaliter Christi tantummodo +mater est, spiritualiter autem et soror et mater.' August. <i>De Sanct. +Virg.</i> i. 5. Migne 40. 399.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Nativitie.</span><a name="pageii.230c" id="pageii.230c"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 8. <i>The effect of Herods jealous generall doome</i>: The singular +'effect' has the support of most of the MSS. against the plural of the +editions and of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, and there can be no doubt that it is +right. All +the effects of Herod's doom were not prevented, but the one aimed +at, the death of Christ, was.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 320. <span class="sc">Crucifying.</span><a name="pageii.230d" id="pageii.230d"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 8. <i>selfe-lifes infinity to'a span.</i> The MSS. supply the 'a' which +the editions here, as elsewhere (e.g. 'a retirednesse', p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.185">185</a>), have +dropped. In the present case the omission is so obvious that the +Grolier Club editor supplies the article conjecturally. In the editions +after <i>1633</i> 'infinitie' is the spelling adopted, leading to the misprint +'infinite' in <i>1669</i> and <i>1719</i>, a variant which I have omitted to +note.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 321. <span class="sc">Resurrection.</span><a name="pageii.230e" id="pageii.230e"></a></h3> + +<p>It will be seen there are some important differences between the +text of this sonnet given in <i>1633</i>, <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, on the one hand +and that of <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S</i>, <i>S96</i>, <i>W</i>. The former has (l. 5) +'this death' where the latter gives 'thy death'. It may be noted that 'this' is always spelt +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.231" id="pageii.231"></a>[pg 231]</span> +'thys' in <i>D</i>, which makes easy an error one way or the other. But +the most difficult reading in <i>1633</i> is (l. 8) 'thy little booke'. Oddly +enough this has the support not only of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i> but also of +<i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, whose text seems to blend the two versions, adding some +features of its own. Certainly the 'life-booke' of the second version +and the later editions seems preferable. Yet this too is an odd +expression, seeing that the line might have run:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>If in thy Book of Life my name thou'enroule.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Was Donne thinking vaguely or with some symbolism of his own, +not of the 'book of life' (Rev. xiii. 8, and xx. 12) but of the 'little +book' (Rev. x. 2) which John took and ate? Or does he say 'little +book' thinking of the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way +which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it' (Matt. vii. 14)? +The grimmer aspects of the Christian creed were always in Donne's +mind:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And though thou beest, O mighty bird of prey,</p> +<p>So much reclaim'd by God, that thou must lay</p> +<p>All that thou kill'st at his feet, yet doth hee</p> +<p>Reserve but few, and leave the most to thee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In l. 9 'last long' is probably right. <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i> had dropped both +adjectives, and 'long' was probably supplied by the editor <i>metri +causa</i>, 'last' disappearing. Between 'glorified' and 'purified' in l. 11 +it is impossible to choose. The reading 'deaths' for 'death' I have +adopted. Here <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i> agree with <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, +<i>S</i>, <i>W</i>, and there can be no doubt that 'sleepe' is intended to go with both 'sinne' +and 'death'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 322. <span class="sc">Holy Sonnets.</span><a name="pageii.231a" id="pageii.231a"></a></h3> + +<p>The MSS. of these sonnets evidently fall into two groups: (1) <i>B</i>, +<i>O'F</i>, <i>S96</i>, <i>W</i>: of which <i>W</i> is by far the fullest and +most correct representative. (2) <i>A18</i>, <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TCC</i>, +<i>TCD</i>. I have kept the +order in which they are given in the editions <i>1635</i> to <i>1669</i>, but +indicated the order of the other groups, and added at the close the +three sonnets contained only in <i>W</i>. I cannot find a definite significance +in any order, otherwise I should have followed that of <i>W</i> as the +fullest and presumably the most authoritative. Each sonnet is a +separate meditation or ejaculation.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">323</span>, III. 7. +<i>That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent</i>: +I have followed the punctuation and order of <i>B</i>, <i>W</i>, because it shows +a little more clearly what is (I think) the correct construction. As +printed in <i>1635-69</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>That sufferance was my sinne I now repent,</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>the clause 'That sufferance was' &c. is a noun clause subject to +'repent'. But the two clauses are co-ordinates and 'That' is a +demonstrative pronoun. '<i>That</i> suffering' (of which he has spoken +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.232" id="pageii.232"></a>[pg 232]</span> +in the six preceding lines) 'was my sin. Now I repent. Because I +did suffer the pains of love, I must now suffer those of remorse.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">324</span>, V. 11. <i>have burnt it heretofore.</i> Donne uses +'heretofore' not infrequently in the sense of 'hitherto', and this seems to be +implied in 'Let their flames retire'. I have therefore preferred the +perfect tense of the MSS. to the preterite of the editions. The 'hath' +of <i>O'F</i> is a change made in the supposed interests of grammar, if not +used as a plural form, for 'their flames' implies that the fires of lust +and of envy are distinguished. In speaking of the first Donne thinks +mainly of his youth, of the latter he has in memory his years of suitorship +at Court.</p> + +<p>VI. 7, note. <a name="pageii.232a" id="pageii.232a"></a><i>Or presently, I know not, see that Face.</i> This line, which +occurs in several independent MSS., is doubtless Donne's, but the +reading of the text is probably his own emendation. The first form +of the line suggested too distinctly a not approved, or even heretical, +doctrine to which Donne refers more than once in his sermons: 'So +<i>Audivimus, et ab Antiquis</i>, We have heard, and heard by them of old, +That in how good state soever they dye yet the souls of the departed +do not see the face of God, nor enjoy his presence, till the day of +Judgement; This we have heard, and from so many of them of old, +as that the voyce of that part is louder, then of the other. And +amongst those reverend and blessed Fathers, which straied into these +errors, some were hearers and Disciples of the Apostles themselves, +as Papias was a disciple of S. John and yet Papias was a Millenarian, +and expected his thousand yeares prosperity upon the earth after the +Resurrection: some of them were Disciples of the Apostles, and some +of them were better men then the Apostles, for they were Bishops of +Rome; <i>Clement</i> was so: and yet <i>Clement</i> was one of them, who +denied the fruition of the sight of God, by the Saints, till the Judgement.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 73. 739-40.</p> + +<p>There are two not strictly orthodox opinions to which Donne seems +to have leant: (1) this, perhaps a remnant of his belief in Purgatory, +the theory of a state of preparation, in this doctrine applied even to +the saints; (2) a form of the doctrine now called 'Conditional Immortality'. +See note on Letter <i>To the Countesse of Bedford</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.196">196</a>, +l. 58.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.232b" id="pageii.232b"></a><span class="bb">325</span>, VII. 6. <i>dearth.</i> This reading of the +Westmoreland MS. is surely right notwithstanding the consensus of the editions and +other MSS. in reading 'death'. The poet is enumerating various +modes in which death comes; death itself cannot be one of these. +The 'death' in l. 8 perhaps explains the error; it certainly makes +the error more obvious.</p> + +<p>VIII. 7. <a name="pageii.232c" id="pageii.232c"></a><i>in us, not immediately.</i> I have interjected a comma after +'us' in order to bring out distinctly the Scholastic doctrine of Angelic +knowledge on which this sonnet turns. See note on <i>The Dreame</i> with +the quotation from Aquinas. What Donne says here is: 'If our +minds or thoughts are known to the saints in heaven as to angels, not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.233" id="pageii.233"></a>[pg 233]</span> +immediately, but by circumstances and signs (such as blushing or +a quickened pulsation) which are apparent in us, how shall the +sincerity of my grief be known to them, since these signs are found +in lovers, conjurers and pharisees?' 'Deo tantum sunt naturaliter +cognitae cogitationes cordium.' 'God alone who put grief in my +heart knows its sincerity.'</p> + +<p>l. 10. <i>vile blasphemous Conjurers.</i> The 'vilde' of the MSS. is +obviously the right reading. The form too is that which Donne used +if we may judge by the MSS., and by the fact that in <i>Elegie XIV: +Julia</i> he rhymes thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i14">and (which is worse than vilde)</p> +<p>Sticke jealousie in wedlock, her owne childe</p> +<p>Scapes not the showers of envie.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>By printing 'vile' the old and modern editions destroy the rhyme. +In the sonnet indeed the rhyme is not affected, and accordingly, +as I am not prepared to change every 'vile' to 'vilde' in the poems, +I have printed 'vile'. <i>W</i> writes vile. Probably one might use +either form.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">326</span>, <a name="pageii.233a" id="pageii.233a"></a>IX. 9-10. I have followed here the punctuation of +<i>W</i>, which takes 'O God' in close connexion with the preceding +line; the vocative case seems to be needed since God has not been +directly addressed until l. 9. The punctuation of <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, which +has often determined that of <i>1633</i>, is not really different from that of +<i>W</i>:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But who am I, that dare dispute with Thee?</p> +<p>Oh God; Oh of thyne, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Here, as so often, the question-mark is placed immediately after the +question, before the sentence is ended. But 'Oh God' goes with +the question. A new strain begins with the second 'Oh'. The +editions, by punctuating</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But who am I that dare dispute with thee?</p> +<p>O God, Oh! &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>(which modern editors have followed), make 'O God, Oh!' a hurried +series of exclamations introducing the prayer which follows. This +suits the style of these abrupt, passionate poems. But it leaves the +question without an address to point it; and to my own mind the +hurried, feverous effect of 'O God, Oh!' is more than compensated +for by the weight which is thrown, by the punctuation adopted, upon +the second 'Oh',—a sigh drawn from the very depths of the heart,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i16">so piteous and profound</p> +<p>As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,</p> +<p>And end his being.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">327</span>, <a name="pageii.233b" id="pageii.233b"></a>XII. 1. <i>Why are wee by all creatures, &c.</i> The +'am I' of the <i>W</i> is probably what Donne first wrote, and I am strongly +tempted to restore it. Donne's usual spelling of 'am' is 'ame' +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.234" id="pageii.234"></a>[pg 234]</span> +in his letters. This might have been changed to 'are', which would +have brought the change of 'I' to 'we' in its wake. On the other +hand there are evidences in this sonnet of corrections made by Donne +himself (e.g. l. 9), and he may have altered the first line as being too +egotistical in sound. I have therefore retained the text of the +editions.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>Simple, and further from corruption?</i> The 'simple' of <i>1633</i> +and <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>W</i> is preferable to the 'simpler' of the later +editions and somewhat inferior MSS. which Chambers has adopted, inadvertently, +I think, for he does not notice the earlier reading. The +dropping of an 'r' would of course be very easy; but the simplicity +of the element does not admit of comparison, and what Donne says +is, I think, 'The elements are purer than we are, and (being simple) +farther from corruption.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.234a" id="pageii.234a"></a><span class="bb">328</span>, XIII. 4-6.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>Whether that countenance can thee affright,</i></p> +<p><i>Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,</i></p> +<p><i>Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers alters the comma after 'affright' to a full stop, the Grolier +Club editor to a semicolon. Both place a semicolon after 'fell'. +Any change of the old punctuation seems to me to disguise the close +relation in which the fifth and sixth lines stand to the third. It is +with the third line they must go, not with the seventh, with which a +slightly different thought is introduced. 'Mark the picture of Christ +in thy heart and ask, can that countenance affright thee in whose eyes +the light of anger is quenched in tears, the furrows of whose frowns +are filled with blood.' Then, from the countenance Donne's thought +turns to the tongue. The full stop, accidentally dropped after 'fell' +in the editions of <i>1633</i> and <i>1635</i>, was restored in <i>1639</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 14. <i>assures.</i> In this case the MSS. enable us to correct an +obvious error of <i>all</i> the printed editions.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">329</span>, <a name="pageii.234b" id="pageii.234b"></a>XVI. 9. <i>Yet such are thy laws.</i> I have adopted +the reading 'thy' of the Westmoreland and some other MSS. because +the sense seems to require it. 'These' and 'those' referring to the +same antecedent make a harsh construction. 'Thy laws necessarily +transcend the limits of human capacity and therefore some doubt +whether these conditions of our salvation can be fulfilled by men. +They cannot, but grace and spirit revive what law and letter kill.'</p> + +<p>l. 11. <i>None doth; but all-healing grace and spirit.</i> I have dropped +the 'thy' of the editions, following all the MSS. I have no doubt +that 'thy' has been inserted: (1) It spoils the rhyme: 'spirit' has +to rhyme with 'yet', which is impossible unless the accent may fall +on the second syllable; (2) 'thy' has been inserted, as 'spirit' has +been spelt with a capital letter, under the impression that 'spirit' +stands for the Divine Spirit, the Holy Ghost. But obviously 'spirit' +is opposed to 'letter' as 'grace' is to 'law'. In <i>W</i> both 'grace' +and 'spirit' are spelt with capitals. Either both or neither must +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.235" id="pageii.235"></a>[pg 235]</span> +be so treated. 'Who also hath made us able ministers of the new +testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, +but the spirit giveth life.' 2 Cor. iii. 6.</p> + +<p>If 'thy' is to be retained, then 'spirit' must be pronounced 'sprit'. +Commentators on Shakespeare declare that this happens, but it is +very difficult to prove it. When Donne needs a monosyllable he +uses 'spright'; 'spirit' he rhymes as disyllable with 'merit'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.235a" id="pageii.235a"></a><span class="bb">330</span>, XVII. 1. <i>she whom I lov'd.</i> This is the +reference to his wife's death which dates these poems. Anne More, Donne's +wife, died on August 15, 1617, on the seventh day after the birth of +her twelfth child. She was buried in the church of St. Clement +Danes. Her monument disappeared when the Church was rebuilt. +The inscription ran:</p> + +<table summary="Inscription from Anne (More) Donne's inscription" border="0"> + +<tr> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> + <td class="rightq" rowspan="5"><img src="images/leftbraced.png" width="20" height="100" alt="left brace" /></td> + <td class="centerq"><span class="sc">Annae</span></td> + <td class="leftq" rowspan="5"><img src="images/rightbraced.png" width="20" height="100" alt="right brace" /></td> + <td> </td> + <td> </td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="rightqz"><span class="sc">Georgii</span></td> + <td class="leftq" rowspan="4"><img src="images/rightbracef.png" width="20" height="70" alt="right brace" /></td> + + <td class="centerq"><span class="sc">More</span> de</td> + + <td class="rightq" rowspan="4"><img src="images/leftbracef.png" width="20" height="70" alt="left brace" /></td> + <td class="leftqz">Filiae</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="rightqz"><span class="sc">Robert</span></td> + + <td class="centerq">Lothesley</td> + + <td class="leftqz">Soror.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="rightqz"><span class="sc">Wilielmi</span></td> + + <td class="centerq">Equitum</td> + + <td class="leftqz">Nept.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="rightqz"><span class="sc">Christopheri</span></td> + + <td class="centerq">Aurator</td> + + <td class="leftqz">Pronept.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Foeminae lectissimae, dilectissimaeq'</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Conjugi charissimae, castissimaeq'</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Matri piissimae, indulgentissimaeq'</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">xv annis in conjugio transactis,</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">vii post xii partum (quorum vii superstant) dies</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">immani febre correptae</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">(quod hoc saxum fari jussit</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Ipse prae dolore infans)</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Maritus (miserrimum dictu) olim charae charus</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">cineribus cineres spondet suos,</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">novo matrimonio (annuat Deus) hoc loco sociandos,</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">JOHANNE DONNE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Sacr: Theol: Profess:</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Secessit</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">An<sup>o</sup> xxxiii aetat. suae et sui Jesu</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerqm" colspan="7">CI<ins title="Transcriber's Note: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>. DC. XVII.</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="centerq" colspan="7">Aug. xv</td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p>XVIII. <a name="pageii.235b" id="pageii.235b"></a>It is clear enough why this sonnet was not published. +It would have revealed Donne, already three years in orders, as still +conscious of all the difficulties involved in a choice between the three +divisions of Christianity—Rome, Geneva (made to include Germany), +and England. This is the theme of his earliest serious poem, the +<i>Satyre III</i>, and the subject recurs in the letters and sermons. Donne +entered the Church of England not from a conviction that it, and it +alone, was the true Church, but because he had first reached the +position that there is salvation in each: 'You know I never fettered +nor imprisoned the word Religion; not straitening it Frierly <i>ad +Religiones factitias</i>, (as the <i>Romans</i> call well their orders of Religion) +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.236" id="pageii.236"></a>[pg 236]</span> +nor immuring it in a Rome, or a <i>Wittenberg</i>, or a <i>Geneva</i>; they are +all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they find clay hearts, +they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender +and mollifie waxen. They are not so contrary as the North and +South Poles; and that they are connatural pieces of one circle.' +<i>Letters</i>, p. 29. From this position it was easy to pass to the view that, +this being so, the Church of England may have special claims on <i>me</i>, +as the Church of my Country, and to a recognition of its character +as primitive, and as offering a <i>via media</i>. As such it attracted +Casaubon and Grotius. But the Church of England never made the +appeal to Donne's heart and imagination it did to George Herbert:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Beautie in thee takes up her place</p> +<p>And dates her letters from thy face</p> +<p class="i6">When she doth write.</p> +<p class="i24">Herbert, <i>The British Church</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Compare, however, the rest of Donne's poem with Herbert's description +of Rome and Geneva, and also: 'Trouble not thy selfe to know the +formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches; neither of a +Church in the Lake, nor a Church upon seven hils'. <i>Sermons</i> 80. +76. 769.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 331. <span class="sc">The Crosse.</span><a name="pageii.236a" id="pageii.236a"></a></h3> + +<p>Donne has evidently in view the aversion of the Puritan to the sign +of the cross used in baptism.</p> + +<p>With the latter part of the poem compare George Herbert's +<i>The Crosse</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">332</span>, l. 27. <i>extracted chimique medicine.</i> Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Only in this one thing, be no Galenist; To make</p> +<p>Courts hot ambitions wholesome, do not take</p> +<p>A dramme of Countries dulnesse; do not adde</p> +<p>Correctives, but as chymiques, purge the bad.</p> +<p class="i22"><i>Letters to, &c.</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.182">182</a>, ll. 59-62.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>ll. 33-4.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><i>As perchance carvers do not faces make,</i></p> +<p><i>But that away, which hid them there, do take.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'To make representations of men, or of other creatures, we finde two +wayes; Statuaries have one way, and Painters have another: Statuaries +doe it by Substraction; They take away, they pare off some parts of +that stone, or that timber, which they work upon, and then that which +they leave, becomes like that man, whom they would represent: +Painters doe it by Addition; Whereas the cloth or table presented +nothing before, they adde colours, and lights, and shadowes, and so +there arises a representation.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 44. 440.</p> + +<p>Norton compares Michelangelo's lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto</p> +<p>Ch' un marmo solo in se non circonscriva</p> +<p>Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva</p> +<p>La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.237" id="pageii.237"></a>[pg 237]</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">333</span>, l. 47. <i>So with harsh, &c.</i> Chambers, I do not +know why, punctuates this line:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest;</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This disguises the connexion of 'cross' with its adverbial qualifications. +The meaning is that as we cross the eye by making it contemplate +'bad objects' so we must cross the rest, i.e. the other +senses, with harsh (the ear), hard (touch), sour (the taste), and +stinking (the sense of smell). The asceticism of Donne in his later +life is strikingly evidenced in such lines as these.</p> + +<p>l. 48. I have made an emendation here which seems to me to +combine happily the text of <i>1633</i> and that of the later editions. It +seems to me that <i>1633</i> has dropped 'all', <i>1635-69</i> have dropped +'call'. +I thought the line as I give it was in <i>O'F</i>, but found on inquiry I had +misread the collation. I should withdraw it, but cannot find it in +my heart to do so.</p> + +<p>l. 52. <i>Points downewards.</i> I think the MS. reading is probably +right, because (1) 'Pants' is the same as 'hath palpitation'; (2) Donne +alludes to the anatomy of the heart, in the same terms, in the <i>Essayes +in Divinity</i>, p. 74 (ed. Jessop, 1855): 'O Man, which art said to be +the epilogue, and compendium of all this world, and the Hymen and +matrimonial knot of eternal and mortal things ... and was made by +God's hands, not His commandment; and hast thy head erected to +heaven, and all others to the centre, that yet only thy heart of all +others points downward, and only trembles.'</p> + +<p>The reference in each case is to the anatomy of the day: 'The +figure of it, as Hippocrates saith in his Booke <i>de Corde</i> is Pyramidall, +or rather turbinated and somewhat answering to the proportion of a +Pine Apple, because a man is broad and short chested. For the +Basis above is large and circular but not exactly round, and after it +by degrees endeth in a cone or dull and blunt round point ... His +lower part is called the Vertex or top, <i>Mucro</i> or point, the Cone, the +heighth of the heart. Hippocrates calleth it the taile which Galen +saith ... is the basest part, as the Basis is the noblest.' Helkiah +Crooke: <ins title="Greek: MIKROKOSMOGRAPHIA">ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ</ins>, +<i>A Description of the Body of +Man, &c.</i> (1631), Book I, chap. ii, <i>Of the Heart</i>.</p> + +<p>'The heart therefore is called <ins title="Greek: kardia ano tou kerdainesthai">καρδία ἀπὸ +τοῦ +κερδαίνεσθαι</ins>, +(<i>sic. i.e.</i> <ins title="Greek: kradainesthai"> +κραδαίνεσθαι</ins>) which signifieth <i>to beate</i> because it is +perpetually moved from the ingate to the outgate of life.' <i>Ibid.</i>, Book VII, <i>The Preface</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 53. <i>dejections.</i> Donne uses both the words given here: 'dejections +of spirit,' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 13. 102; and 'these detorsions have +small force, but (as sunbeams striking obliquely, or arrows diverted +with a twig by the way) they lessen their strength, being turned upon +another mark than they were destined to,' <i>Essays in Divinity</i> +(Jessop), p. 42.</p> + +<p>l. 61. <i>fruitfully.</i> The improved sense, as well as the unanimity +of the MSS., justifies the adoption of this reading. A preacher +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.238" id="pageii.238"></a>[pg 238]</span> +may deal 'faithfully' with his people. The adverb refers to his action, +not its result in them. The Cross of Christ, in Donne's view, must +always deal faithfully; whether its action produces fruit depends on +our hearts.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 334. <span class="sc">The Annuntiation and Passion.</span></h3> + +<p>The MSS. add 'falling upon one day Anno Dñi 1608'; i.e. +March 25, 160<small><sup>8</sup></small>⁄<small>9</small>. George Herbert wrote some Latin verses <i>In +Natales et Pascha concurrentes</i>, and Sir John Beaumont an English +poem 'Vpon the two great feasts of the Annuntiation and Resurrection +falling on the same day, March 25, 1627'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 336. <span class="sc">Good Friday.</span><a name="pageii.238a" id="pageii.238a"></a></h3> + +<p>l. 2. <i>The intelligence</i>: i.e. the angel. Each sphere has its angel or +intelligence that moves and directs it. Grosart quotes the arrangement,—the +Sun, Raphael; the Moon, Gabriel; Mercury, Michael; +Mars, Chemuel; Jupiter, Adahiel; Venus, Haniel; Saturn, Zaphiel.</p> + +<p>l. 4. <i>motions.</i> Nothing is more easy and common than the dropping +of the final 's', which in writing was indicated by little more than +a stroke. The reference is to the doctrine of cycles and epicycles.</p> + +<p>l. 13. <i>But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall.</i> Grosart +and Chambers adopt the reading 'his Crosse' of <i>1635-69</i>, the former +without any reference to the alternative reading. Professor Norton, +in the Grolier Club edition, prints this, but in a note at the end +remarks' that all editions after that of 1633 give this verse, correctly,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>But that Christ on his cross did rise and fall'.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The agreement of the later editions is of little importance. They too +often agree to go wrong. The balance of the MS. evidence is on the +side of <i>1633</i>. To me 'this' seems the more vivid and pointed reading. +The line must be taken in close connexion with what precedes. 'If +I turned to the East,' says Donne, 'I should see Christ lifted on to +his Cross to die, a Sun by rising set. And unless Christ had consented +to rise and set on <i>this</i> Crosse (this Crosse which I should +see in vision if I turned my head), which was raised this day, Sin +would have eternally benighted all.'</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>turne all spheres.</i> The 'tune all speares' of the editions +and some MSS. is tempting because of (as it is doubtless due to) the +Platonic doctrine of the music of the spheres. But Donne was more +of a Schoolman and Aristotelian than a Platonist, and I think there +can be little doubt that he is describing Christ as the 'first mover'. +On the other hand 'tune' may include 'turne'. The Dutch poet +translates:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Die 't Noord en Zuyder-punt bereicken,</p> +<p class="i12">daer Sy 't spanden</p> +<p>Er geven met een' draeg elck Hemel-rond</p> +<p class="i12">sijn toon.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.239" id="pageii.239"></a>[pg 239]</span></p> +<p>The idea that the note of each is due to the rate at which it is spun +is that of Plato, <i>The Republic</i>, x.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 338. THE LITANIE.</h3> + +<p>In a letter to Goodyere written apparently in 1609 or 1610, +Donne says: 'Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made +a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know +imports no other then supplication, but all Churches have one forme +of supplication, by that name. Amongst ancient annals I mean +some 800 years, I have met two Litanies in Latin verse, which +gave me not the reason of my meditations, for in good faith I +thought not upon them then, but they give me a defence, if any +man, to a Lay man, and a private, impute it as a fault, to take such +divine and publique names, to his own little thoughts. The first +of these was made by Ratpertus a Monk of Suevia; and the other +by S. Notker, of whom I will give you this note by the way, that he +is a private Saint, for a few Parishes; they were both but monks and +the Letanies poor and barbarous enough; yet Pope Nicolas the 5, +valued their devotion so much, that he canonized both their Poems, +and commanded them for publike service in their Churches: mine +is for lesser Chappels, which are my friends, and though a copy of +it were due to you, now, yet I am so unable to serve my self with +writing it for you at this time (being some 30 staves of 9 lines) that +I must intreat you to take a promise that you shall have the first, +for a testimony of that duty which I owe to your love, and to my +self, who am bound to cherish it by my best offices. That by which +it will deserve best acceptation, is, that neither the Roman Church +need call it defective, because it abhors not the particular mention +of the blessed Triumphers in heaven; nor the Reformed can discreetly +accuse it, of attributing more then a rectified devotion +ought to doe.'</p> + +<p>The Litanies referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere may be read +in Migne's <i>Patrologia Latina</i>, vol. lxxxvii, col. 39 and 42. They are +certainly barbarous enough. That of Ratpertus is entitled <i>Litania +Ratperti ad processionem diebus Dominicis</i>, and begins:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Ardua spes mundi, solidator et inclyte coeli</p> +<p class="i2">Christe, exaudi nos propitius famulos.</p> +<p>Virgo Dei Genetrix rutilans in honore perennis,</p> +<p class="i2">Ora pro famulis, sancta Maria, tuis.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The other is headed <i>Notkeri Magistri cognomento Balbuli Litania +rhythmica</i>, and opens thus:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Votis supplicibus voces super astra feramus,</p> +<p class="i2">Trinus ut et simplex nos regat omnipotens.</p> +<p>Sancte Pater, adiuva nos, Sancte Fili, adiuva nos,</p> +<p class="i2">Compar his et Spiritus, ungue nos intrinsecus.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.240" id="pageii.240"></a>[pg 240]</span></p> +<p>Michael, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen, martyrs and +virgins, are appealed to in both. There are some differences in respect +of particular saints invoked.</p> + +<p>It is interesting also to compare Donne's series of petitions with +those in a Middle English Litany preserved in the Balliol Coll. MS. 354 +(published by Edward Flügel in <i>Anglia</i> xxv. 220). The poetry is very +poor and I need not quote. The interesting feature is the list of +petitions 'Vnto the ffader', 'ye sonne', 'ye holy gost', 'the trinite', +'our lady', 'ye angelles'. 'ye propre angell', 'John baptist', 'ye +appostiles', 'ye martires', 'the confessours', 'ye virgins', 'unto all +sayntes'. Donne, it will be observed, includes the patriarchs and the +prophets, but omits any reference to a guardian angel and to the +saints. Other references in his poems and sermons show that he +had the thought of a guardian angel often in his mind: 'As that Angel, +which God hath given to protect thee, is not weary of his office, +for all thy perversenesses, so, howsoever God deale with thee, be not +thou weary of bearing thy part, in his Quire here in the Militant +Church.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 44. 440.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">339</span>, l. 34.</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i6"><i>a such selfe different instinct</i></p> +<p><i>Of these;</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'As the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished as Power +(The Father), Knowledge (The Son), Love (The Holy Ghost), and +are yet identical, not three but one, may in me power, love, and +knowledge be thus at once distinct and identical.' The comma after +'these' in <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> was accidentally dropped. In +<i>1635-69</i> +a comma was then interpolated after 'instinct' and 'Of these' was +connected with what follows: 'Of these let all mee elemented bee,' +'these' being made to point forward to the next line. Chambers and +the Grolier Club editor both read thus. But <i>D</i>, <i>H49</i>, <i>Lec</i> +show +what was the original punctuation. Without 'Of these' it is difficult +to give a precise meaning to 'instinct'. It would be easy to change +'a such' to 'such a' with most of the MSS., but Donne seems to +have affected this order. Compare <i>Elegie X: The Dreame</i>, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.95">95</a>, +l. 17:</p> + +<div class="poem width18"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>After a such fruition I shall wake.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">341</span>, l. 86. <i>In Abel dye.</i> Abel was to the early +Church a type of Christ, as being the first martyr.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">343</span>, ll. 122-4. One might omit the brackets in these lines +and substitute a semicolon after 'hearken too' and a comma after +'and do', and make the sense clearer. The MSS. bear evidence to +their difficulty. There is certainly no call for brackets as we use +them, and the 1633 edition is more sparing of them in this poem +than the later editions. What Donne says is: 'While this quire' +(enumerated in the previous stanzas) 'prays for us and thou hearkenest +to them, let not us whose duty is to pray, to endure patiently, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.241" id="pageii.241"></a>[pg 241]</span> +and to do thy will, trust in their prayers so far as to forget our +duty of obedience and service.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">347</span>, l. 231. <i>Which well, if we starve, dine</i>: 'well' +has the support of all the MSS. and may be the adverb placed before its +verb. 'If we starve they dine well.' In this wire-drawn and +tormented poem it is hard to say what Donne may not have written. +Most of the editors read 'will', and this appears in some copies +of <i>1633</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 243. <i>Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry.</i> The 'cry' +of the editions is surely right. God is at once the source of our +prayers and their answerer. Our prayers are echoes of what His +grace inspires in our hearts. The 'eye' of <i>S</i> and other MSS., which +also read 'wretches' for 'ecchoes', is due to a misapprehension of the +condensed thought, and 'eye' with 'ecchoes' is entirely irrelevant. +<i>JC</i> tries another emendation: 'Oh thou heare our cry.'</p> + +<p>'Every man who prostrates himselfe in his chamber, and poures +out his soule in prayer to God;... though his faith assure him, +that God hath granted all that he asked upon the first petition of +his prayer, yea before he made it, (for God put that petition in to +his heart and mouth, and moved him to aske it, that thereby he +might be moved to grant it), yet as long as the Spirit enables him +he continues his prayer,' &c. <i>Sermons</i> 80. 77. 786.</p> + +<p>But indeed we do not need to go to the <i>Sermons</i> to see that this +is Donne's meaning. He has emphasized it already in this poem: +e.g. in Stanza xxiii:</p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Heare us, for till thou heare us, Lord</p> +<p class="i2">We know not what to say:</p> +<p>Thine eare to'our sighes, teares, thoughts gives voice and word.</p> +<p>O Thou who Satan heard'st in Jobs sicke day,</p> +<p>Heare thy selfe now, for thou in us dost pray.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'But in things of this kind (i.e. sermons), that soul that inanimates +them never departs from them. The Spirit of God that dictates them +in the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets +him again (as we meet ourselves in a glass) in the eyes and ears and +hearts of the hearers and readers.' Gosse, <i>Life, &c.</i>, i. 123: To ... the +Countess of Montgomery.</p> + +<p>'God cannot be called a cry', Grosart says; but St. Paul so describes +the work of the Spirit: 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, +for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit +itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be +uttered. And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind +of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according +to the will of God.' Calvin thus closes his note on the passage: +'Atque ita locutus est Paulus quo significantius id totum tribueret +Spiritus gratiae. Iubemur quidem pulsare, sed nemo sponte praemeditari +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.242" id="pageii.242"></a>[pg 242]</span> +vel unam syllabam poterit, nisi arcano Spiritus sui instinctu +nos Deus pulset, adeoque sibi corda nostra aperiat.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">348</span>, l. 246. <i>Gaine to thy self, or us allow.</i> If we +perish neither Christ nor we have gained anything. Both have died in vain. +If 'and' is substituted for 'or' in this line (<i>1635-69</i> and Chambers) +then the next line becomes otiose.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 348. <span class="sc">Upon the translation of the Psalmes</span>, &c.</h3> + +<p>We do not know what was the occasion of these lines. The +Countess was the mother of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and +Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and of Pembroke after his +brother's death. Poems by the former are frequently found with +Donne's, e.g. in the Hawthornden MS. which is made from a collection +in Donne's own possession. Doubtless they were known to one +another, but there is no evidence of intimacy, such as letters. To +the Countess of Montgomery Donne in 1619 sent a copy of one of +his sermons which she had asked for (Gosse, <i>Life, &c</i>., ii. 123). It +may have been for her that he composed this poem.</p> + +<p>An elaborate copy of the Psalms was prepared by John Davis of +Hereford. From this they were published in 1822.</p> + +<p>From l. 53 it is evident that Donne's poem was written after the +death of the Countess of Pembroke in 1621.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">349</span>, l. 38. <i>So well attyr'd abroad, so ill at home.</i> +Donne has probably in mind the French versions of Clement Marot, which +were the war-songs of the Huguenots.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 351. <span class="sc">To Mr. Tilman.</span><a name="pageii.242a" id="pageii.242a"></a></h3> + +<p>Of Mr. Tilman I can find no trace in printed Oxford or Cambridge +registers. The poem is a strange comment on the seventeenth +century's estimate of the clergy:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">Why do they think unfit</p> +<p>That Gentry should joyne families with it?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In his <i>Life of George Herbert</i> Walton tells us of Herbert's resolution +to enter the Church, and the opposition he met with: 'He did, at his +return to London, acquaint a Court-friend with his resolution to enter +into <i>Sacred Orders</i>, who perswaded him to alter it, as too mean an +employment, and too much below his birth, and the excellent abilities +and endowments of his mind. To whom he replied, '<i>It hath been +formerly judg'd that the Domestick Servants of the King of Heaven, should +be of the noblest Families on Earth: and, though the Iniquity of the late +Times have made Clergy-men meanly valued, and the sacred name of +Priest contemptible; yet, I will labour to make it honourable, by +consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities, to advance the +Glory of that God that gave them.</i>' This estimate of the clergy must +not be overlooked when considering the struggle that went on in +Donne's mind too before he crossed the Rubicon.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">352</span>, l. 43. <i>As Angels out of clouds, &c.</i> Walton +doubtless <span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.243" id="pageii.243"></a>[pg 243]</span> +had this line in his mind when he described Donne's own preaching: +'A Preacher in earnest, weeping sometimes for his Auditory, sometimes +with them, alwayes preaching to himselfe, like an Angel from +a cloud, though in none: carrying some (as S. Paul was) to heaven, +in holy raptures; enticing others, by a sacred art and courtship, +to amend their lives; and all this with a most particular grace, and +un-imitable fashion of speaking.'</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 352. <span class="sc">A Hymne To Christ.</span></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">353</span>, ll. 9-12. Perhaps the rhetoric of these lines would be +improved by shifting the semicolon from l. 10 to l. 11. 'In putting, +at thy behest, the seas between my friends and me, I sacrifice them +unto thee: Do thou put thy,' &c. As the verse stands the connexion +between the first two lines and the next is a little vague.</p> + +<p>l. 12. <i>thy sea</i>. I have adopted 'sea' from the MSS. in place of +'seas' <i>1633</i>. It was easy for the printer to take over 'seas' from the +preceding line, but 'sea' is the more pointed word. The sea is the +blood of Christ. The 1635-69 editions indeed read 'blood', which is +as though a gloss had crept in from the margin. More probably +'blood' was a first version, changed by a bold metaphor to a more +striking antithesis.</p> + +<p>Miss Spearing has drawn my attention, since writing this note, to +the peroration of <i>A Sermon of Valediction at my going into Germany, +at Lincolns-Inne, April</i> 18, 1619, which I had overlooked. It confirms +the rightness of 'sea'. The whole passage is of interest in +connexion with this poem: 'Now to make up a circle, by returning +to our first word, remember: As we remember God, so for his sake, +let us remember one another. In my long absence, and far distance +from hence, remember me, as I shall do you in the ears of that God, +to whom the farthest East, and the farthest West are but as the right +and left ear in one of us; we hear with both at once, and he hears in +both at once; remember me, not my abilities; for when I consider +my Apostleship that I was sent to you, I am in St. Pauls <i>quorum, +quorum ego sum minimus</i>, the least of them that have been sent; and +when I consider my infirmities, I am in his <i>quorum</i>, in another +commission, another way, <i>Quorum ego maximus</i>; the greatest of +them; but remember my labors, and endeavors, at least my desire, +to make sure your salvation. And I shall remember your religious +cheerfulness in hearing the word, and your christianly respect towards +all them that bring that word unto you, and towards myself in +particular far bove my merit. And so as your eyes that stay here, +and mine that must be far of, for all that distance shall meet every +morning, in looking upon that same Sun, and meet every night, in +looking upon the same Moon; so our hearts may meet morning and +evening in that God, which sees and hears everywhere; that you +may come thither to him with your prayers, that I, (if I may be of +use for his glory, and your edification in this place) may be restored +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.244" id="pageii.244"></a>[pg 244]</span> +to you again; and may come to him with my prayer that what <i>Paul</i> +soever plant amongst you, or what <i>Apollos</i> soever water, God himself +will give us the increase: That if I never meet you again till we +have all passed the gate of death, yet in the gates of heaven, I may +meet you all, and there say to my Saviour and your Saviour, that +which he said to his Father and our Father, <i>Of those whom thou hast +given me, have I not lost one</i>. Remember me thus, you that stay in +this Kingdome of peace, where no sword is drawn, but the sword of +Justice, as I shal remember you in those Kingdomes, where ambition +on one side, and a necessary defence from unjust persecution on the +other side hath drawn many swords; and Christ Jesus remember us +all in his Kingdome, to which, <i>though we must sail through a sea, it +is the sea of his blood</i>, where no soul suffers shipwrack; though we +must be blown with strange winds, with sighs and groans for our sins, +yet it is the Spirit of God that blows all this wind, and shall blow +away all contrary winds of diffidence or distrust in God's mercy; +where we shall be all Souldiers of one army, the Lord of Hostes, and +Children of one Quire, the God of Harmony and consent: where all +Clients shall retain but one Counsellor, our Advocate Christ Jesus, +nor present him any other fee but his own blood, and yet every +Client have a Judgment on his side, not only in a not guilty, in the +remission of his sins, but in a <i>Venite benedicti</i>, in being called to the +participation of an immortal Crown of glory: where there shall be no +difference in affection, nor in mind, but we shall agree as fully and +perfectly in our <i>Allelujah</i>, and <i>gloria in excelsis</i>, as God the +Father, Son, and Holy Ghost agreed in the <i>faciamus hominem</i> at first; where +we shall end, and yet begin but then; where we shall have continuall +rest, and yet never grow lazie; where we shall be stronger to resist, +and yet have no enemy; where we shall live and never die, where +we shall meet and never part.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 19. 280.</p> + +<p>l. 28. <i>Fame, Wit, Hopes, &c.</i> Compare: 'How ill husbands then +of this dignity are we by <i>sinne</i>, to forfeit it by submitting our selves +to inferior things? either to <i>gold</i>, then which every worme, (because +a worme hath life, and gold hath none) is in nature more estimable, +and more precious; Or, to that which is lesse than gold, to Beauty; +for there went neither labour, nor study, nor cost to the making of +that; (the Father cannot diet himselfe so, nor the mother so, as to be +sure of a faire child) but it is a thing that hapned by chance, wheresoever +it is; and, as there are Diamonds of divers waters, so men +enthrall themselves in one clime to a black, in another to a white +beauty. To that which is lesse then <i>gold</i> or <i>Beauty</i>, <i>voice</i>, +<i>opinion</i>, +<i>fame</i>, <i>honour</i>, we sell our selves.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 38. 352.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 354. <span class="sc">The Lamentations of Jeremy.</span><a name="pageii.244a" id="pageii.244a"></a></h3> + +<p>Immanuel Tremellius was born in the Ghetto of Ferrara in 1510. +His father was apparently a Jewish surgeon, a man of distinction in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.245" id="pageii.245"></a>[pg 245]</span> +the Jewish community. Educated as a Jew, Tremellius became a +Christian about the age of twenty, and, under the influence of the +Protestant movement which was agitating Italy as well as other +countries, a Calvinist. When persecution began Tremellius fled from +Lucca, where he had taught Hebrew under the reformer Vermigli, to +Strasburg, and thereafter his life was that of the wandering, often +fugitive, scholar and reformer. He was invited to England by +Cranmer in 1548, and held the Professorship of Hebrew at +Cambridge until 1553. The accession of Mary drove him back to +the Continent, and he was tutor to the children of the Duke of +Zweibrüchen from 1554 to 1558, and rector of the Gymnasium at +Hornbach from 1558 to 1560. The Duke became a Lutheran, and +Tremellius was exiled, but found after a year or two a haven in the +University of Heidelberg, where Duke Frederick III had rallied to +the Calvinist cause. Tremellius was Professor of Theology here +from 1562-77, and it was here that he issued most of his works. He +had already published a Hebrew version of the Genevan Catechism +intended for his Jewish brethren. The works issued at Heidelberg +include a Chaldaic and Syriac Grammar, an edition of the Peschito +(an old Syrian version of the New Testament), and the Latin +translation of the Old Testament which Donne utilized for his +paraphrase. In this work he was assisted by his son-in-law Francis +Junius (father of the Anglo-Saxon and Antiquarian scholar), a native +of Bourges, who had served as a field-preacher under William the +Silent. Junius was responsible only for the Apocrypha, so that Donne +rightly mentions Tremellius alone. The work was published at +Frankfort in 1575-9; in London in 1580, 1581, and 1585; at Geneva +in 1590 and 1617. In the Genevan editions it was coupled with +Beza's translation of the New Testament. The whole was re-issued +at Hanover as late as 1715.</p> + +<p>Duke Frederick III's successor was a Lutheran, and Tremellius +was driven into exile once more in 1577. His last years were spent +as teacher in the Academy instituted by Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, +Vicomte de Turenne, in Sedan. Here he died in 1580.</p> + +<p>I have compared Donne's version throughout with both Tremellius' +translation and the Vulgate, and wherever the collation helps to fix +the text I have quoted their readings in the textual notes. I add +here one or two more quotations from the originals. Tremellius' +version was accompanied, it must be remembered, with an elaborate +commentary.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">356</span>, l. 58. <i>accite</i>, the reading of <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i> as +well as <i>1635-69</i>, +I have not yet found elsewhere in Donne's works, but doubtless it +occurs. Shakespeare uses it once:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He by the Senate is accited home</p> +<p>From weary wars against the barbarous Goths.</p> +<p class="i18"> <i>Tit. Andr.</i> I. i. 27-8.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.246" id="pageii.246"></a>[pg 246]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width27"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 75-6. <i>for they sought for meat</i></p> +<p class="i4"><i>Which should refresh their soules, they could not get</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Chambers has printed this poem from <i>1639</i>, noting occasionally the +readings of <i>1635</i> and <i>1650</i>, but ignoring consistently those of <i>1633</i>. +Here <i>1633</i> has the support of <i>N</i>, <i>TCD</i>; <i>B</i> reads 'they none could +get'; and <i>O'F</i>, if I may trust my collation, agrees with <i>1635-69;</i> +Grolier follows <i>1633</i> but conjectures 'the sought-for meat'. This is +unnecessary. It is quite in Donne's style to close with an abrupt +'they could not get'. Modern punctuation would change the comma +to a semicolon. The version of Tremellius runs: 'Expirarunt quum +quaererent escam sibi, qua reficerent se ipsos.' The Vulgate, +'consumpti sunt, quia quaesierunt cibum sibi ut refocillarent +animum.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">357</span>, l. 81. <i>Of all which heare I mourne</i>: i.e. 'which +hear that I mourn.' The construction is harsh, and I was tempted for a +moment to adopt the 'me' of <i>N</i>, but Donne is translating Tremellius, +and 'me in gemitu esse' is not quite the same thing as 'me +gementem'. Grosart and Chambers and the Grolier Club editor +would not have followed <i>1639</i> in changing 'heare' to 'here' had they +consulted the original poem which Donne is paraphrasing in any +version. The Vulgate runs: 'Audierunt quia ingemisco ego, et non +est qui consoletur me.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">359</span>, l. 161. <i>poure, for thy sinnes</i>. The 'poure out +thy sinnes' of <i>1635-69</i> which Grosart and Chambers follow is obviously +wrong. The words 'for thy sinnes' have no counterpart in the Latin +of Tremellius or the Vulgate. The latter runs: 'Effunde sicut +aquam cor tuum ante conspectum Domini.'</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">360</span>, ll. 182-3. <i>hath girt mee in</i></p> +<p class="i4"><i>With hemlocke, and with labour</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Cingit cicuta et molestia, <i>Tremellius</i>: circumdedit me felle et labore, +<i>Vulgate</i>. Donne combines the two versions. He is fond of using +'hemlock' as the typical poison: and he tells Wotton in one of his +letters that to him labour or business is the worst of evils: 'I professe +that I hate businesse so much, as I am sometimes glad to remember, +that the <i>Roman Church</i> reads that verse <i>A negotio perambulante in +tenebris</i>, which we reade from the pestilence walking by night, so +equall to me do the plague and businesse deserve avoiding.' <i>Letters</i>, +p. 142. To Goodyere in like manner he writes, 'we who have been +accustomed to one another are like in this, that we love not businesse.' +<i>Letters</i>, p. 94.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">361</span>, l. 193. <i>the children of his quiver</i>. Donne found +this phrase in the Vulgate or in the margin of Tremellius. In the text of the +latter the verse runs, 'Immitit in renes meos tela pharetrae suae.' +The marginal note says, '<i>Heb.</i> filios, id est, prodeuntes a pharetra.' +The Vulgate reads, 'filias pharetrae suae.'</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.247" id="pageii.247"></a>[pg 247]</span></p> + +<p>l. 197. <i>drunke with wormewood</i>: 'inebriavit me absinthio,' <i>Tremellius +and Vulgate</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">362</span>, ll. 226-30. I have changed the full stop in l. 229, +'him', to a comma, for all these clauses are objective to 'the Lord +allowes not this'. The construction is modelled on the original: +'Non enim affligit ex animo suo, moestitiaque afficit filios viri. 34. +Conterere sub pedibus suis omnes vinctos terrae, 35. Detorquere +ius viri coram facie superioris, 36. Pervertere hominem in causa +sua, Dominus non probat.' The version of the Vulgate is similar: +'33. Non enim humiliavit ex corde suo, et abiecit filios hominum, +34. Ut contereret sub pedibus suis omnes vinctos terrae; 35. Ut +declinaret iudicium viri in conspectu vultus Altissimi; 36. Ut +perverteret hominem in iudicio suo; Dominus ignoravit.'</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">364</span>, l. 299. <i>their bone</i>. The reading of the editions +is probably right: 'Concreta est cutis eorum cum osse ipsorum,' +<i>Tremellius</i>.</p> + +<p>l. 302. <i>better through pierc'd then through penury</i>. I have no +doubt that the 'through penury' of the 1635-69 editions and the +MSS. is what Donne wrote. The 1633 editor changed it to 'by +penury'. Donne is echoing the parallelism of 'confossi gladio quam +confossi fame'. The Vulgate has simply 'Melius fuit occisio gladio +quam interfectio fame'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">366</span>, l. 337. <i>The annointed Lord, &c.</i> Chambers, to +judge +from his use of capital letters, evidently reads this verse as applying to +God,—'Th'Annointed Lord', 'under His shadow'. It is rather the +King of Israel. Tremellius's note runs: 'Id est, Rex noster e posteritate +Davidis, quo freti saltem nobis dabitur aliqua interspirandi +occasio in quibuslibet angustiis: nam praefidebant Judaei dignitati +illius regni, tamquam si pure et per seipsum fuisset stabile; non autem +spectabant Christum, qui finis est et complementum illius typi, neque +conditiones sibi imperatas.' 'The anointed of the Lord' is the +translation of the Revised Version. The Vulgate version seems to +indicate a prophetic reference, which may be what Chambers had in +view: 'Spiritus oris nostri, Christus Dominus, captus est in peccatis +nostris: In umbra tua vivemus in gentibus.' Donne took this verse +as the text of a Gunpowder Plot sermon in 1622. He points out +there that some commentators have applied the verse to Josiah, a +good king; others to Zedekiah, a bad king: 'We argue not, we dispute +not; we embrace that which arises from both, That both good +Kings and bad Kings ... are the anointed of the Lord, and the breath +of the nostrils, that is, the life of the people,' &c. James is 'the +Josiah of our times'. James had good reasons for preferring bishops +to Andrew Melville and other turbulent presbyters. But Donne, who +was steeped in the Vulgate, notes a possible reference to Christ: 'Or +if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation, occasioned by +the death of the King of Kings, Christ Jesus, when he came into the +world, this was their case <i>prophetically</i>.' <i>Sermons</i> 50. 43. 402.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.248" id="pageii.248"></a>[pg 248]</span></p> + +<p>l. 355. <i>wee drunke, and pay</i>: 'pecunia bibimus' <i>Tremellius and +Vulgate</i>: the Latin may be present or past tense, but the verse goes on +in the Vulgate, 'ligna nostra pretio comparavimus,' which shows that +'bibimus' is 'we drunk' or 'we have drunk'. The Authorized Version +reads 'we have drunken'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">367</span>, l. 374. <i>children fall</i>. 'Juvenes ad molendum +portant, et pueri ad ligna corruunt,' <i>Tremellius</i>; 'et pueri in ligno corruerunt,' +<i>Vulgate</i>. But the latter translates the first half of the line quite +differently.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 368. <span class="sc">Hymn To God my God, in my sicknesse.</span></h3> + +<p>The date which Walton gives for this poem, March 23, 1630, is of +course March 23, 1631, i.e. eight days before the writer's death. Donne's +tense and torturing will never relaxed its hold before the final +moment: Being speechlesse, he did (as Saint Stephen) look steadfastly +towards heaven, till he saw the Sonne of God standing at the +right hand of his Father; And being satisfied with this blessed sight, +(as his soule ascended, and his last breath departed from him) he +closed his owne eyes, and then disposed his hands and body into such +a posture, as required no alteration by those that came to shroud +him.' <i>Walton</i> (1670).</p> + +<p>Donne's monument had been designed by himself and shows him +thus shrouded. The epitaph too is his own composition and is the +natural supplement to this hymn:</p> + +<div class="center"><div class="content1"> +<h3 class="spaced3">JOHANNES DONNE</h3> +<p class="centersm">SAC. THEOL. PROFESS.</p> +<p class="centersm">POST VARIA STVDIA QVIBVS AB ANNIS</p> +<p class="centersm">TENERRIMIS FIDELITER, NEC INFELICITER</p> +<p class="centersm">INCVBVIT;</p> +<p class="centersm">INSTINCTV ET IMPVLSV SP. SANCTI, MONITV</p> +<p class="centersm">ET HORTATV</p> +<p class="centersm">REGIS JACOBI, ORDINES SACROS AMPLEXVS</p> +<p class="centersm">ANNO SVI JESV MDCXIV. ET SVÆ ÆTATIS XLII</p> +<p class="centersm">DECANATV HVJVS ECCLESIÆ INDVTVS</p> +<p class="centersm">XXVII NOVEMBRIS, MDCXXI.</p> +<p class="centersm">EXVTVS MORTE VLTIMO DIE MARTII MDCXXXI.</p> +<p class="centersm">HIC LICET IN OCCIDVO CINERE ASPICIT EVM</p> +<p class="centersm">CVJVS NOMEN EST ORIENS.</p> +</div></div> + +<p class="space-above2">The reference in the last line of the epitaph, and the figure of the +map with which he plays in the second and third stanzas of the +<i>Hymne</i> are both illustrated by a passage in a sermon on Psalm vi. +8-10: 'In a flat Map, there goes no more, to make West East, +though they be distant in an extremity, but to paste that flat Map +upon a round body, and then West and East are all one. In a flat +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.249" id="pageii.249"></a>[pg 249]</span> +soule, in a dejected conscience, in a troubled spirit, there goes no +more to the making of that trouble, peace, then to apply that trouble +to the body of the Merits, to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, +and conforme thee to him, and thy West is East, thy Trouble of +spirit is Tranquillity of spirit. The name of Christ is <i>Oriens</i>, <i>The +East</i>; And yet Lucifer himself is called <i>Filius Orientis</i>, <i>The Son of +the East</i>. If thou beest fallen by <i>Lucifer</i>, fallen to <i>Lucifer</i>, +and not fallen as <i>Lucifer</i>, to a senselessnesse of thy fall, and an +impenitiblenesse therein, but to a troubled spirit, still thy prospect is the East, still thy +Climate is heaven, still thy Haven is Jerusalem; for, in our lowest +dejection of all, even in the dust of the grave, we are so composed, so +layed down, as that we look to the East: If I could beleeve that +<i>Trajan</i>, or <i>Tecla</i>, could look Eastward, that is, towards Christ, in +Hell, I could beleeve with them of Rome, that Trajan and Tecla +were redeemed by prayer out of hell.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 55. 558.</p> + +<p>For 'the name of Christ is Oriens'. Donne refers in the margin +to <i>Zachariae</i> vi. 12: 'Et loqueris ad eum dicens: Haec ait Dominus +exercituum, dicens: <span class="sc">ECCE VIR ORIENS NOMEN EJUS</span>; et subter eum +orietur, et aedificabit templum Domino.' In the English versions, +Genevan and Authorized, the words run 'whose name is the Branch', +but to Donne the Vulgate was the form in which he knew the Scriptures +most intimately. At the same time he consulted and refers to +the English versions frequently: 'that which we call the <i>Bishops +Bible</i>, nor that which we call the <i>Geneva Bible</i>, and that which we +may call the <i>Kings</i>.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 50. 506.</p> + +<p>The difference between the two versions is due, I understand, to +the fact that the Hebrew participle 'rising' and the Hebrew word for +'branch' contain the same consonants. In unpointed Hebrew it +was, therefore, possible to confound them. The Septuagint version +is <ins title="Greek: Anatolê onoma autou">Ἀνατολὴ +ὄνομα αὐτοῦ</ins>.</p> + +<p>In describing the preparations for making Donne's tomb Walton +says: 'Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so +much of the sheet turned aside, as might show his lean, pale, and +deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from +whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour +Jesus.' Walton says that he stood, but Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has +pointed out that the drapery by its folds reveals that it was modelled +from a recumbent figure. Gosse, <i>Life, &c</i>., ii. 288.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 18-20. <i>Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltare,</i></p> +<p><i>All streights, and none but streights, are wayes to them.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Grosart and Chambers have boggled unnecessarily at these lines. +The former inserts an unnecessary and unmetrical 'are' after +'Gibraltare'. The latter interpolates a mark of interrogation after +'Gibraltare', putting 'Anyan, and Magellan and Gibraltare' on a level +with the Pacific, the 'eastern riches' and Jerusalem, i.e. <i>six</i> possible +homes instead of <i>three</i>. What the poet says is simply, 'Be my home +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.250" id="pageii.250"></a>[pg 250]</span> +in the Pacific, or in the rich east, or in Jerusalem, to each I must +sail through a strait, viz. Anyan (i.e. Behring Strait) if I go west by +the North-West passage, or Magellan, or Gibraltar. These, all of +which are straits, are ways to them, and none but straits are ways to +them.' A condensed construction makes 'are ways to them' +predicate to two subjects. For 'the straight of Anian' see Hakluyt's +<i>Principal Navigations</i>, vol. vii, Glasgow, 1904, esp. the map at p. 256, +which shows very distinctly how the 'Straight of Anian' was +conceived to separate America from 'Cathaia in Asia' and to lead +right on to Japan and the 'Ilandes of Moluccae', 'the eastern riches.' +The <i>Mare Pacificum</i> lies further to the south and east, entered by the +'Straight of Magellanes' between Peru and the 'Terra del Fuego', +which latter is not an island but part of the great 'Terra Australis'. +Thus 'none but straights' lead to the 'eastern riches' or the Pacific. +'Outre ce que les navigations des modernes ont des-jà presque +descouvert que ce n'est point une isle, ains terre ferme et continente +avec l'Inde orientale d'un costé, et avec les terres qui sont soubs les +deux poles d'autre part; ou, si elle en est separée, que c'est d'un si +petit destroit et intervalle, qu'elle ne merite pas d'estre nommé isle +pour cela.' Montaigne, <i>Essais</i>, i. 31: <i>Des Cannibales</i>.</p> + +<p>The conceit about the 'straits' Donne had already used: 'a +narrower way but to a better Land; thorow Straits; 'tis true; but to +the <i>Pacifique</i> Sea, The consideration of the treasure of the Godly +Man in this World, and God's treasure towards him, both in this, and +the next.' <i>Sermons</i> 26. 5. 71.</p> + +<p>'Who ever amongst our Fathers thought of any other way to the +Moluccaes, or to China, then by the Promontory of <i>Good Hope</i>? +Yet another way opened itself to <i>Magellan</i>; a Straite; it is true; but +yet a way thither; and who knows yet, whether there may not be +a North-East, and a North-West way thither, besides?' <i>Sermons</i> 80. +24. 241.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless by the time Donne wrote his hymn the sea to the +south of Terra del Fuego had recently been discovered. He is using +the language of a slightly earlier date, of his own youth, when travels +and far countries were much in his imagination. In 1617 George, +Lord Carew, writing to Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador at the Court of +the Mogul, says: 'The Hollanders have discovered to the southward +of the Strayghts of Magellen an open sea and free passage to the +south sea.' <i>Letters of George, Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Roe</i>, +Camden Society, 1860. For the 'Straight of Anyan' compare also:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>This makes the foisting traveller to sweare,</p> +<p>And face out many a lie within the yeere.</p> +<p>And if he have beene an howre or two aboarde</p> +<p>To spew a little gall: then by the Lord,</p> +<p>He hath beene in both th'Indias, East and West,</p> +<p>Talks of Guiana, China, and the rest,</p> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.251" id="pageii.251"></a>[pg 251]</span> +<p>The straights of Gibraltare, and Ænian</p> +<p>Are but hard by; no, nor the Magellane:</p> +<p>Mandeville, Candish, sea-experienst Drake</p> +<p>Came never neere him, if he truly crake.</p> +<p class="i18"> Gilpin, <i>Skialetheia</i>, Satyre I.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>For 'Ænian' in this passage Grosart conjectures 'Aegean'! I have +put a semicolon for a comma in the third last line quoted. I take it +and the preceding to be a quotation from the traveller's talk.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 369. <span class="sc">A Hymne To God the Father.</span></h3> + +<p>The text of the 1633 edition, which is, with one trifling exception, +that of the other printed editions, is followed by Walton in the first +short life of Donne prefixed to the <i>LXXX Sermons</i> (1640). Walton +probably took it from one of the 1633, 1635, or 1639 editions; but he +may have had a copy of the poem. The MSS. which contain the +hymn have some important differences, and instead of noting these as +variants or making a patchwork text I have thought it best to print +the poem as given in <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>O'F</i>, <i>S96</i>, <i>TCC</i>, +<i>TCD</i>. The six MSS. +represent three or perhaps two different sources if <i>O'F</i> and <i>S96</i> +are derived from a common original—(1) <i>A18</i>, <i>N</i>, <i>TC</i>, (2) +<i>S96</i>, (3) <i>O'F</i>. It is not likely, therefore, that their variants are simply +editorial emendations. In some respects their text seems to me to improve +on that of the printed editions.</p> + +<p><i>S96</i> and <i>O'F</i> differ from the third group in reading, at l. 5, 'I +have not done.' On the other hand, <i>A18</i> and <i>TC</i> at l. 4 read 'do them', +and at l. 15 'this sunne' (probably a misreading of 'thie'). It +seems to me that the readings of l. 2 ('is'), l. 3 ('those sinnes'), +l. 7 ('by which I won'), and l. 15 ('Sweare by thyself') are undoubtedly +improvements, and in a text constructed on the principle +adopted by Mr. Bullen in his anthologies I should adopt them. +Some of the other readings, e.g. l. 18 ('I have no more'), probably +belong to a first version of the poem and were altered by the poet +himself. <i>O'F</i>, which was prepared in 1632, strikes out 'have' and +writes 'fear' above. But in a seventeenth-century poem, circulating +in MS. and transcribed in commonplace-books, who can say which +emendations are due to the author, which to transcribers? Moreover, +the line 'I have no more', i.e. no more to ask, emphasizes the play +upon his own name which runs through the poem. 'I have no more' +is equivalent to 'I am Donne'.</p> + +<p>Walton in citing this hymn adds: 'I have the rather mentioned +this Hymn for that he caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn +tune and to be often sung to the Organ by the Choristers of St. Pauls +Church, in his own hearing, especially at the Evening Service; and +at his Customary Devotions in that place, did occasionally say to +a friend, The words of this Hymne have restored me to the same +thoughts of joy that possest my Soul in my sicknesse when I +composed it. And, O the power of Church-music! that Harmony +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.252" id="pageii.252"></a>[pg 252]</span> +added to it has raised the Affections of my heart, and quickened my +graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe, that I always return +from paying this publick duty of Prayer and Praise to God, with an +unexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave the world.'</p> + +<p>Walton does not tell us who composed the music he refers to, but +the following setting has been preserved in Egerton MS. 2013. The +composer is John Hillton (d. 1657), organist to St. Margaret's Church, +Westminster. See Grove's <i>Dictionary of Music</i>.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<p>As given here it has been corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:<br /><br /></p> + +<img src="images/music_252-500.png" width="500" height="651" alt="Musical notation with lyrics:" /></div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">Wilt thou for-give the sinnes where I be-gunne,</p> +<p class="i4">w<sup>c</sup>h is my sinne though it weare done be-fore,</p> +<p class="i2">wilt thou for-give those sinnes through w<sup>c</sup>h I runne,</p> +<p class="i4">& doe them still, though still I doe de-plore</p> +<p class="i2">when thou hast done, thou hast not done,</p> +<p class="i14">for I have more.</p> + </div> <div class="stanza"> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.253" id="pageii.253"></a>[pg 253]</span></p> + +<p>2 Wilt thou forgive y<sup>t</sup> sinne by w<sup>ch</sup> I won</p> +<p class="i4">Others to sinne & made my sinne their dore</p> +<p class="i2">Wilt thou forgive that sinne w<sup>ch</sup> I did shun</p> +<p class="i4">A yeare or two, but wallowed in a score</p> +<p class="i2">When thou hast done, thou hast not done</p> +<p class="i14">For I have more.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>3 I have a sinne of feare y<sup>t</sup> when I 'ave spun</p> +<p class="i4">My last thred I shall perish one y<sup>e</sup> shore</p> +<p class="i2">Sweare by thy selfe y<sup>t</sup> att my death thy son</p> +<p class="i4">Shall shine as he shines now & heartofore</p> +<p class="i2">And havinge done, thou hast done</p> +<p class="i14">I need noe more.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="author">John: Hillton.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="figcenter1"> +<a href="music/page_252_hymn.mid">midi file</a> +<a href="music/page_252_hymn.pdf">.pdf file</a></div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<p>The music has been thus harmonized for four voices by Professor +C. Sanford Terry:<br /></p> + +<img src="images/music_253-500.png" width="500" height="569" alt="musical notation" /></div> + +<div class="figcenter1"> +<a href="music/page_253_hymn.mid">midi file</a> +<a href="music/page_253_hymn.pdf">.pdf file</a></div> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.254" id="pageii.254"></a>[pg 254]</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">370</span>, ll. 7-8.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i10"><i>that sinne which I have wonne</i></p> +<p><i>Others to sinn? &c.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In a powerful sermon on Matthew xxi. 44, Donne enumerates this +among the curses that will overwhelm the sinner: 'There shall fall +upon him those sinnes which he hath done after anothers dehortation, +and those, which others have done after his provocation.' <i>Sermons</i> +50. 35. 319.</p> + +<h2>ELEGIES UPON THE AUTHOR.<a name="pageii.254a" id="pageii.254a"></a></h2> + +<p>The first and third of these <i>Elegies</i>, those by King and Hyde, were +affixed, without any signature, to <i>Deaths Duell, or A Consolation to +the Soule, against the dying Life, and living Death of the Body.... +By that late learned and Reverend Divine John Donne, D<sup>r</sup> in Divinity, +and Deane of S. Pauls, London. Being his last Sermon, and called by +his Maiesties houshold</i> <span class="sc">The Doctors owne Fvnerall Sermon</span>. +<i>London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Beniamin +Fisher, and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in Alders-gate +street.</i> 1632. The book was entered in the Stationers' Register to +Beniamin Fisher and Richard Redmer on the 30th of September, +1631, and was issued with a dedicatory letter by Redmer to his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.255" id="pageii.255"></a>[pg 255]</span> +sister 'M<sup>rs</sup> Elizabeth Francis of Brumsted in Norff' and a note +'To the Reader' signed 'R'. Now we know from his own statement +that King was Donne's executor and had been entrusted with his +sermons which at King's 'restless importunity' Donne had prepared +for the press. (Letter, dated 1664, prefixed to Walton's <i>Lives</i>, 1670.) +The sermons and papers thus consigned to King were taken from +him later at the instance apparently of Donne's son. But the presence +of King's epitaph in this edition of <i>Deaths Duell</i> seems to show that +he was responsible for, or at any rate permitted, the issue of the +sermon by Redmer and Fisher. The reappearance of these Elegies +signed, and accompanied by a number of others, suggests in like +manner that King <i>may</i> have been the editor behind Marriot of the +<i>Poems</i> in 1633. This would help to account for the general excellence +of the text of that edition, for King, a poet himself as well as an +intimate friend, was better fitted to edit Donne's poems than the +gentle and pious Walton, who was less in sympathy with the side of +Donne which his poetry reveals.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.255a" id="pageii.255a"></a>Of Henry King (1591-1669) poet, 'florid preacher', canon of +Christ Church, dean of Rochester, and in 1641 Bishop of Chichester +it is unnecessary to say more here. A fresh edition of his poems by +Professor Saintsbury is in preparation and will show how worthy a +disciple he was of Donne as love-poet, eulogist, and religious poet. +Probably the finest of his poems is <i>The Surrender</i>.</p> + +<p>It was to King also that Redmer was indebted for the frontispiece +to <i>Deaths Duell</i>, the picture of Donne in his shroud, reproduced in the +first volume. 'It was given', Walton says, 'to his dearest friend and +Executor D<sup>r</sup> King, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece +of white Marble, as it now stands in the Cathedral Church of St. Pauls.'</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.255b" id="pageii.255b"></a>The second of the <i>Elegies</i> in 1633 was apparently by the author of +the <i>Religio Medici</i> and must be his earliest published work, written +probably just after his return from the Continent. The lines were +withdrawn after the first edition.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.255c" id="pageii.255c"></a>The Edw. Hyde responsible for the third Elegy, 'On the death of +Dr. Donne,' is said by Professor Norton to be Edward Hyde, D.D. +(1607-59), son of Sir Lawrence Hyde of Salisbury. Educated at +Westminster School and Cambridge he became a notable Royalist +divine; had trouble with Parliament; and wrote various sermons +and treatises (see D.N.B.). 'A Latin poem by Hyde is prefixed to +Dean Duport's translation of Job into Greek verse (1637) and he contributed +to the "Cambridge Poems" some verses in celebration of the +birth of Princess Elizabeth.'</p> + +<p>It would be interesting to think that the author of the lines on +Donne was not the divine but his kinsman the subsequent Lord +Chancellor. There is this to be said for the hypothesis, that among +those who contribute to the collection of complimentary verses are +some of Clarendon's most intimate friends about this time, viz. +Thomas Carew, Sir Lucius Carie or Lord Falkland, and (but his elegy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.256" id="pageii.256"></a>[pg 256]</span> +appears first in 1635) Sidney Godolphin. The John Vaughan also, +whose MS. lines to Donne I have printed in the introduction (<i>Text and +Canon, &c.</i>, p. <a href="#pageii.lxiv">lxiv</a>, note<small> (9)</small>), is enrolled by Clarendon among his intimates +at this time. If his friends, legal and literary, were thus eulogizing +Donne, why should Hyde not have tried his hand too? However, +we know of no other poetical effusions by the historian, and as +these verses were first affixed with King's to <i>Deaths Duell</i> it is most +probable that their author was a divine.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.256a" id="pageii.256a"></a>The author of the fourth elegy, Dr. C. B. of O., is Dr. Corbet, +Bishop of Oxford (1582-1635). Walton reprinted the poem in the +<i>Lives</i> (1670) as 'by Dr. Corbet ... on his Friend Dr. Donne'. We +have no particulars regarding this friendship, but they were both +'wits' and their poems figure together in MS. collections. Ben Jonson +was an intimate of Corbet's, who was on familiar terms with all the +Jacobean wits and poets. For Corbet's life see D.N.B. His poems +are in Chalmers' collection.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.256b" id="pageii.256b"></a>The Hen. Valentine of the next Elegy matriculated at Christ's +College, Cambridge, in December, 1616, and proceeded B.A. in 1620/1, +M.A. 1624. He was incorporated at Oxford in 1628, where he took +the degree of D.D. in 1636. On the 8th of December, 1630, he was +appointed Rector of Deptford. He was either ejected under the +Commonwealth or died, for Mallory, his successor, was deprived in +1662. For this information I am indebted to the <i>Biographical +Register of Christ's College, 1505-1905, &c., compiled by John Peile ... +Master of the College</i>, 1910. Of works by him the British Museum +Catalogue contains <i>Foure Sea-Sermons preached at the annual meeting +of the Trinitie Companie in the Parish Church of Deptford</i>, London, +1635, and <i>Private devotions, digested into six litanies ... Seven and +twentieth edition</i>, London, 1706. The last was first published in 1651.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.256c" id="pageii.256c"></a>Izaak Walton's <i>Elegie</i> underwent a good deal of revision. Besides +the variants which I have noted, <i>1635-69</i> add the following lines:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Which as a free-will-offring, I here give</p> +<p>Fame, and the world, and parting with it grieve,</p> +<p>I want abilities, fit to set forth</p> +<p>A monument great, as <i>Donnes</i> matchlesse worth.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>In 1658 and 1670, when the <i>Elegie</i> was transferred to the enlarged +<i>Life of Donne</i>, it was again revised, and opens:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Our Donne is dead: and we may sighing say,</p> +<p>We had that man where language chose to stay</p> +<p>And shew her utmost power. I would not praise</p> +<p>That, and his great Wit, which in our vaine dayes</p> +<p>Makes others proud; but as these serv'd to unlocke</p> +<p>That Cabinet, his mind, where such a stock</p> +<p>Of knowledge was repos'd, that I lament</p> +<p>Our just and generall cause of discontent.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.257" id="pageii.257"></a>[pg 257]</span> +But the poem in its final form is included in the many reprints of +Walton's <i>Lives</i>, and it is unnecessary to note the numerous verbal +variations. The most interesting is in ll. 25-6.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Did his youth scatter Poetry, wherein</p> +<p>Lay Loves Philosophy?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><a name="pageii.257a" id="pageii.257a"></a>Professor Norton notes that 'the name of the author of this' (the +seventh) 'Elegy is given as Carie or Cary in all the early editions, +by mistake for Carew'. But the spelling (common in the MSS.) +simply represents the way in which the name was pronounced. +Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?) was sewer-in-ordinary to King Charles +in 1633, and in February 163¾ his most elaborate work, the <i>Coelum +Britannicum</i>, was performed at Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday. It +was published immediately afterwards, 1634. His collected <i>Poems</i> +were issued in 1640 and contained this <i>Elegie</i>. I note the following +variants from the text of 1640 as reproduced by Arthur Vincent +(<i>Muses Library</i>, 1899):</p> + +<p>3. dare we not trust <i>1633</i>: did we not trust <i>1640</i>; 5. Churchman +<i>1633</i>: lecturer <i>1640</i>; 8. thy Ashes <i>1633</i>: the ashes +<i>1640</i>; 9. no voice, no tune? <i>1633</i>: nor tune, nor voice? <i>1640</i>; 17. our Will, +<i>1633</i>: the will, <i>1640</i>; 44. dust <i>1633</i>: dung <i>1640</i>; +rak'd <i>1633</i>: search'd <i>1640</i>; 50. stubborne language <i>1633</i>: troublesome language +<i>1640</i>; 58. is purely thine <i>1633</i>: was only thine <i>1640</i>; 59. thy smallest +worke <i>1633</i>: their smallest work <i>1640</i>; 63. repeale <i>1633</i>: +recall <i>1640</i>; 65. Were banish'd <i>1633</i>: Was banish'd <i>1640</i>; 66. +o'th'Metamorphoses <i>1633</i>: i'th'Metamorphoses <i>1640</i>;</p> + +<p>68-9.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Till verse refin'd by thee, in this last Age,</p> +<p>Turne ballad rime <i>1633</i>:</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>Till verse, refin'd by thee in this last age,</p> +<p>Turn ballad-rhyme <i>1640</i> (<i>Vincent</i>):</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Surely 'in this last Age' goes with 'Turne ballad rime'; 73. awfull +solemne <i>1633</i>; solemn awful <i>1640</i>; 74. faint lines <i>1633</i>: rude +lines <i>1640</i>; 81. maintaine <i>1633</i>: retain <i>1640</i>; 88. our losse +<i>1633</i>: the +loss <i>1640</i>; 89. an Elegie, <i>1633</i>: one Elegy, <i>1640</i>;</p> + +<p>91-2.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though every pen should share a distinct part,</p> +<p>Yet art thou Theme enough to tyre all Art;</p> +<p class="i20"><i>1633</i>: <i>omit 1640</i>.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Some of these differences are trifling, but in several instances (3, 8, +50, 59, 66, 91-2) the 1633 text is so much better that it seems +probable that the poem was printed in 1640 from an early, +unrevised version. In 87. 'the' <i>1633</i>, <i>1640</i> should be 'thee'.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.257b" id="pageii.257b"></a>Sir Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), was +a young man of twenty-one when Donne died, and succeeded his +father in the year in which this poem was published. He had been +educated at Trinity College, Dublin. 'His first years of reason', +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.258" id="pageii.258"></a>[pg 258]</span> +Wood says, 'were spent in poetry and polite learning, into the first of +which he made divers plausible sallies, which caused him therefore +to be admired by the poets of those times, particularly by Ben Jonson +... by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield ... and by Sir John Suckling, +who afterwards brought him into his poem called <i>The Session of Poets</i> +thus,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>He was of late so gone with divinity,</p> +<p>That he had almost forgot his poetry,</p> +<p>Though to say the truth (and Apollo did know it)</p> +<p>He might have been both his priest and his poet.'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But Falkland is best known through his friendship with Clarendon, +whose account of him is classical: 'With these advantages' (of birth +and fortune) 'he had one great disadvantage (which in the first entrance +into the world is attended with too much prejudice) in his person and +presence, which was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature +was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful; and his +aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity; +and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of +reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody would have expected +music from that tongue; and sure no man was less beholden to +nature for its recommendation into the world: but then no man sooner +or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice: that little +person and small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, +a courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition of +the strongest limbs, and most harmonious and proportioned presence +and strength, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; +it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures: +and that untuned voice and tongue easily discovered itself to be +supplied and governed by a mind and understanding so excellent that +the wit and weight of all he said carried another kind of lustre and +admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the +persons present, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably +promise itself, or is usually attended with; and his disposition and +nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, +kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and +love him.' <i>The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon</i> (Oxford, 1827) +i. 42-50. Coming from him, Falkland's poem is an interesting testimony +to the influence of Donne's poetry, presence, and character.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.258a" id="pageii.258a"></a>Jaspar Mayne (1604-72), author of <i>The City Match</i>, was a student +and graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, a poet, dramatist, and divine. +He wrote complimentary verses on the Earl of Pembroke, Charles I, +Queen Henrietta, Cartwright, and Ben Jonson—all, like those on +Donne, very bad. He was the translator of the Epigrams ascribed to +Donne and published with some of his <i>Paradoxes, Problemes, Essays, +Characters</i> in 1651.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.258b" id="pageii.258b"></a>Arthur Wilson (1595-1652), historian and dramatist, author of <i>The</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.259" id="pageii.259"></a>[pg 259]</span> +<i>Inconstant Lady</i> and <i>The Swisser</i>, had in 1633 just completed a +rather belated course at Trinity College, Oxford, whither he had gone after +leaving the service of the third Earl of Essex. For Wilson's <i>Life</i> see +D.N.B. and Feuillerat: <i>The Swisser ... avec une Introduction et des +Notes</i>, Paris, 1904.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.259a" id="pageii.259a"></a>The 'Mr. R. B.' who wrote these lines is said by Mr. Gosse to be +the voluminous versifier Richard Brathwaite (1588-1673), author of +<i>A Strappado for the Divell</i> and other works, satirical and pious. He +is perhaps the most likely candidate for the initials, which are all we +have to go by. At the same time it is a little surprising that a poet +whose name was so well known should have concealed himself under +initials, the device generally of a young man venturing among more +experienced poets. If he had not been too young in 1633, I should +have ventured to suggest that the author was Ralph Brideoak, who +proceeded B.A. at Oxford 1634, and in 1638 contributed lines to +<i>Jonsonus Virbius</i>. He was afterwards chaplain to Speaker Lenthall, +and died Bishop of Chichester. In the lines on Jonson, Brideoak +describes the reception of Jonson's plays with something of the vividness +with which the poet here describes the reception of Donne's +sermons. He also refers to Donne:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Had learned Donne, Beaumont, and Randolph, all</p> +<p>Surviv'd thy fate, and sung thy funeral,</p> +<p>Their notes had been too low: take this from me</p> +<p>None but thyself could write a verse for thee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This last line echoes Donne (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.204">204</a>, l. 24). Most of Donne's eulogists +were young men.</p> + +<p>Brathwaite's wife died in 1633, and, perhaps following Donne, he +for some years wrote <i>Anniversaries upon his Panarete</i>. W. C. Hazlitt +suggests Brome as the author of the lines on Donne, which is not +likely.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.259b" id="pageii.259b"></a>The Epitaph which follows R. B.'s poem is presumably by him also.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.259c" id="pageii.259c"></a>Endymion Porter (1587-1649) may have had a common interest +with Donne in the Spanish language and literature, for the former owed +his early success as an ambassador and courtier to his Spanish descent +and upbringing. He owes his reputation now mainly to his patronage +of art and poetry and to the songs of Herrick. For his life see D.N.B. +and E. B. de Fonblanque's <i>Lives of the Lords Strangford</i>, 1877.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.259d" id="pageii.259d"></a>Daniel Darnelly, the author of the long Latin elegy added to the +collection in 1635, was, according to Foster (<i>Alumni Oxonienses</i>, vol. +i. 1891), the son of a Londoner, and matriculated at Oxford on +Nov. 14, 1623, at the age of nineteen. He proceeded B.A. in 1627, +M.A. 16<small><sup>29</sup></small>⁄<small>30</small>, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1634. He is +described in Musgrave's <i>Obituary</i> as of Trinity Hall. In 1632 he +was appointed rector of Curry Mallet, Somersetshire, and of Walden +St. Paul, Herts., 1634. This would bring him into closer touch with +London, and probably explains his writing an elegy for the forthcoming +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.260" id="pageii.260"></a>[pg 260]</span> +second edition of Donne's <i>Poems</i>. He was rector of Teversham, +Cambridgeshire, from 1635 to 1645, when his living was +sequestered. He died on the 23rd of November, 1659.</p> + +<p>The heading of this poem shows that it was written at the request +of some one, probably King. In l. 35 <i>Nilusque minus strepuisset</i> the +reference is to the great cataract. See Macrobius, <i>Somn. Scip.</i> ii. 4.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.260a" id="pageii.260a"></a>Of Sidney Godolphin (1610-43) Clarendon says, 'There was never +so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so large an +understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body: +so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he was pleased to +be found in his company, where he was the properer man; and it +may be the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness +of his wit, and the composed quickness of his judgement and +understanding the more notable.' <i>The Life of Edward Earl of +Clarendon</i>, i. 51-2. He was killed at Chagford in the civil war. +Professor Saintsbury has not included this poem in his collection of +Godolphin's poems, <i>Caroline Poets</i>, ii. pp. 227-61.</p> + +<p><a name="pageii.260b" id="pageii.260b"></a>John Chudleigh's name appears in MSS. occasionally at the end of +different poems. In the second collection in the Trinity College, +Dublin MS. G. 2. 21 (<i>TCD</i> Second Collection) he is credited with +the authorship of Donne's lyric <i>A Feaver</i>, but two other poems are +also ascribed to him. He is the author of another in Addl. MS. +33998. f. 62 b. Who he was, I am not sure, but probably he may be +identified with John Chudleigh described in 1620 (<i>Visitation of +Devonshire</i>) as son and heir of George Chudley of Asheriston, or +Ashton, in the county of Devon, and then aged fourteen. On the +1st of June, 1621, aged 15, he matriculated at Wadham College, +Oxford. He proceeded B.A. 1623-4, being described as 'equ. aur. +fil.' for his father, a member of Parliament, had been created a baronet +on the 1st of August, 1622. He took his M.A. in 1626, and was +incorporated at Cambridge in 1629 (Foster, <i>Alumni Oxonienses</i>, i. +276). Just before taking his M.A. he was elected to represent East +Looe. He died, however, before May 10, 1634, which is difficult to +reconcile with his being the author of these verses in 1635, unless +they were written some time before.</p> + +<hr class="medium" /> + +<p><a name="pageii.260c" id="pageii.260c"></a></p> + +<h2>APPENDIX A.<br /><br /> + +LATIN POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.</h2> + +<p>Who the Dr. Andrews referred to was we do not know. Dr. Grosart +identifies him with the Andrews whose poems are transcribed in <i>H49</i>, +but this is purely conjectural.</p> + +<p>The lines which I have taken out and made into a separate +Epigram are printed in the old editions as the third and fourth lines +of the letter. As Professor Norton pointed out, they have no +connexion with it. They seem to be addressed to some one who had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.261" id="pageii.261"></a>[pg 261]</span> +travelled to Paris from Frankfort, on an Embassy to the King of +France, and had returned. 'The Maine passed to the Seine, into +the house of the Victor, and with your return comes to Frankfort.'</p> + +<p>If Grosart's conjecture be correct, the author of the epigram may +be the Francis Andrews whose poems appear along with Donne's +in <i>H49</i>, for among these are some political poems in somewhat the +same vein:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though Ister have put down the Rhene</p> +<p class="i2">And from his channel thrust him quite;</p> +<p>Though Prage again repayre her losses,</p> +<p class="i2">And Idol-berge doth set up crosses,</p> +<p>Yet we a change shall shortly feele</p> +<p class="i2">When English smiths work Spanish steele;</p> +<p>Then Tage a nymph shall send to Thames,</p> +<p class="i2">The Eagle then shall be in flames,</p> +<p>Then Rhene shall reigne, and Boeme burne,</p> +<p class="i2">And Neccar shall to Nectar turne.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And of Henri IV:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Henrie the greate, great both in peace and war</p> +<p>Whom none could teach or imitate aright,</p> +<p>Findes peace above, from which he here was far;</p> +<p>A victor without insolence or spite,</p> +<p>A Prince that reigned, without a Favorite.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>Of course, Andrews may be only the transcriber of these poems.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 398. <span class="sc">To Mr. George Herbert, &c.</span><a name="pageii.261a" id="pageii.261a"></a></h3> + +<p>Walton has described the incident of the seals: 'Not long before +his death he caused to be drawn the figure of the Body of Christ, +extended upon an Anchor, like those which Painters draw when they +would present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the Cross; +his varying no otherwise than to affix him not to a Cross, but to an +Anchor (the Emblem of hope); this he caused to be drawn in little, +and then many of those figures thus drawn to be ingraven very small +in <i>Helitropian</i> Stones, and set in gold, and of these he sent to many +of his dearest friends, to be used as <i>Seals</i> or <i>Rings</i>, and kept as +memorials of him, and of his affection to them.'</p> + +<p>These seals have been figured and described in <i>The Gentleman's +Magazine</i>, vol. lxxvii, p. 313 (1807); and <i>Notes and Queries</i>, 2nd +Series, viii. 170, 216; 6th Series, x. 426, 473.</p> + +<p>Herbert's epistle to Donne is given in <i>1650</i>. In Walton's <i>Life</i> the +first two and a half lines of Donne's Latin poem and the whole of the +English one are given, and so with Herbert's reply. As printed in +<i>1650</i> Herbert's reply is apparently interrupted by the insertion between +the eighth and ninth lines of two disconnected stanzas, which may or +may not be by Herbert. The first of these ('When Love' &c.) with +some variants is given in the 1658 edition of the <i>Life</i> of Donne; but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.262" id="pageii.262"></a>[pg 262]</span> +in the collected <i>Lives</i> (1670, 1675) it is withdrawn. The second +I have not found elsewhere.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Although the Crosse could not Christ here detain,</p> +<p>Though nail'd unto't, but he ascends again,</p> +<p>Nor yet thy eloquence here keep him still,</p> +<p>But onely while thou speak'st; This Anchor will.</p> +<p>Nor canst thou be content, unlesse thou to</p> +<p>This certain Anchor adde a Seal, and so</p> +<p>The Water, and the Earth both unto thee</p> +<p>Doe owe the symbole of their certainty.</p> +<p>Let the world reel, we and all ours stand sure,</p> +<p>This holy Cable's of all storms secure.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p class="i2">When Love being weary made an end</p> +<p class="i2">Of kinde Expressions to his friend,</p> +<p class="i2">He writ; when's hand could write no more,</p> +<p class="i2">He gave the Seale, and so left o're.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>How sweet a friend was he, who being griev'd</p> +<p>His letters were broke rudely up, believ'd</p> +<p>'Twas more secure in great Loves Common-weal</p> +<p>(Where nothing should be broke) to adde a Seal.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="ind1"> +<p class="footnote">Line 2: Though <i>1650</i>: When <i>Walton</i></p> + +<p class="footnote">Line 10: of <i>1650</i>: from <i>Walton</i></p> + +</div> + +<p>In the <i>Life of Herbert</i> Walton refers again to the seals and adds, +'At Mr. Herbert's death these verses were found wrapped up with +that seal which was by the Doctor given to him.</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>When my dear Friend could write no more,</p> +<p>He gave this Seal, and, so gave ore.</p> + </div><div class="stanza"> +<p>When winds and waves rise highest, I am sure,</p> +<p>This Anchor keeps my faith, that, me secure.'</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">400</span>, l. 22. 〈<i>Wishes</i>〉 I have ventured to change +'Works' to 'Wishes'. It corrects the metre and corresponds to the Latin.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 400. <span class="sc">Translated out of Gazaeus, &c.</span><a name="pageii.262a" id="pageii.262a"></a></h3> + +<p>The original runs as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Tibi quod optas et quod opto, dent Divi,</p> +<p>(Sol optimorum in optimis Amicorum)</p> +<p>Vt anima semper laeta nesciat curas,</p> +<p>Vt vita semper viva nesciat canos,</p> +<p>Vt dextra semper larga nesciat sordes,</p> +<p>Vt bursa semper plena nesciat rugas,</p> +<p>Vt lingua semper vera nesciat lapsum,</p> +<p>Vt verba semper blanda nesciant rixas,</p> +<p>Vt facta semper aequa nesciant fucum,</p> +<p>Vt fama semper pura nesciat probrum,</p> +<p>Vt vota semper alta nesciant terras,</p> +<p>Tibi quod optas et quod opto, dent Divi.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.263" id="pageii.263"></a>[pg 263]</span></p> +<p>I have taken it from:</p> + +<h2 class="lh"><span class="less">PIA</span><br /> +<span class="spaced2">H I L A R I A</span><br /> +<span class="less">VARIAQVE</span><br /> +<span class="less">CARMINA</span></h2> + +<p class="centert"><span class="sc">Angelini Gazæi</span></p> +<p class="centerb"><i>è Societate Iesu, Atrebatis</i>.<br /><br style="line-height: 20%" /> +[An ornament in original.]</p> + +<p class="centert"><span class="less">DILINGAE</span></p> + +<p class="centerb space-below3"><i>Formis Academicis<br /><br style="line-height: 20%" /> +Cum auctoritate Superiorum</i>.<br /><br style="line-height: 20%" /> +Apud <span class="sc">Vdalricum Rem</span><br /><br style="line-height: 20%" /> +CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>. I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>C. XXIII.</p> + +<p>The folios of this edition do not correspond to those of that which +Donne seems to have used.</p> + +<h2>APPENDIX B.<a name="pageii.263a" id="pageii.263a"></a><br /><br /> + +POEMS WHICH HAVE BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO DONNE.</h2> + +<p>For a full discussion of the authorship of these poems see <i>Text +and Canon of Donne's Poems</i>, pp. <a href="#pageii.cxxix">cxxix</a> <i>et seq.</i></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 401. <span class="sc">To S</span><sup>r</sup> <span class="sc">Nicholas Smyth</span>.</h3> + +<p>Chambers points out that a Nicholas Smyth has a set of verses in +<i>Coryats Crudities</i>, 1611.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Visitation of the County of Devon</i>, 1620, a long genealogy +is given, the closing portion of which shows who this Nicholas Smith +or Smyth of Exeter (l. 15) and his father were:</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"><img src="images/263-500.png" width="500" height="250" alt="Family tree" /></div> + +<p>Seven children of Sir Nicholas are given, including another Nicholas +(aet. 14), and the whole is signed 'Nich Smith'.</p> + +<p>This is doubtless Roe's friend. With Roe as a Falstaff he had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.264" id="pageii.264"></a>[pg 264]</span> +probably 'heard the chimes at midnight' in London before he settled +down to raise a family in Devonshire.</p> + +<p>l. 7. <i>sleeps House, &c.</i> Ovid xi; Ariosto, <i>Orlando Furioso</i>, Canto +xiv; Spenser, <i>Faerie Queene</i>, I. i.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">402</span>, l. 26. <i>Epps</i>. 'This afternoon a servingman of +the Earl of Northumberland fought with swaggering Eps, and ran him +through the ear.' <i>Manninghams Diary</i>, 8th April, 1603 (Camden +Club, p. 165). This is the only certain reference to Epps I have been +able to find, but Grosart declares he is the soldier described in +Dekker's <i>Knights Conjuring</i> as behaving with great courage at the +siege of Ostend (1601-4), where he was killed. I can find no name +in Dekker's work.</p> + +<p>ll. 27-31. As printed in <i>1669</i> these lines are not very intelligible, +and neither Grosart nor Chambers has corrected them. As given in +the MSS. (e.g. <i>TCD</i>) they are a little clearer:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p class="i12">For his Body and State</p> +<p>The Physick and Counsel (which came too late)</p> +<p>'Gainst whores and dice, hee nowe on mee bestowes</p> +<p>Most superficially: hee speakes of those,</p> +<p>(I found by him) least soundly whoe most knows:</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The purpose of bracketing 'which came too late' is obviously to +keep it from being taken with ''Gainst whores and dice'—the very +mistake that <i>1669</i> has fallen into and Grosart and Chambers have +preserved. The drawback to this use of the bracket is that it +disguises, at least to modern readers, that 'which came too late' +must be taken with 'For his Body and State'. I have therefore +dropped it and placed a comma after 'late'. The meaning I take to +be as follows: 'The physic and counsel against whores and dice, +which came too late for his own body and estate, he now bestows on +me in a superficial fashion; for I found by him that of whores and +dice those speak least soundly who know most from personal experience.' +A rather shrewd remark. There are some spheres where +experience does not teach, but corrupt.</p> + +<p>l. 40. <i>in that or those</i>: 'that' the Duello, 'those' the laws of +the Duello. There is not much to choose between 'these' and 'those'.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>ll. 41-3. <i>Though sober; but so never fought. I know</i></p> +<p class="i10"><i>What made his Valour, undubb'd, Windmill go,</i></p> +<p class="i10"><i>Within a Pint at most:</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The MSS. improve both the metre and the sense of the first of +these lines, which in <i>1669</i> and Chambers runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Though sober; but nere fought. I know ...</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>It is when he is sober that he never fights, though he may quarrel. +Roe knows exactly how much drink it would take to make this +undubb'd Don Quixote charge a windmill, or like a windmill. But +the poem is too early for an actual reference to <i>Don Quixote</i>.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.265" id="pageii.265"></a>[pg 265]</span></p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">403</span>, ll. 67-8. <i>and he is braver now</i></p> +<p><i>Than his captain.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>By 'braver' the poet means, not more courageous, but more +splendidly attired, more 'braw'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">404</span>, l. 88. <i>Abraham France</i>—who wrote English +hexameters. +His chief works are <i>The Countess of Pembrokes Ivy Church</i> (1591) and +<i>The Countess of Pembrokes Emmanuel</i> (1591). He was alive in 1633.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">405</span>, l. 113. <i>So they their weakness hide, and greatness +show.</i> +Grosart refused the reading 'weakness', which he found in his +favourite MS. <i>S</i>, and Chambers ignored it. It has, however, the +support of <i>B</i>, <i>O'F</i>, and <i>L74</i> (which is strong in Roe's +poetry), and +seems to me to give the right edge to the sarcasm. 'By giving to +flatterers what they owe to worth, Kings and Lords think to hide +their weakness of character, and to display the greatness of their +wealth and station.' They make a double revelation of their weakness +in their credulity and their love of display.</p> + +<p>l. 128. <i>Cuff.</i> Henry Cuff (1563-1601), secretary to Essex and +an abettor of the conspiracy.</p> + +<p>l. 131. <i>that Scot.</i> It is incredible that Donne wrote these lines. +He found some of his best friends among the Scotch—Hay, Sir +Robert Ker, Essex, and Hamilton, to say nothing of the King.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 406. <span class="sc">Satyre.</span><a name="pageii.265a" id="pageii.265a"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">407</span>, ll. 32-3. <i>A time to come, &c.</i> I have adopted +Grosart's punctuation and think his interpretation of 'beg' must be the right one—'beg +thee as an idiot or natural.' The O.E.D. gives: '†5a. <i>To beg +a person</i>: to petition the Court of Wards (established by Henry VIII +and suppressed under Charles II) for the custody of a minor, an +heiress, or an idiot, as feudal superior or as having interest in the +matter: hence also fig. <i>To beg</i> (any one) <i>for a fool</i> or +<i>idiot</i>: to take him for, set him down as. <i>Obs.</i>' Among other examples is, 'He proved +a wiser man by much than he that begged him. Harington, <i>Met. +Ajax</i> 46.' What the satirist says is, 'The time will come when she +will beg to have wardship of thee as an idiot. If you continue she +will take you for one now.'</p> + +<p>l. 35. <i>Besides, her</i>〈<i>s</i>〉. My reading combines the variants. I think +'here' must be wrong.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 407. <span class="sc">An Elegie.</span><a name="pageii.265b" id="pageii.265b"></a></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">408</span>, l. 5. <i>Else, if you were, and just, in equitie +&c.</i> This is the punctuation of <i>H39</i>, and is obviously right, 'in equitie' going with +what follows. He has denied the existence or, at least, the influence +of the Fates, and now continues, 'For if you existed or had power, +and if you were just, then, according to all equity I should have +vanquish'd her as you did me.' Grosart and the Grolier Club +editor follow <i>1635-54</i>, and read:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Else, if you were, and just in equity, &c.</p> + </div> </div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.266" id="pageii.266"></a>[pg 266]</span></p> +<p>Chambers accepts the attempt of <i>1669</i> to amend this, and prints:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>True if you were, and just in equity, &c.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>But 'just in equity' is not a phrase to which any meaning can be +attached.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 412. <span class="sc">An Elegie.</span></h3> + +<p>Grosart prints this very incorrectly. He does not even reproduce +correctly the MS. <i>S</i>, which he professes to follow. Chambers follows +Grosart, adopting some of the variants of the Haslewood-Kingsborough +MS. reported by Grosart. They both have the strange +reading 'cut in bands' in l. 11, which as a fact is not even in <i>S</i>, from +which Grosart professes to derive it. The reading of all the MSS., +'but in his handes,' makes quite good sense. The Scot wants matter, +except in his hands, i.e. dirt, which is 'matter out of place'. The +reading, 'writ in his hands', which Chambers reports after Grosart, is +probably a mistake of the latter's. Indeed his own note suggests that +the reading of <i>H-K</i> is 'but in's hands'.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 417. <span class="sc">To the Countesse of Huntington.</span><a name="pageii.266a" id="pageii.266a"></a></h3> + +<p>It looks as if some lines of this poem had been lost. The first +sentence has no subject unless 'That' in the second line be a +demonstrative—a very awkward construction.</p> + +<p>If written by Donne this poem must have been composed about +the same time as <i>The Storme</i> and <i>The Calme</i>. He is writing +apparently +from the New World, from the Azores. But it is as impossible to +recover the circumstances in which the poem was written as to be +sure who wrote it.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 422. <span class="sc">Elegie.</span><a name="pageii.266b" id="pageii.266b"></a></h3> + +<p>ll. 5-6. <i>denounce ... pronounce.</i> The reading of the MSS. seems +to me plainly the correct one. 'In others, terror, anguish and grief +announce the approach of death. Her courage, ease and joy in +dying pronounce the happiness of her state.' The reading of the +printed texts is due to the error by which <i>1635</i> and <i>1639</i> took +'comming' as an epithet to 'terror' as 'happy' is to 'state'. +Some MSS. read 'terrors' and 'joyes'.</p> + +<p>l. 22. <i>Their spoyles, &c.</i> I have adopted the MS. reading here, +though with some hesitation, because (1) it is the more difficult +reading: 'Soules to thy conquest beare' seems more like a conjectural +emendation than the other reading, (2) The construction of the +line in the printed texts is harsh—one does not bear anything 'to +a conquest', (3) the meaning suits the context better. It is not +souls that are spoken of, but bodies. The bodies of the wicked +become the spoil of death, trophies of his victory over Adam; not so +those of the good, which shall rise again. See 1 Cor. xv. 54-5.</p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 424. <span class="sc">Psalme 137.</span><a name="pageii.266c" id="pageii.266c"></a></h3> + +<p>This Psalm is found in a MS. collection of metrical psalms +(Rawlinson Poetical 161), in the Bodleian Library, transcribed +by a certain R. Crane. The list of authors is Fr. Dav., Jos. Be., +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.267" id="pageii.267"></a>[pg 267]</span> +Rich. Cripps, Chr. Dav., Th. Carry. That Davison is the author of +this particular Psalm is strongly suggested by the poetical <i>Induction</i> +which in style and verse resembles the psalm. The induction is +signed 'Fr. Dav.' The first verse runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Come Urania, heavenly Muse,</p> +<p class="i6">and infuse</p> +<p>Sacred flame to my invention;</p> +<p class="i2">Sing so loud that Angells may</p> +<p class="i6">heare thy lay,</p> +<p class="i2">Lending to thy note attention.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 429. <span class="sc">Song.</span><a name="pageii.267a" id="pageii.267a"></a></h3> + +<p><i>Soules joy, now I am gone, &c.</i> George Herbert, in the <i>Temple</i>, +gives <i>A Parodie</i> of this poem, opening:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Soul's joy, when thou art gone,</p> +<p class="i14">And I alone,</p> +<p class="i14">Which cannot be,</p> +<p>Because Thou dost abide with me,</p> +<p class="i2">And I depend on Thee.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The parody does not extend beyond the first verse.</p> + +<p>It was one of the aims of Herbert to turn the Muse from profane +love verses to sacred purposes. Mr. Chambers points to another +reference to this poem in some very bad verses by Sir Kenelm Digby +in Bright's edition of Digby's <i>Poems</i> (p. 8), <i>The Roxburghe Club</i>.</p> + +<h2>APPENDIX C.<a name="pageii.267b" id="pageii.267b"></a><br /><br /> + +I. POEMS FROM ADDITIONAL MS. 25707. <small><span class="sc">Page</span> <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.433a">433</a>.</small></h2> + +<p>The authorship of the four poems here printed from <i>A25</i> has been +discussed in the <i>Text and Canon, &c.</i> There is not much reason to +doubt that the first is what it professes to be. The order of the +names in the heading, and the character of the verses both suggest +that the second and corresponding verses are Donne's contribution. +There is a characteristic touch in each one. I cannot find anything +eminently characteristic in any of the rest of the group. The third +poem refers to the poetical controversy on Love and Reason carried +on with much spirit between the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin +Rudyerd in their <i>Poems</i> as printed by the younger Donne in 1660. +A much finer fragment of the debate, beginning—</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And why should Love a footboy's place despise?</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>is attributed to Donne by the Bridgewater MS. and the MS. in the +library of the Marquess of Crewe. It is part of a poem by Rudyerd in +the debate in the volume referred to.</p> + +<h2>II. POEMS FROM THE BURLEY MS.<small> <a name="pageii.267c" id="pageii.267c"></a><span class="sc">Page</span> <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.437a">437</a>.</small></h2> + +<p>Of the poems here printed from the Burley-on-the-Hill MS., none +I think is Donne's. The chief interest of the collection is that it +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.268" id="pageii.268"></a>[pg 268]</span> +comes from a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton, and therefore +presumably represents the work of the group of wits to which +Donne, Bacon, and Wotton belonged. I have found only one of +them in other MSS., viz. that which I have called <i>Life a Play</i>. This +occurs in quite a number of MSS. in the British Museum, and has +been published in Hannah's <i>Courtly Poets</i>. It is generally ascribed +to Sir Walter Raleigh; and Harleian MS. 733 entitles it <i>Verses +made by Sir Walter Raleigh made the same morning he was executed</i>. +I have printed it because with the first, and another in the <i>Reliquiae +Wottonianae</i>, it illustrates Wotton's taste for this comparison of life to +a stage, a comparison probably derived from an epigram in the Greek +Anthology, which may be the source of Shakespeare's famous lines in +<i>As You Like It</i>. The epitaph by Jonson on Hemmings, Shakespeare's +fellow-actor and executor, is interesting. A similar epitaph on Burbage +is found in Sloane MS. 1786:</p> + +<h3>An Epitaph on Mr Richard Burbage the Player.</h3> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>This life's a play groaned out by natures Arte</p> +<p>Where every man hath his alloted parte.</p> +<p>This man hath now as many men can tell</p> +<p>Ended his part, and he hath done it well.</p> +<p>The Play now ended, think his grave to bee</p> +<p>The retiring house of his sad Tragedie.</p> +<p>Where to give his fame this, be not afraid:</p> +<p>Here lies the best Tragedian ever plaid.</p> + </div> </div> + +<h2>III. POEMS FROM VARIOUS MSS. <small><span class="sc">Page</span> <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.443b">443</a>.</small><a name="pageii.268a" id="pageii.268a"></a></h2> + +<p>Of the miscellaneous poems here collected there is very little to be +said. The first eight or nine come from the O'Flaherty MS. (<i>O'F</i>), +which professes to be a collection of Donne's poems, and may, +Mr. Warwick Bond thinks, have been made by the younger Donne, +as it contains a poem by him. It is careless enough to be his work. +They illustrate well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the +seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because +of their subject-matter. Donne had written some improper poems as +a young man; it was tempting therefore to assign any wandering poem +of this kind to the famous Dean of St. Paul's. The first poem, <i>The +Annuntiation</i>, has nothing to do with Donne's poem <i>The Annuntiation +and Passion</i>, but has been attached to it in a manner which is +common enough in the MSS. The poem <i>Love's Exchange</i> is obviously +an imitation of Donne's <i>Lovers infinitenesse</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.17">17</a>). <i>A Paradoxe +of a Painted Face</i> was attributed to Donne because he had written +a prose <i>Paradox</i> entitled <i>That Women ought to paint</i>. The poem was +not published till 1660. In Harleian MS. it is said to be 'By my +Lo: of Cant. follower Mr. Baker'. The lines on <i>Black Hayre and +Eyes</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.460a">460</a>) are found in fifteen or more different MSS. in the +British Museum alone, and were printed in <i>Parnassus Biceps</i> (1656) +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.269" id="pageii.269"></a>[pg 269]</span> +and Pembroke and Ruddier's <i>Poems</i> (1660). Two of the MSS. +attribute the poem to Ben Jonson, but others assign it to W. P. or +Walton Poole. Mr. Chambers points out that a Walton Poole has +verses in <i>Annalia Dubrensia</i> (1636), and also cites from Foster's +<i>Alumni Oxonienses</i>: 'Walton Poole of Wilts arm. matr. 9.1.1580 +at Trinity Coll. aged 15.' These may be the same person. The +signature A. P. or W. P. at the foot of several pages suggests that the +Stowe MS. 961 of Donne's poems had belonged to some member of +this family. The fragment of an Elegy at p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.462">462</a> occurs only in <i>P</i>, +where it forms part of an Heroicall Epistle with which it has obviously +nothing to do. I have thought it worth preserving because of its +intense though mannered style. The line, 'Fortune now do thy +worst' recalls <i>Elegie XII</i>, l. 67. The closing poem,'Farewell ye guilded +follies,' comes from Walton's <i>Complete Angler</i> (1658), where it is thus +introduced: 'I will requite you with a very good copy of verses: it is a +farewell to the vanities of the world, and some say written by Dr. D. +But let they be written by whom they will, he that writ them had a +brave soul, and must needs be possest with happy thoughts of their +composure.' In the third edition (1661) the words were changed to +'And some say written by Sir Harry Wotton, who I told you was an +excellent Angler.' In one MS. they are attributed to Henry King, +Donne's friend and literary executor, and in two others they are +assigned to Sir Kenelm Digby, as by whom they are printed in <i>Wits +Interpreter</i> (1655). Mr. Chambers points out that 'The closing lines +of King's <i>The Farewell</i> are curiously similar to those of this poem.' +He quotes:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>My woeful Monument shall be a cell,</p> +<p>The murmur of the purling brook my knell;</p> +<p>My lasting Epitaph the Rock shall groan;</p> +<p>Thus when sad lovers ask the weeping stone,</p> +<p>What wretched thing does in that centre lie,</p> +<p>The hollow echo will reply, 'twas I.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>I cannot understand why Mr. Chambers, to whom I am indebted +for most of this information, was content to print so inadequate +a text when Walton was in his hand. Two of his lines completely +puzzled me:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Welcome pure thoughts! welcome, ye careless groans!</p> +<p>These are my guests, this is that courtage tones.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Groans' are generally the sign of care, not of its absence. However, +I find that Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian, and some others read:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Welcome pure thoughts! welcome ye careless groves!</p> +<p>These are my guests, this is that court age loves.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This explains the mystery. But Mr. Chambers followed Grosart; +and Grosart was inclined to prefer the version of a bad MS. which +he had found to a good printed version.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.270" id="pageii.270"></a>[pg 270]</span></p> + +<h2>SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.</h2> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">5</span>, <span class="bb">6</span>. The poems of Ben Jonson are here printed just +as they stand in the 1650, 1654, 1669 editions of Donne's <i>Poems</i>. +A comparison with the 1616 edition of Jonson's <i>Works</i> shows some +errors. The poem <i>To John Donne</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.5">5</a>) is xxiii of the <i>Epigrammes</i>. +The sixth line runs</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And which no affection praise enough can give!</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The absurd 'no'n' of 1650 seems to have arisen from the printing +'no'affection' of the 1640 edition of Jonson's <i>Works</i>. The 1719 +editor of Donne's <i>Poems</i> corrected this mistake. A more serious +mistake occurs in the ninth line, which in the <i>Works</i> (1616) runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>All which I meant to praise, and, yet I would.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The error 'mean' comes from the 1640 edition of the <i>Works of Ben +Jonson</i>, which prints 'meane'.</p> + +<p><i>To Lucy, &c.</i>, is xciii of the <i>Epigrammes</i>. The fourteenth line +runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Be of the best; and 'mongst those, best are you.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>The comma makes the sense clearer. In l. 3, 1616 reads 'looke,' +with comma.</p> + +<p><i>To John Donne</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.6a">6</a>) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' +is in <i>1616</i> more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">7</span>, <span class="bb">175</span>, <a name="pageii.270a" id="pageii.270a"></a><span class="bb">369</span>. I am indebted for the excellent +copies of the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence +Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems +along with which they are placed. The first is the young man of +the <i>Songs and Sonets</i>, the <i>Elegies</i> and the <i>Satyres</i>, the +counterpart of Biron and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of +Shakespeare's Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in +his <i>Scrinia Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams ... Archbishop +of York</i> (1693), 'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising +features.'</p> + +<p>The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the +author of the <i>Letters</i>, <i>Epicedes</i>, <i>Anniversaries</i> and earlier +<i>Divine Poems</i>, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy yet ever +and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness', +writing at one time the serious <i>Pseudo-Martyr</i>, at another +the outrageous <i>Ignatius his Conclave</i>, and again the strangely-mooded, +self-revealing <i>Biathanatos</i>: 'mee thinks I have the keyes of my +prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe so soone +to my heart, as mine own sword.'</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.271" id="pageii.271"></a>[pg 271]</span></p> + +<p>After describing the circumstances attending the execution of the +last portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the <i>Lives</i> +(the passage is not in the earlier editions of the <i>Life of Donne</i>): 'And +now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and +perplexities of a various life: even to the gates of death and the +grave; my desire is, he may rest till I have told my Reader, that +I have seen many Pictures of him, in several habits, and at several +ages, and in several postures: And I now mention this, because, I have +seen one Picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen; +with his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the +present fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age: and +his Motto then was,</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>How much shall I be chang'd,</p> +<p>Before I am chang'd.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set +together, every beholder might say, <i>Lord! How much is</i> Dr. Donne +<i>already chang'd, before he is chang'd!</i>' The change written in the +portrait is the change from the poet of the <i>Songs and Sonets</i> to the +poet of the <i>Holy Sonnets</i> and last <i>Hymns</i>.</p> + +<p>The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made +from it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on +the figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also +'a board of the just height of his body'. What was this for? +Walton does not explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed +out that the folds of the drapery show the statue was modelled from +a recumbent figure. Can it be that Walton's account confuses two +things? The incident of the picture is not in the 1640 <i>Life</i>, but was +added in 1658. How could Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with +his winding-sheet knotted 'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable +that he was painted lying in his winding-sheet on the board referred +to; but that the monument, as designed by himself, and executed by +Nicholas Stone, was intended to represent him rising at the Last Day +from the urn, habited as he had lain down—a symbolic rendering +of the faith expressed in the closing words of the inscription</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere</p> +<p class="i8">Aspicit Eum</p> +<p class="i2">Cuius nomen est Oriens.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.271a" id="pageii.271a"></a><span class="bb">37</span>, l. 14. The textual note should have indicated that in +most or all of the MSS. cited the whole line runs:</p> + +<div class="poem width21"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>(Thou lovest Truth) but an Angell at first sight.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p>This is probably the original form of the line, corrected later to +avoid the clashing of the 'but's.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">96</span>, l. 6, note. The <i>R212</i> cited here is Rawlinson +Poetical MS. 212, a miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century prose and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.272" id="pageii.272"></a>[pg 272]</span> +poetry (e.g. Davies' <i>Epigrams</i>. See II. p. 101). I had cited it once +or twice in my first draft. The present instance escaped my eye. +It helps to show how general the reading 'tyde' was.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">115</span>,<a name="pageii.272a" id="pageii.272a"></a> l. 54. <i>goeing on it fashions</i>. The correct +reading is probably 'growing on it fashions', which has the support of both +<i>JC</i>, and <i>1650-69</i> where 'its' is a mere error. I had made my text +before <i>JC</i> came into my hand. To 'grow on' for 'to increase' is +an Elizabethan idiom: 'And this quarrel grew on so far,' North's +<i>Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, ad fin.</i> See also O.E.D.</p> + +<p>I should like in closing to express my indebtedness throughout to +the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>, an invaluable help and safeguard to +the editor of an English text, and also to Franz's admirable +<i>Shakespeare-Grammatik</i> +(1909), which should be translated.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.272b" id="pageii.272b"></a><span class="bb">133</span>, l. 58. To what is said in the note on the taking of +yellow amber as a drug add: 'Divers men may walke by the Sea +side, and the same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all, +one gathereth by the benefit of that light pebles, or speckled shells, +for curious vanitie, and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall +Ambar, by the same light.' <i>Sermons</i> 80. 36. 326.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pages</span> <span class="bb">156-7</span>. <a name="pageii.272c" id="pageii.272c"></a><i>Seeke true religion, &c.</i> All this passage +savours a little of Montaigne: 'Tout cela, c'est un signe tres-evident que +nous ne recevons nostre religion qu'à nostre façon et par nos mains, +et non autrement que comme les autres religions se reçoyvent. Nous +nous sommes rencontrez au païs où elle estoit en usage; ou nous +regardons son ancienneté ou l'authorité des hommes qui l'ont maintenue; +ou creignons les menaces qu'ell' attache aux mescreans, ou +suyvons ses promesses. Ces considerations là doivent estre employées +à nostre creance, mais comme subsidiaires: ce sont liaisons humaines. +Une autre region, d'autres tesmoings, pareilles promesses et menasses +nous pourroyent imprimer par mesme voye une croyance contraire. +Nous sommes chrestiens à mesme titre que nous sommes ou perigordins +ou alemans.' <i>Essais</i> (1580), II. 12. <i>Apologie de Raimond +Sebond</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">220</span>, l. 46. <a name="pageii.272d" id="pageii.272d"></a>Compare: 'One of the most convenient +Hieroglyphicks of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God +loves, hee loves to the end ... His hailestones and his thunderbolts, +and his showres of blood (emblemes and instruments of his Judgements) +fall downe in a direct line, and affect or strike some one +person, or place: His Sun, and Moone, and Starres (Emblemes and +Instruments of his Blessings) move circularly, and communicate +themselves to all. His Church is his chariot; in that he moves +more gloriously, then in the Sun; as much more, as his begotten +Son exceeds his created Sun, and his Son of glory, and of his right +hand, the Sun of the firmament; and this Church, his chariot, moves +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.273" id="pageii.273"></a>[pg 273]</span> +in that communicable motion, circularly; It began in the East, it +came to us, and is passing now, shining out now, in the farthest West.' +<i>Sermons</i> 80. 2. 13-4.</p> + +<p>l. 47. <i>Religious tipes</i>, is the reading of <i>1633</i>. The comma has +been accidentally dropped. There is no comma in <i>1635-69</i>, which +print 'types'.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">241</span>, ll. 343-4. <i>As a compassionate Turcoyse, &c.</i> +Compare:</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>And therefore Cynthia, as a turquoise bought,</p> +<p>Or stol'n, or found, is virtueless, and nought,</p> +<p>It must be freely given by a friend,</p> +<p>Whose love and bounty doth such virtue lend,</p> +<p>As makes it to compassionate, and tell</p> +<p>By looking pale, the wearer is not well.</p> +<p class="i10">Sir Francis Kynaston, <i>To Cynthia</i>.</p> +<p class="i16">Saintsbury, <i>Caroline Poets</i>, ii. 161.</p> + </div> </div> + +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <a name="pageii.273a" id="pageii.273a"></a><span class="bb">251</span>, ll. 9-18. The source of this simile is probably +Lucretius, <i>De Rerum Natura</i>, III. 642-56.</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Falciferos memorant currus abscidere membra</p> +<p>Saepe ita de subito permixta caede calentis,</p> +<p>Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod</p> +<p>Decidit abscisum, cum mens tamen atque hominis vis</p> +<p>Mobilitate mali non quit sentire dolorem;</p> +<p>Et semel in pugnae studio quod dedita mens est,</p> +<p>Corpore reliquo pugnam caedesque petessit,</p> +<p>Nec tenet amissam laevam cum tegmine saepe</p> +<p>Inter equos abstraxe rotas falcesque rapaces,</p> +<p>Nec cecidisse alius dextram, cum scandit et instat.</p> +<p>Inde alius conatur adempto surgere crure,</p> +<p>Cum digitos agitat propter moribundus humi pes.</p> +<p>Et caput abscisum calido viventeque trunco</p> +<p>Servat humi voltum vitalem oculosque patentis,</p> +<p>Donec reliquias animai reddidit omnes.</p> + </div> </div> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p><span class="sc">Page</span> <span class="bb">259</span>, ll. 275-6. + <i>so that there is</i></p> +<p class="i4">(<i>For aught thou know'st</i>) <i>piercing of substances.</i></p> + </div> </div> + +<p>'Piercing of substances,' the actual penetration of one substance +by another, was the Stoic as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine +of mixture of substance (<ins title="Greek: krasis">κρᾶσις</ins>), what is now called chemical +combination. The Peripatetics held that, while the qualities of the +two bodies combined to produce a new quality, the substances +remained in juxtaposition. Plotinus devotes the seventh book of +the <i>Enneades</i> to the subject; and one of the arguments of the Stoics +which he cites resembles Donne's problem: 'Sweat comes out of the +human body without dividing it and without the body being pierced +with holes.' The pores were apparently unknown. See Bouillet's +<i>Enneades de Plotin</i>, I. 243 f. and 488-9, for references.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.274" id="pageii.274"></a>[pg 274]</span></p> + +<h3><span class="sc">Page</span> 368. <span class="sc">Hymne To God my God, in my sicknesse</span>.</h3> + +<p>Professor Moore Smith has at the last moment reminded me of a +fact, the significance of which should have been discussed in the note +on the <i>Divine Poems</i>, that a copy of this poem found (Gosse, <i>Life +&c.</i> ii. 279) among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar bears the statement +that the verses were written in Donne's 'great sickness in December +1623'. Professor Moore Smith is of opinion that Sir Julius Caesar +may have been right and Walton mistaken, and there is a good deal +to be said for this view. 'It seems', he says, 'more likely that +Walton should have attributed the poem wrongly to Donne's last +illness, than that the MS. copy should antedate it by seven years.' +In 1640 Walton simply referred it to his deathbed; the precise date +was given in 1658. Moreover the date 1623 seems to Professor Moore +Smith confirmed by a letter to Sir Robert Ker (later Lord Ancrum) +in 1624 (Gosse, <i>Life &c.</i> ii. 191), in which Donne writes, 'If a flat map +be but pasted upon a round globe the farthest east and the farthest +west meet and are all one.'</p> + +<p>On the other hand, Walton's final date is very precise, and was +probably given to him by King. If the poem was written at the +same time as that 'to God the Father', why did it not pass into wider +circulation? Stowe MS. 961 is the only collection in which I have +found it. The use of the simile in the letter to Ker is not so +conclusive as it seems. In that same letter Donne says, 'Sir, I took +up this paper to write a letter; but my imagination was full of a sermon +before, for I write but a few hours before I am to preach.' Now +I have in my note cited this simile from an undated sermon on one +of the Penitentiary Psalms. This, not the poem, may have been the +occasion of its repetition in this letter. Donne is very prone to repeat +a favourite figure—inundation, the king's stamped face &c. It is quite +likely that the poem was the last, not the first, occasion on which he +used the flat map. Note that the other chief figure in the poem, the +straits which lead to the Pacific Sea, was used in a sermon (see +note) dated February 12, 1629.</p> + +<p>The figure of the flat map is not used, as one might expect, in the +section of the <i>Devotions</i> headed <i>The Patient takes his bed</i>, but the +last line of the poem is recalled by some words there: 'and therefore am +I <i>cast downe</i>, that I might not be <i>cast away</i>.'</p> + +<p>Walton's dates are often inaccurate, but here the balance of the +evidence seems to me in his favour. As Mr. Gosse says, Sir Julius +Caesar may have confounded this hymn with 'Wilt thou forgive'. +In re-reading the <i>Devotions</i> with Professor Moore Smith's statement +in view I have come on two other points of interest. Donne's views on +the immortality of the soul (see II. pp. <a href="#pageii.160">160</a>-2) are very clearly stated: +'That light, which is the very emanation of the light of God ... only +that bends not to this <i>Center</i>, to <i>Ruine</i>; that which was not made +of <i>Nothing</i>, is not thretned with this annihilation. All other things are; +even <i>Angels</i>, even our <i>soules</i>; they move upon the same <i>Poles</i>, they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.275" id="pageii.275"></a>[pg 275]</span> +bend to the same <i>Center</i>; and if they were not made immortall by +<i>preservation</i>, their <i>Nature</i> could not keep them from sinking to +this <i>center</i>, <i>Annihilation</i>' (pp. 216-17).</p> + +<p>The difficult line in the sonnet <i>Resurrection</i> (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.321">321</a>, l. 8) is perhaps +illuminated by pp. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.206">206</a>-8, where Donne speaks of 'thy first booke, the +booke of <i>life</i>', 'thy second book, the booke of Nature,' and closes a +further list with 'to those, <i>the booke with seven seals</i>, which only +<i>the Lamb which was slain, was found worthy to open</i>; which, I hope, it shal not +disagree with the measure of thy blessed <i>spirit</i>, to interpret, the +<i>promulgation of their pardon, and righteousnes, who are washed in the +blood of the Lamb</i>'. This is possibly the 'little booke' of the sonnet, +perhaps changed by Donne to 'life-book' to simplify the reference. +But the two are not the same.</p> + +<h3>ADDENDUM.</h3> + +<p>Vol. I, p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.368">368</a>, l. 6. Whilst my Physitions by their love are growne +Cosmographers ... Sir Julius Caesar's MS. (Addl. MS. 34324) has +<i>Loer</i>, scil. <i>Lore</i>. This is probably the true reading.</p> + +<h3>ERRATUM.</h3> + +<p><span class="bb">P. 274</span>, l. 28. <i>for</i> figure-inundation <i>read</i> +figure—inundation</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageii.276" id="pageii.276"></a>[pg 276]</span></p> + +<h2>INDEX OF FIRST LINES.</h2> + +<p class="title1a">(VOL. II.)</p> + +<table class="toc" summary="contents" border="0"> + +<tr> + <td class="left1"> </td> + <td class="right">PAGE</td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.53">A learned Bishop of this Land</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.53">53</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.101">Amongst the Poets Dacus numbered is</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.101">101</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.145">An ill year of a Goodyere us bereft</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.145">145</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.171">As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.171">171</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.145">Esteemed knight take triumph over death</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.145">145</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.12">Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.12">12</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.261">Henrie the greate, greate both in peace and war</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.261">261</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.103">How often hath my pen (mine hearts Solicitor)</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.103">103</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.129">Loe her's a man worthy indeede to travell</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.129">129</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.129">No want of duty did my mind possess</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.129">7</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.213">Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.213">213</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.268">This Lifes a play groaned out by natures Arte</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.268">268</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.160">Thou send'st me prose and rimes, I send for those</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.160">160</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.261">Though Ister have put down the Rhene</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.261">261</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.141">'Tis not a coate of gray or Shepheardes Life</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.141">141</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1b"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.101">Titus the brave and valorous young gallant</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.101">101</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.52">Whoso termes love a fire, may like a poet</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.52">52</a></td> +</tr> +<tr> + <td class="left1"><a class="contents" href="#pageii.141">Wotton the country and the country swaine</a></td> + <td class="right"><a href="#pageii.141">141</a></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<p class="center space-above5">Oxford: Horace Hart, M.A., Printer to the University</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="tn"> + +<h4>Transcriber's Note:<a name="transcriber_note"></a></h4> + + + + + + + + +<p>This is the second volume of two. There are links between the two +volumes. These links are designed to work when +the book is read on line. However, if you want to download both +volumes and have the links work on your own computer, +then follow these directions carefully.</p> + +<p>1. Create a directory (folder) named whatever you like (e.g., Donne). +(The name of this directory (folder) is not critical, but the inner +folders <i>must</i> be named as listed below, or the links between +volumes will <i>not</i> work).</p> + +<p>2. In that directory (folder) create 2 directories (folders) named</p> +<ul class="nonetn"> + + <li>48688</li> + <li>48772</li> + </ul> + +<p>3. Create the following directories (folders):</p> + +<ul class="nonetn"> + <li>In the 48688 directory create a directory named 48688-h</li> + <li>In the 48772 directory create a directory named 48772-h</li> + </ul> + +<p>4. Download the <i>zipped</i> html version of each volume.</p> +<ul class="nonetn"> + + <li>Download Vol. I from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/48688">http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/48688</a></li> + <li>Download Vol. II from <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/48772">http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/48772</a></li> + </ul> + +<p>5. Unzip the downloaded files and move them into the appropriate directories:</p> +<ul class="nonetn"> + + <li>Move the unzipped 48688-h.htm file and its "images" directory + into your 48688-h directory.</li> + <li>Move the unzipped 48772-h.htm file and its "images" and "music" + directories into your 48772-h directory.</li> + </ul> + +<p>Use the BACK button to return +from a link.</p> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="short" /> +<p> </p> + + + + + + + + + + + + + +<p>Although Scotland had accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1600, until 1752, England still followed the Julian + calendar (after Julius Caesar, 44 B.C.), and celebrated New Year's Day + on March 25th (Annunciation Day). Most Catholic countries accepted the + Gregorian calendar (after Pope Gregory XIII) from some time after 1582 + (the Catholic countries of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in 1582, + Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland within a year or two, + Hungary in 1587, and Scotland in 1600), and celebrated New Year's Day + on January 1st. England finally changed to the Gregorian calendar in + 1752.</p> + +<p>This is the reason for the double dates in the early months of the + years in some parts of this book. e.g., there is a statement, on page 134, that "He died February 7, 1627/8. (i.e. 1627 + in England; 1628 in Scotland). Only after March 25th (Julian New Years + Day) was the year the same in the two countries. The Julian calendar + was known as 'Old Style', and the Gregorian calendar as 'New Style' + (N.S.).</p> + +<p>Page lxiv, Footnote 9: 'Garrard att his quarters in ??' + Perhaps 'ϑermyte' with U+03D1 GREEK THETA SYMBOL: thermyte ? + perhaps meaning "(at the sign of) The Hermit"? + (The printer, rightly or wrongly, seems to have used a + 'theta' at the beginning of the word).</p> + +<p>Page lxv, a facsimile of a Title Page, split a cross-page paragraph. One sentence was on page lxiv; the rest of the paragraph was on page lxvi. +In the interest of a link to the page, it seemed beneficial to leave the paragraph as it was split.</p> + +<p>Page lxv: 'VVith' is as printed.</p> + +<p>Page lxxxvi: 'Lo:' retained, although 'Ld.' is printed above. From the context, 'Lo:' may not be a typo, as this form occurs elsewhere.</p> +<p class="ind">and the <i>Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington</i>."</p> + +<p>Page cxvi, footnote 39 (cont.: '17-8.' corrected to '17-18.'. + "<i>To Sr Henry Wotton</i>, p. 180, ll. 17-18."</p> + +<p>Page cxxx: 'p. 406' corrected to 'p. 412'</p> +<p class="ind">"'Dear Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412)"</p> + +<p>Pages cxxxi-cxxxii: missing word at page-turn? 'and' added in brackets.</p> + +<p class="ind">"And as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very strong evidence,...</p> + +<p>Page 23: 'll. 140-6' corrected to 'll. 440-6'</p> + +<p class="ind">"<i>The Second Anniversary</i>, ll. 440-6 (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.264">264</a>)</p> + +<p>Page 34: 'coporales' corrected to 'corporales'.</p> + +<p class="ind">"'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales perpendunt.'"</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p>Some poems have associated music pages (starting p. <a href="#pageii.54">54</a>). Html links have been added to playable and printable music files (prepared by the transcriber).</p> + +<p>Page 57: This is only the first page of the original two pages (28 and 29) from William Corkine's "Second Book of Ayres" (1612), +for 'Page <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.46a">46</a>. The Baite'. +It is possible that John Donne wrote "The Baite" for a different melody, which no longer exists. +The melody on page 57 may have been intended for Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love: +</p> + +<div class="poem width24"> <div class="stanza"> +<p>Come live with me and be my love:</p> +<p>And we will all the pleasures prove</p> +<p>That hills and valleys, dales and fields,</p> +<p>Woods or sleepy mountain yields."</p> + </div> </div> + +<p> +As Donne's 'The Baite' ("Come live with me and be my love...."), was a parody of Marlowe's "Come live with me....", +the same tune may have later been used for both.</p> + +<p>The PDF and Midi files are an approximate transcription of the melody line for the first 16 bars, +i.e., the first stanza, up to the first double barline. There appear to be only 11 bars in this section, +but it can be seen from the image that a lot of the barlines are missing. These have been restored in the PDF and Midi files, +so that the transcription actually makes sense, and fits the words.</p> + +<p>The melody was transcribed using John Dowland's lute fretting chart, which gives the open strings, ascending, +as: G, C, F, A, D, G, with open string, a, first fret, b, then c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l.</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p>Page 84: 'p. 308, ll. 27-8' corrected to p. 308, ll. 317-8</p> + +<p class="ind">"in the <i>Progresse of the Soule</i>, p. 308, ll. 317-8:"</p> + +<p>Page 214: p. 416 corrected to p. 422.</p> + +<p class="ind">"For the relation of this _Elegie_ to that beginning 'Death, be not +proud' (p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.422">422</a>) see <i>Text and Canon, &c.</i>, p. <a href="#pageii.cxliii">cxliii</a>."</p> + +<p>Page 213: 'p. 404' corrected to p. 410'</p> +<p class="ind">"('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. <a href="../../48688/48688-h/48688-h.htm#pagei.410a">410</a>)"</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p>Pages 235, 263: The inscriptions have a character which looks like a reversed capital C, +but which is actually a ROMAN NUMERAL REVERSED ONE HUNDRED (U+2183).</p> + +<p>(Note: This works in compliant browsers.)</p> + +<p>On Page 235, the date of Anne (More) Donne's death is given as CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>. DC. XVII.<br /> +i.e. hundreds, ten, (1000) plus 600 plus 17, or the year 1617, which is correct.</p> + +<p>On Page 263, the date given is CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>. +I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>C. XXIII.<br /> +CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> = 1000;<br /> +I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>C = 500+100 (600),<br /> +XXIII = 23, so the date is 1623.</p> + +<p>(Reference for page 263: [http:// hypotheses.org/17871] ... 'Le latin de Locke ... Goudae apud Justum Ab Hoeve +</p> + +<p>CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> +I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>C LXXXIX ...<br /> +CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> = 1000<br /> +I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins>C se décompose en +I<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> = 500 + C = 100 soit 600<br /> +LXXXIX = 89<br /> +La date correspondante est 1689 <sup>10</sup>.</p> + +<p><sup>10</sup> 2011 serait CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> +CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> XI '.)</p> + +<p>(Thus 2015 would be CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> +CI<ins title="T.N.: Roman Numeral reversed one hundred"><span class="rc">Ↄ</span></ins> XV.)</p> + +<hr class="mid" /> + +<p>Page 251: <i>S69</i> corrected to <i>S96</i></p> + +<p class="ind">"<i>S96</i> and <i>O'F</i> differ from the third group...."</p> + +<p>Page 275: Erratum, p. 274.... This has been corrected.</p> + +<p class="center"><a href="#top">Return to Top</a></p> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE, VOLUME II (OF 2)***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 48772-h.htm or 48772-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/8/7/7/48772">http://www.gutenberg.org/4/8/7/7/48772</a></p> +<p> +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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