A Letter.
No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That wch I feare I doe too soone pursue
Wch is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yor sonne am prouder of yor band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.
Yor obedient sonne
Jo. Donne.
Pages 5, 6. 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 Text and Canon, &c. They were taken from Jonson's Epigrams (1616), where they are Nos. xxiii., xciv., and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three memorable criticisms in his Conversations with Drummond (ed. Laing, Shakespeare Society, 1842):
'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things.'
'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging.'
'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish.'
SONGS AND SONETS.
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 Elegies, poems similar in theme and tone to the Songs and Sonets. 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.
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 continual contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his
Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth.'
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 Elegie XIV (if it be Donne's, and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities, the two frankly pagan Epithalamia on the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of Ignatius his Conclave, 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 none of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
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', Womans constancy, The Indifferent, Loves Vsury, The Legacie, Communitie, Confined Love, Loves Alchymie, The Flea, The Message, Witchcraft by a picture, The Apparition, Loves Deitie, Loves diet, The Will, A Jeat Ring sent, Negative love, Farewell to love. 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 The good-morrow, The Sunne Rising, The Canonization, Lovers infiniteness, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' A Feaver, Aire and Angells (touched with cynical humour at the close), Breake of day, The Anniversarie, A Valediction: of the booke, Loves growth, The Dreame, A Valediction: of weeping, The Baite, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, The Extasie, The Prohibition, The Expiration, Lecture upon the Shadow. It would, of course, be rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like The Baite, 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.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine examples of his subtler moods as The Funerall, The Blossome, The Primrose, 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 Songs and Sonets are Twicknam Garden and A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day. 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.
Page 7. The Good-morrow.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which is given in the group of MSS. D, H49, Lec, and in 1633, 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 1633, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. collection, probably A18, N, TC. In TCD 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 D, H49, Lec 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 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 better hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. Let Maps to other. 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, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, p. 106 (Cambridge English Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile.' Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I. i. 54.
ll. 20-1. If our two loves be one, &c. If our two loves are one, dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though two, 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, Summa 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.' Sermons 80. 19. 189.
Page 8. Song.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title A Raritie. It is set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that Habington's poem, Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of Women (Castara, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.
Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.
A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in The Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. (1669)
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.
John Dunne.
l. 2. Get with child a mandrake root. 'Many Mola's and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, 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 Vulgar Errors (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also The Progresse of the Soule, st. xv, p. 300.
Page 10. The Undertaking.
l. 2. the Worthies. 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, Accedens of Armorye. Nash mentions Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey in Love's Labour's Lost. All the Worthies 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 [sic] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred guilders'. Vere's Commentaries (1657), p. 174.
l. 6. The skill of specular stone. Compare To the Countesse of Bedford, p. [219], ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take 'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes Holinshed's Chronicle, 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 increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the Coelum Philosophorum:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'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.
l. 16. Loves but their oldest clothes. The 'her' of B 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.
Compare To Mrs. M. H., p. [217], ll. 31-2.
l. 18. Vertue attir'd in woman see. 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.'
Page 11. The Sunne Rising.
Compare Ovid, Amores, I. 13.
Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.
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.
l. 17. both th' India's of spice and Myne. 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, for the word had a wider connotation. Compare Loves exchange, p. [35], ll. 34-35:
and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.
And The Progresse of the Soule, p. [295], l. 17:
thy Western land of Myne.
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.' Sermons 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. To Sir Robert Ker. Gosse's Life, &c., ii. 191.
l. 24. All wealth alchimie: 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, Orlando Furioso (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.
Page 12. The Indifferent.
l. 7. dry corke. 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 (King Lear, III. vii. 31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c. (1603): 'It would pose all the cunning exorcists ... to teach an old corkie woman to writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.
Page 13. Loves Usury.
l. 5. My body raigne. Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from 1635-69. 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
mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.
Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's paradoxical thesis:
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, v. cxxxiv.
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:
Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.
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' (Loves Alchimie), 'as she would man should despise the sport' (Farewell to Love). The prayer that report may ('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'.
Page 14. The Canonization.
l. 7. Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate. 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 Peter) that mony is ill fished for.' Sermons 80. 12. 122.
l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. except Lec, which here as in several other little details appears to resemble 1633 more closely than either of the other MSS., D, H49. 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.
ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of D, H49, Lec, 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
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
with the two preceding lines. To me it seems the line must 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 so 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.
ll. 37-45. And thus invoke us, &c. 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:
Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize—
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love.
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.
Donne as usual is pedantically accurate in the details of his metaphor. The canonized lovers are invoked as saints, i.e. their prayers are requested. 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 Letters, 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.'
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. D, H49, Lec read 'and drawe', a bad rhyme; and A18, N, TCC (the verse is lost in TCD) 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.' Sermons 80. 66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. Because thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.)
l. 45. A patterne of your love. The 'of our love' of 1633 might mean 'for our love', but it is clear from the manner in which this stanza is given in D 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:
The God of Souldiers:
With the consent of supreame Jove, informe
Thy thoughts with Noblenesse.
Shakespeare, Cor. v. iii. 70-2
(Simpson, Shakespearian Punctuation, p. 98).
But clearly here 'Beg' is in the second person plural, predicate to 'You whom reverend love', and 'your love' is the right reading.
Page 16. The Triple Foole.
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.
Page 17. Lovers Infiniteness.
This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is not included in the A18, N, TC collection, would seem to have undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in A25, from which Cy 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 A25 has obviously interchanged 'thine' and 'mine'. The slightly different version of JC gives the correct order. The generally careful D, H49, Lec group has an unusually faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with S96) 'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.
'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:
so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.
For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see Appendix C, p. [439].
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 1633 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 poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet no more', &c.
l. 9. generall 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:
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate, &c.
Page 18. Song.
Sweetest love, &c. Of the music to this and 'Send home my long stray'd eyes' I can discover no trace. The Baite was doubtless sung to the same air as Marlowe's 'Come live with me'. See II. p. [57].
ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of 1633, which has the support of all the MSS. That of 1635-54 is an attempt to accommodate the lines, by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in the other stanzas.
Page 20. The Legacie.
ll. 9-16. I heard me say, &c. 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:
I heard me say, 'Tell her anon,
That myself', that is you not I,
'Did kill me', and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none;
When I had ripp'd and search'd where hearts should lie,
It killed me again, that I who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
The Grolier Club version has no inverted commas, and runs:
I heard me say, Tell her anon,
That myself, that's you not I,
Did kill me; and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none.
When I had ripped me and searched where hearts did lie,
It killed me again that I, who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.
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.
But the point in which both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor seem to me in error is in connecting l. 14, When I had ripp'd, &c., 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:
Maer, oh, ick vond er geen, al scheurd ick mijn geraemt,
En socht door d'oude plaets die 't Hert is toegeraemt.
The last two lines are a comment on the whole incident, the making of the will and the poet's inability to implement it.
l. 20. It was intire to none: 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 The Wrecker. 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.' Letters, 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.'
ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The former, following 1669, but altering the punctuation, prints:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.
The 'for our loss be sad' comes in very strangely before the end, nor is the force of 'and therefore' very clear.
The Grolier Club editor, following the words of 1633, but altering the punctuation, reads:
As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our losses sad;
I meant to send this heart instead of mine
But oh! no man could hold it, for twas thine.
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 1633. '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 pis aller 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.'
Huyghens translates:
Soo meenden ick 't verlies dat ick vergelden most
Te boeten met dit Hert, en doen 't u toebehooren:
Maer, oh, 't en kost niet zijn, 't was uw al lang te voren.
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.
Page 21. A Feaver.
ll. 13-14.
O wrangling schooles, that search what fire
Shall burne this world.
'I cannot but marvel from what Sibyl or Oracle they' (the Ancients) 'stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say,
Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.
There yet remaines to th'World one common fire
Wherein our Bones with Stars shall make one pyre.
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 Religio Medici, sect. 45.
Page 22. Aire and Angels.
l. 19. Ev'ry thy haire. This, the reading of 1633-39 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 1669 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, Sermons 28. 'Every, the most complex, web of thought may be reduced to simple syllogisms.' Sir W. Hamilton. See note to The Funerall, l. 3.
ll. 23-4. Then as an Angell face and wings
Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare.
St. Thomas (Summa Theol. 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.'
Tasso, familiar like Donne with Catholic doctrine, thus clothes his angels:
Così parlògli, e Gabriel s' accinse
Veloce ad eseguir l' imposte cose.
La sua forma invisibil d'aria cinse,
Ed al senso mortal la sottopose:
Umane membra, aspetto uman si finse,
Ma di celeste maestà il compose.
Tra giovane e fanciullo età confine
Gerus. Lib. I. 13. Prese, ed ornò di raggi il biondo crine.
Fairfax translates the relevant lines:
In form of airy members fair imbared,
His spirits pure were subject to our sight.
Milton's language is vague and inconsistent, but his angels are indubitably corporeal. When Satan is wounded,
the ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible; and from the gash
A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed.
. . . . . . . . . .
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, (not as frail man
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,)
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air.
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense; and as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.
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 assume 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,
to his proper shape returns
A Seraph winged, &c.
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.' Pierce Penniless (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 virtually 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.
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, Purgatorio, 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 Enneads, I. 454.
Page 23. Breake of day.
This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not vice versa, 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 (Early English Lyrics, 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 aube, or lyric dialogue of lovers parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened by the punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.
Why should we rise? Because 'tis light?
ll. 13-18. Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c. 'It is a good definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is Animae vacantis passio, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind. For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love.' Sermons 26. 384.
Page 24. The Anniversarie.
l. 3. The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe: i.e. which makes times and seasons as they pass.
Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd.
The Second Anniversary, l. 23.
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 1633, reads 'time', and this makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not improve the construction.
l. 22. But wee no more, then all the rest. 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 1633 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 all in heaven are equally happy, whereas here on earth,
we'are kings and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than all the rest'.
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:
Only who have enjoy'd
The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it;
For it is both the object and the wit.
This is essential joy, where neither hee
Can suffer diminution, nor wee;
'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;
Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood.
The Second Anniversary, ll. 440-6 (p. [264]).
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 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 ... Sententiarum Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare Aquinas, Summa, Supplement. Quaest. xciii.
All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, is Piccardo's answer to Dante (Paradiso, 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.'
ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that 1633 has in this poem followed not D, H49, Lec but A18, N, TC.
Page 25. A Valediction: of my name in the window.
I have adopted from the title of this poem in D, H49, Lec the correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions the titles run straight on, A Valediction of my name, in the window. This has led in the case of the next of these poems, A Valediction of the booke, to the mistake expressed in the title of 1633, Valediction to his Booke, 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. Valediction is the general title of a poem bidding farewell. Of the Booke, Of teares, &c., indicate the particular themes. This is clearly brought out in O'F, where they are brought together and numbered. Valediction 2. of Teares, &c.
Page 26, l. 28. The Rafters of my body, bone. Compare: 'First, Ossa, 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.' Sermons 80. 51. 516.
Page 27, ll. 31-2.
Till my returne, repaire
And recompact my scattered body so.
This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 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 back 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.' Sermons 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration.' Sermons 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.
Page 28. Twicknam Garden.
l. 1. surrounded with tears: i.e. overflowed with tears, the root idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:
Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.
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.' Sermons 80. 59. 599.
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. Letters (1651), pp. 78-9 (To Sir Henry Goodyere).
l. 15. Indure, nor yet leave loving. This is at first sight a strange reading, and I was disposed to think that 1635-69, 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.
It is remarkable that D, H49, Lec, and H40 omit this half line. If the same omission was in the MS. from which 1633 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:
Maer, om my noch te decken
Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min
Te voeren in mijn zin,
Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.
Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be ever the faithful lover.' Compare Loves Deitie, l. 24. 'Love might make me leave loving.' The remainder of the verse may have been suggested by Jonson's
Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.
Cynthias Revels (1600).
l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and 'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from A18, N, TC; D, H49, Lec; and H40. 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:
I prethee yet remember
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shreeking.
Webster, The White Devil, V. vi. 64.
On the other hand the lover most often groans:
Thy face hath not the power to make love grone.
Shakespeare, Sonnets, 131. 6.
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane.
Shakespeare, Sonnets, 133. 1.
Ros. I would be glad to see it. (i.e. his heart)
Bir. I would you heard it groan.
Love's Labour's Lost.
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:
Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms, &c.
2 Hen. VI, III. ii. 310.
In the Elegie upon ... Prince Henry (p. [269], ll. 53-4) Donne writes:
though such a life wee have
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.
i.e. a life of groans.
Page 29. A Valediction: of the Booke.
l. 3. Esloygne. Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good English form.
From worldly care himself he did esloyne.
Spenser, F. Q. I. iv. 20.
The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with 's' disappears after the seventeenth century.
Page 30, l. 7. Her who from Pindar could allure. Corinna, who five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, Var. Hist. xiii. 25, referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix. 22.
l. 8. And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame. His wife, Polla Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first books of his Pharsalia'. 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.'
l. 9. And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name. I owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers to the Myriobiblon or Bibliotheca 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.
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 to me that with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the end of l. 22.
l. 25. Vandals and Goths inundate us. This, the reading of quite a number of independent MSS., seems to me greatly preferable to that of the printed texts:
Vandals and the Goths invade us.
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, The Law of Armes.' Sermons 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
Paradise Lost, i. 351-4.
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, inundans, et transiens usque ad collum veniet.' Isaiah viii. 7-8.
Donne uses the word exactly as here in the Essays in Divinity: '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.
Page 31, 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 who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or "conscience".'
'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.'
l. 53. In this thy booke, such will their nothing see. 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 Cambridge History of Literature, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully rounded 'no'. Compare Negative Love, l. 16.
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.' Sermons 80. 78. 791.
'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, Apologie de Raimond Sebond (Les Essais, ii. 12).
Page 32, ll. 59-61. To take a latitude, &c. 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.
ll. 61-3.
but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee.
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 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.
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.
Page 33. Loves Growth.
ll. 7-8. But if this medicine, &c. '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 that this quintessence cures all diseases 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, The Fourth Book of the Archidoxies. Concerning the Quintessence.
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 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. [186], l. 26), unless that also is the quintessence in Paracelsus's full sense of the word.
ll. 17-20.
As, in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg'd, but showne.
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From loves awakened root do bud out now.
P reads here:
As in the firmament
Starres by the sunne are not enlarg'd but showne
Greater; Loves deeds, &c.
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.' P 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 P'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:
'He peered upwards. "Look!" he said.
"What?" I asked.
"In the sky. Already. On the blackness—a little touch of blue. See! The stars seem larger. And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space—they are hidden."
Swiftly, steadily the day approached us.' The first Men in the Moon. (Chap. vii. Sunrise on the Moon.)
A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night, seemeth greater then in a clear.' Sermons 50. 36. 326.