Page 108. Elegie XV.
l. 12. Following RP31 and also Jonson's Underwoods I have taken 'at once' as going with 'Both hot and cold', not with 'make life, and death' as in 1633-69. This is one of the poems which 1633 derived from some other source than D, H49, Lec.
ll. 16-18 (all sweeter ... the rest) Chambers has overlooked altogether the 1633 reading 'sweeter'. He prints 'sweeten'd' from 1635-69. 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: And the divine impression of stolne kisses That sealed the rest. Does this, as in 1633, 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 1633 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 1635-69.
Page 109, l. 34. I do not know whence Chambers derived his reading 'drift' for 'trust'—perhaps from an imperfect copy of 1633. He attributes it to all the editions prior to 1669. This is an oversight.
Page 110, ll. 59 f. I could renew, &c. Compare Ovid, Amores, III. ii. 1-7.
Non ego nobilium sedeo studiosus equorum;
Cui tamen ipsa faves, vincat ut ille precor.
Ut loquerer tecum veni tecumque sederem,
Ne tibi non notus, quem facis, esset amor.
Tu cursum spectas, ego te; spectemus uterque
Quod iuvat, atque oculos pascat uterque suos.
O, cuicumque faves, felix agitator equorum!
Page 111. Elegie XVI.
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 1635, 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 O'F 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 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,
and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.
As You Like It, I. iii. 114-18.
In l. 35 the reading 'Lives fuellers', i.e. 'Life's fuellers', which is found in such early and good MSS. as D, H49, Lec and W, 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.
In l. 37 there can, I think, be no doubt that the original reading is preserved by A18, N, S, TCD, and W.
Will quickly knowe thee, and knowe thee, and, alas!
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. A18, N, TC; D, H49, Lec, and W is also probably original:
Nor praise, nor dispraise me; Blesse nor curse.
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'.
Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster (Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 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 1719. Donne speaks in his sermons of 'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. Sermons 80. 10. 99.
Page 112, l. 44. England is onely a worthy Gallerie: i.e. entrance hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country: for, if in this life only,' &c. Sermons 50. 30. 270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not two Worlds;... They are not two Houses; This is the Gallery, and that the Bedchamber of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no ruine.' Sermons 50. 43. 399.
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.
Page 113. Elegie XVII.
l. 12. wide and farr. The MSS. here correct an obvious error of the editions.
Page 114, l. 24. This line is found only in A10, which omits the next eleven lines. It may belong to a shorter version of the poem, but it fits quite well into the context.
Page 115, l. 58. daring eyes. 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:
O now no more
Shall his perfections, like the sunbeams, dare
The purblind world; in heaven those glories are.
Campion, Elegie upon the Untimely Death of Prince Henry.
Let his Grace go forward
And dare us with his cap like larks.
Shakespeare, Henry VIII, III. ii. 282.
This refers to the custom of 'daring' or dazzling larks with a mirror.
Page 116. Elegie XVIII.
Page 117, ll. 31-2. Men to such Gods, &c. Donne has in view here the different kinds of sacrifice described by Porphyry:
How to devote things living in due form
My verse shall tell, thou in thy tablets write.
For gods of earth and gods of heaven each three;
For heavenly pure white; for gods of earth
Cattle of kindred hue divide in three,
And on the altar lay thy sacrifice.
For gods infernal bury deep, and cast
The blood into a trench. For gentle Nymphs
Honey and gifts of Dionysus pour.
Eusebius: Praeparatio Evangelica, iv. 9
(trans. E. H. Gifford, 1903).
l. 47. The Nose (like to the first Meridian) '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.' Sermons 80. 68. 688.
'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.' The Sea-mans Kalender, 1632. But ancient Cosmographers placed the first meridian at the Canaries. See note to p. [187], l. 2.
Page 118, l. 52. Not faynte Canaries but Ambrosiall. 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, Par. Lost, 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':
Where still mid thoughts of August's quivering gold
Folk hoed the wheat, and clipped the vine in trust
Of faint October's purple-foaming must.
Earthly Paradise, Atalanta's Race.
Page 119. Elegie XIX.
Page 120, l. 17. then safely tread. The 'safely' of so many MSS., including W, 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.
l. 22. Ill spirits. It is not easy to decide between the 'Ill' of 1669 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'.
In Elegie IV, l. 68, 'all' is written for 'ill' in B.
Page 121, l. 30. How blest am I in this discovering thee! The 'this' of almost all the MSS. is supported by the change of 'discovering' into 'discovery' of B, O'F, one way of evading the rather unusual construction, 'this' with a verbal noun followed by an object. The alteration of 'this' to 'thus' in 1669 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 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.' Letters, p. 306.
l. 32. Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Chambers reads 'my soul'—I do not know from what source. The metaphor is from signing and sealing.
ll. 35-8. Gems which you women use, &c. I have adopted several emendations from the MSS. In the edition of 1669 the lines are printed thus:
Jems which you women use
Are like Atlantas ball: cast in men's views,
That when a fools eye lighteth on a Jem
His earthly soul may court that, not them:
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:
For he who colour loves, and skin,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
The antithesis 'theirs not them' is much more pointed than 'that not them'.
l. 46. There is no pennance due to innocence. I suspect that the original cast of this line was that pointed to by the MSS.,
Here is no penance, much less innocence:
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?'
Page 122. Elegie XX.
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 JC. Compare Ovid, Amor. i. 9: 'Militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido.'
Page 124. Heroicall Epistle. Sapho to Philaenis.
I have transferred this poem hither from its place in 1635-69 among the sober Letters to Severall Personages. 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 Anactoria.
l. 22. As Down, as Stars, &c. 'Down' is probably correct, but the 'Dowves' (i.e. doves) of P 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:
this hand
As soft as doves-downe, and as white as it.
Wint. Tale, IV. iv. 374.
But of course swan's down is also celebrated:
Heaven with sweet repose doth crowne
Each vertue softer than the swan's fam'd downe.
Habington, Castara.
Page 125, l. 33. Modern editors separate 'thorny' and 'hairy' by a comma. They should rather be connected by a hyphen as in TCD.
l. 40. And are, as theeves trac'd, which rob when it snows. This is doubtless the source of Dryden's figurative description of Jonson's thefts from the Ancients: 'You track him everywhere in their snow.' Essay of Dramatic Poesy.
EPITHALAMIONS.
Page 127. 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 W, following the Satyres and Elegies and preceding the Letters, being probably the only one written when the collection in the first part of that MS. was made.
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 kind. In glow and colour nothing he has written surpasses the Somerset Epithalamion:
First her eyes kindle other Ladies eyes,
Then from their beams their jewels lusters rise,
And from their jewels torches do take fire,
And all is warmth and light and good desire.
An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song, &c. '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 like a Constellation; 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, Annales.
A full description of the festivities will be found in Nichol's Progresses of King James, in Stow's Chronicle, 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.' Court and Times of James 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 Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c. (1624), and to the latter she, then in exile and trouble, replied in a courteous strain.
Page 128. Compare with the opening stanzas Chaucer's Parliament of Foules and Skeat's note (Works of Chaucer, i. 516). Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).
l. 42. this, thy Valentine. This is the reading of all the editions except 1669 and of all the MSS. except two of no independent value. I think it is better than 'this day, Valentine', which Chambers adopts from 1669. The bride is addressed throughout the 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, par excellence', 'thy Saint Valentine's day', 'the day which saw you paired'. But 'a Valentine' is a 'true-love': 'to be your Valentine' (Hamlet, IV. v. 50), and the reference may be to Frederick,—Frederick's Day is to become an era.
ll. 43-50. The punctuation of these lines requires attention. That of the editions, which Chambers follows, arranges them thus:
Come forth, come forth, and as one glorious flame
Meeting Another growes the same,
So meet thy Fredericke, and so
To an unseparable union goe,
Since separation
Falls not on such things as are infinite,
Nor things which are but one, can disunite.
You'are twice inseparable, great, and one.
In this it will be seen that the clause 'Since separation ... can disunite' is attached to the previous 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 follows, 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.
l. 46. To an unseparable union growe. I have adopted 'growe' from the MSS. in place of 'goe' from the editions. The former are unanimous with the strange exception of Lec. This MS., which in several respects seems to be most like that from which 1633 was printed, varies here from its fellows D and H49, probably for the same reason that the editor of 1633 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
To an unseparable union growe
is, I think, preferable, because (1) both the words used in l. 44 are thus echoed.
Meeting Another, growes the same,
So meet thy Fredericke, and so
To an unseparable union growe.
(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:
'I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.' All's Well that Ends Well, II. i. 36.
First let our eyes be rivited quite through
Our turning brains, and both our lips grow to.
Donne, Elegie XII, 57-8.
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 1669, 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.
Page 131. Ecclogue. 1613. December 26, &c.
It is unnecessary to detail all the ugly history of this notorious marriage. See Gardiner, History of England, 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.
Page 132, l. 34. in darke plotts. Here the reading of 1635, 'plotts,' has the support of all the MSS., and the 'places' of 1633, to which 1669 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 Progresse of the Soule, l. 129, Donne speaks of 'a darke and foggie plot'.
fire without light. 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.' Sermons 26. 19. 273. 'This dark fire, which was not prepared for us.' Ibid.
l. 57. In the East-Indian fleet. The MSS. here give us back a word which 1633 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.
l. 58. or Amber in thy taste? '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:
beasts of chase, or foul of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd,
Gris-amber steam'd;
Milton, Paradise Regained, ii. 344.
and
Be sure
The wines be lusty, high, and full of spirit,
And amber'd all.
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Custom of the Country, iii. 2.
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 Théâtre d'Agriculture (1600), speaks of persons who had formed a taste for drinking 'de l'ambre jaune subtilement pulvérisé'.
Page 134, ll. 85-6. Thou hast no such; yet here was this, and more,
An earnest lover, wise then, and before.
This is the reading of 1633 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:
Thou hast no such; yet here was this and more.
An earnest lover, wise then, and before,
Our little Cupid hath sued livery.
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 was 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 love them that love me, &c.... The Person that professes love in this place is Wisdom herself ... so that sapere et amare, to be wise and to love, which perchance never met before nor since, are met in this text.' Sermons 26. 18, Dec. 14, 1617.
Then, sweetest Silvia, let's no longer stay;
True love we know, precipitates delay.
Away with doubts, all scruples hence remove;
No man at one time can be wise and love.
Herrick, To Silvia to Wed.
Page 135. I have inserted the title Epithalamion after the Ecclogue from D, H49, Lec, O'F, S96, as otherwise the latter title is extended to the whole poem. This poem is headed in two different ways in the MSS. In A18, N, TC, the title at the beginning is: Eclogue Inducing an Epithalamion at the marriage of the E. of S. 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 Eclogue. 1613. Decemb. 26. Later follows the title Epithalamion. As 1633 follows this fashion at the beginning, it should have done so throughout.
Page 136, l. 126. Since both have both th'enflaming eyes. This is the reading of all the MSS. and it explains the fact that 'th'enflaming' is so printed in 1633. 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 her 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.
l. 129. Yet let A23, O'F. 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.
Page 137, l. 150. Who can the Sun in water see. The Grolier Club edition alters the full stop here to a semicolon; and Chambers quotes the reading of A18, N, TC, '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:
For our ease, give thine eyes th'unusual part
Of joy, a Teare.
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 A Valediction: of my name in the window, and note.
Dryden has borrowed this image—like many another of Donne's:
Muse down again precipitate thy flight;
For how can mortal eyes sustain immortal light?
But as the sun in water we can bear,
Yet not the sun, but his reflection there,
So let us view her here in what she was,
And take her image in this watery glass.
Eleonora, ll. 134-9.
l. 156. as their spheares are. The crystalline sphere in which each planet is fixed.
Page 138, ll. 171-81. The Benediction. 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—
Nature and grace doe all, and nothing Art.
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':
may here, to the worlds end, live
Heires from this King, to take thanks, you, to give,
Nature and grace doe all and nothing Art.
'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 1633 is that of a comma to a full stop, a big change in value, a small one typographically.
Page 139, l. 200. they doe not set so too; 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.'
ll. 204-5. As he that sees, &c. 'I have sometimes wondered in the reading what was become of those glaring colours which amazed me in Bussy D'Ambois 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, The Spanish Friar. In another place Dryden uses the figure in a more poetic or at least ambitious fashion:
The tapers of the gods,
The sun and moon, run down like waxen globes;
The shooting stars end all in purple jellies,
And chaos is at hand.
Oedipus, II. i.
The idea was a common one, but I have no doubt that Dryden owed his use of it as an image to Donne. There is no poet from whom he pilfers 'wit' more freely.
Page 140, ll. 215-16. Now, as in Tullias tombe, 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 Tulliolae filiae meae; 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, Vulgar Errors, iii. 21.
Page 141, l. 17. Help with your presence and devise to praise. 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:
Conceitedly dresse her, and be assign'd
By you, fit place for every flower and jewell,
Make her for love fit fewell
As gay as Flora, and as rich as Inde.
'Devise to praise' would be a very awkward construction.
Page 142, l. 26. Sonns of these Senators wealths deep oceans. 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.
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 Sermon Preached at Pauls Cross ... 26 Mart. 1616, '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 Epithalamion 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:
it rain'd more
Then if the Sunne had drunk the sea before. Storme, 43-4.
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:
Mad paper stay, and grudge not here to burne
With all those sonnes [sunnes B, S96] whom my braine did create.
To Mrs. M. H. H., p. [216].
I am thy sonne, made with thyself to shine.
Holy Sonnets, II. 5.
Sweare by thyself, that at my death thy sonne
Shall shine as hee shines now, and heretofore.
A Hymn to God the Father.
'This day both Gods Sons arose: The Sun of his Firmament, and the Son of his bosome.' Sermons 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.
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'.
Page 143, l. 57. His steeds nill be restrain'd. I had adopted the reading 'nill' for 'will' conjecturally before I found it in W. 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 Epithalamia than anywhere else. Sylvester uses it in his translation of Du Bartas:
For I nill stiffly argue to and fro
In nice opinions, whether so or so.
And it occurs in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody:
And therefore nill I boast of war.
In Shakespeare, setting aside the phrase 'nill he, will he', we have:
in scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether.
ll. 81-2. Till now thou wast but able
To be what now thou art;
She has realized her potentiality; she is now actually what hitherto she has been only ἐν δυνάμει, therefore she 'puts on perfection'. 'Praeterea secundum Philosophum ... qualibet potentiâ melior est eius actus; nam forma est melior quam materia, et actio quam potentia activa: est enim finis eius.' Aquinas, Summa, xxv. i. See also Aristotle, Met. 1050 a 2-16. This metaphysical doctrine 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. De Sanct. Virg. I. x, xi. Compare Aquinas, Summa II. 2, Quaest. clii. 3. Wedded to Christ the virgin puts on a higher perfection.