Page 188. H: W: in Hiber: belligeranti.
This poem is taken from the Burley MS., where it is found along with a number of poems some of which are by Donne, viz.: the Satyres, one of the Elegies, and several of the Epigrams. Of the others this alone has the initials 'J. D.' added in the margin. There can be little doubt that it is by Donne,—a continuation of the correspondence of the years 1597-9 to which the last letter and 'Letters more than kisses' belong. In Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton Mr. Pearsall Smith prints what he takes to be a reply to this letter and the charge of indolence. 'Sir, It is worth my wondering that you can complain of my seldom writing, when your own letters come so fearfully as if they tread all the way upon a bog. I have received from you a few, and almost every one hath a commission to speak of divers others of their fellows, like you know who in the old comedy that asks for the rest of his servants. But you make no mention of any of mine, yet it is not long since I ventured much of my experience unto you in a long piece of paper, and perhaps not of my credit; it is that which I sent you by A. R., whereof till you advertise me I shall live in fits or agues.' After referring to the malicious reports in circulation regarding the Irish expedition he concludes in the style of the previous letters: 'These be the wise rules of policy, and of courts, which are upon earth the vainest places.'
l. 11. yong death: i.e. early death, death that comes to you while young.
ll. 13-15. These lines are enough of themselves to prove Donne's authorship of this poem. Compare To Sr Henry Goodyere, p. [183], ll. 17-20.
Page 189. To the Countesse of Bedford.
Lucy, Countess of Bedford, occupies the central place among Donne's noble patrons and friends. No one was more consistently his friend; to none does he address himselfe in terms of sincerer and more respectful eulogy.
The eldest child of John Harington, created by James first Baron Harington of Exton, was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, in 1594 and was a lady in waiting under Elizabeth. She was one of the group of noble ladies who hastened north on the death of the Queen to welcome, and secure the favour of, James and Anne of Denmark. Her father and mother were granted the tutorship of the young Princess Elizabeth, and she herself was admitted at once as a Lady of the Chamber. Her beauty and talent secured her a distinguished place at Court, and in the years that Donne was a prisoner at Mitcham the Countess was a brilliant figure in more than one of Ben Jonson's masques. 'She was "the crowning rose" in that garland of English beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired Madame Beaumont, the Lady of the French ambassador, to bring with her to an entertainment on the 8th of December, 1603: the three others being Lady Rich, Lady Susan Vere, and Lady Dorothy (Sidney); "and", says the Lady Arabella Stewart, "great cheer they had."' Wiffen, Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, 1833. She figured also in Daniel's Masque, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, which was published (1604) with an explanatory letter addressed to her. In praising her beauty Donne is thus echoing 'the Catholic voice'. The latest Masque in which she figured was the Masque of Queens, 2nd of February, 1609-10.
In Court politics the Countess of Bedford seems to have taken some part in the early promotion of Villiers as a rival to the Earl of Somerset; and in 1617 she promoted the marriage of Donne's patron Lord Hay to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, against the wish of the bride's father. Match-making seems to have been a hobby of hers, for in 1625 she was an active agent in arranging the match between James, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, and Lady Charlotte de la Trémouille, the heroic Countess of Derby who defended Lathom House against the Roundheads.
An active and gay life at Court was no proof of the want of a more serious spirit. Lady Bedford was a student and a poet, and the patron of scholars and poets. Sir Thomas Roe presented her with coins and medals; and Drayton, Daniel, Jonson, and Donne were each in turn among the poets whom she befriended and who sang her praises. She loved gardens. One of Donne's finest lyrics is written in the garden of Twickenham Park, which the Countess occupied from 1608 to 1617; and the laying out of the garden at Moore Park in Hertfordshire, where she lived from 1617 to her death in 1627, is commended by her successor in that place, Sir William Temple.
Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir Henry Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions the death of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his intimacy with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his verse letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises her beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of a simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier phase.
In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November 22-3 (II. p. [10]). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 161⅔), but Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her behaviour. After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he continues: 'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of money, shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a manner vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, Nemo ex morbo melior. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from another at the first view.' Birch, The Court and Times of James the First, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious and pious verses after this crisis.
See notes on Twicknam Garden and the Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day.
Page 189, ll. 4-5. light ... faire faith. I have retained the 'light' and 'faire faith' of the editions, but the MS. readings 'sight' and 'farr Faith' are quite possibly correct. There is not much to choose between 'light' and 'sight', but 'farr' is an interesting reading. Indeed at first sight 'fair' is a rather otiose epithet, a vaguely complimentary adjective. There is, however, probably more in it than that. 'Fair' as an epithet of 'Faith' is probably an antithesis to the 'squint ungracious left-handedness' of understanding. If 'farr' be the right reading, then Donne is contrasting faith and sight: 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Heb. xi. 1. The use of 'far' as an adjective is not uncommon: 'Pulling far history nearer,' Crashaw; 'His own far blood,' Tennyson; 'Far travellers may lie by authority,' Gataker (1625), are some examples quoted in the O.E.D. But there is no parallel to Donne's use of 'far faith' for 'faith that lays hold on things at a distance'. 'These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off', Heb. xi. 13, is probably the source of the phrase. Such a condensed elliptical construction is quite in Donne's manner. Compare 'Neere death', p. [28], l. 63. Both versions may be original. The variants in l. 19 point to some revision of the poem.
Page 190, l. 22. In every thing there naturally grows, &c. 'Every thing hath in it as, as Physicians use to call it, Naturale Balsamum, a naturall Balsamum, which, if any wound or hurt which that creature hath received, be kept clean from extrinseque putrefaction, will heal of itself. We are so far from that naturall Balsamum, as that we have a naturall poyson in us, Originall sin:' &c. Sermons 80. 32. 313.
'Now Physitians say, that man hath in his Constitution, in his Complexion, a naturall Vertue, which they call Balsamum suum, his owne Balsamum, by which, any wound which a man could receive in his body, would cure itself, if it could be kept cleane from the annoiances of the aire, and all extrinseque encumbrances. Something that hath some proportion and analogy to this Balsamum of the body, there is in the soul of man too: The soule hath Nardum suum, her Spikenard, as the Spouse says, Nardus mea dedit odorem suum, she hath a spikenard, a perfume, a fragrancy, a sweet savour in her selfe. For virtutes germanius attingunt animam, quam corpus sanitas, vertuous inclinations, and disposition to morall goodness, is more naturall to the soule of man, and nearer of kin to the soule of man, then health is to the body. And then if we consider bodily health, Nulla oratio, nulla doctrinae formula nos docet morbum odisse, sayes that Father: There needs no Art, there needs no outward Eloquence, to persuade a man to be loath to be sick: Ita in anima inest naturalis et citra doctrinam mali evitatio, sayes he: So the soule hath a naturall and untaught hatred, and detestation of that which is evill,' &c. Sermons 80. 51. 514.
Paracelsus has a great deal to say about this natural balsam, though he declares that 'the spirit is most truly the life and balsome of all Corporeal things'. It was to supply the want of this balsam that mummy was used as a medicine. Of a man suddenly slain Paracelsus says: 'His whole body is profitable and good and may be prepared into a most precious Mummie. For, although the spirit of life went out of such a Body, yet the Balsome, in which lies the Life, remains, which doth as Balsome preserve other mens.'
l. 27. A methridate: i.e. an antidote. See note to p. [255], l. 127.
ll. 31-2. The first good Angell, &c. 'Our first consideration is upon the persons; and those we finde to be Angelicall women and Evangelicall Angels: ... And to recompense that observation, that never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman, here are good women made Angels, that is, Messengers, publishers of the greatest mysteries of our Religion.' Sermons 80. 25. 242.
ll. 35-6. Make your returne home gracious; and bestow
This life on that; so make one life of two.
'Make a present of this life to the next, by living now as you will live then; and so make this life and the next one'—or, as another poet puts it:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
This I take to be Donne's meaning. The 'This' of 1635-69 and the MSS., which Chambers also has adopted, seems required by the antithesis. If one recalls that 'this' is very commonly written 'thys', and that final 's' is little more than a tail, it is easy to account for 'Thy' in 1633. The meaning too is not clear at a glance, and 'Thy' might seem to an editor to make it easier. The thought is much the same as in the Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, p. [279].
And I (though with paine)
Lessen our losse, to magnifie thy gaine
Of triumph, when I say, It was more fit,
That all men should lacke thee, then thou lack it.
Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place upon earth.' Letters, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to p. [112], l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.