Page 279. Elegie on the Lady Marckham.
The wife of Sir Anthony Markham, of Sedgebrook in the county of Notts. She was the daughter of Sir James Harington, younger brother of John, first Baron Harington of Exton. See note to last poem. She was thus first cousin to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and died at her home at Twickenham on May 4, 1609. On her tombstone it is recorded that she was 'inclytae Luciae Comitissae de Bedford sanguine (quod satis) sed et amicitia propinquissima'. It is probably to this friendship of a great patroness of poets that she owes this and other tributes of verse. Francis Beaumont wrote one which is found in several MS. collections of Donne's poems, sometimes with his, sometimes with Beaumont's initials. In it he frankly confesses that he never knew Lady Markham. I quote a few lines:
As unthrifts grieve in strawe for their pawnd Beds,
As women weepe for their lost Maidenheads
(When both are without hope of Remedie)
Such an untimelie Griefe, have I for thee.
I never sawe thy face; nor did my hart
Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert,
But being lifted hence, that which to thee
Was Deaths sad dart, prov'd Cupids shafte to me.
The taste of Beaumont's poem is execrable. Elegies like this, and I fear Donne's among them, were frankly addressed not so much to the memory of the dead as to the pocket of the living.
According to two MSS.(RP31 and H40) the Elegie, 'Death be not proud', was written by Lady Bedford herself on the death of her cousin. It is much simpler and sincerer in tone than Donne's or Beaumont's, but the tenor of the thought seems to connect it with the Elegie on Mris Boulstred, 'Death I recant'. The same MSS. contain the following Epitaph uppon the Ladye Markham, which shows that she was a widow when she died:
A Mayde, a Wyfe shee liv'd, a Widdowe dy'd:
Her vertue, through all womans state was varyed.
The widdowes Bodye which this vayle doth hide
Keepes in, expecting to bee justlie [highly H40] marryed,
When that great Bridegroome from the cloudes shall call
And ioyne, earth to his owne, himself to all.
l. 7. Then our land waters, &c. 'That hand which was wont to wipe all teares from all our eyes, doth now but presse and squeaze us as so many spunges, filled one with one, another with another cause of teares. Teares that can have no other banke to bound them, but the declared and manifested will of God: For, till our teares flow to that heighth, that they might be called a murmuring against the declared will of God, it is against our Allegiance, it is Disloyaltie, to give our teares any stop, any termination, any measure.' Sermons 50. 33. 303: On the Death of King James.
Page 280, l. 11. And even these teares, &c.: i.e. the
Teares which our Soule doth for her sins let fall,
which are the waters above our firmament as opposed to the land or earthly waters which are the tears of passion. The 'these' of the MSS. seems necessary for clearness of references: 'For, Lacrymae sunt sudor animae maerentis, Teares are the sweat of a labouring soule, ... Raine water is better then River water; The water of Heaven, teares for offending thy God, are better then teares for worldly losses; But yet come to teares of any kinde, and whatsoever occasion thy teares, Deus absterget omnem lacrymam, there is the largeness of his bounty, He will wipe all teares from thine eyes; But thou must have teares first: first thou must come to this weeping, or else God cannot come to this wiping; God hath not that errand to thee, to wipe teares from thine eyes, if there be none there; If thou doe nothing for thy selfe, God finds nothing to doe for thee.' Sermons 80. 54. 539-40.
The waters above the firmament were a subject of considerable difficulty to mediaeval philosophy—so difficult indeed that St. Augustine has to strengthen himself against sceptical objections by reaffirming the authority of Scripture: Maior est Scripturae huius auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas. Unde quoquo modo et qualeslibet aquae ibi sint, eas tamen ibi esse, minime dubitamus. Aquinas, who quotes these words from Augustine, comes to two main conclusions, himself leaning to the last. If by the firmament be meant either the firmament of fixed stars, or the ninth sphere, the primum mobile, then, since heavenly bodies are not made of the elements of which earthly things are made (being incorruptible, and unchangeable except in position), the waters above the firmament are not of the same kind as those on earth (non sunt eiusdem speciei cum inferioribus). If, however, by the firmament be meant only the upper part of the air where clouds are condensed, called firmament because of the thickness of the air in that part, then the waters above the firmament are simply the vaporized waters of which rain is formed (aquae quae vaporabiliter resolutae supra aliquam partem aeris elevantur, ex quibus pluviae generantur). Above the firmament waters are generated, below they rest. Summa I. 68.
If I follow him, Donne to some extent blends or confounds these views. Tears shed for our sins differ in kind from tears shed for worldly losses, as the waters above from those below. But the extract from the sermon identifies the waters above the firmament with rain-water. 'Rain water is better than River-water.' It is purer; but it does not differ from it in kind.
l. 12. Wee, after Gods Noe, drowne our world againe. I think the 'our' of the majority of the MSS. must be correct. From the spelling and punctuation both, it is clear that the source from which 1633 printed closely resembled D, H49, Lec, which read 'our'. The change to 'the' was made in the spirit which prompted the grosser error of certain MSS. which read 'Noah'. Donne has in view the 'microcosm' rather than the 'macrocosm'. There is, of course, an allusion to the Flood and the promise, but the immediate reference is to Christ and the soul. 'After Christ's work of redemption and his resurrection, which forbid despair, we yet yield to the passion of sorrow.' We drown not the world but our world, the world within us, or which each one of us is. This sense is brought out more clearly in Cy's version, which is a paraphrase rather than a version:
Wee after Gods mercy drowne our Soules againe.
l. 22. Porcelane, where they buried Clay. 'We are not thoroughly resolved concerning Porcelane or China dishes, that according to common belief they are made of Earth, which lieth in preparation about an hundred years under ground; for the relations thereof are not only divers, but contrary, and Authors agree not herein.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, ii. 5. Browne quotes some of the older opinions and then points out that a true account of the manufacture of porcelain had been furnished by Gonzales de Mendoza, Linschoten, and Alvarez the Jesuit, and that it was confirmed by the Dutch Embassy of 1665. The old physical theories were retained for literary purposes long after they had been exploded.
l. 29. They say, the sea, when it gaines, loseth too. 'But we passe from the circumstance of the time, to a second, that though Christ thus despised by the Gergesens, did, in his Justice, depart from them; yet, as the sea gaines in one place, what it loses in another, his abundant mercy builds up more in Capernaum, then his Justice throwes downe among the Gergesens: Because they drave him away, in Judgement he went from them, but in Mercy he went to the others, who had not intreated him to come.' Sermons 80. 11. 103.
'They flatly say that he eateth into others dominions, as the sea doth into the land, not knowing that in swallowing a poore Iland as big as Lesbos he may cast up three territories thrice as big as Phrygia: for what the sea winneth in the marshe, it looseth in the sand.' Lyly, Midas v. 2. 17.
Compare also Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.
Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in An Essay on Criticism, ll. 54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
l. 34. For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. The modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes this line clearer—'both Deaths' dust.' 'Graves are our trophies, their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger death, i.e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought in its train.' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.
Page 281, ll. 57-8.
this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee.
Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymée de moy beaucoup plus que paternellement, et enveloppée en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection de cette tressaincte amitié ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait pu monter encores: la sincerité et la solidité de ses moeurs y sont desja bastantes.' Essais (1590), ii. 17.
Page 282. Elegie on Mris Boulstred.
Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12, 158¾, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James Whitelocke's Liber Famelicus (Camden Society). He quotes also from the Twickenham Registers: 'Mris Boulstred out of the parke, was buried ye 6th of August, 1609.' In a letter to Goodyere Donne speaks of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistresse Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours at this time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, and the return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all her sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.' Poor Miss Bulstrode, whose
voice was
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,
has not lived to fame in an altogether happy fashion, as the subject of some tortured and tasteless Epicedes, a coarse and brutal Epigram by Jonson (An Epigram on the Court Pucell in Underwoods,—Jonson told Drummond that the person intended was Mris Boulstred), a complimentary, not to say adulatory, Epitaph from the same pen, and a dubious Elegy by Sir John Roe ('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. [410]). It was an ugly place, the Court of James I, as full of cruel libels as of gross flattery, a fit subject for Milton's scorn. The epitaph which Jonson wrote is found in more than one MS., and in some where Donne's poems are in the majority. Chambers very tentatively suggested that it might be by Donne himself, and I was inclined for a time to accept this conjecture, finding it in other MSS. besides those he mentioned, and because the sentiment of the closing lines is quite Donnean. But in the Farmer-Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart) it is signed B. J., and Mr. Percy Simpson tells me that a letter is extant from Jonson to George Gerrard which indicates that the epitaph was written by Jonson while Gerrard's man waited at the door. I quote it from B:
On the death of Mrs Boulstred.
Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such
Reade here a little, that thou mayest know much.
It covers first a Virgin, and then one
That durst be so in Court; a Virtue alone
To fill an Epitaph; but shee hath more:
Shee might have claym'd to have made the Graces foure,
Taught Pallas language, Cynthia modesty;
As fit to have encreas'd the harmonye
Of Spheares, as light of Starres; she was Earths eye,
The sole religious house and votary
Not bound by rites but Conscience; wouldst thou all?
She was Sil. Boulstred, in which name I call
Up so much truth, as could I here pursue,
Might make the fable of good Woemen true.
The name is given as 'Sal', but corrected to 'Sil' in the margin. Other MSS. have 'Sell'. It is doubtless 'Cil', a contraction for 'Cecilia'. Chambers inadvertently printed 'still'.
The language of Jonson's Epitaph harmonizes ill with that of his Epigram. Of all titles Jonson loved best that of 'honest', but 'honest', in a man, meant with Jonson having the courage to tell people disagreeable truths, not to conceal your dislikes. He was a candid friend to the living; after death—nil nisi bonum.
For the relation of this Elegie to that beginning 'Death, be not proud' (p. [422]) see Text and Canon, &c., p. [cxliii].
The 1633 text of this poem is practically identical with that of D, H49, Lec. With these MSS. it reads in l. 27 'life' for the 'lives' of other MSS. and editions, and 'but' for 'though' in the last line. The only variant in 1633 is 'worke' for 'workes' in l. 45. The latter reading has the support of other MSS. and is very probably what Donne wrote. Such use of a plural verb after two singular subjects of closely allied import was common. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 673, and the examples quoted there, e.g. 'Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,' Com. of Err. IV. i. 46, where Rowe corrects to 'stay'; 'Both man and master is possessed,' ibid. IV. iv. 89.
l. 10. Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last. The 'fruite' or 'fruites' of A18, N, TC, which is as old as P (1623), is probably a genuine variant. The reference is to the elaborate dainties of the second course at Elizabethan banquets, the dessert. Sleep, in Macbeth's famous speech, is
great Nature's second course,
and Donne uses the same metaphor of the Eucharist: 'This fasting then ... is but a continuation of a great feast: where the first course (that which we begin to serve in now) is Manna, food of Angels,—plentiful, frequent preaching; but the second course is the very body and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us and given to us, in that Blessed Sacrament, of which himself makes us worthy receivers at that time.' Sermons. 'The most precious and costly dishes are always reserved for the last services, but yet there is wholesome meat before too.' Ibid.
l. 18. In birds, &c.: 'birds' is here in the possessive case, 'birds' organic throats'. I have modified the punctuation so as to make this clearer.
l. 24. All the foure Monarchies: i.e. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. John Sleidan, mentioned in a note on the Satyres, wrote The Key of Historie: Or, A most Methodicall Abridgement of the foure chiefe Monarchies &c., to quote its title in the English translation.
l. 27. Our births and lives, &c. 1633 and the two groups of MSS. D, H49, Lec and A18, L74, N, TC read 'life'. If this be correct, then 'births' would surely need to be 'birth'. HN shows, I think, what has happened. The voiced 'f' was not always distinguished from the breathed sound by a different spelling ('v' for 'f'), and 'lifes' would very easily become 'life'. On the other hand 'v' was frequently written where we now have 'f', and sometimes misleads. Peele's The Old Wives Tale is not necessarily, as usually printed, Wives'. It is just an Old Woman's Tale.