Page 284. Elegie.
Page 285, l. 34. The Ethicks speake, &c. A rather strange expression for 'Ethics tell'. The article is rare. Donne says, 'No booke of Ethicks.' Sermons 80. 55. 550. In HN Drummond has altered to 'Ethnicks' a word Donne uses elsewhere: 'Of all nations the Jews have most chastely preserved that ceremony of abstaining from Ethnic names.' Essays in Divinity. It does not, however, seem appropriate here, unless Donne means to say that she had all the cardinal virtues of the heathen with the superhuman, theological virtues which are superinduced by grace:
Her soul was Paradise, &c.
But this is not at all clear. Apparently there is no more in the line than a somewhat vaguely expressed hyperbole: 'she had all the cardinal virtues of which we hear in Ethics'.
Page 286, l. 44. Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday: i.e. 'We should have had a saint and should have now a holiday'—her anniversary. The MS. form of the line is probably correct:
We hád had á Saint, nów a hólidáy.
l. 48. That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray. As printed in the old editions this line, if it be correctly given, is one of the worst Donne ever wrote:
That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray,
i.e. apparently 'That, the day which we turn into a feast or festival she turned into a day of prayer, a fast'. But 'she turn'd to pray' in such a sense is a hideously elliptical construction and cannot, I think, be what Donne meant to write. Two emendations suggest themselves. One occurs in HN:
That when we turn'd to feast, she turn'd to pray.
When we turn'd aside from the routine of life's work to keep holiday, she did so also, but it was to pray. This is better, but it is difficult to understand how, if this be the correct reading, the error arose, and only HN reads 'when'. The emendation I have introduced presupposes only careless typography or punctuation to account for the bad line. I take it that Donne meant 'feast' and 'pray' to be imperatives, and that the line would be printed, if modernized, thus:
That what we turn to 'feast!' she turn'd to 'pray!'
That the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, which we, especially Roman Catholics and Anglicans of the Catholic school, interpret as to the Christian Church a command to feast, to keep holiday, she interpreted as a command to fast and pray. Probably both Lady Markham and Lady Bedford belonged to the more Calvinist wing of the Church. There is a distinctly Calvinist flavour about Lady Bedford's own Elegy, which reads also as though it were to some extent a rebuke to Donne for the note, either too pagan or too Catholic for her taste, of his poems on Death. See p. [422], and especially:
Goe then to people curst before they were,
Their spoyles in triumph of thy conquest weare.
l. 58. will be a Lemnia. All the MSS. read 'Lemnia' without the article, probably rightly, 'Lemnia' being used shortly for 'terra Lemnia', or 'Lemnian earth'—a red clay found in Lemnos and reputed an antidote to poison (Pliny, N. H. xxv. 13). It was one of the constituents of the theriaca. It may be here thought of as an antiseptic preserving from putrefaction. But Norton points out that by some of the alchemists the name was given to the essential component of the Philosopher's stone, and that what Donne was thinking of was transmuting power, changing crystal into diamond. The alchemists, however, dealt more in metals than in stones. The thought in Donne's mind is perhaps rather that which he expresses at p. [280], l. 21. As in some earths clay is turned to porcelain, so in this Lemnian earth crystal will turn to diamond.
The words 'Tombe' and 'diamond' afford so bad a rhyme that G. L. Craik conjectured, not very happily,'a wooden round'. Craik's criticism of Donne, written in 1847, Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England, is wonderfully just and appreciative.
Page 287. Elegie on the L. C.
Whoever may be the subject of this Elegie, Donne speaks as though he were a member of his household. In 1617 Donne had long ceased to be in any way attached to the Lord Chancellor's retinue. The reference to his 'children' also without any special reference to his son the new earl, soon to be Earl of Bridgewater, is very unlike Donne. Moreover, Sir Thomas Egerton never had more than two sons, one of whom was killed in Ireland in 1599.
ll. 13-16. As we for him dead: though, &c. Both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor connect the clause 'though no family ... with him in joy to share' with the next, as its principal clause, 'We lose what all friends lov'd, &c.' To me it seems that it must go with the preceding clause, 'As we [must wither] for him dead'. I take it as a clause of concession. 'With him we, his family, must die (as the briar does with the tree on which it grows); but no family could die with a more certain hope of sharing the joy into which their head has entered; with none would so many be willing to "venture estates" in that great voyage of discovery.' With the next lines,'We lose,' &c., begins a fresh argument. The thought is forced and obscure, but the figure, taken from voyages of discovery, is characteristic of Donne.
Page 288. An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton.
In the old editions this is placed among the Divine Poems, and Donne meant it to bear that character. For it was rather unwillingly that Donne, now in Orders, wrote this poem at the instance of his friend and patron Sir Robert Ker, or Carr, later (1633) Earl of Ancrum.
James Hamilton, b. 1584, succeeded his father in 1604 as Marquis of Hamilton, and his uncle in 1609 as Duke of Chatelherault and Earl of Arran. He was made a Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber and held other posts in Scotland. On the occasion of James I's visit to Scotland in 1617 he played a leading part, and thereafter became a favourite courtier, his name figuring in all the great functions described in Nichol's Progresses. In 1617 Chamberlain writes: 'I have not heard a man generally better spoken of than the Marquis, even by all the English; insomuch that he is every way held as the gallantest gentleman of both the nations.' He was High Commissioner to the Parliament held at Edinburgh in 1624, where he secured the passing of the Five Articles of Perth. In 1624 he opposed the French War policy of Buckingham, and when he died on March 2, 1624⁄5, it was maintained that the latter had poisoned him.
The rhetoric and rhythm of this poem depend a good deal on getting the right punctuation and a clear view of what are the periods. I have ventured to make a few emendations in the arrangement of 1633. The first sentence ends with the emphatic 'wee doe not so' (l. 8), where 'wee' might be printed in italics. The next closes with 'all lost a limbe' (l. 18), and the effect is marred if, with Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, one places a full stop after 'Music lacks a song', though a colon might be most appropriate. The last two lines clinch the detailed statement which has preceded. The next sentence again is not completed till l. 30, 'in the form thereof his bodie's there', but, though 1633 has only a semicolon here, a full stop is preferable, or at least a colon. Chambers's full stops at l. 22, 'none', and l. 28, 'a resurrection', have again the effect of breaking the logical and rhythmical structure. Lines 23-4 are entirely parenthetical and would be better enclosed in brackets. Four sustained periods compose the elegy.
Page 289, ll. 6-7. If every severall Angell bee A kind alone. Ea enim quae conveniunt specie, et differunt numero, conveniunt in formâ sed distinguuntur materialiter. Si ergo Angeli non sunt compositi ex materiâ et formâ ... sequitur quod impossibile sit esse duos Angelos unius speciei: sicut etiam impossibile esset dicere quod essent plures albedines (whitenesses) separatae aut plures humanitates: ... Si tamen Angeli haberent materiam nec sic possent esse plures Angeli unius speciei. Sic enim opporteret quod principium distinctionis unius ab alio esset materia, non quidem secundum divisionem quantitatis, cum sint incorporei, sed secundum diversitatem potentiarum: quae quidem diversitas materiae causat diversitatem non solum speciei sed generis. Aquinas, Summa I. l. 4.
Page 293. INFINITATI SACRUM, &c.
Page 294, l. 11. a Mucheron: i.e. a mushroom, here equivalent to a fungus. Chambers adopts without note the reading of the later editions, 'Maceron', but spells it 'Macaron'. Grosart prints 'Macheron', taking 'Mucheron' as a mis-spelling. Captain Shirley Harris first pointed out, in Notes and Queries, that 'Mucheron' must be correct, for Donne has in view, as so often elsewhere, the threefold division of the soul—vegetal, sensitive, rational. Captain Harris quoted the very apt parallel from Burton, where, speaking of metempsychosis, he says: 'Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captain:
Ille ego (nam memini Troiani tempore belli)
Panthoides Euphorbus eram,
a horse, a man, a spunge.' Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 1, Sect. 1, Mem. 2, Subs. 10. Donne's order is, a man, a horse, a fungus. But to Burton a sponge was a fungus. The word fungus is cognate with or derived from the Greek σπόγγος.
As for the form 'mucheron' (n. b. 'mushrome' in G) the O.E.D. gives it among different spellings but cites no example of this exact spelling. From the Promptorium Parvulorum it quotes, 'Muscheron, toodys hatte, boletus, fungus.' Captain Harris has supplied me with the following delightful instance of the word in use as late as 1808. It is from a catalogue of Maggs Bros. (No. 263, 1910):
'THE DISAPPOINTED KING OF SPAIN, or the downfall of the Mucheron King Joe Bonaparte, late Pettifogging Attorney's Clerk. Between two stools the Breech comes to the Ground.'
The caricature is etched by G. Cruikshank and is dated 1808.
The 'Maceron' which was inserted in 1635 is not a misprint, but a pseudo-correction by some one who did not recognize 'mucheron' and knew that Donne had elsewhere used 'maceron' for a fop or puppy (see p. [163], l. 117).
'Mushrome', the spelling of the word in G, is found also in the Sermons (80. 73. 748).
l. 22. which Eve eate: 'eate' is of course the past tense, and should be 'ate' in modernized editions, not 'eat' as in Chambers's and the Grolier Club editions.
THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.
The strange poem The Progresse of the Soule, or Metempsychosis, is dated by Donne himself, 16 Augusti 1601. The different use of the same title which Donne made later to describe the progress of the soul heavenward, after its release from the body, shows that he had no intention of publishing the poem. How widely it circulated in MS. we do not know, but I know of three copies only which are extant, viz. G, O'F, and that given in the group A18, N, TCC, TCD. It was from the last that the text of 1633 was printed, the editor supplying the punctuation, which in the MS. is scanty. In some copies of 1633 the same omissions of words occur as in the MS. but the poem was corrected in several places as it passed through the press. G, though not without mistakes itself, supplies some important emendations.
The sole light from without which has been thrown upon the poem comes from Ben Jonson's conversations with Drummond: 'The conceit of Dones Transformation or Μετεμψύχωσις was that he sought the soule of that aple which Eve pulled and thereafter made it the soule of a bitch, then of a shee wolf, and so of a woman; his generall purpose was to have brought in all the bodies of the Hereticks from the soule of Cain, and at last left in the bodie of Calvin. Of this he never wrotte but one sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems.'
Jonson was clearly recalling the poem somewhat inaccurately, and at the same time giving the substance of what Donne had told him. Probably Donne mystified him on purpose, for it is evident from the poem that in his first intention Queen Elizabeth herself was to be the soul's last host. It is impossible to attach any other meaning to the seventh stanza; and that intention also explains the bitter tone in which women are satirized in the fragment. Women and courtiers are the chief subject of Donne's sardonic satire in this poem, as of Shakespeare's in Hamlet.
I have indicated elsewhere what I think is the most probable motive of the poem. It reflects the mood of mind into which Donne, like many others, was thrown by the tragic fate of Essex in the spring of the year. In Cynthia's Revels, acted in the same year as Donne's poem was composed, Jonson speaks of 'some black and envious slanders breath'd against her' (i.e. Diana, who is Elizabeth) 'for her divine justice on Actaeon', and it is well known that she incurred both odium and the pangs of remorse. Donne, who was still a Catholic in the sympathies that come of education and association, seems to have contemplated a satirical history of the great heretic in lineal descent from the wife of Cain to Elizabeth—for private circulation. See The Poetry of John Donne, II. pp. [xvii]-xx.
Page 295, l. 9. Seths pillars. Norton's note on this runs: 'Seth, the son of Adam, left children who imitated his virtues. 'They were the discoverers of the wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit these discoveries to mankind.... Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.' Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston's translation), I. 2, §3.
Page 296, l. 21. holy Ianus. 'Janus, whom Annius of Viterbo and the chorographers of Italy do make to be the same with Noah.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, vi. 6. The work referred to is the Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII (1498, reprinted and re-arranged 1511), by Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), a Dominican friar, Fra Giovanni Nanni. Each of the books, after the first, consists of a digest with commentary of various works on ancient history, the aim being apparently to reconcile Biblical and heathen chronology and to establish the genealogy of Christ. Liber XIIII is a digest, or 'defloratio', of Philo (of whom later); Liber XV of Berosus, a reputed Chaldaean historian ('patria Babylonicus; et dignitate Chaldaeus'), cited by Josephus. From him Annius derives this identification of Janus with Noah: 'Hoc vltimo loco Berosus de tribus cognominibus rationes tradit: Noa: Cam & Tythea. De Noa dicit quod fuit illi tributum cognomen Ianus a Iain: quod apud Aramaeos et Hebraeos sonat vinum: a quo Ianus id est vinifer et vinosus: quia primus vinum invenit et inebriatus est: vt dicit Berosus: et supra insinuavit Propertius: et item Moyses Genesis cap ix. vbi etiam Iain vinum Iani nominat: vbi nos habemus: Cum Noa evigilasset a vino. Cato etiam in fragmentis originum; et Fabius Pictor in de origine vrbis Romae dicunt Ianum dictum priscum Oenotrium: quia invenit vinum et far ad religionem magis quam ad vsum,' &c., XV, Fo. cxv. Elsewhere the identity is based not on this common interest in wine but on their priestly office, they being the first to offer 'sacrificia et holocausta', VII, Fo. lviii. Again, 'Ex his probatur irrevincibiliter a tempore demonstrato a Solino et propriis Epithetis Iani: eundem fuisse Ogygem: Ianum et Noam ... Sed Noa fuit proprium: Ogyges verum Ianus et Proteus id est Vertumnus sunt solum praenomina ejus,' XV, Fo. cv. No mention of the ark as a link occurs, but a ship figured on the copper coins distributed at Rome on New Year's day, which was sacred to Janus. The original connexion is probably found in Macrobius' statement (Saturn. I. 9) that among other titles Janus was invoked as 'Consivius ... a conserendo id est a propagine generis humani quae Iano auctore conseritur'. Noah is the father of the extant human race.
Page 299, ll. 114-17. There can be no doubt, I think, that the 1633 text is here correct, though for clearness a comma must be inserted after 'reasons'. The emendation of the 1635 editor which modern editors have followed gives an awkward and, at the close, an absurdly tautological sentence. It is not the reason, the rational faculty, of sceptics which is like the bubbles blown by boys, that stretch too thin, 'break and do themselves spill.' What Donne says, is that the reasons or arguments of those who answer sceptics, like bubbles which break themselves, injure their authors, the apologists. The verse wants a syllable—not a unique phenomenon in Donne's satires; but if one is to be supplied 'so' would give the sense better than 'and'.
Page 300, l. 129. foggie Plot. The word 'foggie' has here the in English obsolete, in Scotch and perhaps other dialects, still known meaning of 'marshy', 'boggy'. The O.E.D. quotes, 'He that is fallen into a depe foggy well and sticketh fast in it,' Coverdale, Bk. Death, I. xl. 160; 'The foggy fens in the next county,' Fuller, Worthies.
l. 137. To see the Prince, and have so fill'd the way. The grammatically and metrically correct reading of G appears to me to explain the subsequent variation. 'Prince' struck the editor of the 1633 edition as inconsistent with the subsequent 'she', and he therefore altered it to 'Princess'. He may have been encouraged to do so by the fact that the copy from which he printed had dropped the 'have', or he may himself have dropped the 'have' to adjust the verse to his alteration. The former is, I think, the more likely, because what would seem to be the earlier printed copies of 1633 read 'Prince': unless he himself overlooked the 'have' and then amended by 'Princess'. The 1635 editor restored 'Prince' and then amended the verse by his usual device of padding, changing 'fill'd' to 'fill up'. Of course Donne's line may have read as we give it, with 'Princess' for 'Prince', but the evidence of the MSS. is against this, so far as it goes. The title of 'Prince' was indeed applicable to a female sovereign. The O.E.D. gives: 'Yea the Prince ... as she hath most of yearely Revenewes ... so should she have most losse by this dearth,' W. Stafford, 1581; 'Cleopatra, prince of Nile,' Willobie, Avisa, 1594; 'Another most mighty prince, Mary Queene of Scots,' Camden (Holland), 1610.
Page 301, ll. 159-160. built by the guest,
This living buried man, &c.
The comma after guest is dropped in the printed editions, the editor regarding 'this living buried man' as an expansion of 'the guest'. But the man buried alive is the 'soul's second inn', the mandrake. 'Many Molas and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, the first from great Antiquity conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man which is a conceit not to be made out by ordinary inspection, or any other eyes, than such as regarding the clouds, behold them in shapes conformable to pre-apprehensions.' Browne, Vulgar Errors.
Page 303, ll. 203-5. The punctuation of this stanza is in the editions very chaotic, and I have amended it. A full stop should be placed at the end of l. 203, 'was not', because these lines complete the thought of the previous stanza. Possibly the semicolon after 'ill' was intended to follow 'not', but a full stop is preferable. Moreover, the colon after 'soule' (l. 204) suggests that the printer took ''twas not' with 'this soule'. The correct reading of l. 204 is obviously:
So jolly, that it can move, this soul is.
Chambers prefers:
So jolly, that it can move this soul, is
The body ...
but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to make the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:
thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
Satyre III, ll. 41-2.
'The soul is so glad to be at last able to move (having been imprisoned hitherto in plants which have the soul of growth, not of locomotion or sense), and the body is so free of its kindnesses to the soul, that it, the sparrow, forgets the duty of self-preservation.'
l. 214. hid nets. In making my first collation of the printed texts I had queried the possibility of 'hid' being the correct reading for 'his', a conjecture which the Gosse MS. confirms.
Page 305, l. 257. None scape, but few, and fit for use, to get. I have added a comma after 'use' to make the construction a little clearer; a pause is needed. 'The nets were not wrought, as now, to let none scape, but were wrought to get few and those fit for use; as, for example, a ravenous pike, &c.'
Page 306, ll. 267-8. 'To make the water thinne, and airelike faith cares not.' What Chambers understands by 'air like faith', I do not know. What Donne says is that the manner in which fishes breathe is a matter about which faith is indifferent. Each man may hold what theory he chooses. There is not much obvious relevance in this remark, but Donne has already in this poem touched on the difference between faith and knowledge:
better proofes the law
Of sense then faith requires.
A vein of restless scepticism runs through the whole.
l. 280. It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food. If with 1650-69, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor, we alter the full stop which separates this line from the last to a comma, 'It' must mean the same as 'she', i.e. the fish. This is a harsh construction. The line is rather to be taken as an aphorism. 'To be exalted is often to become the instrument and prey of him who has exalted you.'
Page 307, l. 296. That many leagues at sea, now tir'd hee lyes. The reading of G represents probably what Donne wrote. It is quite clear that 1633 was printed from a MS. identical with A18, N, TC, and underwent considerable correction as it passed through the press. In no poem does the text of one copy vary so much from that of another as in this. Now in this MS. a word is dropped. The editor supplied the gap by inserting 'o're-past', which simply repeats 'flown long and fast'. G shows what the dropped word was. 'Many leagues at sea' is an adverbial phrase qualifying 'now tir'd he lies'.
ll. 301-10. I owe the right punctuation of this stanza to the Grolier Club edition and Grosart. The 'as' of l. 303 requires to be followed by a comma. Missing this, Chambers closes the sentence at l. 307, 'head', leaving 'This fish would seem these' in the air. The words 'when all hopes fail' play with the idea of 'the hopeful Promontory', or Cape of Good Hope.
Page 308, ll. 321-2.
He hunts not fish, but as an officer,
Stayes in his court, at his owne net.
Compare: 'A confidence in their owne strengths, a sacrificing to their own Nets, an attributing of their securitie to their own wisedome or power, may also retard the cause of God.' Sermons, Judges xv. 20 (1622).
'And though some of the Fathers pared somewhat too neare the quick in this point, yet it was not as in the Romane Church, to lay snares, and spread nets for gain.' Sermons 80. 22. 216.
'The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of comfort comes to him' (the courtier) 'but hee will die in his old religion, which is to sacrifice to his owne Nets, by which his portion is plenteous.' Sermons 80. 70. 714.
The image of the net is probably derived from Jeremiah v. 26: 'For among my people are found wicked men; they lay wait as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.' Compare also: 'he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor when he draweth him into his net.' Psalm x. 9.
Pages 310-11, ll. 381-400. Compare: 'Amongst naturall Creatures, because howsoever they differ in bignesse, yet they have some proportion to one another, we consider that some very little creatures, contemptible in themselves, are yet called enemies to great creatures, as the Mouse is to the Elephant.' Sermons 50. 40. 372. 'How great an Elephant, how small a Mouse destroys.' Devotions, p. 284.
ll. 405-6.
Who in that trade, of Church, and kingdomes, there
Was the first type.
The 1635 punctuation of this passage is right, though it is better to drop the comma after 'Kingdoms' and obviate ambiguity. The trade is the shepherd's; in it Abel is type both of Church and Kingdom, Emperor and Pope. As a type of Christ Donne refers to Abel in The Litanie, p. [341], l. 86.
Page 312, l. 419. Nor 〈make〉 resist. I have substituted 'make' for the 'much' of the editions, confident that it is the right reading and explains the vacillation of the MSS. The proper alternative to 'show' is 'make'. The error arose from the obsolescence of 'resist' used as a noun. But the O.E.D. cites from Lodge, Forbonius and Priscilla (1585), 'I make no resist in this my loving torment', and other examples dated 1608 and 1630. Donne is fond of verbal nouns retaining the form of the verb unchanged.
l. 439. soft Moaba. 'Moaba', 'Siphatecia' (l. 457), 'Tethlemite' (l. 487), and Themech' (l. 509) are not creatures of Donne's invention, but derived from his multifarious learning. It is, however, a little difficult to detect the immediate source from which he drew. The ultimate source of all these additions to the Biblical narrative and persons was the activity of the Jewish intellect and imagination in the interval between the time at which the Old Testament closes and the dispersion under Titus and Vespasian, the desire of the Jews in Palestine and Alexandria to 'round off the biblical narrative, fill up the lacunae, answer all the questions of the inquiring mind of the ancient reader'. Of the original Hebrew writings of this period none have survived, but their traditions passed into mediaeval works like the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor and hence into popular works, e.g. the Middle English Cursor Mundi. Another compendium of this pseudo-historical lore was the Philonis Judaei Alexandrini. Libri Antiquitatum. Quaestionum et Solutionum in Genesin. de Essaeis. de Nominibus hebraicis. de Mundo. Basle. 1527. An abstract of this work is given by Annius of Viterbo in the book referred to in a previous note. Dr. Cohn has shown that this Latin work is a third- or fourth-century translation of a Greek work, itself a translation from the Hebrew. More recently Rabbi M. Gaster has brought to light the Hebrew original in portions of a compilation of the fourteenth century called the Chronicle of Jerahmeel, of which he has published an English translation under the 'Patronage of the Royal Asiatic Society', Oriental Translation Fund. New Series, iv. 1899. In chapter xxvi of this work we read: 'Adam begat three sons and three daughters, Cain and his twin wife Qualmana, Abel and his twin wife Deborah, and Seth and his twin wife Nōba. And Adam, after he had begotten Seth, lived seven hundred years, and there were eleven sons and eight daughters born to him. These are the names of his sons: Eli, Shēēl, Surei, 'Almiel, Berokh, Ke'al, Nabath, Zarh-amah, Sisha, Mahtel, and Anat; and the names of his daughters are: Havah, Gitsh, Harē, Bikha, Zifath, Hēkhiah, Shaba, and 'Azin.' In Philo this reappears as follows: 'Initio mundi Adam genuit tres filios et unam filiam, Cain, Noaba, Abel, et Seth: Et vixit Adam, postquam genuit Seth, annos DCC., et genuit filios duodecim, et filias octo: Et haec sunt nomina virorum, Aeliseel, Suris, Aelamiel, Brabal, Naat, Harama, Zas-am, Maathal, et Anath: Et hae filiae eius, Phua, Iectas, Arebica, Siphatecia, Sabaasin.' It is clear there are a good many mistakes in Philo's account as it has come to us. His numbers and names do not correspond. Clearly also some of the Latin names are due to the running together of two Hebrew ones, e.g. Aeliseel, Arebica, and Siphatecia. Of the names in Donne's poem two occur in the above lists—Noaba (Heb. Nobā) and Siphatecia. But Noaba has become Moaba: Siphatecia is 'Adams fift daughter', which is correct according to the Hebrew, but not according to Philo's list; and there is no mention in these lists of Tethlemite (or Thelemite) among Adam's sons, or of Themech as Cain's wife. In the Hebrew she is called Qualmana. Doubtless since two of the names are traceable the others are so also. We have not found Donne's immediate source. I am indebted for such information as I have brought together to Rabbi Gaster.
Page 314, l. 485. (loth). I have adopted this reading from the insertion in TCC, not that much weight can be allowed to this anonymous reviser (some of whose insertions are certainly wrong), but because 'loth' or 'looth' is more likely to have been changed to 'tooth' than 'wroth'. The occurrence of 'Tooth' in G as well as in 1633 led me to consult Sir James Murray as to the possibility of a rare adjectival sense of that word, e.g. 'eager, with tooth on edge for'. I venture to quote his reply: 'We know nothing of tooth as an adjective in the sense eager; or in any sense that would fit here. Nor does wroth seem to myself and my assistants to suit well. In thinking of the possible word for which tooth was a misprint, or rather misreading ... the word loth, loath, looth, occurred to myself and an assistant independently before we saw that it is mentioned in the foot-note.... Loath seems to me to be exactly the word wanted, the true antithesis to willing, and it was a very easy word to write as tooth.' Sir James Murray suggests, as just a possibility, that 'wroth' (1635-69) may have arisen from a provincial form 'wloth'. He thinks, however, as I do, that it is more probably a mere editorial conjecture.
Page 315, ll. 505-9.
these limbes a soule attend;
And now they joyn'd: keeping some quality
Of every past shape, she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow
To be a woman.
Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have erroneously followed 1635-69 in their punctuation and attached 'keeping some quality of every past shape' to the preceding 'they'. The force of Donne's bitter comment is thus weakened. It is with 'she', i.e. the soul, that the participial phrase goes. 'She, retaining the evil qualities of all the forms through which she has passed, has thus "ills enow" (treachery, rapine, deceit, and lust) to be a woman.'
DIVINE POEMS.
The dating of Donne's Divine Poems raises some questions that have not received all the consideration they deserve. They fall into two groups—those written before and those written after he took orders. Of the former the majority would seem to belong to the years of his residence at Mitcham. The poem On the Annunciation and Passion was written on March 25, 1608⁄9. The Litanie was written, we gather from a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere, about the same time. The Crosse we cannot date, but I should be inclined with Mr. Gosse to connect it rather with the earlier than the later poems. It is in the same somewhat tormented, intellectual style. On the other hand the Holy Sonnets were composed, we know now from Sonnet XVII, first published by Mr. Gosse, after the death of Donne's wife in 1617; and The Lamentations of Jeremy appear to have been written at the same juncture. The first sermon which Donne preached after that event was on the text (Lam. iii. 1): 'I am the man that hath seen affliction,' and Walton speaks significantly of his having ended the night and begun the day in lamentations.
The more difficult question is the date of the La Corona group of sonnets. It is usual to attribute them to the later period of Donne's ministry. This is not, I think, correct. It seems to me most probable that they too were composed at Mitcham in or before 1609.
Dr. Grosart first pointed out that one of Donne's short verse-letters, headed in 1663 and later editions To E. of D. with six holy Sonnets, must have been sent with a copy of six of these sonnets, the seventh being held back on account of some imperfection. It appears with the same heading in O'F, but in W it is entitled simply To L. of D., and is placed immediately after the letter To Mr. T. W., 'Haste thee harsh verse' (p. [205]), and before the next to the same person, 'Pregnant again' (p. 206). It thus belongs to this group of letters written apparently between 1597 and 1609-10.
Who is the E. of D.? Dr. Grosart, Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Gosse assume that it must be Lord Doncaster, though admitting in the same breath that the latter was not Earl of, but Viscount Doncaster, and that only between 1618 and 1622, four short years. The title 'L. of D.' might indicate Doncaster because the title 'my Lord of' is apparently given to a Viscount. In his letters from Germany Donne speaks of 'my Lord of Doncaster'. It may, therefore, be a mistake of the printer or editor of 1633; which turned 'L. of D.' into 'E. of D.'; but Hay was still alive in 1633, and the natural thing for the printer to do would have been to alter the title to 'E. of C.' or 'Earl of Carlisle'. Before 1618 Donne speaks of the 'Lord Hay' or 'the L. Hay' (see Letters, p. 145),[1] and this or 'the L. H.' is the title the poem would have borne if addressed to him in any of the years to which the other letters in the Westmoreland MS. (W) seem to belong.
Moreover, there is another of Donne's noble friends who might correctly be described as either E. of D. or L. of D. and that is Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. Donne generally speaks of him as 'my Lord of Dorset': 'I lack you here', he writes to Goodyere, 'for my L. of Dorset, he might make a cheap bargain with me now, and disingage his honour, which in good faith, is a little bound, because he admitted so many witnesses of his large disposition towards me.' Born in 1589, the grandson of the great poet of Elizabeth's early reign, Richard Sackville was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He succeeded as third Earl of Dorset on February 27, 1608⁄9, having two days previously married Anne, Baroness Clifford in her own right, the daughter of George Clifford, the buccaneering Earl of Cumberland, and Margaret, daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford. The Countess of Dorset was therefore a first cousin to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, the husband of Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford.
The earliest date at which the letter could have been addressed to Dorset as L. of D. or E. of D. is 1609, just after his marriage into the circle of Donne's friends. Now in Harleian MS. 4955 (H49) we find the heading,
Holy Sonnets: written 20 yeares since.
This is followed at once by 'Deign at my hands', and then the title La Corona is given to the six sonnets which ensue. Thereafter follow, without any fresh heading, twelve of the sonnets belonging to the second group, generally entitled Holy Sonnets. It will be noticed that in the editions this last title is used twice, first for both groups and then, in italics, for the second alone. The question is, did the copyist of H49 intend that the note should apply to all the sonnets he transcribed or only to the La Corona group? If to all, he was certainly wrong as to the second lot, which were written later; but he was quite possibly right as to the first. Now twenty years before 1629, which is the date given to some of Andrewes' poems in the MS., would bring us to 1609, the year of the Earl of Dorset's accession and marriage, and the period when most of the letters among which that to L. of D. in W appears were written.
Note, moreover, the content of the letter To L. of D. Most of the letters in this group, to Thomas and Rowland Woodward, to S. B., and B. B., are poetical replies to poetical epistles. Now that To L. of D. is in the same strain:
See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime,
In me, your fatherly yet lusty Ryme
(For, these songs are their fruits) have wrought the same.
This is in the vein of the letter To Mr. R. W., 'Muse not that by thy mind,' and of the epistle To J. D. which I have cited in the notes (p. 166). We hear nowhere that Lord Hay wrote verses, and it is very unlikely that he, already when Donne formed his aquaintance a rising courtier, should have joined with the Woodwards, and Brookes, and Cornwallis, in the game of exchanging bad verses with Donne. It is quite likely that the young Lord of Dorset, either in 1609, or earlier when he was still an Oxford student or had just come up to London, may have burned his pinch of incense to the honour of the most brilliant of the wits, now indeed a grave épistolier and moralist, but still capable of 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness'. We gather from Lord Herbert of Cherbury that the Earl of Dorset must have been an enthusiastic young man. When Herbert returned to England after the siege of Julyers (whither Donne had sent him a verse epistle), 'Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom otherwise I was a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, where bringing me into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, he at last brought me to a frame covered with green taffeta, and asked me who I thought was there; and therewithal presently drawing the curtain showed me my own picture; whereupon demanding how his Lordship came to have it, he answered, that he had heard so many brave things of me, that he got a copy of a picture which one Larkin a painter drew for me, the original whereof I intended before my departure to the Low Countries for Sir Thomas Lucy.' Autobiography, ed. Lee. A man so interested in Herbert may well have been interested in Donne even before his connexion by marriage with Lucy, Countess of Bedford. He became later one of Donne's kindest and most practical patrons. The grandson of a great poet may well have written verses.[2]
But there is another consideration besides that of the letter To E. of D. which seems to connect the La Corona sonnets with the years 1607-9. That is the sonnet To the Lady Magdalen Herbert: of St. Mary Magdalen, which I have prefixed, with that To E. of D., to the group. This was sent with a prose letter which says, 'By this messenger and on this good day, I commit the inclosed holy hymns and sonnets (which for the matter not the workmanship, have yet escaped the fire) to your judgment, and to your protection too, if you think them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed sonnet to usher them to your happy hand.' This letter is dated 'July 11, 1607', which Mr. Gosse thinks must be a mistake, because another letter bears the same date; but the date is certainly right, for July 11 is, making allowance for the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, July 22, i.e. St. Mary Magdalen's day, 'this good day.'
What were the 'holy hymns and sonnets', of which Donne says:
and in some recompence
That they did harbour Christ himself, a Guest,
Harbour these Hymns, to his dear name addrest?
Walton says: 'These hymns are now lost; but doubtless they were such as they two now sing in heaven.' But Walton was writing long afterwards and was probably misled by the name 'hymns'. By 'hymns and sonnets' Donne possibly means the same things, as he calls his love-lyrics 'songs and sonets'. The sonnets are hymns, i.e. songs of praise. Mr. Chambers suggests—it is only a suggestion—that they are the second set, the Holy Sonnets. But these are not addressed to Christ. In them Donne addresses The Trinity, the Father, Angels, Death, his own soul, the Jews—Christ only in one (Sonnet XVIII, first published by Mr. Gosse). On the other hand, 'Hymns to his dear name addrest' is an exact description of the La Corona sonnets.
I venture to suggest, then, that the Holy Sonnets sent to Mrs. Herbert and to the E. of D. were one and the same group, viz. the La Corona sequence. Probably they were sent to Mrs. Herbert first, and later to the E. of D. Donne admits their imperfection in his letter to Mrs. Herbert. One of them seems to have been criticized, and in sending the sequence to the E. of D. he held it back for correction. If the E. of D. be the Earl of Dorset they may have been sent to him before he assumed that title. Any later transcript would adopt the title to which he succeeded in 1609. We need not, however, take too literally Donne's statement that the E. of D.'s poetical letter was 'the only-begetter' of his sonnets.
My argument is conjectural, but the assumptions that they were written about 1617 and sent to Lord Doncaster are equally so. The last is untenable; the former does not harmonize so well as that of an earlier date with the obvious fact, which I have emphasized in the essay on Donne's poetry, that these sonnets are more in the intellectual, tormented, wire-drawn style of his earlier religious verse (excellent as that is in many ways) than the passionate and plangent sonnets and hymns of the years which followed the death of his wife.
[1] This letter was written in November or December, 1608, and seems to be the first in which Donne speaks of Lord Hay as a friend and patron. The kindness he has shown in forwarding a suit seems to have come somewhat as a surprise to Donne.
[2] Lord Dorset is thus described by his wife: 'He was in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person: He had a great advantage in his breeding by the wisdom and discretion of his grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer of England, who was then held one of the wisest men of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all manner of learning, that in his youth when he lived in the University of Oxford, there was none of the young nobility then students there, that excelled him. He was also a good patriot to his country ... and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate; As also, with excessive prodigality in house-keeping and other noble ways at Court, as tilting, masking, and the like; Prince Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to these noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.' Collins's Peerage, ii. 194-5. quoted in Zouch's edition of Walton's Lives, 1817.
Page 317. To E. of D.
ll. 3-4. Ryme ... their ... have wrought. The concord here seems to require the plural, the rhyme the singular. Donne, I fear, does occasionally rhyme a word in the plural with one in the singular, ignoring the 's'. But possibly Donne intended 'Ryme' to be taken collectively for 'verses, poetry'. Even so the plural is the normal use.
To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, &c.
ll. 1-2.
whose faire inheritance
Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo.
'Mary Magdalene had her surname of magdalo a castell | and was born of right noble lynage and parents | which were descended of the lynage of kynges | And her fader was named Sinus and her moder eucharye | She wyth her broder lazare and her suster martha possessed the castle of magdalo: whiche is two myles fro nazareth and bethanye the castel which is nygh to Iherusalem and also a gret parte of Iherusalem whiche al thise thynges they departed amonge them in suche wyse that marye had the castelle magdalo whereof she had her name magdalene | And lazare had the parte of the cytee of Iherusalem: and martha had to her parte bethanye' Legenda Aurea. See Ed. (1493), f. 184, ver. 80.
l. 4. more than the Church did know, i.e. the Resurrection. John xx. 9 and 11-18.
Page 318. La Corona.
The MSS. of these poems fall into three well-defined groups: (1) That on which the 1633 text is based is represented by D, H49; Lec does not contain these poems. (2) A version different in several details is presented by the group B, S, S96, W, of which W is the most important and correct. O'F has apparently belonged originally to this group but been corrected from the first. (3) A18, N, TC agrees now with one, now with another of the two first groups. When all the three groups unite against the printed text the case for an emendation is a strong one.
Page 319. Annunciation.
l. 10. who is thy Sonne and Brother.
'Maria ergo faciens voluntatem Dei, corporaliter Christi tantummodo mater est, spiritualiter autem et soror et mater.' August. De Sanct. Virg. i. 5. Migne 40. 399.
Nativitie.
l. 8. The effect of Herods jealous generall doome: The singular 'effect' has the support of most of the MSS. against the plural of the editions and of D, H49, and there can be no doubt that it is right. All the effects of Herod's doom were not prevented, but the one aimed at, the death of Christ, was.
Page 320. Crucifying.
l. 8. selfe-lifes infinity to'a span. The MSS. supply the 'a' which the editions here, as elsewhere (e.g. 'a retirednesse', p. [185]), have dropped. In the present case the omission is so obvious that the Grolier Club editor supplies the article conjecturally. In the editions after 1633 'infinitie' is the spelling adopted, leading to the misprint 'infinite' in 1669 and 1719, a variant which I have omitted to note.
Page 321. Resurrection.
It will be seen there are some important differences between the text of this sonnet given in 1633, D, H49, on the one hand and that of B, O'F, S, S96, W. The former has (l. 5) 'this death' where the latter gives 'thy death'. It may be noted that 'this' is always spelt 'thys' in D, which makes easy an error one way or the other. But the most difficult reading in 1633 is (l. 8) 'thy little booke'. Oddly enough this has the support not only of D, H49 but also of A18, N, TC, whose text seems to blend the two versions, adding some features of its own. Certainly the 'life-booke' of the second version and the later editions seems preferable. Yet this too is an odd expression, seeing that the line might have run:
If in thy Book of Life my name thou'enroule.
Was Donne thinking vaguely or with some symbolism of his own, not of the 'book of life' (Rev. xiii. 8, and xx. 12) but of the 'little book' (Rev. x. 2) which John took and ate? Or does he say 'little book' thinking of the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it' (Matt. vii. 14)? The grimmer aspects of the Christian creed were always in Donne's mind:
And though thou beest, O mighty bird of prey,
So much reclaim'd by God, that thou must lay
All that thou kill'st at his feet, yet doth hee
Reserve but few, and leave the most to thee.
In l. 9 'last long' is probably right. D, H49 had dropped both adjectives, and 'long' was probably supplied by the editor metri causa, 'last' disappearing. Between 'glorified' and 'purified' in l. 11 it is impossible to choose. The reading 'deaths' for 'death' I have adopted. Here A18, N, TC agree with B, O'F, S, W, and there can be no doubt that 'sleepe' is intended to go with both 'sinne' and 'death'.
Page 322. Holy Sonnets.
The MSS. of these sonnets evidently fall into two groups: (1) B, O'F, S96, W: of which W is by far the fullest and most correct representative. (2) A18, D, H49, N, TCC, TCD. I have kept the order in which they are given in the editions 1635 to 1669, but indicated the order of the other groups, and added at the close the three sonnets contained only in W. I cannot find a definite significance in any order, otherwise I should have followed that of W as the fullest and presumably the most authoritative. Each sonnet is a separate meditation or ejaculation.
Page 323, III. 7. That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent: I have followed the punctuation and order of B, W, because it shows a little more clearly what is (I think) the correct construction. As printed in 1635-69,
That sufferance was my sinne I now repent,
the clause 'That sufferance was' &c. is a noun clause subject to 'repent'. But the two clauses are co-ordinates and 'That' is a demonstrative pronoun. 'That suffering' (of which he has spoken in the six preceding lines) 'was my sin. Now I repent. Because I did suffer the pains of love, I must now suffer those of remorse.'
Page 324, V. 11. have burnt it heretofore. Donne uses 'heretofore' not infrequently in the sense of 'hitherto', and this seems to be implied in 'Let their flames retire'. I have therefore preferred the perfect tense of the MSS. to the preterite of the editions. The 'hath' of O'F is a change made in the supposed interests of grammar, if not used as a plural form, for 'their flames' implies that the fires of lust and of envy are distinguished. In speaking of the first Donne thinks mainly of his youth, of the latter he has in memory his years of suitorship at Court.
VI. 7, note. Or presently, I know not, see that Face. This line, which occurs in several independent MSS., is doubtless Donne's, but the reading of the text is probably his own emendation. The first form of the line suggested too distinctly a not approved, or even heretical, doctrine to which Donne refers more than once in his sermons: 'So Audivimus, et ab Antiquis, We have heard, and heard by them of old, That in how good state soever they dye yet the souls of the departed do not see the face of God, nor enjoy his presence, till the day of Judgement; This we have heard, and from so many of them of old, as that the voyce of that part is louder, then of the other. And amongst those reverend and blessed Fathers, which straied into these errors, some were hearers and Disciples of the Apostles themselves, as Papias was a disciple of S. John and yet Papias was a Millenarian, and expected his thousand yeares prosperity upon the earth after the Resurrection: some of them were Disciples of the Apostles, and some of them were better men then the Apostles, for they were Bishops of Rome; Clement was so: and yet Clement was one of them, who denied the fruition of the sight of God, by the Saints, till the Judgement.' Sermons 80. 73. 739-40.
There are two not strictly orthodox opinions to which Donne seems to have leant: (1) this, perhaps a remnant of his belief in Purgatory, the theory of a state of preparation, in this doctrine applied even to the saints; (2) a form of the doctrine now called 'Conditional Immortality'. See note on Letter To the Countesse of Bedford, p. [196], l. 58.
Page 325, VII. 6. dearth. This reading of the Westmoreland MS. is surely right notwithstanding the consensus of the editions and other MSS. in reading 'death'. The poet is enumerating various modes in which death comes; death itself cannot be one of these. The 'death' in l. 8 perhaps explains the error; it certainly makes the error more obvious.
VIII. 7. in us, not immediately. I have interjected a comma after 'us' in order to bring out distinctly the Scholastic doctrine of Angelic knowledge on which this sonnet turns. See note on The Dreame with the quotation from Aquinas. What Donne says here is: 'If our minds or thoughts are known to the saints in heaven as to angels, not immediately, but by circumstances and signs (such as blushing or a quickened pulsation) which are apparent in us, how shall the sincerity of my grief be known to them, since these signs are found in lovers, conjurers and pharisees?' 'Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae cogitationes cordium.' 'God alone who put grief in my heart knows its sincerity.'
l. 10. vile blasphemous Conjurers. The 'vilde' of the MSS. is obviously the right reading. The form too is that which Donne used if we may judge by the MSS., and by the fact that in Elegie XIV: Julia he rhymes thus:
and (which is worse than vilde)
Sticke jealousie in wedlock, her owne childe
Scapes not the showers of envie.
By printing 'vile' the old and modern editions destroy the rhyme. In the sonnet indeed the rhyme is not affected, and accordingly, as I am not prepared to change every 'vile' to 'vilde' in the poems, I have printed 'vile'. W writes vile. Probably one might use either form.
Page 326, IX. 9-10. I have followed here the punctuation of W, which takes 'O God' in close connexion with the preceding line; the vocative case seems to be needed since God has not been directly addressed until l. 9. The punctuation of D, H49, which has often determined that of 1633, is not really different from that of W:
But who am I, that dare dispute with Thee?
Oh God; Oh of thyne, &c.
Here, as so often, the question-mark is placed immediately after the question, before the sentence is ended. But 'Oh God' goes with the question. A new strain begins with the second 'Oh'. The editions, by punctuating
But who am I that dare dispute with thee?
O God, Oh! &c.
(which modern editors have followed), make 'O God, Oh!' a hurried series of exclamations introducing the prayer which follows. This suits the style of these abrupt, passionate poems. But it leaves the question without an address to point it; and to my own mind the hurried, feverous effect of 'O God, Oh!' is more than compensated for by the weight which is thrown, by the punctuation adopted, upon the second 'Oh',—a sigh drawn from the very depths of the heart,
so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being.
Page 327, XII. 1. Why are wee by all creatures, &c. The 'am I' of the W is probably what Donne first wrote, and I am strongly tempted to restore it. Donne's usual spelling of 'am' is 'ame' in his letters. This might have been changed to 'are', which would have brought the change of 'I' to 'we' in its wake. On the other hand there are evidences in this sonnet of corrections made by Donne himself (e.g. l. 9), and he may have altered the first line as being too egotistical in sound. I have therefore retained the text of the editions.
l. 4. Simple, and further from corruption? The 'simple' of 1633 and D, H49, W is preferable to the 'simpler' of the later editions and somewhat inferior MSS. which Chambers has adopted, inadvertently, I think, for he does not notice the earlier reading. The dropping of an 'r' would of course be very easy; but the simplicity of the element does not admit of comparison, and what Donne says is, I think, 'The elements are purer than we are, and (being simple) farther from corruption.'
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.
Chambers alters the comma after 'affright' to a full stop, the Grolier Club editor to a semicolon. Both place a semicolon after 'fell'. Any change of the old punctuation seems to me to disguise the close relation in which the fifth and sixth lines stand to the third. It is with the third line they must go, not with the seventh, with which a slightly different thought is introduced. 'Mark the picture of Christ in thy heart and ask, can that countenance affright thee in whose eyes the light of anger is quenched in tears, the furrows of whose frowns are filled with blood.' Then, from the countenance Donne's thought turns to the tongue. The full stop, accidentally dropped after 'fell' in the editions of 1633 and 1635, was restored in 1639.
l. 14. assures. In this case the MSS. enable us to correct an obvious error of all the printed editions.
Page 329, XVI. 9. Yet such are thy laws. I have adopted the reading 'thy' of the Westmoreland and some other MSS. because the sense seems to require it. 'These' and 'those' referring to the same antecedent make a harsh construction. 'Thy laws necessarily transcend the limits of human capacity and therefore some doubt whether these conditions of our salvation can be fulfilled by men. They cannot, but grace and spirit revive what law and letter kill.'
l. 11. None doth; but all-healing grace and spirit. I have dropped the 'thy' of the editions, following all the MSS. I have no doubt that 'thy' has been inserted: (1) It spoils the rhyme: 'spirit' has to rhyme with 'yet', which is impossible unless the accent may fall on the second syllable; (2) 'thy' has been inserted, as 'spirit' has been spelt with a capital letter, under the impression that 'spirit' stands for the Divine Spirit, the Holy Ghost. But obviously 'spirit' is opposed to 'letter' as 'grace' is to 'law'. In W both 'grace' and 'spirit' are spelt with capitals. Either both or neither must be so treated. 'Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' 2 Cor. iii. 6.
If 'thy' is to be retained, then 'spirit' must be pronounced 'sprit'. Commentators on Shakespeare declare that this happens, but it is very difficult to prove it. When Donne needs a monosyllable he uses 'spright'; 'spirit' he rhymes as disyllable with 'merit'.
Page 330, XVII. 1. she whom I lov'd. This is the reference to his wife's death which dates these poems. Anne More, Donne's wife, died on August 15, 1617, on the seventh day after the birth of her twelfth child. She was buried in the church of St. Clement Danes. Her monument disappeared when the Church was rebuilt. The inscription ran:
 | Annae |  | ||||
| Georgii |  | More de |  | Filiae | ||
| Robert | Lothesley | Soror. | ||||
| Wilielmi | Equitum | Nept. | ||||
| Christopheri | Aurator | Pronept. | ||||
| Foeminae lectissimae, dilectissimaeq' | ||||||
| Conjugi charissimae, castissimaeq' | ||||||
| Matri piissimae, indulgentissimaeq' | ||||||
| xv annis in conjugio transactis, | ||||||
| vii post xii partum (quorum vii superstant) dies | ||||||
| immani febre correptae | ||||||
| (quod hoc saxum fari jussit | ||||||
| Ipse prae dolore infans) | ||||||
| Maritus (miserrimum dictu) olim charae charus | ||||||
| cineribus cineres spondet suos, | ||||||
| novo matrimonio (annuat Deus) hoc loco sociandos, | ||||||
| JOHANNE DONNE | ||||||
| Sacr: Theol: Profess: | ||||||
| Secessit | ||||||
| Ano xxxiii aetat. suae et sui Jesu | ||||||
| CIↃ. DC. XVII. | ||||||
| Aug. xv | ||||||
XVIII. It is clear enough why this sonnet was not published. It would have revealed Donne, already three years in orders, as still conscious of all the difficulties involved in a choice between the three divisions of Christianity—Rome, Geneva (made to include Germany), and England. This is the theme of his earliest serious poem, the Satyre III, and the subject recurs in the letters and sermons. Donne entered the Church of England not from a conviction that it, and it alone, was the true Church, but because he had first reached the position that there is salvation in each: 'You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion; not straitening it Frierly ad Religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religion) nor immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittenberg, or a Geneva; they are all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they find clay hearts, they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen. They are not so contrary as the North and South Poles; and that they are connatural pieces of one circle.' Letters, p. 29. From this position it was easy to pass to the view that, this being so, the Church of England may have special claims on me, as the Church of my Country, and to a recognition of its character as primitive, and as offering a via media. As such it attracted Casaubon and Grotius. But the Church of England never made the appeal to Donne's heart and imagination it did to George Herbert:
Beautie in thee takes up her place
And dates her letters from thy face
When she doth write.
Herbert, The British Church.
Compare, however, the rest of Donne's poem with Herbert's description of Rome and Geneva, and also: 'Trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches; neither of a Church in the Lake, nor a Church upon seven hils'. Sermons 80. 76. 769.
Page 331. The Crosse.
Donne has evidently in view the aversion of the Puritan to the sign of the cross used in baptism.
With the latter part of the poem compare George Herbert's The Crosse.
Page 332, l. 27. extracted chimique medicine. Compare:
Only in this one thing, be no Galenist; To make
Courts hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dramme of Countries dulnesse; do not adde
Correctives, but as chymiques, purge the bad.
Letters to, &c., p. [182], ll. 59-62.
ll. 33-4.
As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take.
'To make representations of men, or of other creatures, we finde two wayes; Statuaries have one way, and Painters have another: Statuaries doe it by Substraction; They take away, they pare off some parts of that stone, or that timber, which they work upon, and then that which they leave, becomes like that man, whom they would represent: Painters doe it by Addition; Whereas the cloth or table presented nothing before, they adde colours, and lights, and shadowes, and so there arises a representation.' Sermons 80. 44. 440.
Norton compares Michelangelo's lines:
Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.
Page 333, l. 47. So with harsh, &c. Chambers, I do not know why, punctuates this line:
So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest;
This disguises the connexion of 'cross' with its adverbial qualifications. The meaning is that as we cross the eye by making it contemplate 'bad objects' so we must cross the rest, i.e. the other senses, with harsh (the ear), hard (touch), sour (the taste), and stinking (the sense of smell). The asceticism of Donne in his later life is strikingly evidenced in such lines as these.
l. 48. I have made an emendation here which seems to me to combine happily the text of 1633 and that of the later editions. It seems to me that 1633 has dropped 'all', 1635-69 have dropped 'call'. I thought the line as I give it was in O'F, but found on inquiry I had misread the collation. I should withdraw it, but cannot find it in my heart to do so.
l. 52. Points downewards. I think the MS. reading is probably right, because (1) 'Pants' is the same as 'hath palpitation'; (2) Donne alludes to the anatomy of the heart, in the same terms, in the Essayes in Divinity, p. 74 (ed. Jessop, 1855): 'O Man, which art said to be the epilogue, and compendium of all this world, and the Hymen and matrimonial knot of eternal and mortal things ... and was made by God's hands, not His commandment; and hast thy head erected to heaven, and all others to the centre, that yet only thy heart of all others points downward, and only trembles.'
The reference in each case is to the anatomy of the day: 'The figure of it, as Hippocrates saith in his Booke de Corde is Pyramidall, or rather turbinated and somewhat answering to the proportion of a Pine Apple, because a man is broad and short chested. For the Basis above is large and circular but not exactly round, and after it by degrees endeth in a cone or dull and blunt round point ... His lower part is called the Vertex or top, Mucro or point, the Cone, the heighth of the heart. Hippocrates calleth it the taile which Galen saith ... is the basest part, as the Basis is the noblest.' Helkiah Crooke: ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ, A Description of the Body of Man, &c. (1631), Book I, chap. ii, Of the Heart.
'The heart therefore is called καρδία ἀπὸ τοῦ κερδαίνεσθαι, (sic. i.e. κραδαίνεσθαι) which signifieth to beate because it is perpetually moved from the ingate to the outgate of life.' Ibid., Book VII, The Preface.
l. 53. dejections. Donne uses both the words given here: 'dejections of spirit,' Sermons 50. 13. 102; and 'these detorsions have small force, but (as sunbeams striking obliquely, or arrows diverted with a twig by the way) they lessen their strength, being turned upon another mark than they were destined to,' Essays in Divinity (Jessop), p. 42.
l. 61. fruitfully. The improved sense, as well as the unanimity of the MSS., justifies the adoption of this reading. A preacher may deal 'faithfully' with his people. The adverb refers to his action, not its result in them. The Cross of Christ, in Donne's view, must always deal faithfully; whether its action produces fruit depends on our hearts.