Page 84. Elegie IV.
l. 2. All thy suppos'd escapes. He is addressing the lady. All her supposed transgressions (e.g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo, venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous transgression.) Applied esp. to breaches of chastity.' O.E.D. It is probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:
Brabantio. For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them. Shakespeare, Othello, I. iii. 195-8.
ll. 7-8. Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,
i.e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':
I met a lion
Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me. Shakespeare, Jul. Caes. I. iii. 20-2.
The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's deformed hand' (Com. of Err. V. i. 298), i.e. 'deforming hand'; 'deserved children' (Cor. III. i. 292), i.e. 'deserving'. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, ยง 661.
The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:
Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.
Shakespeare, Lucrece, 540-1.
The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror lest he be stricken himself.
If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would be needed:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.
Shakespeare, Rich. II, II. ii. 16.
ll. 9, 15. have ... take. I have noted the subjunctive forms found in certain MSS., because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e.g.
Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.
Elegie II, 3 ff.
Though poetry indeed be such a sin. Satire II, 5.
Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.
ll. 10-11. Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods.
Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as 'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c.). I fear that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken too seriously.
l. 22. palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats. All the MSS. read 'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or blushing here.' Sermons 80. 61. 611.
l. 29. ingled: i.e. fondled, caressed. O.E.D.
ll. 33-4. He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride.
Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks.' Dekker.
l. 37. were hir'd to this. All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to' is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for this piece of work:
This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,
Hir'd to it by your brother.
Shakespeare, Much Ado, V. i. 307.
l. 44. the pale wretch shivered. I have (with the support of the best MSS.) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought ... had wrought'. This seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not to what follows. As soon as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.
The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.
l. 49. The precious Vnicornes. See Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 23: 'Great account and much profit is made of Unicornes horn, at least of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet doubtless has the same application, i.e. to the horns.
Page 86. Elegie V.
l. 8. With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread. I have let the 1633 reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not responsible for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from D, H49, Lec, in which probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or printer supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it because I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has undergone some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is suggested by B, S, S96,
With Cares rash sudden storms o'rpressed,
where 'o'erpress' means 'conquer, overwhelm'. Compare Shakespeare's
but in my sight
Deare heart forbear to glance thine eye aside.
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'erprest defence can bide.
Sonnets, 139. 8.
He bestrid an o'erpressed Roman. Coriolanus, II. ii. 97.
To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold synecdoche, leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed, o'ermastered by Cares storms.' But 'o'erpressed' was harshly used and was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was made more appropriate by substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the cause, 'Cares storms.' This is what we find in JC and such a good MS. as W:
With cares rash sudden horiness o'erspread.
In B and P 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse when 'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to 'o'erspread'. In 1635-69 the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been altered to 'harsh'.
With cares harsh, sodaine horinesse o'rspread.
The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's final version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and more in the style of Shakespeare's
That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,
Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.
Sonnets, 72. 1-4.
l. 16. Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see. Here again there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor. Most MSS. read:
Should like and love less what hee did love to see.
To 'like and love' was an Elizabethan combination:
And yet we both make shew we like and love.
Farmer, Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart), i. 90.
Yet every one her likte, and every one her lov'd.
Spenser, Faerie Queene, III. ix. 24.
Donne or his editor has made the line smoother.
l. 20. To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough. I have made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs in A25 and B, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. The 'weak' of 1650-69 adjusts the metre, but for that very reason one a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or 'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. The meaning of 'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed.' The O.E.D. quotes: 'I can nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused.' Palsgr. (1530). 'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret.' Baxter, Reformed Pastor (1656).
It seems to me probable that P preserves an early form of these lines:
who now is grown tough enough
To feed on that which to disused tastes seems rough.
The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O.E.D. quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583). 'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv. 64 (1608).
Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the monotonous sound of 'tough enough ... rough', and this ultimately led to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close of the last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem tough to the taste? Even meat does not taste tough: and it is not of meat that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed to return to the reading of P, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.