To the Praise of the Dead.
Page 231, l. 43. What high part thou bearest in those best songs. The contraction of 'bearest' to 'bear'st' in the earliest editions (1611-25) led to the insertion of 'of' after 'best' in the later ones (1633-69).
An Anatomie of the World.
Page 235, ll. 133-6. Chambers alters the punctuation of these lines in such a way as to connect them more closely:
So short is life, that every peasant strives,
In a torn house, or field, to have three lives;
And as in lasting, so in length is man,
Contracted to an inch, who was a span.
But the punctuation of 1633 is careful and correct. A new paragraph begins with 'And as in lasting, so, &c.' From length of years Donne passes to physical stature. The full stop is at 'lives', the semicolon at 'span'. Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate correctly.
l. 144. We'are scarce our Fathers shadowes cast at noone: Compare:
But now the sun is just above our head,
We doe those shadowes tread;
And to brave clearnesse all things are reduc'd.
A Lecture upon the Shadowe.
Page 236, l. 160. And with new Physicke: i.e. the new mineral drugs of the Paracelsians.
Page 237, l. 190. Be more then man, or thou'rt lesse then an Ant. Compare To Mr Rowland Woodward, p. [185], ll. 16-18 and note.
l. 205. The new Philosophy calls all in doubt, &c. The philosophy of Galileo and Copernicus has displaced the earth and discredited the concentric arrangement of the elements,—earth, water, air, fire. Norton quotes: 'The fire is an element most hot and dry, pure, subtill, and so clear as it doth not hinder our sight looking through the same towards the stars, and is placed next to the Spheare of the Moon, under the which it is turned about like a celestial Spheare'. M. Blundeville His Exercises, 1594.
When the world was formed from Chaos, then—
Earth as the Lees, and heavie dross of All
(After his kinde) did to the bottom fall:
Contrariwise, the light and nimble Fire
Did through the crannies of th'old Heap aspire
Unto the top; and by his nature, light
No less than hot, mounted in sparks upright:
But, lest the Fire (which all the rest imbraces)
Being too near, should burn the Earth to ashes;
As Chosen Umpires, the great All-Creator
Between these Foes placed the Aire and Water:
For, one suffiz'd not their stern strife to end.
Water, as Cozen did the Earth befriend:
Aire for his Kinsman Fire, as firmly deals &c.
Du Bartas, The second Day of the first Week
(trans. Joshua Sylvester).
Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sect. 2, Mem. 3, tells how the new Astronomers Tycho, Rotman, Kepler, &c. by their new doctrine of the heavens are 'exploding in the meantime that element of fire, those fictitious, first watry movers, those heavens I mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius and many of the fathers affirm'. They have abolished, that is to say, the fire which surrounded the air, as that air surrounded the water and the earth (all below the moon); and they have also abolished the Crystalline Sphere and the Primum Mobile which were supposed to surround the sphere of the fixed stars, or the firmament.
Page 238, l. 215. Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things forgot. Donne has probably in mind the effect of the religious wars in Germany, France, the Low Countries, &c.
l. 217. that then can be. This is the reading of all the editions before 1669, and there is no reason to change 'then' to 'there': 'Every man thinks he has come to be a Phoenix (preferring private judgement to authority) and that then comparison ceases, for there is nothing of the same kind with which to compare himself. There is nothing left to reverence.'
Page 239, l. 258.
It teares
The Firmament in eight and forty sheires.
Norton says that in the catalogue of Hipparchus, preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy, the stars were divided into forty-eight constellations.
l. 260. New starres. Norton says: 'It was the apparition of a new star in 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that turned Tycho Brahe to astronomy: and a new bright star in Ophiuchus, in 1604, had excited general wonder, and afforded Galileo a text for an attack on the Ptolemaic system'.
At p. [247], l. 70, Donne notes that the 'new starres' went out again.
Page 240, l. 286. a Tenarif, or higher hill. 'Tenarif' is the 1611 spelling, 'Tenarus' that of 1633-69. Donne speaks of 'Tenarus' elsewhere, but it is not the same place.
It is not probable that Donne ever saw the Peak of Teneriffe, although biographers speak of this line as a descriptive touch drawn from memory. The Canary Isles are below the 30th degree of latitude. The fleet that made the Islands Exhibition was never much if at all further south than 43 degrees. After coasting off Corunna 43° N. 8° W., and some leagues south of that port, the fleet struck straight across to the Azores, 37° N. 25° W. Donne was somewhat nearer in the previous year when he was at Cadiz, 36° N. 6° W., but too far off to descry the Peak. His description, though vivid, is 'metaphysical', like that of Hell which follows: 'The Pike of Teneriff, how high is it? 79 miles or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes'. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.
On the other side, Satan, alarm'd,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremov'd.
Milton, Par. Lost, iv. 985-7.
ll. 295 f. If under all, a Vault infernall bee, &c. Hell, according to mediaeval philosophy, was in the middle of the earth. 'If this be true,' says Donne, 'and if at the same time the Sea is in places bottomless, then the earth is neither solid nor round. We use these words only approximately. But you may hold, on the other hand, that the deepest seas we know are but pock-holes, the highest hills but warts, on the face of the solid earth. Well, even in that case you must admit that in the moral sphere at any rate the world's proportion is disfigured by the want of all proportioning of reward and punishment to conduct.' The sudden transition from the physical to the moral sphere is very disconcerting. Compare: 'Or is it the place of hell, as Virgil in his Aeneides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think. In good earnest, Antony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian college in Millan, in his great volume de Inferno, lib. i, cap. 47, is stiffe in this tenent.... Whatsoever philosophers write (saith Surius) there be certaine mouthes of Hell, and places appointed for the punishment of mens souls, as at Hecla in Island, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living. God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God,' &c. Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.
ll. 296-8. Which sure is spacious, &c. 'Franciscus Ribera will have hell a materiall and locall fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words Exivit sanguis de terra ... per stadia mille sexcenta, &c. But Lessius (lib. 13, de moribus divinis, cap. 24) will have this locall hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone; because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square); which will abundantly suffice, 'cum certum sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum.' Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, ut sup. Eschatology was the 'dismal science' of those days and was studied with astonishing gusto and acumen. 'For as one Author, who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the Earth, lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid, pronounces that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse, (and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng, for their bodies must be there in their dimensions, as well as their soules) so when the Schoole-men come to measure the house in heaven (as they will measure it, and the Master, God, and all his Attributes, and tell us how Allmighty, and how Infinite he is) they pronounce that every soule in that house shall have more roome to it selfe, then all this world is.' Sermons 80. 73. 747. The reference in the margin is to Munster.
l. 311. that Ancient, &c. 'Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and originall of it' (i.e. the rational soul), 'whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates,' &c. Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, Part i, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subsec. 9. Probably Donne has the same 'Ancient' in view. It is from Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 10) that we learn that Aristoxenus held the soul to be a harmony of the body. Though a Peripatetic, Aristoxenus lived in close communion with the latest Pythagoreans, and the doctrine is attributed to Pythagoras as a consequence of his theory of numbers. Simmias, the disciple of the Pythagorean Philolaus, maintains the doctrine in Plato's Phaedo, and Socrates criticizes it. Aristotle states and examines it in the De Anima, 407b. 30. Two classes of thinkers, Bouillet says (Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, Seventh Book, note), regarded the soul as a harmony, doctors as Hippocrates and Galen, who considered it a harmony of the four elements—the hot, the cold, the dry and the moist (as the definition of health Donne refers to this more than once, e.g. The good-morrow, l. 19, and The Second Anniversary, ll. 130 f.); and musicians like Aristoxenus, who compared the soul to the harmony of the lyre. Donne leaves the sense in which he uses the word quite vague; but l. 321 suggests the medical sense.
l. 312. at next. This common Anglo-Saxon construction is very rare in later English. The O.E.D. cites no instance later than 1449, Pecock's Repression. The instance cited there is prepositional in character rather than adverbial: 'Immediatli at next to the now bifore alleggid text of Peter this proces folewith.' Donne's use seems to correspond exactly to the Anglo-Saxon: 'Johannes ða ofhreow þaēre mēden and ðaera licmanna drēorignysse, and āstrehte his licaman tō eorðan on langsumum gebēde, and ða aet nēxtan āras, and eft upahafenum handum langlice baed.' Aelfric (Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, 1894, p. 67). But 'at next' in the poem possibly does not mean simply 'next', but 'immediately', i.e. 'the first thing he said would have been ...'
l. 314. Resultances: i.e. productions of, or emanations from, her. 'She is the harmony from which proceeds that harmony of our bodies which is their soul.' Donne uses the word also in the sense of 'the sum or gist of a thing': 'He speakes out of the strength and resultance of many lawes and Canons there alleadged.' Pseudo-martyr, p. 245; and Walton says that Donne 'left the resultance of 1400 Authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' Life (1675), p. 60. He is probably using Donne's own title.
Page 241, l. 318. That th'Arke to mans proportions was made. The following quotation from St. Augustine will show that the plural of 1611-12 is right, and what Donne had in view. St. Augustine is speaking of the Ark as a type of the Church: 'Procul dubio figura est peregrinantis in hoc seculo Civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae, quae fit salva per lignum in quo pependit Mediator Dei et hominum, homo Iesus Christus. (1 Tim. ii. 5.) Nam et mensurae ipsae longitudinis, altitudinis, latitudinis eius, significant corpus humanum, in cuius veritate ad homines praenuntiatus est venturus, et venit. Humani quippe corporis longitudo a vertice usque ad vestigia sexies tantum habet, quam latitudo, quae est ab uno latere ad alterum latus, et decies tantum, quam altitudo, cuius altitudinis mensura est in latere a dorso ad ventrem: velut si iacentem hominem metiaris supinum, seu pronum, sexies tantum longus est a capite ad pedes, quam latus a dextra in sinistram, vel a sinistra in dextram, et decies, quam altus a terra. Unde facta est arca trecentorum in longitudine cubitorum, et quinquaginta in latitudine, et triginta in altitudine.' De Civitate Dei, XV. 26.
Page 242, ll. 377-80. Nor in ought more, &c. 'The father' is the Heavens, i.e. the various heavenly bodies moving in their spheres; 'the mother', the earth:
As the bright Sun shines through the smoothest Glasse
The turning Planets influence doth passe
Without impeachment through the glistering Tent
Of the tralucing (French diafane) Fiery Element,
The Aires triple Regions, the transparent Water;
But not the firm base of this faire Theater.
And therefore rightly may we call those Trines
(Fire, Aire and Water) but Heav'ns Concubines:
For, never Sun, nor Moon, nor Stars injoy
The love of these, but only by the way,
As passing by: whereas incessantly
The lusty Heav'n with Earth doth company;
And with a fruitfull seed which lends All life,
With childes each moment, his own lawfull wife;
And with her lovely Babes, in form and nature
So divers, decks this beautiful Theater.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, Second Day, First Week.
Page 243, l. 389. new wormes: probably serpents, such as were described in new books of travels.
l. 394. Imprisoned in an Hearbe, or Charme, or Tree. Compare A Valediction: of my name, in the window, p. [27], ll. 33-6:
As all the vertuous powers which are
Fix'd in the starres, are said to flow
Into such characters, as graved bee
When these starres have supremacie.
l. 409. But as some Serpents poyson, &c. Compare: 'But though all knowledge be in those Authors already, yet, as some poisons, and some medicines, hurt not, nor profit, except the creature in which they reside, contribute their lively activitie and vigor; so, much of the knowledge buried in Books perisheth, and becomes ineffectuall, if it be not applied, and refreshed by a companion, or friend. Much of their goodnesse hath the same period which some Physicians of Italy have observed to be in the biting of their Tarentola, that it affects no longer, then the flie lives.' Letters, p. 107.
Page 245, l. 460. As matter fit for Chronicle, not verse. Compare The Canonization, p. [15], ll. 31-2:
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes ...
God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.
l. 467. Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c. The bracket of 1611 makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of 1633:
Such an opinion, in due measure, made.
According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me ... invade'. The bracket shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to himself the same thoughts as God.
A Funerall Elegie.
l. 2. to confine her in a marble chest. The 'Funerall Elegie' was probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.
Page 246, l. 41. the Affrique Niger. Grosart comments on this: 'A peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according to Pliny (N. H. v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris.' Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought up in Barbarie ... Translated and collected by Iohn Porie, late of Gonevill and Caius College in Cambridge, 1600.' Of the Niger he says: 'This land of Negros hath a mighty river, which taking his name of the region is called Niger: this river taketh his originall from the east out of a certain desert called by the foresaide Negros Sen ... Our Cosmographers affirme that the said river of Niger is derived out of Nilus, which they imagine for some certaine space to be swallowed up of the earth, and yet at last to burst forth into such a lake as is before mentioned.' Pory is mentioned occasionally in Donne's correspondence.
Page 247, l. 50. An Angell made a Throne, or Cherubin. See Elegy XI, ll. 77-8 and note. Donne, like Shakespeare, uses 'Cherubin' as a singular. There can be no doubt that the lines in Macbeth, I. vii. 21-3, should read:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast, or heavens cherubins horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, &c.
It is an echo of:
He rode upon the cherubins and did fly;
He came flying upon the wings of the wind. Psalm xviii. 10.
'Cherubin' is a singular in Shakespeare, and 'cherubim' as a plural he did not know.
l. 73. a Lampe of Balsamum, i.e. burning balsam instead of ordinary oil: 'And as Constantine ordained, that upon this day' (Christmas Day), 'the Church should burne no Oyle, but Balsamum in her Lamps, so let us ever celebrate this day, with a thankfull acknowledgment, that Christ who is unctus Domini, The Anointed of the Lord, hath anointed us with the Oyle of gladnesse above our fellowes.' Sermons 80. 7. 72.
ll. 75-7. Cloath'd in, &c. Chambers's arrangement of these lines is ingenious but, I think, mistaken because it alters the emphasis of the sentences. The stress is not laid by Donne on her purity, but on her early death: 'She expir'd while she was still a virgin. She went away before she was a woman.' Line 76:
For marriage, though it doe not staine, doth dye.
is a sudden digression. Dryden filches these lines:
All white, a Virgin-Saint, she sought the skies
For Marriage, tho' it sullies not, it dies.
The Monument of a Faire Maiden Lady.
Page 248, l. 83. said History is a strange phrase, but it has the support of all the editions which can be said to have any authority.
l. 92. and then inferre. Compare: 'That this honour might be inferred on some one of the blood and race of their ancient king.' Raleigh (O.E.D.). Donne's sense of 'commit', 'entrust', is not far from Raleigh's of 'confer', 'bestow', and both are natural extensions of the common though now obsolete sense, 'bring on, occasion, cause':
Inferre faire Englands peace by this Alliance.
Shakespeare, Rich. III, IV. iv. 343.
l. 94. thus much to die. To die so far as this life is concerned.
OF THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.
THE SECOND ANNIVERSARIE.
Page 252, l. 43.
These Hymnes thy issue, may encrease so long,
As till Gods great Venite change the song.
This is the punctuation of the editions 1612 to 1633. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions, 1635-69, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so long, &c.' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with l. 44 as the older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which are thy issue, may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase 'increase and multiply') 'so long as till, &c.' This suggests that the Hymns themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening in them virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater music of God's Venite. The modern version is compatible with the death of the hymns, but the survival of their issue.
l. 48. To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so. Here again Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the editions 1625-69 against the earlier ones, 1612 and 1621. These have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:
to be hydroptic so,
Forget this rotten world ...
But surely the full stop after 'so' in 1612 is right, and 'to be Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst is the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health.'
'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But for the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee.' Sermons, &c.
Page 253, l. 72. Because shee was the forme, that made it live: i.e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form, that in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur ... Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. Et cum vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis gradibus viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum operum vitae, est anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et sentimus, et movemur secundum locum, et similiter quo primo intelligimus. Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et haec est demonstratio Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24.' Aquinas goes on to show that any other relation as of part to whole, or mover to thing moved, is unthinkable, Summa I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth Drury in like manner was the form of the world, that in virtue of which it lived and functioned.
Page 254, l. 92. Division: a series of notes forming one melodic sequence:
and streightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd Tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions
Crashaw, Musicks Duell.Quicke volumes of wild Notes.
l. 102. Satans Sergeants, i.e. bailiffs, watching to arrest for debt. Compare:
as this fell Sergeant, Death,
Shakespeare, Hamlet, V.Is strict in his arrest.
l. 120. but a Saint Lucies night. Compare p. [44]. 'Saint Lucies night' is the longest in the year, yet it too passes, is only a night. Death is a long sleep, yet a sleep from which we shall awaken. So the Psalmist compares life to 'a watch in the night', which seems so long and is so short.
ll. 123-6. Shee whose Complexion, &c.: i.e. 'in whose temperaments the humours were in such perfect equilibrium that no one could overgrow the others and bring dissolution':
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally.
The good-morrow.
And see the note to p. [182], ll. 59-62.
Page 255, l. 127. Mithridate: a universal antidote or preservative against poison and infectious diseases, made by the compounding together of many ingredients. It was also known as 'Theriaca' and 'triacle': 'As it is truly and properly said, that there are more ingredients, more simples, more means of restoring in our dram of triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup, in which there may be 3 or 4, in the other perchance, so many hundred.' Sermons 26. 20. 286-7. Vipers were added to the other ingredients by Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero, whence the name 'theriaca' or 'triacle': 'Can an apothecary make a sovereign triacle of Vipers and other poysons, and cannot God admit offences and scandalls into his physick.' Sermons 50. 17. 143. See To Sr Henry Wotton, p. [180], l. 18 and note.
ll. 143-6. Compare p. [269], ll. 71-6.
l. 152. Heaven was content, &c. 'And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Matthew xi. 12.
l. 158. wast made but in a sinke. Compare: 'Formatus est homo ... de spurcissimo spermate.' Pope Innocent, De Contemptu Mundi; and
With Goddes owene finger wroght was he,
And nat begeten of mannes sperme unclene.
Chaucer, Monkes Tale.
Page 256, ll. 159-62. Thinke that ... first of growth. According to Aquinas, who follows Aristotle, the souls of growth, of sense, and of intelligence are not in man distinct and (as Plato had suggested) diversely located in the liver, heart, and brain, but are merged in one: 'Sic igitur anima intellectiva continet in sua virtute quidquid habet anima sensitiva brutorum et nutritiva plantarum,' Summa I. lxxvi. 3. He cites Aristotle, De Anima, ii. 30-1.
l. 190. Meteors. See note to The Storme, l. 13. A meteor was regarded as due to the effect of the air's cold region on exhalations from the earth:
If th'Exhalation hot and oily prove,
And yet (as feeble) giveth place above
To th'Airy Regions ever-lasting Frost,
Incessantly th'apt-tinding fume is tost
Till it inflame: then like a Squib it falls,
Or fire-wing'd shaft, or sulphry Powder-Balls.
But if this kind of Exhalation tour
Above the walls of Winters icy bowr
'T-inflameth also; and anon becomes
A new strange Star, presaging wofull dooms.
Sylvester's Du Bartas. Second Day of the First Weeke.
i.e. a Meteor below the middle region, it becomes a Comet above.
l. 189 to Page 257, l. 206. Donne summarizes in these lines the old concentric arrangement of the Universe as we find it in Dante. Leaving the elements of earth and water the soul passes through the regions of the air (including the central one where snow and hail and meteors are generated), and through the element of fire to the Moon, thence to Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Firmament of the fixed stars. He has already indicated (p. [237], ll. 205 f.) how this arrangement is being disturbed by 'the New Philosophy'.
l. 192. Whether th'ayres middle region be intense. Compare:
The Storme, p. [175], l. 14.th'ayres middle marble roome.
Page 257, ll. 219-20. This must, my Soule, &c. This is the punctuation of 1612-25: 1633 and all the later editions change as in the note. Chambers and Grolier follow suit. It is clearly a corruption. The 'long-short Progresse' is the passage to heaven which has been described. A new thought begins with 'T'advance these thoughts'. Grosart puts a colon after (l. 219) 'bee', but as he also places a semicolon after (l. 220) 'T'advance these thoughts' it is not quite clear how he reads the lines. The mistake seems to have arisen from forgetting that the 'she' whose progress has been described is not Elizabeth Drury but the poet's own soul emancipated by death.
Page 258, ll. 236-40. The Tutelar Angels, &c. 'And it is as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense ... That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation of society one other; and every man one other.' Letters, p. 43. Aquinas insists (Summa I. cxiii) on the assignment of a guardian angel to every individual. He mentions also, following St. Gregory, the guardian angel assigned to the Kingdom of the Persians (Dan. x. 13).
l. 242. Her body was the Electrum. 'The ancient Electrum', Bacon says, 'had in it a fifth of silver to the Gold.' Her body, then, is not pure gold, but an alloy in which are many degrees of gold. In Paracelsus' works, Electrum is the middle substance between ore and metal, neither wholly perfect nor altogether imperfect. It is on the way to perfection. The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of ... Paracelsus, Arthur E. Waite, 1894. 'Christ is not that Spectrum that Damascene speaks of, nor that Electrum that Tertullian speakes of ... a third metall made of two other metals.' Donne, Sermons 80. 40. 397.
Page 259, l. 270. breake. Here—as at p. [260], l. 326, 'choose'—I have reverted to the spelling of 1612.
l. 292. by sense, and Fantasie: i.e. by sense and the phantasmata which are conveyed by the senses to the intellect to work upon. See Aristotle, De Anima, iii. and Aquinas, Summa I. lxxxv. i. Angels obtain their knowledge of material things through immaterial, i.e. through Ideas. Their knowledge is immediate, not as ours mediate, by sense and ratiocination, 'collections'.
Page 261, l. 342. Joy in not being that, which men have said 'Joy in not being "sine labe concepta", for then she would have had no virtue in being good.' Norton. Her own goodness has gained for her a higher exaltation than the adventitious honour of being the Mother of God.
ll. 343-4. Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
'Scriptum est in Evangelio, quod mater et fratres Christi, hoc est consanguinei carnis eius, cum illi nuntiati fuissent, et foris exspectarent, quia non possent eum adire prae turba, ille respondit: Quae est mater mea, aut qui sunt fratres mei? Et extendens manum super discipulos suos, ait: Hi sunt fratres mei; et quicumque fecerit voluntatem Patris mei, ipse mihi frater, et mater, et soror est (Matt. xii. 46-50). Quid aliud nos docens, nisi carnali cognationi genus nostrum spirituale praeponere; nec inde beatos esse homines, si iustis et sanctis carnis propinquitate iunguntur, sed si eorum doctrinae ac moribus obediendo atque imitando cohaerescunt? Beatior ergo Maria percipiendo fidem Christi, quam concipiendo carnem Christi. Nam et dicenti cuidam, Beatus venter qui te portavit; ipse respondit, Imo beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt' (Luc. xi. 27, 28), Augustini De Sancta Virginitate, I. 3. (Migne, 40. 397-8.) If a Protestant in the previous two lines, Donne is here as sound a Catholic as St. Augustine.
l. 354. joyntenants with the Holy Ghost. 'We acknowledge the Church to be the house onely of God, and that we admit no Saint, no Martyr, to be a Iointenant with him.' Sermons 50. 21. 86.
l. 360. royalties: i.e. the prerogatives, rights, or privileges pertaining to the sovereign. Donne here enumerates them as the power to make war and conclude peace, uncontrolled authority ('the King can do no wrong'), the administration of justice, the dispensing of pardon, coining money, and the granting of protection against legal arrest.
Page 262, l. 369. impressions. The plural of the first edition must, I think, be accepted. Her stamp is set upon each of our acts as the impression of the King's head on a coin: 'Ignoraunce maketh him unmeete metall for the impressions of vertue.' Fleming, Panopl. Epist. 372 (O.E.D.).
Your love and pitty doth th'impression fill,
Which vulgar scandall stampt upon my brow.
Shakespeare, Sonnets cxii.
ll. 397-9. So flowes her face, and thine eyes, neither now
That Saint, nor Pilgrime, which your loving vow
Concern'd, remaines ...
I have kept the comma after 'eyes' of 1621 (1612 seems to have no stop) rather than change it with later and modern editions to a semicolon, because I take it that the clauses are not co-ordinate; the second is a subordinate clause of degree after 'so'. 'Her face and thine eyes so flow that now neither that Saint nor that Pilgrim which your loving vow concern'd remains—neither you nor the lady you adore remain the same.' The lady is the Saint, the lover the Pilgrim, as in Romeo and Juliet:
Rom. If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,
My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Jul. Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss.
Punctuated as the sentence is in modern editions 'so' must mean 'in like manner', referring back to the statement about the river.
Page 263, l. 421. this Center, is the reading of the first edition and is doubtless correct, the 't' having been dropped accidentally in 1621 and so in all subsequent editions. 'This Center' is 'this Earth.' The Earth could neither support such a tower nor provide material with which to build it. Compare:
The Heavens themselves, the Planets, and this Center,
Observe degree, priority, and place.
Shakespeare, Troil. and Cress. I. iii. 85.
As far remov'd from God and light of Heav'n
As from the Center thrice to th' utmost Pole.
Milton, Par. Lost, i. 74.
Page 264, l. 442. For it is both the object and the wit. God, the Idea of Good, is the source of both being and knowing—the ultimate object of knowledge and the source of the knowledge by which Himself is known.
ll. 445-6. 'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;
Had th' Angels once look'd on him they had stood.
After discussion Aquinas concludes (I. lxiii. 5) that the devil was not evil through fault of his own will in the first instant of his creation, because this would make God the cause of evil: 'Illa operatio quae simul incipit cum esse rei est ei ab agente a quo habet esse ... Agens autem quod Angelos in esse produxit, scilicet Deus, non potest esse causa peccati.' He then considers whether there was any delay between his creation and his fall, and concludes that the most probable conclusion and most consonant with the words of the Saints is that there was none, otherwise by his first good act he would have acquired the merit whose reward is the happiness which comes from the sight of God and is enduring: 'Si diabolus in primo instanti, in gratiâ creatus, meruit, statim post primum instans beatitudinem accepisset, nisi statim impedimentum praestitisset peccando.' This 'beatitudo' is the sight of God: 'Angeli beati sunt per hoc quod Verbum vident.' And endurance is of the essence of this blessedness: 'Sed contra de ratione beatitudinis est stabilitas, sive confirmatio in bono.' Thus, as Donne says, 'Had th' Angells,' &c. Summa lxii. 1, 5; lxiii. 6.
Page 265, l. 479. Apostem: i.e. Imposthume, deep-seated abscess.
Page 266, l. 509. Long'd for, and longing for it, &c. So Dante of Beatrice:
Angelo chiama in divino intelletto,
E dice: 'Sire, nel mondo si vede
Meraviglia nell' atto, che procede
Da un' anima, che fin quassù risplende.
Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto
Che d'aver lei, al suo Signor la chiede,
E ciascun santo ne grida mercede.'
An Angel, of his blessed knowledge, saith
To God: 'Lord, in the world that Thou hast made,
A miracle in action is display'd
By reason of a soul whose splendors fare
Even hither: and since Heaven requireth
Nought saving her, for her it prayeth Thee,
Thy Saints crying aloud continually.'
and again:
Madonna è desiata in l'alto cielo.
My lady is desired in the high Heaven.
Donne, one thinks, must have read the Vita Nuova as well as the Divina Commedia. It is possible that in the eulogy of Elizabeth Drury he is following its transcendental manner without fully appreciating the transfiguration through which Beatrice passed in Dante's mind.
ll. 511-18. Here in a place, &c. These lines show that The Second Anniversary was written while Donne was in France with Sir Robert and Lady Drury. Compare A Letter to the Lady Carey, &c., p. [221]:
Here where by All All Saints invoked are, &c.
EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES, &c.,
Of all Donne's poems these are the most easy to date, at least approximately. The following are the dates of the deaths which called forth the poems, arranged in chronological order:
| Lady Markham (p. [279]), May 4, 1609. |
| Mris Boulstred (pp. [282], [284]), Aug. 4, 1609. |
| Prince Henry (p. [267]), Nov. 6, 1612. |
| Lord Harington (p. [271]), Feb. 27, 1614. |
| Marquis Hamilton (p. [288]), March 22, 1625. |
Those about whose date and subject there is uncertainty are that entitled in 1635 Elegie on the L. C. and that headed Death. If with Chambers and Norton we assume that the former poem is an Elegy on the death of the Lord Chancellor, Baron Ellesmere, it will have been written in 1617. The conjecture is a natural one and may be correct, but there are difficulties, (1) This title is affixed to Elegie in 1635 for the first time. The poem bears no such heading in 1633 or in any MS. in which I have found it. Probably 'L. C.' stands for Lord Chancellor (though this is not certain); but on what authority was the poem given this reference? (2) The position which it occupies in 1633 is due to its position in the MS. from which it was printed. Now in D, H49, Lec, and in W, it is included among the Elegies, i.e. Love Elegies. But in the last of these, W, it appears with a collection of poems (Satyres, Elegies, the Lincoln's Inn Epithalamium, and a series of letters to Donne's early friends) which has the appearance of being, or being derived from, an early collection, a collection of poems written between 1597 and 1608 to 1610 at the latest. (3) The poem is contained, but again without any title, in HN, the Hawthornden MS. in Edinburgh. Now we know that Drummond was in London in 1610, and there is no poem, of those which he transcribed from a collection of Donne's, that is demonstrably later than 1609, though the two Obsequies, 'Death, I recant' and 'Language, thou art too narrowe and too weak', must have been written in that year. Drummond may have been in London at some time between 1625 and 1630, during which years his movements are undetermined (David Masson: Drummond of Hawthornden, ch. viii), but if he had made a collection of Donne's poems at this later date it would have been more complete, and would certainly have contained some of the religious poems. At a later date he seems to have been given a copy of the Hymn to the Saints and to Marquesse Hamylton, for a MS. of this poem is catalogued among the books presented to the Edinburgh University Library by Drummond. Unfortunately it has disappeared or was never actually handed over. Most probably, Drummond's small collection of poems by Donne, Pembroke, Roe, Hoskins, Rudyerd, and other 'wits' of King James's reign, now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, was made in 1610.
All this points to the Elegie in question being older than 1617. It is very unlikely that a poem on the death of his great early patron would have been allowed by him to circulate without anything to indicate in whose honour it was written. Egerton was as great a man as Lord Harington or Marquis Hamilton, and if hope of reward from the living was the efficient cause of these poems quite as much as sorrow for the dead, Lord Ellesmere too left distinguished and wealthy successors. Yet the MS. of Donne's poems which belonged to the first Earl of Bridgewater contains this poem without any indication to whom it was addressed.
In 1610 Donne sent to the Lord Chancellor a copy of his Pseudo-Martyr, and the following hitherto unpublished letter shows in what high esteem he held him:
'As Ryvers though in there Course they are content to serve publique uses, yett there end is to returne into the Sea from whence they issued. So, though I should have much Comfort that thys Booke might give contentment to others, yet my Direct end in ytt was, to make it a testimony of my gratitude towards your Lordship and an acknowledgement that those poore sparks of Vnderstandinge or Judgement which are in mee were derived and kindled from you and owe themselves to you. All good that ys in ytt, your Lordship may be pleased to accept as yours; and for the Errors I cannot despayre of your pardon since you have long since pardond greater faults in mee.'
If Donne had written an Elegie on the death of Lord Ellesmere it would have been as formally dedicated to his memory as his Elegies to Lord Harington and Lord Hamilton. But by 1617 he was in orders. His Muse had in the long poem on Lord Harington, brother to the Countess of Bedford, 'spoke, and spoke her last'. It was only at the express instance of Sir Robert Carr that he composed in 1625 his lines on the death of the Marquis of Hamilton, and he entitled it not an Elegy but A Hymn to the Saints and to Marquesse Hamylton.
It seems to me probable that the Elegie, 'Sorrow, who to this house', was an early and tentative experiment in this kind of poetry, on the death of some one, we cannot now say whom, perhaps the father of the Woodwards or some other of his earlier correspondents and friends.
The Elegie headed Death is also printed in a somewhat puzzling fashion. In 1633 it follows the lyrics abruptly with the bald title Elegie. It is not in D, H49, Lec, nor was it in the MS. resembling this which 1633 used for the bulk of the poems. In HN also it bears no title indicating the subject of the poem. The other MSS. all describe it as an Elegie upon the death of Mris Boulstred, and from 1633 and several MSS. it appears that it was sent to the Countess of Bedford with the verse Letter (p. [227]), 'You that are shee and you, that's double shee'. It is possible that the MSS. are in error and that the dead friend is not Miss Bulstrode but Lady Markham, for the closing line of the letter compares her to Judith:
Yet but of Judith no such book as she.
But Judith was, like Lady Markham, a widow. The tone of the poem too supports this conclusion. The Elegy on Miss Bulstrode lays stress on her youth, her premature death. In this and the other Elegy (whose title assigns it to Lady Markham) the stress is laid on the saintliness and asceticism of life becoming a widow.
Page 267. Elegie upon ... Prince Henry.
The death of Prince Henry (1594-1612) evoked more elegiac poetry Latin and English than the death of any single man has probably ever done. See Nichols's Progresses of James I, pp. 504-12. He was the hope of that party, the great majority of the nation, which would fain have taken a more active part in the defence of the Protestant cause in Europe than James was willing to venture upon. Donne's own Elegie appeared in a collection edited by Sylvester: 'Lachrymae Lachrymarum, or The Spirit of Teares distilled from the untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince Panaretus. By Joshua Sylvester. The Third Edition, with Additions of His Owne and Elegies. 1613. Printed by Humphrey Lownes.' Sylvester's own poem is followed by poems in Latin, Italian, and English by Joseph Hall and others, and then by a separate title-page: Sundry Funerall Elegies ... Composed by severall Authors. The authors are G. G. (probably George Gerrard), Sir P. O., Mr. Holland, Mr. Donne, Sir William Cornwallis, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyere, and Henry Burton. Jonson told Drummond 'That Done said to him, he wrott that Epitaph on Prince Henry Look to me, Faith to match Sir Ed: Herbert in obscurenesse' (Drummond's Conversations, ed. Laing). Donne's elegy was printed with some carelessness in the Lachrymae Lachrymarum. The editor of 1633 has improved the punctuation in places.
The obscurity of the poem is not so obvious as its tasteless extravagance: 'The death of Prince Henry has shaken in me both Faith and Reason, concentric circles or nearly so (l. 18), for Faith does not contradict Reason but transcend it.' See Sermons 50. 36. 'Our Faith is shaken because, contemplating his greatnesse and its influence on other nations, we believed that with him was to begin the age of peace:
Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas,
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
But by his death this faith becomes heresy. Reason is shaken because reason passes from cause to effect. Miracle interrupts this progress, and the loss of him is such a miracle as brings all our argument to a standstill. We can predict nothing with confidence.' In his over-subtle, extravagant way Donne describes the shattering of men's hopes and expectations.
At the end he turns to her whom the Prince loved,
The she-Intelligence which mov'd this sphere.
Could he but tell who she was he would be as blissful in singing her praises as they were in one another's love.
A short epitaph on Prince Henry by Henry King (1592-1669), the friend and disciple of Donne, bears marks of being inspired by this poem. It is indeed ascribed to 'J. D.' in Le Prince d'Amour (1660), but is contained in King's Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets (1657).
Page 269, ll. 71-6. These lines are printed as follows in the Lachrymae Lachrymarum:
If faith have such a chaine, whose diverse links
Industrious man discerneth, as hee thinks
When Miracle doth joine; and to steal-in
A new link Man knowes not where to begin:
At a much deader fault must reason bee,
Death having broke-off such a linke as hee.
But compare The Second Anniversary, p. [255], ll. 143-6.
Page 271. Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, &c.
The MS. from which 1633 printed this poem probably had the title as above. It stands so in D, H49, Lec. By a pure accident it was changed to Obsequies to the Lord Harringtons brother. To the Countesse of Bedford. There was no Lord Harington after the death of the subject of this poem.
John Harington, the first Baron of Exton and cousin of Sir John Harington the translator of the Orlando Furioso, died at Worms in 1613, when returning from escorting the Princess Elizabeth to her new home at Heidelberg. His children were John, who succeeded him as Second Baron of Exton, and Lucy, who had become Countess of Bedford in 1594. The young Baron had been an intimate friend of Prince Henry. In 1609 he visited Venice and was presented to the Doge as likely to be a power in England when Henry should succeed. 'He is learned', said Wotton, 'in philosophy, has Latin and Greek to perfection, is handsome, well-made as any man could be, at least among us.' His fate was as sudden and tragic as that of his patron. Travelling in France and Italy in 1613 he grew ill, it was believed he had been poisoned by accident or design, and died at his sister's house at Twickenham on the 27th of February, 1614.
There is not much in Donne's ingenious, tasteless poem which evinces affection for Harington or sorrow for his tragic end, nor is there anything of the magnificent poetry, 'ringing and echoing with music,' which in Lycidas makes us forgetful of the personality of King. Donne's poem was written to please Lady Bedford:
And they who write to Lords rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at dores for meat?
Apparently it served its purpose, for in a letter written a year or two later Donne says to Goodyere: 'I am almost sorry, that an Elegy should have been able to move her to so much compassion heretofore, as to offer to pay my debts; and my greater wants now, and for so good a purpose, as to come disingaged into that profession, being plainly laid open to her, should work no farther but that she sent me £30,' &c. Letters, &c., p. 219.
Of Harington, Wiffen, in his Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, says: 'Whilst he devoted much of his time to literary study he is reported to have uniformly begun and closed the day with prayer ... and to have been among the first who kept a diary wherein his casual faults and errors were recorded, for his surer advancement in happiness and virtue.' Wiffen's authority is probably The Churches Lamentation for the losse of the Godly Delivered in a Sermon at the funerals of that truly noble, and most hopefull young Gentleman Iohn Lord Harington, Baron of Exton, Knight of the noble order of the Bath etc. by R. Stock. 1614. To this verses Latin and English by I. P., F. H. D. M., and Sir Thomas Roe are appended. The preacher gives details of Harington's religious life. The D. N. B. speaks of two memorial sermons. This is a mistake.
l. 15. Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest; Chambers by placing a semicolon after 'midnight' makes 'now all rest' an independent, rhetorical statement:
Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;
The Grolier Club editor varies it:
Thou seest me here at midnight now, all rest;
But surely as punctuated in the old editions the line means 'at midnight, now when all rest', 'the time when all rest'. 'I watch, while others sleep.'
Donne's description of his midnight watch recalls that of Herr Teufelsdroeckh: 'Gay mansions, with supper rooms and dancing rooms are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts, but in the Condemned Cells the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning,' &c. Sartor Resartus, i. 3.
Page 272, l. 38. Things, in proportion fit, by perspective. It is by an accident, I imagine, that 1633 drops the comma after 'fit', and I have restored it. The later punctuation, which Chambers adopts, is puzzling if not misleading:
Things, in proportion, fit by perspective.
It is with 'proportion' that 'fit' goes. Deeds of good men show us by perspective things in a proportion fitted to our comprehension. They bring the goodness or essence of things, which is seen aright only in God, down to our level. The divine is most clearly revealed to us in the human.
Page 274, l. 102. Sent hither, this worlds tempests to becalme. I have adopted the reading to which the MSS. point in preference to that of the editions. Both the chief groups read 'tempests', and 'this' (for 'the') has still more general support. Now if the 's' in 'tempests' were once dropped, 'this' would be changed to 'the', the emphasis shifting from 'this' to 'world'. I think the sense is better. If but one tempest is contemplated, then either so many 'lumps of balm' are not needed, or they fail sadly in their mission. They come rather to allay the storms with which human life is ever and again tormented. Moreover, in Donne's cosmology 'this world' is frequently contrasted with other and better worlds. Compare An Anatomie of the World, pp. [225] et seq.
l. 110. Which the whole world, or man the abridgment hath. The comma after 'man' in 1633 gives emphasis. The absence of a comma, however, after 'abridgment' gives a reader to-day the impression that it is object to 'hath'. I have, therefore, with 1635-69, dropped the comma after 'man'. The omission of commas in appositional phrases is frequent. 'Man the abridgment' means of course 'Man the microcosm': 'the Macrocosme and Microcosme, the Great and the Lesser World, man extended in the world, and the world contracted and abridged into man.' Sermons 80. 31. 304.
ll. 111-30. Thou knowst, &c. The circles running parallel to the equator are all equally circular, but diminish in size as they approach the poles. But the circles which cut these at right angles, and along which we measure the distance of any spot from the equator, from the sun, are all of equal magnitude, passing round the earth through the poles, i.e. meridians are great circles, their planes passing through the centre of the earth.
Harington's life would have been a Great Circle had it completed its course, passing through the poles of youth and age. In that case we should have had from him lessons for every phase of life, medicines to cure every moral malady.
In The Crosse Donne writes:
All the Globes frame and spheares, is nothing else
But the Meridians crossing Parallels.
And in the Anatomie of the World, p. [239], ll. 278-80:
For of Meridians, and Parallels,
Man hath weav'd out a net, and this net throwne
Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne.
Page 275, l. 133. Whose hand, &c. The singular is the reading of all the MSS., and is pretty certainly right. The minute and second hands were comparatively rare at the beginning of the seventeenth century. See the illustrations in F. J. Britten's Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, &c. (1904); and compare: 'But yet, as he that makes a Clock, bestowes all that labour upon the severall wheeles, that thereby the Bell might give a sound, and that thereby the hand might give knowledge to others how the time passes,' &c. Sermons 80. 55. 550.
Page 276, l. 154. And great Sun-dyall to have set us All. Compare:
The lives of princes should like dyals move,
Whose regular example is so strong,
They make the times by them go right or wrong.
Webster, White Devil, I. ii. 313.
Page 279, l. 250. French soldurii. The reading of the editions is a misprint. The correct form is given in D, H49, Lec, and is used by Donne elsewhere: 'And we may well collect that in Caesars time, in France, for one who dyed naturally, there dyed many by this devout violence. For hee says there were some, whom hee calls Devotos, and Clientes (the latter Lawes call them Soldurios) which enjoying many benefits, and commodities, from men of higher ranke, alwaies when the Lord dyed, celebrated his Funerall with their owne. And Caesar adds, that in the memorie of man, no one was found that ever refused it.' Biathanatos, Part I, Dist. 2, Sect. 3. The marginal note calls them 'Soldurii', and refers to Caes., Bell. Gall. 3, and Tholosa. Sym. lib. 14, cap. 10, N. 14.