(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my attention:
- 35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.
- 61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.
- 88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.
- 113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.
I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the Satyres. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across the metrical scheme—that is, the sense overflows from line to line, and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the paragraph beginning at p. [156], l. 65.
Graccus loves all as one, &c.
In the Elegies and in the Letters the structure is not so irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i.e. the lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples are Elegie I. ll. 1 to 16, Elegie IV. ll. 13 to 26, Elegie V. l. 5 to the end, Elegie VIII. ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also the letter To the Countesse of Salisbury and the Hymn to the Saints and the Marquesse Hamylton. Each of these is composed of three or four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure. To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written. Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text materially.
With regard to the Elegie on Mistris Boulstred (18 on the list) I cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne certainly did write, viz.
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;
and another, entitled Death, beginning
Language thou art too narrow, and too weake