The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of outlook on men and women. The Elegie XIV (if it be Donne's, and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities, the two frankly pagan Epithalamia on the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of Ignatius his Conclave, were all written long after his marriage and when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'. Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little. These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that none of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations' of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe and catche', Womans constancy, The Indifferent, Loves Vsury, The Legacie, Communitie, Confined Love, Loves Alchymie, The Flea, The Message, Witchcraft by a picture, The Apparition, Loves Deitie, Loves diet, The Will, A Jeat Ring sent, Negative love, Farewell to love. In another group the wit in Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such are The good-morrow, The Sunne Rising, The Canonization, Lovers infiniteness, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' A Feaver, Aire and Angells (touched with cynical humour at the close), Breake of day, The Anniversarie, A Valediction: of the booke, Loves growth, The Dreame, A Valediction: of weeping, The Baite, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, The Extasie, The Prohibition, The Expiration, Lecture upon the Shadow. It would, of course, be rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like The Baite, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments. But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before and after their marriage.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine examples of his subtler moods as The Funerall, The Blossome, The Primrose, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think, have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford. The two most enigmatical poems in the Songs and Sonets are Twicknam Garden and A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day. Yet the very names 'Twicknam Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless, and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention. It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS. collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.
Page 7. The Good-morrow.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which is given in the group of MSS. D, H49, Lec, and in 1633, reads, 3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better. The other, which is the most common in the MSS., reads, 3. childish pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of 1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer 'set up' from 1633, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. collection, probably A18, N, TC. In TCD the second recension is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the MS.; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and D, H49, Lec seems the more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether 'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two hemispheres that fit one another more exactly?' But this is not, I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other. Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world. The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find a better hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. Let Maps to other. The edition may have dropped the 's', which occurs in most of the MSS., but the plural without 's' is common even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things.' Bunyan, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, p. 106 (Cambridge English Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile.' Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I. i. 54.
ll. 20-1. If our two loves be one, &c. If our two loves are one, dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though two, they are always alike. What is simple—as God or the soul—cannot be dissolved; nor compounds, e.g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in contraria sunt' &c., Aquinas, Summa I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 6. The body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish; but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye.' Sermons 80. 19. 189.
Page 8. Song.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title A Raritie. It is set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that Habington's poem, Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of Women (Castara, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs