An active and gay life at Court was no proof of the want of a more serious spirit. Lady Bedford was a student and a poet, and the patron of scholars and poets. Sir Thomas Roe presented her with coins and medals; and Drayton, Daniel, Jonson, and Donne were each in turn among the poets whom she befriended and who sang her praises. She loved gardens. One of Donne's finest lyrics is written in the garden of Twickenham Park, which the Countess occupied from 1608 to 1617; and the laying out of the garden at Moore Park in Hertfordshire, where she lived from 1617 to her death in 1627, is commended by her successor in that place, Sir William Temple.
Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir Henry Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions the death of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his intimacy with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his verse letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises her beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of a simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier phase.
In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November 22-3 (II. p. [10]). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 161⅔), but Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her behaviour. After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he continues: 'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of money, shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a manner vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, Nemo ex morbo melior. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from another at the first view.' Birch, The Court and Times of James the First, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious and pious verses after this crisis.
See notes on Twicknam Garden and the Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day.
Page 189, ll. 4-5. light ... faire faith. I have retained the 'light' and 'faire faith' of the editions, but the MS. readings 'sight' and 'farr Faith' are quite possibly correct. There is not much to choose between 'light' and 'sight', but 'farr' is an interesting reading. Indeed at first sight 'fair' is a rather otiose epithet, a vaguely complimentary adjective. There is, however, probably more in it than that. 'Fair' as an epithet of 'Faith' is probably an antithesis to the 'squint ungracious left-handedness' of understanding. If 'farr' be the right reading, then Donne is contrasting faith and sight: 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' Heb. xi. 1. The use of 'far' as an adjective is not uncommon: 'Pulling far history nearer,' Crashaw; 'His own far blood,' Tennyson; 'Far travellers may lie by authority,' Gataker (1625), are some examples quoted in the O.E.D. But there is no parallel to Donne's use of 'far faith' for 'faith that lays hold on things at a distance'. 'These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off', Heb. xi. 13, is probably the source of the phrase. Such a condensed elliptical construction is quite in Donne's manner. Compare 'Neere death', p. [28], l. 63. Both versions may be original. The variants in l. 19 point to some revision of the poem.
Page 190, l. 22. In every thing there naturally grows, &c. 'Every thing hath in it as, as Physicians use to call it, Naturale Balsamum, a naturall Balsamum, which, if any wound or hurt which that creature hath received, be kept clean from extrinseque putrefaction, will heal of itself. We are so far from that naturall Balsamum, as that we have a naturall poyson in us, Originall sin:' &c. Sermons 80. 32. 313.
'Now Physitians say, that man hath in his Constitution, in his Complexion, a naturall Vertue, which they call Balsamum suum, his owne Balsamum, by which, any wound which a man could receive in his body, would cure itself, if it could be kept cleane from the annoiances of the aire, and all extrinseque encumbrances. Something that hath some proportion and analogy to this Balsamum of the body, there is in the soul of man too: The soule hath Nardum suum, her Spikenard, as the Spouse says, Nardus mea dedit odorem suum, she hath a spikenard, a perfume, a fragrancy, a sweet savour in her selfe. For virtutes germanius attingunt animam, quam corpus sanitas, vertuous inclinations, and disposition to morall goodness, is more naturall to the soule of man, and nearer of kin to the soule of man, then health is to the body. And then if we consider bodily health, Nulla oratio, nulla doctrinae formula nos docet morbum odisse, sayes that Father: There needs no Art, there needs no outward Eloquence, to persuade a man to be loath to be sick: Ita in anima inest naturalis et citra doctrinam mali evitatio, sayes he: So the soule hath a naturall and untaught hatred, and detestation of that which is evill,' &c. Sermons 80. 51. 514.
Paracelsus has a great deal to say about this natural balsam, though he declares that 'the spirit is most truly the life and balsome of all Corporeal things'. It was to supply the want of this balsam that mummy was used as a medicine. Of a man suddenly slain Paracelsus says: 'His whole body is profitable and good and may be prepared into a most precious Mummie. For, although the spirit of life went out of such a Body, yet the Balsome, in which lies the Life, remains, which doth as Balsome preserve other mens.'
l. 27. A methridate: i.e. an antidote. See note to p. [255], l. 127.
ll. 31-2. The first good Angell, &c. 'Our first consideration is upon the persons; and those we finde to be Angelicall women and Evangelicall Angels: ... And to recompense that observation, that never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman, here are good women made Angels, that is, Messengers, publishers of the greatest mysteries of our Religion.' Sermons 80. 25. 242.