Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place upon earth.' Letters, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to p. [112], l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.
Page 191. To the Countesse of Bedford.
ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions (which the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers completed the confusion by printing the lines thus,
You have refined me, and to worthiest things—
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.
Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as of the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,
Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues.
But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man is refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to boast of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, and strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and sharpened my judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things owe their value to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but depends on circumstances.' This, the next two verses add, explains why at Court it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your beauty. To Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court the focus of wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative nature of all goodness he has touched in the Progresse of the Soule, p. [316], ll. 518-20:
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;