Page 201. To the Countesse of Huntingdon.
Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby, married Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, in 1603. Her mother's second husband was Sir Thomas Egerton, whom Lady Derby married in 1600. Donne was then Egerton's secretary, and in lines 57-60 he refers to his early acquaintance with her, then Lady Alice Stanley. If the letter in Appendix A, p. [417], 'That unripe side', &c., be also by Donne, and addressed to the Countess of Huntingdon, it must have been written earlier than this letter, which belongs probably to the period immediately before Donne's ordination.
l. 13. the Magi. The MSS. give Magis, and in The First Anniversary (l. 390) Donne writes, 'The Aegyptian Mages'. The argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi to the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your fame guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are so bad that they may not be thus led. Your light can illumine and guide the darkest.'
l. 18. the Sunnes fall. In Autumn? or does Donne refer to the fall of the sun to the centre in the new Astronomy? In the Letters, p. 102, he says that 'Copernicisme in the Mathematiques hath carried earth farther up from the stupid Center; and yet not honoured it, because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so much higher from it'. Compare An Anatomie of the World, [l. 274].
Page 202, l. 25. She guilded us: But you are gold, and Shee; The 1633 reading is the more pregnant, and therefore the more characteristic of Donne. 'She guilded us, but you she changed into her own substance.' The 1635 reading implies transubstantiation, but does not indicate so clearly the identity of the new substance with virtue's own essence.
ll. 33-6. Else being alike pure, &c. This verse follows in the closest way on what has gone before, and should not be separated from it by a full stop as in Chambers and Grolier. The last line of this stanza concludes the whole argument which began at l. 29. 'The high grace of virginity indeed is not yours, because virtue, having made you one with herself, wished in you to reveal herself. Virtue and Virginity are each too pure for earthly vision. As air and aqueous vapour are each invisible till both are changed into thickened air or cloud, so virtue becomes manifest in you as mother and wife. It is for our sake you take these low names.'
ll. 41-4. So you, as woman, one doth comprehend, &c. 'One, your husband, comprehends your being. To others it is revealed, but under the veil of kindred; to still others of friendship; to me, who stand more remote, under the relationship of prince to subject.'
l. 47. I, which doe soe. The edition of 1633 reads, 'I, which to you', making a logical and grammatical construction of the sentence impossible. The editor has failed to note that the personal reference of 'owe' is supplied in l. 45, 'To whom'. 'I, which doe so' means 'I, who contemplate you'.
Page 203. To Mr T. W.
To Mr T. W. The group of letters which begins with this I have arranged according to the order in which they are found in W, Mr. Gosse's Westmoreland MS. In this MS. a better text of these poems is given than that of 1633; lines are supplied which have been dropped, and a few whole letters. The series contains also a reply to one of Donne's letters. For these reasons it seems to me preferable to follow an order which may correspond to the order of composition.