The Poems of John Donne, Volume 2 (of 2) / Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts

by John Donne

See also Donne's The Litanie, i. p. [342], l. 112.

Page 208. To M^r C. B.

Pretty certainly Christopher Brooke, to whom The Storme and The Calme, are addressed. Chambers takes 'the Saint of his affection' to be Donne's wife, and dates the letter after 1600. But surely the last two lines would not have been written of a wife. They are in the conventional tone of the poet to his cruel Mistress. If Ann More is the 'Saint' referred to, she was not yet Donne's wife. Possibly it is some one else. Writing from Wales in 1599, Wotton says (in a letter which Mr. Pearsall Smith thinks is addressed to Donne, but this is not at all certain), 'May I after these, kiss that fair and learned hand of your mistress, than whom the world doth possess nothing more virtuous.' (Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, i. 306.)

l. 10. Heavens liberall and earths thrice fairer Sunne. I prefer the 1633 and 1669 reading, amended from W which reads 'fairer', to that of the later editions, 'the thrice faire Sunne', which Chambers adopts. There are obviously two suns in question—the Heavens' liberal sun, and the earth's thrice-fairer one, i.e. the lady. Exiled from both, Donne carries with him sufficient fire to melt the ice of the wintry regions he must visit—not 'that which walls her heart'. Commenting on a similar conceit in Petrarch:

Ite caldi sospiri al freddo core,

Rompete il ghiaccio, che pietà contende,

Tassoni tells how while writing he found himself detained at an Inn by a severe frost, and that sighs were of little use to melt it. Considerazioni, &c. (1609), p. 228.

To M^r E. G.

Gosse conjectures that the person addressed is Edward Guilpin, or Gilpin, author of Skialetheia (1598), a collection of epigrams and satires. Guilpin imitates one of Donne's Satyres, which may imply acquaintance. He makes no traceable reference to Donne in his works, and we know so little of Guilpin that it is impossible to affirm anything with confidence. Whoever is meant is in Suffolk. There were Gilpins of Bungay there in 1664. It is worth noting that Sir Henry Goodyere begins one of his poems (preserved in MS. at the Record Office, State Papers Dom., 1623) with the line: 'Even as lame things thirst their perfection.' Goodyere's poem was written before the issue of Donne's poems in 1633, and that edition does not contain this letter. One suspects that E. G. may be a Goodyere.