'Mushrome', the spelling of the word in G, is found also in the Sermons (80. 73. 748).
l. 22. which Eve eate: 'eate' is of course the past tense, and should be 'ate' in modernized editions, not 'eat' as in Chambers's and the Grolier Club editions.
THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.
The strange poem The Progresse of the Soule, or Metempsychosis, is dated by Donne himself, 16 Augusti 1601. The different use of the same title which Donne made later to describe the progress of the soul heavenward, after its release from the body, shows that he had no intention of publishing the poem. How widely it circulated in MS. we do not know, but I know of three copies only which are extant, viz. G, O'F, and that given in the group A18, N, TCC, TCD. It was from the last that the text of 1633 was printed, the editor supplying the punctuation, which in the MS. is scanty. In some copies of 1633 the same omissions of words occur as in the MS. but the poem was corrected in several places as it passed through the press. G, though not without mistakes itself, supplies some important emendations.
The sole light from without which has been thrown upon the poem comes from Ben Jonson's conversations with Drummond: 'The conceit of Dones Transformation or Μετεμψύχωσις was that he sought the soule of that aple which Eve pulled and thereafter made it the soule of a bitch, then of a shee wolf, and so of a woman; his generall purpose was to have brought in all the bodies of the Hereticks from the soule of Cain, and at last left in the bodie of Calvin. Of this he never wrotte but one sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems.'
Jonson was clearly recalling the poem somewhat inaccurately, and at the same time giving the substance of what Donne had told him. Probably Donne mystified him on purpose, for it is evident from the poem that in his first intention Queen Elizabeth herself was to be the soul's last host. It is impossible to attach any other meaning to the seventh stanza; and that intention also explains the bitter tone in which women are satirized in the fragment. Women and courtiers are the chief subject of Donne's sardonic satire in this poem, as of Shakespeare's in Hamlet.
I have indicated elsewhere what I think is the most probable motive of the poem. It reflects the mood of mind into which Donne, like many others, was thrown by the tragic fate of Essex in the spring of the year. In Cynthia's Revels, acted in the same year as Donne's poem was composed, Jonson speaks of 'some black and envious slanders breath'd against her' (i.e. Diana, who is Elizabeth) 'for her divine justice on Actaeon', and it is well known that she incurred both odium and the pangs of remorse. Donne, who was still a Catholic in the sympathies that come of education and association, seems to have contemplated a satirical history of the great heretic in lineal descent from the wife of Cain to Elizabeth—for private circulation. See The Poetry of John Donne, II. pp. [xvii]-xx.
Page 295, l. 9. Seths pillars. Norton's note on this runs: 'Seth, the son of Adam, left children who imitated his virtues. 'They were the discoverers of the wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit these discoveries to mankind.... Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.' Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Whiston's translation), I. 2, §3.
Page 296, l. 21. holy Ianus. 'Janus, whom Annius of Viterbo and the chorographers of Italy do make to be the same with Noah.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, vi. 6. The work referred to is the Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII (1498, reprinted and re-arranged 1511), by Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), a Dominican friar, Fra Giovanni Nanni. Each of the books, after the first, consists of a digest with commentary of various works on ancient history, the aim being apparently to reconcile Biblical and heathen chronology and to establish the genealogy of Christ. Liber XIIII is a digest, or 'defloratio', of Philo (of whom later); Liber XV of Berosus, a reputed Chaldaean historian ('patria Babylonicus; et dignitate Chaldaeus'), cited by Josephus. From him Annius derives this identification of Janus with Noah: 'Hoc vltimo loco Berosus de tribus cognominibus rationes tradit: Noa: Cam & Tythea. De Noa dicit quod fuit illi tributum cognomen Ianus a Iain: quod apud Aramaeos et Hebraeos sonat vinum: a quo Ianus id est vinifer et vinosus: quia primus vinum invenit et inebriatus est: vt dicit Berosus: et supra insinuavit Propertius: et item Moyses Genesis cap ix. vbi etiam Iain vinum Iani nominat: vbi nos habemus: Cum Noa evigilasset a vino. Cato etiam in fragmentis originum; et Fabius Pictor in de origine vrbis Romae dicunt Ianum dictum priscum Oenotrium: quia invenit vinum et far ad religionem magis quam ad vsum,' &c., XV, Fo. cxv. Elsewhere the identity is based not on this common interest in wine but on their priestly office, they being the first to offer 'sacrificia et holocausta', VII, Fo. lviii. Again, 'Ex his probatur irrevincibiliter a tempore demonstrato a Solino et propriis Epithetis Iani: eundem fuisse Ogygem: Ianum et Noam ... Sed Noa fuit proprium: Ogyges verum Ianus et Proteus id est Vertumnus sunt solum praenomina ejus,' XV, Fo. cv. No mention of the ark as a link occurs, but a ship figured on the copper coins distributed at Rome on New Year's day, which was sacred to Janus. The original connexion is probably found in Macrobius' statement (Saturn. I. 9) that among other titles Janus was invoked as 'Consivius ... a conserendo id est a propagine generis humani quae Iano auctore conseritur'. Noah is the father of the extant human race.