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Volume I

THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

INTRODUCTION

Donne's position among English poets, regarded from the historical and what we like to call scientific point of view, has been defined with learning and discrimination by Mr. Courthope in his History of English Poetry. As a phenomenon of curious interest for the student of the history of thought and literary fashions, there it is. Mr. Courthope is far too well-informed and judicious a critic to explain Donne's subtle thought and erudite conceits by a reference to 'Marini and his followers'. Gongora and Du Bartas are alike passed over in silence. What we are shown is the connexion of 'metaphysical wit' with the complex and far-reaching changes in men's conception of Nature which make the seventeenth century perhaps the greatest epoch in human thought since human thinking began.

The only thing that such a criticism leaves unexplained and undefined is the interest which Donne's poetry still has for us, not as an historical phenomenon, but as poetry. Literary history has for the historian a quite distinct interest from that which it possesses for the student and lover of literature. For the historian it is a matter of positive interest to connect Donne's wit with the general disintegration of mediaeval thought, to recognize the influence on the Elizabethan drama of the doctrines of Machiavelli, or to find in Pope's achievement in poetry a counterpart to Walpole's in politics. For the lover of literature none of these facts has any positive interest whatsoever. Donne's wit attracts or repels him equally whatever be its source; Tamburlaine and Iago lose none of their interest for us though we know nothing of Machiavelli; [pg vi] Pope's poetry is not a whit more or less poetical by being a strange by-product of the Whig spirit in English life. For the lover of literature, literary history has an indirect value. He studies history that he may discount it. What he relishes in a poet of the past is exactly the same essential qualities as he enjoys in a poet of his own day—life and passion and art. But between us and every poet or thinker of the past hangs a thinner or thicker veil of outworn fashions and conventions. The same life has clothed itself in different garbs; the same passions have spoken in different images; the same art has adapted itself to different circumstances. To the historian these old clothes are in themselves a subject of interest. His enjoyment of Shakespeare is heightened by finding the explanation of Falstaff's hose, Pistol's hyperboles, and the poet's neglect of the Unities. To the lover of literature they are, until by understanding he can discount them, a disadvantage because they invest the work of the poet with an irrelevant air of strangeness. He studies them that he may grow familiar with them and forget them, that he may clear and intensify his sense of what alone has permanent value, the poet's individuality and the art in which it is expressed.

Donne's conceits, of which so much has been made and on whose historical significance Mr. Courthope has probably said the last word, are just like other examples of these old clothes. The question for literature is not whence they came, but how he used them. Is he a poet in virtue or in spite of them, or both? Are they fit only to be gathered into a museum of antiquated fashions such as Johnson prefixed to his study of the last poet who wore them in quite the old way (for Dryden, who pilfered more freely from Donne than from any of his predecessors, cut them to a new fashion), or are they the individual and still expressive dress of a true and great poet, commanding admiration in their own manner and degree as freshly and enduringly as the stiff and brocaded magnificence of Milton's no less individual, no less artificial style?

Donne's reputation as a poet has passed through many vicissitudes in the course of the last three centuries. With [pg vii] regard to his 'wit', its range and character, erudition and ingenuity, all generations of critics have been at one. It is as to the relation of this 'wit' to, and its effect on, his poetry that they have been at variance. To his contemporaries the 'wit' was identical with the poetry. Donne's 'wit' gave him the same supremacy among poets that learning and humour and art gave to Jonson among dramatists. To certain of his Dutch admirers the wit of The Flea seemed superhuman, and the epitaph with which Carew closes his Elegy expresses the almost universal English opinion of the seventeenth century:

It may be doubted if Milton shared this opinion. He never mentions Donne, but it was probably of him or his imitators he was thinking when in his verses at Cambridge he spoke of

Certainly the growing taste for 'correctness' led after the Restoration to a discrimination between Donne's wit and his poetry. 'The greatest wit,' Dryden calls him, 'though not the greatest poet of our nation.' What he wanted as a poet were just the two essentials of 'classical' poetry—smoothness of verse and dignity of expression. This point of view is stated with clearness and piquancy in the sentences of outrageous flattery which Dryden addressed to the Earl of Dorset in the opening paragraphs of his delightful Essay on Satire:

Dryden's estimate of Donne, as well as his application to his poetry of the epithet 'metaphysical', was transmitted through the eighteenth century. Johnson's famous paragraphs in the Life of Cowley do little more than echo and expand Dryden's pronouncement, with a rather vaguer use of the word 'metaphysical'. In Dryden's application it means correctly 'philosophical'; in Johnson's, no more than 'learned'. 'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the fingers better than of the ear.' They 'drew their conceits from recesses of learning not very much frequented by common readers of poetry'. Waller is exempted from being a metaphysical poet because 'he seldom fetches an amorous sentiment from the depths of science; his thoughts are for the most part easily understood, and his images such as the superficies of nature readily supplies'.

Even to those critics with whom began a revived appreciation of Donne as a poet and preacher, his 'wit' still bulks largely. It is impossible to escape from it. 'Wonder-exciting vigour,' writes Coleridge, 'intenseness and peculiarity, using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects where we have no right [pg ix] to expect it—this is the wit of Donne.' And lastly De Quincey, who alone of these critics recognizes the essential quality which may, and in his best work does, make Donne's wit the instrument of a mind which is not only subtle and ingenious but profoundly poetical: 'Few writers have shown a more extraordinary compass of powers than Donne; for he combined what no other man has ever done—the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address with the most impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very substance of his poem on the Metempsychosis, thoughts and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or Aeschylus, whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical brilliancies is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose.'

What is to-day the value and interest of this wit which has arrested the attention of so many generations? How far does it seem to us compatible with poetry in the full and generally accepted sense of the word, with poetry which quickens the imagination and touches the heart, which satisfies and delights, which is the verbal and rhythmical medium whereby a gifted soul communicates to those who have ears to hear the content of impassioned moments?

Before coming to close quarters with this difficult and debated question one may in the first place insist that there is in Donne's verse a great deal which, whether it be poetry in the full sense of the word or not, is arresting and of worth both historically and intrinsically. Whatever we may think of Donne's poetry, it is impossible not to recognize the extraordinary interest of his mind and character. In an age of great and fascinating men he is not the least so. The immortal and transcendent genius of Shakespeare leaves Donne, as every other contemporary, lost in the shadows and cross-lights of an age that is no longer ours, but from which Shakespeare emerges into the clear sunlight. Of Bacon's mind, 'deep and slow, exhausting thought,' and divining as none other the direction in which the road led through the débris of outworn learning to a renovated science and a new philosophy, [pg x] Donne could not boast. Alike in his poetry and in his soberest prose, treatise or sermon, Donne's mind seems to want the high seriousness which comes from a conviction that truth is, and is to be found. A spirit of scepticism and paradox plays through and disturbs almost everything he wrote, except at moments when an intense mood of feeling, whether love or devotion, begets faith, and silences the sceptical and destructive wit by the power of vision rather than of intellectual conviction. Poles apart as the two poets seem at a first glance to lie in feeling and in art, there is yet something of Tennyson in the conflict which wages perpetually in Donne's poetry between feeling and intellect.

But short of the highest gifts of serene imagination or serene wisdom Donne's mind has every power it well could, wit, insight, imagination; and these move in such a strange medium of feeling and learning, mediaeval, renaissance and modern, that every imprint becomes of interest. To do full justice to that interest one's study of Donne must include his prose as well as his verse, his paradoxical Pseudomartyr, and equally paradoxical, more strangely mooded Biathanatos, the intense and subtle eloquence of his sermons, the tormented passion and wit of his devotions, and the gaiety and melancholy, wit and wisdom, of his letters. But most of these qualities have left their mark on his poetry, and given it interests over and above its worth simply as poetry.

One quality of his verse, which has been somewhat overlooked by critics intent upon the definition and sources of metaphysical wit, is wit in our sense of the word, wit like the wit of Swift and Sheridan. The habit in which this wit masquerades is doubtless old-fashioned. It is not always the worse for that, for the wit of the Elizabethans is delightfully blended with fancy and feeling. There is a little of Jaques in all of them. But if fanciful and at times even boyish, Donne's wit is still amusing, the quickest and most fertile wit of the century till we come to the author of Hudibras.

It is not in the Satyres that this wit is to us most obvious. Nothing grows so soon out of date as contemporary satire. [pg xi] Even the brilliance and polish of Pope's satire—and Pope's art is nowhere more perfect than in The Dunciad and the Imitations of Horace—cannot interest us in Lord Hervey, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the forgotten poets of an unpoetic age. How then should we be interested in Elizabeth's fantastic 'Presence', the streets of sixteenth-century London, and the knavery of pursuivants, presented with a satiric art which is wonderfully vivid and caustic but still tentative,—over-emphatic, rough in style and verse, though with a roughness which is obviously a studied and in a measure successful effect. The verses upon Coryats Crudities are in their way a masterpiece of insult veiled as compliment, but it is a rather boyish and barbarous way.

It is in the lighter of his love verses that Donne's laughable wit is most obvious and most agile. Whatever one may think of the choice of subject, and the flame of a young man's lust that burns undisguised in some of the Elegies, it is impossible to ignore the dazzling wit which neither flags nor falters from the first line to the last. And in the more graceful and fanciful, the less heated Songs and Sonets, the same wit, gay and insolent, disports itself in a philosophy of love which must not be taken altogether seriously. Donne at least, as we shall see, outgrew it. His attitude is very much that of Shakespeare in the early comedies. But the Petrarchian love, which Shakespeare treats with light and charming irony, the vows and tears of Romeo and Proteus, Donne openly scoffs. He is one of Shakespeare's young men as these were in the flesh and the Inns of Court, and he tells us frankly what in their youthful cynicism (which is often even more of a pose than their idealism) they think of love, and constancy, and women.

Of all miracles, Donne cries, a constant woman is the greatest, of all strange sights the strangest:

But is it true that we desire to find her? Donne's answer is Woman's Constancy:

She will, like Proteus in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, have no dearth of sophistries—but why elaborate them?

It is not often that the reckless and wilful gaiety of youth masking as cynicism has been expressed with such ebullient wit as in these and companion songs. And when he adopts for a time the pose of the faithful lover bewailing the cruelty of his mistress the sarcastic wit is no less fertile. It would be difficult to find in the language a more sustained succession of witty surprises than The Will. Others were to catch these notes from Donne, and Suckling later flutes them gaily in his lighter fashion, never with the same fullness of wit and fancy, never with the same ardour of passion divinable through the audacious extravagances.

But to amuse was by no means the sole aim of Donne's 'wit'; gay humour touched with fancy and feeling is not its only [pg xiii] quality. Donne's 'wit' has many strands, his humour many moods, and before considering how these are woven together into an effect that is entirely poetical, we may note one or two of the soberer strands which run through his Letters, Epicedes, and similar poems—descriptive, reflective, and complimentary.

Not much of Donne's poetry is given to description. Of the feeling for nature of the Elizabethans, their pastoral and ideal pictures of meadow and wood and stream, which delighted the heart of Izaak Walton, there is nothing in Donne. A greater contrast than that between Marlowe's Come live with me and Donne's imitation The Baite it would be hard to conceive. But in The Storme and The Calme Donne used his wit to achieve an effect of realism which was something new in English poetry, and was not reproduced till Swift wrote The City Shower. From the first lines, which describe how

The sense of tropical heat and calm in the companion poem is hardly less oppressive, and, if the whole is not quite so happy as the first, it contains two lines whose vivid and unexpected felicity is as delightful to-day as when Ben Jonson recited them to Drummond at Hawthornden:

Donne's letters generally fall into two groups. The first comprises those addressed to his fellow-students at Cambridge and the Inns of Court, the Woodwards, Brookes, and others, or to his maturer and more fashionable companions in the quest of favour and employment at Court, Wotton, and Goodyere, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. To the other belong the complimentary and elegant epistles in which he delighted and perhaps bewildered his noble lady friends and patronesses with erudite and transcendental flattery.

In the first class, and the same is true of some of the Satyres, notably the third, and of the satirical Progresse of the Soule, especially at the beginning and the end, the reflective, moralizing strain predominates. Donne's 'wit' becomes the instrument of a criticism of life, grave or satiric, melancholy or stoical. Despite Matthew Arnold's definition, verse of this kind seldom is poetry in the full sense of the word; but, as Stevenson says in speaking of his own Scotch verses, talk not song. The first of English poets was a master of the art. Neither Horace nor Martial, whom Stevenson cites, is a more delightful talker in verse than Geoffrey Chaucer, and the archaism of his style seems only to lend the additional charm of a lisp to his babble. Since Donne's day English poetry has been rich in such verse talkers—Butler and Dryden, Pope and Swift, Cowper and Burns, Byron and Shelley, Browning and Landor. It did not come easy to the Elizabethans, whose natural accent was song. Donne's chief rivals were Daniel and Jonson, and I venture to think that he excels them both in the clear and pointed yet easy and conversational development of his thought, in the play of wit and wisdom, and, despite the pedantic cast of Elizabethan erudite moralizing, in the power to leave on the reader the impression of a potent and yet a winning personality. We seem to get nearer to the man himself in Donne's letters to Goodyere and Wotton than in Daniel's weighty, but also heavy, moralizing epistles to the Countess of Cumberland or Sir Thomas Egerton; and the personality whose voice sounds so distinct and human in our ear is a more attractive one than the harsh, censorious, burly [pg xv] but a little blustering Jonson of the epistles on country life and generous givers. Donne's style is less clumsy, his verse less stiff. His wit brings to a clear point whatever he has to say, while from his verse as from his prose letters there disengages itself a very distinct sense of what it was in the man, underlying his brilliant intellect, his almost superhuman cleverness, which won for him the devotion of friends like Wotton and Goodyere and Walton and King, the admiration of a stranger like Huyghens, who heard him talk as well as preach:—a serious and melancholy, a generous and chivalrous spirit.

So he writes to Goodyere, but the letter to Wotton going Ambassador to Venice is Donne's masterpiece in this simpler style, and it seems to me that neither Daniel nor Jonson nor Drayton ever catches this note at once sensitive and courtly. To find a like courtliness we must go to Wotton; witness the reply to Donne's earlier epistle which I have printed in the notes. But neither Wotton nor any other of the courtly poets in Hannah's collection adds to this dignity so poignant a personal accent.

This personal interest is very marked in the two satires which are connected by tone and temper with the letters, the third of the early, classical Satyres and the opening and closing stanzas of the Progresse of the Soule. Each is a vivid picture of the inner workings of Donne's soul at a critical period in his life. The first was doubtless written at the moment that he was passing from the Roman to the Anglican Church. It is one [pg xvi] of the earliest and most thoughtful appeals for toleration, for the candid scrutiny of religious differences, which was written perhaps in any country—one of the most striking symptoms of the new eddies produced in the stream of religious feeling by the meeting currents of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.

It was a difficult and dangerous process through which Donne was passing, this conversion from the Church of his fathers to conformity with the Church of England as by law established. It would be as absurd, in the face of a poem like this and of all that we know of Donne's subsequent life, to call it a conversion in the full sense of the term, a changed conviction, as to dub it an apostasy prompted by purely political considerations. Yet doubtless the latter predominated. The position of a Catholic in the reign of Elizabeth was that of a man cut off rigorously from the main life of the nation, with every avenue of honourable ambition closed to him. He had to live the starved, suspected life of a recusant or to seek service under a foreign power. Some of the most pathetic documents in Strype's Annals of the Reformation are those in which we hear the cry of young men of secure station and means driven by conscientious conviction to abandon home and country. It is possible that before 1592 Donne himself had been sent abroad by relatives with a view to his entering a seminary or the service of a foreign power. His mother spent a great part of her life abroad, and his own relatives were among those who suffered most severely under Walsingham's persecution. 'I had', Donne says, 'my first breeding and conversation with men of suppressed and afflicted Religion, accustomed to the despite of death, and hungry of an imagined Martyrdome.' To a young man of ambition, and as yet certainly with no bent to devotion or martyrdom, it was only common sense to conform if he might.

From this dilemma Donne escaped, not by any opportune change of conviction, or by any insincere profession, but by the way of intellectual emancipation. He looks round in this satire and sees that whichever be the true Church it is not by [pg xvii] any painful quest of truth, and through the attainment of conviction, that most people have accepted the Church to which they may belong. Circumstances and whim have had more to do with their choice than reason and serious conviction. Yet it is only by search that truth is to be found:

It was not often in the sixteenth or seventeenth century that a completely emancipated and critical attitude on religious, not philosophical, questions was expressed with such entire frankness and seriousness. From this position, Walton would have us believe, Donne advanced through the study of Bellarmine and other controversialists to a convinced acceptance of Anglican doctrine. The evidence points to a rather different conclusion on Donne's part. He came to think that all the Churches were 'virtual beams of one sun', 'connatural pieces of one circle', a position from which the next step was to the conclusion that for an Englishman the Anglican Church was the right choice (Cujus regio, ejus religio); but Donne had not reached this conclusion when he wrote the Satyre, and doubtless did not till he had satisfied himself that the Church of England offered a reasonable via media. But changes of creed made on purely intellectual grounds, and prompted by practical motives, are not unattended with danger to a man's moral and spiritual life. Donne had doubtless outwardly conformed before he entered Egerton's service in 1598, but long afterwards, when he is already in Orders, he utters a cry which betrays how real the dilemma still was:

and the first result of his 'conversion' was apparently to deepen the sceptical vein in his mind.

Scepticism and melancholy, bitter and sardonic, are certainly [pg xviii] the dominant notes in the sombre fragment of satire The Progresse of the Soule, which he composed in 1601, when he was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary, four months before his marriage and six months after the death of the Earl of Essex. There can be little doubt, as I have ventured to suggest elsewhere, that it was the latter event which provoked this strange and sombre explosion of spleen, a satire of the same order as the Tale of a Tub or the Vision of Judgment. The account of the poem which Jonson gave to Drummond does not seem to be quite accurate, though it was probably derived from Donne himself. It was, one suspects from several circumstances, a little Donne's way in later years to disguise the footprints of his earlier indiscretions. According to this tradition the final habitat of the soul which 'inanimated' the apple

was to be John Calvin. The tradition is interesting as marking how far Donne was in 1601 from his later orthodox Protestantism, for Calvin is never mentioned but with respect in the Sermons. A few months later he wrote to Egerton disclaiming warmly all 'love of a corrupt religion'. But, though sceptical in tone, the poem is written from a Catholic standpoint; its theme is the progress of the soul of heresy. And, as the seventh stanza clearly indicates, the great heretic in whom the line closed was to be not Calvin but Queen Elizabeth:

Donne can hardly have thought of publishing such a poem, or circulating it in the Queen's lifetime. It was an expression of the mood which begot the 'black and envious slanders breath'd against Diana for her divine justice on Actaeon' to which Jonson refers in Cynthia's Revels the same year. That some copies were circulated in manuscript later is probably due to the reaction which brought into favour at James's [pg xix] Court the Earl of Southampton and the former adherents of Essex generally.

The tone, moreover, of the stanza quoted above suggests that it was no vulgar libel on Elizabeth which Donne contemplated. Elizabeth, the cruel persecutor of his Catholic kinsfolk, now stained with the blood of her favourite, appeared to him somewhat as she did to Pope Sixtus, a heretic but a great woman. He felt to her as Burke did to the 'whole race of Guises, Condés and Colignis'—'the hand that like a destroying angel smote the country communicated to it the force and energy under which it suffered.' In a mood of bitter admiration, of sceptical and sardonic wonder, he contemplates the great bad souls who had troubled the world and served it too, for the idea on which the poem was to rest is the disconcerting reflection that we owe many good things to heretics and bad men:

It would have been interesting to read Donne's history of the great souls that troubled and yet quickened the world from Cain to Arius and from Mahomet to Elizabeth, but unfortunately Donne never got beyond the introduction, a couple of cantos which describe the progress of the soul while it is still passing through the vegetable and animal planes, the motive of which, so far as it can be disentangled, is to describe the pre-human education of a woman's soul:

The fragment has some of the sombre power which De Quincey attributes to it, but on the whole one must confess it is a failure. The 'wit' of Donne did not apparently include invention, for many of the episodes seem pointless as well as disgusting, and indeed in no poem is the least attractive side of Donne's mind so clearly revealed, that aspect of his wit which to some readers is more repellent, more fatal to his claim to be a poet, than too subtle ingenuity or misplaced erudition—the vein of sheer ugliness which runs through his work, presenting details that seem merely and wantonly repulsive. The same vein is apparent in the work of Chapman, of Jonson, and even in places of Spenser, and the imagery of Hamlet and the tragedies owes some of its dramatic vividness and power to the same quality. The ugly has its place in art, and it would not be difficult to find it in every phase of Renaissance art, marked like the beautiful in that art by the same evidence of power. Decadence brought with it not ugliness but prettiness.

The reflective, philosophic, somewhat melancholy strain of the poems I have been touching on reappears in the letters addressed to noble ladies. Here, however, it is softened, less sardonic in tone, while it blends with or gives place to another strain, that of absurd and extravagant but fanciful and subtle compliment. Donne cannot write to a lady without his heart and fancy taking wing in their own passionate and erudite fashion. Scholastic theology is made the instrument of courtly compliment and pious flirtation. He blends in the same disturbing fashion as in some of the songs and elegies that depreciation of woman in general, which he owes less to classical poetry than to his over-acquaintance with the Fathers, with an adoration of her charms in the individual which passes into the transcendental. He tells the Countess of Huntingdon that active goodness in a woman is a miracle; but it is clear that she and the Countess of Bedford and Mrs. Herbert and Lady Carey and the Countess of Salisbury are all examples of such miracle—ladies whose beauty itself is virtue, while their virtues are a mystery revealable only to the initiated.

The highest place is held by Lady Bedford and Mrs. Herbert. [pg xxi] Nothing could surpass the strain of intellectual and etherealized compliment in which he addresses the Countess. If lines like the following are not pure poetry, they haunt some quaint borderland of poetry to which the polished felicities of Pope's compliments are a stranger. If not pure fancy, they are not mere ingenuity, being too intellectual and argumentative for the one, too winged and ardent for the other:

is in a like dazzling and subtle vein. Those addressed to Mrs. Herbert, notably the letter

are less transcendental in tone but bespeak an even warmer admiration. Indeed it is clear to any careful reader that in the poems addressed to both these ladies there is blended with the respectful flattery of the dependant not a little of the tone of warmer feeling permitted to the 'servant' by Troubadour [pg xxii] convention. And I suspect that some poems, the tone of which is still more frankly and ardently lover-like, were addressed to Lady Bedford and Mrs. Herbert, though they have come to us without positive indication.

points to the person addressed, for Twickenham Park was the residence of Lady Bedford from 1607 to 1618, and Donne's intimacy with her seems to have begun in or about 1608. There can, I think, be little doubt that it is to her, and neither to his wife nor the mistresses of his earlier, wandering fancy, that these lines, conventional in theme but given an amazing timbre by the impulse of Donne's subtle and passionate mind, were addressed. But if Twicknam Garden was written to Lady Bedford, so also, one is tempted to think, must have been A Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day, for Lucy was the Countess's name, and the thought, feeling, and rhythm of the two poems are strikingly similar.

But the Nocturnall is a sincerer and profounder poem than Twicknam Garden, and it is more difficult to imagine it the expression of a conventional sentiment. Mr. Gosse, and there is no higher authority when it comes to the interpretation of Donne's character and mind, rightly, I think, suggests that the death of the lady addressed is assumed, not actual, but he connects the poem with Donne's earlier and troubled loves. 'So also in a most curious ode, the Nocturnal ..., amid fireworks of conceit, he calls his mistress dead and protests that his hatred has grown cold at last.' But I can find no note of bitterness, active or spent, in the song. It might have been written to Ann More. It is a highly metaphysical yet sombre and sincere description of the emptiness of life without love. The critics have, I think, failed somewhat to reckon with this stratum in Donne's songs, of poems Petrarchian in convention but with a Petrarchianism coloured by Donne's realistic temper and impatient wit. Any interpretation of so [pg xxiii] enigmatical a poem must be conjectural, but before one denied too positively that its subject was Lady Bedford—perhaps her illness in 1612—one would need to answer two questions, how far could a conventional passion inspire a strain so sincere, and what was Donne's feeling for Lady Bedford and hers for him?

Poetry is the language of passion, but the passion which moves the poet most constantly is the delight of making poetry, and very little is sufficient to quicken the imagination to its congenial task. Our soberer minds are apt to think that there must be an actual, particular experience behind every sincere poem. But history refutes the idea of such a simple relation between experience and art. No poet will sing of love convincingly who has never loved, but that experience will suffice him for many and diverse webs of song and drama. Without pursuing the theme, it is sufficient for the moment to recall that in the fashion of the day Spenser's sonnets were addressed to Lady Carey, not to his wife; that it was to Idea or to Anne Goodere that Drayton wrote so passionate a poem as

and that we know very little of what really lies behind Shakespeare's profound and plangent sonnets, weave what web of fancy we will.

Of Lady Bedford's feeling for Donne we know only what his letters reveal, and that is no more than that she was his warm friend and generous patroness. It is clear, however, from their enduring friendship and from the tone of that correspondence that she found in him a friend of a rarer and finer calibre than in the other poets whom she patronized in turn, Daniel and Drayton and Jonson—some one whose sensitive, complex, fascinating personality could hardly fail to touch a woman's imagination and heart. Friendship between man and woman is love in some degree. There is no need to exaggerate the situation, or to reflect on either her loyalty or his to other claims, to recognize that their mutual feeling was of the kind for which the Petrarchian convention afforded a ready and recognized vehicle of expression.

And so it was, one fancies, with Mrs. Herbert. She too found in Donne a rare and comprehending spirit, and he in her a gracious and delicate friend. His relation to her, indeed, was probably simpler than to Lady Bedford, their friendship more equal. The letter and the elegy referred to already are instinct with affection and tender reverence. To her Donne sent some of his earliest religious sonnets, with a sonnet on her beautiful name. And to her also it would seem that at some period in the history of their friendship, the beginning of which is very difficult to date, he wrote songs in the tone of hopeless, impatient passion, of Petrarch writing to Laura, and others which celebrate their mutual affection as a love that rose superior to earthly and physical passion. The clue here is the title prefixed to that strange poem The Primrose, being at Montgomery Castle upon the hill on which it is situate. It is true that the title is found for the first time in the edition of 1635 and is in none of the manuscripts. But it is easier to explain the occasional suppression of a revealing title than to conceive a motive for inventing such a gloss. The poem is doubtless, as Mr. Gosse says, 'a mystical celebration of the beauty, dignity and intelligence of Magdalen Herbert'—a celebration, however, which takes the form (as it might with Petrarch) of a reproach, a reproach which Donne's passionate temper and caustic wit seem even to touch with scorn. He appears to hint to Mrs. Herbert that to wish to be more than a woman, to claim worship in place of love, is to be a worse monster than a coquette:

In exactly the same mood as The Primrose is The Blossome, possibly written in the same place and on the same day, for the poet is preparing to return to London. The Dampe is in an even more scornful tone, and one hesitates to connect it with Mrs. Herbert. But all these poems recur so repeatedly together in the manuscripts as to suggest that they have a common origin. [pg xxv] And with them go the beautiful poems The Funerall and The Relique. In the former the cruelty of the lady has killed her lover, but in the second the tone changes entirely, the relation between Donne and Mrs. Herbert (note the lines

has ceased to be Petrarchian and become Platonic, their love a thing pure and of the spirit, but none the less passionate for that:

Such were the notes that a poet in the seventeenth century might still sing to a high-born lady his patroness and his friend. No one who knows the fashion of the day will read into them more than they were intended to convey. No one who knows human nature will read them as merely frigid and conventional compliments. Any uncertainty one may feel about the subject arises not from their being love-poems, but from the difficulty which Donne has in adjusting himself to the Petrarchian convention, the tendency of his passionate heart and satiric wit to break through the prescribed tone of worship and complaint.

Without some touch of passion, some vibration of the heart, Donne is only too apt to accumulate 'monstrous and disgusting hyperboles'. This is very obvious in the Epicedes—his complimentary laments for the young Lord Harington, Miss Boulstred, Lady Markham, Elizabeth Drury and the Marquis of Hamilton, poems in which it is difficult to find a line that moves. Indeed, seventeenth-century elegies are not as a rule [pg xxvi] pathetic. A poem in the simple, piercing strain and the Wordsworthian plainness of style of the Dutch poet Vondel's lament for his little daughter is hardly to be found in English. An occasional epitaph like Browne's

comes near it, but in general seventeenth-century elegy is apt to spend itself on three not easily reconcilable themes—extravagant eulogy of the dead, which is the characteristically Renaissance strain, the Mediaeval meditation on death and its horrors, the more simply Christian mood of hope rising at times to the rapt vision of a higher life. In the pastoral elegy, such as Lycidas, the poet was able to escape from a too literal treatment of the first into a sequence of charming conventions. The second was alien to Milton's thought, and with his genius for turning everything to beauty Milton extracts from the reference to the circumstances of King's death the only touch of pathos in the poem:

In the metaphysical elegy as cultivated by Donne, Beaumont, and others there was no escape from extravagant eulogy and sorrow by way of pastoral convention and mythological embroidery, and this class of poetry includes some of the worst verses ever written. In Donne all three of the strains referred to are present, but only in the third does he achieve what can be truly called poetry. In the elegies on Lord Harington and Miss Boulstred and Lady Markham it is difficult to say which is more repellent—the images in which the poet [pg xxvii] sets forth the vanity of human life and the humiliations of death or the frigid and blasphemous hyperboles in which the virtues of the dead are eulogized.

Even the Second Anniversary, the greatest of Donne's epicedes, is marred throughout by these faults. There is no stranger poem in the English language in its combination of excellences and faults, splendid audacities and execrable extravagances. 'Fervour of inspiration, depth and force and glow of thought and emotion and expression'—it has something of all these high qualities which Swinburne claimed; but the fervour is in great part misdirected, the emotion only half sincere, the thought more subtle than profound, the expression heated indeed but with a heat which only in passages kindles to the glow of poetry.

Such are the passages in which the poet contemplates the joys of heaven. There is nothing more instinct with beautiful feeling in Lycidas than some of the lines of Apocalyptic imagery at the close:

But in spiritual sense, in passionate awareness of the transcendent, there are lines in Donne's poem that seem to me superior to anything in Milton if not in purity of Christian feeling, yet in the passionate, mystical sense of the infinite as something other than the finite, something which no suggestion of illimitable extent and superhuman power can ever in any degree communicate.

In passages like these there is an earnest of the highest note of [pg xxviii] spiritual eloquence that Donne was to attain to in his sermons and last hymns.

Another aspect of Donne's poetry in the Anniversaries, of his contemptus mundi and ecstatic vision, connects them more closely with Tennyson's In Memoriam than Milton's Lycidas. Like Tennyson, Donne is much concerned with the progress of science, the revolution which was going on in men's knowledge of the universe, and its disintegrating effect on accepted beliefs. To him the new astronomy is as bewildering in its displacement of the earth and disturbance of a concentric universe as the new geology was to be to Tennyson with the vistas which it opened into the infinities of time, the origin and the destiny of man:

On Tennyson the effect of a similar dislocation of thought, the revelation of a Nature which seemed to bring to death and bring to life through endless ages, careless alike of individual and type, was religious doubt tending to despair:

On Donne the effect was quite the opposite. It was not of religion he doubted but of science, of human knowledge with its uncertainties, its shifting theories, its concern about the unimportant:

With this welter of shifting theories and worthless facts he contrasts the vision of which religious faith is the earnest here:

It will seem to some readers hardly fair to compare a poem like In Memoriam, which, if in places the staple of its feeling and thought wears a little thin, is entirely serious throughout, with poems which have so much the character of an intellectual tour de force as Donne's Anniversaries, but it is easy to be unjust to the sincerity of Donne in these poems. Their extravagant eulogy did not argue any insincerity to Sir Robert and Lady Drury. It was in the manner of the time, and doubtless seemed to them as natural an expression of grief as the elaborate marble and alabaster tomb which they erected to the memory of their daughter. The Second Anniversarie was written in France when Donne was resident there with the Drurys. And it was on this occasion that Donne had the vision of his absent wife which Walton has related so graphically. [pg xxx] The spiritual sense in Donne was as real a thing as the restless and unruly wit, or the sensual, passionate temperament. The main thesis of the poem, the comparative worthlessness of this life, the transcendence of the spiritual, was as sincere in Donne's case as was in Tennyson the conviction of the futility of life if death closes all. It was to be the theme of the finest passages in his eloquent sermons, the burden of all that is most truly religious in the verse and prose of a passionate, intellectual, self-tormenting soul to whom the pure ecstasy of love of a Vondel, the tender raptures of a Crashaw, the chastened piety of a Herbert, the mystical perceptions of a Vaughan could never be quite congenial.

I have dwelt at some length on those aspects of Donne's 'wit' which are of interest and value even to a reader who may feel doubtful as to the beauty and interest of his poetry as such, because they too have been obscured by the criticism which with Dr. Johnson and Mr. Courthope represents his wit as a monster of misapplied ingenuity, his interest as historical and historical only. Apart from poetry there is in Donne's 'wit' a great deal that is still fresh and vivid, wit as we understand wit; satire pungent and vivid; reflection on religion and on life, rugged at times in form but never really unmusical as Jonson's verse is unmusical, and, despite frequent carelessness, singularly lucid and felicitous in expression; elegant compliment, extravagant and grotesque at times but often subtle and piquant; and in the Anniversaries, amid much that is both puerile and extravagant, a loftier strain of impassioned reflection and vision. It is not of course that these things are not, or may not be constituents of poetry, made poetic by their handling. To me it seems that in Donne they generally are. It is the poet in Donne which flavours them all, touching his wit with fancy, his reflection with imagination, his vision with passion. But if we wish to estimate the poet simply in Donne, we must examine his love-poetry and his religious poetry. It is here that every one who cares for his unique and arresting genius will admit that he must stand or fall as a great poet.

For it is here that we find the full effect of what De Quincey points to as Donne's peculiarity, the combination of dialectical subtlety with weight and force of passion. Objections to admit the poetic worth and interest of Donne's love-poetry come from two sides—from those who are indisposed to admit that passion, and especially the passion of love, can ever speak so ingeniously (this was the eighteenth-century criticism); and from those, and these are his more modern critics, who deny that Donne is a great poet because with rare exceptions, exceptions rather of occasional lines and phrases than of whole poems, his songs and elegies lack beauty. Can poetry be at once passionate and ingenious, sincere in feeling and witty,—packed with thought, and that subtle and abstract thought, Scholastic dialectic? Can love-poetry speak a language which is impassioned and expressive but lacks beauty, is quite different from the language of Dante and Petrarch, the loveliest language that lovers ever spoke, or the picturesque hyperboles of Romeo and Juliet? Must not the imagery and the cadences of love poetry reflect 'l'infinita, ineffabile bellezza' which is its inspiration?

The first criticism is put very clearly by Steele, who goes so far as to exemplify what the style of love-poetry should be; and certainly it is something entirely different from that of The Extasie or the Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day. Nothing could illustrate better the 'return to nature' of our Augustan literature than Steele's words:

It is not possible to find so distinct a statement of the other view to which I have referred, but I could imagine it coming from Mr. Robert Bridges, or (since I have no authority to quote Mr. Bridges in this connexion) from an admirer of his beautiful poetry. Mr. Bridges' love-poetry is far indeed from the vapid naturalness which Steele commended in The Guardian. It is as instinct with thought, and subtle thought, as Donne's own poetry; but the final effect of his poetry is beauty, emotion recollected in tranquillity, and recollected especially in order to fix its delicate beauty in appropriate and musical words:

Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,

It leaps in the sky: unrisen lustres slake

The o'ertaken moon. Awake, O heart, awake!

She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee;

Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee,

Already they watch the path thy feet shall take:

Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

And if thou tarry from her,—if this could be,—

She cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee;

For thee would unashamed herself forsake:

Awake to be loved, my heart, awake, awake!

[pg xxxiii]

Awake, the land is scattered with light, and see,

Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree:

And blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake;

Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake!

Lo all things wake and tarry and look for thee:

She looketh and saith, 'O sun, now bring him to me.

Come more adored, O adored, for his coming's sake,

And awake my heart to be loved: awake, awake!'

Donne has written nothing at once so subtle and so pure and lovely as this, nothing the end and aim of which is so entirely to leave an untroubled impression of beauty.

But it is not true either that the thought and imagery of love-poetry must be of the simple, obvious kind which Steele supposes, that any display of dialectical subtlety, any scintillation of wit, must be fatal to the impression of sincerity and feeling, or on the other hand that love is always a beautiful emotion naturally expressing itself in delicate and beautiful language. To some natures love comes as above all things a force quickening the mind, intensifying its purely intellectual energy, opening new vistas of thought abstract and subtle, making the soul 'intensely, wondrously alive'. Of such were Donne and Browning. A love-poem like 'Come into the garden, Maud' suspends thought and fills the mind with a succession of picturesque and voluptuous images in harmony with the dominant mood. A poem such as The Anniversarie or The Extasie, The Last Ride Together or Too Late, is a record of intense, rapid thinking, expressed in the simplest, most appropriate language—and it is a no whit less natural utterance of passion. Even the abstractness of the thought, on which Mr. Courthope lays so much stress in speaking of Donne and the 'metaphysicals' generally, is no necessary implication of want of feeling. It has been said of St. Augustine 'that his most profound thoughts regarding the first and last things arose out of prayer ... concentration of his whole being in prayer led to the most abstract observation'. So it may be with love-poetry—so it was with Dante in the Vita Nuova, and so, on a lower scale, and allowing for the time that the passion [pg xxxiv] is a more earthly and sensual one, the thought more capricious and unruly, with Donne. The Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day is not less passionate because that passion finds expression in abstract and subtle thought. Nor is it true that all love-poetry is beautiful. Of none of the four poems I have mentioned in the last paragraph is pure beauty, beauty such as is the note of Mr. Bridges' song, the distinctive quality. It is rather vivid realism:

But this sacrifice of beauty to dramatic vividness is a characteristic of passionate poetry. Beauty is not precisely the quality we should predicate of the burning lines of Sappho translated by Catullus:

Beauty is the quality of poetry which records an ideal passion recollected in tranquillity, rather than of poetry either dramatic or lyric which utters the very movement and moment of passion itself.

Donne's love-poetry is a very complex phenomenon, but the two dominant strains in it are just these: the strain of dialectic, subtle play of argument and wit, erudite and fantastic; and the strain of vivid realism, the record of a passion which is not ideal nor conventional, neither recollected in tranquillity nor a pure product of literary fashion, but love as an actual, immediate experience in all its moods, gay and angry, scornful and rapturous with joy, touched with tenderness and darkened with sorrow—though these last two moods, the commonest in love-poetry, [pg xxxv] are with Donne the rarest. The first of these strains comes to Donne from the Middle Ages, the dialectic of the Schools, which passed into mediaeval love-poetry almost from its inception; the second is the expression of the new temper of the Renaissance as Donne had assimilated it in Latin countries. Donne uses the method, the dialectic of the mediaeval love-poets, the poets of the dolce stil nuovo, Guinicelli, Cavalcanti, Dante, and their successors, the intellectual, argumentative evolution of their canzoni, but he uses it to express a temper of mind and a conception of love which are at the opposite pole from their lofty idealism. The result, however, is not so entirely disintegrating as Mr. Courthope seems to think: 'This fine Platonic edifice is ruthlessly demolished in the poetry of Donne. To him love, in its infinite variety and inconsistency, represented the principle of perpetual flux in nature.'¹ The truth is rather that, owing to the fullness of Donne's experience as a lover, the accident that made of the earlier libertine a devoted lover and husband, and from the play of his restless and subtle mind on the phenomenon of love conceived and realized in this less ideal fashion, there emerged in his poetry the suggestion of a new philosophy of love which, if less transcendental than that of Dante, rests on a juster, because a less dualistic and ascetic, conception of the nature of the love of man and woman.

The fundamental weakness of the mediaeval doctrine of love, despite its refining influence and its exaltation of woman, was that it proved unable to justify love ethically against the claims of the counter-ideal of asceticism. Taking its rise in a relationship which excluded the thought of marriage as the end and justification of love, which presumed in theory that the relation of the 'servant' to his lady must always be one of reverent and unrewarded service, this poetry found itself involved from the beginning in a dualism from which there was no escape. On the one hand the love of woman is the great ennobler of the [pg xxxvi] human heart, the influence which elicits its latent virtue as the sun converts clay to gold and precious stones. On the other hand, love is a passion which in the end is to be repented of in sackcloth and ashes. Lancelot is the knight whom love has made perfect in all the virtues of manhood and chivalry; but the vision of the Holy Grail is not for him, but for the virgin and stainless Sir Galahad.

In the high philosophy of the Tuscan poets of the 'sweet new style' that dualism was apparently transcended, but it was by making love identical with religion, by emptying it of earthly passion, making woman an Angel, a pure Intelligence, love of whom is the first awakening of the love of God. 'For Dante and the poets of the learned school love and virtue were one and the same thing; love was religion, the lady beloved the way to heaven, symbol of philosophy and finally of theology.'² The culminating moment in Dante's love for Beatrice arrives when he has overcome even the desire that she should return his salutation and he finds his full beatitude in 'those words that do praise my lady'. The love that begins in the Vita Nuova is completed in the Paradiso.

The dualism thus in appearance transcended by Dante reappears sharply and distinctly in Petrarch. 'Petrarch', says Gaspary, 'adores not the idea but the person of his lady; he feels that in his affections there is an earthly element, he cannot separate it from the desire of the senses; this is the earthly tegument which draws us down. If not as, according to the ascetic doctrine, sin, if he could not be ashamed of his passion, yet he could repent of it as a vain and frivolous thing, regret his wasted hopes and griefs.'³ Laura is for Petrarch the flower of all perfection herself and the source of every virtue in her lover. Yet his love for Laura is a long and weary aberration of the soul from her true goal, which is the love of God. This is the contradiction from which flow some of the most lyrical [pg xxxvii] strains in Petrarch's poetry, as the fine canzone 'I'vo pensando', where he cries:

Elizabethan love-poetry is descended from Petrarch by way of Cardinal Bembo and the French poets of the Pléiade, notably Ronsard and Desportes. Of all the Elizabethan sonneteers the most finely Petrarchian are Sidney and Spenser, especially the former. For Sidney, Stella is the school of virtue and nobility. He too writes at times in the impatient strain of Petrarch:

But two things had come over this idealist and courtly love-poetry by the end of the sixteenth century. It had become a literary artifice, a refining upon outworn and extravagant conceits, losing itself at times in the fantastic and absurd. A more important fact was that this poetry had begun to absorb a new warmth and spirit, not from Petrarch and mediaeval chivalry, but from classical love-poetry with its simpler, less metaphysical strain, its equally intense but more realistic [pg xxxviii] description of passion, its radically different conception of the relation between the lovers and of the influence of love in a man's life. The courtly, idealistic strain was crossed by an Epicurean and sensuous one that tends to treat with scorn the worship of woman, and echoes again and again the Pagan cry, never heard in Dante or Petrarch, of the fleetingness of beauty and love:

Now if we turn from Elizabethan love-poetry to the Songs and Sonets and the Elegies of Donne, we find at once two distinguishing features. In the first place his poetry is in one respect less classical than theirs. There is far less in it of the superficial evidence of classical learning with which the poetry of the 'University Wits' abounds, pastoral and mythological imagery. The texture of his poetry is more mediaeval than theirs in as far as it is more dialectical, though a dialectical evolution is not infrequent in the Elizabethan sonnet, and the imagery is less picturesque, more scientific, philosophic, realistic, and homely. The place of the

is taken by images drawn from all the sciences of the day, from the definitions and distinctions of the Schoolmen, from the travels and speculations of the new age, and (as in Shakespeare's tragedies or Browning's poems) from the experiences of everyday life. Maps and sea discoveries, latitude and longitude, the phoenix and the mandrake's root, the Scholastic theories of Angelic bodies and Angelic knowledge, Alchemy [pg xxxix] and Astrology, legal contracts and non obstantes, 'late schoolboys and sour prentices,' 'the king's real and his stamped face'—these are the kind of images, erudite, fanciful, and homely, which give to Donne's poems a texture so different at a first glance from the florid and diffuse Elizabethan poetry, whether romantic epic, mythological idyll, sonnet, or song; while by their presence and their abundance they distinguish it equally (as Mr. Gosse has justly insisted) from the studiously moderate and plain style of 'well-languaged Daniel'.

But if the imagery of Donne's poetry be less classical than that of Marlowe or the younger Shakespeare there is no poet the spirit of whose love-poetry is so classical, so penetrated with the sensual, realistic, scornful tone of the Latin lyric and elegiac poets. If one reads rapidly through the three books of Ovid's Amores, and then in the same continuous rapid fashion the Songs and the Elegies of Donne, one will note striking differences of style and treatment. Ovid develops his theme simply and concretely, Donne dialectically and abstractly. There is little of the ease and grace of Ovid's verses in the rough and vehement lines of Donne's Elegies. Compare the song,

Ovid passes from one natural and simple thought to another, from one aspect of dawn to another equally objective. Donne just touches one or two of the same features, borrowing them doubtless from Ovid, but the greater part of the song is devoted to the subtle and extravagant, if you like, but not the less passionate development of the thought that for him the woman he loves is the whole world.

But if the difference between Donne's metaphysical conceits and Ovid's naturalness and simplicity is palpable it is not less clear that the emotions which they express, with some important [pg xl] exceptions to which I shall recur, are identical. The love which is the main burden of their song is something very different from the ideal passion of Dante or of Petrarch, of Sidney or Spenser. It is a more sensual passion. The same tone of witty depravity runs through the work of the two poets. There is in Donne a purer strain which, we shall see directly, is of the greatest importance, but such a rapid reader as I am contemplating might be forgiven if for the moment he overlooked it, and declared that the modern poet was as sensual and depraved as the ancient, that there was little to choose between the social morality reflected in the Elizabethan and in the Augustan poet.

And yet even in these more cynical and sensual poems a careful reader will soon detect a difference between Donne and Ovid. He will begin to suspect that the English poet is imitating the Roman, and that the depravity is in part a reflected depravity. In revolt from one convention the young poet is cultivating another, a cynicism and sensuality which is just as little to be taken au pied de la lettre as the idealizing worship, the anguish and adoration of the sonneteers. There is, as has been said already, a gaiety in the poems elaborating the thesis that love is a perpetual flux, fickleness the law of its being, which warns us against taking them too seriously; and even those Elegies which seem to our taste most reprehensible are aerated by a wit which makes us almost forget their indecency. In the last resort there is all the difference in the world between the untroubled, heartless sensuality of the Roman poet and the gay wit, the paradoxical and passionate audacities and sensualities of the young Elizabethan law-student impatient of an unreal convention, and eager to startle and delight his fellow students by the fertility and audacity of his wit.

It is not of course my intention to represent Donne's love-poetry as purely an 'evaporation' of wit, to suggest that there is in it no reflection either of his own life as a young man or the moral atmosphere of Elizabethan London. It would be a much less interesting poetry if this were so. Donne has pleaded guilty to a careless and passionate youth:

From what we know of the lives of Essex, Raleigh, Southampton, Pembroke, and others it is probable that Donne's Elegies come quite as close to the truth of life as Sidney's Petrarchianism or Spenser's Platonism. The later cantos of The Faerie Queene reflect vividly the unchaste loves and troubled friendships of Elizabeth's Court. Whether we can accept in its entirety the history of Donne's early amours which Mr. Gosse has gathered from the poems or not, there can be no doubt that actual experiences do lie behind these poems as behind Shakespeare's sonnets. In the one case as in the other, to recognize a literary model is not to exclude the probability of a source in actual experience.

But however we may explain or palliate the tone of these poems it is impossible to deny their power, the vivid and packed force with which they portray a variously mooded passion working through a swift and subtle brain. If there is little of the elegant and accomplished art which Milton admired in the Latin Elegiasts while he 'deplored' their immorality, there is more strength and sincerity both of thought and imagination. The brutal cynicism of

the witty anger of The Apparition, the mordant and paradoxical wit of The Perfume and The Bracelet, the passionate dignity and strength of His Picture,

the passion that rises superior to sensuality and wit, and takes wing into a more spiritual and ideal atmosphere, of His parting from her,

[pg xlii] compare these with Ovid and the difference is apparent between an artistic, witty voluptuary and a poet whose passionate force redeems many errors of taste and art. Compare them with the sonnets and mythological idylls and Heroicall Epistles of the Elizabethans and it is they, not Donne, who are revealed as witty and 'fantastic' poets content to adorn a conventional sentiment with mythological fancies and verbal conceits. Donne's interest is his theme, love and woman, and he uses words not for their own sake but to communicate his consciousness of these surprising phenomena in all their varying and conflicting aspects. The only contemporary poems that have the same dramatic quality are Shakespeare's sonnets and some of Drayton's later sonnets. In Shakespeare this dramatic intensity and variety is of course united with a rarer poetic charm. Charm is a quality which Donne's poetry possesses in a few single lines. But to the passion which animates these sensual, witty, troubled poems the closest parallel is to be sought in Shakespeare's sonnets to a dark lady and in some of the verses written by Catullus to or of Lesbia:

But neither sensual passion, nor gay and cynical wit, nor scorn and anger, is the dominant note in Donne's love-poetry. Of the last quality there is, despite the sardonic emphasis of some of the poems, less than in either Shakespeare or Catullus. There is nothing in his poetry which speaks so poignantly of an outraged heart, a love lavished upon one who was worthless, as some of Shakespeare's sonnets and of Catullus's poems. The finest note in Donne's love-poetry is the note of joy, the joy of mutual and contented passion. His heart might be subtle to plague itself; its capacity for joy is even more obvious. Other poets have done many things which Donne could not do. They have invested their feelings with a garb of richer and sweeter poetry. They have felt more deeply and finely the reverence which is in the heart of love. But it is only in the fragments of Sappho, the lyrics of Catullus, and [pg xliii] the songs of Burns that one will find the sheer joy of loving and being loved expressed in the same direct and simple language as in some of Donne's songs, only in Browning that one will find the same simplicity of feeling combined with a like swift and subtle dialectic.

The joy is as intense though it is of a more spiritual and intellectual quality. And in the other notes of this simple passionate love-poetry, sorrow which is the shadow of joy, and tenderness, Donne does not fall far short of Burns in intensity of feeling and directness of expression. These notes are not so often heard in Donne, but

And strangest of all perhaps is the tenderness which came into Donne's poetry when a sincere passion quickened in his heart, for tenderness, the note of

is the last quality one would look for in the poetry of a nature at once so intellectual and with such a capacity for caustic satire. But the beautiful if not flawless Elegy XVI,

[pg xliv] and the Valedictions which he wrote on different occasions of parting from his wife, combine with the peculiar élan of all Donne's passionate poetry and its intellectual content a tenderness as perfect as anything in Burns or in Browning:

The poet who wrote such verses as these did not believe any longer that 'love ... represents the principle of perpetual flux in nature'.

But Donne's poetry is not so simple a thing of the heart and of the senses as that of Burns and Catullus. Even his purer poetry has more complex moods—consider The Prohibition—and it is metaphysical, not only in the sense of being erudite and witty, but in the proper sense of being reflective and philosophical. Donne is always conscious of the import of his moods; and so it is that there emerges from his poems a philosophy or a suggested philosophy of love to take the place of the idealism which he rejects. Set a song of the joy of love by Burns or by Catullus such as I have cited beside Donne's Anniversarie,

[pg xlv] and the difference is at once apparent. Burns gets no further than the experience, Catullus than the obvious and hedonistic reflection that time is flying, the moment of pleasure short. In Donne's poem one feels the quickening of the brain, the vision extending its range, the passion gathering sweep with the expanding rhythms, and from the mind thus heated and inspired emerges, not a cry that time might stay its course,

but a clearer consciousness of the eternal significance of love, not the love that aspires after the unattainable, but the love that unites contented hearts. The method of the poet is, I suppose, too dialectical to be popular, for the poem is in few Anthologies. It may be that the Pagan and Christian strains which the poet unites are not perfectly blended—if it is possible to do so—but to me it seems that the joy of love has never been expressed at once with such intensity and such elevation.

And it is with sorrow as with joy. There is the same difference of manner in the expression between Donne and these poets, and the deepest thought is the same. The Nocturnall on S. Lucies Day is at the opposite pole of Donne's thought from the Anniversarie, and compared with

both the feeling and its expression are metaphysical. But the passion is felt through the subtle and fantastic web of dialectic; and the thought from which the whole springs is the emptiness of life without love.

What, then, is the philosophy which disengages itself from Donne's love-poetry studied in its whole compass? It seems to me that it is more than a purely negative one, that consciously or unconsciously he sets over against the abstract idealism, the sharp dualism of the Middle Ages, a justification of love as a natural passion in the human heart the meaning and end of which is marriage. The sensuality and exaggerated cynicism of so much of the poetry of the [pg xlvi] Renaissance was a reaction from courtly idealism and mediaeval asceticism. But a mere reaction could lead no-whither. There are no steps which lead only backward in the history of human thought and feeling. Poems like Donne's Elegies, like Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, like Marlowe's Hero and Leander could only end in penitent outcries like those of Sidney and Spenser and of Donne himself. The true escape from courtly or ascetic idealism was a poetry which should do justice to love as a passion in which body and soul alike have their part, and of which there is no reason to repent.

And this with all its imperfections Donne's love-poetry is. It was not for nothing that Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary made a runaway match for love. For Dante the poet, his wife did not exist. In love of his wife Donne found the meaning and the infinite value of love. In later days he might bewail his 'idolatry of profane mistresses'; he never repented of having loved. Between his most sensual and his most spiritual love-songs there is no cleavage such as separates natural love from Dante's love of Beatrice, who is in the end Theology. The passion that burns in Donne's most outspoken elegies, and wantons in the Epithalamia, is not cast out in The Anniversarie or The Canonization, but absorbed. It is purified and enriched by being brought into harmony with his whole nature, spiritual as well as physical. It has lost the exclusive consciousness of itself which is lust, and become merged in an entire affection, as a turbid and discoloured stream is lost in the sea.

This justification of natural love as fullness of joy and life is the deepest thought in Donne's love-poems, far deeper and sincerer than the Platonic conceptions of the affinity and identity of souls with which he plays in some of the verses addressed to Mrs. Herbert. The nearest approach that he makes to anything like a reasoned statement of the thought latent rather than expressed in The Anniversarie is in The Extasie, a poem which, like the Nocturnall, only Donne could have written. Here with the same intensity of feeling, and in [pg xlvii] the same abstract, dialectical, erudite strain he emphasizes the interdependence of soul and body:

It may be that Donne has not entirely succeeded in what he here attempts. There hangs about the poem just a suspicion of the conventional and unreal Platonism of the seventeenth century. In attempting to state and vindicate the relation of soul and body he falls perhaps inevitably into the appearance, at any rate, of the dualism which he is trying to transcend. He places them over against each other as separate entities and the lower bulks unduly. In love, says Pascal, the body disappears from sight in the intellectual and spiritual passion which it has kindled. That is what happens in The Anniversarie, not altogether in The Extasie. Yet no poem makes one realize more fully what Jonson meant by calling Donne 'the first poet in the world for some things'. 'I should never find any fault with metaphysical poems,' is Coleridge's judgement, 'if they were all like this or but half as excellent.'

It was only the force of Donne's personality that could achieve even an approximate harmony of elements so divergent as are united in his love-verses, that could master the lower-natured steed that drew the chariot of his troubled and passionate soul and make it subservient to his yoke-fellow of purer strain who is a lover of honour, and modesty, and temperance, and the follower of true glory. In the work of his followers, who were many, though they owed allegiance to Jonson also, the lower elements predominated. The strain of metaphysical love-poetry in the seventeenth century with its splendid élan and sonorous cadence is in general Epicurean [pg xlviii] and witty. It is only now and again—in Marvell, perhaps in Herrick's

that the accents of the heart are clearly audible, that passion prevails over Epicurean fancy or cynical wit. On the other hand, the idealism of seventeenth-century poetry and romances, the Platonism of the Hôtel de Rambouillet that one finds in Habington's Castara, in Kenelm Digby's Private Memoirs, in the French romances of chivalry and their imitations in English is the silliest, because the emptiest, that ever masqueraded as such in any literature, at any period. A sensual and cynical flippancy on the one hand, a passionless, mannered idealism on the other, led directly to that thinly veiled contempt of women which is so obvious in the satirical essays of Addison and Pope's Rape of the Lock.

But there was one poet who meditated on the same problem as Donne, who felt like him the power and greatness of love, and like him could not accept a doctrine of love which seemed to exclude or depreciate marriage. In 1640, just before his marriage, as rash in its way as Donne's but less happy in the issue, Milton, defending his character against accusations of immorality, traced the development of his thought about love. The passage, in An Apology against a Pamphlet called 'A Modest Confutation', &c., has been taken as having a reference to the Paradise Lost. But Milton rather seems at the time to have been meditating a work like the Vita Nuova or a romance like that of Tasso in which love was to be [pg xlix] a motive as well as religion, for the whole theme of his thought is love, true love and its mysterious link with chastity, of which, however, 'marriage is no defilement'. In the arrogance of his youthful purity Milton would doubtless have looked with scorn or loathing on the Elegies and the more careless of Donne's songs. But perhaps pride is a greater enemy of love than such faults of sense as Donne in his passionate youth was guilty of, and from which Dante by his own evidence was not exempt. Whatever be the cause—pride, and the disappointment of his marriage, and political polemic—Milton never wrote any English love-poetry, except it be the one sonnet on the death of the wife who might have opened the sealed wells of his heart; and some want of the experience which love brought to Dante has dimmed the splendour of the great poem in which he undertook to justify the ways of God to men. Donne is not a Milton, but he sounded some notes which touch the soul and quicken the intellect in a way that Milton's magnificent and intense but somewhat hard and objective art fails to achieve.

That the simpler and purer, the more ideal and tender of Donne's love-poems were the expression of his love for Ann More cannot of course be proved in the case of each individual poem, for all Donne's verses have come to us (with a few unimportant exceptions) undated and unarranged. But the general thesis, that it was a great experience which purified and elevated Donne's poetry, receives a striking confirmation from the better-known history of his devotional poetry. Here too wit, often tortured wit, fancy, and the heat which Donne's wit was always able to generate, would have been all his verse had to show but for the great sorrow which struck him down in 1617 and gave to his subsequent sonnets and hymns a sincerer and profounder note, his imagery a more magnificent quality, his rhythms a more sonorous music.

Donne was not by nature a devotional poet in the same way and to the same degree as Giles Fletcher or Herbert or Crashaw. It was a sound enough instinct which, despite his religious upbringing and his wide and serious interest in [pg l] theological questions, made him hesitate to cross the threshold of the ministry and induced him to seek rather for some such public service as fell to the lot of his friend Wotton. It was not, I think, the transition from the Roman to the Anglican Church which was the obstacle. I have tried to describe what seems to me to have been the path of enlightenment which opened the way for him to a change which on every ground of prudence and ambition was desirable and natural. But to conform, and even to take a part as a free-lance in theological controversy was one thing, to enter the ministry another. When this was pressed upon him by Morton or by the King it brought him into conflict with something deeper and more fundamental than theological doctrines, namely, a temperament which was rather that of the Renaissance than that either of Puritan England or of the Counter-Reformation, whether in Catholic countries or in the Anglican Church—the temperament of Raleigh and Bacon rather than of Milton or Herbert or Crashaw.

The simple way of describing Donne's difficulty is Walton's, according to whom Donne shrank from entering the ministry for fear the notorious irregularities of his early years should bring discredit on the sacred calling. But there was more in Donne's life than a youth of pleasure, an old age of prayers. It is not the case that all which was best and most serious in Donne's nature led him towards Holy Orders. In his earliest satires and even in his 'love-song weeds' there is evidence enough of an earnest, candid soul underneath the extravagances of wit and youthful sensuality. Donne's mind was naturally serious and religious; it was not naturally devout or ascetic, but worldly and ambitious. But to enter the ministry was, for Donne and for all the serious minds of his age, to enter a profession for which the essential qualifications were a devotional and an ascetic life. The country clergy of the Anglican Church were often careless and scandalous livers before Laud took in hand the discipline of the Church; but her bishops and most eminent divines, though they might be courtly and sycophantic, were with few exceptions men of devout and [pg li] ascetic life. When Donne finally crossed the Rubicon, convinced that from the King no promotion was to be hoped for in any other line of life, it was rather with the deliberate resolution that he would make his life a model of devotion and ascetic self-denial than as one drawn by an irresistible attraction or impelled by a controlling sense of duty to such a life. Donne was no St. Augustine whose transition from libertinism to saintliness came entirely from within. The noblest feature of Donne's earlier clerical life was the steadfast spirit in which he set himself to realize the highest ideals of the calling he had chosen, and the candour with which he accepted the contrast between his present position and his earlier life, leaving to whosoever wished to judge while he followed the path of duty and penitence.

But such a spirit will not easily produce great devotional poetry. There are qualities in the religious poetry of simpler and purer souls to which Donne seldom or never attains. The natural love of God which overflows the pages of the great mystics, which dilates the heart and the verses of a poet like the Dutchman Vondel, the ardour and tenderness of Crashaw, the chaste, pure piety and penitence of Herbert, the love from which devotion and ascetic self-denial come unbidden—to these Donne never attained. The high and passionate joy of The Anniversary is not heard in his sonnets or hymns. Effort is the note which predominates—the effort to realize the majesty of God, the heinousness of sin, the terrors of Hell, the mercy of Christ. Some of the very worst traits in Donne's mind are brought out in his religious writing. The Essays on Divinity are an extraordinary revelation of his accumulations of useless Scholastic erudition, and his capacity to perform feats of ingenious deduction from traditional and accepted premises. To compare these freakish deductions from the theory of verbal inspiration with the luminous sense of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is to realize how much rationalism was doing in the course of the century for the emancipation and healing of the human intellect. Some of the poems, and those the earliest written, before Donne had actually taken Orders, [pg lii] are not much more than exercises in these theological subtleties, poems such as that On the Annunciation and Passion falling in the same year (1608), The Litany (1610), Good-Friday (1613), and The Cross (c. 1615) are characteristic examples of Donne's intense and imaginative wit employed on traditional topics of Catholic devotion to which no change of Church ever made him indifferent. Donne never ignored in his sermons the gulf that separated the Anglican from the Roman Church, or the link that bound her to the Protestant Churches of the Continent. 'Our great protestant divines' are one of his courts of appeal, and included Luther and Calvin of whom he never speaks but with the deepest respect. But he was unwilling to sacrifice to a fanatical puritanism any element of Catholic devotion which was capable of an innocent interpretation. His language is guarded and perhaps not always consistent, but it would not be difficult to show from his sermons and prose-writings that many of the most distinctively Catholic tenets were treated by him with the utmost tenderness.

But, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, the sincerest and profoundest of Donne's devotional poetry dates from the death of his wife. The loss of her who had purified and sweetened his earliest love songs lent a new and deeper timbre to the sonnets and lyrics in which he contemplates the great topics of personal religion,—sin, death, the Judgement, and throws himself on the mercy of God as revealed in Christ. The seven sonnets entitled La Corona have been generally attributed to this period, but it is probable that they were composed earlier, and their treatment of the subject of Christ's life and death is more intellectual and theological than spiritual and poetical. It is when the tone becomes personal, as in the Holy Sonnets, when he is alone with his own soul in the prospect of death and the Judgement, that Donne's religious poetry acquires something of the same unique character as his love songs and elegies by a similar combination of qualities, intensity of feeling, subtle turns of thought, and occasional Miltonic splendour of phrase. Here again we meet the magnificent openings of the Songs and Sonets:—

This passionate penitence, this beating as it were against the bars of self in the desire to break through to a fuller apprehension of the mercy and love of God, is the intensely human note of these latest poems. Nothing came easily to his soul that knew so well how to be subtle to plague itself. The vision of divine wrath he can conjure up more easily than the beatific vision of the love that 'moves the sun in heaven and all the stars'. Nevertheless it was that vision which Donne sought. He could never have been content with Milton's heaven of majesty and awe divorced from the quickening spirit of love. And there are moments when he comes as close to that beatific vision as perhaps a self-tormenting mind involved in the web of seventeenth-century theology ever could,—at moments love and ecstasy gain the upper hand of fear and penitence. But it is in the sermons that he reaches these highest levels. There is nothing in the florid eloquence of Jeremy Taylor that can equal the splendour of occasional passages in Donne's sermons, when the lava-like flow of his heated reasoning seems suddenly to burst and flower in such a splendid incandescence of mystical rapture as this:—

This is the highest level that Donne ever reached in eloquence inspired by the vision of the joy and not the terror of the Christian faith, higher than anything in the Second Anniversary, but in his last hymns hope and confidence find a simpler and a tenderer note. The noble hymn, 'In what torn ship so ever I embark,' is in somewhat the same anguished tone as the Holy Sonnets; but the highly characteristic

and the Hymn to God the Father, speak of final faith and hope in tones which recall—recall also by their sea-coloured imagery, and by their rhythm—the lines in which another sensitive and tormented poet-soul contemplated the last voyage:

It has not been the aim of the present editor to attempt to pronounce a final judgement upon Donne. It seems to him idle to compare Donne's poetry with that of other poets or to endeavour to fix its relative worth. Its faults are great and manifest; its beauties sui generis, incommunicable and incomparable. My endeavour here has been by an analysis of some of the different elements in this composite work—poems composed at different times and in different moods; flung together at the end so carelessly that youthful extravagances of witty sensuality and pious aspirations jostle each other cheek by jowl; and presenting a texture so diverse from that of poetry as we usually think of it—to show how many are the strands which run through it, and that one of these is a poetry, not perfect in form, rugged of line and careless in rhyme, a poetry in which intellect and feeling are seldom or never perfectly fused in a work that is of imagination all compact, yet a poetry of an extraordinarily arresting and haunting quality, passionate, thoughtful, and with a deep melody of its own.

¹ History of English Poetry, iii. 154. Mr. Courthope qualifies this statement somewhat on the next page: 'From this spirit of cynical lawlessness he was perhaps reclaimed by genuine love,' &c. But he has, I think, insufficiently analysed the diverse strains in Donne's love-poetry.

² Gaspary: History of Italian Literature (Oelsner's translation), 1904. Consult also Karl Vossler: Die philosophischen Grundlagen des 'süssen neuen Stils', Heidelberg, 1904, and La Poesia giovanile &c. di Guido Cavalcanti: Studi di Giulio Salvadori, Roma, 1895.

THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS

Both the text and the canon of Donne's poems present problems which have never been frankly faced by any of his editors—problems which, considering the greatness of his reputation in the seventeenth century, and the very considerable revival of his reputation which began with Coleridge and De Quincey and has advanced uninterruptedly since, are of a rather surprising character. An attempt to define and, as far as may be, to solve these problems will begin most simply with a brief account of the form in which Donne's poems have come down to us.

Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime—the Anniversaries (i.e. The Anatomy of the World with A Funerall Elegie and The Progresse of the Soule) in 1611 and 1612, with later editions in 1621 and 1625; the Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable Prince Henry, in Sylvester's Lachrymae Lachrymarum, 1613; and the lines prefixed to Coryats Crudities in 1611. We know nothing of any other poem by Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the Miscellanies which appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as Englands Parnassus¹ (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as Davison's Poetical Rhapsody,² contained poems [pg lvii] by Donne. The first of these is a collection of witty and elegant passages from different authors on various general themes (Dissimulation, Faith, Learning, &c.) and is just the kind of book for which Donne's poems would have been made abundant use of at a somewhat later period. There are in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating from the second quarter of the seventeenth century.³ The editor of the second of the anthologies mentioned, Francis Davison, became later much interested in Donne's poems. In notes which he made at some date after 1608, we find him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc., by John Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from Eleaz. Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books again which he has lent to his brother at a later date are 'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on the part of Davison in Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely that if he had known them earlier he would not have included some of them in his Rhapsody, or that if he had done so he would not have told us. It has been the custom of late to assign to Donne the authorship of one charming lyric in the Rhapsody, 'Absence hear thou my protestation.' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.

The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which is here reproduced.

POEMS,

Printed by M. F. for Iohn Marriot,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t 'Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street. 1633.

The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) The Printer to the Understanders,⁴ (2) the Hexastichon Bibliopolae, (3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, The Progresse of the Soule, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves, with some prose letters and the Elegies upon the Author, fill pages 1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this, and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later. As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton, Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4.) It should be added that copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally The Printer to the Understanders is omitted, the Infinitati Sacrum &c. following immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably The Progresse of the Soule, and certain of the Letters to noble ladies, the text underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the press. Some copies are more correct than others. A few of the errors of the 1635 edition [pg lx] are traceable to the use by the printer of a comparatively imperfect copy of the 1633 edition.

POEMS,

Printed by M. F. for John Marriot,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street.
1635.

The Poems by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death were reprinted by M. F. for John Harriot in 1635 (the title-page is here reproduced), but with very considerable [pg lxi] alterations. The introductory material remained unchanged except that to the Hexastichon Bibliopolae was added a Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam. Incerti. (See p. 3.) To the title-page was prefixed a portrait in an oval frame. Outside the frame is engraved, to the left top, ANNO DNI. 1591. ÆTATIS SVÆ. 18.; to the right top, on a band ending in a coat of arms, ANTES MVERTO QUE MVDADO. Underneath the engraved portrait and background is the following poem:

The Printer to the Understanders is still followed immediately by the dedication, Infinitati Sacrum, of The Progresse of the Soule, although the poem itself is removed to another part of the volume. The printer noticed this mistake, and at the end of the Elegies upon the Author adds this note:

Cvrteous Reader, know, that that Epistle intituled, Infinitati Sacrum, 16. of August, 1601. which is printed in [pg lxii] the beginning of the Booke, is misplaced; it should have beene printed before the Progresse of the Soule, in Page 301. before which it was written by the Author; if any other in the Impression doe fall out, which I know not of, hold me excused for I have endeavoured thy satisfaction.

The closing lines of Walton's poem show that it must have been written for this edition, as they refer to what is the chief feature in the new issue of the poems (pp. 1-388, including some prose letters in Latin and English, pp. 275-300, but not including the Elegies upon the Author which in this edition and those of 1639, 1649, 1650, and 1654 are added in unnumbered pages). This new feature is their arrangement in a series of groups:⁷—

While the poems were thus rearranged, the canon also underwent some alteration. One poem, viz. Basse's Epitaph on Shakespeare ('Renowned Chaucer lie a thought more nigh To rare Beaumont'), which had found its way into 1633, was dropped; but quite a number were added, twenty-eight, or twenty-nine if the epitaph On Himselfe be reckoned (as it appears) twice. Professor Norton, in the bibliographical note in the Grolier Club edition (which I occasionally call Grolier for convenience), has inadvertently given the Elegie on the L. C. as one of the poems first printed in 1635. This is an error. The poem was included in 1633 as the sixth in [pg lxiv] a group of Elegies, the rest of which are love poems. The editor of 1635 merely transferred it to its proper place among the Funerall Elegies, just as modern editors have transferred the Elegie on his Mistris ('By our first strange and fatall interview') from the funeral to the love Elegies.

The authenticity of the poems added in 1635 will be fully discussed later. The conclusion of the present editor is that of the English poems fifteen are certainly Donne's; three or four are probably or possibly his; the remaining eleven are pretty certainly not by Donne. There is no reason to think that 1635 is in any way a more authoritative edition than 1633. It has fewer signs of competent editing of the text, and it begins the process of sweeping in poems from every quarter, which was continued by Waldron, Simeon, and Grosart.

The third edition of Donne's poems appeared in 1639. This is identical in form, contents, and paging with that of 1635. The dedication and introduction to The Progresse of the Soule are removed to their right place and the Errata dropped, and there are a considerable number of minor alterations of the text.

In the issuing of all these editions of Donne's poems, the younger Donne, who seems to have claimed the right to benefit by his father's literary remains, had apparently no part.⁹

POEMS,

Printed by M. F. for John Marriot,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street.
1639.

What assistance, if any, the printer and publisher had from others of Donne's friends and executors it is impossible now to say, though one can hardly imagine that without some assistance they could have got access to so many poems or been allowed to publish the elegies on his death, some of which refer to the publication of the poems.¹⁰ Walton, as we have seen, wrote verses to be prefixed to the second edition. At any rate in 1637 the younger John Donne made an effort to arrest the unauthorized issue of his father's works. Dr. Grosart first printed in his edition of the poems (Fuller Worthies' Library, 1873, ii, p. lii) the following petition and response preserved in the Record Office:

Doth show unto your Grace that since y^e death of his Father (latly Deane of Pauls) there hath bene manie scandalous Pamflets printed, and published, under his name, which were [pg lxvii] none of his, by severall Boocksellers, withoute anie leave or Autoritie; in particuler one entitoled Juvenilia, printed for Henry Seale; another by John Marriott and William Sheares, entitoled Ignatius his Conclave, as allsoe certaine Poems by y^e sayde John Marriote, of which abuses thay have bene often warned by your Pe^tr and tolde that if thay desisted not, thay should be proceeded against beefore your Grace, which thay seeme soe much to slight, that thay profess soddainly to publish new impressions, verie much to the greife of your Pe^tr and the discredite of y^e memorie of his Father.

Wherefore your Pe^tr doth beeseece your Grace that you would bee pleased by your Commaunde, to stopp their farther proceedinge herein, and to cale the forenamed boocksellers beefore you, to giue an account, for what thay haue allreadie done; and your Pe^tr shall pray, &c.

I require y^e Partyes whom this Pe^t concernes, not to meddle any farther w^th y^e Printing or Selling of any y^e pretended workes of y^e late Deane of St. Paules, saue onely such as shall be licensed by publicke authority, and approued by the Peticon^r, as they will answere y^e contrary at theyr perill. And of this I desire Mr. Deane of y^e Arches to take care.

Despite this injunction the edition of 1639 was issued, as the previous ones had been, by Marriot and M. F. It was not till ten years later that the younger Donne succeeded in establishing his claim. In 1649 Marriot prepared a new edition, printed as before by M. F. The introductory matter remained unchanged except that the printing being more condensed it occupies three pages instead of five; the use of Roman and Italic type is exactly reversed; and there are some slight changes of spelling. The printing of the poems is also more condensed, so that they occupy pp. 1-368 instead of 1-388 in 1635-39. The text underwent some generally unimportant alteration or corruption, and two poems were added, the lines Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities (p. 172. It had been printed with Coryats Crudities in 1611) and the short poem called Sonnet. The Token (p. 72).

Only a very few copies of this edition were issued. W. C. Hazlitt describes one in his Bibliographical Collections, &c., [pg lxviii] Second Series (1882), p. 181. The only copy of whose existence I am aware is in the Library of Harvard College. It was used by Professor Norton in preparing the Grolier Club edition, and I owe my knowledge of it to this and to a careful description made for me by Miss Mary H. Buckingham. The title-page is here reproduced.

POEMS,

Printed by M. F. for Iohn Marriot,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street.
1649.

What happened seems to have been this. The younger Donne intervened before the edition was issued, and either by authority or agreement took it over. Marriot remained the publisher. The title-page which in 1649 was identical with that of 1635-39, except for the change of date and the 'W' in 'WITH', now appeared as follows:

POEMS,

Printed for John Marriot, and are
to be sold by Richard Marriot at his shop
by Chancery lane end over against the Inner
Temple gate. 1650.

The initials of the printer, M. F., disappear, and the name of John Marriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears along with his own. There is no great distance between St. Dunstan's Churchyard and the end of Chancery Lane. With M. F. went the introductory Printer to the Understanders, its place being taken by a dedicatory letter in young Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron of Hamsted-Marsham.

In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration was made. The 'divers Copies ... never before in print', of which the new editor boasts, were inserted in a couple of sheets (or a sheet and a half, aa, bb incomplete) at the end. These are variously bound up in different copies, being sometimes before, sometimes at the end of the Elegies upon the Author, sometimes before and among them. They contain a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse and prose, Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a few complimentary verses on Donne taken from Jonson's Epigrams.

The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In short, Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the canon of his father's poems. The former, as it stands in the body of the volume in the editions of 1650-54, he took over from Marriot and M. F. As regards the latter, he speaks of the 'kindnesse of the Printer, ... adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire might perish undiscerned'; but he does not condescend to tell us, if he knew, what these unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing.

In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed from the same types as in 1650. The text of the poems (pp. 1-368) is identical in 1649, 1650, 1654; of the additional matter (pp. 369-392) in 1650, 1654. The only change made in the last is on the title-page, where a new publisher's name appears,¹¹ as in the following facsimile:

POEMS,

Printed by J. Flesher, and are to be sold
by John Sweeting at the Angel in
Popeshead-Alley. 1654.

James Flesher was the son of Miles Flesher, or Fletcher, who is probably the M. F. of the earlier editions. John Sweeting was an active bookseller and publisher, first at the Crown in Cornhill, and subsequently at the Angel as above (1639-1661). He was the publisher of many plays and poems, and in 1657 the publication of Donne's Letters to Severall Persons of Honour was transferred to him from Richard Marriot, who issued them in 1651.

POEMS, &c.

In the SAVOY,

Printed by T. N. for Henry Herringman, at the sign of
the Anchor, in the lower-walk of the
New-Exchange. 1669.

The last edition of Donne's poems which bears evidence of recourse to manuscript sources, and which enlarged the canon of the poems, was that of 1669. The younger Donne died in 1662, and this edition was purely a printer's venture. Its title-page runs as opposite.

This edition added two elegies which a sense of propriety had hitherto excluded from Donne's printed works, though they are in almost all the manuscript collections, and a satire which most of the manuscripts assign not to Donne but to Sir John Roe. The introductory material remains as in 1650-54 and unpaged; but the Elegies to the Author are now paged, and the poems with the prose letters inserted in 1633 and added to in 1635 (see above, p. lxiii, note 8), the Elegies to the Author, and the additional sheets inserted in 1650, occupy pp. 1-414. The love Elegies were numbered as in earlier editions, but the titles which some had borne were all dropped. Elegie XIIII (XII in this edition) was enlarged. Two new Elegies were added, one (Loves Progress) as Elegie XVIII, the second (Going to Bed) unnumbered and simply headed To his Mistress going to bed. The text of the poems underwent considerable alteration, some of the changes showing a reversion to the text of 1633, others a reference to manuscript sources, many editorial conjecture.

The edition of 1669 is the last edition of Donne's poems which can be regarded as in any degree an authority for the text of the poems, because it is the last which affords evidence of access to independent manuscript sources. All subsequent editions, till we come to those of Grosart and Chambers, were based on these. If the editor preferred one reading to another it was on purely internal evidence, a result of his own decision as to which was the more correct or the preferable reading. In 1719, for example, a new edition was brought out by the well-known publisher Jacob Tonson. The title-page runs as over.

POEMS

Printed for J. Tonson, and Sold by
W. Taylor at the Ship in
Pater-noster-Row. 1719.

This edition opens with the Epistle Dedicatory as in 1650-69, which is followed by an abridgement of Walton's Life of Donne. An examination of the text of the poems shows clearly that this edition was printed from that of 1669, but is by no means a slavish reproduction. The editor has consulted earlier [pg lxxv] editions and corrected mistakes, but I have found no evidence either that he knew the editions of 1633 and 1635, or had access to manuscript collections. He very wisely dropped the Satire 'Sleep next Society', inserted for the first time by the editor of 1669, and certainly not by Donne. It was reinserted by Chalmers in 1810.¹²

These, then, are the early editions of Donne's poems. But the printed editions are not the only form in which the poems, or the great majority of the poems, have come down to us. None of these editions, we have seen, was issued before the poet's death. None, so far as we can discover (I shall discuss this point more fully later), was printed from sources carefully prepared for the press by the author, as were for example the LXXX Sermons issued in 1640. But Donne's poems were well known to many readers before 1633. One of the earliest published references to them occurs in 1614, in [pg lxxvi] a collection of Epigrams by Thomas Freeman, called Runne | And a great Cast | The | Second Book.

Epigram 84.

In 1616 Ben Jonson's Epigrammes were published in the first (folio) edition of his works, and they contain the Epigram, printed in this edition, To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, with Mr. Donnes Satyres. In these and similar cases the 'bookes' referred to are not printed but manuscript works. Mr. Chambers has pointed out (Poems of John Donne, i, pp. xxxviii-ix) an interesting reference in Drayton's Epistle to Reynolds to poems circulating thus 'by transcription'; and Anthony Wood speaks of Hoskins having left a 'book of poems neatly written'. In Donne's own letters we find references to his poems, his paradoxes and problems, and even a long treatise like the ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ, being sent to his friends with injunctions of secrecy, and in the case of the last with an express statement that it had not been, and was not to be, printed. Sometimes the manuscript collection seems to have been made by Donne himself, or on his instruction, for a special friend and patron like Lord Ancrum; but after he had become a distinguished Churchman who, as Jonson told Drummond, 'repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems,' it was his friends and admirers who collected and copied them. An instructive reference to the interest awakened in Donne's early poems by his fame as a preacher comes to us from Holland. Constantine Huyghens, the Dutch poet, and father of the more famous scientist, Christian, was a member of the Dutch embassy in 1618, 1621-23, and again in 1624. He moved in the best circles, and made the acquaintance of Donne ('great preacher and great conversationalist', he calls [pg lxxvii] him) at the house probably of Sir Robert Killigrew. Writing to his friend and fellow-poet Hooft, in 1630, he says:¹³

'I think I have often entertained you with reminiscences of Dr. Donne, now Dean of St. Pauls in London, and on account of this remunerative post (such is the custom of the English) held in high esteem, in still higher for the wealth of his unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the pulpit. Educated early at Court in the service of the great; experienced in the ways of the world; sharpened by study; in poetry, he is more famous than anyone. Many rich fruits [pg lxxviii] from the green branches of his wit ¹⁴ have lain mellowing among the lovers of art, which now, when nearly rotten with age, they are distributing. Into my hands have fallen, by the help of my special friends among the gentlemen of that nation, some five and twenty of the best sort of medlars. Among our people, I cannot select anyone to whom they ought to be communicated sooner than to you,¹⁵ as this poets manner of conceit and expression are exactly yours, Sir.'

This is a very interesting piece of evidence as to the manner in which Donne's poems had been preserved by his friends, and the form in which they were being distributed. There is no reference to publication. It is doubtless due to this activity in collecting and transcribing the poems of the now famous preacher that we owe the number of manuscript collections dating from the years before and immediately after 1630.

Had Donne undertaken the publication of his own poems, such of these manuscript collections as have been preserved—none of which are autograph, and few or none of which have a now traceable history—would have little importance for a modern editor. The most that they could do would be to show us occasionally what changes a poem had undergone between its earliest and its latest appearance. But Donne's poems were not published in this way, and the manuscripts cannot be ignored. They must have for his editor at least the same interest and importance as the Quartos have for the editor of Shakespeare. Whatever opinion he may hold, on a priori or a posteriori grounds, regarding the superior [pg lxxix] authority of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, no editor, not 'thirled to' a theory, will deny that a right reading has been preserved for us often by the Quartos and the Quartos only. No wise man will neglect the assistance even of the more imperfect of them. Before therefore discussing the relative value of the different editions, and the use that may be made of the manuscripts, it will be well to give a short description of the manuscripts which the present editor has consulted and used, of their relation to one another, their comparative value, and the relation of some of them to the editions. It is, of course, possible that there are manuscripts of Donne's poems which have not yet come to light; and among them may be some more correctly transcribed than any which has come into the present editor's hands. He has, however, examined between twenty and thirty, and with the feeling recently of moving in a circle—that new manuscripts were in part or whole duplicates of those which had been already examined, and confirmed readings already noted but did not suggest anything fresh.

I will divide the manuscripts into four classes, of which the first two, it will be seen at a glance, are likely to be the most important for the textual critic.

(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e.g. the Satyres. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the epigram quoted above was probably a small collection of this kind, and we have seen that Jonson sent the Satyres to Lady Bedford, and Francis Davison lent them to his brother. Of such collections I have examined the following:

Q. This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number of other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library of Queen's College, Oxford. It is headed Mr. John Dunnes Satires, and contains the five Satires (which alone I have accepted as Donne's own) followed by A Storme, A Calme, and one song, The Curse (see p. 41), here headed Dirae. As Mr. Chambers says (Poems of John Donne, i, p. xxxvi), this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read. [pg lxxx] The poems it contains are probably those of Donne's poems which were first known outside the circle of his intimate friends.

What seems to be a duplicate of Q is preserved among the Dyce MSS. in the South Kensington Museum. This contains the five Satyres, and the Storme and Calme. The MSS. are evidently transcribed from the same source, but one is not a copy of the other. They agree in such exceptional readings as e.g. Satyres, I. 58 'Infanta of London'; 94 'goes in the way' &c.; II. 86 'In wringing each acre'; 88 'Assurances as bigge as glossie civill lawes'. The last suggests that the one is a copy of the other, but again they diverge in such cases as III. 49 'Crants' Dyce MS.; 'Crates' Q; and IV. 215-16 'a Topclief would have ravisht him quite away' Q, where the Dyce MS. preserves the normal 'a Pursevant would have ravisht him quite away'.

If manuscripts like Q and the Dyce MS. carry us back, as they seem to do, to the form in which the Satyres circulated before any of the later collections of Donne's poems were made (between 1620 and 1630), they are clearly of great importance for the editor. The text of the Satyres in 1633 and the later editions, which closely resembles that of one of the later MS. collections, presents many variants from the older tradition. It is a difficult matter to decide how far these may be the corrections of the author himself, or of the collector and editor.

W. This, the Westmoreland MS., belonging to Mr. Edmund Gosse, is one of the most interesting and valuable manuscripts of Donne's poems which have come down to us. It is bound in its original vellum, and was written, Mr. Warner, late Egerton Librarian, British Museum, conjectured from the handwriting, 'a little later than 1625'. This date agrees with what one would gather from the contents, for the manuscript contains sonnets which must have been written after 1617, but does not contain any of the hymns written just at the close of Donne's life.

W is a much larger 'book' than Q. It begins with the five [pg lxxxi] Satyres, as that does. Leaving one page blank, it then continues with a collection of the Elegies numbered, thirteen in all, of which twelve are Love Elegies, and one, the last, a Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house.'¹⁶ These are followed by an Epithalamion (that generally called 'made at Lincolns Inn') and a number of verse letters to different friends, some of which are not contained in any of the old editions. So many of them are addressed to Rowland Woodward, or members of his family, that Mr. Gosse conjectures that the manuscript was prepared for him, but this cannot be proved.¹⁷ The letters are followed by the Holy Sonnets, these by La Corona, and the book closes (as many collections of the poems do) with a bundle of prose Paradoxes, followed in this case by the Epigrams. Both the Holy Sonnets and the Epigrams contain poems not printed in any of the old editions.

It should be noted that though W as a whole may have been transcribed as late as 1625, it clearly goes back in portions to an earlier date. The letters are headed e.g. To Mr. H. W., To Mr. C. B., &c. Now the custom in manuscripts [pg lxxxii] and editions is to bring these headings up to date, changing 'To Mr. H. W.' into 'To S^r Henry Wotton'. That they bear headings which were correct at the date when the poems were written points to their fairly direct descent from the original copies.

If Q probably represents the kind of manuscript which circulated pretty widely, W is a good representative of the kind which circulated only among Donne's friends. Some of the poems escaped being transcribed into larger collections and were not published till our own day. The value of W for the text of Donne's poems must stand high. For some of the letters and religious poems it is our sole authority. Though a unique manuscript now, it was probably not so always, for Addl. MS. 23229 in the British Museum contains a single folio which must have been torn from a manuscript identical with W. The handwriting is slightly different, but the order of the poems and their text prove the identity.

A23. This same manuscript (Addl. MS. 23229), which is a very miscellaneous collection of fragments, presented to the Museum by John Wilson Croker, contains two other portions of what seem to have been similar small 'books' of Donne's poems. The one is a fragment of what seems to have been a carefully written copy of the Epithalamion, with introductory Eclogue, written for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset. Probably it was one of those prepared and circulated at the time. The other consists of some leaves from a collection of the Satyres finely written on large quarto sheets.

G. This is a manuscript containing only the Metempsychosis, or Progresse of the Soule, now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who (Life &c. of John Donne, i. 141) states that it 'belonged to a certain Bradon, and passed into the Phillipps Collection'. It is not without errors, but its text is, on the whole, more correct than that of the manuscript source from which the version of 1633 was set up in the first instance.

(2) In the second class I place manuscripts which are, or [pg lxxxiii] aim at being, complete collections of Donne's poems. Most of these belong to the years between 1620 and 1633. They vary considerably in accuracy of text, and in the care which has been taken to include only poems that are authentic. They were made probably by professional copyists, and some of those whose calligraphy is most attractive show that the scribe must have paid the smallest attention to the meaning of what he was writing.

Of those which I have examined, two groups of manuscripts seem to me especially noteworthy, because both show that their collectors had a clear idea of what were, and what were not, Donne's poems, and because of the general accuracy with which the poems in one of them are transcribed. Taken with the edition of 1633 they form an invaluable starting-point for the determination of the canon of Donne's poems.

The first of these is represented by three manuscripts which I have examined, D (Dowden), H49 (Harleian MS. 4955), and Lec (Leconfield).

D is a small quarto manuscript, neatly written in a thin, clear hand and in ordinary script. It was formerly in the Haslewood collection, and is now in the possession of Professor Edward Dowden, Trinity College, Dublin, by whose kindness I have had it by me almost all the time that I have been at work on my edition.

H49 is a collection of Donne's poems, in the British Museum, bound up with some by Ben Jonson and others. It is a large folio written throughout apparently in the same hand. It opens with some poems and masques by Jonson. A certain Doctor Andrewes' poems occupy folios 57-87. They are signed Franc: Andrilla. London August 14. 1629. Donne's poems follow, filling folios 88 to 144b. Thereafter follow more poems by Andrewes, Jonson, and others, with some prose letters by Jonson.

Lec. This is a large quarto manuscript, beautifully transcribed, belonging to Lord Leconfield and preserved at [pg lxxxiv] Petworth House. Many of the manuscripts in this collection were the property of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632), the friend who communicated the news of Donne's marriage to his father-in-law.

These three manuscripts are obviously derived from one common source. They contain the same poems, except that D has one more than H49, and both of these have some which are not in Lec. The order of the poems is the same, except that D and Lec show more signs of an attempt to group the poems than H49. The text, with some divergences, especially on the part of Lec, is identical. One instance seems to point to one of them being the source of the others. In the long Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington, Brother to the Countess of Bedford, the original copyist, after beginning l. 159 'Vertue whose flood', had inadvertently finished with the second half of l. 161, 'were [sic] blowne in, by thy first breath.' This error is found in all the three manuscripts. It may, however, have come from the common source of this poem, and there are divergences in order and text which make me think that they are thus derived from one common source.

A special interest attaches to this collection, apart from the relative excellence of its text and soundness of its canon, from the probability that a manuscript of this kind was used for a large, and that textually the best, part of the edition of 1633. This becomes manifest on a close examination of the order of the poems and of their text. Mr. Gosse has said, in speaking of the edition of 1633: 'The poems are thrown together without any attempt at intelligent order; neither date, nor subject, nor relation is in the least regarded.' This is not entirely the case. Satires, Elegies, Epigrams, Songs are grouped to some extent. The disorder which prevails is due to two causes: (1) to the fact that the printer set up from a variety of sources. There was no previous collected edition to guide him. Different friends supplied collections, and of a few poems there were earlier editions. He seems to have passed from one of these to another as was most convenient at [pg lxxxv] the moment. Perhaps some were lent him only for a time. The differences between copies of 1633 show that it was prepared carefully, but emended from time to time while the printing was actually going on. (2) The second source of the order of the poems is their order in the manuscripts from which they were copied. Now a comparison of the order in 1633 with that in D, H49, Lec reveals a close connexion between them, and throws light on the composition of 1633.

It is necessary, before instituting this comparison with 1633, to say a word on the order of the poems in D, H49, Lec themselves, as it is not quite the same in all three. H49 is the most irregular, perhaps therefore the earliest, each of the others showing efforts to obtain a better grouping of the poems. All three begin with the Satyres, of which D and Lec have five, H49 only four; but the text of Lec differs from that of the other two, agreeing more closely with the version of 1633 and of another group of manuscripts. They have all, then, thirteen Elegies in the same order. After these H49 continues with a number of letters (The Storme, The Calme, To S^r Henry Wotton, To S^r Henry Goodyere, To the Countesse of Bedford, To S^r Edward Herbert, and others) intermingled with Funeral Elegies (Lady Markham, Mris Boulstred) and religious poems (The Crosse, The Annuntiation, Good Friday). Then follows a long series of lyrical pieces, broken after The Funerall by A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mrs. Essex Rich, the Epithalamion on the Palatine marriage, and an Old Letter ('At once from hence', p. 206). The lyrical pieces are then resumed, and the collection ends with the Somerset Eclogue and Epithalamion, the Letanye, both sets of Holy Sonnets, a letter (To the Countesse of Salisbury), and the long Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington.

D makes an effort to arrange the poems following the Elegies in groups. The Funeral Elegies come first, and two blank pages are headed An Elegye on Prince Henry. The letters are then brought together, and are followed by the religious poems dispersed in H49. The lyrical poems follow [pg lxxxvi] piece by piece as in H49, and the whole closes with the two epithalamia and the Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington.

The order in Lec resembles that of H49 more closely than that of D. The mixed letters, funeral elegies, and religious poems follow the Elegies as in H49, but Lec adds to them the two letters (Lady Carey and The Countess of Salisbury) and the Letanie which in H49 are dispersed through the lyrical pieces. Lec does not contain any of the Holy Sonnets, but after The Letanie ten pages are left blank, evidently intended to receive them. Thereafter, the lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in D, H49, except that The Prohibition ('Take heed of loving mee') is omitted—a fact of some interest when we come to consider 1633. Lec closes, like D, with the epithalamia and the Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington.

Turning now to 1633, we shall see that, whatever other sources the editor of that edition used, one was a collection identical with, or closely resembling, D, H49, Lec, especially Lec. That edition begins with the Progresse of the Soule, which was not derived from this manuscript. Thereafter follow the two sets of Holy Sonnets, the second set containing exactly the same number of sonnets, and in the same order, as in D, H49, whereas other manuscripts, e.g. B, O'F, S, S96, which will be described later, have more sonnets and in a different order; and W, which agrees otherwise with B, O'F, S, S96, adds three that are found nowhere else. The sonnets are followed in 1633 by the Epigrams, which are not in D, H49, Lec, but after that the resemblance of 1633 to D, H49, Lec becomes quite striking. These manuscripts, we have seen, begin with the Satyres. The edition, however, passes on at once to the Elegies. Of the thirteen given in D, H49, Lec, 1633 prints eight, omitting the first (The Bracelet), the second (Going to Bed), the tenth (Loves Warr), the eleventh (On his Mistris), and the thirteenth (Loves Progresse). That the editor, however, had before him, and intended to print, the Satyres and the thirteen Elegies as he found them in his copy0 of D, H49, Lec, is proved by the following extract which Mr. Chambers quotes from the Stationers' Register:

13^o September, 1632

This note is intelligible only when compared with this particular group of manuscripts. In others the order is quite different.

This bar—which was probably dictated by reasons of propriety, though it is difficult to see why the first and the eleventh Elegies should have been singled out—was got over later as far as the Satyres were concerned. They are printed after all the other poems, just before the prose letters. But by this time the copy of D, H49, Lec had perhaps passed out of Marriot's hands, for the text of the Satyres seems to show that they were printed, not from this manuscript, but from one represented by another group, which I shall describe later. This is, however, not quite certain, for in Lec the version of the Satyres given is not the same as in D, H49, but is that of this second group of manuscripts. Several little details show that of the three manuscripts D, H49, and Lec the last most closely resembles 1633.

Following the Elegies in 1633 come a group of letters, epicedes, and religious poems, just as in H49, Lec (D re-groups them)—The Storme, The Calme, To Sir Henry Wotton, ('Sir, more than kisses'), The Crosse, Elegie on the Lady Marckham, Elegie on Mris Boulstred ('Death I recant'), To Sr Henry Goodyere, To Mr. Rowland Woodward, To Sr Henry Wootton ('Here's no more newes'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Reason is our Soules left hand'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Madam, you have refin'd'), To Sr Edward Herbert, at Julyers. Here 1633 diverges. Having got into letters to noble and other people the editor was anxious to [pg lxxxviii] continue them, and accordingly from another source (which I shall discuss later) he prints a long series of letters to the Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Huntingdon, Mr. T. W., and other more intimate friends (they are 'thou', the Countesses 'you'), and Mrs. Herbert. He perhaps returns to D, H49, Lec in those to The Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche, from Amyens, and To the Countesse of Salisbury; and, as in that manuscript, the Palatine and Essex epithalamia (to which, however, 1633 adds that written at Lincoln's Inn) are followed immediately by the long Obsequies to Lord Harrington. Three odd Elegies follow, two of which (The Autumnall and The Picture, 'Image of her') occur in D, H49, Lec in the same detached fashion. Other manuscripts include them among the numbered Elegies. The Elegie on Prince Henry, Psalme 137 (probably not by Donne), Resurrection, imperfect, An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamilton, An Epitaph upon Shakespeare (certainly not by Donne), Sapho to Philaenis, follow in 1633—a queerly consorted lot. The Elegie on Prince Henry is taken from the Lachrymae Lachrymarum of Joshua Sylvester (1612); the rest were possibly taken from some small commonplace-book. This would account for the doubtful poems, the only doubtful poems in 1633. These past, the close connexion with our manuscript is resumed. The Annuntiation is followed, as in H49, Lec, by The Litanie. Thereafter the lyrical pieces begin, as in these manuscripts, with the song, 'Send home my long strayd eyes to me.' This is followed by two pieces which are not in D, H49, Lec,—the impressive, difficult, and in manuscripts comparatively rare Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, and the much commoner Witchcraft by a picture. Thereafter the poems follow piece by piece the order in D, H49, Lec¹⁸ until [pg lxxxix] The Curse is reached.¹⁹ Then, in what seems to have been the editor's or printer's regular method of proceeding in this edition, he laid aside the manuscript from which he was printing the Songs and Sonets to take up another piece of work that had come to hand, viz. An Anatomie of the World with A Funerall Elegie and Of the Progresse of the Soule, which he prints from the edition of 1625. Without apparent rhyme or reason these long poems are packed in between The Curse and The Extasie. With the latter poem 1633 resumes the songs and (with the exception of The Undertaking) follows the order in Lec to The Dampe, with which the series in the manuscripts closes. It has been noted that in Lec, The Prohibition (which in D, H49 follows Breake of day and precedes The Anniversarie) is omitted. This must have been the case in the manuscript used for 1633, for it is omitted at this place and though printed later was probably not derived from this source.

With The Dampe the manuscript which I am supposing the editor to have followed in the main probably came to an end. The poems which follow in 1633 are of a miscellaneous character and strangely conjoined. The Dissolution (p. 64), A Ieat Ring sent (p. 65), Negative Love (p. 66), The Prohibition (p. 67), The Expiration (p. 68), The Computation (p. 69), complete the tale of lyrics. A few odd elegies follow ('Language thou art,' 'You that are she,' 'To make the doubt clear') with The Paradox. A Hymne to Christ, at the Authors last going into Germany is given a page to itself, and is followed by The Lamentations of Jeremy, The Satyres, and A Hymne to God the Father. Thereafter come the prose letters and the Elegies upon the Author.

What this comparison of the order of the poems points to is borne out by an examination of the text. The critical notes afford the materials for a further verification, and I need not tabulate the resemblances at length. In Elegie IV, for example, ll. 7, 8, which occur in all the other manuscripts and editions, are omitted by 1633 and by D, H49, Lec. Again, when a song has no title in 1633 it has frequently none in the manuscript. When there are evidently two versions of a poem, as e.g. in The Good-morrow and The Flea, the version given in 1633 is generally that of D, H49, Lec. Later editions often contaminate this with another version of the poem. At the same time there are ever and again divergences between the edition and the manuscript which are not to be ignored, and cannot always be explained. Some are due to error in one or the other, but some point either to divergence between the text of the editor's manuscript and ours, or to the use by the editor of other sources as well as this. In the fifth elegy (The Picture), for example, 1633 twice seems to follow, not D, H49, Lec, but another source, another group of manuscripts which has been preserved; and in The Aniversarie ll. 23, 24, the version of 1633 is not that of D, H49, Lec but of the same second group, which will be described later. On the whole, however, it is clear that a manuscript closely resembling that now represented by these three manuscripts supplied the editor of 1633 with the bulk of the shorter poems, especially the older and more privately circulated poems, the Songs and Sonets and Elegies. When he is not following this manuscript he draws from miscellaneous and occasionally inferior sources.

It would be interesting if we could tell whence this manuscript was obtained, and whether it was a priori likely to be a good one. On this point we can only conjecture, but it seems to me a fairly tenable conjecture (though not to be built on in any way) that the nucleus of the collection, at any rate, may have been a commonplace-book which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere. The ground for this conjecture is the inclusion in the edition of some prose letters addressed to [pg xci] this friend, one in Latin and seven in English. There is indeed also one addressed to the Countess of Bedford; but in the preceding letter to Goodyere Donne says, 'I send you, with this, a letter which I sent to the Countesse. It is not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having it, there were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you are sure you have hers.' He goes on to refer to some verses which are the subject of the letter to the Countesse. There can be no doubt that the letter printed is the letter sent to Goodyere. The Burley MS. (see Pearsall-Smith's Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Oxford, 1907) gives us a good example of how a gentleman in the seventeenth century dealt with his correspondence. That contains, besides various letters, as of Sidney to Queen Elizabeth on the Anjou marriage, and other matter which recurs in commonplace-books, a number of poems and letters, sent to Wotton by his friends, including Donne, and transcribed by one or other of Wotton's secretaries. The letters have no signatures appended, which is the case with the letters in the 1633 edition of Donne's poems. Wotton and Goodyere did not need to be reminded of the authors, and perhaps did not wish others to know. The reason then for the rather odd inclusion of nine prose letters in a collection of poems is probably, that the principal manuscript used by the printer was an 'old book'²⁰ which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere and in which his secretaries had transcribed poems and letters by Donne. Goodyere's collection of Donne's poems would not necessarily be exhaustive, but it would be full; it would not like the collections of others include poems that were none of Donne's; and its text would be accurate, allowing for the carelessness, indifference, and misunderstandings of secretaries and copyists.

After D, H49, Lec, the most carefully made collection of Donne's poems is one represented now by four distinct manuscripts:

N. The Norton MS. in Harvard College Library, Boston, of which an account is given by Professor Norton in a note appended to the Grolier Club edition.

TCD. A large manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, containing two apparently quite independent collections of poems—the first a collection of Donne's poems with one or two additional poems by Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Corbet; the second a quite miscellaneous collection, put together some time in the thirties of the seventeenth century, and including some of Donne's poems. It is only the first of these which belongs to the group in question.

These four manuscripts are closely connected with one another, but a still more intimate relation exists between A18 and TCC on the one hand, N and TCD on the other. N and TCD are the larger collections; A18 and TCC contain each a smaller selection from the same body of poems. Indeed it would seem that N is a copy of TCD, A18 of TCC.

TCD, to start with it, is a beautifully written collection of Donne's poems beginning with the Satyres, passing on to an irregularly arranged series of elegies, letters, lyrics and epicedes, and closing with the Metempsychosis or Progresse of the Soule and the Divine Poems, which include the hymns written in the last years of the poet's life. N has the same poems, arranged in the same order, and its readings are nearly always identical with those of TCD, so far as I can judge from the collation made for me. The handwriting, unlike that of TCD, is in what is known as secretary hand and is somewhat difficult to read. What points to the one manuscript [pg xciii] being a copy of the other is that in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go' the scribe has accidentally dropped stanza 4, by giving its last line to stanza 3, and passing at once to the fifth stanza. Both manuscripts make this mistake, whereas A18 and TCC contain the complete poem. In other places N and TCD agree in their readings where A18 and TCC diverge. If the one is a copy of the other, TCD is probably the more authoritative, as it contains some marginal indications of authorship which N omits.

TCC is a smaller manuscript than TCD, but seems to be written in the same clear, fine hand. It does not contain the Satyres, the Elegy (XI. in this edition) The Bracelet, and the epistles The Storme and The Calme, with which N and TCD open. It looks, however, as though the sheets containing these poems had been torn out. Besides these, however, TCC omits, without any indication of their being lost, an Elegie to the Lady Bedford ('You that are she'), the Palatine Epithalamion, a long series of letters ²¹ which in N, TCD follow that To M.M.H. and precede Sapho to Philaenis, the elegies on Prince Henry and on Lord Harington, and The Lamentations of Jeremy. There are occasional differences in the grouping of the poems; and TCC does not contain some poems by Beaumont, Corbet, Sir John Roe, and Sir Thomas Overbury which are found in N and TCD. In TCD these, with the exception of that by Beaumont, are carefully initialled, and therefore not ascribed to Donne. In N these initials are in some cases omitted; and some of the poems have found their way into editions of Donne's poems.

Presumably TCC is the earlier collection, and when TCD was made, the copyist was able to add fresh poems. It is clear, however, that in the case of even those poems which the two [pg xciv] have in common, the one manuscript is not simply a copy of the others. There are several divergences, and the mistake referred to above, in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go', is not made in TCC. Strangely enough, a similar mistake is made by TCC in transcribing Loves Deitie and is reproduced in A18.

A18, indeed, would seem to be a copy of TCC. It is not in the same handwriting, but in secretary hand. It omits the opening Satyres, &c., as does TCC, but there is no sign of excision. Presumably, then, the copy was made after these poems were, if they ever were, torn out of TCC. Wherever TCC diverges from TCD, A18 follows TCC.²²

Whoever was responsible for this collection of Donne's poems, it was evidently made with care, at least as regards the canon. Very few poems that are not certainly by Donne are included, and they are correctly initialled. The only uninitialled doubtful poems are A Paradox, 'Whoso terms Love a fire,' which in all the four manuscripts follows 'No Lover saith, I love', and Beaumont's letter to the Countess of Bedford, which begins, 'Soe may my verses pleasing be.' In N, TCD this follows Donne's letter to the same lady, 'You that are she and you.' It is regrettable that the text of the poems is not so good as the canon is pure. The punctuation is careless. There are numerous stupid blunders, and there are evidences of editing in the interest of more regular metre or a more obvious meaning. At times, however, it would seem that the copyist is following a different version of a poem or poems (e.g. the Satyres) from that given in D, H49, and other manuscripts, and is embodying corrections perhaps made by the author himself. It is quite credible that Donne, in sending copies of his poems at different times to different people, may have revised and amended them. It is quite clear, as my notes will show, that of certain poems more than one version (each correct in itself) was in circulation.

Was A18, N, TC, or a manuscript resembling it one of the [pg xcv] sources of the edition of 1633? In part, I think, it was. The most probable case at first sight is that of the Satyres. These, we have seen, Marriot was at first prohibited from printing. Otherwise they would have followed the Epigrams, and immediately preceded the Elegies. As it is, they come after all the other poems; they are edited with some cautious dashes; and their text is almost identical with that of N, TCD. In the first satire the only difference between 1633 and N, TCD occurs in l. 70, where N, TCD, with all the other manuscripts read—

'high' is either a slip or an editorial emendation. There are other cases of similar editing, not all of which it is possible to correct with confidence; but a study of the textual notes will show that in general 1633 follows the version preserved in N, TCD, and also in L74 (of which later), when the rest of the manuscripts present an interestingly different text. But strangely enough this version of the Satyres is also in Lec. This is the feature in which that manuscript diverges most strikingly from D and H49. Moreover in some details in which 1633 differs from A18, N, TC it agrees with Lec. It is possible therefore that the Satyres were printed from the same manuscript as the majority of the poems.

Again in the Letters not found in D, H49, Lec there is a close but not invariable agreement between the text of 1633 and that of this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which follow that To Sir Edward Herbert, are printed in 1633 in the same order as in this edition (pp. 195-226), except that the group of short letters beginning at p. 203 ('All haile sweete Poet') is here amplified and rearranged from W. Now in A18, N, TC these letters are also brought together (N, TCD adding some which are not in A18, TCC), and the special group referred to, of letters to intimate friends, are arranged in exactly the same order as in 1633; have the same headings, the same omissions, and the same accidental linking of two [pg xcvi] poems. In the other letters, to the Countesses of Bedford, Huntingdon, Salisbury, &c., the textual notes will show some striking resemblances between the edition and the manuscripts. In the difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. 195), 1633 follows N, TCD where O'F gives a different and in some details more correct text. In 'This twilight of two yeares' (p. 198) the strange reading of l. 35, 'a prayer prayes,' is obviously due to N, TCD, where 'a praiser prayes' has accidentally but explicably been written 'a prayer praise'. In the letter To the Countesse of Huntingdon (p. 201) the 1633 version of ll. 25, 26 is a correct rendering of what N, TCD give wrongly:

On the other hand there are some differences, as e.g. in the placing of ll. 40-2 in 'Honour is so sublime' (p. 218), which make it impossible to affirm that these poems were taken direct from this group of manuscripts as we know them, without alteration or emendation. The Progresse of the Soule or Metempsychosis, as printed in 1633, must have been taken in the first instance from this manuscript. In both the manuscripts and the edition, at l. 83 of the poem a blank space is left after 'did'; in both, l. 137 reads, 'To see the Prince, and soe fill'd the waye'; in both, 'kinde' is substituted for 'kindle' at l. 150; in l. 180 the 'uncloth'd child' of 1633 is explicable as an emendation of the 'encloth'd' of A18, N, TC; and similarly the 'leagues o'rpast', l. 296 of 1633, is probably due to the omission of 'many' before 'leagues' in A18, N, TC—'o'rpast' supplies the lost foot. It is clear, however, from a comparison of different copies that as 1633 passed through the press this poem underwent considerable correction and alteration; and in its final printed form there are errors which I have been enabled to correct from G.

The paraphrase of Lamentations, and the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn (which is not in D, H49, Lec) are other poems which show, in passages where there are divergent readings, a tendency to follow the readings of A18, N, [pg xcvii] TC, though in neither of these poems is the identity complete. It is further noteworthy that to several poems unnamed in D, H49, Lec the editor of 1633 has given the title which these bear in A18, N, TCC, and TCD, as though he had access to both the collections at the same time.

These two groups of manuscripts, which have come down to us, thus seem to represent the two principal sources of the edition of 1633. What other poems that edition contains were derived either from previously printed editions (The Anniversaries and the Elegy on Prince Henry) or were got from more miscellaneous and less trustworthy sources.

A third manuscript collection of Donne's poems is of interest because it seems very probable that it or a similar collection came into the hands of the printer before the second edition of 1635 was issued. A considerable number of the errors, or inferior readings, of the later editions seem to be traceable to its influence. At least it is remarkable how often when 1635 and the subsequent editions depart from 1633 and the general tradition of the manuscripts they have the support of this manuscript and this manuscript alone. This is the manuscript which I have called

O'F, because it was at one time in the possession of the Rev. T. R. O'Flaherty, of Capel, near Dorking, a great student of Donne, and a collector. He contributed several notes on Donne to Notes and Queries. I do not know of any more extensive work by him on the subject.

This manuscript has been already described by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in the Catalogue of Ellis and Elvey, 1903. It is a large but somewhat indiscriminate collection, made apparently with a view to publication. The title-page states that it contains 'The Poems of D. J. Donne (not yet imprinted) consisting of

The reader will notice how far this arrangement agrees with, how far it differs from, that adopted in 1635.

Of the twenty-eight new poems, genuine, doubtful, and spurious, added in 1635, this manuscript contains twenty, a larger number than I have found in any other single manuscript. An examination of the text of these does not, however, make it certain that all of them were derived from this source or from this source only. The text, for example, of the Elegie XI. The Bracelet, in 1635, is evidently taken from a manuscript differing in important respects from O'F and resembling closely Cy and P. Elegie XII, also, His parting from her, can hardly have been derived from O'F, as 1635 gives an incomplete, O'F has an entire, version of the poem. In others, however, e.g. Elegie XIII. Julia; Elegie XVI. On his Mistris; Satyre, 'Men write that love and reason disagree,' it will be seen that the text of 1635 agrees more closely with O'F than with any of the other manuscripts cited. The second of these, On his Mistris, is a notable case, and so are the four Divine Sonnets added in 1635. Most striking of all is the case of the Song, probably not by Donne, 'Soules joy now I am gone,' where the absurd readings 'Words' for 'Wounds' and 'hopes joyning' for 'lipp-joyning' (or perhaps 'lipps-joyning') must have come from this source. One can hardly believe that two independent manuscripts would perpetrate two such blunders. Taken with the many changes from the text of 1633 in which 1635 has the support of O'F, one can hardly doubt that among the fresh manuscript collections which came into the hands of the printer of 1635 (often only to mislead him) O'F was one.

Besides the twenty poems which passed into 1635, O'F attributes some eighteen other poems to Donne, of which few [pg xcix] are probably genuine.²³ Of the other manuscript collections I must speak more shortly. There is no evidence that any of them was used by the seventeenth-century editors.

B is a handsome, vellum-bound manuscript belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House. I am, I think, the first editor who has examined it. The volume bears on the fly-leaf the autograph signature ('J. Bridgewater') of the first Earl of Bridgewater, the son of Donne's early patron, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper and later Lord Chancellor. On the title-page 'Dr Donne' is written in the same hand. John Egerton, it will be remembered, was, like Donne, a volunteer in Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. In 1599 he and his elder brother Thomas were in Ireland, where the latter was killed, leaving John to be his father's heir. The book-number, inscribed on the second leaf, is in the handwriting of the second Earl of Bridgewater, the Elder Brother of Milton's Comus. The manuscript has thus interesting associations, and links with Donne's earliest patron. I had hoped that it might prove, being made for those who had known Donne all his life, an exceptionally good manuscript, but can hardly say that my expectations were fulfilled. It was probably put together in the twenties, because though it contains the Holy Sonnets it does not contain the hymns written at the close of the poet's life. It resembles O'F, S, S96, and P, rather than either of the first two collections which I have described, D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC, in that it includes with Donne's poems a number of poems not by Donne,²⁴ but most of them [pg c] apparently by his contemporaries, Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Jonson, and other of the wits of the first decade of the seventeenth century, the men who collaborated in writing witty poems on Coryat, or Characters in the style of Sir Thomas Overbury. In the case of some of these initials are added, and a later, but not modern, hand has gone over the manuscript and denied or queried Donne's authorship of others. Textually also B tends to range itself, especially in certain groups of poems, as the Satyres and Holy Sonnets, with O'F, S96, W when these differ from D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC. In such cases the tradition which it represents is most correctly preserved in W. In a few poems the text of B is identical with that of S96. On the whole B cannot be accepted in any degree as an independent authority for the text. It is important only for its agreements with other manuscripts, as helping to establish what I may call the manuscript tradition, in various passages, as against the text of the editions.

P. This manuscript is a striking example of the kind of collections of poems, circulating in manuscript, which gentlemen in the seventeenth century caused to be prepared, and one cannot help wondering how they managed to understand the poems, so full is the text of gross and palpable errors. P is a small octavo manuscript, once in the Phillipps collection, now in the possession of Captain C. Shirley Harris, Oxford. On the cover of brown leather is stamped the royal arms of James I. On p. 1 is written, '1623 me possidet Hen. Champernowne de Dartington in Devonia, generosus.' Two other members of this old, and still extant, Devonshire family have owned the volume, as also Sir Edward Seymour (Knight Baronett) and Bridgett Brookbrige. The poems are written [pg ci] in a small, clear hand, and in Elizabethan character. Captain Harris has had a careful transcript of the poems made, and he allowed me after collating the original with the transcript to keep the latter by me for a long time.

The collection is in the nature of a commonplace-book, and includes a prose letter to Raleigh, and a good many poems by other poets than Donne, but the bulk of the volume is occupied with his poems,²⁵ and most of the poems are signed 'J. D. Finis.' The date of the collection is between 1619, when the poem When he went with the Lo Doncaster was written, and 1623, the date on the title-page. Neither for text nor for canon is P an authority, but the very carelessness with which it is written makes its testimony to certain readings indisputable. It makes no suggestion of conscious editing. In certain poems its text is identical with that of Cy, even to absurd errors. It sometimes, however, supports readings which are otherwise confined to O'F and the later editions of the poem, showing that these may be older than 1632-5.

Cy. The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred folio [pg cii] pages bound in flexible vellum, and is now in the Harvard College Library, Boston. It is by no means an exhaustive collection; the poems are chaotically arranged; the text seems to be careless, and the spelling unusually erratic; but most of the poems it contains are genuine.²⁶ This manuscript is not as a whole identical with P, but some of the poems it contains must have come from that or from a common source.

JC. The John Cave MS. is a small collection of Donne's poems now in the possession of Mr. Elkin Matthews, who has kindly allowed me to collate it. It was formerly in Mr. O'Flaherty's possession. The original possessor had been a certain John Cave, and the volume opens with the following poem, written, it will be seen, while Donne was still alive:

The manuscript is divided into three parts, the first containing the five Satyres, the Litany and the Storme and Calme. The second consists of Elegies and Epigrammes and the third of Miscellanea, Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author. The elegies in the second part are, as in D, H49, Lec, and W, thirteen in number. Their arrangement is that of W, and, like W, JC gives The Comparison, which, D, H49, Lec do not, but drops Loves Progress, which the latter group contains. The text of these poems is generally that of W, but here and throughout JC abounds in errors and emendations. It contains one or two poems which were published in the edition of 1650, and which I have found in no other manuscript except O'F. In these JC supplies some obvious emendations. The poems in the third part are very irregularly arranged. This is the only manuscript, professing to be of Donne's poems, which contains the elegy, 'The heavens rejoice in motion,' which the younger Donne added to the edition of 1650. It is not a very correct, but is an interesting manuscript, with very few spurious poems. At the other end of the manuscript from Donne's, are poems by Corbet.

What seems to be practically a duplicate of JC is preserved in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It belonged originally to a certain 'Johannes Nedlam e Collegio Lincolniense' and is dated 1625. Cave's poem 'Upon Doctor Donne's Satyres' is inscribed and the contents and arrangement of the volume are identical with those of JC except that one poem, The Dampe, is omitted, probably by an oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience of JC I did not think it necessary to collate this manuscript. It was from it that Waldron printed some of the unpublished poems of Donne and Corbet in A Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry (1802).

H40 and RP31, i.e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British Museum, and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian Library, are two manuscripts containing a fairly large number of Donne's poems intermingled with poems by other and [pg civ] contemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf of RP31 declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is certainly not an accurate description.²⁷ Some of the poems must have been written as late as 1610, and they are by various authors, Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont, and probably others, but names of authors are only occasionally given. Each manuscript starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st.' The poems follow the same order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by Donne RP31 contains several which are not in H40, and, on the other hand, of poems by Donne H40 inserts at various places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not in RP31. The latter is, in short, a miscellaneous collection of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems, including several of Donne's; the former, the same collection in which Donne's poems have become by insertion the principal feature. I have cited the readings of H40 throughout; those of RP31 only when they differ from H40, or when I wish to emphasize their agreement. Wherever derived from, the poems are generally carefully and intelligently transcribed. They contain some unpublished poems of Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, and probably Daniel.

L74. The Lansdowne MS. 740, in the British Museum, is an interesting collection of Donne's mainly earlier and secular poems, along with several by contemporaries.²⁸ The text of [pg cv] the Satyres connects this collection with A18, N, TC, but it is probably older, as it contains none of the Divine Poems and no poem written later than 1610. Its interest, apart from the support which it lends to the readings of other manuscripts, centres in the evidence it affords as to the authorship of some of the unauthentic poems which have been ascribed to Donne.

S. The Stephens MS., now in the Harvard College Library, Boston, is the manuscript on which Dr. Grosart based his edition (though he does not reproduce it either consistently or with invariable accuracy) in 1873—an unhappy choice even were it legitimate to adopt any single manuscript in preference to the edition of 1633. Of all the manuscripts I have examined (I know it only through the collation made for me and from Dr. Grosart's citations) it is, I think, without exception the worst, the fullest of obvious and absurd blunders. There are too in it more evidences of stupid editing than in P, whose blunders are due to careless copying by eye or to dictation, and therefore more easy to correct.

The manuscript is dated, at the end, '19th July 1620,' and contains no poems which are demonstrably later than this date, or indeed than 1610. As, however, it contains several of the Divine Poems, including La Corona, but not the Holy Sonnets, it affords a valuable clue to the date of these poems,—of which more elsewhere. The collection is an ambitious one, and an attempt has been made at classification. Six Satires are followed by twenty-seven Elegies (one is torn out) under which head love and funeral elegies are included, and these by a long series of songs with the Divine Poems interspersed. Some of the songs, as of the elegies, are not by Donne.²⁹

S96. Stowe MS. 961 is a small folio volume in the British Museum, containing a collection of Donne's poems very neatly and prettily transcribed. It cannot have been made before 1630 as it contains all the three hymns written during the poet's last illnesses. Indeed it is the only manuscript which I have found containing a copy of the Hymne to God, my God in my Sicknes. It is a very miscellaneous collection. Three satires are followed by the long obsequies to the Lord Harington, and these by a sequence of Letters, Funeral Elegies, Elegies, and Songs intermingled. It is regrettable that so well-written a manuscript is not more reliable, but its text is poor, its titles sometimes erroneous, and its ascriptions inaccurate.³⁰

(3) In the third class I place manuscripts which are not primarily collections of Donne's poems but collections of seventeenth-century poems among which Donne's are included. It is not easy to draw a hard and fast line between this class and the last because, as has been seen, most of the manuscripts at the end of the last list contain poems which are not, or probably are not, by Donne. Still, in these collections Donne's work predominates, and the tendency of the collector is to bring the other poems under his aegis. Initials like J. R., F. B., J. H. disappear, or J. D. takes their place. In the case of these last collections this is not so. Poems by Donne are included with poems which the collector assigns to other wits. Obviously this class could be made to include many different [pg cvii] kinds of collections, ranging from those in which Donne is a prominent figure to those which include only one or two of his poems. But such manuscripts have comparatively little value and no authority for the textual critic, though they are not without importance for the student of the canon of Donne's poetry. I shall mention only one or two, though I have examined a good many more.

A25. Additional MS. 25707, in the British Museum, is a large and interesting collection, written in several different hands, of early seventeenth-century poems, Jacobean and Caroline. It contains an Elegie by Henry Skipwith on the death of King Charles I, but most of the poems are early Jacobean, and either the bulk of the collection was made before this and some other poems were inserted, or it is derived from older collections. Indeed, most of the poems by Donne were probably got from some older collection or collections not unlike some of those already described. They consist of twelve elegies arranged in the same order as in JC, W, and to some extent O'F, which is not the order of D, H49, Lec and 1633; a number of Songs with some Letters and Obsequies following one another sometimes in batches, at times interspersed with poems by other writers; the five Satyres, separated from the other poems and showing some evidences in the text of deriving from a collection like Q or its duplicate in the Dyce collection.³¹ The only one of the Divine Poems which A25 contains is The Crosse. No poem which can be proved to have been written later than 1610 is included.

The poems by Donne in this manuscript are generally, but not always, initialled J. D., and are thus distinguished from others by F. B., H. K., N. H., H. W., Sr H. G., T. P., T. G., G. Lucy., No. B., &c. The care with which this has been done lends interest to those poems which are here ascribed to Donne but are not elsewhere assigned to him. A25 (with its partial duplicate C) is the only manuscript which attributes to [pg cviii] 'J. D.' the Psalm, 'By Euphrates flowery side,' that was printed in 1633 and all the subsequent editions.³²

C. A strange duplicate of certain parts of A25 is a small manuscript in the Cambridge University Library belonging to the Baumgartner collection. It is a thin folio, much damaged by damp, and scribbled over. A long poem, In cladem Rheensen ('Verses upon the slaughter at the Isle of Rhees'), has been used by the cataloguer to date the manuscript, but as this has evidently been inserted when the whole was bound, the rest of the contents may be older or younger. The collection opens with three of the Elegies contained in A25. It then omits eleven poems which are in A25, and continues with twenty Songs and Obsequies, following the order of A25 but omitting the intervening poems. Some nine more poems are given, following the order of A25, but many are omitted in C which are found in A25, and the poems in C are often only fragments of the whole poems in A25. Evidently C is a selection of poems either made directly from A25, or from the collection of Donne's poems (with one or two by Beaumont and others) which A25 itself drew from.

A10. Additional MS. 10309, in the British Museum, is a little octavo volume which was once the property of Margaret Bellasis, probably the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Lord Fauconberg. It is a very miscellaneous collection of prose (Hall's Characterismes of Vice) and verse. Of Donne's undoubted poems there are very few, but there is an interesting group of poems by Roe or others (the authors are not named in the manuscript) which are frequently found with Donne's, and some of which have been printed as his.³³

M. This is a manuscript bought by Lord Houghton and now in the library of the Marquis of Crewe. It is entitled

A later hand, probably Sir John Simeon's, has added 'Chiefly in the Autograph of Dr. Donne Dean of St. Pauls', but this is quite erroneous. It is a miscellaneous collection of poems by Donne, Jonson, Pembroke, Shirley, and others, with short extracts from Fletcher and Shakespeare. Donne's are the most numerous, and their text generally good, but such a collection can have no authority. It is important only as supporting readings and ascriptions of other manuscripts. I cite it seldom.

TCD (Second Collection).³⁴ The large manuscript volume in Trinity College, Dublin, contains two collections of poems (though editors have spoken of them as one) of very different character and value. The first I have already described. It occupies folios 1 to 292. On folio 293 a new hand begins with the song, 'Victorious Beauty though your eyes,' and from that folio to folio 565 (but some folios are torn out) follows a long and miscellaneous series of early seventeenth-century poems. There are numerous references to Buckingham, but none to the Long Parliament or the events which followed, so that the collection was probably put together before 1640. [pg cx] The poems are ascribed to different authors in a very haphazard and untrustworthy fashion. James I is credited with Jonson's epigram on the Union of the Crowns; Donne's The Baite is given to Wotton; and Wotton's 'O Faithless World' to Robert Wisedom. Probably there is more reliance to be put on the ascriptions of later and Caroline poems, but for the student of Donne and early Jacobean poetry the collection has no value. Some of Donne's poems occur, and it is noteworthy that the version given is often a different one from that occurring in the first part of the volume. Probably two distinct collections have been bound up together.

Another collection frequently cited by Grosart, but of little value for the editor of Donne, is the Farmer-Chetham MS., a commonplace-book in the Chetham Library, Manchester, which has been published by Grosart. It contains one or two of Donne's poems, but its most interesting contents are the 'Gulling Sonnets' of Sir John Davies, and some poems by Raleigh, Hoskins, and others. Nothing could be more unsafe than to ascribe poems to Donne, as Grosart did, because they occur here in conjunction with some that are certainly his.

A similar collection, which I have not seen, is the Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS., as Dr. Grosart called it. To judge from the analysis in Thorpe's Catalogue, 1831, this too is a miscellaneous anthology of poems written by, or at any rate ascribed to, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, Donne, and others. There is no end to the number of such collections, and it is absurd to base a text upon them.

The Burley MS., to which I refer once or twice, and which is a manuscript of great importance for the editor of Donne's letters, is not a collection of poems. It is a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton's in the handwriting of his secretaries. Amid its varied contents are some letters, unsigned but indubitably by Donne; ten of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; and a few poems of Donne's with other poems. Of the last, one is certainly by Donne (H. W. in Hibernia belligeranti), and I have incorporated it. The others seem to [pg cxi] me exceedingly doubtful. They are probably the work of other wits among Wotton's friends. I have printed a selection from them in Appendix C.³⁵

Of the manuscripts of the first two classes, which alone could put forward any claim to be treated as independent sources of the text of an edition of Donne's poems, it would be impossible, I think, to construct a complete genealogy. Different poems, or different groups of poems in the same manuscript, come from different sources, and to trace each stream to its fountain-head would be a difficult task, perhaps impossible without further material, and would in the end hardly repay the trouble, for the difficulties in Donne's text are not of so insoluble a character as to demand such heroic methods. The interval between the composition of the poems and their first publication ranges from about forty years at the most to a year or two. There is no case here of groping one's way back through centuries of transmission. The surprising fact is rather that so many of the common errors of a text preserved and transmitted in manuscript should have appeared so soon, that the text and canon of Donne's poems should present an editor in one form or another with all the chief problems which confront the editor of a classical or a mediaeval author.

The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) D, H49, Lec. These with a portion of 1633 come from a common source. (2) A18, N, TCC, TCD. These also come from a single stream and some parts of 1633 follow them. L74 is closely connected with them, at least in parts. (3) A25, B, Cy, JC, O'F, P, S, S96, W. These cannot be traced in their entirety to a single head, but in certain groups of poems they tend to follow a common tradition which may or may not be that of one or other of the first two groups. Of the Elegies, for example, A25, JC, O'F and W transcribe twelve in the same order and with much the same text. Again, B, O'F, S96, and W have taken the Holy Sonnets from a common source, but [pg cxii] O'F has corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec, while W has a more correct version than the others of the common tradition, and three sonnets which none of these include. Generally, whenever B, O'F, S96, and W derive from the same source, W is much the most reliable witness.

Indeed, our first two groups and W have the appearance of being derived from some authoritative source, from manuscripts in the possession of members of Donne's circle. All the others suggest, by the headings they give to occasional poems, their misunderstanding of the true character of some poems, their erroneous ascriptions of poems, that they are the work of amateurs to whom Donne was not known, or who belonged to a generation that knew Donne as a divine, only vaguely as a wit.

These being the materials at our command, the question is, how are we to use them to secure as accurate a text as possible of Donne's poems, to get back as close as may be to what the poet wrote himself. The answer is fairly obvious, though it could not be so until some effort had been made to survey the manuscript material as a whole.

Of the three most recent editors—the first to attempt to obtain a true text—of Donne's poems, each has pursued a different plan. The late Dr. Grosart ³⁶ proceeded on a principle [pg cxiii] which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine accurately what is the source of, or authority for, any particular reading he adopted. He printed now from one manuscript, now from another, but corrected the errors of the manuscript by one or other of the editions, most often by that of 1669. He made no estimate of the relative value of either manuscripts or editions, nor used them in any systematic fashion.

The Grolier Club edition ³⁷ was constructed on a different principle. For all those poems which 1633 contains, that edition was accepted as the basis; for other poems, the first edition, whichever that might be. The text of 1633 is reproduced very closely, even when the editor leans to the acceptance of a later reading as correct. Only one or two corrections are [pg cxiv] actually incorporated in the text. But the punctuation has been freely altered throughout, and no record of these changes is preserved in the textual notes even when they affect the sense. In more than one instance the words of 1633 are retained in this edition but are made to convey a different meaning from that which they bear in the original.

The edition of Donne's poems prepared by Mr. E. K. Chambers ³⁸ for the Muses Library was not based, like Dr. Grosart's, on a casual use of individual manuscripts and editions, nor like the Grolier Club edition on a rigid adherence to the first edition, but on an eclectic use of all the seventeenth-century editions, supplemented by an occasional reference to one or other of the manuscript collections, either at first hand or through Dr. Grosart.

Of these three methods, that of the Grolier Club editor is, there can be no doubt, the soundest. The edition of 1633 comes to us, indeed, with no a priori authority. It was not [pg cxv] published, or (like the sermons) prepared for the press ³⁹ by the author; nor (as in the case of the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays) was it issued by the author's executors.

But if we apply to 1633 the a posteriori tests described by Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante's Divina Commedia, if we select a number of test passages, passages where the editions vary, but where one reading can be clearly shown to be intrinsically the more probable, by certain definite tests,⁴⁰ we shall find that 1633 is, taken all over, [pg cxvi] far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may add at once, to any single manuscript.

Moreover, any careful examination of the later editions, of their variations from 1633, and of the text of the poems which they print for the first time, shows clearly that some method more trustworthy than individual preference must be found if we are to distinguish between those of their variations which have, and those which have not, some authority behind them; those which are derived from a fresh reference to manuscript sources, and those which are due to carelessness, to misunderstanding, or to unwarrantable emendation. Apart from some such sifting, an edition of Donne based, like Mr. Chambers', on an eclectic use of the editions is exactly in the same position as would be an edition of Shakespeare based on an eclectic use of the Folios, helped out by a quite occasional and quite eclectic reference to a quarto. A plain reprint of 1633 like Alford's (of such poems as he publishes) has fewer serious errors than an eclectic text.

It is here that the manuscripts come to our aid. To take, indeed, any single manuscript, as Dr. Grosart did, and select this or that reading from it as seems to you good, is not a justifiable procedure. This is simply to add to the editions one more possible source of error. There is no single manuscript which could with any security be substituted for 1633. Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec was the source of a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to prefer D, H49, Lec as a whole to 1633.⁴¹ It corrects some errors in that edition; it has others of its own. Even W, which has [pg cxvii] a completer version of some poems than 1633, in these poems makes some mistakes which 1633 avoids.

If the manuscripts are to help us it must be by collating them, and establishing what one might call the agreement of the manuscripts whether universal or partial, noting in the latter case the comparative value of the different groups. When we do this we get at once an interesting result. We find that in about nine cases out of ten the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of those readings of 1633 which are supported by the tests of intrinsic probability referred to above,⁴² and on the other hand we find that sometimes the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of the later editions, [pg cxviii] and that in such cases there is a good deal to be said for the later reading.⁴³

The first result of a collation of the manuscripts is thus to vindicate 1633, and to provide us with a means of distinguishing among later variants those which have, from those which have not, authority. But in vindicating 1633 the agreement of the manuscripts vindicates itself. If B's evidence is found always or most often to support A, a good witness, on those points on which A's evidence is in itself most probably correct, not only is A's evidence strengthened but B's own [pg cxix] character as a witness is established, and he may be called in when A, followed by C, an inferior witness, has gone astray. In some cases the manuscripts alone give us what is obviously the correct reading, e.g. p. 25, l. 22, 'But wee no more' for 'But now no more'; p. 72, l. 26, 'his first minute' for 'his short minute'. These are exceptionally clear cases. There are some where, I have no doubt, my preference of the reading of the manuscripts to that of the editions will not be approved by every reader. I have adopted no rigid rule, but considered each case on its merits. All the circumstances already referred to have to be weighed—which reading is most likely to have arisen from the other, what is Donne's usage elsewhere, what Scholastic or other 'metaphysical' dogma underlies the conceit, and what is the source of the text of a particular poem in 1633.

For my analysis of this edition has thrown light upon what of itself is evident—that of some poems or groups of poems 1633 provides a more accurate text than of others, viz. of those for which its source was a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec, but possibly more correct than any one of these, or revised by an editor who knew the poems. But in printing some of the poems, e.g. The Progresse of the Soule, a number of the letters to noble ladies and others,⁴⁴ the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne, The Prohibition, and a few others, for which D, H49, Lec was not available, 1633 seems to have followed an inferior manuscript, A18, N, TC or one resembling it. In these cases it is possible to correct 1633 by comparing it with a better single manuscript, as G or W, or group of manuscripts, as D, H49, Lec. Sometimes even a generally inferior manuscript like O'F seems to offer a better text of an individual poem, at least in parts, for [pg cxx] occasionally the correct reading has been preserved in only one or two manuscripts. Only W among eleven manuscripts which I have recorded (and I have examined others) preserves the reading in the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne, p. 143, l. 57:

—which is quite certainly right. Only three manuscripts have the, to my mind, most probably correct reading in Satyre I, l. 58, p. 147:

and only two, Q and the Dyce MS. which is its duplicate, the tempting and, I think, correct reading in Satyre IV, l. 38, p. 160:

Lastly, there are poems for which 1633 is not available. The authenticity of these will be discussed later. Their text is generally very corrupt, especially of those added in 1650 and 1669. Here the manuscripts help us enormously. With their aid I have been able to give an infinitely more readable text of the fine Elegie XII, 'Since she must go'; the brilliant though not very edifying Elegies XVII, XVIII, and XIX; as well as of most of the poems in the Appendixes. The work of correcting some of these had been begun by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers, but much was still left to do by a wider collation. Dr. Grosart was content with one or two generally inferior manuscripts, and Mr. Chambers mentions manuscripts which time or other reasons did not allow him to examine, or he could not have been content to leave the text of these poems as it stands in his edition.

One warning which must be borne in mind when making a comparison of alternative readings has been given by Mr. Chambers, and my examination of the manuscripts bears it out: 'In all probability most of Donne's poems existed in several more or less revised forms, and it was sometimes a matter of chance which form was used for printing a particular edition.' The examination of a large number of manuscripts has shown that it is not probable, but certain, that of some [pg cxxi] poems (e.g. The Flea, A Lecture upon the Shadow, The Good-Morrow, Elegie XI. The Bracelet) more than one distinct version was in circulation. Of the Satyres, too, many of the variants represent, I can well believe, different versions of the poems circulated by the poet among his friends. And the same may possibly be true of variants in other poems. Our analysis of 1633 has shown us what versions were followed by that edition. What happened in later editions was frequently that the readings of two different versions were combined eclectically. In the present edition, when it is clear that there were two versions, my effort has been to retain one tradition pure, recording the variants in the notes, even when in individual cases the reading of the text adopted seemed to me inferior to its rival, provided it was not demonstrably wrong.

In view of what has been said, the aim of the present edition may be thus briefly stated:

(1) To restore the text of 1633 in all cases where modern editors have abandoned or disguised it, if there is no evidence, internal or external, to prove its error or inferiority; and to show, in the textual notes, how far it has the general support of the manuscripts.

(2) To correct 1633 when the meaning and the evidence of the manuscripts point to its error and suggest an indubitable or highly probable emendation.

(3) To correct throughout, and more drastically, by help of the manuscripts when such exist, the often carelessly and erroneously printed text of those poems which were added in 1635, 1649, 1650, and 1669.

(4) By means of the commentary to vindicate or defend my choice of reading, and to elucidate Donne's thought by reference to his other works and (but this I have been able to do only very partially) to his scholastic and other sources.

As regards punctuation, it was my intention from the outset to preserve the original, altering it only (a) when, judged by its own standards, it was to my mind wrong—stops were displaced or dropped, or the editor had misunderstood the poet; (b) when even though defensible the punctuation was misleading, [pg cxxii] tested frequently by the fact that it had misled editors. In doing this I frequently made unnecessary changes because it was only by degrees that I came to understand all the subtleties of older punctuation and to appreciate some of its nuances. A good deal of my work in the final revision has consisted in restoring the original punctuation. In doing this I have been much assisted by the study of Mr. Percy Simpson's work on Shakespearian Punctuation. My punctuation will not probably in the end quite satisfy either the Elizabethan purist, or the critic who would have preferred a modernized text. I will state the principles which have guided me.

I do not agree with Mr. Chambers that the punctuation, at any rate of 1633, is 'exceptionally chaotic'. It is sometimes wrong, and in certain poems, as the Satyres, it is careless. But as a rule it is excellent on its own principles. Donne, indeed, was exceptionally fastidious about punctuation and such typographical details as capital letters, italics, brackets, &c. The LXXX Sermons of 1640 are a model of fine rhetorical and rhythmical pointing, pointing which inserted stops to show you where to stop. The sermons were not printed in his lifetime, but we know that he wrote them out for the press, hoping that they might be a source of income to his son.

But Donne did not prepare his poems for the press. Their punctuation is that of the manuscript from which they were taken, revised by the editor or printer. One can often recognize in D the source of a stop in 1633, or can see what the pointing and use of capitals would have been had Donne himself supervised the printing. The printer's man was sometimes careless; the printer or editor had prejudices of his own in certain things; and Donne is a difficult and subtle poet. All these circumstances led to occasional error.

The printer's prejudice was one which Donne shared, but not, I think, to quite the same extent. Compared, for example, with the Anniversaries (printed in Donne's lifetime) 1633 shows a fondness for the semicolon,⁴⁵ not only within the sentence, [pg cxxiii] but separating sentences, instead of a full stop, when these are closely related in thought to one another. In an argumentative and rhetorical poet like Donne the result is excellent, once one grows accustomed to it, as is the use of commas, where we should use semicolons, within the sentence, dividing co-ordinate clauses from one another. On the other hand this use of semicolons leads to occasional ambiguity when one which separates two sentences comes into close contact with another within the sentence. For example, in Satyre III, ll. 69-72, how should an editor, modernizing the punctuation, deal with the semicolons in ll. 70 and 71? Should he print thus?—

With trifling differences that is how Chambers and the Grolier Club editor print them. But the lines might run, to my mind preferably—

'And the right' being taken as equivalent to 'And as to the right'. One might even print—

One of the semicolons is equivalent to a little more than a comma, the other to a little less than a full stop.

Another effect of this finely-shaded punctuation is that the question is constantly forced upon an editor, is it correct? Has the printer understood the subtler connexion of Donne's thought, or has he placed the semicolon where the full stop should be, the comma where the semicolon? My solution of these difficulties has been to face and try to overcome them. I have corrected the punctuation where it seemed to me, on its own principles, definitely wrong; and I have, but more sparingly, amended the pointing where it seemed to me to disguise [pg cxxiv] the subtler connexions of Donne's thought or to disturb the rhetoric and rhythm of his verse paragraphs. In doing so I have occasionally taken a hint from the manuscripts, especially D and W, which, by the kindness of Mr. Gosse and Professor Dowden, I have had by me while revising the text. But if I occasionally quote these manuscripts in support of my punctuation, it is only with a view to showing that I have not departed from the principles of Elizabethan pointing. I do not quote them as authoritative. On questions of punctuation none of the extant manuscripts could be appealed to as authorities. Their punctuation is often erratic and chaotic, when it is not omitted altogether. Finally, I have recorded every change that I have made. A reader should be able to gather from the text and notes combined exactly what was the text of the first edition of each poem, whether it appeared in 1633 or a subsequent edition, in every particular, whether of word, spelling, or punctuation. My treatment of the last will not, as I have said, satisfy every reader. I can only say that I have given to the punctuation of each poem as much time and thought as to any part of the work. In the case of Donne this is justifiable. I am not sure that it would be in the case of a simpler, a less intellectual poet. It would be an easier task either to retain the old punctuation and leave a reader to correct for himself, or to modernize. With all its refinements, Elizabethan punctuation erred by excess. A reader who gives thought and sympathy to a poem does not need all these commands to pause, and they frequently irritate and mislead.

¹ Englands Parnassus; or The Choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets: with their Poetical Comparisons. Descriptions of Bewties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, Springs, Rivers etc. Whereunto are annexed Other Various Discourses both Pleasaunt and Profitable. Imprinted at London, For N. L. C. B. And T. H. 1600.

² A Poetical Rhapsody Containing, Diuerse Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, Madrigalls, and other Poesies, both in Rime and Measured Verse. Never yet published. &c. 1602. The work was republished in 1608, 1611, and 1621. It was reprinted by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges in 1814, by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1826, and by A. H. Bullen in 1890.

Englands Helicon, printed in 1600, is a collection of songs almost without exception in pastoral guise. The Eclogue introducing the Somerset Epithalamion is Donne's only experiment in this favourite convention. Donne's friend Christopher Brooke contributed an Epithalamion to this collection, but not until 1614. It is remarkable that Donne's poem The Baite did not find its way into Englands Helicon which contains Marlowe's song and two variants on the theme. In 1600 Eleazar Edgar obtained a licence to publish Amours by J. D. with Certen Oyr. (i.e. other) sonnetes by W. S. Were Donne and Shakespeare to have appeared together? The volume does not seem to have been issued.

³ e.g. Among Drummond of Hawthornden's miscellaneous papers; in Harleian MS. 3991; in a manuscript in Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

⁴ So on the first page, and the opening sentences of the letter defend the use of the word 'Understanders'. Nevertheless the second and third pages have the heading, running across from one to the other, 'The Printer to the Reader.'

⁵ 'Will: Marshall sculpsit' implies that Marshall executed the plate from which the whole frontispiece is taken, including portrait and poem, not that he is responsible for the portrait itself. To judge from its shape the latter would seem to have been made originally from a medallion. Marshall, the Dictionary of National Biography says, 'floruit c. 1630,' so could have hardly executed a portrait of Donne in 1591. Mr. Laurence Binyon, of the Print Department of the British Museum, thinks that the original may have been by Nicholas Hilyard (see II. p. 134) whom Donne commends in The Storme. The Spanish motto suggests that Donne had already travelled.

The portrait does not form part of the preliminary matter, which consists of twelve pages exclusive of the portrait. It was an insertion and is not found in all the extant copies. The paper on which it is printed is a trifle smaller than the rest of the book.

⁶ One or two copies seem to have got into circulation without the Errata. One such, identical in other respects with the ordinary issue, is preserved in the library of Mr. Beverley Chew, New York. I am indebted for this information to Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who is preparing a detailed bibliography of Donne's works.

⁷ Some such arrangement may have been intended by Donne himself when he contemplated issuing his poems in 1614, for he speaks, in a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere (see II. pp. 144-5), of including a letter in verse to the Countess of Bedford 'amongst the rest to persons of that rank'. The manuscripts, especially the later and more ambitious, e.g. Stephens and O'Flaherty, show similar groupings; and in 1633, though there is no consistent sequence, the poems fall into irregularly recurring groups. The order of the poems within each of these groups in 1633 is generally retained in 1635. In the 1633 arrangement there were occasional errors in the placing of individual poems, especially Elegies, owing to the use of that name both for love poems and for funeral elegies or epicedes. These were sometimes corrected in later editions.

Modern editors have dealt rather arbitrarily and variously with the old classification. Grosart shifted the poems about according to his own whims in a quite inexplicable fashion. The Grolier Club edition preserves the groups and their original order (except that the Epigrams and Progresse of the Soule follow the Satyres), but corrects some of the errors in placing, and assigns to their relevant groups the poems added in 1650. Chambers makes similar corrections and replacings, but he further rearranges the groups. In his first volume he brings together—possibly because of their special interest—the Songs and Sonets, Epithalamions, Elegies, and Divine Poems, keeping for his second volume the Letters to Severall Personages, Funerall Elegies, Progresse of the Soul, Satyres, and Epigrams. There is this to be said for the old arrangement, that it does, as Walton indicated, correspond generally to the order in which the poems were written, to the succession of mood and experience in Donne's life. In the present edition this original order has been preserved with these modifications: (1) In the Songs and Sonets, The Flea has been restored to the place which it occupied in 1633; (2) the rearrangement of the misplaced Elegies by modern editors has been accepted; (3) their distribution of the few poems added in 1650 (in two sheets bound up with the body of the work) has also been accepted, but I have placed the poem On Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities after the Satyres; (4) two new groups have been inserted, Heroical Epistles and Epitaphs. It was absurd to class Sappho to Philaenis with the Letters to Severall Personages. At the same time it is not exactly an Elegy. There is a slight difference again between the Funerall Elegy and the Epitaph, though the latter term is sometimes loosely used. Ben Jonson speaks of Donne's Epitaph on Prince Henry. (5) The Letter, to E. of D. with six holy Sonnets has been placed before the Divine Poems. (6) The Hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton has been transferred to the Epicedes. (7) Some poems have been assigned to an Appendix as doubtful.

⁸ The edition of 1633 contained one Latin, and seven English, letters to Sir Henry Goodyere, with one letter to the Countess of Bedford, a copy of which had been sent to Goodyere. To these were added in 1635 a letter in Latin verse, De libro cum mutuaretur (see p. 397), and four prose letters in English, one To the La. G. written from Amyens in February, 1611-2, and three To my honour'd friend G. G. Esquier, the first dated April 14, 1612, the two last November 2, 1630, and January 7, 1630.

⁹ In the copy of the 1633 edition belonging to the Library of Christ Church, Oxford, which has been used for the present edition, and bears the name 'Garrard att his quarters in ϑermyte' (perhaps Donne's friend George Garrard or Gerrard: see Gosse: Life and Letters &c. i. 285), are some lines, signed J. V., which seem to imply that the writer had some hand in the publication of the poems; but the reference may be simply to his gift:

An early offer of him to yo^r sight

Was the best way to doe the Author right

My thoughts could fall on; w^ch his soule w^ch knew

The weight of a iust Prayse will think't a true.

Our commendation is suspected, when

Wee Elegyes compose on sleeping men,

The Manners of the Age prevayling so

That not our conscience wee, but witts doe show.

And 'tis an often gladnes, that men dye

Of unmatch'd names to write more easyly.

Such my religion is of him; I hold

It iniury to have his merrit tould;

Who (like the Sunn) is righted best when wee

Doe not dispute but shew his quality.

Since all the speech of light is less than it.

An eye to that is still the best of witt.

And nothing can express, for truth or haste

So happily, a sweetnes as our taste.

W^ch thought at once instructed me in this

Safe way to prayse him, and yo^r hands to kisse.

Affectionately y^rs

J. V.

tu longe sequere et vestigia

semper adora

Vaughani

The name at the foot of the Latin line, scribbled at the bottom of the page, seems to identify J. V. with a Vaughan, probably John Vaughan (1603-74) who was a Christ Church man. In 1630 (D.N.B.) he was a barrister at the Inner Temple, and a friend of Selden. He took an active part in politics later, and in 1668 was created Sir John Vaughan and appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

¹⁰ I am inclined to believe that Henry King, the poet, and later Bishop of Chichester, assisted the printer. The 1633 edition bears more evidence of competent editing by one who knew and understood Donne's poems than any later edition. See p. 255.

¹¹ Professor Norton (Grolier Club edition, i, p. xxxviii) states that the Epistle Dedicatory and the Epigram by Jonson are omitted in this edition. This is an error, perhaps due to the two pages having been torn out of or omitted in the copy he consulted. They are in the Christ Church, Oxford, copy which I have used.

¹² In 1779 Donne's poems were included in Bell's Poets of Great Britain. The poems were grouped in an eccentric fashion and the text is a reprint of 1719. In 1793 Donne's poems were reissued in a Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, published by Arthur Arch, London, and Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh, under the editorship of Robert Anderson. The text and arrangement of the poems show that this is a reprint of Bell's edition. The same is true of the text, so far as I have checked it, in Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v, 1810. But in the arrangement of the poems the editor has recurred to the edition of 1669, and has reprinted some poems from that source. Southey printed selections from Donne's poems in his Select Works of the British Poets from Chaucer to Jonson (1831). The text is that of 1669. In 1839 Dean Alford included some of Donne's poems in his very incomplete edition of the Works of Donne. He printed these from a copy of the 1633 edition.

There were two American editions of the poems before the Grolier Club edition. Donne's poems were included in The Works of the British Poets with Lives of their Authors, by Ezekiel Sanford, Philadelphia, 1819. The text is based on the edition of 1719. A complete and separate edition was published at Boston in 1850. This has an eclectic text, but the editor has relied principally on the editions after 1633. Variants are sparingly and somewhat inaccurately recorded.

In 1802 F. G. Waldron printed in his Shakespeare Miscellany 'Two Elegies of Dr. Donne not in any edition of his Works'. Of these, one, 'Loves War,' is by Donne. The other, 'Is Death so great a gamster,' is by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. In 1856-7 Sir John Simeon printed in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society several 'Unpublished Poems of Donne'. Very few of them are at all probably poems of Donne.

Of Grosart's edition (1873), the Grolier Club edition (1895), and Chambers's edition (1896), a full account will be given later.

¹³ Huyghens sent some translations with the letter. He translated into Dutch (retaining the original metres, except that Alexandrines are substituted for decasyllabics) nineteen pieces in all. An examination of these shows that the text he used was a manuscript one, the readings he translates being in more than one instance those of the manuscript, as opposed to the printed, tradition. In a note which he prefixed to the translations when he published them many years later in his Korenbloemen (1672) he states that Charles I, having heard of his intention to translate Dr. Donne, 'declared he did not believe that anyone could acquit himself of that task with credit'—an interesting testimony to the admiration which Charles felt for the poetry of Donne. A copy of the 1633 edition now in the British Museum is said to have belonged to the King, and to bear the marks of his interest in particular passages. Huyghens's comment on Charles's criticism shows what it was in the English language which most struck a foreigner speaking a tongue of a purer Germanic strain: 'I feel sure that he would not have passed so absolute a sentence had he known the richness of our language, a moderate command of which is sufficient to enable one to render the thoughts of peoples of all countries with ease and delight. From these I must, however, except the English; for their language is all languages; and as it pleases them, Greek and Latin become plain English. But since we do not thus admit foreign words it is easy to understand in what difficulty we find ourselves when we have to express in a pure German speech, Ecstasis, Atomi, Influentiae, Legatum, Alloy, and the like. Set these aside and the rest costs us no great effort.'

At the end of his life Huyghens wrote a poem of reminiscences, Sermones de Vita Propria, in which he recalls the impression that Donne had left upon his mind:

'Suffer me, all-surpassing Donne, virtuous teacher, to name you first and above all; and sing your fame as god-like poet and eloquent preacher. From your golden mouth, whether in the chamber of a friend, or in the pulpit, fell the speech of Gods, whose nectar I drank again and again with heartfelt joy.'

¹⁵ Tot verschiedene reizen meen ik U. E. onderhouden te hebben met de gedachtenisse van Doctor Donne, tegenwoordigh Deken van St Pauls tot Londen, ende, door dit rijckelick beroep, volgens 't Engelsch gebruyck, in hooghen ansien, in veel hooger door den rijckdom van sijn gadeloos vernuft ende noch onvergelijckerer welsprekentheit op stoel. Eertijts ten dienst van de grooten ten hove gevoedt, in de werelt gewortelt, in de studien geslepen, in de dictkonst vermaerdt, meer als yemand. Van die groene tacken hebben veel weelderige vruchten onder de liefhebbers leggen meucken, diese nu bynaer verrot van ouderdom uytdeylen, my synde voor den besten slag van mispelen ter hand geraeckt by halve vijf en twintig, door toedoen van eenighe mijne besondere Heeren ende vrienden van die natie. Onder de onze hebb ick geene konnen uytkiesen, diese voor U. E. behoorden medegedeelt te werden, slaende deze dichter ganschelijck op U. E. manieren van invall ende uitspraeck.

¹⁶ This is not the only manuscript in which this poem appears among the Elegies following immediately on that entitled The Picture, 'Here take my picture, though I bid farewell.' It is thus placed in 1633. The adhesion of two poems in a number of otherwise distinct manuscripts may mean, I think, that they were written about the same time.

¹⁷ There are, however, grounds for the conjecture besides the contents. The Westmoreland MS. was secured, Mr. Gosse writes me, when the library of the Earls of Westmoreland was disposed of, about the year 1892. 'The interest of this library was that it had not been disturbed since the early part of the seventeenth century. With the Westmoreland MS. of Donne's Poems was attached a very fine copy of Donne's Pseudomartyr, which contained, in what was certainly Donne's handwriting, the words "Ex dono authoris: Row: Woodward" and a motto in Spanish "De juegos el mejor es con la hoja". There can be no doubt, I think, that these two books belonged to Rowland Woodward and were given him by Donne.' But is it likely that after 1617 Donne would give even to a friend a manuscript containing the most reprehensible of his earlier Elegies and the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn? It seems to me more probable that the manuscript contains two distinct collections, made at different times. The one is a transcript from an early collection, quite probably Woodward's, containing Satires, Elegies, and one Epithalamion. To this the Divine Poems have been added.

¹⁸ With the grouping of 1635 I have adopted generally its order within the groups, but the reader will see quite easily what is the order of the Songs in 1633 and in D, H49, Lec, if he will turn to the Contents and, beginning at The Message (p. 43), will follow down to A Valediction: forbidding mourning (p. 49). He must then turn back to the beginning and follow the list down till he comes to The Curse (p. 41), and then resume at The Extasie (p. 51). If the seven poems, The Message to A Valediction: forbidding mourning, were brought to the beginning, the order of the Songs and Sonets in 1635-69 would be the same as in 1633.

The editor of 1633 began a process, which was carried on in 1635, of naming poems unnamed in the manuscripts, and re-naming some that already had titles. The textual notes will give full details regarding the names, and will show that frequently a poem unnamed in D, H49, Lec remains unnamed in 1633.

¹⁹ There is one exception to this which I had overlooked. In D, H49, Lec, The Undertaking (p. 10) comes later, following The Extasie.

²⁰ When in 1614 Donne contemplated an edition of his poems he wrote to Goodyere: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, than it did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you,' &c. Letters (1651), p. 197.

²¹ Five are to the Countess of Bedford—'Reason is', 'Honour is', 'You have refin'd', 'To have written then', and 'This Twy-light'. One is to the Countess of Huntingdon, 'Man to Gods image'; one to the Countess of Salisbury, 'Fair, great and good'; and one to Lady Carey, 'Here where by all.'

²³ Additional lines to the Annuntiation and Passion, 'The greatest and the most conceald impostor', 'Now why should Love a footeboys place despise', 'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', 'Pure link of bodies where no lust controules', 'Whoso terms love a fire', Upon his scornefull Mistresse ('Cruel, since that thou dost not fear the curse'), The Hower Glass ('Doe but consider this small Dust'), 'If I freely may discover', Song ('Now you have kill'd me with your scorn'), 'Absence, heare thou my protestation', Song ('Love bred of glances'), 'Love if a god thou art', 'Greate Lord of Love how busy still thou art', 'To sue for all thy Love and thy whole hart'.

²⁴ 'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', On the death of Mris Boulstred ('Stay view this stone'), Against Absence ('Absence, heare thou my protestation'), 'Thou send'st me prose and rhyme', Tempore Hen: 3 ('The state of Fraunce, as now it stands'), A fragment ('Now why shuld love a Footboyes place despise'), To J. D. from Mr. H. W. ('Worthie Sir, Tis not a coate of gray,' see II. p. 141), 'Love bred of glances twixt amorous eyes', To a Watch restored to its mystres ('Goe and count her better houres'), 'Deare Love continue nyce and chast', 'Cruell, since thou doest not feare the curse', On the blessed virgin Marie ('In that, ô Queene of Queenes').

²⁵ Of 128 items in the volume 99 are by Donne, and I have excluded some that might be claimed for him. The poems certainly not by Donne are 'Wrong not deare Empresse of my heart', 'Good folkes for gold or hire', 'Love bred of glances twixt amorous eyes', 'Worthy Sir, Tis not a coat of gray' (here marked 'J. D'.), 'Censure not sharply then' (marked 'B. J.'), 'Whosoever seeks my love to know', 'Thou sendst me prose and rimes' (see II. p. 166), 'An English lad long wooed a lasse of Wales', 'Marcella now grown old hath broke her glasse', 'Pretus of late had office borne in London', To his mistresse ('O love whose power and might'), Her answer ('Your letter I receaved'), The Mar: B. to the Lady Fe. Her. ('Victorious beauty though your eyes')—a poem generally attributed to the Earl of Pembroke, A poem ('Absence heare my protestation'), 'True love findes witt but hee whom witt doth move', Earle of Pembroke 'If her disdain', Ben Ruddier 'Till love breeds love', 'Good madam Fowler doe not truble mee', 'Oh faithlesse world; and the most faithlesse part, A womans hart', 'As unthrifts greeve in straw for their pawn'd beds' (marked 'J. D.'), 'Why shuld not pilgrimes to thy body come' (marked 'F. B.'), On Mrs. Bulstreed, 'Mee thinkes death like one laughing lies', 'When this fly liv'd shee us'd to play' (marked 'Cary'), The Epitaph ('Underneath this sable hearse'), a couple of long heroical epistles (with notes appended) entitled Sir Philip Sidney to the Lady Penelope Rich and The Lady Penelope Rich to Sir Philipe Sidney. The latter epistle after some lines gives way quite abruptly to a different poem, a fragment of an elegy, which I have printed in Appendix C, p. 462.

and two elegies, generally assigned to F. Beaumont, 'I may forget to eate' and 'As unthrifts greive in straw'.

²⁷ The note may point to some connexion of the MS. with the Harington family. The MS. contains an unusually large number of poems addressed to the Countess of Bedford, and ascribes, quite probably, the Elegy 'Death be not proud' to the Countess herself.

²⁸ The poems not by Donne are A Satire: To Sr Nicholas Smith, 1602 ('Sleep next society'); Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Each woman is a Breefe of Womankind' and his epitaph 'The spann of my daies measurd, here I rest'; a poem headed Bash, beginning 'I know not how it comes to pass'; Verses upon Bishop Fletcher who married a woman of France ('If any aske what Tarquin ment to marrie'); Fletcher Bishop of London ('It was a question in Harroldrie'); 'Mistres Aturney scorning long to brooke'; 'Wonder of Beautie, Goddesse of my sence'; 'Faire eyes doe not thinke scorne to read of Love'; two sonnets apparently by Sir Thomas Roe; six consecutive poems by Sir John Roe (see pp. 401-6, 408-10); 'Absence heare thou,'; To the Countess of Rutland ('Oh may my verses pleasing be'); To Sicknesse ('Whie disease dost thou molest'); 'A Taylor thought a man of upright dealing'; 'Unto that sparkling wit, that spirit of fier'; 'There hath beene one that strove gainst natures power.'

²⁹ Satyra Sexta ('Sleepe next Society'), Elegia Undecima ('True Love findes wit'), Elegia Vicesima ('Behold a wonder': see Grosart ii. 249), Elegia Vicesima Secunda ('As unthrifts mourne'), Elegia vicesima septima ('Deare Tom: Tell her'), To Mr. Ben: Jonson 9^o Novembris 1603 ('If great men wronge me'), To Mr. Ben: Jonson ('The state and mens affairs'), 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste', 'Wherefore peepst thou envious Daye', 'Great and good, if she deride me', To the Blessed Virgin Marie ('In that ô Queene of Queenes'), 'What if I come to my Mistresse bed', 'Thou sentst to me a heart as sound', 'Believe your glasse', A Paradox of a Painted Face ('Not kisse! By Jove I will').

³⁰ The poems not by Donne are not numerous, but they are assigned to him without hesitation. They are 'As unthrifts grieve in straw', 'Thou sentst me Prose', 'Dear Love continue', 'Madam that flea', The Houre Glass ('Doe but consider this small dust'), A Paradox of a Painted Face ('Not kiss, by Jove'), 'If I freely may discover', 'Absence heare thou', 'Love bred of glances'.

³¹ Note the readings I. 58 'The Infanta of London', IV. 38 'He speaks no language'.

³² The other poems here ascribed to J. D. are To my Lo: of Denbrook (sic., i.e. Pembroke), 'Fye, Fye, you sonnes of Pallas', A letter written by Sr H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus ('Since every tree'), 'Why shuld not Pillgryms to thy bodie come', 'O frutefull Garden and yet never till'd', Of a Lady in the Black Masque. See Appendix C, pp. 433-7.

³³ 'The Heavens rejoice in motion', 'Tell her if she to hired servants show', 'True love finds wit', 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', 'Shall I goe force an Elegie?', 'Men write that Love and Reason disagree', 'Come Fates: I feare you not', 'If her disdaine'. The authorship of these is discussed later.

A note on the first page in a modern hand says, 'The pieces which I have extracted for the "Specimens" are, Page 91, 211, 265.' What 'Specimens' are referred to I do not know: the pieces are 'You nimble dreams', signed H. (i.e. John Hoskins); 'Upon his mistresses inconstancy' ('Thou art prettie but inconstant'); and Cupid and the Clowne. The manuscript was purchased at Bishop Heber's sale in 1836.

³⁴ I refer to it occasionally as TCD (II), and (once it has been made plain that this is the collection referred to throughout) as simply TCD.

³⁵ Since Mr. Pearsall-Smith transcribed these poems, which I subsequently collated, the house at Burley-on-the-Hill has been burned down and the manuscript volume has perished.

³⁶ The Complete Poems of John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. For the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With The Original and Early Editions And MSS. And Enlarged With Hitherto Unprinted And Inedited Poems From MSS. &c.... By The Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, &c. The Fuller Worthies' Library, 1872-3. Dr. Grosart's favourite manuscript was the Stephens (S). When that failed him he used Addl. MS. 18643 (A18), whose relation to the manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin and Cambridge (TCD, TCC) he did not suspect, though he collated these. Some poems he printed from the Hazlewood-Kingsburgh MS. or the Farmer-Chetham MS. The first two are not good texts of Donne's poems, the last two are miscellaneous collections. The three first Satyres Dr. Grosart printed from Harleian MS. 5110 (H51); and he used other sources for the poems he ascribed to Donne. It cannot be said that he always recorded accurately the readings of the manuscript from which he printed. I have made no effort to record all the differences between Grosart's text and my own.

The description of the editions which Grosart gives at ii, p. liii is amazingly inaccurate, considering that he claimed to have collated 'all the early and later printed editions'. He describes 1639, 1649, 1650, and 1654 as identical with one another, and declares that the younger Donne is responsible only for 1669, which appeared after his death.

³⁷ The Poems of John Donne From The Text of The Edition of 1633 Revised By James Russell Lowell With The Various Readings of The Other Editions Of The Seventeenth Century, And With A Preface, An Introduction, And Notes By Charles Eliot Norton. New York. 1895. In preparing the text from Lowell's copy of 1633, emended in pencil by him, Professor Norton was assisted by Mrs. Burnett, the daughter of Mr. Lowell. As I could not apportion the responsibility for the text I have spoken throughout my textual notes and remarks of 'the Grolier Club editor' (Grolier for short). I have accepted Professor Norton as the sole author of the commentary. For instances where the punctuation has been altered, and the meaning, in my opinion, obscured, I may refer to the textual notes on The Legacie (p. 20), The Dreame (p. 37), A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day (p. 44). But I have cited and discussed most of the cases in which I disagree with the Grolier Club editors. It is for readers to judge whether at times they may not be right, and I have gone astray. The Grolier Club edition only came into my hands when I had completed my first collation of the printed texts. Had I known it sooner, or had the edition been more accessible, I should probably not have ventured on the arduous task of editing Donne. It is based on the best text, and the editors have been happier than most in their interpretation and punctuation of the more difficult passages.

Professor Norton made no use of the manuscripts in preparing the text, but he added in an appendix an account of the manuscript which, following him, I have called N, and he gave a list of variants which seemed to him possible emendations. Later, in the Child Memorial Volume of Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature (1896), he gave a somewhat fuller description of N and descriptions of S (the Stephens MS.) and Cy (the Carnaby MS.). Of the readings which Professor Norton noted, several have passed into my edition on the authority of a wider collation of the manuscripts.

³⁸ Poems of John Donne Edited By E. K. Chambers. With An Introduction By George Saintsbury. London and New York. 1896. Of the editions Mr. Chambers says: 'Nor can it be said that any one edition always gives the best text; even for a single poem, sometimes one, sometimes another is to be preferred, though, as a rule, the edition of 1633 is the most reliable, and the readings of 1669 are in many cases a return to it' (vol. i, p. xliv). A considerable portion of Mr. Chambers' edition would seem to have been 'set up' from a copy of the 1639 edition, the earlier and later readings being then either incorporated or recorded. The result is that the 1633 or 1633-35 readings have been more than once overlooked. This applies especially to the Epicedes and the Divine Poems.

As with the Grolier Club edition, so with Mr. Chambers' edition, I have recorded and discussed the chief differences between my text and his. I have worked with his edition constantly beside me. I used it for my collations on account of its convenient numbering of the lines. To Mr. Chambers' commentary also I owe my first introduction to the wide field of the manuscripts. His knowledge of seventeenth-century literature and history, which even in 1896 was extensive, has directed me in taking up most of the questions of canon and authorship which I have investigated. It is easy to record one's points of disagreement with a predecessor; it is more difficult to estimate accurately how much one owes to his labours.

Mr. Chambers, too, has 'modernized the spelling and corrected the exceptionally chaotic punctuation of the old editions'. Of the latter changes he has, with one or two exceptions, preserved no record, so that when, as is sometimes the case, he has misunderstood the poet, it is impossible to get back to the original text of which the stops as well as the words are a part.]

³⁹ It is very unlikely that Donne had in his possession when he died manuscript copies of his early poems. (1) Walton makes no mention of them when enumerating the works which Donne left behind in manuscript, including 'six score sermons all written with his own hand; also an exact and laborious treatise concerning self-murder, called Biathanatos', as well as elaborate notes on authors and events. (2) In 1614, when Donne thought of publishing his poems, he found it necessary to beg for copies from his friends: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, then it did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you.' To Sir H. G., Vigilia St. Tho. 1614. (3) Jonson and Walton both tell us that Donne, after taking Orders, would have been glad to destroy his early poems. The sincerity of this wish has been doubted because of what he says in a letter regarding Biathanatos: 'I only forbid it the press and the fire.' But Biathanatos is a very different matter from the poems. It is a grave and devout, if daring, treatise in casuistry. No one can enter into Donne's mind from 1617 onwards, as ascetic devotion became a more and more sincere and consuming passion, and believe that he kept copies of the early poems or paradoxes, prepared for the press like his sermons or devotions.

⁴⁰ Contributions To The Textual Criticism of The Divina Commedia, &c. By the Rev. Edward Moore, D.D., &c. Cambridge, 1889. The tests which Dr. Moore lays down for the judgement, on internal grounds, of a reading are—I state them shortly in my own words—(1) That is the best reading which best explains the erroneous readings. I have sometimes recorded a quite impossible reading of a manuscript because it clearly came from one rather than another of two rivals, and thus lends support to that reading despite its own aberration. (2) Generally speaking, 'Difficilior lectio potior,' the more difficult reading is the more likely to be the original. This applies forcibly in the case of a subtle and difficult author like Donne. The majority of the changes made in the later editions arise from the tendency to make Donne's thought more commonplace. Even in 1633 errors have crept in. The obsolete words 'lation' (p. 94, l. 47), 'crosse' (p. 43, l. 14) have been altered; the old-fashioned and metaphorically used idiom 'in Nature's gifts' has confused the editor's punctuation; the subtle thought of the epistles has puzzled and misled. (3) 'Three minor considerations may be added which are often very important, when applicable, though they are from the nature of the case less frequently available.' Moore. These are (a) the consistency of the reading with sentiments expressed by the author elsewhere. I have used the Sermons and other prose works to illustrate and check Donne's thought and vocabulary throughout. (b) The relation of the reading to the probable source of the poet's thought. A Scholastic doctrine often lurks behind Donne's wit, ignorance of which has led to corruption of the text. See The Dreame, p. 37, ll. 7, 16; To Sr Henry Wotton, p. 180, ll. 17-18. (c) The relation of a reading to historical fact. In the letter To Sr Henry Wotton, p. 187, the editors, forgetting the facts, have confused Cadiz with Calais, and the Azores with St. Michael's Mount.

⁴¹ It is worth while to compare the kind of mistakes in which a manuscript abounds with those which occur in a printed edition. The tendency of the copyist was to write on without paying much attention to the sense, dropping words and lines, sometimes two consecutive half-lines or whole stanzas, ignoring or confounding punctuation, mistaking words, &c. He was, if a professional copyist or secretary, not very apt to attempt emendation. The kind of errors he made were easily detected when the proof was read over, or when the manuscript was revised with a view to printing. Words or half-lines could be restored, &c. But in such revision a new and dangerous source of error comes into play, the tendency of the editor to emend.

⁴² Take a few instances where the latest editor, very naturally and explicably, securing at places a reading more obvious and euphonious, has departed from 1633 and followed 1635 or 1669. I shall take them somewhat at random and include a few that may seem still open to discussion. In The Undertaking (p. 10, l. 18), for 'Vertue attir'd in woman see', 1633, Mr. Chambers reads, with 1635-69, 'Vertue in woman see.' So:

Loves Vsury, p. 13, l. 5:
let my body raigne 1633	let my body range 1635-69, Chambers
Aire and Angels, p. 22, l. 19:
Ev'ry thy hair 1633	Thy every hair 1650-69, Chambers
The Curse, p. 41, ll. 3, 10:
His only, and only his purse 1633-54	Him, only for his purse 1669, Chambers
who hath made him such 1633	who hath made them such 1669, Chambers
A Valediction, p. 50, l. 16:
Those things which elemented it 1633	The thing which elemented it 1669, Chambers
The Relique, p. 62, l. 13:
mis-devotion 1633-54	mass-devotion 1669, Chambers
Elegie II, p. 80, l. 6:
is rough 1633, 1669	is tough 1635-54, Chambers
Elegie VI, p. 88, ll. 24, 26:
and then chide 1633	and there chide 1635-69, Chambers
her upmost brow 1633	her utmost brow 1635-69, Chambers (an oversight).
Epithalamions, p. 129, l. 60:
store, 1633	starres, 1635-69, Chambers
Ibid., p. 133, l. 55:
I am not then from Court 1633	And am I then from Court? 1635-69, Chambers
Satyres, p. 169, ll. 37-41:
The Iron Age that was, when justice was sold, now Injustice is sold deerer farre; allow All demands, fees, and duties; gamsters, anon The mony which you sweat, and sweare for, is gon Into other hands: 1633	The iron Age that was, when justice was sold (now Injustice is sold dearer) did allow All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters, anon The mony which you sweat and swear for is gon Into other hands. 1635-54, Chambers (no italics; 'that' a relative pronoun, I take it)
The Calme, p. 179, l. 30:
our brimstone Bath 1633	a brimstone bath 1635-69, Chambers
To Sr Henry Wotton, p. 180, l. 17:
dung, and garlike 1633	dung, or garlike 1635-69, Chambers
Ibid., p. 181, ll. 25, 26:
The Country is a desert, where no good, Gain'd, as habits, not borne, is understood. 1633	The Country is a desert, where the good, Gain'd inhabits not, borne, is not understood. 1635-54, Chambers.

In all these passages, and I could cite others, it seems to me (I have stated my reasons fully in the notes) that if the sense of the passage be carefully considered, or Donne's use of words (e.g. 'mis-devotion'), or the tenor of his thought, the reading of 1633 is either clearly correct or has much to be said for it. Now in all these cases the reading has the support of all the manuscripts, or of the most and the best.

⁴³ e.g. 'their nothing' p. 31, l. 53; 'reclaim'd' p. 56, l. 25; 'sport' p. 56, l. 27.]

⁴⁴ The 1633 text of these letters, which is generally that of A18, N, TC, is better than I was at one time disposed to think, though there are some indubitable errors and perhaps some original variants. The crucial reading is at p. 197, l. 58, where 1633 and A18, N, TC read 'not naturally free', while 1635-69 and O'F read 'borne naturally free', at first sight an easier and more natural text, and adopted by both Chambers and Grosart. But consideration of the passage, and of what Donne says elsewhere, shows that the 1633 reading is certainly right.

⁴⁵ The 1650 printer delighted in colons, which he generally substituted for semicolons indiscriminately.

CANON.

The authenticity of all the poems ascribed to Donne in the old editions is a question which has never been systematically and fully considered by his editors and critics. A number of poems not included in these editions have been attributed to him by Simeon (1856), Grosart (1873), and others on very insufficient grounds, whether of external evidence or internal probability. Of the poems published in 1633, one, Basse's An Epitaph upon Shakespeare, was withdrawn at once; another, [pg cxxv] the metrical Psalme 137, has been discredited and Chambers drops it.¹ Of those which were added in 1635, one To Ben Ionson. 6 Ian. 1603, has been dropped by Grosart, the Grolier Club edition, and Chambers on the strength of a statement made to Drummond by Ben Jonson.² But the editors have accepted Jonson's statement without apparently giving any thought to the question whether, if this particular poem is by Roe, the same must not be true of its companion pieces, To Ben. Ionson. 9 Novembris, 1603. and To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603. They are inserted together in 1635, and are strikingly similar in heading, in style, and in verse. Nor has any critic, so far as I know, taken up the larger question raised by rejecting one of the poems ascribed to Donne in 1635, namely, are not all the poems then added made thereby to some extent suspect, and if so can we distinguish those which are from those which are not genuine? I propose then to discuss, in the light afforded by a wider and more connected survey of the seventeenth-century manuscript collections, the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Donne in the old editions, and to ask what, if any, poems may be added to those there published.

For this discussion an invaluable starting-point is afforded by the edition of 1633, the manuscript group D, H49, Lec, and the manuscript group A18, N, TCC, TCD. Taken together, and used to check one another, these three collections provide us with a corpus of indubitable poems which may be used as a test by which to try other claimants. Of course, it must be clearly understood that the only proof which can be offered [pg cxxvi] that Donne is the author of many poems is, that they are ascribed to him in edition after edition and manuscript after manuscript, and that they bear a strong family resemblance. There is no edition issued by himself or in his lifetime.³

Bearing this in mind we find that in the edition of 1633 there are only two poems—Basse's Epitaph on Shakespeare and the Psalme 137, both already mentioned—for the genuineness of which there is not strong evidence, internal and external. But these two poems are the only ones not contained in D, H49, Lec or in A18, N, TC. In D, H49, Lec, on the other hand, there are no poems which are not, on the same evidence, genuine. There are, however, some which are not in 1633, seven in all. But of these, five are the Elegies which, we have seen above, the editor of 1633 was prohibited from printing. The others are the Lecture upon the Shadow (why omitted in 1633 I cannot say) and the lines 'My fortune and my choice'. There are poems in 1633 which are not in D, H49, Lec. These, with the exception of poems previously printed, as the Anniversaries and the Elegie on Prince Henry, are all in A18, N, TC. This last collection does contain some twelve poems not by Donne, but of these the majority are found only in N and TCD, and they make no pretence to be Donne's. Three are initialled 'J. R.' (in TCD), and two of these, with some poems by Overbury and Beaumont, are not part of the Donne collection but are added at the end. Another poem is initialled 'R. Cor.' The only poems which are included among Donne's poems as though by him are The Paradox ('Whoso terms Love a fire') and the Letter or Elegy, 'Madam soe may my verses pleasing be.' Of these, the first is in all four manuscripts, the second only in N and TCD. Neither is in D, H49, Lec, or 1633. The last is by Beaumont, and follows immediately a letter by Donne to the same lady, the Countess of Bedford. Doubtless the two poems have come from some collection in which they [pg cxxvii] were transcribed together, ultimately from a commonplace-book of the Countess herself. The former may be by Donne, but has probably adhered for a like reason to his paradox, 'No lover saith' (p. 302), which immediately precedes it.

We have thus three collections, each of which has kept its canon pure or very nearly so, and in which any mistake by one is checked by the absence of the poem in the other two. It cannot be by accident that these collections are so free from the unauthentic poems which other manuscripts associate with Donne's. Those who prepared them must have known what they were about. Marriot must have had some help in securing a text on the whole so accurate as that of 1633, and in avoiding spurious poems on the whole so well. When that guidance was withdrawn he was only too willing to go a-gathering what would swell the compass of his volume. If then a poem does not occur in any of these collections it is not necessarily unauthentic, but as no such poem has anything like the wide support of the manuscripts that these have, it should present its credentials, and approve its authenticity on internal grounds if external are not available.

We start then with a strong presumption, coming as close to demonstration as the circumstances of the case will permit, in favour of the absolute genuineness of all the poems in 1633 (a glance down the list headed 'Source' in the 'Contents' will show what these are) except the two mentioned, and of all the poems added in 1635, or later editions, which are also in D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC.⁴ These last (to which I prefix the date of first publication) are—

(These are the five Elegies suppressed in 1633—at such long intervals did they find their way into print.)

We may add to these, without lengthy investigation, the four Holy Sonnets added in 1635:—

For these (though in none of the three collections) we have, besides internal probability, the evidence of W, clearly an unexceptionable manuscript witness. Walton, too, vouches for the authenticity of the Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse, which indeed no one but Donne could have written.

This leaves for investigation, of poems inserted in 1635, 1649, 1650, or 1669, the following:—

Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the author.

Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True love finds witt', the first of which ⁶ was printed in Le Prince d'Amour, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved him; and that when they two were [pg cxxx] ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings, Kings Lords [as] Lords do us.' (Drummond's Conversations with Jonson), ed. Laing.

Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these append the initials 'J. R.' But all the manuscripts which contain the one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though none have added the initials 'J. R.', B, in which it has been separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems, appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one of Donne's poems). The third poem, To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603 (p. 410), is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are one, H40 and RP31) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally in their immediate proximity, and in B initialled 'J. R.' In the others the poem is unsigned, and in L74 a much later hand has added 'J. D.'

Of the other poems, the first—the poem which was in 1669 printed as Donne's seventh Satyre, was dropped in 1719 but restored by Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers—is said in B to be 'By Sir John Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R.' in TCD. Even an undiscriminating manuscript like O'F adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th: Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in 1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412) and 'Shall I goe force an Elegie?' (p. 410) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in which I have found them.

But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep next Society' is initialled 'J. R.' in so carefully prepared a collection of Donne's poems as TCD is valuable evidence, and the initials in a collection so well vouched for as HN, Drummond's copy of a collection of poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set aside by [pg cxxxi] a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble. But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement of any other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these poems occur, any more than on that of the 1635 and later editions. The best of them (H40, RP31) are often silent, and the others are too often mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If we are to get the truth from them it must be by cross-examination.

For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems to Roe is based is the singular regularity with which they adhere to one another. If a manuscript has one it generally has the rest in close proximity. Thus B, after giving thirty-six poems by Donne, of which only one is wrongly ascribed, continues with a number that are clearly by other authors as well as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are 'Sleep next Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds witt,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she.' A fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes rather later. H40 and RP31 give in immediate sequence 'The State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True Love finds witt,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; I fear you not.' L74, a collection not only of poems by Donne but of the work of other wits of the day, transcribes in immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates, I fear you not.' Lastly A10, a quite miscellaneous collection, gives in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] Tell her if she,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue nice and chaste,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that love and reason disagree.' 'Come Fates; I fear you not' follows after a considerable interval.

It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus recur in manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common origin.⁷ And as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable [pg cxxxii] (and) three on very strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne out by a general resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, that they are all by Roe.

To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle, brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm, of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the professional armies serving in the Low Countries.

For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire, 'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's Satyres. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers accepts this and when referring to Jonson, Epigram 98, on Roe the ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe.' Who this uncle was they do not tell us, but Hunter in the Chorus Vatum notes that, if Gifford's conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.

It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle (he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)—a kind of Sir Toby Belch, taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before 1603, when these poems were written.⁸ Sir John Roe the poet was the cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county of Essex.⁹ William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor of the name Roe.¹⁰ He had two sons, John and William, the latter of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's Epigrammes, cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's History of Essex (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will, proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford.¹¹ [pg cxxxiv] How long he stayed there is not known, probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605 that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood, Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour Roe shall receive.¹² By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England and dead in 1608—Sir John Roe.'¹³

Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his Satyre, a duellist:

XXXII.

In his conversations with Drummond Jonson as usual gave more intimate and less complimentary details: 'Sir John Roe was an infinite spender, and used to say, when he had no more to spend he could die. He died in his (i.e. Jonson's) arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges 20lb., which was given him back,' doubtless by his brother William. Morant states that 'Sir John the eldest son, having no issue, sold this Manor (i.e. Higham-hill) to his father-in-law Sir Reginald Argall, of whom it was purchased by the second son—Sir William Rowe'.

Such a career is much more likely than Donne's to have produced the satire 'Sleep, next Society', with its lurid picture of cashiered captains, taverns, stews, duellists, hard drinkers, and parasites. It is much more like a scene out of Bartholomew Fair than any of Donne's five Satyres. Nor was Donne likely at any time to have written of James I as Roe does. He moved in higher circles, and was more politic. But Roe had ability. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste' is not quite in the taste of to-day, but it is a good example of the paradoxical, metaphysical lyric; and there are both feeling and wit in 'Come, Fates; I feare you not', unlike as it is to Donne's subtle, erudite, intenser strain.

Returning to the list of poems open to question on pp. cxxviii-ix we have sixteen left to consider. Of some of these there is very little to say.

Nos. 1 and 14 are most probably by the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Pembroke collaborating with Sir Benjamin Rudyard. Both were wits and poets of Donne's circle. The first song,

is ascribed to Donne only in 1635-69, and is there inaccurately [pg cxxxvi] printed. It is assigned to Pembroke in the younger Donne's edition of Pembroke and Ruddier's Poems (1660), a bad witness, but also by Lansdowne MS. 777, which Mr. Chambers justly calls 'a very good authority'.¹⁴ The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's because the central idea—the inseparableness of souls—is his, and so is the contemptuous tone of

But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing common. We get it again in Lovelace's

The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, or the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this cheerful, confident strain. He consoles himself at times with the doctrine of inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never absent. He cannot cheat his passionate heart and senses with metaphysical subtleties.

The song Farewell to love, the second in the list of poems added in 1635, is found only in O'F and S96. There is therefore no weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, but no one can read it without feeling that it is his. The cynical yet passionate strain of wit, the condensed style, and the metaphysical turn given to the argument, are all in his manner. As printed in 1635 the point of the third stanza is obscured. As I have ventured to amend it, an Aristotelian doctrine is referred to in a way that only Donne would have done in quite such a setting.

The three Elegies, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, His parting from her, is so fine a poem that it [pg cxxxvii] is difficult to think any unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it is one of the finest of the Elegies,¹⁵ and in this sincerer note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like The Bracelet and The Perfume and resembles the fine elegy called His Picture and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the general tenor of the Elegies, namely, the famous elegy On his Mistris, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a page:

and that rather enigmatical poem The Expostulation, which found its way into Jonson's Underwoods:

All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, and to this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative rareness with which His parting from her is found in manuscripts, and that it finally appeared in a mutilated form. The poet may have given copies only to a few friends and desired that it should not be circulated. In the Second Collection of poems in TCD it is signed at the close, 'Sir Franc: Wryothlesse.' Who is intended by this I do not know. The ascriptions in this collection are many of them purely fanciful. Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.

Of the other two elegies, Julia, which is found in only two manuscripts, B and O'F, is quite the kind of thing Donne might have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style of Horace's invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by [pg cxxxviii] Mantuan and other Humanists. The chief difficulty with regard to the second, A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife, is to find Donne writing in this vein at so late a period as 1609 or 1610, the date implied in several of the allusions. He was already the author of religious poems, including probably La Corona. In 1610 he wrote his Litanie, and, as Professor Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of the writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature, the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, and says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask and have his comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn in myself that I have given my wit such evaporations as those, if they be free from profaneness, or obscene provocations.' Whether this would cover the elegy in question is a point on which perhaps our age and Donne's would not decide alike. Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne and the grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a little time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. But once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in this case been made responsible for what is another's. Every one wrote this occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.

There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign to or from Donne than the long letter headed To the Countesse of Huntington, 13 on the list, which, for the time being, I have placed in the Appendix B. On internal grounds there is more to be said for ascribing it to Donne than any other single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I have resolved to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it deserves.¹⁶ The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are these:

(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it [pg cxxxix] found in either of the groups D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TCC, TCD. It was added in 1635 with four other spurious poems, the dialogue ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by the great majority of manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two epistles to Ben Jonson, and the Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe, which we have assigned, for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The poem is found in only two manuscript collections, viz. P and the second, miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in TCD. In both of these it is headed Sr Walter Ashton (or Aston) to the Countesse of Huntingtone, and no reference whatsoever is made to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. Imaginary headings were quite common in the case of poems circulating in manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been written by the Earl of Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he died, or as found in the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. Editors have occasionally taken these too seriously. Drayton's Heroicall Epistles made it a fashion to write such letters in the case of any notorious love affair or intrigue. The manuscript P contains a long imaginary letter from Sir Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. In the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of Pembroke, 'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed The Mar: B to the Lady Fe: Her., i.e. the Marquis of Buckingham to—I am not sure what lady is intended. The only thing which the title given to the letter in question suggests is that it was not an actual letter to the Countess but an imaginary one.

(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 became the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not been able to tell us very much. He must have met her at the house of Sir Thomas Egerton when her mother, the dowager Countess of Derby, married that statesman in 1600. Donne says:

Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had relations with her either directly or through her first cousin, the Countess of Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, 'I remember that about this time you purpose a journey to fetch, or meet the Lady Huntington.' This fact lends support to the view of Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the Countesse' referred to in the following extract from a letter to Goodyere, which has an important bearing on the poem under consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in which it may have been written. The latter places it in April, 1615, when Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was approaching his noble patronesses for help in clearing himself of debt. But Mr. Chambers points to the closing reference to 'a Christning at Peckam', and dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne was at Peckham after leaving Pyrford and before settling at Mitcham. I am not sure that this is conclusive, for in Donne's unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might at any time have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival to the house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the tone of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the letters to Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme of the letter, a comparison of the different Churches, is that of other letters of the same period. The one in question (Letters 1651, p. 100; Gosse, Life, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation of another (Letters, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, Life, i. 225). Whatever be its date, this is what Donne says: 'For the other part of your Letter, spent in the praise of the Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of her, and can never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline it. That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that I may also keep my dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. The Spanish proverb informes me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad which makes two. [pg cxli] The other strong reason is my integrity to the other Countesse' (i.e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though I swallowed your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had reserved not only all the verses which I should make, but all the thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because I hope she will not disdain, that I should write well of her Picture, I have obeyed you thus far as to write; but intreat you by your friendship, that by this occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable, earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not present it.

(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the Elegies. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph, ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, [pg cxlii] or some one on a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young', e.g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which compare in the Letter to Wotton, here added, at p. 188:

I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the Satyres. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across the metrical scheme—that is, the sense overflows from line to line, and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65.

In the Elegies and in the Letters the structure is not so irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i.e. the lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples are Elegie I. ll. 1 to 16, Elegie IV. ll. 13 to 26, Elegie V. l. 5 to the end, Elegie VIII. ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also the letter To the Countesse of Salisbury and the Hymn to the Saints and the Marquesse Hamylton. Each of these is composed of three or four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and [pg cxliii] ll. 37 to 46. But the rest of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure. To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written. Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text materially.

With regard to the Elegie on Mistris Boulstred (18 on the list) I cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne certainly did write, viz.

Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D.'), and that it is not included in D, H49, Lec. It is certainly Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris. Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred, says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.

In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud' is found in only five manuscripts, B, H40, O'F, P, RP31. Of these H40 and RP31 are really one, and in them [pg cxliv] the poem is not ascribed to Donne. In two others, O'F and P, the poem is given in a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of 'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If O'F and P are right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put forward in a note to the Cambridge History of Literature (iv. 216). I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own Epicedes. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I came on the ascription in H40, viz. 'By C. L. of B.' This indicated no one whom I knew; but in RP31 it appeared as 'By L. C. of B.,' i.e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates 1609 (Gosse's Life, &c., i. 217; Letters, 1651, p. 67) he speaks of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill.' That the Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is untouched by any real feeling for the [pg cxlv] subject of the elegy, displeased her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned. At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. B attributes it to 'F. B.', i.e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the Holy Sonnets with the exclamation used here:

I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.

The sonnet On the Blessed Virgin Mary (19 on the list), 'In that O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's poems in 1635 and in B, O'F, S, S96. There is little doubt that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C., in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were first published by T. Park in Heliconia, ii. 1815, and unless all of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style, and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly contradict this sonnet than the lines in the Second Anniversarie:

Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the Ode beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred it from the Appendix to the place among the Divine Poems which it occupies in 1635. Against its authenticity are the following considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented, Scholastic Divine Poems. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears, B, Cy, [pg cxlvi] H40, RP31, O'F, P, S, the best, RP31, assigns it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i.e. Lord Herbert of Cherbury.¹⁷ Mr. Chambers, indeed, inadvertently stated that in this manuscript 'it is said to have been written to George Herbert'. The name 'Sr Edw. Herbert' is written beside the poem, and that in such cases is meant to indicate the author of the poem. It seems to me quite possible that it was written by Lord Herbert, but until more evidence be forthcoming I have let it stand, because (1) the letters 'I. D.' printed after the poem show that the poem must have been so initialled in the manuscript from which it was printed, and (2) because, though not in the style of Donne's later religious poems, it is somewhat in the style of the philosophical, stoical letter which Donne addressed to Sir Edward Herbert at the siege of Juliers in 1610. The poem was possibly composed at the same time. (3) The thought of the last verse, our ignorance of ourselves, recurs in Donne's poems and prose. Compare Negative Love (p. 66):

The poem Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney, and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister, if by Donne, was probably written late in his life and never widely circulated. It occurred to me that the author might be John Davies of Hereford, who was a dependent of the Countess and her two sons, and who made a calligraphic copy of the Psalms of Sidney and his sister, from which they were printed by Singer in 1823. But Professor Saintsbury considers, I think justly, that the 'wit' of the opening lines,

is above Davies' level, and indeed the whole poem is. The lines To Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders (22 on the list) were also probably privately communicated to the person to whom they were addressed. The best argument for their genuineness is that Walton seems to quote from them when he describes Donne's preaching.

must have suggested 'always preaching to himself, like an angel from a cloud, but in none'. This does not, however, carry us very far. Walton had seen the editions of 1635 and 1639 before he wrote these lines in 1640.

The verse On the Sacrament (23 on the list) is probably assigned to Donne by a pure conjecture. It is very frequently attributed to Queen Elizabeth.

Of the two poems added in 1649 the lines Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities are of course Donne's. They appeared with his name in his lifetime, and Donne is one of the friends mentioned by Coryat in his letters from India. The Token (4 on the list) may or may not be Donne's. It is found in several, but no very good, manuscripts. Its wit is quite in Donne's style, though not absolutely beyond the compass of another. The poems which the younger Donne added in 1650 are in much the same position. 'He that cannot chose but love' (5 on the list) is a trifle, whoever wrote it. 'The heavens rejoice in motion' (10 on the list) is in a much stronger strain of paradox, and if not Donne's is by an ambitious and witty disciple. If genuine, it is strange that it did not find its way into more collections. It is found in A10, where a few of Donne's poems are given with others by Roe, Hoskins, and other wits of his circle. It is also, however, given in JC, a manuscript containing in its first part few poems that are not demonstrably genuine. As things stand, the balance of evidence is in favour of Donne's authorship.

Besides the Elegies XVIII and XIX, which are Donne's, as we have seen, and the Satyre 'Sleep next Society', which is [pg cxlviii] not Donne's, the edition of 1669 prefixed to the song Breake of Day a fresh stanza:

It appears in the same position in S96, but is given as a separate poem in A25, C, O'F, and P. It certainly has no connexion with Donne's poem, for the metre is entirely different and the strain of the poetry less metaphysical.

The separate stanza was a favourite one in Song-Books of the seventeenth century. It was printed apparently for the first time in 1612, in The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of five Parts: apt for Viols and Voices. Newly composed by Orlando Gibbons. Here it begins

In the same year it was printed in A Pilgrimes Solace. Wherein is contained Musicall Harmonie of 3, 4 and 5 parts, to be sung and plaid with the Lute and Viols. By John Dowland. The stanza begins

Mr. Chambers conjectures that the affixing of Dowland's initials to the verse in some collection led to Donne being credited with it, which is quite likely; but we are not sure that Dowland wrote it, and the common theme appears to have drawn the poems together. In The Academy of Complements, Wherein Ladies, Gentlewomen, Schollers, and Strangers may accomodate their Courtly practice with gentile Ceremonies, Complemental amorous high expressions, and Formes of speaking or writing of Letters most in fashion (1650) the verse is connected with a variation of the first stanza of Donne's poem so as to make a consistent song:

It was probably some such combination as this which suggested to the editor of 1669 to prefix the stanza to Donne's poem. The poem in The Academy of Compliments was repeated in Wits Interpreter, the English Parnassus, a sure guide to those Admirable Accomplishments that compleat our English Gentry in the most acceptable Qualifications of Discourse or Writing (1655). But the first stanza is given again in this collection as a separate poem.

The translation of the Psalme 137, which was inserted in 1633 and never withdrawn (as the Epitaph on Shakespeare was) is pretty certainly not by Donne. The only manuscript which ascribes it to him is A25 followed by C. On the other hand it is assigned to Francis Davison, editor of the Poetical Rhapsody, in RP61 (Bodleian Library). In one manuscript, Addl. MS. 27407, the poem is accompanied with a letter, unsigned and undirected, which speaks of this as one out of several translations made by the author. The handwriting and style of the letter are not Donne's, but the letter explains why this one Psalm is found floating around by itself. It was, the translator says, a freer paraphrase than the others. Apparently it proved a favourite.

When one turns from the poems attributed to Donne in the old editions to those which some of the more recent editors have added, one launches into a sea which I have no intention of attempting to navigate in its entirety. Both Sir John Simeon and Dr. Grosart were disposed to cry 'Eureka' too readily, and assigned to Donne a number of poems culled from various manuscripts for the genuineness of which there is no evidence external or internal. I shall confine my remarks to the few poems I have myself incorporated for the first time in [pg cl] an edition of Donne's poems; to the Song 'Absence hear my protestation', which it is now the fashion to ascribe to Donne absolutely, letting evidence 'go hang'; and to the four poems which Mr. Chambers printed from A25. I have added some more in my Appendix C, because they are interesting ἀδέσποτα illustrative of the influence in seventeenth-century poetry of Donne's realistic passion and his paradoxical wit.

Of the poems which appear here for the first time in a collected edition, it is not necessary to say much of those which are taken from W, the Westmoreland MS. now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who with the greatest and most spontaneous kindness has permitted me to print them all. These include two Epigrams, four additional Letters, and three Holy Sonnets. The Epigrams, the Holy Sonnets, and two of the Letters have been already printed by Mr. Gosse in his Life of John Donne, 1899. There can be no doubt of their genuineness. They enlarge a series of Letters and a series of Sonnets which appear in 1633 and in all the best manuscript collections. In their arrangement I have followed W in preference to 1633, which is based on A18, N, TC. Of the letter taken from the Burley MS. there may be greater doubt in some minds. To me it seems unquestionably Donne's (aut Donne aut Diabolus), an addition to the series of letters which he wrote to Sir Henry Wotton between the return of the Islands Expedition and Essex's return from Ireland. The Burley MS. is a commonplace-book of Wotton's and includes poems which we know as Donne's, e.g. 'Come, Madam, come'; some of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; other letters which from their substance and style seem to be Donne's; and a number of poems, including this which alone of all the doubtful poems in the manuscript is initialled 'J. D.' The manuscript contains work by Donne. Does this come under that head? Only internal evidence can decide. Of the other poems in the manuscript, most of which I print in Appendix C, none are certainly Donne's.

'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's lifetime in Davison's A Poetical Rhapsody (1602, 1608, 1621), but with no reference to Donne's authorship, although his [pg cli] name was yearly growing a more popular hostel for wandering, unclaimed poems.¹⁸ It was not printed in any edition of his poems from 1633 to 1719. It is not found in either of the most trustworthy manuscript collections, D, H49, Lec, or A18, N, TC. It is found in B, Cy, L74, O'F, P, S96, but none of these can be counted an authority. In 1711 it was for the first time ascribed to Donne in The Grove, a miscellaneous collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old Manuscript of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'. On the other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, HN, it is transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what he describes as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' (not 'by Donne'), and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H.' That other poem called

is by a Manchester manuscript (Farmer-Chetham MS., ed. Grosart, Chetham Society Publications, lxxxix, xc) assigned to 'Mr. Hoskins', and in another manuscript (A10) it is signed 'H' with the left leg of H so written as to suggest JH run together. Clearly at any rate the onus probandi lies with those who say the poem is by Donne. Internally it has never seemed to me so since I came to know Donne well. The metaphysical, subtle strain is like Donne, as it is in Soules Joy, but here as there (though there is more feeling in Absence, the closing line has a very Donne-like note of sudden anguish, 'and so miss her') the tone is airier, the prosody more tripping. The stressed syllables are less weighted emotionally and vocally. Compare

with the more tripping measure, in which one touches the stressed syllables as with tiptoe, of

There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript volume of poems which he left behind ('bigger than those of Dr. Donne') was lost in 1653.

Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers (op. cit., Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. 25707 (A25), and, so far as I know, there only. I have placed them first in Appendix C, as the only pieces in that Appendix which are at all likely to be by Donne. A25 is a manuscript written in a number of different hands, some six within the portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative age of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence. What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three poems, viz. Donne's Elegye: 'What [sic] that in Color it was like thy haire,' his Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt last died, and the Elegie of Loves progresse. It is in Elizabethan secretary's hand, and seems to me identical with the writing in which the same poems are copied in C, the Cambridge University Library MS. A second hand, B, inserts the larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in close succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A fourth hand, D, seems to be the latest because it is the handwriting in which the Index was made out, and the poems inserted in this hand are inserted in odd spaces left by the other writers. Now of the poems in question, one, A letter written by S^r H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus, is copied by D, and the same hand adds immediately An Elegie on the Death of my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First, by Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was therefore not entered here till after 1649. But of course it may have come from an older source, and it has quite the appearance [pg cliii] of being genuine. Whoever made the collection would seem to have had access to some of Goodyere's work, for this poem is almost immediately preceded by an Epithalamion of the Princess Mariage, by S^r H. G., and a little earlier the Good Friday poem by Donne is headed Mr J. Dun goeing from Sir H. G. on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the waye. That reads like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be what happened, the copyist may have ascribed to Donne some of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly there is nothing in the other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,' 'Fie, fie, you sons of Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the handwriting C) which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later in the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy body come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D., but P assigns it to F. B., and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on Beaumont occupy a considerable space in A25. He is a quite possible candidate for the authorship of some of the poems assigned to Donne in the hand C.

Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (General Index to Hazlitt's Handbook, &c., p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip Stanhope, who died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not been able to find the volume in which it appears; but, as it is said to be by John Donne Alumnus, the author must be the younger Donne.

¹ Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these, but only in an Appendix and under the title of Doubtful Poems. He has added a few more from A25, from Coryats Crudities, and from some manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were not reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much the worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has, I presume, taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and Grosart.

² All three editors have also dropped the song 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', David Laing having pointed out (Archaeologia Scotica, iv. 73-6) that this poem occurs in the Hawthornden MSS. with the signature 'J. R.' Chambers also rejects the sonnet On the Blessed Virgin Mary, probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the lines On the Sacrament.

³ I have given with each poem a list of the editions and manuscripts (known to me) in which it is contained. A glance at these will show the weight of the external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be judge for himself.

⁴ To these must of course be added poems already published in Donne's name. See II. lvi.

⁶ Chambers includes it in his Appendix A, Doubtful Poems, but seems to lean to the view that it is by Roe. The second is printed as Donne's by Grosart and as presumably Donne's by Chambers.

⁷ In O'F and S, where they also occur, they are more dispersed; but these manuscripts have, like 1635, adopted a classification of the poems they contain which involves their distribution as songs, elegies, letters and satires. A10 is the most significant witness. This manuscript contains very few poems by Donne. Why should it select just this suspicious group?

⁸ Among the marriage licences granted by the Bishop of London in 1601 (Harleian Society Publications) is the following: 'Henry Sackford the younger, of the Charter House, Gent; 27, father dead, and Sarah Rowe of St Johns in St John's Street, co. Middlesex, Maiden, dau. of John Rowe of Clapham, Beds, Esq. decd (i.e. deceas'd) about 9 years since,' &c.

⁹ See the genealogies given in the Harleian Society Publications, vol. xiii, 1878, from the Visitation of Essex 1612 (pp. 282-3) and the Visitation of Essex 1634 (p. 479).

¹⁰ The oldest was the John Rowe of Clapham, Beds. The second, Henry, was also Mayor of London and was knighted in 1603. The fourth, Robert, was the father of the ambassador, and died while his son was a child. There were two daughters—Mary, who married Thomas Randall, and Elizabeth, who married William Garret of Dorney, co. Bucks. The son of the latter couple was Donne's intimate friend George Gerrard or Garrard.

¹¹ Row, John, of Essex. arm. matric. 14 Oct., 1597, aged 16. (Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, iii, 1284). The Provost of Queen's has kindly informed me that in the College books his name is entered simply as 'Rowe' and as having entered 'Ter. Mich. 1597'. He tells me further that in Andrew Clark's edition of the University Matriculation Registers it is stated that the date of his matriculation was between Oct. 14 and Dec. 2, 1597. There can be no doubt, I think, that this is our Roe. There are not likely to have been two in the County of Essex with the right to be called 'armiger'. Had his father still lived he would have been entered as 'fil. gen.' or 'fil. arm.'

¹² Hist. MSS. Com.: Buccleugh MSS. (Montague House), vol. i, pp. 56, 58. The letters are dated May 13, Nov. 7.

¹³ Calendar of State Papers. Ireland, 1606-8, p. 538. I owe this and the last reference to Mr. Murray L. R. Beavan, University Assistant in History, Aberdeen University.

¹⁴ Other poems by Pembroke are found in the manuscript collections of Donne's poems. A scholarly edition of the poems of Pembroke and Rudyard would be a boon. Many ascribed to them by the younger Donne in his edition of 1660 could be removed and others added from manuscript sources.

¹⁵ It is one of the worst printed in 1635 and 1669 (where it first appeared in full), and has admitted of many emendations from the manuscripts. Grosart has already introduced some from the Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS., but he left some gross errors. In the lines,

—a strange reason for being enamoured. Some difficult and perhaps corrupt lines still remain.]

¹⁶ In forming this Appendix it was not my intention to remove these poems dogmatically from under the aegis of Donne's name. I wished rather to separate them from those which are indubitably his and facilitate comparison. Further evidence may show that I have erred as to one or other. This letter is the only one about which I feel any doubt myself. I have taken as much trouble with their text as with the rest of the poems.

¹⁷ H40 has no ascription. In the poem just discussed the ascription made correctly, at least intelligibly, in RP31, was transposed in H40. This must be the later collection. See II. p. cxiv.

¹⁸ Absence is printed, again unsigned, in Wit Restored in severall Select Poems not formerly published. (1658.)

COMMENTARY.

Donne is a 'metaphysical' poet. The term was perhaps first applied by Dryden, from whom Johnson borrowed it: 'He' (Donne) 'affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.' Essay on Satire. 'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.' Johnson, Life of Cowley. The parade of learning, and a philosophical or abstract treatment of love had been a strain in mediaeval poetry from the outset, manifesting itself most fully in the Tuscan poets of the 'dolce stil nuovo', but never altogether absent from mediaeval love-poetry. The Italian poet Testi (1593-1646), describing his choice of classical in preference to Italian models (he is thinking specially of Marino), says: 'poichè lasciando quei concetti metafisici ed ideali di cui sono piene le poesie italiane, mi sono provato di spiegare cose più domestiche, e di maneggiarle con effetti più famigliari a imitazione d'Ovidio, di Tibullo, di Properzio, e degli altri migliori.' Donne's love-poetry is often classical in spirit; his conceits are the 'concetti metafisici' of mediaeval poetry given a character due to his own individuality and the scientific interests of his age.

A metaphysical poet in the full sense of the word is a poet who finds his inspiration in learning; not in the world as his own and common sense reveal it, but in the world as science and philosophy report of it. The two greatest metaphysical poets of Europe are Lucretius and Dante. What the philosophy of Epicurus was to Lucretius, that of Thomas Aquinas was to Dante. Their poetry is the product of their learning, transfigured by the imagination, and it is not to be understood without some study of their thought and knowledge.

Donne is not a metaphysical poet of the compass of Lucretius and Dante. He sets forth in his poetry no ordered system of the universe. [pg 2] The ordered system which Dante had set forth was breaking in pieces while Donne lived, under the criticism of Copernicus, Galileo, and others, and no poet was so conscious as Donne of the effect on the imagination of that disintegration. In the two Anniversaries mystical religion is made an escape from scientific scepticism. Moreover, Donne's use of metaphysics is often frivolous and flippant, at best simply poetical. But he is a learned poet, and he is a philosophical poet, and without some attention to the philosophy and science underlying his conceits and his graver thought it is impossible to understand or appreciate either aright. Failure to do so has led occasionally to the corruption of his text.

Walton tells us that Donne's learning, in his eleventh year when he went to Oxford, 'made one then give this censure of him, "That this age had brought forth another Picus Mirandula; of whom story says that he was rather born than made wise by study."' 'In the most unsettled days of his youth', the same authority reports, 'his bed was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took great liberty after it.' 'He left the resultances of 1,400 authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' The lists of authors prefixed to his prose treatises and the allusions and definite references in the sermons corroborate Walton's statement regarding the range of Donne's theological and controversial reading.

Confining attention here to Donne's poetry, and the spontaneous evidence of learning which it affords, one would gather that his reading was less literary and poetic in character than was Milton's during the years spent at Horton. It is clear that he knew the classical poets, but there are few specific allusions. Ovid, Horace, and Juvenal one can trace, not any other with certainty, nor in his sermons do references to Virgil, Horace, or other poets abound.

Like Milton, Donne had doubtless read the Italian romances. One reference to Angelica and an incident in the Orlando Furioso occur in the Satyres, and from the same source as well as from an unpublished letter we learn that he had read Dante. Aretino is the only other Italian to whom he makes explicit reference.

One of Régnier's satires opens in a manner resembling the fourth of Donne's, and in a letter written from France apparently in 1612 he refers to 'a book of French Satires', which Mr. Gosse conjectures to [pg 3] be Régnier's. The resemblance may be accidental, for Donne's Satyres were written before the publication of Régnier's (1608, 1613), and Donne makes no explicit mention of him or any other French poet. We learn, however, from his letters that he had read Montaigne and Rabelais; and it is improbable that he did not share the general interest of his contemporaries in the poetry of the Pléiade. The one poet to whom recent criticism has pointed as the inspiration of Donne's metaphysical verse is the Protestant poet Du Bartas. Mr. Alfred Horatio Upham (The French Influence in English Literature. New York, 1908), and following him Sir Sidney Lee (The French Renaissance in England. Oxford, 1910), have insisted strongly on the importance of this influence. The latter goes so far as to say that 'Donne clothed elegies, eclogues, divine poems, epicedes, obsequies, satires, in a garb barely distinguishable from the style of Du Bartas and Sylvester', and that the metaphysical style in English poetry is a heritage from Du Bartas.

I confess this seems to me a somewhat exaggerated statement. When I turn from Donne's passionate and subtle songs and elegies to Sylvester's hum-drum and yet 'conceited' work, I find their styles eminently distinguishable. Mr. Upham indeed allows that Donne's genius makes 'vital and impressive' what in the original is 'vapid and commonplace'. He pleads for no more than an 'element of French suggestion'.

Of the most characteristic features of Du Bartas's rhetoric, his affected antitheses, his studied alliterative effects, and especially his double-epithets 'aime-carnage', 'charme-souci', 'blesse-honneur', Sylvester's 'forbidden-Bit-lost-glory', 'the Act-simply-pure', &c., Mr. Upham admits that Donne makes sparing use. Donne uses a fair number of compounds but the majority of these are nouns and verbs. Of the epithets only one or two are of the sentence-compressing character which the French poet cultivated. The most like is 'full-on-both-side-written rolls'. The real link between Du Bartas and Donne is that they are metaphysical poets. Following Lucretius, whom he often translates, the Frenchman set himself to give a scientific account of the creation of the universe as outlined in Genesis. He describes with the utmost minuteness of detail, and necessarily uses similes better fitted to elucidate and illustrate than to give poetic pleasure, drawn from the most everyday sources as well as arts and sciences. It was part of the programme [pg 4] of the Pléiade thus to annex the vocabulary of learning and the crafts. Now Donne may have read Du Bartas in the original, or he may have seen some parts of Sylvester's translation (it did not appear till 1598), as it was in preparation, though to a Catholic, as Donne was, the poem would not have the attraction it had for Protestant poets in England, Holland, and Germany. The bent of his own mind was to metaphysics, to erudition, and also to figures realistic and surprising rather than beautiful. It would be rash to deny that he may have found in Du Bartas a style which he preferred to the Italianate picturesqueness of sonneteers and idyllists, and been encouraged to follow his bent. That he borrowed his style from Du Bartas is non proven: and there are in his work strains of feeling, thought, and learning which cannot be traced to the French poet. Two poets more essentially unlike it would be difficult to imagine. There are very few passages where one can trace or conjecture echoes or borrowings (see note, II. p. 193). I agree indeed with Mr. Upham that the poems which most strongly suggest that Donne had been reading Du Bartas are the First and Second Anniversaries, which Sir Sidney Lee inadvertently calls early poems. Here at least he is often dealing with the same themes. One can illustrate his thought from Du Bartas. Perhaps it was the latter's poem which suggested the use of marginal notes, giving the argument of the poem.

We know from Donne's explicit statement that his library was full both of Spanish poets and Spanish theologians, and there has been some talk of Spanish influence in his poetry. But no one has adduced evidence. Gongora is out of the question, for Gongora did not begin to cultivate the extravagant conceits of his later poetry till he came under the influence of Carillo's posthumous poems in 1611 (Fitzmaurice Kelly: Spanish Literature, 283-5); nor is there much resemblance between his high-flown Marinism and Donne's metaphysical subtleties. It is possible that Spanish mysticism and religious eloquence have left traces in Donne's Divine Poems and sermons. The subject awaits investigation.

A commentator on Donne is, therefore, not called on to trace literary echoes in his poetry as Bishop Newton and others have done in Milton's poems. It is reading of another kind, though a kind also traceable in Milton, that he has to note. Donne was steeped in Scholastic Philosophy and Theology. Often under his most playful conceits lurk Scholastic definitions and distinctions. The question [pg 5] of the influence of Plato on the poets of the Renaissance has been discussed of recent years, but generally without a sufficient preliminary inquiry as to the Scholastic inheritance of these poets. Doctrines that derive ultimately, it may be, from Plato and Aristotle were familiar to Donne and others in the first place from Aquinas and the theology of the Schools, and, as Professor Picavet has insisted (Esquisse d'une histoire générale et comparée des philosophies médiévales. Paris, 1907), they entered the Scholastic Philosophy through Plotinus and were modified in the passage.¹ The present editor is in no way a specialist in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given here concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text and to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this as far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further investigation must follow. An expert will doubtless note many allusions that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have endeavoured to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.

¹ The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and Theology in English poetry deserves attention. When Milton states that

he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the Areopagite (adopted by Aquinas), that the four highest orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, and Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages.

Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen, especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes use in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton had familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy from Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and casuists. The Progresse of the Soule reveals his acquaintance with Jewish apocryphal legends.

But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; but his legal studies have left their mark in his Songs and Sonets. Of Medicine he had made an extensive study, and the poems abound in allusions to both the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new Paracelsian medicine with its chemical drugs and homoeopathic cures.² In Physics he knows, like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, [pg 6] their concentric arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c., and at the same time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science, of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their doctrines on the traditional views.

² In the Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c. (1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, Donne gives a short sketch of the history of medical doctrines from Hippocrates through Galen to Paracelsus, but declares that the new principles are attributed to the latter 'too much to his honour'.

A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn from the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh has not included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering the influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination (The English Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. Glasgow, 1906, iii), but perhaps none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my America, my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at least in imagination,

he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.

In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not so much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the form in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to his own works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or but slightly later works, as Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica. I have made constant use of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus (1845). By Professor Picavet my attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's Enneads with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's Philosophie der Griechen, on Plotinus, and Harnack's History of Dogma. Throughout, my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to accumulate parallels.

^*_*^* In the following notes the LXXX Sermons &c. (1640), Fifty Sermons &c. (1649), and XXVI Sermons &c. (1669/70) are referred to thus:—80. 19. 189, i.e. the LXXX Sermons, the nineteenth sermon, page 189. References to page and line simply of the poems are to the first volume of this edition. References to the second are given thus, II. p. 249.

THE PRINTER TO &c.

Page 1, ll. 17-18. it would have come to us from beyond the Seas: e.g. from Holland.

ll. 19-20. My charge and pains in procuring of it: A significant statement as to the source of the edition.

Page 3. Hexastichon Bibliopolae.

l. 1. his last preach'd, and printed Booke, i.e. Deaths Duell or a Consolation to the Soule against the dying Life and living Death of the body. Delivered in a sermon at Whitehall, before the Kings Majesty in the beginning of Lent 1630, &c. ... Being his last Sermon and called by his Majesties household the Doctors owne Funerall Sermon. 1632, 1633.

This has for frontispiece a bust of Donne in his shroud, engraved by Martin Dr[oeshout] from the drawing from which Nicholas Stone cut the figure on Donne's tomb (Gosse's Life, &c. ii. 288). Walton's account of the manner in which this picture was prepared is well known. See II. p. 249.

Page 4. William, Lord Craven, &c. This is the younger Donne's dedication. See Text and Canon, &c., p. lxx.

William Craven (1606-1697) entered the service of Maurice, Prince of Nassau in 1623. He served later, 1631, under Gustavus Adolphus; and became a devoted adherent of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the cause of the Palatine house. He lost his estates in the Rebellion, but after the Restoration was created successively Baron Craven of Hampsted-Marsham, Viscount Craven of Uffington, and Earl of Craven. He was an early member of the Royal Society.

Of the younger John Donne, D.C.L., whose life was dissolute and poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem addressed to his father. It is found in O'F and has been printed by Mr. Warwick Bond:

A Letter.

Pages 5, 6. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the sheets hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of Donne's poems prepared for the press in 1649. See Text and Canon, &c. They were taken from Jonson's Epigrams (1616), where they are Nos. xxiii., xciv., and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three memorable criticisms in his Conversations with Drummond (ed. Laing, Shakespeare Society, 1842):

SONGS AND SONETS.

Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as are discoverable in the Elegies, poems similar in theme and tone to the Songs and Sonets. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says, 'All Donne's Love-poems ... seem to me to fall into two divisions. There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love.' This is a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before 1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering at least courtly adoration to some other lady.

Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a [pg 9] continual contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his

The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of outlook on men and women. The Elegie XIV (if it be Donne's, and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities, the two frankly pagan Epithalamia on the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of Ignatius his Conclave, were all written long after his marriage and when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'. Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little. These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that none of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.

Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations' of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe and catche', Womans constancy, The Indifferent, Loves Vsury, The Legacie, Communitie, Confined Love, Loves Alchymie, The Flea, The Message, Witchcraft by a picture, The Apparition, Loves Deitie, Loves diet, The Will, A Jeat Ring sent, Negative love, Farewell to love. In another group the wit in Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such are The good-morrow, The Sunne Rising, The Canonization, Lovers infiniteness, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' A Feaver, Aire and Angells (touched with cynical humour at the close), Breake of day, The Anniversarie, A Valediction: of the booke, Loves growth, The Dreame, A Valediction: of weeping, The Baite, A Valediction: forbidding mourning, The Extasie, The Prohibition, The Expiration, Lecture upon the Shadow. It would, of course, be rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like The Baite, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments. But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before and after their marriage.

In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine [pg 10] examples of his subtler moods as The Funerall, The Blossome, The Primrose, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think, have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford. The two most enigmatical poems in the Songs and Sonets are Twicknam Garden and A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day. Yet the very names 'Twicknam Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless, and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention. It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS. collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.

Page 7. The Good-morrow.

The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which is given in the group of MSS. D, H49, Lec, and in 1633, reads, 3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better. The other, which is the most common in the MSS., reads, 3. childish pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of 1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer 'set up' from 1633, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. collection, probably A18, N, TC. In TCD the second recension is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the MS.; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and D, H49, Lec seems the more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether 'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two hemispheres that fit one another more exactly?' But this is not, I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the [pg 11] other. Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world. The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find a better hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.

l. 13. Let Maps to other. The edition may have dropped the 's', which occurs in most of the MSS., but the plural without 's' is common even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things.' Bunyan, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, p. 106 (Cambridge English Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile.' Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, I. i. 54.

ll. 20-1. If our two loves be one, &c. If our two loves are one, dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though two, they are always alike. What is simple—as God or the soul—cannot be dissolved; nor compounds, e.g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in contraria sunt' &c., Aquinas, Summa I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 6. The body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish; but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they shall alwaies know they shall never dye.' Sermons 80. 19. 189.

Page 8. Song.

The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title A Raritie. It is set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that Habington's poem, Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of Women (Castara, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:

A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in The Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. (1669)

l. 2. Get with child a mandrake root. 'Many Mola's and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, the first from great Antiquity, conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man.... Now whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs.' Sir Thomas Browne's Vulgar Errors (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also The Progresse of the Soule, st. xv, p. 300.

Page 10. The Undertaking.

l. 2. the Worthies. The nine worthies usually named are Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick is mentioned by Gerard Legh, Accedens of Armorye. Nash mentions Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey in Love's Labour's Lost. All the Worthies therefore covers a wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled in gold the seven [sic] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred guilders'. Vere's Commentaries (1657), p. 174.

l. 6. The skill of specular stone. Compare To the Countesse of Bedford, p. 219, ll. 28-30:

Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take 'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes Holinshed's Chronicle, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i.e. glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare not affirm for certain.' This is the 'pierre spéculaire' or 'pierre à miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians (among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the Moon, and even [pg 13] increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the Coelum Philosophorum:

'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air. Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror in which an inverted copy of an object is seen.' The old name for crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone', but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the other.

l. 16. Loves but their oldest clothes. The 'her' of B is a tempting reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their' is the common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic use of the pronoun is striking in either case.

l. 18. Vertue attir'd in woman see. The reading of the 1633 edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible form of woman and love that.'

Page 11. The Sunne Rising.

A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections with Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly what Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical and the metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.

l. 17. both th' India's of spice and Myne. A distinction that Donne is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.' Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O.E.D. does not contradict this, [pg 14] for the word had a wider connotation. Compare Loves exchange, p. 35, ll. 34-35:

And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies.' Sermons 50. 15. 123. And 'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. To Sir Robert Ker. Gosse's Life, &c., ii. 191.

l. 24. All wealth alchimie: i.e. imposture or 'glittering dross' (O.E.D.). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage.' Harrington, Orlando Furioso (1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.

Page 12. The Indifferent.

l. 7. dry corke. Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was dry and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or tragic poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his corky arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (King Lear, III. vii. 31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett's Declaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c. (1603): 'It would pose all the cunning exorcists ... to teach an old corkie woman to writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.

Page 13. Loves Usury.

l. 5. My body raigne. Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from 1635-69. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could

Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's paradoxical thesis:

ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:

I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them. Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the 1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's play' (Loves Alchimie), 'as she would man should despise the sport' (Farewell to Love). The prayer that report may ('let', not 'let not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not report'.

Page 14. The Canonization.

l. 7. Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate. Donne's conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get you to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see the face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that brings the mony in the mouth (as he did to Peter) that mony is ill fished for.' Sermons 80. 12. 122.

l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. except Lec, which here as in several other little details appears to resemble 1633 more closely than either of the other MSS., D, H49. It is quite possible that 'man' is correct—a vivid and concrete touch, but in view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words are frequently interchanged in the MSS.

ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of D, H49, Lec, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first (l. 24) to a semicolon and connects

with the two preceding lines. To me it seems the line must go with what follows, and that 'so' (which should have no comma) is not an illative conjunction but a subordinate conjunction of effect. 'Both sexes fit so entirely into one neutral thing that we die and rise the same,' &c. The Grolier Club editor, like Chambers, connects the line with what has gone before, but drops the comma after 'so', making it an adverb of degree.

ll. 37-45. And thus invoke us, &c. Grosart and Chambers have disguised and altered the sense of this stanza. Grosart, indeed, by printing 'Who did the whole world's extract', has made it completely unintelligible. Chambers's version gives a meaning, but a wrong one. He prints the last six lines thus:

These harsh constructions are not Donne's. The object of 'drove' is not the 'world's soul', but 'Countries, towns, courts'; and 'beg' is not in the indicative but the imperative mood. For clearness' sake I have bracketed ll. 42-3 and printed 'love!' otherwise leaving the punctuation unchanged.

Donne as usual is pedantically accurate in the details of his metaphor. The canonized lovers are invoked as saints, i.e. their prayers are requested. They are asked to beg from above a pattern of their love for those below. Of prayers to saints Donne speaks in one of his Letters, p. 181: 'I see not how I can admit that circuit of sending them' (i.e. letters) 'to you to be sent hither; that seems a kinde of praying to Saints, to whom God must tell first, that such a man prays to them to pray to him.'

l. 40. The 'contract' of the printed editions is doubtless correct, despite the preference of the MSS. for 'extract'. This goes in several MSS. with other errors which show confusion. D, H49, Lec read 'and drawe', a bad rhyme; and A18, N, TCC (the verse is lost in TCD) drop 'soule', reading 'the world extract'. The reading 'extract' is due to what Dr. Moore calls 'the extraordinary short-sightedness of the copyists in respect of a construction. Their vision seems often to be bounded by a single line.' To 'extract the soul' of things is a not uncommon phrase with Donne. Here it does not suit the thought which is coming so well as 'contract': 'As the spirit and soule of the whole booke of Psalmes is contracted into this psalme, so is the spirit and soule of this whole psalme contracted into this verse.' Sermons 80. 66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. Because thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.)

l. 45. A patterne of your love. The 'of our love' of 1633 might [pg 17] mean 'for our love', but it is clear from the manner in which this stanza is given in D that the copyist has misunderstood the construction—'our love' follows from the assumption that 'Countries, Townes, Courts' is the subject to 'Beg'. The colon and the capital letter would not make such a view impossible, as they might be given a merely emphasizing value; or if regarded as imperative the 'Beg' might be taken as in the third person: 'Countries, Townes, Courts—let them beg,' &c. Compare:

But clearly here 'Beg' is in the second person plural, predicate to 'You whom reverend love', and 'your love' is the right reading.

Page 16. The Triple Foole.

He is trebly a fool because (1) he loves, (2) he expresses his love in verse, (3) he thereby enables some one to set the verse to music and by singing it to re-awaken the passion which composition had lulled to sleep.

Page 17. Lovers Infiniteness.

This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is not included in the A18, N, TC collection, would seem to have undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in A25, from which Cy is copied, would seem to be the original, at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to 'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 A25 has obviously interchanged 'thine' and 'mine'. The slightly different version of JC gives the correct order. The generally careful D, H49, Lec group has an unusually faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with S96) 'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.

'Lovers Infiniteness' is a strange title. It is not found in any of the MSS., and possibly should be 'Loves Infiniteness'. Yet the 'Lovers' suits the closing thought:

ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct that of 1633 without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the [pg 18] poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet no more', &c.

l. 9. generall is the reading of two MSS. which are practically one. I have recorded it because (1) ll. 29-30 (see textual note) would seem to suggest that their version of the poem is an early one (revised by Donne), and this may be an early reading; (2) because in l. 20 this epithet is used as though repeated, 'thy gift being generall.' It would be not unlike Donne to quibble with the word, making it mean first a gift made generally to all, and secondly a gift general in its content, not limited or defined in any way. The whole poem is a piece of legal quibbling not unlike Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet:

Page 18. Song.

Sweetest love, &c. Of the music to this and 'Send home my long stray'd eyes' I can discover no trace. The Baite was doubtless sung to the same air as Marlowe's 'Come live with me'. See II. p. 57.

ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of 1633, which has the support of all the MSS. That of 1635-54 is an attempt to accommodate the lines, by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in the other stanzas.

Page 20. The Legacie.

ll. 9-16. I heard me say, &c. The construction of this verse has proved rather a difficulty to editors. I give it as printed by Chambers and by the Grolier Club editor. Chambers's modernized version runs:

In my own version the only departure which I have made from the punctuation of the 1633 version is the substitution of a semicolon for a comma after 'lye' (l. 14). If inverted commas are to be used at all it seems to me they would need to be extended to 'gone' (l. 12) or to 'lie' (l. 14). As Donne is addressing the lady throughout it is difficult to distinguish what he says to her now from what he said on the occasion imagined.

But the point in which both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor seem to me in error is in connecting l. 14, When I had ripp'd, &c., with what follows instead of with the immediately preceding line. There is no justification for changing the comma after 'none' either to a semicolon or a full stop. The meaning of ll. 13-14 is, 'But alas! when I had ripp'd me and search'd where hearts did (i.e. used to) lie, I could there find none.' It is so that the Dutch translator understands the lines:

The last two lines are a comment on the whole incident, the making of the will and the poet's inability to implement it.

l. 20. It was intire to none: i.e. 'It was tied to no one lover.' The word 'entire' in this sense is still found on public-house signs, and misled the American Pinkerton in Stevenson's The Wrecker. Compare: 'But this evening I will spie upon the B[ishop] and give you an account to-morrow morning of his disposition; when, if he cannot be intire to you, since you are gone so farre downwards in your favours to me, be pleased to pursue your humiliation so farre as to chuse your day, and either to suffer the solitude of this place, or to change it, by such company, as shall waite upon you.' Letters, p. 315 (To ... Sir Robert Karre). This seems to mean, 'if the Bishop cannot fulfill, be faithful to, his engagement to you, come and dine here.'

ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The former, following 1669, but altering the punctuation, prints:

The 'for our loss be sad' comes in very strangely before the end, nor is the force of 'and therefore' very clear.

The Grolier Club editor, following the words of 1633, but altering the punctuation, reads:

Apparently the heart was sad for our losses because it was no better than might be made by art. The confusion arises from deserting the punctuation of 1633. 'For our losses sad' is an adjectival qualification of 'I'. 'I, sad to have lost my heart, which by legacy was yours, resolved as a pis aller to send this, which seemed as good as could be made by art. But to send it was impossible, for no man could hold it. It was thine.'

But this does not appear to be quite accurate. Huyghens appears to think that Donne could not give his heart to the lady, because it was hers already. What he really says is, that no one could keep this heart of hers, which had taken the place of his own in his bosom, because, being hers, it was too volatile.

Page 21. A Feaver.

'I cannot but marvel from what Sibyl or Oracle they' (the Ancients) 'stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say,

I believe the World grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles. As the work of Creation was above nature, so is its adversary annihilation; without which the World hath not its end, but its mutation. Now what force should be able to consume it thus far, without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my Philosophy cannot inform me.' Browne's Religio Medici, sect. 45.

Page 22. Aire and Angels.

l. 19. Ev'ry thy haire. This, the reading of 1633-39 and the MSS., is, I think, preferable to the amended 'Thy every hair', &c., of the 1650-69 editions (which Chambers adopts, ascribing it to 1669 alone), though the difference is slight. 'Every thy hair' has the force of 'Thy every hair' with the additional suggestion of 'even thy least hair' derived from the construction with a superlative adjective. 'Every the least remembrance.' J. King, Sermons 28. 'Every, the most complex, web of thought may be reduced to simple syllogisms.' Sir W. Hamilton. See note to The Funerall, l. 3.

St. Thomas (Summa Theol. I. li. 2) discusses the nature of the body assumed by Angels when they appear to men, seeing that naturally they are incorporeal. There being four elements, this body must consist of one of these, but 'Angeli non assumunt corpora de terrâ vel aquâ: quia non subito disparerent. Neque iterum de igne: quia comburerent ea quae contingerent. Neque iterum ex aere: quia aer infigurabilis est et incolorabilis'. To this Aquinas replies, 'Quod licet aer in sua raritate manens non retineat figuram neque colorem: quando tamen condensatur, et figurari et colorari potest: sicut patet in nubibus. Et sic Angeli assumunt corpora ex aere, condensando ipsum virtute divina, quantum necesse est ad corporis assumendi formationem.'

Milton's language is vague and inconsistent, but his angels are indubitably corporeal. When Satan is wounded,

The lines italicized indicate that Milton is familiar with the doctrine of the schools, and is giving it a turn of his own. Milton's angels, apparently, do not assume a body of air but, remaining in their own ethereal substance, assume what form and colour they choose. Raphael, thus having passed through the air like a bird,

Nash says, speaking of Satan, 'Lucifer (before his fall) an Archangel, was a cleere body, compact of the purest and brightest of the ayre, but after his fall hee was vayled with a grosser substance, and tooke a new forme of darke and thicke ayre, which he still reteyneth.' Pierce Penniless (Grosart), ii. 102. The popular mind had difficulty in appreciating the scholastic doctrine of the purely spiritual nature of angels who do not possess but only assume bodies; who do not occupy any point in space but are virtually present as operating at that point. 'Per applicationem igitur virtutis angelicae ad aliquem locum qualitercumque dicitur Angelus esse in loco corporeo.' The popular mind gave them thin bodies and wondered how many could stand on a needle.

The Scholastic doctrine of Angelic bodies was an inheritance from the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the bodies of demons, the beings intermediary between gods and men. According to Plotinus these could assume a body of air or of fire, but the generally entertained view of the school was, that their bodies were of air. Apuleius was the author of a definition of demons which was transmitted through the Middle Ages: 'Daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio rationalia, animo passiva, corpore aeria, tempore aeterna.' See also Dante, Purgatorio, xv. The aerial or aetherial body is a tenet of mysticism. It has been defended by such different thinkers as Leibnitz and Charles Bonnet. See Bouillet's note to Plotinus's Enneads, I. 454.

Page 23. Breake of day.

This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not vice versa, though the fact has eluded some of the copyists, who have tried to change the pronouns. It is strange to find the subtle and erudite Donne in his quest of realism falling into line with the popular song-writer. Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his learned and delightful essay on the mediaeval lyric (Early English Lyrics, 1907) that the popular as opposed to the courtly love-song was frequently put into the mouth of the woman. One has only to turn to Burns and the Scotch lyrists to find the same thing true. This song, indeed, is clearly descended from the popular aube, or lyric dialogue of lovers parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened by the punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.

ll. 13-18. Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c. 'It is a good definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is Animae vacantis passio, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind. For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love.' Sermons 26. 384.

Page 24. The Anniversarie.

l. 3. The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe: i.e. which makes times and seasons as they pass.

The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone being given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be supplied with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers, inadvertently or from some copy of 1633, reads 'time', and this makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not improve the construction.

l. 22. But wee no more, then all the rest. The 'wee' of every MS. which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading. The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of 1633 imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. But he was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we are in heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven indeed we shall be 'throughly blest', but all in heaven are equally happy, whereas here on earth,

The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than all the rest'.

The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves on the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John xiv. 2, they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according to their merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision of God:

But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an [pg 24] in gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De hoc August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo erunt, scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia in omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod habebunt singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis omnium erit per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod par gaudium omnes habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, quia per charitatem quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque gaudebit de bono alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. Sed si par erit cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium beatitudo; quod constat omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest quod beatitudo par esset si ita esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit, non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem beatitudinis. Potest etiam sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur paritas ad intensionem affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem rerum de quibus laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, gaudebunt omnes.' Petri Lombardi ... Sententiarum Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare Aquinas, Summa, Supplement. Quaest. xciii.

All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, is Piccardo's answer to Dante (Paradiso, iii. 70-88): 'So that our being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is a joy to all the realm, as to the King, who draweth our wills to what he willeth: and his will is our peace.'

ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that 1633 has in this poem followed not D, H49, Lec but A18, N, TC.

Page 25. A Valediction: of my name in the window.

I have adopted from the title of this poem in D, H49, Lec the correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions the titles run straight on, A Valediction of my name, in the window. This has led in the case of the next of these poems, A Valediction of the booke, to the mistake expressed in the title of 1633, Valediction to his Booke, and repeated by Grosart, that the latter was a dedication, 'formed the concluding poem of the missing edition of his poems.' This is a complete mistake. Valediction is the general title of a poem bidding farewell. Of the Booke, Of teares, &c., indicate the particular themes. This is clearly brought out in O'F, where they are brought together and numbered. Valediction 2. of Teares, &c.

Page 26, l. 28. The Rafters of my body, bone. Compare: 'First, Ossa, bones, We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation, what they are; They are these Beames, and Timbers, and Rafters of these Tabernacles, these Temples of the Holy Ghost, these bodies of ours.' Sermons 80. 51. 516.

This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 [pg 25] it went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' was changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption that 'so' pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, 'so' refers back to the preceding verse. Donne has described how from his anatomy or skeleton, i.e. his name scratched in the glass, the lady may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens the new verse by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter ... we have Job's Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced.... Job felt the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation too; and it was all one hand: This is God's Method ... even God's demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections are so many recompactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole peece, and he cuts us out of the whole peece into peeces, that he may make us up into a whole garment.' Sermons 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration.' Sermons 80. 55. 552. With the third line, 'As all the virtuous powers,' Donne begins a new comparison which is completed in the next stanza. Therefore the sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text with a colon. The full stop of the later editions, which Chambers adopts, is obviously wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains the comma at 'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous stanza, the sense becomes very obscure.

Page 28. Twicknam Garden.

l. 1. surrounded with tears: i.e. overflowed with tears, the root idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:

Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which are so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures themselves, and suppresse and surround them.' Sermons 80. 59. 599.

With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and season where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent some of my meditations to you.... The pleasantnesse of the season displeases me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older and not better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being to pass more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out all my ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and so am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. Letters (1651), pp. 78-9 (To Sir Henry Goodyere).

l. 15. Indure, nor yet leave loving. This is at first sight a strange reading, and I was disposed to think that 1635-69, which has the support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority), must be right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is probably addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving' as though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden' suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to linger here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.

It is remarkable that D, H49, Lec, and H40 omit this half line. If the same omission was in the MS. from which 1633 printed, the present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older than that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce the effect of the alliteration:

Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be ever the faithful lover.' Compare Loves Deitie, l. 24. 'Love might make me leave loving.' The remainder of the verse may have been suggested by Jonson's

l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and 'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from A18, N, TC; D, H49, Lec; and H40. It is surely much more in Donne's style than the colourless and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with the next line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the mandrake, then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or 'flow'. The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that the mandrake is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to groan:

In a metaphor where two objects are identified such a transference of attributes is quite permissible. Moreover, although 'shriek' is the more common word, 'groan' is used of the mandrake:

Page 29. A Valediction: of the Booke.

l. 3. Esloygne. Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good English form.

The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with 's' disappears after the seventeenth century.

Page 30, l. 7. Her who from Pindar could allure. Corinna, who five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, Var. Hist. xiii. 25, referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix. 22.

l. 8. And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame. His wife, Polla Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first books of his Pharsalia'. Lemprière. The source of this tradition I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe versum ... complevit ... Argentaria cum Lucano.'

l. 9. And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name. I owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers to the Myriobiblon or Bibliotheca of Photius, of which the first edition was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an abstract of a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that Musaeus' daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her work Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers to Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work Homer got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This last source is mentioned by Lemprière, who knows nothing of the other. Probably, therefore, it is the better known tradition.

ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of l. 21 and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines of the stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, in cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the only instruments for Loves clergy—their Missal and Breviary.' I presume this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems [pg 28] to me that with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the end of l. 22.

l. 25. Vandals and Goths inundate us. This, the reading of quite a number of independent MSS., seems to me greatly preferable to that of the printed texts:

The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are errors due to misunderstanding, e.g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb' show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving, or conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor mistook 'in[~u]date' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why the epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not extended to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by Donne in the sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which invasive Armies pour upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name of Law, The Law of Armes.' Sermons 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:

Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of the Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here: 'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes et multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet super omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per Iudam, inundans, et transiens usque ad collum veniet.' Isaiah viii. 7-8.

Donne uses the word exactly as here in the Essays in Divinity: 'To which foreign sojourning ... many have assimilated and compared the Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded in Avignon seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of the Goths in Italy.' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.

Page 31, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood, and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover [pg 29] who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or "conscience".'

'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of "bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or inspiring fear in those who descry it.'

l. 53. In this thy booke, such will their nothing see. After some hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of 1633 and 1669, 'there something.' I do so because (1) the MSS. support it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance; (2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton, and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the Cambridge History of Literature, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully rounded 'no'. Compare Negative Love, l. 16.

With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture.' Sermons 80. 78. 791.

'Un personnage de grande dignité, me voulant approuver par authorité cette queste de la pierre philosophale où il est tout plongé, m'allegua dernièrement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur lesquels il disoit s'estre premièrement fondé pour la descharge de sa conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, à la verité, l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien proprement accommodée à la défence de cette belle science.' Montaigne, Apologie de Raimond Sebond (Les Essais, ii. 12).

Page 32, ll. 59-61. To take a latitude, &c. The latitude of a spot may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a star whose altitude, i.e. distance from the equator, is known. The words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.

This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an [pg 30] instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the time of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. In certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted and carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.

The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis. 'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love will be.' There is no real appropriateness.

Page 33. Loves Growth.

ll. 7-8. But if this medicine, &c. 'The quintessence then is a certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced, and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter most subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from all the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is, so to say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut up within things but now free from any domicile and from all outward incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties of things.... Now the fact that this quintessence cures all diseases does not arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely its great cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner, it alters the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it.... When therefore the quintessence is separated from that which is not the quintessence, as the soul from its body, and itself is taken into the body, what infirmity is able to withstand this so noble, pure, and powerful nature, or to take away our life save death, which being predestined separates our soul and body, as we teach in our treatise on Life and Death. But by whatsoever method it takes place, the quintessence should not be extracted by the mixture or the addition of incongruous matters; but the element of the quintessence must be extracted from a separated body, and in like manner by that separated body which is extracted.' Paracelsus, The Fourth Book of the Archidoxies. Concerning the Quintessence.

The O.E.D. quotes the first sentence of this passage to illustrate its first sense of the word—'the "fifth essence" of ancient and mediaeval philosophy, supposed to be the substance of which the heavenly bodies were composed, and to be actually latent in all things, the extraction of it ... being one of the great objects of Alchemy.' But Paracelsus expressly denies 'that the quintessence exists as a fifth element beyond the other four'; and as he goes on [pg 31] to discuss the different quintessences of different things (each thing having in its constitution the four elements, though one may be predominant) it would seem that he is using the word rather in the second sense given in the O.E.D.—'The most essential part of any substance, extracted by natural or artificial processes.' Probably the two meanings ran into each other. There was a real and an ideal quintessence of things. A specific sense given to the word in older Chemistry is a definite alcoholic tincture obtained by digestion at a gentle heat. This is probably the 'soule of simples' (p. 186, l. 26), unless that also is the quintessence in Paracelsus's full sense of the word.

This certainly makes the verse clearer. As it stands l. 18 is rather an enigma. The stars are not revealed by the sun, but hidden. Grosart's note is equally enigmatical: 'a curious phrase meaning that the stars that show in daylight are not enlarged, but showne to be brighter than their invisible neighbours, and to be comparatively brighter than they appear to be when all are seen together in the darkness of the night.' P is so carelessly written that an occasional good reading may be an old one because there is no evidence of any editing. The copyist seems to have written on without paying any attention to the sense of what he set down. Still, 'Gentle' is the reading of all the other MSS. and editions, and I do not think it is necessary or desirable to change it. But P's emendation shows what Donne meant. By 'showne' he does not mean 'revealed'—an adjectival predicate 'larger' or 'greater' must be supplied from the verb 'enlarg'd'. 'The stars at sunrise are not really made larger, but they are made to seem larger.' It is a characteristically elliptical and careless wording of a characteristically acute and vivid image. Mr. Wells has used the same phenomenon with effect:

"In the sky. Already. On the blackness—a little touch of blue. See! The stars seem larger. And the little ones and all those dim nebulosities we saw in empty space—they are hidden."

Swiftly, steadily the day approached us.' The first Men in the Moon. (Chap. vii. Sunrise on the Moon.)

A similar phenomenon is noted by Donne: 'A Torch in a misty night, seemeth greater then in a clear.' Sermons 50. 36. 326.

Page 34. Loves Exchange.

l. 11. A non obstante: a privilege, a waiving of any law in favour of an individual: 'Who shall give any other interpretation, any modification, any Non obstante upon his law in my behalf, when he comes to judge me according to that law which himself hath made.' Sermons 50. 12. 97. 'A Non obstante and priviledge to doe a sinne before hand.' Ibid. 50. 35. 313.

l. 14. minion: i.e. 'one specially favoured or beloved; a dearest friend' &c. O.E.D. Not used in a contemptuous sense. 'John the Minion of Christ upon earth, and survivor of the Apostles, (whose books rather seem fallen from Heaven, and writ with the hand which ingraved the stone Tables, then a mans work)' &c. Sermons 50. 33. 309.

Page 36. Confined Love.

Compare with this the poem Loves Freedome in Beaumont's Poems (1652), sig. E. 6:

Poems on such themes were doubtless exercises of wit at which more than one author tried his hand in rivalry with his fellows.

l. 16. And not to seeke new lands, or not to deale withall. I have, after some consideration, adhered to the 1633 reading. Chambers has adopted that of the later editions, taking the line to mean that a man builds ships in order to seek new lands and to deal or trade with all lands. But ships cannot trade with inland countries. The form 'withal' is the regular one for 'with' when it follows the noun it governs. 'We build ships not to let them lie in harbours but to [pg 33] seek new lands with, and to trade with.' The MS. evidence is not of much assistance, because it is not clear in all cases what 'w^th all' stands for. The words were sometimes separated even when the simple preposition was intended. 'People, such as I have dealt with all in their marchaundyse.' Berners' Froissart, I. cclxvii. 395 (O.E.D.). But D, H49, Lec read 'w^th All', supporting Chambers.

Page 37. The Dreame.

I have left the punctuation of the first stanza unaltered. The sense is clear and any modernization alters the rhetoric. Chambers places a semicolon after 'dreame' and a full stop after 'phantasie'. The last is certainly wrong, for the statement 'It was a theme', &c. is connected not with what precedes, but with what follows, 'Therefore thou waked'st me wisely.' In like manner Chambers's full stop after 'but continued'st it' breaks the close connexion with the two following lines, which are really an adverbial clause of explanation or reason. 'My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it,' for 'Thou art so truth', &c. A full stop might more justifiably be placed after 'histories', but the semicolon is more in Donne's manner.

l. 7. Thou art so truth. The evidence of the MSS. shows that both 'truth' and 'true' were current versions and explains the alteration of 1635-69. But 'truth' is both the more difficult reading and the more subtle expression of Donne's thought; 'true' is the obvious emendation of less metaphysical copyists and editors. Donne's 'Love' is not true as opposed to false only; she is 'truth' as opposed to dreams or phantasms or aught that partakes of unreality. She is essentially truth as God is: 'Respondeo dicendum quod ... veritas invenitur in intellectu, secundum quod apprehendit rem ut [pg 34] est; et in re, secundum quod habet esse conformabile intellectui. Hoc autem maxime invenitur in Deo. Nam esse eius non solum est conforme suo intelligere; et suum intelligere est mensura et causa omnis alterius esse, et omnis alterius intellectus; et ipse est suum esse et intelligere. Unde sequitur quod non solum in ipso sit veritas, sed quod ipse sit ipsa summa et prima veritas. Summa I. vi. 5.

To deify the object of your love was a common topic of love-poetry; Donne does so with all the subtleties of scholastic theology at his finger-ends. In this single poem he attributes to the lady addressed two attributes of Deity, (1) the identity of being and essence, (2) the power of reading the thoughts directly.

'A sodain light brought into a room doth awaken some men; but yet a noise does it better.' Sermons 50. 38. 344.

Modern editors, by removing the comma after 'thoughts', have altered the sense of these lines. It is not that she could read his thoughts better than an angel, but that she could read them at all, a power which is not granted to Angels.

St. Thomas (Summa Theol. Quaest. lvii. Art. 4) discusses 'Utrum angeli cognoscant cogitationes cordium', and concludes, 'Cognoscunt Angeli cordium cogitationes in suis effectibus: ut autem in se ipsis sunt, Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae.' Angels may read our thoughts by subtler signs than our words and acts, or even those changes of countenance and pulsation which we note in each other, 'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales perpendunt.' But to know them as they are in the intellect and will belongs only to God, to whom only the freedom of the human will is subject, and a man's thoughts are subject to his will. 'Manifestum est autem, quod ex sola voluntate dependet, quod aliquis actu aliqua consideret; quia cum aliquis habet habitum scientiae, vel species intelligibiles in eo existentes, utitur eis cum vult. Et ideo dicit Apostolus I Corinth. secundo: quod quae sunt hominis, nemo novit nisi spiritus hominis qui in ipso est.'

Donne recurs to this theme very frequently: 'Let the Schoole dispute infinitely (for he that will not content himself with means of salvation till all Schoole points be reconciled, will come too late); let Scotus and his Heard think, That Angels, and separate souls have a [pg 35] naturall power to understand thoughts ... And let Aquinas present his arguments to the contrary, That those spirits have no naturall power to know thoughts; we seek no farther, but that Jesus Christ himself thought it argument enough to convince the Scribes and Pharisees, and prove himself God, by knowing their thoughts. Eadem Maiestate et potentia sayes S. Hierome, Since you see I proceed as God, in knowing your thoughts, why beleeve you not that I may forgive his sins as God too?' Sermons 80. 11. 111; and compare also Sermons 80. 9. 92.

'If it' (i.e. a torch) 'have never been lighted, it does not easily take light, but it must be bruised and beaten first; if it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire of it self, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any convenient distance.' Sermons 50. 36. 332.

Page 38. A Valediction: of Weeping.

ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what follows—wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined, stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls, so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt, estranging sea".'

It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers' unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here:

Page 39. Loves Alchymie.

l. 7. th'Elixar: i.e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of quintessences (see note, II. p. 30) Paracelsus declares that there are certain quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious stones, &c., 'of more importance than that they should be called a quintessence. It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and mystery ... Among these arcana we here put forward four. Of these arcana the first is the mercury of life, the second is the primal matter, the third is the Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the tincture. But although these arcana are rather angelical than human to speak of we shall not shrink from them.' From the description he gives they all seem to operate more or less alike, purging metals and other bodies from disease.

ll. 7-10. And as no chymique yet, &c. 'My Lord Chancellor gave me so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly advice that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries by the way, though I attain not mine end.' To ... Sir H. G., Gosse's Life, &c., ii. 49.

The punctuation of these lines in 1633-54 is ambiguous, and Chambers has altered it wrongly to

The MSS. generally support the punctuation which I have adopted, which is that of the Grolier Club edition.

Page 40. The Flea.

I have restored this poem to the place it occupied in 1633. In 1635 it was placed first of all the Songs and Sonets. A strange choice to our mind, but apparently the poem was greatly admired as a masterpiece of wit. It is the first of the pieces translated by Huyghens:

De Vloy.

and was selected for special commendation by some of his correspondents. Coleridge comments upon it in verse:

Page 41. The Curse.

l. 3. His only, and only his purse. This, the reading of all the editions except the last, and of the MSS., is obviously right. What is to dispose 'some dull heart to love' is his only purse and his alone, no one's but his purse. Chambers adopts the 1669 conjecture, 'Him only for his purse,' but in that case there is no subject to 'may dispose', or if 'some dull heart' be subject then 'itself' must be supplied—a harsh construction. 'Dispose' is not used intransitively in this sense.

l. 27. Mynes. I have adopted the plural from the MSS. It brings it into line with the other objects mentioned.

Page 43. The Message.

l. 11. But if it be taught by thine. It seems incredible that Donne should have written 'which if it' &c. immediately after the 'which' of the preceding line. I had thought that the 1633 printer had accidentally repeated from the line above, but the evidence of the MSS. points to the mistake (if it is a mistake) being older than that. 'Which' was in the MS. used by the printer. If 'But' is not Donne's own reading or emendation it ought to be, and I am loath to injure a charming poem by pedantic adherence to authority in so small a point. De minimis non curat lex; but art cares very much indeed. JC and P read 'Yet since it hath learn'd by thine'.

The 'crosse' of all the MSS. is pretty certainly what Donne wrote. An editor would change to 'break' hardly the other way. To 'crosse' is, of course, to 'cancel'. Compare Jonson's Poetaster, Act II, Scene i:

Page 44. A Nocturnall, &c.

l. 12. For I am every dead thing. I have not thought it right to alter the 1633 'every' to the 'very' of 1635-69. 'Every' has some MS. support, and it is the more difficult reading, though of course 'a very' might easily enough be misread. But I rather think that 'every' expresses what Donne means. He is 'every dead thing' because he is the quintessence of all negations—'absence, darkness, death: things which are not', and more than that, 'the first nothing.'

ll. 14-18. For his art did expresse ... things which are not. This is a difficult stanza in a difficult poem. I have after considerable hesitation adopted the punctuation of 1719, which is followed by all the modern editors. This makes 'dull privations' and 'lean emptinesse' expansions of 'nothingnesse'. This is the simpler construction. I am not sure, however, that the punctuation of the earlier editions and of the MSS. may not be correct. In that case 'From dull privations' goes with 'he ruined me'. Milton speaks of 'ruining from Heaven'. 'From me, who was nothing', says Donne, 'Love extracted the very quintessence of nothingness—made me more nothing than I already was. My state was already one of "dull privation" and "lean emptiness", and Love reduced it still further, making me once more the non-entity I was before I was created.' Only Donne could be guilty of such refined and extravagant subtlety. But probably this is to refine too much. There is no example of 'ruining' as an active verb used in this fashion. A feature of the MS. collection from which this poem was probably printed is the omission of stops at the end of the line. In the next verse Donne pushes the annihilation further. Made nothing by Love, by the death of her he loves he is made the elixir (i.e. the quintessence) not now of ordinary nothing, but of 'the first nothing', the nothing which preceded God's first act of creation. The poem turns upon the thought of degrees in nothingness.

For 'elixir' as identical with 'quintessence' see Oxf. Eng. Dict., Elixir, † iii. b, and the quotation there, 'A distill'd quintessence, a pure elixar of mischief, pestilent alike to all.' Milton, Church Govt.

Of the 'first Nothing' Donne speaks in the Essays in Divinity (Jessop, 1855), pp. 80-1, but in a rather different strain: 'To speak truth freely there was no such Nothing as this' (the nothing which a man might wish to be) 'before the beginning: for he that hath refined all the old definitions hath put this ingredient Creabile (which cannot be absolutely nothing) into his definition of creation; and that Nothing which was, we cannot desire; for man's will is not larger than God's power: and since Nothing was not a pre-existent matter, nor mother of this all, but only a limitation when any thing began to be; how impossible it is to return to that first point of time, since God (if it imply contradiction) cannot reduce yesterday? Of this we will say no more; for this Nothing being no creature; is more incomprehensible than all the rest.'

which is to me unintelligible. 'If I were a beast, I should prefer some end, some means' refers to the Aristotelian and Schools doctrine of the soul. The soul of man is rational and self-conscious; of beasts perceptive and moving, therefore able to select ends and means; the [pg 39] vegetative soul of plants selects what it can feed on and rejects what it cannot, and so far detests and loves. Even stones, which have no souls, attract and repel. But even of stones Donne says: 'We are not sure that stones have not life; stones may have life; neither (to speak humanely) is it unreasonably thought by them, that thought the whole world to be inanimated by one soule, and to be one intire living creature; and in that respect does S. Augustine prefer a fly before the Sun, because a fly hath life, and the Sun hath not.' Sermons 80. 7. 69-70.

l. 35. If I an ordinary nothing were. 'A shadow is nothing, yet, if the rising or falling sun shines out and there be no shadow, I will pronounce there is no body in that place neither. Ceremonies are nothing; but where there are no ceremonies, order, and obedience, and at last (and quickly) religion itself will vanish.' Sermons (quoted in Selections from Donne, 1840).

l. 41. Enjoy your summer all; This is Grosart's punctuation. The old editions have a comma. Chambers, obviously quite wrongly, retains the comma, and closes the sentence in the next line. The clause 'Since she enjoys her long night's festival' explains 43 'Let me prepare towards her', &c., not 41 'Enjoy your summer all'.

Page 47. The Apparition.

ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of the thought to the climax,

l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the 1669 text. The correct reading of 1633 was spoiled in 1635 by accidentally dropping 'will', and this error continued through 1639-54. The 1669 editor, detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by interpolating 'a' and 'even'.

Page 48. The Broken Heart.

l. 8. A flaske of powder burne a day. The 'flash' of later editions is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (1633 and many MSS.) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of powder seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what happened to the heart which love inflamed

l. 14. and never chawes: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses: 'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow; but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself.' Sermons 80. 18. 178.

Page 49. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will conclude mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever equal them.' The critics probably included Wotton,—perhaps also Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness to find our own poets as good as the Ancients.

The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the epithet 'tender' can be applied. The Valediction: of weeping is more passionate.

An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a volume in the Bodleian Library.

ll. 9-12. Moving of th'earth, &c. 'The "trepidation" was the precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline Sphere.' Chambers.

l. 16. Those things which elemented it. Chambers follows 1669 and reads 'The thing'—wrongly, I think. 'Elemented' is just 'composed', and the things are enumerated later, 20. 'eyes, lips, hands.' Compare:

This and the fellow poem Upon Absence may be compared with Donne's poems on the same theme. See Saintsbury's Caroline Poets, i, pp. 548, 550.

l. 20. and hands: 'and' has the support of all the MSS. The want of it is no great loss, for though without it the line moves a little irregularly, 'and hands' is not a pleasant concatenation.

ll. 25-36. If they be two, &c. Donne's famous simile has a close parallel in Omar Khayyam. Whether Donne's 'hydroptic immoderate thirst of humane learning and languages' extended to Persian I do not know. Captain Harris has supplied me with translations and reference:

'Oh my soul, you and I are like a compass. We form but one body having two points. Truly one point moves from the other point, and makes the round of the circle; but the day draws near when the two points must re-unite.' J. H. M^cCarthy (D. Nutt, 1898).

Page 51. The Extasie.

This is one of the most important of the lyrics as a statement of Donne's metaphysic of love, of the interconnexion and mutual dependence of body and soul. It is printed in 1633 from D, H49, Lec or a MS. resembling it, and from this and the other MSS. I have introduced some alterations in the text: and two rather vital emendations, ll. 55 and 59. The Extasie is probably the source of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's best known poem, An Ode Upon a Question Moved Whether Love Should Continue For Ever. Compare with the opening lines of Donne's poem:

In a letter to Sir Thomas Lucy, Donne writes: 'Sir I make account that this writing of letters, when it is with any seriousness, is a kind of extasie, and a departing, and secession, and suspension of the soul, which doth then communicate itself to two bodies.' Ecstasy in Neo-Platonic philosophy was the state of mind in which the soul, escaping from the body, attained to the vision of God, the One, the Absolute. Plotinus thus describes it: 'Even the word vision (θέαμα) does not seem appropriate here. It is rather an ecstasy (ἔκστασις), a simplification, an abandonment of self, a perfect quietude (στάσις), a desire of contact, in short a wish to merge oneself in that which one contemplates in the Sanctuary.' Sixth Ennead, ix. 11 (from the French translation of Bouillet, 1857-8). Readers will observe how closely Donne's poem agrees with this—the exodus of the souls (ll. 15-16), the perfect quiet (ll. 18-20), the new insight (ll. 29-33), the contact and union of the souls (l. 35). Donne had probably read Ficino's translation of Plotinus (1492), but the doctrine of ecstasy passed into Christian thought, connecting itself especially with the experience of St. Paul (2 Cor. xii. 2). St. Paul's word is ἁρπαγέντα, and Aquinas distinguishes between 'raptus' and 'ecstasis': 'Extasis importat simpliciter excessum a seipso ... raptus super hoc addit violentiam quandam.' Another word for 'ecstasy' was 'enthusiasm'.

l. 9. So to entergraft our hands. All the later editions read 'engraft', which makes the line smoother. But to me it seems more probable that Donne wrote 'entergraft' and later editors changed this to 'engraft', than that the opposite should have happened. Moreover, 'entergraft' gives the reciprocal force correctly, which 'engraft' does not. Donne's precision is as marked as his subtlety. 'Entergraft' has the support of all the best MSS.

Page 52, l. 20. And wee said nothing all the day. 'En amour un silence vaut mieux qu'un langage. Il est bon d'être interdit; il y a une éloquence de silence qui pénètre plus que la langue ne saurait faire. Qu'un amant persuade bien sa maîtresse quand il est interdit, et que d'ailleurs il a de l'esprit! Quelque vivacité que l'on ait, il est bon dans certaines rencontres qu'elle s'éteigne. Tout cela se passe sans règle et sans réflexion; et quand l'esprit le fait, il n'y pensait pas auparavant. C'est par nécessité que cela arrive.' Pascal, Discours sur les passions de l'amour.

l. 32. Wee see, wee saw not what did move. Chambers inserts a comma after 'we saw not', perhaps rightly; but the punctuation of the old editions gives a distinct enough sense, viz., 'We see now, that we did not see before the true source of our love. What we thought was due to bodily beauty, we perceive now to have its source in the [pg 43] soul.' Compare, 'But when I wakt, I saw, that I saw not.' The Storme, l. 37.

l. 42. Interinanimates two soules. The MSS. give the word which the metre requires and which I have no doubt Donne used. The verb inanimates occurs more than once in the sermons. 'One that quickens and inanimates all, and is the soul of the whole world.' Sermons 80. 29. 289. 'That universall power which sustaines, and inanimates the whole world.' Ibid. 80. 31. 305. 'In these bowels, in the womb of this promise we lay foure thousand yeares; The blood with which we were fed then, was the blood of the Sacrifices, and the quickening which we had there, was an inanimation, by the often refreshing of this promise of that Messias in the Prophets.' Ibid. 80. 38. 381. 'Hee shews them Heaven, and God in Heaven, sanctifying all their Crosses in this World, inanimating all their worldly blessings.' Ibid. 80. 44. 436.

Page 53, l. 51. They'are ours though they'are not wee, Wee are The line as given in all the MSS. is metrically, in the rhetorically effective position of the stresses, superior to the shortened form of the editions:

l. 52. the spheare. The MSS. all give the singular, the editions the plural. Donne is not incapable of making a singular rhyme with a plural, or at any rate a form with 's' with one without:

Still, I think 'spheare' is right. The bodies made one are the Sphere in which the two Intelligences meet and command. This suits all that followes:

l. 55. forces, sense, This reading of all the MSS. is, I think, certainly right; the 'senses force' of the editions being an emendation. (1) It is the more difficult reading. It is inconceivable that an ordinary copyist would alter 'senses force' to 'forces sense', which, unless properly commaed, is apt to be read as 'forces' sense' and make nonsense. (2) It is more characteristic of Donne's thought. He is, with his usual scholastic precision, distinguishing the functions of soul and body. Perception is the function (the δύναμις, power or force) of soul:

But the body has its function also, without which the soul could not fulfil its; and that function is 'sense'. It is through this medium that human souls must operate to obtain knowledge of each other. The bodies must yield their forces or faculties ('sense' in all its forms, especially sight and touch—hands and eyes) to us before our souls can become one. The collective term 'sense' recurs:

'Aucuns ont escrit que l'air a aussi cette vertu de faire decouler avec le feu elementaire les influences et proprietez secrettes des estoilles et planettes: alleguans que l'efficace des corps celestes ne peut s'estendre aux inferieurs et terrestres, que par les moyens et elemens qui sont entre deux. Mais cela soit au iugement des lecteurs que nous renvoyons aux disputes de ceux qui ont escrit sur la philosophie naturelle. Voyez aussi Pline au 5 ch. du 2 liu., Plutarque au 5 & 2 liu. des opinions des Philosophes, Platon en son Timee, Aristote en ses disputes de physique, specialement au i. liu. de la generation et corruption, et ceux qui ont escrit depuis luy touchant les elemens.' Du Bartas, La Sepmaine, &c. (1581), Indice. Air.

l. 59. Soe soule into the soule may flow. The 'Soe' of the MSS. must, I think, be right rather than the 'For' of D, H49, Lec, and the editions. It corresponds to the 'So' in l. 65, and it expresses the simpler and more intelligible thought. In references to the heavenly bodies and their influence on men one must remember certain aspects of older thought which have become unfamiliar to us. They were bodies of great dignity, 'aeterna corpora,' not composed of any of the four elements, and subject to no change in time but movement, change of position. If not as the older philosophers and some of the Fathers had held, 'animata corpora,' having a soul united to the body, yet each was guided by an Intelligence operating by contact: 'Ad hoc autem quod moveat, non opportet quod uniatur ei ut forma, sed per contactum virtutis, sicut motor unitur mobili.' Aquinas, Summa I. lxx. 3. Such bodies, it was claimed, influence human actions: 'Corpora enim coelestia, cum moveantur a spiritualibus substantiis ... agunt in virtute earum quasi instrumenta. Sed illae substantiae spirituales sunt superiores animabus nostris. Ergo videtur quod possint imprimere in animas nostras, et sic causare actus humanos.' Aquinas, however, disputes this, as Plotinus had before him, and distinguishes: As bodies, the stars affect us only indirectly, in so far namely as the mind and will of man are subject to the influence of physical and corporeal disturbances. But man's will remains free. 'Sapiens homo dominatur astris in quantum scilicet dominatur suis passionibus.' As Intelligences, the stars do not operate on man thus mediately and controllingly: 'sed in intellectum [pg 45] humanum agunt immediate illuminando: voluntatem autem immutare non possunt.' Aquinas, Summa I. cxv. 4.

Now if 'Soe' be the right reading here then Donne is thinking of the heavenly bodies without distinguishing in them between soul or intelligence and body. 'As these high bodies or beings operate on man's soul through the comparatively low intermediary of air, so lovers' souls must interact through the medium of body.'

If 'For' be the right reading, then Donne is giving as an example of soul operating on soul through the medium of body the influence of the heavenly intelligences on our souls. But this is not the orthodox view of their interaction. I feel sure that 'Soe' is the right reading. The thought and construction are simpler, and 'Soe' and 'For' are easily interchanged.

Of noblemen Donne says: 'They are Intelligences that move great Spheares.' Sermon, Judges xv. 20, p. 20 (1622).

'Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, and the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common tye or medium betwixt the body and the soule, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soule of itselfe. Melancthon holds the fountaine of these spirits to be the Heart, begotten there; and afterward convayed to the Braine, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be three kindes, according to the three principall parts, Braine, Heart, Liver; Naturall, Vitall, Animall. The Naturall are begotten in the Liver, and thence dispersed through the Veines, to performe those naturall actions. The Vitall Spirits are made in the Heart, of the Naturall, which by the Arteries are transported to all the other parts: if these Spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a Syncope or Swowning. The Animall spirits formed of the Vitall, brought up to the Braine, and diffused by the Nerves, to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.' Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (1638), p. 15. 'The spirits in a man which are the thin and active part of the blood, and so are of a kind of middle nature, between soul and body, those spirits are able to doe, and they doe the office, to unite and apply the faculties of the soul to the organs of the body, and so there is a man.' Sermons 26. 20. 291.

Page 55. Loves Diet.

ll. 19-24. This stanza, carefully and correctly printed in the 1633 edition, which I have followed, was mangled in that of 1635, and has remained in this condition, despite conjectural emendations, in subsequent editions, including those of Grosart and Chambers. What Donne says is obvious: 'Whatever Love dictated I wrote, but burned [pg 46] the letters. When she wrote to me, and when (correctly resumed by 'that') that favour made him (i.e. Love) fat, I said,' &c. The 1650-54 'Whate'er might him distaste,' &c. is obviously an attempt to put right what has gone wrong. No reading but that of the 1633 edition gives any sense to 'that favour' and 'convey'd by this'.

ll. 25-7. reclaim'd ... sport. In 1633 'reclaim'd' became 'redeem'd', probably owing to the frequent misreading of 'cl' as 'd'. The mistake here increases the probability that 'sports' is an error for 'sport' or 'sporte'. It is doubtful if 'sports' was used as now.

Page 56. The Will.

ll. 19-27. This verse is omitted in most of the MSS. Probably in James's reign its references to religion were thought too outspoken and flippant. Charles admired in Donne not only the preacher but also the poet, as Huyghens testifies.

The first three lines turn on a contrast that Donne is fond of elaborating between the extreme Protestant doctrine of justification by faith only and the Catholic, especially Jesuit, doctrine of co-operant works. It divided the Jesuits and the Jansenists. The Jansenists had not yet emerged, but their precursors in the quarrel (as readers of Les Provinciales will recall) were the Dominicans, to whom Donne refers: 'So also when in the beginning of S. Augustines time, Grace had been so much advanced that mans Nature was scarce admitted to be so much as any means or instrument (not only no kind of cause) of his own good works: And soon after in S. Augustines time also mans free will (by fierce opposition and arguing against the former error) was too much overvalued, and admitted into too near degrees of fellowship with Grace; those times admitted a doctrine and form of reconciliation, which though for reverence to the time, both the Dominicans and Jesuits at this day in their great quarrell about Grace and Free Will would yet seem to maintaine, yet indifferent and dispassioned men of that Church see there is no possibility in it, and therefore accuse it of absurdity, and almost of heresie.' Letters (1651), pp. 15-16. As an Anglican preacher Donne upheld James's point of view, that the doctrine of grace and free-will was better left undiscussed: 'Resistibility, and Irresistibility of Grace, which is every Artificers wearing now, was a stuff that our Fathers wore not, a language that pure antiquity spake not.... They knew Gods law, and his Chancery: But for Gods prerogative, what he could do of his absolute power, they knew Gods pleasure, Nolumus disputari: It should scarce be disputed of in Schools, much less serv'd in every popular pulpit to curious and itching ears; least of all made table-talke, and houshold-discourse.' Sermons 26. 1. 4.

The 'Schismaticks of Amsterdam' were the extreme Puritans. See Jonson's The Alchemist for Tribulation Wholesome and 'We of the separation'.

Page 58. The Funerall.

l. 3. That subtile wreath of haire, which crowns my arme; 'And Theagenes presented her with a diamond ring which he used to wear, entreating her, whensoever she did cast her eyes upon it, to conceive that it told her in his behalf, that his heart would prove as hard as that stone in the admittance of any new affection; and that his to her should be as void of end as that circular figure was;' (compare A Ieat Ring sent, p. 65) 'and she desired him to wear for her sake a lock of hair which she gave him; the splendour of which can be expressed by no earthly thing, but it seemed as though a stream of the sun's beams had been gathered together and converted into a solid substance. With this precious relique about his arm,' (compare The Relique, p. 62) 'whose least hair was sufficient' (compare Aire and Angels, p. 22, 'Ev'ry thy hair' and note) 'to bind in bonds of love the greatest heart that ever was informed with life, Theagenes took his journey into Attica.' Kenelm Digby's Private Memoirs (1827), pp. 80-1. When later Theagenes heard that Stelliana (believing Theagenes to be dead) was to wed Mardonius, 'he tore from his arm the bracelet of her hair ... and threw it into the fire that was in his chamber; when that glorious relic burning shewed by the wan and blue colour of the flame that it had sense and took his words unkindly in her behalf.'

Theagenes was Sir Kenelm Digby himself, Stelliana being Lady Venetia Stanley, afterwards his wife. Mardonius was probably Edward, Earl of Dorset, the brother of Donne's friend and patron.

It is probable that this sequence of poems, The Funerall, The Blossome, The Primrose and The Relique, was addressed to Mrs. Herbert in the earlier days of Donne's intimacy with her in Oxford or London.

l. 24. That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you. I have hesitated a good deal over this line. The reading of the editions is 'have none of me'; and in the group of MSS. D, H49, Lec, while H49 reads 'save', D has corrected 'have' to what may be 'save', and Lec reads 'have'. The reading of the editions is the full form of the construction, which is more common without the 'have'. 'It's four to one she'll none of me,' Twelfth Night, I. iii. 113; 'She will none of him,' Ibid. II. ii. 9, are among Schmidt's examples (Shakespeare Lexicon), in none of which 'have' occurs. The reading of the MSS., 'save none of me,' is also quite idiomatic, resembling the 'fear none of this' (i.e. 'do not fear this') of Winter's Tale, IV. iv. 601; and I have preferred it because: (1) It seems difficult to understand how it could have arisen if 'have none' was the original. (2) It gives a sharper antithesis, 'You would not save me, keep me alive. Therefore I will bury, not you indeed, but a part of you.' (3) To be saved is the lover's usual prayer; and the idea of the poem is that his death is due to the lady's cruelty.

Compare also the Letter To M^rs M. H. (pp. 216-8), where the same idea recurs:

Page 59. The Blossome.

l. 10. labour'st. The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS., and 't' is restored in 1635. The 'labours' of 1633 represents a common dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that he wrote the word so, and not some copyist.

I have adopted the MS. readings 'tongue' and 'what need you a heart?' because they seem to me more certainly what Donne wrote. He may have altered them, but so may an editor. 'Tongue' is more exactly parallel to eyes and ears, and the whole talk is of organs. 'What need you a heart?' is more pointed. 'With these organs of sense, what need have you of a heart?' The idiom was not uncommon, the verb being used impersonally. The O.E.D. gives among others:

'What need your heart go' is of course also idiomatic. The latest example the O.E.D. gives is from Hall's Satires, 1597: 'What needs me care for any bookish skill?'

Page 61. The Primrose, &c.

It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', &c. was made in 1635. It is unknown to 1633 and the MSS. It may be unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical description of Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently five petals, but more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize his love, he fears to find either more or less. What can be less than woman? But if more than woman she becomes that [pg 49] unreal thing, the object of Platonic affection and Petrarchian adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,

Let woman be content to be herself. Since five is half ten, united with man she will be half of a perfect life; or (and the cynical humour breaks out again) if she is not content with that, since five is the first number which includes an even number (2) and an odd (3), it may claim to be the perfect number, and she to be the whole in which we men are included and absorbed. We have no will of our own.

'From Sarai's name He took a letter which expressed the number ten, and reposed one which made but five; so that she contributed that five which man wanted before, to show a mutual indigence and support.' Essays in Divinity (Jessop, 1855), p. 118.

'Even for this, he will visite to the third, and fourth generation; and three and foure are seven, and seven is infinite. Sermons 50. 47. 440.

l. 30. this, five, I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written 'this' alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference too remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it crept into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support which the MSS. lend to 1633 make it dangerous to remove either word now, but I have thought it well to show that 'this' is 'five'. In the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under it and the substituted word placed in the margin.

Page 62. The Relique.

l. 13. Where mis-devotion doth command. The unanimity of the earlier editions and the MSS. shows clearly that 'Mass-devotion' (which Chambers adopts) is merely an ingenious conjecture of the 1669 editor. Donne uses the word frequently, e.g.:

and: 'This mis-devotion, and left-handed piety, of praying for the dead.' Sermons 80. 77. 780.

l. 17. You shalbe. I have recorded this reading of several MSS. because the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and Donne may have so written. His discrimination of 'thou' and 'you' is very marked throughout the poems. 'Thou' is the pronoun of feeling [pg 50] and intimacy, 'you' of respect. Compare 'To Mrs. M. H.', and remember that Mrs. Herbert's name was Magdalen.

ll. 27-8. Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not between those meales: i.e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne enumerates the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this among them: 'Now by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, though defamed by treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, since God invites us to it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. It is an imputation laid upon Nero, that Neque adveniens neque proficiscens, That whether comming or going he never kissed any: And Christ himself imputes it to Simon, as a neglect of him, That when he came into his house he did not kisse him. This then was in use', &c. Sermons 80. 41. 407.

The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later eighteenth century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's Confessions, Bk. 9, and Byron's Childe Harold, III. lxxix.

But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venis, omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris; redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; disceditur abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur affatim; denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia.'

Page 64. The Dissolution.

l. 10. earthly sad despaire. Cf. O.E.D.: 'Earthly. 3. Partaking of the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete.' The form was used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare, 'A young man of a softly disposition.' Camden's Reign of Elizabeth (English transl.).

Page 66. Negative Love.

l. 15. What we know not, our selves. 'All creatures were brought to Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures, he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to himselfe it may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe lesse then he did other creatures.' Sermons 80. 50. 563.

Page 67. The Prohibition.

l. 18. So, these extreames shall neithers office doe. The 'neithers' of D, H40, JC, supported by 'neyther' in O'F and 'neyther their' in Cy, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for 'ne'er their'. The reading of Cy shows how the phrase puzzled an ordinary [pg 51] copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other prevent either from fulfilling his function.' Compare, 'As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i.e. each to the other's purpose). Shakespeare, Hen. V, II. ii. 107.

l. 22. So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee. I have placed a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not the verb. The 'stay' of 1633 is defensible, but the 1633 editor was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting of l. 5. All the MSS. I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph, a thing achieved once, never to be repeated.' Compare:

ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from 1633. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:

The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed are quite intelligible. As given in the editions 1635-69 they are nonsensical.

Page 68. The Expiration.

l. 5. We ask'd. The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis and sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting.'

Page 70. The Paradox.

l. 14. lights life. The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the editions, 'lifes light.' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun. In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an epitaph. This poem is not in D, H49, Lec, and 1633 has printed it from A18, N, TC.

In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by another of the same kind, which is found also in H40, RP31, and O'F, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from TCC:

A Paradox.

Page 71. Farewell to Love.

l. 12. His highnesse &c. 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt gingerbread.' Chambers. See Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, III. i.

This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise posterity.' Surely this is Abracadabra!

What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, [pg 53] and made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire' to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i.e. in the species, not in the individual.' (De Anima, B. 4. 415 A-B.) Donne's argument then is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone this feeling of depression and remorse after the act of love? Is it a device of nature to restrain us from an act which shortens the life of the individual (he refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious effect of the act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam brought upon man, the curse of mortality,

The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O.E.D. is from Mulcaster's Positions (1581), where the sense is that of imitating physically: 'They that be gawled ... may neither runne nor wrastle for eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's: 'The nature of som men is so ... unconvenable that ... poverte myhte rather egren hym to don felonies.' Chaucer, Boëth. De Consol. Phil. In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram on Bancroft appears:

Page 71. A Lecture upon the Shadow.

The text of this poem in the editions is that of A18, N, TC among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of [pg 54] the other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for 'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for 'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'. It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an obvious blunder.

Note on the music to which certain of Donne's songs were set.

A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung, generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:

Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's Songs and Sonets as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged periods of the Elegies, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic verse-paragraph, suggest speech,—impassioned, rhythmical speech rather than the melody of song. We are not haunted by a sense of the tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's songs were set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made before'. One of these is The Baite, which must have been set to the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment found in William Corkine's Second Book of Ayres (1612). The airs of the other two (see p. 18 (note)) I have not been able to find, nor are they known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of Donne's great Hymns.

Page 8. Song.

Page 23. Breake of Day.

Page 46. The Baite.

EPIGRAMS.

Pages 75-8. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions, 1633-69. Of these, thirteen are in A18, N, TC, none in D, H49, Lec. Of the remaining three, two are in W, one in HN, both good authorities. I have added three of interest from W, of which one is in HN, and all three are in O'F. W includes among the Epigrams the short poem On a Jeat Ring Sent, printed generally with the Songs and Sonets. In HN there is one and in the Burley MS. are three more. Of these the one in HN and two of those in Bur are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in Bur runs:

Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says: 'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best.' The stanzas referred to are entitled Sopra la bellezza, and begin:

Page 75. Pyramus and Thisbe. The Grolier Club edition prints the first line of this epigram,

which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in 1633 the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought them together here.' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's Metamorphoses, iv. 55-165. The closing line runs:

A Burnt Ship. In W the title is given in Italian, in O'F in Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for assistance against Spain;—'Should I ruin myself for maintaining them.... I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: a man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea; and it is doubtless a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine [pg 59] with putting the meat in their mouth.' The King to Salisbury, 1607, Hatfield MSS., quoted in Gardiner's History of England, ii. 25.

Page 76. Sir John Wingefield. In that late Island. Mr. Gosse has inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of O'F is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. 'Then we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says Captain Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's Annals, iv. 398. Another account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of Cadiz and at the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. Here the severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to Cadiz'. What does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island we lately visited so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets late, that western island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It would not be unlike Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed force. Compare (if the reading be right) 'far faith' (p. 189, l. 4) and the note.

Pages 75-6. The series of Epigrams A burnt ship, Fall of a wall, A lame begger, Cales and Guyana, Sir John Wingefield seem to me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour when so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The Fall of a wall may mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced its way into the city. A lame begger records a common spectacle in a Spanish and Catholic town. Cales and Guyana must clearly have been written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the leaders were debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on Essex's side) urged that the fleet should sail west and intercept the silver fleet, but Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate return to England. The last of the series chronicles the one death to which every account of the expedition refers.

Page 77. Antiquary. Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is evidently the subject of this epigram and is referred to in Satyre V, l. 87, I cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, LL.D., the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to [pg 60] the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in Strype's Annals collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.

Phryne. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond, Conversations, ed. Laing, 842.

Page 78. Raderus. 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German Jesuit, published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in 1602.' Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene thing can be uttered in it)....' The reason which Donne gives is that 'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they gelde.' Ignatius his Conclave (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.

Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus. A journal or register of news started at Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was entitled: Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594 gestarum, nuncius. In the seventeenth century it was published half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable (Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', Poetaster, v. i), nor its news always trustworthy.

The Lier. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's Unpublished Poems of Donne (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his Appendix A. It is given the title Supping Hours. Its inclusion in HN (whence the present title) and W strengthens its claim to be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish fare.

l. 3. Like Nebuchadnezar. Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in grass.' Shakespeare, All's Well, IV. v.

THE ELEGIES.

Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated before the larger collections were made or publication took place. Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house,' afterwards called Elegie on the L. C. The order in the one group, as we find it in e.g. D, H49, Lec, is The Bracelet,¹ Going [pg 61] to Bed, Jealousie, The Anagram, Change, The Perfume, His Picture, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let mee not serve,' Loves Warr, On his Mistris, 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' Loves Progress. The second group, as we find it in A25, JC, and W, contains The Bracelet, The Comparison, The Perfume, Jealousie, 'Oh, let not me (sic W) serve,' 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' Loves Warr, Going to Bed, Change, The Anagram, On his Mistris, His Picture, 'Sorrow, who to this house.' The last is not given in A25. It will be noticed that D, H49, Lec drops The Comparison; A25, JC, W, Loves Progress; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.

¹ I take the titles given in the editions for ease of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title which D, H49, Lec have is On Loves Progresse; A25, JC, and W have none. Other MSS. give one or other occasionally.

These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of Donne's Elegies, taken as such. Of the rest The Dreame is given in D, H49, Lec, but among the songs, and The Autumnall is placed by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed to get into general circulation.

Can we to any extent date the Elegies? There are some hints which help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably belong. In The Bracelet Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having

The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in 1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the only determinable date. In Loves Warre we are brought nearer to a definite date.

points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598. The line,

refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz [pg 62] expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of 1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated joining it.

To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in 1598.

The twelfth (His parting from her) and fifteenth (The Expostulation) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not likely that they were written after his marriage. Julia is quite undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before 1615. But the fourteenth (A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife) was certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.

The Autumnall raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (Life of Mr. George Herbert, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs. Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her son Edward, Donne being then near to (about First Ed.) the Fortieth year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of man's life.' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of Essex, i.e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to the best part of it your house.' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs. Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this poem.

Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded a priori, very persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity; to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste and good manners' (Life, &c., ii. 228). It is, however, somewhat hazardous to fix a standard of taste for the age of James I, and above all others for John Donne. To the taste of the time and the temper of Donne such a poem might more becomingly be addressed to a widow of forty, the mother of ten children, one already an accomplished courtier, than it might be written by a [pg 63] priest in orders. Donne would have been startled to hear that in 1625 he had spent any time in such a vain amusement as composing a secular elegy. The poem he wrote to Mrs. Herbert before 1609 was probably thought by her and him an exquisite compliment. He expressly disclaims speaking of the old age which disfigures. He writes of one whose youthful beauty has flown. Forty seemed old for a woman, even to Jane Austen, and in Montaigne's opinion it is old for a man: 'J'estois tel, car je ne me considère pas à cette heure, que je suis engagé dans les avenues de la vieillesse, ayant pieça franchy les quarante ans:

Ce que je seray doresnevant ce ne sera plus qu'un demy estre, ce ne sera plus moy; je m'eschappe les jours et me desrobe a moy mesme:

Mrs. Herbert's marriage was due to no 'heyday of the blood'. It was the gravity of Danvers' temper which attracted her, and he became the steady friend and adviser of her children.

There are, moreover, some items of evidence which go to support Walton's testimony. The poem is found in one MS., S, dated 1620, which gives us a downward date; and in 1610 occurs what looks very like an allusion to Donne's poem in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman. Clerimont and True-wit are speaking of the Collegiate ladies, and the former asks,

The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which the poem is dubbed An Autumnal Face or The Autumnall shows that the phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such allusions, and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's paradoxes, perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' Lady Danvers. We cannot prove that the poem was written so early, but the evidence on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.

Page 79. Elegie I.

l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' is clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and from the vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which Donne uses more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to bruises,' Sermons 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' [pg 64] Ibid. 80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' would be to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' with which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. Both Chambers and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's poisoned father:

a most instant tetter barked about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,

All my smooth body.

ll. 19-20. Nor, at his board together being sat

With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate.

Quum premit ille torum, vultu comes ipsa modesto

Ibis, ut adcumbas; clam mihi tange pedem,

Me specta, nutusque meos, vultumque loquacem:

Excipe furtivas, et refer ipsa, notas.

Verba superciliis sine voce loquentia dicam:

Verba leges digitis, verba notata mero.

Quum tibi succurrit Veneris lascivia nostrae,

Purpureas tenero pollice tange genas.

Si quid erit, de me tacita quod mente queraris,

Pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus:

Quum tibi, quae faciam, mea lux, dicamve placebunt,

Versetur digitis annulus usque tuis,

Tange manu mensam, quo tangunt more precantes,

Optabis merito quum mala multa viro.

Quod tibi miscuerit sapias, bibat ipse iubeto;

Tu puerum leviter posce, quod ipsa velis.

Quae tu reddideris, ego primus pocula sumam,

Et qua tu biberis, hac ego parte bibam.

Ovid, Amores, I. iv. 15-32.

Page 80. Elegie II.

l. 4. Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth be jeat: i.e. 'Though her eyes be yellow as ivory, her teeth are black as jet.' The edition of 1669 substitutes 'theirs' for 'they', referring back to 'others'. Grosart follows.

l. 6. rough is the reading of 1633, 1669, and all the best MSS. Chambers and Grosart prefer the 'tough' of 1635-54, but 'rough' means probably 'hairy, shaggy, hirsute'. O.E.D., Rough, B. I. 2. Her hair is in the wrong place. To have hair on her face and none on her head are alike disadvantageous to a woman's beauty.

l. 22. unfit. I have changed the semicolon after this word to a full stop. The former suggests that the next two lines are an expansion or explanation of this statement. But the poet is giving a series of different reasons why Flavia may be loved.

Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities [pg 66] the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. agree with 1633-54, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is probably correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their foes, drown (i.e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus produced is their protection.' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. The reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden. 'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given to land overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.

Page 82. Elegie III.

l. 5. forc'd unto none is a strange expression, and the 'forbid to none' of B is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none' probably means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In woman's love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from a favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a monopoly:

l. 8. these meanes, as I, It is difficult to say whether the 'these' of the editions and of D, H49, Lec or the 'those' of the rest of the MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of 'the same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:

l. 17. Who hath a plow-land, &c. This has nothing to do, as Grosart seems to think, with the name for a certain measurement of land in the north of England corresponding to a hide in the south. A 'plow-land' here is an arable or cultivated field. Possibly the 'a' has crept in and one should read simply 'plow-land', or, like P, 'plow-lands.' Otherwise 'Who hath' is to be slurred in reading the line. The meaning of the passage seems to be that though a man puts all his own seed into his land, he is quite willing to reap the corn which has sprung from others' seed, brought thither, it may be, by wind or birds.

l. 30. To runne all countries, a wild roguery. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes this line, giving to 'roguery' the meaning of 'a knavish, rascally act'. But Grosart is certainly right in explaining it as 'vagrancy'. In love, Donne does not wish to be a captive bound to one, but he does not wish on the other hand to be a vagrant with no settled abode. The O.E.D. dates the poem c. 1620, which is much too late. Donne was not writing in this manner after he took orders. It cannot be later than 1601, and is probably earlier.

l. 32. more putrifi'd, or, as in the MSS., 'worse putrifi'd.' The latter is probably correct, but the difference is trifling. By [pg 67] 'putrifi'd' Donne means 'made salt' and so less fit for drinking. The 'purifi'd' of some editions points to a misunderstanding of Donne's meaning; for saltness and putrefaction were not identical: 'For Salt as incorruptible was the Symbol of friendship, and before the other service was offered unto their guests.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, v. 22.

Page 84. Elegie IV.

l. 2. All thy suppos'd escapes. He is addressing the lady. All her supposed transgressions (e.g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo, venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous transgression.) Applied esp. to breaches of chastity.' O.E.D. It is probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:

i.e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':

The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's deformed hand' (Com. of Err. V. i. 298), i.e. 'deforming hand'; 'deserved children' (Cor. III. i. 292), i.e. 'deserving'. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 661.

The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror lest he be stricken himself.

If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would be needed:

ll. 9, 15. have ... take. I have noted the subjunctive forms found in certain MSS., because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e.g.

Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.

Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as 'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c.). I fear that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken too seriously.

l. 22. palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats. All the MSS. read 'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or blushing here.' Sermons 80. 61. 611.

Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks.' Dekker.

l. 37. were hir'd to this. All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to' is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for this piece of work:

l. 44. the pale wretch shivered. I have (with the support of the best MSS.) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought ... had wrought'. This seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not [pg 69] to what follows. As soon as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.

The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.

l. 49. The precious Vnicornes. See Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 23: 'Great account and much profit is made of Unicornes horn, at least of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet doubtless has the same application, i.e. to the horns.

Page 86. Elegie V.

l. 8. With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread. I have let the 1633 reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not responsible for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from D, H49, Lec, in which probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or printer supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it because I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has undergone some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is suggested by B, S, S96,

To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold synecdoche, leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed, o'ermastered by Cares storms.' But 'o'erpressed' was harshly used and was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was made more appropriate by substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the cause, 'Cares storms.' This is what we find in JC and such a good MS. as W:

In B and P 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse when 'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to 'o'erspread'. In 1635-69 the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been altered to 'harsh'.

[pg 70] The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's final version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and more in the style of Shakespeare's

l. 16. Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see. Here again there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor. Most MSS. read:

l. 20. To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough. I have made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs in A25 and B, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. The 'weak' of 1650-69 adjusts the metre, but for that very reason one a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or 'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. The meaning of 'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed.' The O.E.D. quotes: 'I can nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused.' Palsgr. (1530). 'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret.' Baxter, Reformed Pastor (1656).

The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O.E.D. quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583). 'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv. 64 (1608).

Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the monotonous sound of 'tough enough ... rough', and this ultimately led to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close of the last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem tough to the taste? Even meat does not taste tough: and it is not of meat that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed [pg 71] to return to the reading of P, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.

Page 87. Elegie VI.

l. 6. Their Princes stiles, with many Realmes fulfill. This is the reading of all the best MSS. The 'which' for 'with' of the editions is due to an easy confusion of two contractions invariably used in the MSS. Grosart and Chambers accept 'with' from S and A25, but further alter 'styles' to 'style', following these generally inferior MSS. The plural is correct. Donne refers to more than one prince and style. The stock instance is

But the English monarchs themselves bore in their 'style' the kingdom of France, and for some years (1558-1566) Mary, Queen of Scots, bore in her 'style' the arms of England and Ireland.

Page 88, ll. 21-34. These lines evidently suggested Carew's poem, To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side, An Eddy:

The number of MSS. and editions is in favour of 'there', but the quality (e.g. 1633 and W) of those which read 'then', and the sense of the lines, favour 'then'. The stream is at one moment in 'speechless slumber', and the next chiding. She cannot in the same place do both at once:

The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather [pg 72] than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final 'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak or treacherous spot in its bank'.

Page 89. Elegie VII.

l. 1. Natures lay Ideot. Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant', as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the meaning of 'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That word has a different origin from 'lay' (Lat. laicus), and the earliest example of it given in O.E.D. is dated 1688.

The 'call' of 1633 is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast', from S; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase 'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O.E.D. gives one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word here:

I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the eyes water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing feverously.'

The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease, calling it this or that.

'Posy, in both its senses, is a contraction of poesy, the flowers of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that engraved on a ring.' Weekly, Romance of Words, London, 1912, p. 134. She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.

l. 22. Inlaid thee. The O.E.D. cites this line as the only example of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or preservation.' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word has perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in another substance.' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such a setting as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined and heightened those charms.'

l. 25. Thy graces and good words my creatures bee. I was tempted to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of 1669 and some MSS., the theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the kind of conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of 1633-54 has the support of so good a MS. as W, and 'good words' is an Elizabethan idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:

Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces and commendations are my work', i.e. either the commendations you receive, or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with which you can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of conversation did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne sentences'. Compare, in Elegie IX: The Autumnall, the description of Lady Danvers' conversation:

l. 28. Frame and enamell Plate. Compare: 'And therefore they that thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good, will make God bad.' Sermons 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of course, 'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The elaborate enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as common as in the case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. Britten's Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, 1904.

Page 90. Elegie VIII.

ll. 5-6. In these lines as they stand in the editions and most of the MSS. there is clearly something wrong:

A 'coronet' is not an ornament of the neck, but of the head. The obvious emendation is that of A25, C, JC, and W, which Grosart and Chambers have adopted. A 'carcanet' is a necklace, and carcanets of pearl were not unusual: see O.E.D., s. v. But why then do the editions and so many MSS. read 'coronets'? Consideration of this has convinced me that the original error is not here but in the word 'neck'. Article by article, as in an inventory, Donne contrasts his mistress and his enemy's. But in the next line he goes on:

contrasting her brow with that of his mistress, where the sweat drops seem 'no sweat drops but pearle coronets'.

The explanation of the error is, probably, that an early copyist passed in his mind from breast to neck more easily than to brow. Another explanation is that Donne altered 'brow' to 'neck' and forgot to alter 'coronets' to 'carcanets'. I do not think this likely. The force of the poem lies in its contrasts, and the brow is proverbially connected with sweat. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' &c. Possibly Donne himself in the first version, or a copy of it, wrote 'neck', meaning to write 'brow', misled by the proximity and associations of 'breast'. Mr. J. C. Smith has shown that Spenser occasionally wrote a word which association brought into his mind, but which was clearly not the word he intended to use, as it is destructive of the rhyme-scheme. Oddly enough the late Francis Thompson used 'carcanet' in the sense of 'coronet':

Page 91, l. 10. Sanserra's starved men. 'When I consider what God did for Goshen in Egypt ... How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from famines, how many Genevas from plots and machinations.' Sermons.

The Protestants in Sancerra were besieged by the Catholics for nine months in 1573, and suffered extreme privations. Norton quotes Henri Martin, Histoire de France, ix. 364: 'On se disputa les débris les plus immondes de toute substance animale ou végétale; on créa, pour ainsi dire, des aliments monstrueux, impossibles.'

Following the MSS. I have made 'lying' an epithet attached to 'stones' and substituted 'they hang' for the superficially more grammatical 'it hangs'. The readings of 1633, 'vile stones lying' and 'it hangs', seem to me just the kind of changes a hasty editor [pg 75] would make, the kind of changes which characterize the Second Folio of Shakespeare. The stones are not only 'vile'; they are 'lying', inasmuch as they pretend to be what they are not, as the 'saffron'd tinne' pretends to be gold.

l. 19. Thy head: i.e. 'the head of thy mistress.' Donne continues this construction in ll. 25, 32, 39, and I have restored it from the later editions and MSS. at l. 34, 'thy gouty hand.'

l. 34. thy gouty hand: 'thy' is the reading of all the editions except 1633 and of all the MSS. except JC and S. It is probably right, corresponding to l. 19 'Thy head' and l. 32 'thy tann'd skins'. Donne uses 'thy' in a condensed fashion for 'the head of thy mistress', &c.

Page 92, l. 51. And such. The 'such' of the MSS. is doubtless right, the 'nice' of the editions being repeated from l. 49.

Page 92. Elegie IX.

The text of 1633 diverges in some points from that of all the MSS., in some others it agrees with D, H49, Lec. In the latter case I have retained it, but where D, H49, Lec agree with the rest of the MSS. I have corrected 1633, e.g.:

Page 93, l. 6. Affection here takes Reverences name: where 'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. But now shee's gold: where 'They are gold' of 1633 involves a very loose use of 'they'. Possibly 1633 here gives a first version afterwards corrected.

ll. 29-32. Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c. Herodotus (vii. 31) tells how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which for its beauty (κάλλεος εἵνεκα) he decked with gold ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, Variae Historiae, ii. 14, De platano Xerxe amato, attributes his admiration to its size: ἐν Λυδίᾳ γοῦν, φασίν, ἰδὼν φυτὸν εὐμέγεθες πλατάνου, &c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858) size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, N. H. 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which companies of men camped and slept.

The quotation from Aelian confirms the 1633 reading, 'none being so large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow. The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do not understand.

Page 94, l. 47. naturall lation. This, the reading of the great majority of the MSS., is obviously correct and explains the vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The O.E.D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to another.' Fotherby (1619);

[pg 76] and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of 1633 is an unusual order in Donne; the 'natural station' of 1635-69 is the opposite of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a misreading of 'lation'.

Page 95. Elegie X.

The title of this Elegy, The Dream, was given it in 1635, perhaps wrongly. S96 seems to come nearer with Picture. The 'Image of her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams come to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be strengthened if the lady herself were present.

l. 26. Mad with much heart, &c. Aristotle made the heart the source of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these to the brain. See note to p. 99, l. 100.

Page 96. Elegie XI.

Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond of the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; she hath a legion of angels' (Merry Wives, I. iii. 60). But Donne knows more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can pursue the analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun on angels the only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, pistolets, and gold are all played with in turn. The poem was a favourite with Ben Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart' (Drummond's Conversations, ed. Laing).

The text of the poem, which was first printed in 1635 (Marriot having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633), is based on a MS. closely resembling Cy and P, and differing in several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS., including D, H49, Lec, and W. I have endeavoured rather to give this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either to substitute another or contaminate the two. When Cy and P go over to the side of the other MSS. it is a fair inference that the editions have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more open one.

Page 97, l. 24. their naturall Countreys rot: i.e. 'their native Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of that Countrey', Greene, News from Hell (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This is the reading of Cy, and the order of the words in the other MSS. points to its being the reading of the MS. from which 1635 was printed.

l. 26. So pale, so lame, &c. The chipping and debasement of the French crown is frequently referred to, and Shakespeare is fond of [pg 77] punning on the word. But two extracts from Stow's Chronicle (continued ... by Edmund Howes), 1631, will throw some light on the references to coins in this poem: In the year 1559 took place the last abasement of English money whereby testons and groats were lowered in value and called in, 'and according to the last valuation of them, she gave them fine money of cleane silver for them commonly called Sterling money, and from this time there was no manner of base money coyned or used in England ... but all English monies were made of gold and silver, which is not so in any other nation whatsoever, but have sundry sorts of copper money.'

'The 9. of November, the French crowne that went currant for six shillings foure pence, was proclaimed to be sixe shillings.'

In 1561, 'The fifteenth of November, the Queenes Maiestie published a Proclamation for divers small pieces of silver money to be currant, as the sixe pence, foure pence, three pence, 2 pence and a peny, three half-pence, and 3 farthings: and also forbad all forraigne coynes to be currant within the same Realme, as well gold as silver, calling them all into her Maiesties Mints, except two sorts of crownes of gold, the one the French crowne, the other the Flemish crowne.' The result was the bringing in of large sums in 'silver plates: and as much or more in pistolets, and other gold of Spanish coynes, and one weeke in pistolets and other Spanish gold 16000 pounds, all these to be coyned with the Queenes stamps.'

l. 29. Spanish Stamps still travelling. Grosart regards this as an allusion to the wide diffusion of Spanish coins. The reference is more pointed. It is to the prevalence of Spanish bribery, the policy of securing paid agents in every country. It was by money that Parma secured his first hold on the revolted provinces. Gardiner has shown that Lord Cranborne, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, accepted a pension from the Spanish king (Hist. of England, i, p. 215). The discovery of the number of his Court who were in Spanish pay came as a profound shock to James at a later period. The invariable charge brought by one Dutch statesman against another was of being in the pay of the Spaniard.

'It is his Indian gold,' says Raleigh, speaking of the King of Spain in 1596, 'that endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it creeps into councils, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies thereof.'

The punctuation of 1669 has the support generally of the MSS., but in matters of punctuation these are not a very safe guide. As punctuated in 1635, 'ragged and decay'd' are epithets of Scotland, contrasting her with 'Gorgeous France'. I think, however, that the antithesis to 'gorgeous' is 'ruin'd, ragged and decay'd', describing the condition of France after the pistolets of Spain had done their [pg 78] work. The epithet applied to Scotland is 'which knew no state', the antithesis being 'proud in one day'.

Page 98, ll. 51-4. Much hope which they should nourish, &c. Professor Norton proposed that the last two of these lines should run:

but that 'alone' is a misprint for 'atone.' This is unnecessary, and there is no authority for 'atone'. What Donne says, in the cynical vein of Elegie VI, 9-10, is: 'If thou love me let my crowns alone, for the poorer I grow the less you will love me. I shall lose the qualities which you admired in me when you saw them through the glamour of wealth.'

l. 55. And be content. The majority of the MSS. begin a new paragraph here and read:

Donne would almost seem to have read or seen (he was a frequent theatre-goer) the old play of Soliman and Perseda (pr. 1599). There the lover, having lost a carcanet, sends a cryer through the street and offers one hundred crowns reward. Chambers notes a similar case in The Puritan (1607). Lost property is still cried by the bellman in northern Scottish towns. The custom of resorting in such cases to 'some dread Conjurer' is frequently referred to. See Jonson's Alchemist for the questions with which their customers approached conjurers.

ll. 71-2. So in the first falne angels, &c. Aquinas discusses the question: 'Utrum intellectus daemonis sit obtenebratus per privationem cognitionis omnis veritatis.' After stating the arguments for such privation he replies: 'Sed contra est quod Dionysius dicit ... quod "data sunt daemonibus aliqua dona, quae nequaquam mutata esse dicimus, sed sunt integra et splendidissima." Inter ista, autem, naturalia dona est cognitio veritatis.' Aquinas then explains that knowledge is twofold, that which comes by nature, and that which comes by grace: and that the latter again is twofold, that which is purely speculative, and that which is 'affectiva, producens amorem Dei'. 'Harum autem trium cognitionum prima in daemonibus nec est ablata nec diminuta: consequitur enim ipsam naturam Angeli, qui secundum suam naturam est quidam intellectus vel mens. Propter simplicitatem autem suae substantiae a natura eius aliquid subtrahi non potest.' Devils, therefore, have natural knowledge in an eminent degree (splendidissima); they have even the knowledge which comes by grace in so far as God chooses to bestow it, for His own purposes, by the mediation of angels or 'per aliqua temporalia divinae virtutis effecta' (Augustine). But of the knowledge which leads to good they have nothing: 'tenendum est firmiter secundum fidem catholicam, quod et voluntas bonorum Angelorum confirmata est in bono, et voluntas daemonum obstinata est in malo.' Summa I.

There is a good deal of vacillation in the MSS. as to the punctuation of 'Angels yet', some placing the semicolon before, others after 'yet'. The difference is not great, but that which I have adopted, though it has least authority, brings out best what I take to be the meaning of these somewhat difficult lines. 'Pity these Angels, for yet (i.e. until they are melted down and lose their form) they, as good angels, are superior in dignity to Vertues, Powers, and Principalities among the bad angels.' The order of the Angelic beings, which the Middle Ages took from Pseudo-Dionysius, consisted of nine Orders in three Hierarchies. The first and highest Hierarchy included (beginning with the highest Order) Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the second, Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; the third, Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Thus the three Orders mentioned by Donne are all in rank superior to mere Angels; but the lowest Order of Good Angels is superior to the highest Order of Evil Spirits, although before their fall these belonged to the highest Orders. Probably, however, there is a second and satiric reference in Donne's words which explains his choice of Vertues, Powers, and Principalities. In the other sense of the words Angels are coins, money; and the power of money surpasses that of earthly Vertues, Powers, and Principalities. This may explain, further, why Donne singles out 'Vertues, Powers, and Principalities'. One would expect that, to make the antithesis between good and bad angels as complete as possible, he would have named the three highest orders, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. But the three orders which he does mention are the highest Orders which travel, as money does. The angels are divided into Assistentes and Administrates. To the former class belong all the Orders of the first Hierarchy, and the Dominions of the second. The Vertues are thus the highest Order of Administrantes. Aquinas, Summa, cxii. 3, 4. The Assistentes are those who 'only stand and wait'.

This was Aristotle's opinion (De Part. Anim. II. 7), refuted by Galen, who, like Plato, made the brain the seat of the soul and the generator of the animal spirits. See II. p. 45.

Page 100, ll. 112, 114. Gold is Restorative ... 'tis cordiall. 'Most men say as much of gold, and some other minerals, as these have [pg 80] done of precious stones. Erastus still maintaineth the opposite part, Disput. in Paracelsum, cap. 4, fol. 196, he confesseth of gold, that it makes the heart merry, but in no other sense but as it is in a miser's chest:

as he said in the poet: it so revives the spirits, and is an excellent receipt against melancholy,

Elegie XII.

Page 101, l. 37. And mad'st us sigh and glow: 'sigh and blow' has been the somewhat inelegant reading of all editions hitherto.

l. 42. And over all thy husbands towring eyes. The epithet 'towring' is strange and the MSS. show some vacillation. Most of them read 'towred', probably the past participle of the same verb, though Grosart alters to 'two red'—not a very poetical description. RP31 here diverges from H40 and reads 'loured', perhaps for 'lurid', but both these MSS. alter the order of the words and attach the epithet to 'husbands', which is manifestly wrong, and the Grolier Club edition prints 'lowering' without comment, regarding, I suppose, 't' as a mistake for 'l'.

The 'towring' of 1669 and TCD is probably correct, being a bold metaphor from hawking, and having the force practically of 'threatening'. The hawk towers threateningly above its prey before it 'sousing kills with a grace'. If 'towring' is not right, 'lowring' is the most probable emendation.

Page 102, l. 43. That flam'd with oylie sweat of jealousie. This is the reading of all the MSS., and as on the whole their text is superior I have followed it. If 'oylie' is, as I think, the right epithet, it means 'moist', as in 'an oily palm', with perhaps a reference to the inflammability of oil. If 'ouglie '(i.e. ugly) be preferred it is a forcible transferred epithet.

l. 49. most respects? This is the reading of all the MSS., and 'best' in 1669 is probably an emendation. The use of 'most' as an adjective, superlative of 'great', is not uncommon:

l. 54. I can make no exact sense of this line either as it stands in 1669 or in the MSS. One is tempted to combine the versions and read:

[pg 81] the 'secrets of our Art' being all the signs by which they communicated to one another their mutual affection. But it is necessary to explain the presence of 'inwards' or 'inward' in both the versions.

Page 103, l. 79. The Summer how it ripened in the eare; This fine passage has been rather spoiled in all editions hitherto by printing in this line 'yeare' for 'eare', even in modernized texts. The MSS. and the sense both show that 'eare' is the right word, and indeed I have no doubt that 'year' in 1635 was simply due to a compositor's or copyist's pronunciation. It occurs again in the 1669 edition in the song Twicknam Garden (p. 28, l. 3):

These forms in 'y' are common in Sylvester's Du Bartas, e.g. 'yerst'. The O.E.D. gives the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries as those in which 'yere' was a recognized pronunciation of 'ear', but it is found sporadically later and has misled editors. Thus in Sir George Etherege's letter to the Earl of Middleton from Ratisbon, printed in Dryden's Works (Scott and Saintsbury), xi, pp. 38-40, some lines run:

In a modernized text, as this is, surely 'Kunigunda's years' should be 'Kunigunda's ears'.

'I there neglected find' has been the reading of all editions hitherto—a strange reason for being enamoured.

Page 104, l. 96. My deeds shall still be what my words are now: 'words' suits the context better than either the 'deeds' of 1635-69 or 'thoughts' of A25.

Page 104. Elegie XIII.

Chambers, following the editions from 1639 onwards, drops the comma after 'Mastix', which suggests that Julia is the 'foemall Mastix', not Mantuan. By Mantuan he understands Virgil, and supposes there is a reference to the 'flammis armataque Chimaera' of Aen. vi. 289. The Mantuan of the text is the 'Old Mantuan' of [pg 82] Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 92. Donne calls Mantuan the scourge of women because of his fourth eclogue De natura mulierum. Norton quotes from it:

The O.E.D. quotes from S. Holland, Zara (1656): 'It would have puzzell'd that Female Mastix Mantuan to have limn'd this she Chymera'—obviously borrowed from this poem. The dictionary gives examples of 'mastix' in other compounds.

The reference to Mantuan as a woman-hater is a favourite one with the prose-pamphleteers: 'To this might be added Mantuans invective against them, but that pittie makes me refraine from renewing his worne out complaints, the wounds whereof the former forepast feminine sexe hath felt. I, but here the Homer of Women hath forestalled an objection, saying that Mantuans house holding of our Ladie, he was enforced by melancholic into such vehemencie of speech', &c. Nash, The Anatomy of Absurdity (ed. McKerrow, i. 12).

'Where I leave you to consider, Gentlemen, how far unmeete women are to have such reproches laid upon them, as sundrye large lipt fellows have done: who when they take a peece of work in hand, and either for want of matter, or lack of wit, are half gravelled, then they must fill up the page with slaundering of women, who scarsly know what a woman is: but if I were able either by wit or arte to be their defender, or had the law in my hand to dispose as I list, which would be as unseemely, as an Asse to treade the measures: yet, if it were so, I would correct Mantuans Egloge, intituled Alphus: or els if the Authour were alive, I would not doubt to persuade him in recompence of his errour, to frame a new one,' &c. Greene, Mamillia (ed. Grosart), 106-7. Greene is probably the 'Homer of Women' referred to in the first extract.

l. 19. Tenarus. In the Anatomy of the World 'Tenarif' is thus spelt in the editions of 1633 to 1669, and Grosart declared that the reference here is to that island. It is of course to 'Taenarus' in Laconia. There was in that headland a sulphurous cavern believed to be a passage to Hades. Through it Orpheus descended to recover Eurydice. Ovid, Met. x. 13; Paus. iii. 14, 25.

l. 28. self-accusing oaths: 'oaths' is the reading of the MSS., 'loaths' of the editions. The word 'loaths' in the sense of 'dislike, hatred, ill-will' is found as late as 1728 (O.E.D.). 'If your Horse ... grow to a loath of his meat.' Topsell (1607). A self-accusing loath may mean a hatred, e.g. of good, which condemns yourself. In the context, however, 'cavils, untroths,' I am inclined to think that 'oaths' is right. Among the malevolent evils with which her breast swarms are oaths accusing others of crimes, which accuse herself, either because she is willing to implicate herself so long as she secures her enemy's ruin, or because the information is of a kind that could be got only by complicity in crime.

Page 105. Elegie XIV.

Page 106, l. 6. I touch no fat sowes grease. Probably 'I say nothing libellous as to the way in which this or that rich man has acquired his wealth'. I cannot find the proverb accurately explained, or given in quite this form, in any collection.

l. 10. will redd or pale. The reading of 1669 and the two MSS. is doubtless correct, 'looke' being an editorial insertion as the use of 'red' as a verb was growing rare. If 'looke' had belonged to the original text 'counsellor' would probably have had the second syllable elided. Compare:

l. 21. the number of the Plaguy Bill: i.e. the weekly bill of deaths by the plague. By a Privy Council order of April 9, 1604, the theatres were permitted to be open 'except ther shall happen weeklie to die of the Plague above the number of thirtie'. The number was later raised to forty. The theatres were repeatedly closed for this reason between July 10, 1606, and 1610. In 1609 especially the fear of infection made it difficult for the companies, driven from London, to gain permission to act anywhere. There were no performances at Court during the winter 1609-10. Murray, English Dramatic Companies.

l. 22. the Custome Farmers. The Privy Council registers abound in references to the farmers of the customs and their conflicts with the merchants. As they had to pay dearly for their farm, they were tempted to press the law against the merchants in exacting dues.

l. 23. Of the Virginian plot. Two expeditions were sent to Virginia in 1609, in May under Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain Newport, and at the end of the year under Lord de la Warr, 'who by free election of the Treasurer and counsell of Virginia, and with the full consent of the generality of that company was constituted and authorized, during his natural life to be Lord Governor and Captaine Generall of all the English Collonies planted, or to be planted in Virginia, according to the tenor of his Majesties letters patents granted that yeare 1609.' Stow. Speculation in Virginia stock was encouraged: 'Besides many noblemen, knights, gentlemen, merchants, and wealthy tradesmen, most of the incorporated trades of London were induced to take shares in the stock.' Hildreth, History of the United States, i. 108, quoted by Norton.

The meaning of 'plot' here is 'device, design, scheme' (O.E.D.), as 'There have beene divers good plottes devised, and wise counsells cast allready about reformation of that realme': Spenser, State of Ireland. Donne uses the word also in the more original sense of 'a piece of ground, a spot'. See p. 132, l. 34.

l. 23-4. whether Ward ... the I(n)land Seas. I have taken 'Iland' 1635-54 as intended for 'Inland', perhaps written 'Ĩland', not for 'Island'. The edition of 1669 reads 'midland', and there is no doubt that the Mediterranean was the scene of the career and exploits of the notorious Ward, whose head-quarters were at Tunis. The Mediterranean is called the Inland sea in Holland's translation of Pliny (Hist. of the World, III. The Proeme); and Donne uses the phrase (with a different application but one borrowed from this meaning) in the Progresse of the Soule, p. 308, ll. 317-8:

Previous editors read 'Island seas' but do not explain the reference, except Grosart, who declares that the 'Iland seas are those around the West Indian and other islands. The Midland seas (as in 1669) were probably the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Seas'. He cites no authority; nor have we proof that Ward was ever in these seas. Writing to Salisbury on the 7th of March, 1607-8, Wotton says: 'The voice is here newly arrived that Warde hath taken another Venetian vessel of good value, so as the hatred of him increaseth among them and fully as fast as the fear of him. These are his effects. Now to give your Lordship some taste of his language. One Moore, captain of an English ship that tradeth this way ... was hailed by him not long since a little without the Gulf, and answering that he was bound for Venice, "Tell those flat caps" (said he) "who have been the occasion that I am banished out of my country that before I have done with them I will make them sue for pardon." In this style he speaketh.' Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of ... Wotton, ii. 415. Mr. Pearsall Smith adds in a note that Ward hoped to 'buy or threaten the English Government into pardoning him', and that some attempt was also made by the Venetian Government to procure his assassination.

If 'Island' be the right reading the sea referred to must be the Adriatic. The Islands of the Illyrian coast were at various times the haunt of pirates. But I have found no instance of the phrase in this sense.

l. 25. the Brittaine Burse. This was built by the Earl of Salisbury on the site of an 'olde long stable' in the Strand on the north side of Durham House: 'And upon Tuesday the tenth of Aprill this yeere, one thousand sixe hundred and nine, many of the upper shoppes were richly furnished with wares, and the next day after that, the King, Queene, and Prince, the Lady Elizabeth and the Duke of Yorke, with many great Lords, and chiefe Ladies, came thither, and were there entertained with pleasant speeches, giftes, and ingenious devices, and then the king gave it a name, and called it Brittaines Burse.' Stow, Chronicle, p. 894.

l. 27. Of new built Algate, and the More-field crosses. Aldgate, one [pg 85] of the four principal gates in the City wall, was taken down in 1606 and rebuilt by 1609: Stow, Survey. Norton refers to Jonson's Silent Woman, I. i: 'How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city's Love and Charity while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished?'

'The More-field crosses' are apparently the walks at Moor-field. Speaking of the embellishment of London which ensued from the long duration of peace, Stow says, 'And lastly, whereof there is a more generall, and particular notice taken by all persons resorting and residing in London, the new and pleasant walks on the north side of the city, anciently called More fields, which field (untill the third yeare of King James) was a most noysome and offensive place, being a generall laystall, a rotten morish ground, whereof it tooke first the name.' Stow, Chronicle. For the ditches which crossed the field were substituted 'most faire and royall walkes'.

Page 107, l. 41. The '(quoth Hee)' of the 1669 edition is obviously correct. 'Hee' is required both by rhyme and reason. Mr. Chambers has ingeniously put '"True" quoth I' into a parenthesis, as a remark interjected by the poet. But apart from the rhyme the 'quoth Hee' is needed to explain the transition to direct speech. Without it the long speech of the citizen begins very awkwardly.

ll. 42-44. These lines seem to echo the Royal Proclamation of 1609, though the reference is different: 'in this speciall Proclamation his Majestic declared how grievously, the people of this latter age and times are fallen into verball profession, as well of religion, as of all commendable morall vertues, but wanting the actions and deeds of so specious a profession, and the insatiable and immeasurable itching boldnesse of the spirits, tongues and pens of most men.' Stow, Chronicle.

l. 46. Bawd, Tavern-keeper, Whore and Scrivener; The singular number of the MS. gives as good a sense as the plural and a better rhyme.

'We have many bankrupts daily, and as many protections, which doth marvellously hinder all manner of commerce.' Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 31, 1612. By 'kingsmen' I understand noblemen holding monopolies from the King. I do not understand the 'kinsmen' of the editions. By 'protections' is meant 'exemptions from suits in law', especially suits for debt. The London tradesmen were much cheated by the protections granted to the servants and followers of members of Parliament.

l. 65. found nothing but a Rope. I cannot identify this Rope. In the Aulularia of Plautus, when Euclio finds his treasure gone he laments in the usual manner. At l. 721 he says, 'Heu me miserum, misere perii, male perditu', pessume ornatus eo.' The last words may have been taken as meaning 'I have the rope round my neck'.

Page 108. Elegie XV.

l. 12. Following RP31 and also Jonson's Underwoods I have taken 'at once' as going with 'Both hot and cold', not with 'make life, and death' as in 1633-69. This is one of the poems which 1633 derived from some other source than D, H49, Lec.

ll. 16-18 (all sweeter ... the rest) Chambers has overlooked altogether the 1633 reading 'sweeter'. He prints 'sweeten'd' from 1635-69. It is clear from the MSS. that this is an editor's amendment due to Donne's 'all sweeter' suggesting, perhaps intentionally, 'all the sweeter'. By dropping the bracket Chambers has left at least ambiguous the construction of 17-18: And the divine impression of stolne kisses That sealed the rest. Does this, as in 1633, belong to the parenthesis, or is 'the divine impression' to be taken with 'so many accents sweet, so many sighes' and 'so many oathes and teares' as part subject to 'should now prove empty blisses'. I prefer the 1633 arrangement, which has the support of the MSS., though the punctuation of these is apt to be careless. The accents, sighs, oaths, and tears were all made sweeter by having been stolen with fear and trembling. This is how the Grolier Club editor takes it; Grosart and Chambers prefer to follow 1635-69.

Page 109, l. 34. I do not know whence Chambers derived his reading 'drift' for 'trust'—perhaps from an imperfect copy of 1633. He attributes it to all the editions prior to 1669. This is an oversight.

Page 111. Elegie XVI.

A careful study of the textual notes to this poem will show that there is a considerable difference between the text of this poem as given for the first time in 1635, and that of the majority of the MSS. It is very difficult, however, to decide between them as the differences are not generally such as to suggest that one reading is necessarily right, the other wrong. The chief variants are these: 7 'parents' and 'fathers'. Here I fancy the 'parents' of the MSS. is right, and that 'fathers' in the editions and in a late MS. like O'F is due to the identification of Donne's mistress with his wife. Only the father of Anne More was alive at the time of their first acquaintance. It is not at all certain, however, that this poem is addressed to Anne More, and in any case [pg 87] Donne would probably have disguised the details. The change of 'parents' to 'fathers' is more likely than the opposite. In l. 12 'wayes' (edd.) and 'meanes' (MSS.) are practically indistinguishable; nor is there much to choose between the two versions of l. 18: 'My soule from other lands to thee shall soare' (edd.) and 'From other lands my soule towards thee shall soare' (MSS.). In each case the version of the editions is slightly the better. In l. 28, on the other hand, I have adopted 'mindes' without hesitation although here the MSS. vary. There is no question of changing the mind, but there is of changing the mind's habit, of adopting a boy's cast of thought and manner: as Rosalind says,

In l. 35 the reading 'Lives fuellers', i.e. 'Life's fuellers', which is found in such early and good MSS. as D, H49, Lec and W, is very remarkable. If I were convinced that it is correct I should regard it as decisive and prefer the MS. readings throughout. But 'Loves fuellers', though also a strange phrase, seems more easy of interpretation, and applicable.

In l. 37 there can, I think, be no doubt that the original reading is preserved by A18, N, S, TCD, and W.

The sudden, brutal change in the sense of the word 'knowe' is quite in Donne's manner. The reasons for omitting or softening it are obvious, and may excuse my not restoring it. The whole of these central lines reveal that strange bad taste, some radical want of delicacy, which mars not only Donne's poems and lighter prose but even at times the sermons. In l. 49 the reading of the MSS. A18, N, TC; D, H49, Lec, and W is also probably original:

It is not uncommon in Donne's poetry to find a syllable dropped with the effect of increasing the stress on a rhetorically emphatic word, here 'Blesse'. An editor would be sure to supply 'nor'.

Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster (Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808). It is clear that he used a copy of the 1669 edition, for he reads 35 'Lives fuellers', and also 42 'Aydroptique' for 'Hydroptique'. Both these mistakes were corrected in 1719. Donne speaks in his sermons of 'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. Sermons 80. 10. 99.

Page 112, l. 44. England is onely a worthy Gallerie: i.e. entrance hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that [pg 88] this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country: for, if in this life only,' &c. Sermons 50. 30. 270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not two Worlds;... They are not two Houses; This is the Gallery, and that the Bedchamber of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no ruine.' Sermons 50. 43. 399.

In connexion with the general theme of this poem it may be noted that in 1605 Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester, who like Donne served in the Cadiz and Islands expeditions, left England accompanied by the beautiful Elizabeth Southwell disguised as a page. At this period the most fantastic poetry was never more fantastic than life itself.

Page 113. Elegie XVII.

Page 114, l. 24. This line is found only in A10, which omits the next eleven lines. It may belong to a shorter version of the poem, but it fits quite well into the context.

Page 115, l. 58. daring eyes. The epithet looks as though it had been repeated from the line above, and perhaps 'darling' or 'darting' may have been the original reading. However, both the MSS. agree with the editions, and the word is probably used in two distinct senses, 'bold, adventurous' with 'armes' and 'dazzling' with 'eyes'. Compare:

Page 116. Elegie XVIII.

Page 117, ll. 31-2. Men to such Gods, &c. Donne has in view here the different kinds of sacrifice described by Porphyry:

l. 47. The Nose (like to the first Meridian) 'In the state of nature we consider the light, as the sunne, to be risen at the Moluccae, in the farthest East; In the state of the law we consider it as the sunne come to Ormus, the first Quadrant; but in the Gospel to be come to the Canaries, the fortunate Ilands, the first Meridian. Now whatsoever is beyond this, is Westward, towards a Declination.' Sermons 80. 68. 688.

'Longitude is length, and in the heavens it is understood the distance of any starre or Planet, from the begining of Aries to the place of the said Planet or Starre ... Otherwise, longitude in the earth, is the distance of the Meridian of any place, from the Meridian which passeth over the Isles of Azores, where the beginning of longitude is said to be.' The Sea-mans Kalender, 1632. But ancient Cosmographers placed the first meridian at the Canaries. See note to p. 187, l. 2.

Page 118, l. 52. Not faynte Canaries but Ambrosiall. The 'Canary' of several MSS. is probably right—an adjective, like 'Ambrosiall'. By 'faynte' is meant 'faintly odorous' as opposed to 'Ambrosial', i.e. 'divinely fragrant; perfumed as with Ambrosia' (O.E.D.). 'Fruit that ambrosial smell diffus'd': Milton, Par. Lost, ix. 852. The text gives an earlier use of both these words in this meaning than any indicated by the O.E.D. William Morris uses the same adjective in a somewhat ambiguous way but meaning, I suppose, 'weak, ready to die':

Page 119. Elegie XIX.

Page 120, l. 17. then safely tread. The 'safely' of so many MSS., including W, seems to me a more likely reading than 'softly'. The latter was probably suggested by the 'soft' of the following line. The 'safely' means of course that even without her shoes she will not be hurt.

l. 22. Ill spirits. It is not easy to decide between the 'Ill' of 1669 and some MSS. and the 'All' of some other MSS. Besides those enumerated, two lesser MSS., viz. the Sloane MSS. 542 and 1792, read 'all'.

Page 121, l. 30. How blest am I in this discovering thee! The 'this' of almost all the MSS. is supported by the change of 'discovering' into 'discovery' of B, O'F, one way of evading the rather unusual construction, 'this' with a verbal noun followed by an object. The alteration of 'this' to 'thus' in 1669 is another. But the construction, though bold, is not inexcusable, and Donne wishes to lay the stress not on the manner of the discovery, but on the discovery itself, comparing it (in a very characteristic manner) to the discovery of [pg 90] America. This figure alone is sufficient to establish Donne's authorship, for he is peculiarly fond of these allusions to voyages, using them again and again in his sermons. For the use of 'this' with the gerund compare: 'Sir,—I humbly thank you for this continuing me in your memory, and enlarging me so far, as to the memory of my Sovereign, and (I hope) my Master.' Letters, p. 306.

l. 32. Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Chambers reads 'my soul'—I do not know from what source. The metaphor is from signing and sealing.

ll. 35-8. Gems which you women use, &c. I have adopted several emendations from the MSS. In the edition of 1669 the lines are printed thus:

I have adopted 'balls' from several MSS. as agreeing with the story and with the plural 'Gems'. I have taken 'are' with 'cast in mens views', regarding 'like Atlantas balls' as parenthetic. Both the metre and the sense of l. 38 are improved by reading 'covet' for 'court', though the latter has considerable support. The two words are easily confused in writing. I have adopted 'theirs' too in preference to 'that' because it is more in Donne's manner as well as strongly supported. 'A man who loves dress and ornaments on a woman loves not her but what belongs to her; what is accessory, not what is essential.' Compare:

l. 46. There is no pennance due to innocence. I suspect that the original cast of this line was that pointed to by the MSS.,

Penance and innocence alike are clothed in white. The version in the text is a softening of the original to make it compatible with the suggestion that the poem could be read as an epithalamium. 'Why', says a note in the margin of the Bridgewater MS., 'may not a man write his own epithalamium if he can do it so modestly?'

Page 122. Elegie XX.

Though not printed till 1802 there can be no doubt that this poem is by Donne. The MS. which Waldron used is the Dyce fellow of JC. Compare Ovid, Amor. i. 9: 'Militat omnis amans, et habet sua castra Cupido.'

Page 124. Heroicall Epistle. Sapho to Philaenis.

I have transferred this poem hither from its place in 1635-69 among the sober Letters to Severall Personages. It has obviously a closer relation to the Elegies, and must have been composed about the same time. Its genus is the Heroical Epistle modelled on Ovid, of which Drayton produced the most popular English imitations in 1597. Donne's was possibly evoked by these and written in 1597-8, but there is no means of dating it exactly. 'Passionating' and 'conceited' eloquence is the quality of these poems modelled on Ovid, and whatever one may think of the poem on moral grounds it is impossible to deny that Donne has caught the tone of the kind, and written a poem passionate and eloquent in its own not altogether admirable way. The reader is more than once reminded of Mr. Swinburne's far less conceited but more diffuse Anactoria.

l. 22. As Down, as Stars, &c. 'Down' is probably correct, but the 'Dowves' (i.e. doves) of P gives the plural as in the other nouns, and a closer parallel in poetic vividness. We get a series of pictures—doves, stars, cedars, lilies. The meaning conveyed would be the same:

Page 125, l. 33. Modern editors separate 'thorny' and 'hairy' by a comma. They should rather be connected by a hyphen as in TCD.

l. 40. And are, as theeves trac'd, which rob when it snows. This is doubtless the source of Dryden's figurative description of Jonson's thefts from the Ancients: 'You track him everywhere in their snow.' Essay of Dramatic Poesy.

EPITHALAMIONS.

Page 127. The dates of the two chief Marriage Songs are: the Princess Elizabeth, Feb. 14, 1613; the Earl of Somerset, Dec. 26, 1613. The third is an earlier piece of work, dating from the years when Donne was a student at Lincoln's Inn. It is found in W, following the Satyres and Elegies and preceding the Letters, being probably the only one written when the collection in the first part of that MS. was made.

While quite himself in his treatment of the theme of this kind of poem, Donne comes in it nearer to Spenser than in any other [pg 92] kind. In glow and colour nothing he has written surpasses the Somerset Epithalamion:

An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song, &c. 'In February following, the Prince Palatine and that lovely Princess, the Lady Elizabeth, were married on Bishop Valentine's Day, in all the Pomp and Glory that so much grandeur could express. Her vestments were white, the Emblem of Innocency; her Hair dishevel'd hanging down her Back at length, an Ornament of Virginity; a Crown of pure Gold upon her Head, the Cognizance of Majesty, being all over beset with precious Gems, shining like a Constellation; her Train supported by Twelve young Ladies in White Garments, so adorned with Jewels, that her passage looked like a Milky-way. She was led to Church by her Brother Prince Charles, and the Earl of Northampton; the young Batchelor on the Right Hand, and the old on the left.' Camden, Annales.

A full description of the festivities will be found in Nichol's Progresses of King James, in Stow's Chronicle, and other works. In a letter to Mrs. Carleton, Chamberlain gives an account of what he saw: 'It were long and tedious to tell you all the particulars of the excessive bravery, both of men and women, but you may conceive the rest by one or two. The Lady Wotton had a gown that cost fifty pounds a yard the embroidery.... The Viscount Rochester, the Lord Hay, and the Lord Dingwall were exceeding rich and costly; but above all, they speak of the Earl of Dorset. But this extreme cost and riches makes us all poor.' Court and Times of James I, i. 226. The princess had been educated by Lord and Lady Harington, the parents of Donne's patroness, the Countess of Bedford. They accompanied her to Heidelberg, but Lord Harington died on his way home, Lady Harington shortly after her return. Donne had thus links with the Princess, and these were renewed and strengthened later when with Lord Doncaster he visited Heidelberg in 1619, and preached before her and her husband. He sent her his first printed sermon and his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c. (1624), and to the latter she, then in exile and trouble, replied in a courteous strain.

Page 128. Compare with the opening stanzas Chaucer's Parliament of Foules and Skeat's note (Works of Chaucer, i. 516). Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).

l. 42. this, thy Valentine. This is the reading of all the editions except 1669 and of all the MSS. except two of no independent value. I think it is better than 'this day, Valentine', which Chambers adopts from 1669. The bride is addressed throughout the [pg 93] stanza, and it would be a very abrupt change to refer 'thou' in l. 41 to Valentine. I take 'this, thy Valentine' to mean 'this which is thy day, par excellence', 'thy Saint Valentine's day', 'the day which saw you paired'. But 'a Valentine' is a 'true-love': 'to be your Valentine' (Hamlet, IV. v. 50), and the reference may be to Frederick,—Frederick's Day is to become an era.

ll. 43-50. The punctuation of these lines requires attention. That of the editions, which Chambers follows, arranges them thus:

In this it will be seen that the clause 'Since separation ... can disunite' is attached to the previous verb. It gives the reason why they should 'go to an unseparable union'. In that which I have adopted, which is that of several good MSS., the clause 'Since separation ... can disunite' goes with what follows, explains 'You are twice inseparable, great, and one.' This is obviously right. My attention was first called to this emendation by the punctuation of the Grolier Club editor, who changes the comma after 'goe' (l. 46) to a semicolon.

l. 46. To an unseparable union growe. I have adopted 'growe' from the MSS. in place of 'goe' from the editions. The former are unanimous with the strange exception of Lec. This MS., which in several respects seems to be most like that from which 1633 was printed, varies here from its fellows D and H49, probably for the same reason that the editor of 1633 did, because he did not quite understand the phrase 'growe to' as used here, and 'goe' follows later. But it is unlikely that 'goe' would have been changed to 'growe', and

is, I think, preferable, because (1) both the words used in l. 44 are thus echoed.

(2) 'To an unseparable union growe', meaning 'Become inseparably incorporated with one another', is a slightly violent but not unnatural application of the phrase 'grow to' so common in Elizabethan English:

'I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.' All's Well that Ends Well, II. i. 36.

l. 56. The 'or' of the MSS. must, I think, be right. 'O Bishop Valentine' does not make good sense. Chambers's ingenious emendation of 1669, by which he connects 'of Bishop Valentine' with 'one way left', lacks support. Bishop Valentine has paired them; the Bishop in church has united them; the consummation is their own act.

Page 131. Ecclogue. 1613. December 26, &c.

It is unnecessary to detail all the ugly history of this notorious marriage. See Gardiner, History of England, ii. 16 and 20. Frances Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk, was married in 1606 to the youthful Earl of Essex, the later Parliamentary general. In 1613, after a prolonged suit she was granted a divorce, or a decree of nullity, and was at once married to King James's ruling favourite, Robert Carr, created Viscount Rochester in 1611, and Earl of Somerset in 1613. Donne, like every one else, had sought assiduously to win the favour of the all-powerful favourite. Mr. Gosse was in error in attributing to him a report on 'the proceedings in the nullity of the marriage of Essex and Lady Frances Howard' (Harl. MS. 39, f. 416), which was the work of his namesake, Sir Daniell Dunn. None the less, Donne's own letters show that he was quite willing to lend a hand in promoting the divorce; and that before the decree was granted he was already busy polishing his epithalamium. One of these letters is addressed to Sir Robert Ker, afterwards Earl of Ancrum, a friend of Donne's and a protégé of Somerset's. It seems to me probable that Sir Robert Ker is the 'Allophanes' of the Induction. Donne is of course 'Idios', the private man, who holds no place at Court. 'Allophanes' is one who seems like another, who bears the same name as another, i.e. the bridegroom. The name of both Sir Robert and the Earl of Somerset was Robert Ker or Carr.

Page 132, l. 34. in darke plotts. Here the reading of 1635, 'plotts,' has the support of all the MSS., and the 'places' of 1633, to which 1669 returns, is probably an emendation accidental or intentional of the editor or printer. It disturbs the metre. The word 'plot' of a piece of ground was, and is, not infrequent, and here its meaning is only a little extended. In the Progresse of the Soule, l. 129, Donne speaks of 'a darke and foggie plot'.

fire without light. Compare: 'Fool, saies Christ, this night they will fetch away thy soul; but he neither tells him, who they be that shall fetch it, nor whither they shall carry it; he hath no light but lightnings; a sodain flash of horror first, and then he goes into fire without light.' Sermons 26. 19. 273. 'This dark fire, which was not prepared for us.' Ibid.

l. 57. In the East-Indian fleet. The MSS. here give us back a word which 1633 had dropped, the other editions following suit. It was the East-Indian fleet which brought spices, the West-Indian brought 'plate', i.e. gold or (more properly) silver, to which there is no reference here.

l. 58. or Amber in thy taste? 'Amber' is here of course 'Ambergris', which was much used in old cookery, in which considerable importance was attached to scent as well as flavour. Compare:

This was the original meaning of the word 'amber', which was extended to the yellow fossil resin through some mistaken identification of the two substances. Mr. Gosse has called my attention to some passages which seem to indicate that the other amber was also eaten. Tallemant des Réaux says of the Marquise de Rambouillet, 'Elle bransle un peu la teste, et cela lui vient d'avoir trop mangé d'ambre autrefois.' This may be ambergris; but Olivier de Serres, in his Théâtre d'Agriculture (1600), speaks of persons who had formed a taste for drinking 'de l'ambre jaune subtilement pulvérisé'.

This is the reading of 1633 and gives, I think, Donne's meaning. Missing this, later editions placed a full stop after 'more', so that each line concludes a sentence. Mr. Chambers emends by changing the full stop after 'before' into a comma, and reading:

This looks ingenious, but I confess I do not know what it means. When was Cupid wise? When had he been so before? And with what special propriety is Cupid here called 'an earnest lover'? What Donne says is: 'Here was all this,—a court such as I have described, and more—an earnest lover (viz. the Earl of Somerset), wise in love (when most men are foolish), and wise before, as is approved by the King's confidence. In being admitted to that breast Cupid has ceased to be a child, has attained his majority, and the right to administer his own affairs.' Compare: 'I love them that love me, &c.... The Person that professes love in this place is Wisdom [pg 96] herself ... so that sapere et amare, to be wise and to love, which perchance never met before nor since, are met in this text.' Sermons 26. 18, Dec. 14, 1617.

Page 135. I have inserted the title Epithalamion after the Ecclogue from D, H49, Lec, O'F, S96, as otherwise the latter title is extended to the whole poem. This poem is headed in two different ways in the MSS. In A18, N, TC, the title at the beginning is: Eclogue Inducing an Epithalamion at the marriage of the E. of S. The proper titles of the two parts are thus given at once, and no second title is needed later. In the other MSS. the title at the beginning is Eclogue. 1613. Decemb. 26. Later follows the title Epithalamion. As 1633 follows this fashion at the beginning, it should have done so throughout.

Page 136, l. 126. Since both have both th'enflaming eyes. This is the reading of all the MSS. and it explains the fact that 'th'enflaming' is so printed in 1633. Without the 'both' this destroys the metre and, accordingly, the later editions read 'the enflaming'. It was natural to bring 'eye' into the singular and make 'th'enflaming eye' balance 'the loving heart'. Moreover 'both th'enflaming eyes' may have puzzled a printer. It is a Donnean device for emphasis. He has spoken of her flaming eyes, and now that he identifies the lovers, that identity must be complete. Both the eyes of both are lit with the same flame, both their hearts kindled at the same fire. Compare later: 225. 'One fire of foure inflaming eyes,' &c.

l. 129. Yet let A23, O'F. The first of these MSS. is an early copy of the poem. 'Yet' improves both the sense and the metre. It would be easily dropped from its likeness to 'let' suggesting a duplication of that word.

Page 137, l. 150. Who can the Sun in water see. The Grolier Club edition alters the full stop here to a semicolon; and Chambers quotes the reading of A18, N, TC, 'winter' for 'water', as worth noting. Both the change and the suggestion imply some misapprehension of the reference of these lines, which is to the preceding verse:

The opening of a stanza with two lines which in thought belong to the previous one is not unprecedented in Donne's poems. Compare the sixth stanza of A Valediction: of my name in the window, and note.

l. 156. as their spheares are. The crystalline sphere in which each planet is fixed.

Page 138, ll. 171-81. The Benediction. The accurate punctuation of Donne's poetry is not an easy matter. In the 1633 edition the last five lines of this stanza have no stronger stop than a comma. This may be quite right, but it leaves ambiguous what is the exact force and what the connexion of the line—

The editions of 1635-69, by placing a full stop after 'give' (l. 178), connect 'Nature and grace' with what follows, and Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have accepted this, though they place a semicolon after 'Art'. It seems to me that the line must go with what precedes. The force of 'may' is carried on to 'doe all':

'May there always be heirs of James to receive thanks, of you two to give; and may this mutual relation owe everything to nature and grace, the goodness of your descendants, the grace of the king, nothing to art, to policy and flattery.' That is the only meaning I can give to the line. The only change in 1633 is that of a comma to a full stop, a big change in value, a small one typographically.

Page 139, l. 200. they doe not set so too; I have changed the full stop after 'too' to a semicolon, as the 'Therefore thou maist' which follows is an immediate inference from these two lines. 'You rose at the same hour this morning, but you (the bride) must go first to bed.'

ll. 204-5. As he that sees, &c. 'I have sometimes wondered in the reading what was become of those glaring colours which amazed me in Bussy D'Ambois upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly; nothing but a cold, dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was a-shooting.' Dryden, The Spanish Friar. In another place Dryden uses the figure in a more poetic or at least ambitious fashion:

The idea was a common one, but I have no doubt that Dryden [pg 98] owed his use of it as an image to Donne. There is no poet from whom he pilfers 'wit' more freely.

Page 140, ll. 215-16. Now, as in Tullias tombe, i.e. Cicero's daughter. 'According to a ridiculous story, which some of the moderns report, in the age of Pope Paul III a monument was discovered on the Appian road with the superscription Tulliolae filiae meae; the body of a woman was found in it, which was reduced to ashes as soon as touched; there was also a lamp burning, which was extinguished as soon as the air gained admission there, and which was supposed to have been lighted above 1500 years.' Lemprière. See Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 21.

Page 141, l. 17. Help with your presence and devise to praise. I have dropped the comma after 'presence' because it suggests to us, though it did not necessarily do so to seventeenth-century readers, that 'devise' here is a verb—both Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers have taken it as such—whereas it is the noun 'device' = fancy, invention. Their fancy and invention is to be shown in the attiring of the bride:

Page 142, l. 26. Sonns of these Senators wealths deep oceans. The corruption of the text here has arisen in the first place from the readily explicable confusion of 'sonnes' or 'sonns' as written and 'sonne', the final 's' being the merest flourish and repeatedly overlooked in copying and printing, while 'sonne' easily becomes 'some', and secondly from a misapprehension of Donne's characteristic pun. The punctuation of the 1633 edition is supported by almost every MS.

The 'frolique Patricians' are of course not the sons of 'these Senators' by birth. 'I speak not this to yourselves, you Senators of London,' says Donne in the Sermon Preached at Pauls Cross ... 26 Mart. 1616, 'but as God hath blessed you in your ways, and in your callings, so put your children into ways and courses too, in which God may bless them.... The Fathers' former labours shall not excuse their Sons future idleness.' The sons of wealthy citizens might grow idle and extravagant; they could not be styled 'Patricians'. It is not of them that Donne is thinking, but of the young noblemen who are accompanying their friend on his wedding-day. They are, or are willing to be, the sons, by marriage not by blood, of 'these Senators', or rather of their money-bags. In a word, they marry their daughters for money, as the hero of the Epithalamion is doing. It is fortunate for the Senators if the young courtiers do not find in their wives as well as their daughters, like Fastidious Brisk in Jonson's comedy, 'Golden Mines and furnish'd Treasurie.' But they are 'Sunnes' as well as Sonnes'—suns which drink up the deep oceans of these Senators' wealth:

Hence the metaphor 'deep oceans', and hence the appropriateness of the predicate 'Here shine'. This pun on 'sunne' and 'sonne' is a favourite with Donne:

'This day both Gods Sons arose: The Sun of his Firmament, and the Son of his bosome.' Sermons 80. 26. 255. 'And when thy Sun, thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed, the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory.' Ibid. 80. 45. 450.

Correctly read the line has a satiric quality which Donne's lines rarely want, and in which this stanza abounds. I have chosen the spelling 'Sonns' as that which is most commonly used in the MSS. for 'sonnes' and 'sunnes'.

Page 143, l. 57. His steeds nill be restrain'd. I had adopted the reading 'nill' for 'will' conjecturally before I found it in W. There can be no doubt it is right. As printed, the two clauses (57-8) simply contradict each other. The use of 'nill' for 'will' was one of Spenser's Chaucerisms, and Donne comes closer to Spenser in the Epithalamia than anywhere else. Sylvester uses it in his translation of Du Bartas:

She has realized her potentiality; she is now actually what hitherto she has been only ἐν δυνάμει, therefore she 'puts on perfection'. 'Praeterea secundum Philosophum ... qualibet potentiâ melior est eius actus; nam forma est melior quam materia, et actio quam potentia activa: est enim finis eius.' Aquinas, Summa, xxv. i. See also Aristotle, Met. 1050 a 2-16. This metaphysical doctrine [pg 100] is not contradicted by the religious exaltation of virginity, for it is not virginity as such which is preferred to marriage by the Church, but the virgin's dedication of herself to God: 'Virginitas inde honorata, quia Deo dicata.... Virgines ideo laudatae, quia Deo dicatae. Nec nos hoc in virginibus praedicamus, quod virgines sunt; sed quod Deo dicatae piâ continentiâ virgines. Nam, quod non temere dixerim, felicior mihi videtur nupta mulier quam virgo nuptura: habet enim iam illa quod ista adhuc cupit.... Illa uni studet placere cui data est: haec multis, incerta cui danda est,' &c.; August. De Sanct. Virg. I. x, xi. Compare Aquinas, Summa II. 2, Quaest. clii. 3. Wedded to Christ the virgin puts on a higher perfection.

SATYRES.

The earliest date assignable to any of the Satyres is 1593, or more probably 1594-5. On the back of the Harleian MS. 5110 (H51), in the British Museum, is inscribed:¹

The handwriting is not identical with that in which the poems are transcribed, and it is impossible to say either when the poems were copied or when the title and date were affixed. One may not build too absolutely on its accuracy; but there are in the three first Satires (which alone the MS. contains) some indications that point to 1593-5 as the probable date. Mr. Chambers notes the reference in I., 80, 'the wise politic horse,' to Banks' performing horse, and says: 'A large collection of them' (i.e. allusions to the horse) 'will be found in Mr. Halliwell-Phillips's Memoranda on Love's Labour's Lost. Only one of these allusions is, however, earlier than 1593. It is in 1591, and refers not to an exhibition in London, but in the provinces, and not to Morocco, which was a bay, but to a white horse. It is probable, therefore, that by 1591 Banks had not yet come to London, and if so the date 1593 on the Harl. MS. 5110 of Donne's Satires cannot be far from that of their composition.' But this is not the only allusion. The same lines run on:

This has been passed by commentators as a quite general reference; [pg 101] but the Ape and Elephant seem to have been animals actually performing, or exhibited, in London about 1594. Thus in Every Man out of his Humour, acted in 1599, Carlo Buffone says (IV. 6): ''S heart he keeps more ado with this monster' (i.e. Sogliardo's dog) 'than ever Banks did with his horse, or the fellow with the elephant.' Further, all three are mentioned in the Epigrams of Sir John Davies, e.g.:

In Dacum.

In Titum

Colonel Cunningham has pointed out another reference in Basse's Metamorphosis of the Walnut Tree (1645), where he tells how 'in our youth we saw the Elephant'. Grosart's suggestion that the Elephant was an Inn is absurd.

Davies' Epigrams were first published along with Marlowe's version of Ovid's Elegies, but no date is affixed to any of the three editions which followed one another. But a MS. in the Bodleian which contains forty-five of the Epigrams describes them as English Epigrammes much like Buckminsters Almanacke servinge for all England but especially for the meridian of the honourable cittye of London calculated by John Davies of Grayes Inne gentleman An^o 1594 in November.² [pg 102] This seems much too exact to be a pure invention, and if it be correct it is very unlikely that the allusions would be to ancient history. Banks' Horse, the performing Ape, and the Elephant were all among the sights of the day, like the recently erected tomb of Lord Chancellor Hatton, who died in 1591. The atmosphere of the first Satyre, as of Davies' Epigrams, is that of 1593-5. The phrase 'the Infanta of London, Heire to an India', in which commentators have found needless difficulty, contains possibly, besides its obvious meaning, an allusion to the fact that since 1587 the Infanta of Spain had become in official Catholic circles heir to the English throne. In 1594 Parsons' tract, A Conference about the next Succession to the Crown of England. By R. Doleman, defended her claim, and made the Infanta's name a byword in England.

If H51 is thus approximately right in its dating of the first Satire it may be the better trusted as regards the other two, and there is at least nothing in them to make this date impossible. The references to poetry in the second acquire a more vivid interest when their date or approximate date is remembered. In 1593 died Marlowe, the greatest of the brilliant group that reformed the stage, giving

and Shakespeare was one of the 'ideot actors'. Shakespeare, too, was one of the many sonneteers who 'would move Love by rithmes', and in 1593 and 1594 he appeared among those 'who write to Lords, rewards to get'.

It would be interesting if we could identify the lawyer-poet, Coscus, referred to in this Satire. Malone, in a MS. note to his copy of 1633 (now in the Bodleian Library), suggested John Hoskins or Sir Richard Martin. Grosart conjectured that Donne had in view the Gullinge Sonnets preserved in the Farmer-Chetham MS., and ascribed with probability to Sir John Davies, the poet of the Epigrams just mentioned. Chambers seems to lean to this view and says, 'these sonnets are couched in legal terminology.' Donne is supposed to have mistaken Davies' 'gulling' for serious poetry. This is very unlikely. Moreover, only the last two of Davies' sonnets are 'couched in legal terminology':

Nor, although Davies' style parodies the style of the sonneteers (not of the anonymous Zepheria only), is it particularly harsh. It is [pg 103] much more probable that Donne, like Davies, has chiefly in view this anonymous series of sonnets—Zepheria. Ogni dì viene la sera. Mysus et Haemonia juvenis qui cuspide vulnus senserat, hac ipsa cuspide sensit opem. At London: Printed by the Widow Orwin, for N. L. and John Busby. 1594. The style of Zepheria exactly fits Donne's description:

'The verbs "imparadize", "portionize", "thesaurize", are some of the fruits of his ingenuity. He claims that his Muse is capable of "hyperbolised trajections"; he apostrophizes his lady's eyes as "illuminating lamps" and calls his pen his "heart's solicitor".' Sidney Lee, Elizabethan Sonnets. The following sonnet from the series illustrates the use of legal terminology which both Davies and Donne satirize:

Canzon 20.

We do not know who the author of Zepheria was, so cannot tell how far Donne is portraying an individual in what follows. It can hardly be Hoskins or Martin, unless Zepheria itself was intended to be a burlesque, which is possible. Quite possibly Donne has taken the author of Zepheria simply as a type of the young lawyer who writes bad poetry; and in the rest of the poem portrays the same type when he has abandoned poetry and devoted himself to 'Law practice for mere gain', extorting money and lands from Catholics or suspected Catholics, and drawing cozening conveyances. If Zepheria be the poems referred to, then 1594-5 would be the date of this Satire.

The third Satyre has no datable references, but its tone reflects the years in which Donne was loosening himself from the Catholic Church but had not yet conformed, the years between 1593 and 1599, and probably the earlier rather than the later of these years. On the whole 1593 is a little too early a date for these three satires. They were probably written between 1594 and 1597.

The long fourth Satyre is in the Hawthornden MS. (HN) headed Sat. 4. anno 1594. But this is a mistake either of Drummond, who transcribed the poems probably as late as 1610, or of Donne himself, whose tendency was to push these early effusions far back in his life. The reference to 'the losse of Amyens' (l. 114) shows that the poem must have been written after March 1597, probably between that date and September, when Amiens was re-taken by Henry IV. These lines may be an insertion, but there is no extant copy of the Satyre without them. It belongs to the period between the 'Calis-journey' and the 'Island-voyage', when first Donne is likely to have appeared at court in the train of Essex.

The fifth Satyre is referred by Grosart and Chambers to 1602-3 on the ground that the phrase 'the great Carricks pepper' is a reference to the expedition sent out by the East India Company under Captain James Lancaster to procure pepper, the price of which commodity was excessively high. Lancaster captured a Portuguese Carrick and sent home pepper and spice. There is no proof, however, that this ship was ever known as 'the Carrick' or 'the great Carrick'. That phrase was applied to 'that prodigious great carack called the Madre de Dios or Mother of God, one of the greatest burden belonging to the crown of Portugal', which was captured by Raleigh's expedition and brought to Dartmouth in 1592. 'This prize was reckoned the greatest and richest that had ever been brought into England' and 'daily drew vast numbers of spectators from all parts to admire at the hugeness of it' (Oldys, Life of Raleigh, 1829, pp. 154-7). Strype states that she 'was seven decks high, 165 foot long, and manned with 600 men' (Annals, iv. 177-82). That pepper formed a large part of the Carrick's cargo is clear from the following order issued by the Privy Council: A letter to Sir Francis Drake, William Killigrewe, Richard Carmarden and Thomas Midleton Commissioners appointed for the Carrique. 'Wee have received your letter of the 23^rd of this presente of your proceeding in lading of other convenient barkes with the pepper out of the Carrique, and your opinion concerning the same, for answere whereunto we do thinke it meete, and so require you to take order, so soone as the goods are quite dischardged, that Sir Martin Frobisher be appointed to have the charge and conduction of those shippes laden with the pepper and other commodities out of the Carrique to be brought about to Chatham.' 27 Octobris, 1592. See also under October 1. The reference in 'the great Carricks pepper' is thus clear. The words 'You Sir, whose righteousness she loves', &c., ll. 31-3, show that the poem was written after Donne had entered Sir Thomas Egerton's service, i.e. between 1598, if not earlier, and February 1601-2 when he was dismissed, which makes the date suggested by Grosart and Chambers (1602-3) impossible. The poem was probably written in 1598-9. There is a note of enthusiasm in these lines as of one who has just entered on a service of which he is [pg 105] proud, and the occasion of the poem was probably Egerton's endeavour to curtail the fees claim'd by the Clerk of the Star Chamber (see note below). With Essex's return from Ireland in 1599 began a period of trouble and anxiety for Egerton, and probably for Donne too. The more sombre cast of his thought, and the modification in his feelings towards Elizabeth, after the fatal February of 1600-1, are reflected in the satirical fragment The Progresse of the Soule.

The so-called sixth and seventh Satyres (added in 1635 and 1669) I have relegated to the Appendix B, and have given elsewhere my reasons for assigning them to Sir John Roe. That Donne wrote only five regular Satyres is very definitely stated by Drummond of Hawthornden in a note prefixed to the copy of the fourth in HN: 'This Satyre (though it heere have the first place because no more was intended to this booke) was indeed the authors fourth in number and order he having written five in all to using which this caution will sufficientlie direct in the rest.'

¹ Attention was first called to this inscription by J. Payne Collier in his Poetical Decameron (1820). He uses the date to vindicate the claim for Donne's priority as a satirist to Hall. 'Dunne' is of course one of the many ways in which the poet's name is spelt, and 'Jhon' is a spelling of 'John'. The poet's own signature is generally 'Jo. Donne.' 'Jhon Don' is Drummond's spelling on the title-page of HN. In Q the first page is headed 'M^r John Dunnes Satires'.

² Of the forty-five which the MS. contains, some thirty-three were published in the edition referred to above. On the other hand the edition contains some which are not in the MS. Of these, one, 47, 'Meditations of a gull,' alone refers to events which are certainly later than 1594. As this is not in the MS. there is nothing to contradict the assertion that it (and the Epigrams cited above) belong to 1594. Davies' Epigrams are referred to in Sir John Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596.

Page 145. Satyre I.

This Satyre is pretty closely imitated in the Satyra Quinta of SKIALETHEIA. or, A shadowe of Truth in certaine Epigrams and Satyres. 1598. attributed to Edward Guilpin (or Gilpin), to whom extracts from it are assigned in Englands Parnassus (1600). Who Guilpin was we do not know. Besides the work named he wrote two sonnets prefixed to Gervase Markham's Devoreux. Vertues tears for the losse of the most Christian King Henry, third of that name; and the untimely death of the most noble and heroical Gentleman, Walter Devoreux, who was slain before Roan in France. First written in French by the most excellent and learned Gentlewoman, Madame Geneuefe Petan Maulette. And paraphrastically translated into English by Jervis Markham. 1597. See Grosart's Introduction to his reprint of Skialetheia in Occasional Issues. 6. (1878). Donne addresses a letter to Mr. E. G. (p. 208), which Gosse conjectures to be addressed to Guilpin. That Guilpin knew Donne is probable in view of this early imitation of a privately circulated MS. poem. Guilpin's poem begins:

l. 1. Away thou fondling, &c. The reading of the majority of editions and MSS. is 'changeling', but this is a case not of a right and wrong reading but of two versions, both ascribable to the author. Which was his emendation it is impossible to say. He may have changed 'fondling' (a 'fond' or foolish person) thinking that the idea was conveyed by 'motley', which, like Shakespeare's epithet 'patch', is a synecdoche from the dress of the professional fool or jester. On the other hand the idea of 'changeling' is repeated in 'humorist', which suggests changeable and fanciful. I have, therefore, let the 1633 text stand. 'Changeling' has of course the meaning here of 'a fickle or inconstant person', not the common sense of a person or thing or child substituted for another, as 'fondling' is not here a 'pet, favourite', as in modern usage.

l. 3. Consorted. Grosart, who professes to print from H51, reads Consoled, without any authority.

l. 6. Natures Secretary: i.e. Aristotle. He is always 'the Philosopher' in Aquinas and the other schoolmen. Walton speaks of 'the great secretary of nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon'.

l. 7. jolly Statesmen. All the MSS. except O'F agree with 1633 in reading 'jolly', though 'wily' is an obvious emendation. Chambers adopts it. By 'jolly' Donne probably meant 'overweeningly self-confident ... full of presumptuous pride ... arrogant, over-bearing' (O.E.D.). 'Evilmerodach, a jolly man, without Iustyse and cruel.' Caxton (1474). 'It concerneth every one of us ... not to be too high-minded or jolly for anything that is past.' Sanderson (1648).

l. 10. Giddie fantastique Poets of each land. In a letter Donne tells Buckingham, in Spain, how his own library is filled with Spanish books 'from the mistress of my youth, Poetry, to the wife of mine age, Divinity'. This line in the Satires points to the fact, which Donne was probably tempted later to obscure a little, that his first prolonged visit to the Continent had been made before he settled in London in 1592 and probably without the permission of the Government. The other than Spanish poets would doubtless be French and Italian. Donne had read Dante. He refers to him in the fourth Satyre ('who dreamt he saw hell'), and in an unpublished letter in the Burley MS. he dilates at some length, but in no very creditable fashion, on an episode in the Divina Commedia. Of French poets he probably knew at any rate Du Bartas and Regnier.

l. 12. And follow headlong, wild uncertain thee? I have retained the 1633 punctuation instead of, with Chambers, comma-ing 'wild' as well as 'headlong'. The latter is possibly an adverb here, going with 'follow'. The use of 'headlong' as an adjective with persons was not common. The earliest example in the O.E.D. is from Hudibras:

Donne's line is, however, ambiguous; and the subsequent description of the humorist would justify the adjective.

l. 18. Bright parcell gilt, with forty dead mens pay. Compare: 'Captains some in guilt armour (unbatt'red) some in buffe jerkins, plated o'r with massy silver lace (raz'd out of the ashes of dead pay).' Dekker, Newes from Hell, ii. 119 (Grosart). So many 'dead pays' (i.e. men no longer on the muster roll) were among the perquisites allowed to every captain of a company, but the number was constantly exceeded: 'Moreover where' (i.e. whereas) 'there are 15 dead paies allowed ordinarily in every bande, which is paid allwaies and taken by the captaines, althogh theire nombers be greatly dyminished in soche sorte as sometimes there are not fower score or fewer in a company, her Majestys pleasure is that from hence the saide 15 dead paies shall not be allowed unlesse the companies be full and compleate, but after the rate of two dead paies for everie twenty men that shalbe in the saide bande where the companies are dyminished.' Letter to Sir John Norreyes, Knighte. Acts of the Privy Council, 1592.

Page 146, l. 27. Oh monstrous, superstitious puritan. The 'Monster' of the MSS. is of course not due to the substitution of the noun for the adjective, but is simply an older form of the adjective. Compare 'O wonder Vandermast', Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.

l. 32. raise thy formall: 'raise' is probably right, but 'vaile' is a common metaphor. 'A Player? Call him, the lousie slave: what will he saile by, and not once strike or vaile to a Man of Warre.' Captain Tucca in Jonson's Poetaster, III. 3.

l. 33. That wilt consort none, &c. It is unnecessary to alter 'consort none' to 'consort with none', as some MSS. do. The construction is quite regular. 'Wilt thou consort me, bear me company?' Heywood. The 'consorted with these few books' of l. 3 is classed by the O.E.D. under a slightly different sense of the word—not 'attended on by' these books, but 'associated in a common lot with' them.

l. 39. The nakednesse and barenesse, &c. The reading 'barrennesse' of all the editions and some MSS. is due probably to similarity of pronunciation (rather than of spelling) and a superficial suggestion of appropriateness to the context. A second glance shows that 'bareness' is the correct reading. The MSS. give frequent evidence of having been written to dictation.

l. 46. The 'yet', which the later editions and Chambers drop, is quite in Donne's style. It is heavily stressed and 'he was' is slurred, 'h' was.'

Page 147, l. 58. The Infanta of London, Heire to an India. It is not necessary to suppose a reference to any person in particular. The allusion is in the first place to the wealth of the city, and the greed of patricians and courtiers to profit by that wealth. 'No one can tell who, amid the host of greedy and expectant suitors, will carry off whoever is at present the wealthiest minor (and probably the king's ward) in London, i.e. the City.' Compare the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn:

Compare also: 'I possess as much in your wish, Sir, as if I were made Lord of the Indies.' Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour, II. iii.

The 'Infanta' of A25, O'F, Q is pretty certainly right, though 'Infant' can be applied, like 'Prince', to a woman. There is probably a second allusion to the claim of the Infanta of Spain to be heir to the English throne.

l. 60. heavens Scheme: 'Scheme' is certainly the right reading. The common MS. spelling, 'sceame' or 'sceames', explains the 'sceanes' which 1633 has derived from N, TCD. For the Satyres the editor did not use his best MS. See Text and Canon, &c., p. xcv. It is possible that a slurred definite article ('th'heavens') has been lost.

In preparing his 'theme' or horoscope the astrologer had five principal things to consider, (1) the heavenly mansions, (2) the signs of the zodiac, (3) the planets, (4) the aspects and configurations, (5) the fixed stars. With this end in view the astrologer divided the heavens into twelve parts, called mansions, to which he related the positions occupied at the same moment by the stars in each of them ('drawing the horoscope'). There were several methods of doing this. That of Ptolemy consisted in dividing the zodiac into twelve equal parts. This was called the equal manner. To represent the mansions the astrologers constructed twelve triangles between two squares placed one within the other. Each of the twelve mansions thus formed had a different name, and determined different aspects of the life and fortune of the subject of the horoscope. From the first was foretold the general character of his life, his health, his habits, morals. The second indicated his [pg 109] wealth; and so on. The different signs of the zodiac and the planets, in like manner, had each its special influence. But sufficient has been said to indicate what Donne means by 'drawing forth Heavens scheme'.

l. 62. subtile-witted. There is something to be said for the 'supple-witted' of H51 and some other MSS. 'Subtle-witted' means 'fantastic, ingenious'; 'supple-witted' means 'variable'. Like Fastidious Brisk in Every Man out of his Humour, they have a fresh fashion in suits every day. 'When men are willing to prefer their friends, we heare them often give these testimonies of a man; He hath good parts, and you need not be ashamed to speak for him; he understands the world, he knowes how things passe, and he hath a discreet, a supple, and an appliable disposition, and hee may make a fit instrument for all your purposes, and you need not be afraid to speake for him.' Sermons 80. 74. 750. A 'supple disposition' is one that changes easily to adapt itself to circumstances.

l. 89. I whispered let'us go. I have, following the example of 1633 in other cases, indicated the slurring of 'let'us' or 'let's', which is necessary metrically if we are to read the full 'whispered' which 1669 first contracts to 'whisperd'. Q shows that 'let's' is the right contraction. Donne's use of colloquial slurrings must be constantly kept in view when reading especially his satires. They are not always indicated in the editions: but note l. 52:

Page 149, ll. 100-4. My punctuation of these lines is a slight modification of that indicated by W and JC, which give the proper division of the speeches. The use of inverted commas would make this clearer, but Chambers' division seems to me (if I understand it) to give the whole speech, from 'But to me' to 'So is the Pox', to Donne's companion, which is to deprive Donne of his closing repartee. The Grolier Club editor avoids this, but makes 'Why he hath travelled long?' a part of Donne's speech beginning 'Our dull comedians want him'. I divide the speeches thus:—

The brackets round 'which understand none' I have taken from Q. I had thought of inserting them before I came on this MS. Of course brackets in old editions are often used where commas would [pg 110] be sufficient, and one can build nothing on their insertion here in one MS. But it seems to me that these words have no point unless regarded as a sarcastic comment interpolated by Donne, perhaps sotto voce. 'To you, who understand neither French nor Italian, he may seem perfect French and Italian—but to no one else.' Probably an eclectic attire was the only evidence of travel observable in the person in question. 'How oddly is he suited!' says Portia of her English wooer; 'I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' Brackets are thus used by Jonson to indicate a remark interjected sotto voce. See the quotation from the Poetaster in the note on The Message (II. p. 37). Modern editors substitute for the brackets the direction 'Aside', which is not in the Folio (1616).

Page 149. Satyre II.

ll. 1-4. It will be seen that H51 gives two alternative versions of these lines. The version of the printed text is that of the majority of the MSS.

Page 150, ll. 15-16. As in some Organ, &c. Chambers prints these lines with a comma after 'move', connecting them with what follows about love-poetry. Clearly they belong to what has been said about dramatic poets. It is Marlowe and his fellows who are the bellows which set the actor-puppets in motion.

ll. 19-20. Rammes and slings now, &c. The 'Rimes and songs' of P is a quaint variant due either to an accident of hearing or to an interpretation of the metaphor: 'As in war money is more effective than rams and slings, so it is more effective in love than songs.' But there is a further allusion in the condensed stroke, for 'pistolets' means also 'fire-arms'. Money is as much more effective than poetry in love as fire-arms are than rams and slings in war. Donne is Dryden's teacher in the condensed stroke, which 'cleaves to the waist', lines such as

Page 151, l. 33. to out-sweare the Letanie. 'Letanie,' the reading of all the MSS., is indicated by a dash in 1633 and is omitted without any indication by 1635-39. In 1649-50 the blank was supplied, probably conjecturally, by 'the gallant'. It was not till 1669 that 'Letanie' was inserted. In 'versifying' Donne's Satyres Pope altered this to 'or Irishmen out-swear', and Warburton in a note explains the original: 'Dr. Donne's is a low allusion to a licentious quibble used at that time by the enemies of the English Liturgy, who, disliking the frequent invocations in the Litanie, called them the taking God's name in vain, which is the Scripture periphrasis for swearing.'

l. 36. tenements. Drummond in HN writes 'torments', probably a conjectural emendation. Drummond was not so well versed in Scholastic Philosophy as Donne.

l. 44. But a scarce Poet. This is the reading of the best MSS., and [pg 111] I have adopted it in preference to 'But scarce a Poet', which is an awkward phrase and does not express what the writer means. Donne does not say that he is barely a poet, but that he is a bad poet. Donne uses 'scarce' thus as an adjective again in Satyre IV, l. 4 (where see note) and l. 240. It seems to have puzzled copyists and editors, who amend it in various ways. By 'jollier of this state' he means 'prouder of this state', using the word as in 'jolly statesmen', I. 7.

l. 48. 'language of the Pleas and Bench.' See Introductory Note for legal diction in love-sonnets.

The unpunctuated 'for meere gaine bold soule repute' of 1633-69 and most MSS. has caused considerable trouble to the editors and copyists. One way out of the difficulty, 'bold souls repute,' appears in Chambers' edition as an emendation, and before that in Tonson's edition (1719), whence it was copied by all the editions to Chalmers' (1810). Lowell's conjecture, 'hold soules repute,' had been anticipated in some MSS. There is no real difficulty. I had comma'd the words 'bold soule' before I examined Q, which places them in brackets, a common means in old books of indicating an apostrophe. The 'bold soule' addressed, and invoked to esteem such worthless people aright, is the 'Sir' (whoever that may be) to whom the whole poem is addressed. A note in HN prefixed to this poem says that it is taken from 'C. B.'s copy', i.e. Christopher Brooke's. It is quite possible that this Satyre, like The Storme, was addressed to him.

These lines are printed as in 1633, except that the comma after 'Asses' is raised to a semicolon, and that I have put a hyphen between 'Bearing' and 'like'. The lines are difficult and have greatly puzzled editors. Grosart prints from H51 and reads 'wringd', which, though an admissible form of the past-participle, makes no sense here. The Grolier Club editor prints:

By retaining the comma after 'bar' in a modernized text with modern punctuation these editors leave it doubtful whether they do or do not consider that 'asses' is the object to 'wring'. Further, they connect 'and more shameless far than carted whores' closely with [pg 112] 'asses', separating it by a semicolon from 'lie to the grave judge'. I take it that 'more shameless far' is regarded by these editors as a qualifying adjunct to 'asses'. This is surely wrong. The subject of the long sentence is 'He' (l. 65), and the infinitives throughout are complements to 'must': 'He must walk ... he must talk ... [he must] lie ... [he must] wring to the bar bearing-like asses; [he must], more shameless than carted whores, lie to the grave judge, &c.' This is the only method in which I can construe the passage, and it carries with it the assumption that 'bearing like' should be connected by a hyphen to form an adjective similar to 'Relique-like', which is the MS. form of 'Relique-ly' at l. 84. Certainly it is 'he', Coscus, who is 'more shameless, &c.,' not his victims. These are the 'bearing-like asses', the patient Catholics or suspected Catholics whom he wrings to the bar and forces to disgorge fines. Coscus, a poet in his youth, has become a Topcliffe in his maturer years. 'Bearing,' 'patient' is the regular epithet for asses in Elizabethan literature:

Possibly, but it is not very likely, Donne refers not only to the stupid patience of the ass but to her fertility: 'They be very gainefull and profitable to their maisters, yielding more commodities than the revenues of good farmers.' Holland's Pliny, 8. 43, Of Asses.

Page 153, l. 87. In parchments. The plural is the reading of the better MSS. and seems to me to give the better sense. The final 's' is so easily overlooked or confounded with a final 'e' that one must determine the right reading by the sense of the passage.

ll. 93-6. When Luther was profest, &c. The 'power and glory clause' which is not found in the Vulgate or any of the old Latin versions of the New Testament (and is therefore not used in Catholic prayers, public or private), was taken by Erasmus (1516) from all the Greek codices, though he does not regard it as genuine. Thence it passed into Luther's (1521) and most Reformed versions. In his popular and devotional Auslegung deutsch des Vaterunsers (1519) Luther makes no reference to it.

l. 105. Whereas th'old ... In great hals. The line as I have printed it combines the versions of 1633 and the later editions. It is found in several MSS. Some of these, on the other hand, like 1633-69, read 'where'; but 'where's' with a plural subject following was quite idiomatic. Compare: 'Here needs no spies nor eunuchs,' p. 81, l. 39; 'With firmer age returns our liberties,' p. 115, l. 77.

At p. 165, l. 182, the MSS. point to 'cryes his flatterers' as the original version. See Franz, Shak.-Gram. § 672; Knecht, Die Kongruenz zwischen Subjekt und Prädikat (1911), p. 28.

Donne has other instances of irregular concord, or of the plural form in 's', and 'th':

The rhyme makes the form here indisputable. The MSS. point to a more frequent use of 'hath' with a plural subject than the editions have preserved. The above three instances seem all plurals. In other cases the individuals form a whole, or there is ellipsis:

Page 154, l. 107. meanes blesse. The reading of 1633 has the support of the best MSS. Grosart and Chambers prefer the reading of the later editions, 'Meane's blest.' This, it would seem to me, needs the definite article. The other reading gives quite the same sense, 'in all things means (i.e. middle ways, moderate measures) bring blessings':

The general tenor of the closing lines recalls Horace's treatment of the same theme in Sat. ii. 2. 88, 125, more than either Juvenal, Sat. ix, or Persius, Sat. vi.

Grosart states that 'means, then as now, meant riches, possessions, but never the mean or middle'. But see O.E.D., which quotes for the plural in this sense: 'Tempering goodly well Their contrary dislikes with loved means.' Spenser, Hymns. In the singular Bacon has, 'But to speake in a Meane.' Of Adversitie.

Page 154. Satyre III.

Page 155, l. 19. leaders rage. This phrase might tempt one to date the poem after the Cadiz expedition and Islands voyage, in both of which 'leaders' rage', i.e. the quarrels of Howard and Essex, and of Essex and Raleigh, militated against success; but it is too little to build upon. Donne may mean simply the arbitrary exercise of arbitrary power on the part of leaders.

ll. 30-2. who made thee to stand Sentinell, &c. 'Souldier' is the reading of what is perhaps the older version of the Satyres. It would do as well: 'Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus est animus in custodia corporis; nec iniussu eius a quo ille est vobis datus ex hominum vita migrandum est, ne munus assignatum a Deo defugisse videamini.' Cicero, Somnium Scipionis.

'Veteres quidem philosophiae principes, Pythagoras et Plotinus, prohibitionis huius non tam creatores sunt quam praecones, omnino illicitum esse dicentes quempiam militiae servientem a praesidio et commissa sibi statione discedere contra ducis vel principis iussum. Plane eleganti exemplo usi sunt eo quod militia est vita hominis super terram.' John of Salisbury, Policrat. ii. 27.

Donne considers the rashness of those whom he refers to as a degree of, an approach to, suicide. To expose ourselves to these perils we abandon the moral warfare to which we are appointed. In his own work on suicide (ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ, &c.) Donne discusses the permissible approaches to suicide. An unpublished Problem shows his knowledge of John of Salisbury.

ll. 33-4. Know thy foes, &c. I have followed the better MSS. here against 1633 and L74, N, TCD. The dropping of 's' after 'foe' has probably led to the attempt to regularize the construction by interjecting 'h'is'. Donne has three foes in view—the devil, the world, and the flesh.

l. 35. quit. Whether we read 'quit' or 'rid' the construction is difficult. The phrase seems to mean 'to be free of his whole Realm'—an unparalleled use of either adjective.

l. 36. The worlds all parts. Here 'all' means 'every', but Shakespeare would make 'parts' singular: 'All bond and privilege of nature break,' Cor. V. iii. 25. Donne blends two constructions.

Page 156, l. 49. Crantz. I have adopted the spelling of W, which emphasizes the Dutch character of the name. The 'Crates ' of Q is tempting as bringing the name into line with the other classical ones, but all the other MSS. have an 'n' in the word. Donne has in view the 'schismatics of Amsterdam' (The Will) and their followers. The change to Grant or Grants shows a tendency in the copyists to substitute a Scotch for a Dutch name.

Page 157, ll. 69-71. But unmoved thou, &c. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are certainly ambiguous. The semicolon [pg 115] after 'allow' has a little less value than that of a full stop; that after 'right' a little more than a comma, or contrariwise. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor all connect 'and the right' with what precedes:

So Chambers,—Grosart and the Grolier Club editor place a comma after 'allow'. It seems to me that 'And the right' goes rather with what follows:

If the first arrangement be right, then 'And' seems awkward. The second marks two stages in the argument: a stable judgement compels us to acknowledge religion, and that there can be only one. This being so, the next question is, Which is the true one? As to that, we cannot do better than consult our fathers:

'Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.' Deut. xxxii. 7.

l. 76. To adore, or scorne an image, &c. Compare: 'I should violate my own arm rather than a Church, nor willingly deface the name of Saint or Martyr. At the sight of a Cross or Crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of Friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of Devotion. I could never hear the Ave-Mary Bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all, that is in silence and dumb contempt.... At a solemn Procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter.' Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, sect. 3. Compare also Donne's letter To Sir H. R. (probably to Goodyere), (Letters, p. 29), 'You know I have never imprisoned the word Religion; not straightning it Friarly ad religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religion), nor immuring it in a Rome, or a [pg 116] Geneva; they are all virtual beams of one Sun.... They are not so contrary as the North and South Poles; and they are connaturall pieces of one circle. Religion is Christianity, which being too spirituall to be seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent body of good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian.'

l. 80. Cragged and steep. The three epithets, 'cragged', 'ragged', and 'rugged', found in the MSS., are all legitimate and appropriate. The second has the support of the best MSS. and is used by Donne elsewhere: 'He shall shine upon thee in all dark wayes, and rectifie thee in all ragged ways.' Sermons 80. 52. 526. Shakespeare uses it repeatedly: 'A ragged, fearful, hanging rock,' Gent. of Ver. I. ii. 121; 'My ragged prison walls,' Rich. II, V. v. 21; and metaphorically, 'Winter's ragged hand,' Sonn. VI. i.

ll. 85-7. To will implyes delay, &c. I have changed the 'to' of 1633 to 'too'. It is a mere change of spelling and has the support of both H51 and W. Grosart and Chambers take it as the preposition following the noun it governs, 'hard knowledge to'—an unexampled construction in the case of a monosyllabic preposition. Franz (Shak.-Gram. § 544) gives cases of inversion for metrical purposes, but only with 'mehrsilbigen Präpositionen', e.g. 'For fear lest day should look their shapes upon.' Mid. N. Dream, III. ii. 385.

Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and Chambers have all, I think, been misled by the accidental omission in 1633 of the full stop or colon after 'doe', l. 85. Chambers prints:

The latter is the better version, but in each 'the body's pains' is a strange apposition to 'deeds' taken as object to 'do'. We do not 'do pains'. The second clause also has no obvious relation to the first which would justify the 'too'. If we close the first sentence at 'doe', we get both better sense and a better balance: 'Act now, for the night cometh. Hard deeds are achieved by the body's pains (i.e. toil, effort), and hard knowledge is attained by the mind's efforts.' The order of the words, and the condensed force given to 'reach' produce a somewhat harsh effect, but not more so than is usual in the Satyres, and less so than the alternative versions of the editors. The following lines continue the thought quite naturally: 'No endeavours of the mind will enable us to comprehend mysteries, but all eyes can apprehend them, dazzle as they may.' Compare: 'In all Philosophy there is not so darke a thing as light; As the sunne which is fons lucis naturalis, the beginning of naturall light, is the most [pg 117] evident thing to be seen, and yet the hardest to be looked upon, so is naturall light to our reason and understanding. Nothing clearer, for it is clearnesse it selfe, nothing darker, it is enwrapped in so many scruples. Nothing nearer, for it is round about us, nothing more remote, for wee know neither entrance, nor limits of it. Nothing more easie, for a child discerns it, nothing more hard for no man understands it. It is apprehensible by sense, and not comprehensible by reason. If wee winke, wee cannot chuse but see it, if wee stare, wee know it never the better.' Sermons 50. 36. 324.

Page 158, ll. 96-7. a Philip, or a Gregory, &c. Grosart and Norton conjecture that by Philip is meant Melanchthon, and for 'Gregory' Norton conjectures Gregory VII; Grosart either Gregory the Great or Gregory of Nazianzus. But surely Philip of Spain is balanced against Harry of England, one defender of the faith against another, as Gregory against Luther. What Gregory is meant we cannot say, but probably Donne had in view Gregory XIII or Gregory XIV, post-Reformation Popes, rather than either of those mentioned above. Satire does not deal in Ancient History. The choice is between Catholic and Protestant Princes and Popes.

Page 158. Satyre IIII.

This satire, like several of the period, is based on Horace's Ibam forte via Sacra (Sat. i. 9), but Donne follows a quite independent line. Horace's theme is at bottom a contrast between his own friendship with Maecenas and 'the way in which vulgar and pushing people sought, and sought in vain, to obtain an introduction'. Donne, like Horace, describes a bore, but makes this the occasion for a general picture of the hangers-on at Court. A more veiled thread running through the poem is an attack on the ways and tricks of informers. The bore's gossip is probably not without a motive:

The manner in which the stranger accosts him suggests the 'intelligencer': 'Two hungry turns had I scarce fetcht in this wast gallery when I was encountered by a neat pedantical fellow, in the forme of a Cittizen, who thrusting himself abruptly into my companie, like an Intelligencer, began very earnestly to question me.' Nash, Pierce Penniless.

In the Satyres Donne is always, though he does not state his position too clearly, one with links attaching him to the persecuted Catholic minority. He hates informers and pursuivants.

ll. 1-4. These lines resemble the opening of Régnier's imitation of Horace's satire:

l. 4. A recreation to, and scarse map of this. I have ventured here to restore, from Q and its duplicate among the Dyce MSS., what I think must have been the original form of this line. The adjective 'scarse' or 'scarce' used in this way ('a scarce poet', 'a scarce brook') is characteristic of Donne, and it always puzzled his copyists, who tried to correct it in one way or another, e.g. 'scarce a poet', II. 44; 'a scant brooke', IV. 240. It is inconceivable that they would have introduced it. The preposition 'to' governing 'such as' regularizes the construction, but would very easily be omitted by a copyist who wished to smooth the metre or did not at once catch its reference. Donne's use of 'scarse', like his use of 'Macaron' in this poem, is probably an Italianism; in Italian 'scarso' means 'wanting, scanty, poor'—'stretta e scarsa fortuna', 'E si riduce talvolta nell' Estate con si scarsa acqua', 'Veniva bellissima tanto quanto ogni comparazione ci saria scarsa', 'Ma l'ingegno e le rime erano scarse' (Petrarch).

Page 159, l. 21. seaven Antiquaries studies. Donne has more than one hit at Antiquaries. See the Epigrams and Satyre V. The reign of Elizabeth witnessed a great revival of antiquarian studies and the first formation of an Antiquarian society: 'There was a time, most excellent king,' says a later writer addressing King James, 'when as well under Queen Elizabeth, as under your majesty, certain choice gentlemen, men of known proof, were knit together, statis temporibus, by the love of these studies, upon contribution among themselves: which company consisted of an elective president and of clarissimi, of other antiquaries and a register.' Oldys, Life of Raleigh, p. 317. He goes on to describe how the society was dissolved by death. In the list of names he gives there are more than seven, but it is just possible that Donne refers to some such society in its early stages.

l. 22. Africks monsters, Guianaes rarities. Africa was famous as the land of monsters. The second reference is to the marvels described in Sir Walter Raleigh's The discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden City of Manoa which the Spaniards call El Dorado, performed in the year 1595 (pub. 1596). Among the monsters were Amazons, Anthropophagi,

l. 23. Stranger then strangers, &c. The 'Stranger then strangest' of some MSS. would form a natural climax to the preceding list of marvels. But 'strangers' is the authoritative reading, and forms the transition to the next few lines. The reference is to the unpopularity [pg 119] in London of the numerous strangers whom wars and religious persecution had collected in England. Strype (Annals, iv) prints a paper of 1568 in which the Lord Mayor gives to the Privy Council an account of the strangers in London. In 1593 there were again complaints of their presence and threats to attack them. 'While these inquiries were making, to incense the people against them there were these lines in one of their libels: Doth not the world see that you, beastly brutes, the Belgians, or rather drunken drones and faint-hearted Flemings; and you fraudulent father (sic. Query 'faitor[s]'), Frenchmen, by your cowardly flight from your own natural countries, have abandoned the same into the hands of your proud, cowardly enemies, and have by a feigned hypocrisy and counterfeit show of religion placed yourself here in a most fertile soil, under a most gracious and merciful prince; who hath been contented, to the great prejudice of her own natural subjects, to suffer you to live here in better case and more freedom then her own people—Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that it is best for them to depart out of the realm of England between this and the 9th of July next. If not then to take that which follows: for that there shall be many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. And all the apprentices and journeymen will down with the Flemings and strangers.'

Another libel was in verse, and after quoting it the official document proceeds: 'The court upon these seditious motives took the most prudent measures to protect the poor strangers, and to prevent any riot or insurrection.' Among other provisions, 'Orders to be given to appoint a strong watch of merchants and others, and like-handicrafted masters, to answer for their apprentices' and servants' misdoing.' Strype's Annals, iv. 234-5.

In the same year a bill was promoted in Parliament against aliens selling foreign wares among us by retail, which Raleigh supported: 'Whereas it is pretended that for strangers it is against charity, against honour, against profit to expel them: in my opinion it is no matter of charity to relieve them. For first, such as fly hither have forsaken their own king: and religion is no pretext for them; for we have no Dutchmen here, but such as come from those princes where the gospel is preached; yet here they live disliking our church,' &c. Birch, Life of Raleigh, p. 163.

I have thought it worth while to note these more recent references as Grosart refers to the rising against strangers on May-day, 1517.

l. 29. by your priesthood, &c. In 1581 a proclamation was issued imposing the penalty of death on any Jesuits or seminary priests who entered the Queen's dominions, and in 1585 Parliament again decreed that all Jesuits and seminary priests were to leave the kingdom within forty days under the capital penalty of treason. The detection, imprisonment, torture, and execution of disguised priests form a considerable [pg 120] chapter in Elizabethan history. Donne's companion looks so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest from Rome, or Douay. See Strype's Annals, passim, and Meyer, Die Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth, 1910.

Page 160, l. 35. and saith: 'saith' is the reading of all the earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor silently alter it to an exclamatory 'faith'—turning it into a statement which Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a harshly interpolated 'so he says'. One MS. adds 'he', and possibly the pronoun in some form has been dropped, e.g. 'sayth a speakes'.

ll. 37-8. Made of the Accents, &c. It is perhaps rash to accept the 'no language' of A25, Q, and the Dyce MS. But the last two represent, I think, an early version of the Satyres, and 'no language' (like 'nill be delayed', Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn) is just the sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated transmission. It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better sense; and it is echoed by Jonson in his Discoveries: 'Spenser in affecting the ancients writ no language.' In like manner Donne's companion, in affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, spoke none. I confess that seems to me a more pointed remark than that he spoke one made up of these.

l. 48. Jovius or Surius: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, among many other works wrote Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV. 1553. Chambers quotes from the Nouvelle Biographie Générale: 'Ses œuvres sont pleines des mensonges dont profita sa cupidité.'

Laurentius Surius (1522-78) was a Carthusian monk who wrote ecclesiastical history. Among his works are a Commentarius brevis rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno 1550 (1568), and a Vitae Sanctorum, 1570 et seq. He was accused of inaccuracy by Protestant writers. It is worth while noting that Q and O'F read 'Sleydan', i.e. Sleidanus. John Sleidan (1506-56) was a Protestant historian who, like Surius, wrote both general and ecclesiastical history, e.g. De quatuor Summis Imperiis, Babylonico, Persico, Graeco, et Romano, 1556 (an English translation appeared in 1635), and De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii (1555-9). The latter is a history of the Reformation written from the Protestant point of view, to which Surius' work is a reply. Sleidan's history did not give entire satisfaction to the reformers. It is quite possible that Donne's first sneer was at the Protestant historian and that he thought it safer later to substitute the Catholic Surius.

l. 54. Calepines Dictionarie. A well-known polyglot dictionary edited by Ambrose Calepine (1455-1511) in 1502. It grew later to a Dictionarium Octolingue, and ultimately to a Dictionarium XI Linguarum (Basel, 1590).

l. 56. Some other Jesuites. The 'other' is found only in HN, which is no very reliable authority. Without it the line wants [pg 121] a whole foot, not merely a syllable. Donne more than once drops a syllable, compensating for it by the length and stress which is given to another. Nothing can make up for the want of a whole foot, though in dramatic verse an incomplete line may be effective. To me, too, it seems very like Donne to introduce this condensed and sudden stroke at Beza and nothing more likely to have been dropped later, either by way of precaution or because it was not understood. No one of the reformers was more disliked by Catholics than Beza. The licence of his early life, his loose Latin verses, the scurrilous wit of his own controversial method—all exposed him to and provoked attack. The De Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezae, Omnium Haereticorum nostri temporis facile principis, &c.: Authore Jacobo Laingaeo Doctore Sorbonico (1585), is a bitter and calumnious attack. There was, too, something of the Jesuit, both in the character of the arguments used and in the claim made on behalf of the Church to direct the civil arm, in Beza's defence of the execution of Servetus. Moreover, the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos was sometimes attributed to Beza, and the views of the reformers regarding the rights of kings put forward there, and those held by the Jesuits, approximate closely. (See Cambridge Modern History, iii. 22, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 759-66.) In his subsequent attacks upon the Jesuits, Donne always singles out the danger of their doctrines and practice to the authority of kings. Throughout the Satyres Donne's veiled Catholic prejudices have to be constantly borne in mind.

Page 161, l. 59. and so Panurge was. See Rabelais, Pantagruel ii. 9. One day that Pantagruel was walking with his friends he met 'un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineaments de corps, mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux, et tant mal en ordre qu'il sembloit estre eschappe es chiens'. Pantagruel, convinced from his appearance that 'il n'est pauvre que par fortune', demands of him his name and story. He replies; but, to the dismay of Pantagruel and his friends, his answer is couched first in German, then in Arabic (?), then in Italian, in English (or what passes as such), in Basque, in Lanternoy (an Esperanto of Rabelais's invention), in Dutch, in Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in the language of Utopia, and finally in Latin. '"Dea, mon amy," dist Pantagruel, "ne sçavez-vous parler françoys?" "Si faict tresbien, Seigneur," respondit le compaignon; "Dieu mercy! c'est ma langue naturelle et maternelle, car je suis né et ay esté nourry jeune au jardin de France: c'est Touraine."—"Doncques," dist Pantagruel, "racomtez nous quel est votre nom et dont vous venez."... "Seigneur," dist le compagnon, "mon vray et propre nom de baptesmes est Panurge."' Panurge was not much behind Calepine's Dictionary, and if Donne's companion spoke in the 'accent and best phrase' of all these tongues he certainly spoke 'no language'.

l. 69. doth not last: 'last' has the support of several good MSS., [pg 122] 'taste' (i.e. savour, go down, be acceptable) of some. It is impossible to decide on intrinsic grounds between them.

l. 70. Aretines pictures. The lascivious pictures of Giulio Romano, for which Aretino wrote sonnets.

l. 75. the man that keepes the Abbey tombes. See Davies' epigram, On Dacus, quoted in the general note on the Satyres.

l. 80. Kingstreet. From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.

The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only one suit.' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes ... grogaram' to Donne, and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted commas, and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new speech at 'Mine'.

For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in A Midsummer Nights Dream: 'I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances quoted by Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making fun of an affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant appears from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this Letter ... and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according to your addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it.' To Sir G. B., Letters, p. 201.

Page 162, l. 97. ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes. Every reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their account of the greater events of each year mention of trifling events, strange births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is reflected in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these 'lay-chroniclers that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and the deere yere and the great frost'. Pierce Penniless.

ll. 98. he knowes; He knowes. I have followed D, H49, Lec in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of [pg 123] triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne does not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.

l. 117. To heare this Makeron talke. This is the earliest instance of this Italian word used in English which the O.E.D. quotes, and is a proof of Donne's Italian travels. The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this meaning, homo crassâ Minerva, in Italian:

Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one of the Elegies to the Author, and led to the absurd substitution, in the editions after 1633, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in the epistle prefixed to The Progress of the Soule.

l. 124. Perpetuities. 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised daily from fines and recoveries.' Manningham's Diary, April 22, 1602. Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights, i.e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.

l. 133. To sucke me in; for.... I have, with some of the MSS. and with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' with what follows. But 1633 and the better MSS. read:

Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for hearing him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the superstition about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as ... leachers, &c., ... so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he free.' 'I should be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy who had spoken treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of trials of suspected traitors before Walsingham and others. It is on this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a crown or two.

Page 164, l. 148. complementall thankes. The word 'complement' or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened and brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the most part, in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives an addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his condemnation [pg 124] that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions well too.' Sermons 80. 18. 176.

l. 164. th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility. I have followed the MSS. in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be more easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is commoner as a noun. The O.E.D. gives no example of the adjectival use earlier than 1613. Compare:

Page 165, l. 169. your waxen garden or yon waxen garden—it is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or 'motion' exhibitors. Compare:

l. 176. Baloune. A game played with a large wind-ball or football struck to and fro with the arm or foot.

l. 179. and I, (God pardon mee.) This, the reading of the 1633 edition, is obviously right. Mr. Chambers, misled by the dropping of the full stop after 'me' in the editions from 1639 onwards, has adopted a reading of his own:

But what, in this case, does Donne ask God's pardon for? It is not his fault that their apparels are fresh or costly. 'God pardon them!' would be the appropriate exclamation. What Donne asks God's pardon for is, that he too should be found in the 'Presence' again, after what he has already seen of Court life and 'the wretchedness of suitors': as though Dante, who had seen Hell and escaped, should wilfully return thither.

l. 189. Cutchannel: i.e. Cochineal. The ladies' painted faces suggest the comparison. In or shortly before 1603 an English ship, the Margaret and John, made a piratical attack on the Venetian ship, La Babiana. An indemnity was paid, and among the stolen articles are mentioned 54 weights of cochineal, valued at £50-7. Our school Histories tell us of Turkish and Moorish pirates, not so much of the piracy which was conducted by English merchant ships, not always confining themselves to the ships of nations at war with their country.

Page 166, ll. 205-6. trye ... thighe. I have, with the support of Ash. 38, printed thus instead of tryes ... thighes. If we retain 'tryes', then we should also, with several MSS., read (l. 204) 'survayes'; and if 'thighes' be correct we should expect 'legges'. The regular construction keeps the infinitive throughout, 'refine', 'lift', 'call', 'survay', 'trye'. If we suppose that Donne shifted the construction as he got away from the governing verb, the change would naturally begin with 'survayes'.

ll. 215-6. A Pursevant would have ravish'd him away. The reading of three independent MSS., Q, O'F, and JC, of 'Topcliffe' for 'Pursevant' is a very interesting clue to the Catholic point of view from which Donne's Satyres were written. Richard Topcliffe (1532-1609) was one of the cruellest of the creatures employed to ferret out and examine by torture Catholics and Jesuits. It was he who tortured Southwell the poet. In 1593 he was on the commission against Jesuits, and in 1594-5 was in prison. John Hammond, the civilist, who is possibly referred to in Satyre V, l. 87, sat with him on several inquiries. See D.N.B. and authorities quoted there; also Meyer, Die Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth, 1910.

Of one of Harvey's pamphlets Nash writes: 'Credibly it was once rumoured about the Court, that the Guard meant to try masteries with it before the Queene, and, instead of throwing the sledge or the hammer, to hurle it foorth at the armes end for a wager.' Have with you, &c. (M^cKerrow, iii, p. 36.)

The name 'beefeater' has, I suppose, some responsibility for the jest. Nash refers to their size: 'The big-bodied Halbordiers that guard her Majesty,' Nash (Grosart), i. 102; and to their capacities as trenchermen: 'Lies as big as one of the Guardes chynes of beefe,' Nash (M^cKerrow), i. 269.

'Ascapart is a giant thirty feet high who figures in the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton.' Chambers.

l. 240. a scarce brooke. Donne uses 'scarce' in this sense, i.e. 'scanty'. It is not common. See note to l. 4.

Page 168, l. 242. Macchabees modestie. 'And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.' 2 Maccabees xv. 38.

Page 168. Satyre V.

l. 9. If all things be in all. 'All things are concealed in all. One of them all is the concealer of the rest—their corporeal vessel, external, visible and movable.' Paracelsus, Coelum Philosophorum: The First Canon, Concerning the Nature and Properties of Mercury.

Page 169, l. 31. You Sir, &c.: i.e. Sir Thomas Egerton, whose service Donne entered probably in 1598 and left in 1601-2. Norton says 1596 to 1600. In 1596 Egerton was made Lord Keeper. In 1597 he was busy with the reform of some of the abuses connected with the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and this is probably what Donne has in view throughout the Satyre. 'For some years the administration of this office had given rise to complaints. In the last Parliament a bill had been brought in ... for the reformation of it; but by a little management on the part of the Speaker had been thrown out on the second reading. Upon this I suppose the complainants addressed themselves to the Queen. For it appears that the matter was under inquiry in 1595, when Puckering was Lord Keeper; and it is certain that at a later period some of the fees claimed by the Clerk of Council were by authority of the Lord Keeper Egerton restrained.' Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, ii. 56. In the note Spedding refers to a MS. at Bridgewater House containing 'The humble petition of the Clerk of the Council concerning his fees restrained by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Keeper'. Bacon held the reversion to this Clerkship and in a long letter to Egerton he discusses in detail the nature of the 'claim'd fees'. The question was not settled till 1605. It will be noticed that in several editions and MSS. the reading is 'claim'd fees'.

ll. 37-41. These lines are correctly printed in 1633, though the old use of the semicolon to indicate at one time a little less than a full stop, at another just a little more than a comma, has caused confusion. I have, therefore, ventured to alter the first (after 'farre') to a full stop, and the second (after 'duties') to a comma. 'That', says Donne (the italics give emphasis), 'was the iron age when justice was sold. Now' (in this 'age of rusty iron') 'injustice is sold dearer. Once you have allowed all the demands made on you, you find, suitors (and suitors are gamblers), that the money you toiled for has passed into other hands, the lands for which you urged your rival claims has escaped you, as Angelica escaped while Ferrau and Rinaldo fought for her.'

To the reading of the editions 1635-54, which Chambers has [pg 127] adopted (but by printing in roman letters he makes 'that' a relative pronoun, and 'iron age' subject to 'did allow'), I can attach no meaning:

How did the iron age allow fees and duties? The text of 1669 reverts to that of 1633 (keeping the 'claim'd fees' of 1635-54), but does not improve the punctuation by changing the semicolon after 'farre' to a comma.

Mr. Allen (Rise of Formal Satire, &c.) points out that the allusion to the age of 'rusty iron', which deserves some worse name, is obviously derived from Juvenal XIII. 28 ff.:

ll. 45-6. powre of the Courts below Flow. Grosart and Chambers silently alter to 'Flows', but both the editions and MSS. have the plural form. Franz notes the construction in Shakespeare:

The last is a very close parallel. The proximity of the plural noun in the prepositional phrase is the chief determining factor, but in some cases the combined noun and qualifying phrase has a plural force—'such venomous looks', 'his mental powers or faculties.'

Page 170, l. 61. heavens Courts. There can be no doubt that the plural is right: 'so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and refine our wills from earthly Drugs, and Lees, more then the Reformed, and so seems to bring us nearer heaven, but then that carries heaven farther from us, by making us pass so many Courts, and Offices of Saints in this life, in all our petitions,' &c. Letters, 102.

ll. 65-8. Compare: 'If a Pursevant, if a Serjeant come to thee from the King, in any Court of Justice, though he come to put thee in trouble, to call thee to an account, yet thou receivest him, thou entertainest him, thou paiest him fees.' Sermons 80. 52. 525. Gardiner, writing of the treatment of Catholics under Elizabeth, says: 'Hard as this treatment was, it was made worse by the misconduct of the constables and pursevants whose business it was to search for the priests who took refuge in the secret chambers which were always to be found in the mansions of the Catholic gentry. These wretches, under pretence of discovering the concealed fugitives, were in the habit of wantonly destroying the furniture or of carrying off valuable property.' Hist. of England, i. 97.

Page 171, l. 91. The right reading of this line must be either (a) that which we have taken from N and TCD, which differs only by a letter from that of 1633-69; or (b) that of A25, B, and other MSS.:

The first refers to the suitor. He, like the dog, dives for what has vanished; goes to law for what is irrecoverable. The second reading would refer to the dog and continue the illustration: 'Thou art the dog whom shadows cozened and who div'd for what vanish'd.' The ambiguity accounts for the vacillation of the MSS. and editions. The reading of 1669 is a conjectural emendation. The 'div'd'st' of some MSS. is an endeavour to get an agreement of tenses after 'what's' had become 'what'.

Page 172. Vpon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities.

These verses were first published in 1611 with a mass of witty and scurrilous verses by all the 'wits' of the day, prefixed to Coryats Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhaetia ... Newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe, in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the nourishment of the travelling members of this Kingdom. Coryat was an eccentric and a favourite butt of the wits, but was not without ability as well as enterprise. In 1612 he set out on a journey through the East which took him to Constantinople, Jerusalem, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India. In his letters to the wits at home he sends greetings to, among others, Christopher Brooke, John Hoskins (as 'Mr. Ecquinoctial Pasticrust of the Middle Temple'), Ben Jonson, George Garrat, and 'M. John Donne, the author of two most elegant Latine Bookes, Pseudomartyr and Ignatius Conclave' He died at Surat in 1617.

l. 2. leavened spirit. This is the reading of 1611. It was altered in 1649 to 'learned', and modern editors have neglected to correct the error. A glance at the first line shows that 'leavened' is right. It is leaven which raises bread. A 'leavened spirit' is one easily [pg 129] puffed up by the 'love of greatness'. There is much more of satire in such an epithet than in 'learned'.

l. 17. great Lunatique, i.e. probably 'great humourist', whose moods and whims are governed by the changeful moon. See O.E.D., which quotes:

'By nativitie they be lunaticke ... as borne under the influence of Luna, and therefore as firme ... as melting waxe.' Greene, Mamillia.

l. 22. Munster. The Cosmographia Universalis (1541) of Sebastian Munster (1489-1552).

l. 22. Gesner. The Bibliotheca Universalis, siue Catalogus Omnium Scriptorum in Linguis Latina, Graeca, et Hebraica, 1545, by Conrad von Gesner of Zurich (1516-1565). Norton quotes from Morhof's Polyhistor: 'Conradus Gesner inter universales et perpetuos Catalogorum scriptores principatum obtinet'; and from Dr. Johnson: 'The book upon which all my fame was originally founded.'

Page 173, l. 56. Which casts at Portescues. Grosart offers the only intelligible explanation of this phrase. He identifies the 'Portescue' with the 'Portaque' or 'Portegue', the great crusado of Portugal, worth £3 12s., and quotes from Harrington, On Playe: 'Where lords and great men have been disposed to play deep play, and not having money about them, have cut cards instead of counters, with asseverance (on their honours) to pay for every piece of card so lost a portegue.' Donne's reference to the use which is to be made of Coryat's books shows clearly that he is speaking of some such custom as this. Chambers asks pertinently, would the phrase not be 'for Portescues'? but 'to cast at Portescues' may have been a term, perhaps translated. A greater difficulty is that 'Portescue' is not given as a form of 'Portague' by the O.E.D., but a false etymology connecting it with 'escus', crowns, may have produced it.

The following poem is also found among the poems prefixed to Coryat's Crudities. It may be by Donne, but was not printed in any edition of his poems:

Incipit Ioannes Dones.

LOE her's a Man, worthy indeede to trauell;

Fat Libian plaines, strangest Chinas grauell.

For Europe well hath scene him stirre his stumpes:

Turning his double shoes to simple pumpes.

And for relation, looke he doth afford

Almost for euery step he tooke a word;

What had he done had he ere hug'd th'Ocean

With swimming Drake or famous Magelan?

And kis'd that vnturn'd¹ cheeke of our old mother,[pg 130]

Since so our Europes world he can discouer?

It's not that French² which made his Gyant³ see

Those vncouth Ilands where wordes frozen bee,

Till by the thaw next yeare they'r voic't againe;

Whose Papagauts, Andoüelets, and that traine

Should be such matter for a Pope to curse

As he would make; make! makes ten times worse,

And yet so pleasing as shall laughter moue:

And be his vaine, his game, his praise, his loue.

Sit not still then, keeping fames trump vnblowne:

But get thee Coryate to some land vnknowne.

From whẽce proclaime thy wisdom with those wõders,

Rarer then sommers snowes, or winters thunders.

And take this praise of that th'ast done alreadie:

T'is pitty ere they flow should haue an eddie.

Explicit Ioannes Dones.

Page 174. In Eundem Macaronicum.

A writer in Notes and Queries, 3rd Series, vii, 1865, gives the following translation of these lines:

(These notes are given in the margin of the original, opposite the words explained.)

LETTERS TO SEVERALL PERSONAGES.

Of Donne's Letters the earliest are the Storms and Calme which were written in 1597. The two letters to Sir Henry Wotton, 'Sir, More then kisses' and 'Heres no more newes, then vertue', belong to 1597-8. The fresh letter here published, H: W: in Hiber: belligeranti (p. 188), was sent to Wotton in 1599. That To Mr Rowland Woodward (p. 185) was probably written about the same time, and to these years—1598 to about 1608—belong also, I am inclined to think, the group of short letters beginning with To Mr T. W. at p. 205. There are very few indications of date. In that to Mr. R. W. (pp. 209-10) an allusion is made to the disappointment of hopes in connexion with Guiana:

Grosart and Chambers refer this, and 'the Spanish businesse' below, [pg 131] to 1613-14. The more probable reference is to the disappointment of Raleigh's hopes, in 1596 and the years immediately following, that the Government might be persuaded to make a settlement in Guiana, both on account of its wealth and as a strategic point to be used in harassing the King of Spain. Coolly received by Burleigh, Raleigh's scheme excited considerable enthusiasm, and Chapman wrote his De Guiana: Carmen Epicum, prefixed to Lawrence Keymis's A Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana (1596), to celebrate Raleigh's achievement and to promote his scheme. The 'Spanish businesse', i.e. businesses, which, Donne complains,

are probably the efforts in the direction of peace made by the party in the Government opposed to Essex. Guiana is referred to in the Satyres which certainly belong to these years, and in Elegie XX: Loves War, which cannot be dated so late as 1613-14. In 1598 Chamberlain writes to Carleton: 'Sir John Gilbert, with six or seven saile, one and other, is gone for Guiana, and I heare that Sir Walter Raleigh should be so deeply discontented because he thrives no better, that he is not far off from making that way himself'. Chamberlain's Letters, Camd. Soc. 1861. Compare also: 'The Queene seemede troubled to-daye; Hatton came out from her presence with ill countenance, and pulled me aside by the gyrdle and saide in a secrete waie; If you have any suite to-day praie you put it aside, The sunne doth not shine. Tis this accursede Spanish businesse; so will I not adventure her Highnesse choler, lest she should collar me also.' Sir John Harington's Nugae Antiquae, i. 176. (Note dated 1598.) All these letters are found in the Westmoreland MS. (W), whose order I have adopted, and the titles they bear—'To Mr H. W.', 'To Mr C. B.'—suggest that they belong to a period before either Wotton or Brooke was well known, at least before Wotton had been knighted. The tone throughout points to their belonging to the same time. They are full of allusions now difficult or impossible to explain. They are written to intimate friends. 'Thou' is the pronoun used throughout, whereas 'You' is the formula in the letters to noble ladies. Wotton, Christopher and Samuel Brooke, Rowland and Thomas Woodward are among the names which can be identified, and they are the names of Donne's most intimate friends in his earlier years. Probably there were answers to Donne's letters. He refers to poems which have called forth his poems. One of these has been preserved in the Westmoreland MS., though we cannot tell who wrote it. A Bodleian MS. contains another verse letter written to Donne in the same style as these letters, a little crabbed and enigmatical, and it is addressed to him as Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. This whole correspondence, then, I should be inclined to date from 1597 to about 1607-8. The last is probably the date of the letter To E. of D. or To L. of D. (so in W), beginning:

This I have transferred to the Divine Poems, and shall give reasons later for ascribing it to about this year, and for questioning the identification of its recipient with Viscount Doncaster, later Earl of Carlisle.

Of the remaining Letters some date themselves pretty definitely. Donne formed the acquaintance of Lady Bedford about 1607-8 when she came to Twickenham, and the two letters to her—'Reason is our Soules left hand' (p. 189) and 'You have refin'd mee' (p. 191)—probably belong to the early years of their friendship. The second suggests that the poet is himself at Mitcham. The long, difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. 195), belongs probably to some year following 1609. There is an allusion to Virginia, in which there was a quickening of interest in 1609 (see Elegie XIV, Note), and the 'two new starres' sent 'lately to the firmament' may be Lady Markham (died May 4, 1609) and Mris Boulstred (died Aug. 4, 1609). This is Chambers's conjecture; but Norton identifies them with Prince Henry (died Nov. 6, 1612) and the Countess's brother, Lord Harington, who died early in 1614. Public characters like these are more fittingly described as stars, so that the poem probably belongs to 1614, to which year certainly belongs the letter To the Countesse of Salisbury (p. 224). What New Year called forth the letter to Lady Bedford, beginning 'This twilight of two years' (p. 198), we do not know, nor the date of the long letter in triplets, 'Honour is so sublime perfection' (p. 218). But the latter was most probably written from France in 1611-12, like the fragmentary letter which follows, and the letter, similar in verse and in 'metaphysics', To the Lady Carey and Mrs Essex Riche (p. 221). Donne had a little shocked his noble lady friends by the extravagance of his adulation of the dead child Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, in 1611, and these letters are written to make his peace and to show the pitch he is capable of soaring to in praise of their maturer virtues.

To Sir Henry Wotton (p. 214), Donne wrote in a somewhat more elevated and respectful strain than that of his earlier letters, when the former set out on his embassy to Venice in 1604. The letter to Sir Henry Goodyere (p. 183) belongs to the Mitcham days, 1605-8. To Sir Edward Herbert (p. 193) he wrote 'at Julyers', therefore in 1610. The letter To the Countesse of Huntingdon (p. 201) was probably written just before Donne took orders, 1614-15. The date of the letter To Mris M. H. (p. 216), that is, to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, not yet Lady Danvers, must have been earlier than her second marriage in 1608—the exact day of that marriage I do not know—probably in 1604, as the verse, style and tone closely resemble that of the letter to Wotton of that year. This suits the tenor of the letter, which implies that she had not yet married Sir John Danvers.

The last in the collection of the letters to Lady Bedford, 'You that are she and you' (p. 227), seems from its position in 1633 and several [pg 133] MSS. to have been sent to her with the elegy called Death, and to have been evoked by the death of Lady Markham or Mrs. Boulstred in 1609.

The majority of the letters thus belong to the years 1596-7 to 1607-8, the remainder to the next six years. With the Funerall Elegies and the earlier of the Divine Poems they represent the middle and on the whole least attractive period of Donne's life and work. The Songs and Sonets and Elegies are the expression of his brilliant and stormy youth, the Holy Sonnets and the hymns are the utterance of his ascetic and penitent last years. In the interval between the two, the wit, the courtier, the man of the world, and the divine jostle each other in Donne's works in a way that is not a little disconcerting to readers of an age and temper less habituated to strong contrasts.

Page 175. The Storme.

After the Cadiz expedition in 1596, the King of Spain began the preparation of a second Armada. With a view to destroying this Elizabeth fitted out a large fleet under the command of Essex, Howard, and Raleigh. The storm described in Donne's letter so damaged the fleet that the larger purpose was abandoned and a smaller expedition, after visiting the Spanish coast, proceeded to the Azores, with a view to intercepting the silver fleet returning from America. Owing to dissensions between Raleigh and Essex, it failed of its purpose. This was the famous 'Islands Expedition'.

The description of the departure and the storm which followed was probably written in Plymouth, whither the ships had to put back, and whence they sailed again about a month later; therefore in July-August, 1597. 'We imbarked our Army, and set sayle about the ninth of July, and for two dayes space were accompanied with a faire leading North-easterly wind.' (Mildly it kist our sailes, &c.)...... 'Wee now being in this faire course, some sixtie leagues onwards our journey with our whole Fleet together, there suddenly arose a fierce and tempestuous storme full in our teethe, continuing for foure dayes with so great violence, as that now everyone was inforced rather to looke to his own safetie, and with a low saile to serve the Seas, then to beate it up against the stormy windes to keep together, or to follow the directions for the places of meeting.' A larger Relation of the said Iland Voyage written by Sir Arthur Gorges, &c. Purchas his Pilgrimes. Glasg. mcmvii. While at Plymouth Donne wrote a prose letter, to whom is not clear, preserved in the Burley Commonplace Book. There he speaks of 'so very bad wether y^t even some of y^e mariners have been drawen to think it were not altogether amiss to pray, and myself heard one of them say, God help us'.

To Mr. Christopher Brooke. Donne's intimate friend and chamber-fellow at Lincoln's Inn. He was Donne's chief abetter in his secret marriage, his younger brother Samuel performing the ceremony. They were the sons of Robert Brooke, Alderman of and once M.P. [pg 134] for York, and his wife Jane Maltby. The Alderman had other sons who followed in his footsteps and figure among the Freemen of York, but Christopher and Samuel earned a wider reputation. At Lincoln's Inn, Christopher wrote verses and cultivated the society of the wits. Wood mentions as his friends and admirers Selden and Jonson, Drayton and Browne, Wither and Davies of Hereford. Browne sings his praises in the second song of the second book of Britannia's Pastorals, and in The Shepherds Pipe (1614) urges him to sing a higher strain. His poems, which have been collected and edited by the late Dr. Grosart, include an Elegy on Prince Henry, and a long poem of no merit, The Ghost of Richard the Third (Miscellanies of the Fuller Worthies Library, vol. iv, 1872). In 1614 he became a bencher and Summer Reader at Lincoln's Inn. He died February 7, 162⅞.

l. 4. By Hilliard drawne. Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619), the first English miniature painter. He was goldsmith, carver, and limner to Queen Elizabeth, and engraved her second great seal in 1586. He drew a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, at eighteen, and executed miniatures of many contemporaries. He also wrote a treatise on miniature painting. Mr. Laurence Binyon thinks it is quite possible that the miniature from which Marshall, about 1635, engraved the portrait of Donne as a young man, was by Hilliard. It is, he says, quite in his style.

l. 13. From out her pregnant intrailes. The ancients attributed winds to the effect of exhalations from the earth. Seneca, Quaestiones Naturales, v. 4, discusses various causes but mentions this first: 'Sometimes the earth herself emits a great quantity of air, which she breathes out of her hidden recesses ... A suggestion has been made which I cannot make up my mind to believe, and yet I cannot pass over without mention. In our bodies food produces flatulence, the emission of which causes great offence to ones nasal susceptibilities; sometimes a report accompanies the relief of the stomach, sometimes there is more polite smothering of it. In like manner it is supposed the great frame of things when assimilating its nourishment emits air. It is a lucky thing for us that nature's digestion is good, else we might apprehend some less agreeable consequences.' (Q. N. translated by John Clarke, with notes by Sir Archibald Geikie, 1910.) These exhalations, according to one view, mounting up were driven back by the violence of the stars, or by inability to pass the frozen middle region of the air—hence commotions. (Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 38, 45, 47, 48.) This explains Donne's 'middle marble room', where 'marble' may mean 'hard', or possibly 'blue' referring to the colour of the heavens. It is so used by Studley in his translations of Seneca's tragedies: 'Whereas the marble sea doth fleete,' Hipp. i. 25; 'When marble skies no filthy fog doth dim,' Herc. Oet. ii. 8; 'The monstrous hags of marble seas' (monstra caerulei maris), Hipp. v. 5, I owe this suggestion to Miss Evelyn Spearing (The Elizabethan 'Tenne Tragedies of Seneca'. Mod. Lang. Review, iv. 4). But the [pg 135] peripatetic view was that the heavens were made of hard, solid, though transparent, concentric spheres: 'Tycho will have two distinct matters of heaven and ayre; but to say truth, with some small modifications, they' (i.e. Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman) 'have one and the self same opinion about the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard and impenetrable, as Peripateticks hold, transparent, of a quinta essentia, but that it is penetrable and soft as the ayre itself is, and that the planets move in it', (according to the older view each was fixed in its sphere) 'as birds in the ayre, fishes in the sea.' Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, part ii, sect. 2, Men. 3.

'Wind', says Donne elsewhere, 'is a mixt Meteor, to the making whereof, diverse occasions concurre with exhalations.' Sermons 80. 31. 305.

If heav'ns bright torches, from earth's Kidneys, sup

Som somwhat dry and heatfull Vapours up,

Th' ambitious lightning of their nimble Fire

Would suddenly neer th' Azure Cirques aspire:

But scarce so soon their fuming crest hath raught,

Or toucht the Coldness of the middle Vault,

And felt what force their mortall Enemy

In Garrison keeps there continually;

When down again towards their Dam they bear,

Holp by the weight which they have drawn from her.

But in the instant, to their aid arrives

Another new heat, which their heart revives,

Re-arms their hand, and having staied their flight,

Better resolv'd brings them again to fight.

Well fortifi'd then by these fresh supplies,

More bravely they renew their enterprize:

And one-while th' upper hand (with honor) getting,

Another-while disgracefully retreating,

Our lower Aire they tosse in sundry sort,

As weak or strong their matter doth comport.

This lasts not long; because the heat and cold,

Equall in force and fortune, equall bold

In these assaults; to end this sudden brall,

Th' one stops their mounting, th' other stayes their fall:

So that this vapour, never resting stound,

Stands never still, but makes his motion round,

Posteth from Pole to Pole, and flies amain

From Spain to India, and from Inde to Spain.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Week, Second Day.

l. 18. prisoners, which lye but for fees, i.e. the fees due to the gaoler. 'And as prisoners discharg'd of actions may lye for fees; so when,' &c.

Deaths Duell (1632), p. 9. Thirty-three years after this poem was written, Donne thus uses the same figure in the last sermon he ever preached.

Page 176, l. 38. I, and the Sunne. The 'Yea, and the Sunne' of Q shows that 'I' here is probably the adverb, not the pronoun, though the passage is ambiguous. Modern editors have all taken 'I' as the pronoun.

Page 177, l. 60. Strive. Later editions and Chambers read 'strives', but 'ordinance' was used as a plural: 'The goodly ordinance which were xii great Bombardes of brasse', and 'these six small iron ordinance.' O.E.D. The word in this sense is now spelt 'ordnance'.

l. 66. the'Bermuda. It is probably unnecessary to change this to 'the'Bermudas.' The singular without the article is quite regular.

l. 67. Darknesse, lights elder brother. The 'elder' of the MSS. is grammatically more correct than the 'eldest' of the editions. 'We must return again to our stronghold, faith, and end with this, that this beginning was, and before it, nothing. It is elder than darkness, which is elder than light; and was before confusion, which is elder than order, by how much the universal Chaos preceded forms and distinctions.' Essays in Divinity (ed. Jessop, 1855), p. 46.

Page 178. The Calme.

l. 4. A blocke afflicts, &c. Aesop's Fables. Sir Thomas Rowe recalled Donne's use of the fable, when he was Ambassador at the Court of the Mogul. Of Ibrahim Khan, the Governor of Surat after Zufilkhar Khan, he writes: 'He was good but soe easy that he does no good; wee are not lesse afflicted with a block then before with a storck.' The Embassy, &c. (Hakl. Soc.), i. 82.

l. 8. thy mistresse glasse. This poem, like the last, is probably addressed to Christopher Brooke, but it is not so headed in any [pg 137] edition or MS. The Grolier Club editor ascribes the first heading to both.

l. 14. or like ended playes. This suggests that the Elizabethan stage was not so bare of furniture as used to be stated, and also that furniture was not confined to the curtained-off rear-stage. What Donne recalls is a stage deserted by the actors but cumbered with furniture and decorations.

l. 16. a frippery, i.e. 'A place where cast-off clothes are sold', O.E.D. 'Oh, ho, Monster; wee know what belongs to a frippery.' Tempest, IV. i. 225. Here the rigging has the appearance of an old-clothes shop.

l. 17. No use of lanthornes. The reference is to the lanterns in the high sterns of the ships, used to keep the fleet together. 'There is no fear now of our losing one another.' Each squadron of a fleet followed the light of its Admiral. Essex speaks of having lost, or missing, 'Sir Walter Raleigh with thirty sailes that in the night followed his light.' Purchas, xx. 24-5.

l. 18. Feathers and dust. 'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things: his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart; and that passage of the Calme, That dust and feathers doe not stirre, all was soe quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have written all his best peeces ere he was twenty-five yeares old.' Jonson's Conversations with Drummond. When Donne wrote The Calme he was in his twenty-fifth year.

l. 21. lost friends. Raleigh and his squadron lost the main fleet while off the coast of Spain, before they set sail definitely for the Azores. He rejoined the fleet at the Islands. Donne's poem was probably written in the interval.

The reading of some MSS., 'lefte friends,' is quite a possible one. Carleton, writing from Venice to Chamberlain, says: 'Let me tell you, for your comfort (for I imagine what is mine is yours) that my last news from the left island ... took knowledge of my vigilancy and diligency.' The 'left island' is Great Britain, and Donne may mean no more than that 'we can neither get back to our friends nor on to our enemies.' There may be no allusion to Raleigh's ships.

l. 23. the Calenture. 'A disease incident to sailors within the tropics, characterized by delirium in which the patient, it is said, fancies the sea to be green fields, and desires to leap into it.' O.E.D. Theobald had the Calenture in mind when he conjectured that Falstaff 'babbled o' green fields'.

Page 179, l. 33. Like Bajazet encaged, &c.: an echo of Marlowe's Tamburlaine:

ll. 35-6. a Miriade Of Ants, &c. 'Erat ei' (i.e. Tiberius) 'in oblectamentis serpens draco, quem ex consuetudine manu sua cibaturus, cum consumptum a formicis invenisset, monitus est ut vim multitudinis caveret.' Suetonius, Tib. 72.

l. 37. Sea-goales, i.e. sea-gaols. 'goale' was a common spelling. See next poem, l. 52, 'the worlds thy goale.' Strangely enough, neither the Grolier Club editor nor Chambers seems to have recognized the word here, in The Calme, though in the next poem they change 'goale' to 'gaol' without comment. The Grolier Club editor retains 'goales' and Chambers adopts the reading of the later editions, 'sea-gulls.' A gull would have no difficulty in overtaking the swiftest ship which ever sailed. Grosart takes the passage correctly. 'Sea-goales' is an accurate definition of the galleys.' Finny-chips' is a vivid description of their appearance. Compare:

l. 38. our Pinnaces. 'Venices' is the reading of 1633 and most of the MSS., where, as in 1669, the word is often spelt 'Vinices'. But I can find no example of the word 'Venice' used for a species of ship, and Mr. W. A. Craigie of the Oxford English Dictionary tells me that he has no example recorded. The mistake probably arose in a confusion of P and V. The word 'Pinnace' is variously spelt, 'pynice', 'pinnes', 'pinace', &c., &c. The pinnaces were the small, light-rigged, quick-sailing vessels which acted as scouts for the fleet.

l. 48. A scourge, 'gainst which wee all forget to pray. The 'forgot' of 1669 and several MSS. is tempting—'a scourge against which we all in setting out forgot to pray.' I rather think, however, that what Donne means is 'a scourge against which we all at sea always forget to pray, for to pray for wind at sea is generally to pray for cold under the poles, for heat in hell'. The 'forgot' makes the reference too definite. At the same time, 'forgot' is so obvious a reading that it is difficult to account for 'forget' except on the supposition that it is right.

Donne is here playing with an antithesis which apparently he owes to the rhetoric of Tertullian. 'Canst thou choose', says the poet in one of his later sermons, 'but think God as perfect now, at least as he was at first, and can he not as easily make thee up againe of nothing, as he made thee of nothing at first? Recogita quid fueris antequam esses. Think over thyselfe; what wast thou before thou wast anything? Meminisses utique, si fuisses: if thou had'st been anything than, surely thou would'st remember it now. Qui non eras, factus es; cum iterum non eris, fies. Thou that wast once nothing, wast made this that thou art now; and when thou shalt be nothing again, thou shalt be made better then thou art yet.' Sermons 50. 14. 109. A note in the margin indicates that the quotations are from Tertullian, and Donne is echoing here the antithetical Recogita quid fueris antequam esses.

This echo is certainly made more obvious to the ear by the punctuation of 1669, which Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and Chambers all follow. The last reads:

This may be right; but after careful consideration I have retained the punctuation of 1633. In the first place, if the 1669 text be right it is not clear why the poet did not preserve the regular order:

To place 'he was' at the end of the line was in the circumstances to court ambiguity, and is not metrically requisite. In the second place, the rhetorical question asked requires an answer, and that is given most clearly by the punctuation of 1633. 'How little more, alas, is man now than [he was] before he was? He was nothing; and as for us, we are fit for nothing. Chance or ourselves still throw us out of gear with everything.' To be nothing and to be fit for nothing—there is all the difference. In the 1669 version it is not easy to see the relevance of the rhetorical question and of the line which follows: 'Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit.' This seems to introduce a new thought, a fresh antithesis. It is not quite true. A breeze would fit them very well.

Page 180. To S^r Henry Wotton.

The occasion of this letter was apparently (see my article, Bacon's Poem, The World: Its Date And Relation to Certain Other Poems: Mod. Lang. Rev., April, 1911) a literary débat among some of the wits of Essex's circle. The subject of the débat was 'Which kind of life is best, that of Court, Country, or City?' and the suggestion came from the two epigrams in the Greek Anthology attributed to Posidippus and Metrodorus respectively. In the first (Ποίην τις βιότοιο τάμῃ τρίβον;) each kind of life in turn is condemned; in the second each is defended. These epigrams were paraphrased in Tottel's Miscellany (1557) by Nicholas Grimald, and again in the Arte of English Poesie (1589), attributed to George Puttenham. Stimulated perhaps by the latter version, in which the Court first appears as one of the principal spheres of life, or by Ronsard's French version in which also the 'cours des Roys', unknown to the Greek poet, are introduced, Bacon wrote his well-known paraphrase:

It is just possible too that he wrote a paraphrase, similar in verse, of the second epigram, which I have printed in the article referred to. A copy of The World was found among Wotton's papers and was printed in the Reliquiae Wottonianae (1651) signed 'Fra. Lord Bacon'. It had already been published by Thomas Farnaby in his Florilegium Epigrammatum Graecorum &c. (1629). Bacon probably gave Wotton a copy and he appears to have shown it to his friends. Among these was Thomas Bastard, who, to judge by the numerous epigrams he addressed to Essex, belonged to the same circle as Bacon, Donne, and Wotton,—if we may so describe it, but probably every young man of letters looked to Essex for patronage. Bastard's poem runs:

Ad Henricum Wottonum.

Donne was one of those to whom Wotton showed Bacon's poem, [pg 141] and the result was the present letter which occasionally echoes Bacon's words. Wotton replied to it in some characteristic verses preserved in B (Lord Ellesmere's MS.) and P (belonging to Captain Harris). I print it from the former:

To J: D: from M^r H: W:

Worthie Sir:

Tis not a coate of gray or Shepheards life,

Tis not in feilds or woods remote to live,

That adds or takes from one that peace or strife,

Which to our dayes such good or ill doth give:

5It is the mind that make the mans estate

For ever happy or unfortunate.

Then first the mind of passions must be free

Of him that would to happiness aspire;

Whether in Princes Pallaces he bee,

10Or whether to his cottage he retire;

For our desires that on extreames are bent

Are frends to care and traitors to content.

Nor should wee blame our frends though false they bee

Since there are thousands false, for one that's true,

15But our own blindness, that we cannot see

To chuse the best, although they bee but few:

For he that every fained frend will trust,

Proves true to frend, but to himself unjust.

The faults wee have are they that make our woe,

20Our virtues are the motives of our joye,

Then is it vayne, if wee to desarts goe

To seek our bliss, or shroud us from annoy:

Our place need not be changed, but our Will,

For every where wee may do good or ill.

25But this I doe not dedicate to thee,

As one that holds himself fitt to advise,

Or that my lines to him should precepts be

That is less ill then I, and much more wise:

Yet 'tis no harme mortality to preach,

For men doe often learne when they do teach.

The date of the débat is before April 1598, when Bastard's Chrestoleros was entered on the Stationers' Register, probably 1597-8, the interval between the return of the Islands Expedition and Donne's entry into the household of Sir Thomas Egerton. Mr. Chambers has shown that during this interval Donne was occasionally employed by Cecil to carry letters to and from the Commanders of the English forces still in France. But it was not till about April 1598 that he found permanent employment.

l. 8. Remoraes; Browne doubts 'whether the story of the remora be [pg 142] not unreasonably amplified'. The name is given to any of the fish belonging to the family Echeneididae, which by means of a suctorial disk situated on the top of the head adhere to sharks, other large fishes, vessels, &c., letting go when they choose. The ancient naturalists reported that they could arrest a ship in full course. See Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lib. xiii, De Aqua et ejus Ornatu.

l. 11. the even line is the reading of all the MS. copies, and must have been taken from one of these by the 1669 editor. The use of the word is archaic and therefore more probably Donne's than an editor's emendation. Compare Chaucer's 'Of his stature he was of even length', i.e. 'a just mean between extremes, of proper magnitude or degree'. The 'even line' is, as the context shows, the exact mean between the 'adverse icy poles'. I suspect that 'raging' is an editorial emendation. There are several demonstrable errors in the 1633 text of this poem. The 'other' of P, and 'over' of S, are errors which point to 'even' rather than 'raging'.

l. 12. th'adverse icy poles. The 'poles' of most MSS. is obviously necessary if we are to have two temperate regions. The expression is a condensed one for 'either of the adverse icy poles'. Compare:

One cannot be under both the poles at once. One is 'under' the pole in Donne's cosmology because the poles are not the termini of the earth's axis but of the heavens'. 'For the North and Southern Pole, are the invariable terms of that Axis whereon the Heavens do move.' Browne, Pseud. Epidem. vi. 7.

l. 17. Can dung and garlike, &c. This is the text of the 1633 edition made consistent with itself, and it has the support of several MSS. Clearly if we are to read 'or' in one line we must do so in both, and adopt the 1635-69 text. It is tempting at first sight to do so, but I believe the MSS. are right. What Donne means is, 'Can we procure a perfume, or a medicine, by blending opposite stenches or poisons?' This is his expansion of the question, 'Shall cities, built of both extremes, be chosen?' The change to 'or' obscures the exact metaphysical point. It would be an improvement perhaps to bracket the lines as parenthetical.

According to Donne's medical science the scorpion (probably its flesh) was an antidote to its own poison: 'I have as many Antidotes as the Devill hath poisons, I have as much mercy as the Devill hath malice; There must be scorpions in the world; but the Scorpion shall cure the Scorpion; there must be tentations; but tentations shall adde to mine and to thy glory, and Eripiam, I will deliver thee.' Sermons 80. 52. 527. Obviously Donne could not ask in surprise, 'Can a Scorpion or Torpedo cure a man?' Each can; it is their combination [pg 143] he deprecates. In Ignatius his Conclave he writes, 'and two Poysons mingled might do no harme.'

In speaking of scent made from dung Donne has probably the statement of Paracelsus in his mind to which Sir Thomas Browne also refers: 'And yet if, as Paracelsus encourageth, Ordure makes the best Musk, and from the most fetid substances may be drawn the most odoriferous Essences; all that had not Vespasian's nose, might boldly swear, here was a subject fit for such extractions.' Pseudodoxia Epidemica, iii. 26.

This is the punctuation of 1633 and of D, H49, Lec, and W. The later punctuation which Chambers has adopted and modernized, is not found to be an improvement if scrutinized. He reads:

The mark of interrogation after 'three' would be justifiable only if the poet were going to expatiate upon the badness of cities. 'Of all three? that is saying very little, &c., &c.' But this is not the tenor of the passage. From one thought he is led to another. 'Cities are worst of all three (i.e. Court, City, Country). Nay, each is equally the worst.' The interjected 'O knottie riddle' does not mean, 'Who is to say which is the worst?' but 'How can it come that each is worst? This is a riddle!' Donne here echoes Bacon:

ll. 25-6. The country is a desert, &c. The evidence for this reading is so overwhelming that it is impossible to reject it. I have modified the punctuation to bring out more clearly what I take it to mean. 'The country is a desert where no goodness is native, and therefore rightly understood. Goodness in the country is like a foreign language, a faculty not born with us, but acquired with pain, and never thoroughly understood and mastered.' Only Dr. Johnson could stigmatize in adequate terms so harsh a construction, but the 1635-54 emendation is not less obscure. Does it mean that any good which comes there quits it with all speed, while that which is native and must stay is not understood? This is not a lucid or just enough thought to warrant departure from the better authorized text.

l. 27. prone to more evills; The reading 'mere evils' of several MSS., including D, H49, Lec, is tempting and may be right. In that case 'meere' has the now obsolete meaning of 'pure, unadulterated', 'meere English', 'meere Irish', &c. in O.E.D., or more fully, 'absolute, entire, sheer, perfect, downright', as in 'Th'obstinacie, willfull disobedience, meere lienge and disceite of the countrie gentlemen,' Hist. MSS. Com. (1600), quoted in O.E.D.; 'the [pg 144] mere perdition of the Turkish fleet,' Shakespeare, Othello, II. ii. 3. Such a strong adjective would however come better after 'devills' in the next line. Placed here it disturbs the climax. What Donne says here is that men in the country become beasts, and more prone to evil than beasts because of their higher faculties:

Page 182, ll. 59-62. Only in this one thing, be no Galenist, &c. The Galenists perceived in the living body four humours; hot, cold, moist, and dry, and held that in health these were present in fixed proportions. Diseases were due to disturbance of these proportions, and were to be cured by correction of the disproportion by drugs, these being used as they were themselves hot, cold, moist, or dry; to add to whichever humours were defective. The chymiques or school of Paracelsus, held that each disease had an essence which might be got rid of by being purged or driven from the body by an antagonistic remedy.

Page 183. To S^r Henry Goodyere.

Goodyere and Walton form between them the Boswell to whom we owe our fullest and most intimate knowledge of the life of Donne. To the former he wrote apparently a weekly letter in the years of his residence at Pyrford, Mitcham, and London. And Goodyere preserved his letters and his poems. Of the letters published by Donne's son in 1651-4, the greatest number, as well as the most interesting and intimate, are addressed to Goodyere. Some appeared with the first edition of the poems, and it is ultimately to Goodyere that we probably owe the generally sound text of that edition.

Sir Henry Goodyere was the son of Sir William Goodyere of Monks Kirby in Warwickshire, who was knighted by James in 1603, and was the nephew of Sir Henry Goodyere (1534-95) of Polesworth in Warwickshire. The older Sir Henry had got into trouble in connexion with one of the conspiracies on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, but redeemed his good name by excellent service in the Low Countries, where he was knighted by Leicester. He married Frances, daughter of Hugh Lowther of Lowther, Westmoreland, and left two daughters, Frances and Anne. The latter, who succeeded the Countess of Bedford as patroness to the poet Michael Drayton and as the 'Idea' of his sonnets, married Sir Henry Raynsford. The former married her cousin, the son of Sir William, and made him proprietor of Polesworth, to which repeated allusion is made in Donne's Letters. He was knighted, in 1599, in Dublin, by Essex. He is addressed as a knight by Donne in 1601, and appears as such in the earliest years of King James. (See Nichol's Progresses of King James.)

He was a friend of wits and poets and himself wrote occasional verses in rivalry with his friends. Like Donne he wrote satirical congratulatory verses for Coryats Crudities (1611) and an elegy on Prince Henry for the second edition of Sylvester's Lachrymae Lachrymarum (1613), and there are others in MS., including an Epithalamium on Princess Elizabeth.

The estate which Goodyere inherited was apparently encumbered, and he was himself generous and extravagant. He was involved all his life in money troubles and frequently petitioned for relief and appointments. It was to him probably that Donne made a present of one hundred pounds when his own fortunes had bettered. The date of the present letter was between 1605 and 1608, when Donne was living at Mitcham. These were the years in which Goodyere was a courtier. In 1604-5 £120 was stolen from his chamber 'at Court', and in 1605 he participated in the jousting at the Barriers. Life at the dissolute and glittering Court of James I was ruinously extravagant, and the note of warning in Donne's poem is very audible. Sir Henry Goodyere died in March 1627-8.

The Epitaph is probably by the same author as the Verses, a nephew perhaps. Sir Henry's son predeceased him.

Page 183, l. 1. It is not necessary to change 'the past' of 1633-54 to 'last' with 1669. 'The past year' is good English for 'last year'.

Page 184, l. 27. Goe; whither? Hence; &c. My punctuation, [pg 146] which is that of some MSS., follows Donne's usual arrangement in dialogue, dividing the speeches by semicolons. Chambers's textual note misrepresents the earlier editions. He attributes to 1633-54 the reading, 'Go whither? hence you get'. But they have all 'Goe, whither?', and 1633 has 'hence;' 1635-54 drop this semicolon. In 1669 the text runs, 'Goe, whither. Hence you get,' &c. The semicolon, however, is better than the full stop after 'Hence', as the following clause is expansive and explanatory: 'Anywhere will do so long as it is out of this. In such cases as yours, to forget is itself a gain.'

l. 34. The modern editors, by dropping the comma after 'asham'd', have given this line the opposite meaning to what Donne intended. I have therefore, to avoid ambiguity, inserted one before. Sir Henry Goodyere is not to be asham'd to imitate his hawk, but is, through shame, to emulate that noble bird by growing more sparing of extravagant display. 'But the sporte which for that daie Basilius would principally shewe to Zelmane, was the mounting at a Hearne, which getting up on his wagling wings with paine ... was now growen to diminish the sight of himself, and to give example to greate persons, that the higher they be the lesse they should show.' Sidney's Arcadia, ii. 4.

Goodyere's fondness for hawking is referred to in one of Donne's prose letters, 'God send you Hawks and fortunes of a high pitch' (Letters, p. 204), and by Jonson in Epigram LXXXV.

l. 44. Tables, or fruit-trenchers. I have let the 'Tables' of 1633-54 stand, although 'Fables' has the support of all the MSS. T is easily confounded with F. In the very next poem 1633-54 read 'Termers' where I feel sure that 'Farmers' (spelt 'Fermers') is the correct reading. Moreover, Donne makes several references to the 'morals' of fables:

If 'Tables' is the correct reading, Donne means, I take it, not portable memorandum books such as Hamlet carried (this is Professor Norton's explanation), but simply pictures (as in 'Table-book'), probably Emblems.

Page 185. To M^r Rowland Woodward.

Rowland Woodward was a common friend of Donne and Wotton. The fullest account of Woodward is given by Mr. Pearsall Smith (The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, 1907). Of his early life unfortunately he can tell us little or nothing. He seems to have [pg 147] gone to Venice with Wotton in 1604, at least he was there in 1605. This letter was, therefore, written probably before that date. One MS., viz. B, states that it was written 'to one that desired some of his papers'. It is quite likely that Woodward, preparing to leave England, had asked Donne for copies of his poems, and Donne, now a married man, and, if not disgraced, yet living in 'a retiredness' at Pyrford or Camberwell, was not altogether disposed to scatter his indiscretions abroad. He enjoins privacy in like manner on Wotton when he sends him some Paradoxes. Donne, it will be seen, makes no reference to Woodward's going abroad or being in Italy.

While with Wotton he was sent as a spy to Milan and imprisoned by the Inquisition. In 1607, while bringing home dispatches, he was attacked by robbers and left for dead. On Feb. 2, 1608, money was paid to his brother, Thomas Woodward (the T. W. of several of Donne's Letters), for Rowland's 'surgeons and diets'. In 1608 he entered the service of the Bishop of London. For subsequent incidents in his career see Pearsall Smith, op. cit. ii. 481. He died sometime before April 1636.

It is clear that the MSS. Cy, O'F, P, S96 have derived this poem from a common source, inferior to that from which the 1633 text is derived, which has the general support of the best MSS. These MSS. agree in the readings: 3 'holiness', but O'F corrects, 10 'to use it,' 13 'whites' Cy, O'F, 14 'Integritie', but O'F corrects, 33 'good treasure'. It is clear that a copy of this tradition fell into the hands of the 1635 editor. His text is a contamination of the better and the inferior versions. The strange corruption of 4-6 began by the mistake of 'flowne' for 'showne'. In O'F and the editions 1635-54 the sense is adjusted to this by reading, 'How long loves weeds', and making the two lines an exclamation. The 'good treasure' (l. 33) of 1635-69, which Chambers has adopted, comes from this source also. The reading at l. 10 is interesting; 'to use it', for 'to us, it', has obviously arisen from 'to use and love Poetrie' of the previous verse. In the case of 'seeme but light and thin' we have an emendation, even in the inferior version, made for the sake of the metre (which is why Chambers adopted it), for though Cy, O'F, and P have it, S96 reads:

l. 2. a retirednesse. This reading of some MSS., including W, which is a very good authority for these Letters, is quite possibly authentic. It is very like Donne to use the article; it was very easy for a copyist to drop it. Compare the dropping of 'a' before 'span' in Crucifying (p. 320), l. 8. The use of abstracts as common nouns with the article, or in the plural, is a feature of Donne's syntax. He does so in the next line: 'a chast fallownesse'. Again: 'Beloved, it is not enough to awake out of an ill sleepe of sinne, or of ignorance, or out of a good sleep, out of a retirednesse, and take [pg 148] some profession, if you winke, or hide your selves, when you are awake.' Sermons 50. 11. 90. 'It is not that he shall have no adversary, nor that that adversary shall be able to doe him no harm, but that he should have a refreshing, a respiration, In velamento alarum, under the shadow of Gods wings.' Sermons 80. 66. 670—where also we find 'an extraordinary sadnesse, a predominant melancholy, a faintnesse of heart, a chearlessnesse, a joylessnesse of spirit' (Ibid. 672). Donne does not mean to say that he is 'tied to retirednesse', a recluse. The letter was not written after he was in orders, but probably, like the preceding, when he was at Pyrford or Mitcham (1602-8). He is tied to a degree of retirednesse (compared with his early life) or a period of retiredness. He does not compare himself to a Nun but to a widow. Even a third widowhood is not necessarily a final state. 'So all retirings', he says in a letter to Goodyere, 'into a shadowy life are alike from all causes, and alike subject to the barbarousnesse and insipid dulnesse of the Country.' Letters, p. 63. But the phrase here applies primarily to the Nun and the widow.

l. 3. fallownesse; I have changed the full stop of 1633-54 to a semicolon here because I take the next three lines to be an adverbial clause giving the reason why Donne's muse 'affects ... a chast fallownesse'. The full stop disguises this, and Chambers, by keeping the full stop here but changing that after 'sown' (l. 6), has thrown the reference of the clause forward to 'Omissions of good, ill, as ill deeds bee.'—not a happy arrangement.

ll. 16-18. There is no Vertue, &c. Donne refers here to the Cardinal Virtues which the Schoolmen took over from Aristotle. There are, Aquinas demonstrates, four essential virtues of human nature: 'Principium enim formale virtutis, de qua nunc loquimur, est rationis bonum. Quod quidem dupliciter potest considerari: uno modo secundum quod in ipsa consideratione consistit; et sic erit una virtus principalis, quae dicitur prudentia. Alio modo secundum quod circa aliquid ponitur rationis ordo; et hoc vel circa operationes, et sic est justitia; vel circa passiones, et sic necesse est esse duas virtutes. Ordinem enim rationis necesse est ponere circa passiones, considerata repugnantia ipsarum ad rationem. Quae quidem potest esse dupliciter: uno modo secundum quod passio impellit ad aliquid contrarium rationi; et sic necesse est quod passio reprimatur, et ab hoc denominatur temperantia; alio modo secundum quod passio retrahit ab eo quod ratio dictat, sicut timor periculorum vel laborum; et sic necesse est quod homo firmetur in eo quod est rationis, ne recedat; et ab hoc denominatur fortitudo.' Summa, Prima Secundae, 61. 2. Since the Cardinal Virtues thus cover the whole field, what place is reserved for the Theological Virtues, viz., Faith, Hope, and Charity? Aquinas's reply is quite definite: 'Virtutes theologicae sunt supra hominem ... Unde non proprie dicuntur virtutes humanae sed suprahumanae, vel divinae.' Ibid., 61. 1. [pg 149] Donne here exclaims that the cardinal virtues themselves are non-existent without religion. They are, isolated from religion, habits which any one can assume who has the discretion to cover his vices. Religion not only gives us higher virtues but alone gives sincerity to the natural virtues. Donne is probably echoing St. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xviiii. 25: 'Quod non possint ibi verae esse virtutes, ubi non est vera religio. Quamlibet enim videatur animus corpori et ratio vitiis laudibiliter imperare, si Deo animus et ratio ipsa non servit, sicut sibi esse serviendum ipse Deus precepit, nullo modo corpori vitiisque recte imperat. Nam qualis corporis atque vitiorum potest esse mens domina veri Dei nescia nec eius imperio subjugata, sed vitiosissimis daemonibus corrumpentibus prostituta? Proinde virtutes quas habere sibi videtur per quas imperat corpori et vitiis, ad quodlibet adipiscendum vel tenendum rettulerit nisi ad Deum, etiam ipsae vitia sunt potius quam virtutes. Nam licet a quibusdam tunc verae atque honestae esse virtutes cum referentur ad se ipsas nec propter aliud expetuntur: etiam tunc inflatae et superbae sunt, et ideo non virtutes, sed vitia iudicanda sunt. Sicut enim non est a carne sed super carnem quod carnem facit vivere; sic non est ab homine sed super hominem quod hominem facit beate vivere: nec solum hominem, sed etiam quamlibet potestatem virtutemque caelestem.'

Page 186, ll. 25-7. You know, Physitians, &c. Paracelsus refers more than once to the heat of horse-dung used in 'separations', e.g. On the Separations of the Elements from Metals he enjoins that when the metal has been reduced to a liquid substance you must 'add to one part of this oil two parts of fresh aqua fortis, and when it is enclosed in glass of the best quality, set it in horse-dung for a month'.

l. 31. Wee are but farmers of our selves. The reading of 1633 is 'termers', and as in 'Tables' 'Fables' of the preceding poem it is not easy to determine which is original. 'Termer' of course, in the sense of 'one who holds for a term' (see O.E.D.), would do. It is the more general word and would include 'Farmer'. A farmer generally is a 'termer' in the land which he works. I think, however, that the rest of the verse shows that 'farmer' is used in a more positive sense than would be covered by 'termer'. The metaphor includes not only the terminal occupancy but the specific work of the farmer—stocking, manuring, uplaying.

Donne in a sermon for the 5th of November speaks of those who will have the King to be 'their Farmer of his Kingdome.' Sermons 50. 43. 403.

It must be remembered that in MS. 'Fermer' and 'Termer' would be easily interchanged.

l. 34. to thy selfe be approv'd. There is no reason to prefer the 1669 'improv'd' here. To be 'improv'd to oneself' is not a very lucid phrase. What Donne bids Woodward do is to seek the approval of his own conscience. His own conscience is contrasted with 'vaine outward things'. Donne has probably Epictetus in mind: 'How then may this be attained?—Resolve now if never before, to approve thyself to thyself; resolve to show thyself fair in God's sight; long to be pure with thine own pure self and God.' Golden Sayings, lxxvi., trans. by Crossley.

Page 187. To S^r Henry Wootton.

The date of this letter is given in two MSS. as July 20, 1598. Its tone is much the same as that of the previous letter (p. 180) and of both the fourth and fifth Satyres. The theme of them all is the Court.

l. 2. Cales or St Michaels tale. The point of this allusion was early lost and has been long in being recovered. The spelling 'Calis' is a little misleading, as it was used both for Calais and for Cadiz. In Sir Francis Vere's Commentaries (1657) he speaks of 'The Calis-journey' and the 'Island voiage'. I have taken 'Cales' from some MSS. as less ambiguous. All the modern editors have printed 'Calais', and Grosart considers the allusion to be to the Armada, Norton to the 'old wars with France'. The reference is to the Cadiz expedition and the Island voyage: 'Why should I tell you what we both know?' In speaking of 'St. Michaels tale' Donne may be referring to the attack on that particular island, which led to the loss of the opportunity to capture the plate-fleet. But the 'Islands of St. Michael' was a synonym for the Azores. 'Thus the ancient Cosmographers do place the division of the East and Western Hemispheres, that is, the first term of longitude, in the Canary or fortunate Islands; conceiving these parts the extreamest habitations Westward: But the Moderns have altered that term, and translated it unto the Azores or Islands of St Michael; and that upon a plausible conceit of the small or insensible variation of the Compass in those parts,' &c. Browne, Pseud. Epidem. vi. 7.

The idea that Fate or Fortune is the deputy of God in the sphere of external goods (τὰ ἐκτὸς ἀγαθά, i beni del mondo) is very clearly expressed by Dante in the Convivio, iv. 11, and in the Inferno, vi. 67 f.: '"Master," I said to him, "now tell me also: this Fortune of which [pg 151] thou hintest to me; what is she, that has the good things of the world thus within her clutches?" And he to me, "O foolish creatures, how great is this ignorance that falls upon ye! Now I wish thee to receive my judgement of her. He whose wisdom is transcendent over all, made the heavens" (i.e. the nine moving spheres) "and gave them guides" (Angels, Intelligences); "so that every part may shine to every part equally distributing the light. In like manner, for worldly splendours, he ordained a general minister and guide (ministro e duce); to change betimes the vain possessions, from people to people, and from one kindred to another, beyond the hindrance of human wisdom. Hence one people commands, another languishes; obeying her sentence, which is hidden like the serpent in the grass. Your knowledge cannot withstand her. She provides, judges, and maintains her kingdom, as the other gods do theirs. Her permutations have no truce. Necessity makes her be swift; so oft come things requiring change. This is she, who is so much reviled, even by those who ought to praise her, when blaming her wrongfully, and with evil words. But she is in bliss, and hears it not. With the other Primal Creatures joyful, she wheels her sphere, and tastes her blessedness."' Dante finds in this view the explanation of the want of anything like distributive justice in the assignment of wealth, power, and worldly glory. Dante speaks here of Fortune, but though in its original conception at the opposite pole from Fate, Fortune is ultimately included in the idea of Fate. 'Necessity makes her be swift.' 'Sed talia maxime videntur esse contingentia quae Fato attribuuntur.' Aquinas. The relation of Fate or Destiny to God or Divine Providence is discussed by Boethius, De Cons. Phil. IV. Prose III, whom Aquinas follows, Summa, I. cxvi. Ultimately the immovable Providence of God is the cause of all things; but viewed in the world of change and becoming, accidents or events are ascribed to Destiny. 'Uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio; ad id quod est, id quod gignitur; ad aeternitatem, tempus; ad punctum medium, circulus; ita est fati series mobilis ad Providentiae stabilem simplicitatem.' Boethius. This is clearly what Donne has in view when he calls Destiny the Commissary of God or declares that God made but doth not control her. The idea of Fate in Greek thought which Christian Philosophy had some difficulty in adjusting to its doctrines of freedom and providence came from the astronomico-religious ideas of the Chaldaeans. The idea of Fate 'arose from the observation of the regularity of the sidereal movements'. Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans, 1912, pp. 28, 69.

l. 14. wishing prayers. This may be a phrase corresponding to 'bidding prayers', but 'wishing' is comma'd off as a noun in some MSS. and 'wishes' may be the author's correction.

Page 188, l. 24. dull Moralls of a game at Chests. The comparison of life and especially politics to a game of chess is probably an old one. Sancho Panza develops it with considerable eloquence.

Page 188. H: W: in Hiber: belligeranti.

This poem is taken from the Burley MS., where it is found along with a number of poems some of which are by Donne, viz.: the Satyres, one of the Elegies, and several of the Epigrams. Of the others this alone has the initials 'J. D.' added in the margin. There can be little doubt that it is by Donne,—a continuation of the correspondence of the years 1597-9 to which the last letter and 'Letters more than kisses' belong. In Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton Mr. Pearsall Smith prints what he takes to be a reply to this letter and the charge of indolence. 'Sir, It is worth my wondering that you can complain of my seldom writing, when your own letters come so fearfully as if they tread all the way upon a bog. I have received from you a few, and almost every one hath a commission to speak of divers others of their fellows, like you know who in the old comedy that asks for the rest of his servants. But you make no mention of any of mine, yet it is not long since I ventured much of my experience unto you in a long piece of paper, and perhaps not of my credit; it is that which I sent you by A. R., whereof till you advertise me I shall live in fits or agues.' After referring to the malicious reports in circulation regarding the Irish expedition he concludes in the style of the previous letters: 'These be the wise rules of policy, and of courts, which are upon earth the vainest places.'

ll. 13-15. These lines are enough of themselves to prove Donne's authorship of this poem. Compare To S^r Henry Goodyere, p. 183, ll. 17-20.

Page 189. To the Countesse of Bedford.

Lucy, Countess of Bedford, occupies the central place among Donne's noble patrons and friends. No one was more consistently his friend; to none does he address himselfe in terms of sincerer and more respectful eulogy.

The eldest child of John Harington, created by James first Baron Harington of Exton, was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, in 1594 and was a lady in waiting under Elizabeth. She was one of the group of noble ladies who hastened north on the death of the Queen to welcome, and secure the favour of, James and Anne of Denmark. Her father and mother were granted the tutorship of the young Princess Elizabeth, and she herself was admitted at once as a Lady of the Chamber. Her beauty and talent secured her a distinguished place at Court, and in the years that Donne was a prisoner at Mitcham the Countess was a brilliant figure in more than one of Ben Jonson's masques. 'She was "the crowning rose" in that garland of English beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired Madame [pg 153] Beaumont, the Lady of the French ambassador, to bring with her to an entertainment on the 8th of December, 1603: the three others being Lady Rich, Lady Susan Vere, and Lady Dorothy (Sidney); "and", says the Lady Arabella Stewart, "great cheer they had."' Wiffen, Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, 1833. She figured also in Daniel's Masque, The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses, which was published (1604) with an explanatory letter addressed to her. In praising her beauty Donne is thus echoing 'the Catholic voice'. The latest Masque in which she figured was the Masque of Queens, 2nd of February, 1609-10.

In Court politics the Countess of Bedford seems to have taken some part in the early promotion of Villiers as a rival to the Earl of Somerset; and in 1617 she promoted the marriage of Donne's patron Lord Hay to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, against the wish of the bride's father. Match-making seems to have been a hobby of hers, for in 1625 she was an active agent in arranging the match between James, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, and Lady Charlotte de la Trémouille, the heroic Countess of Derby who defended Lathom House against the Roundheads.

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 [pg 154] 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.

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. [pg 155] 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.'

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.

'Make a present of this life to the next, by living now as you will live then; and so make this life and the next one'—or, as another poet puts it:

This I take to be Donne's meaning. The 'This' of 1635-69 and the MSS., which Chambers also has adopted, seems required by the antithesis. If one recalls that 'this' is very commonly written 'thys', and that final 's' is little more than a tail, it is easy to account for 'Thy' in 1633. The meaning too is not clear at a glance, and 'Thy' might seem to an editor to make it easier. The thought is much the same as in the Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, p. 279.

Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then [pg 156] 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,

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,

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:

With the sentiment regarding Courts compare: 'Beauty, in courts, is so necessary to the young, that those who are without it, seem to be there to no other purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair; to attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon and stars do the sun by day; or at best to be the refuge of those hearts which others have despised; and by the unworthiness of both to give and take a miserable comfort.' Dryden, Dedication of the Indian Emperor.

I have completed the enclosure of (Where ... show) in brackets [pg 157] which 1633 began but forgot to carry out. The statement is parenthetical, and it is of the essence of Donne's wit to turn aside in one parenthesis to make another, dart from one distracting thought to a further, returning at the end to the main track. He has left the Countess for a moment to explain why the Court 'is not Vertues clime'. She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen there, as I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low. Then taking up again the thought of the first line he continues: 'all my rhyme is claimed there by your vertues, for there rareness gives them value. I am the comment on what there is a dark text; the usher who announces one that is a stranger.'

For brackets within brackets compare: 'And yet it is imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense (I dare not say to reason (though it have appearance of that too) because none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is reasonablest) That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation or society one other; and every man one other.' Letters, p. 43.

l. 13. To this place: i.e. Twickenham. O'F heads the poem To the Countesse of Bedford, Twitnam. The poem is written to welcome her home. See l. 70.

The development of Donne's subtle and extravagant conceits is a little difficult. The Countess is the sun which exhales the sweetness of the country when she comes thither (13-18). Apparently the Countess has returned to Twickenham in Autumn, perhaps arriving late in the evening. When she emerges from her chariot it is the breaking of a new day, the beginning of a new year or new world. Both the Julian and the Gregorian computations are thus falsified (19-22). It shows her truth to nature that she will not suffer a day which begins at a stated hour, but only one that begins with the actual appearance of the light (23-4: a momentary digression). Since she, the Sun, has thus come to Twickenham, the Court is made the Antipodes. While the 'vulgar sun' is an Autumnal one, this Sun which is in Spring, receives our sacrifices. Her priests, or instruments, we celebrate her (25-30). Then Donne draws back from the religious strain into which he is launching. He will not sing Hymns as to a Deity, but offer petitions as to a King, that he may view the beauty of this Temple, and not as Temple, but as Edifice. The rest of the argument is simpler.

l. 60. The same thinge. The singular of the MSS. seems to be required by 'you cannot two'. The 's' of the editions is probably due to the final 'e'. But 'things' is the reading of Lec, the MS. representing most closely that from which 1633 was printed.

ll. 71-2. Who hath seene one, &c. 'Who hath seen one, e.g. Twickenham, which your dwelling there makes a Paradise, would fain see you too, as whoever had been in Paradise would not have [pg 158] failed to seek out the Cherubim.' The construction is elliptical. Compare:

The Cherubim are specially mentioned (although the Seraphim are the highest order) because they are traditionally the beautiful angels: 'The Spirit of Chastity ... in the likenesse of a faire beautifull Cherubine.' Bacon, New Atlantis (1658), 22 (O.E.D.).

Page 193. To S^r Edward Herbert. at Iulyers.

Edward Herbert, first Baron of Cherbury (1563-1648), the eldest son of Donne's friend Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, had not long returned from his first visit to France when he set out again in 1610 with Lord Chandos 'to pass to the city of Juliers which the Prince of Orange resolved to besiege. Making all haste thither we found the siege newly begun; the Low Country army assisted by 4,000 English under the command of Sir Edward Cecil. We had not long been there when the Marquis de la Chartre, instead of Henry IV, who was killed by that villain Ravaillac, came with a brave French army thither'. Autobiography, ed. Sidney Lee. The city was held by the Archduke Leopold for the Emperor. The Dutch, French, and English were besieging the town in the interest of the Protestant candidates, the Elector of Brandenburg, and the Palatine of Neuburg. The siege marked the beginning of the Thirty Years' War. Herbert was a man of both ability and courage but of a vanity which outweighed both. Donne's letter humours both his Philosophical pose and his love of obscurity and harshness in poetry. His own poems with a few exceptions are intolerably difficult and unmusical, and Jonson told Drummond that 'Donne said to him he wrote that Epitaph upon Prince Henry, Look to me Faith, to match Sir Ed. Herbert in obscureness'. (Jonson's Conversations, ed. Laing.) The poems have been reprinted by the late Professor Churton Collins. In 1609 when Herbert was in England he and Donne both wrote Elegies on Mistress Boulstred.

l. 1. Man is a lumpe, &c. The image of the beasts Donne has borrowed from Plato, The Republic, ix. 588 B-E.

Page 194, ll. 23-6. A food which to chickens is harmless poisons men. Our own nature contributes the factor which makes a food into a poison either corrosive or killing by intensity of heat or cold: 'Et hic nota quod tantus est ordo naturae, ut quod est venenosum et inconveniens uni est utile et conveniens alteri; sicut jusquiamus qui est cibus passeris licet homini sit venenosus; et sicut napellus interficit hominem solum portatus, et mulierem praegnantem non laesit manducatus, teste Galieno; et mus qui pascitur napello est tiriaca contra napellum.' Benvenuto on Dante, Div. Comm.: Paradiso, i. The plants here mentioned are henbane and aconite. Concerning hemlock the O.E.D. quotes Swan, Spec. M. vi. § 4 (1643), 'Hemlock ... [pg 159] is meat to storks and poison to men.' Donne probably uses the word 'chickens' as equivalent to 'young birds', not for the young of the domestic fowl. For the cold of the hemlock see Persius, Sat. v. 145; Ovid, Amores, iii. 7. 13; and Juvenal, Sat. vii. 206, a reference to Socrates' gift from the Athenians of 'gelidas ... cicutas'.

ll. 31-2. Thus man, that might be'his pleasure, &c. These lines are condensed and obscure. The 'his' must mean 'his own'. 'Man who in virtue of that gift of reason which makes him man might be to himself a source of joy, becomes instead, by the abuse of reason, his own rod. Reason which should be the God directing his life becomes the devil which misleads him.' Chambers prints 'His pleasure', 'His rod', referring 'his' to God—which seems hardly possible.

ll. 34-8. wee'are led awry, &c. Chambers's punctuation of this passage is clearly erroneous:

This must mean that we are led astray by those who, in their abridgement of man, still show him to us greater than he really is. But this is the opposite of what Donne says. 'Greater than due' goes with 'no form'. Compare:

'And therefore the Philosopher draws man into too narrow a table, when he says he is Microcosmos, an Abridgement of the world in little: Nazianzen gives him but his due, when he calls him Mundum Magnum, a world to which all the rest of the world is but subordinate: For all the world besides, is but God's Foot-stool; Man sits down upon his right-hand,' &c. Sermons 26. 25. 370.

'It is too little to call Man a little world; Except God, Man is a diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world doth, nay than the world is.' Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c. (1624), p. 64.

On the other hand the Grolier Club editor has erroneously followed 1635-69 in altering the full stop after 'chaw' to a comma; and has substituted a semicolon for the comma after 'fill' (l. 39), reading:

But 'All that is fill'd,' &c. is not object to 'can draw'. It is subject (in apposition with 'All the round world') to 'is but a pill'.

Page 195, l. 47. This makes it credible. I have changed the comma after 'credible' to a semicolon to avoid the misapprehension, into which the Grolier Club editor seems to have fallen, that what is credible [pg 160] is 'that you have dwelt upon all worthy books'. It is because Lord Herbert has dwelt upon all worthy books that it is credible that he knows man.

Page 195. To the Countesse of Bedford.

l. 1. T'have written then, &c. This is one of the most difficult of Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment Donne has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the poem is one of those for which the MS. resembling D, H49, Lec was not available. The text of 1633 was taken from a MS. belonging to the group A18, N, TCC, TCD, and contains several errors. Some of these were corrected in 1635 from O'F or a MS. resembling it, but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in 1633 was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.

l. 20. 'or all It; You.' for 'or all, in you.' There is not much to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very logical expression. But the 1633 reading may mean 'the world's best part, or the world's all,—you.' The alteration of 1635 is not necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.

l. 4. Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse. 'Naturall and morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all Solomons bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of thankefulnesse, as you shall in Seneca and in Plutarch. No book of Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude.' Sermons 80. 55. 550.

Page 197, l. 54. Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove. Following the hint of O'F, I have bracketed all these words to show that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.

Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But 1633 is right. If 'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the Penitential Psalms (Sermons 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian [pg 161] Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i.e. immortal) is presented as sharply as in this line of the verse Letter. But Donne states the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying, then, that it cannot dye.' Sermons 80. 27. 269. This makes the correct reading of the line quite certain.

The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well as labour (ll. 43-8). He returns in ll. 49-52 to the main theme of the body's corrupting influence, and this leads him to a new thought. It is not only the soul which suffers by this absorption in the body, but the body itself:

By this descent of the soul into the body we deprive the latter of its proper dignity, to be the Casket, Temple, Palace of the Soul. Then Donne turns aside to enforce the dignity of the Body. It will be redeemed from death, and the Soul is only preserved. No more than the Body is the Soul naturally immortal. These lines are almost a parenthesis. The poet returns once more to his main theme, the degradation of the soul by our exclusive regard for the body.

Thus the deepest thought of Donne's poetry, his love poetry and his religious poetry, emerges here again. He will not accept the antithesis between soul and body. The dignity of the body is hardly less than that of the soul. But we cannot exalt the body at the expense of the soul. If we immerse the soul in the body it is not the soul alone which suffers but the body also. In the highest spiritual life, as in the fullest and most perfect love, body and soul are complementary, are merged in each other; and after death the life of the soul is in some measure incomplete, the end for which it was created is not obtained until it is reunited to the body. 'Yet have not those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text, acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule, mistaken nor miscalled the matter. Take Damascens owne definition of Resurrection: Resurrectio est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio: A Resurrection is a second rising to that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now though by death, the soule do not fall into any such state, as that it can complaine, (for what can that lack, which God fils?) yet by death, the soule fals from that, for which it was infused, and poured into man at first; that is to be the forme of that body, the King of that Kingdome; [pg 162] and therefore, when in the generall Resurrection, the soule returns to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath had an affection, and a desire, even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of Heaven, then, when the soule returns to her office, to make up the man, because the whole man hath, therefore the soule hath a Resurrection: not from death, but from a deprivation of her former state; that state which she was made for, and is ever enclined to.' Sermons 80. 19. 189.

Here, as before, Donne is probably following St. Augustine, who combats the Neo-Platonic view (to which mediaeval thought tended to recur) that a direct source of evil was the descent of the soul into the body. The body is not essentially evil. It is not the body as such that weighs down the soul (aggravat animam), but the body corrupted by sin: 'Nam corruptio corporis ... non peccati primi est causa, sed poena; nec caro corruptibilis animam peccatricem, sed anima peccatrix fecit esse corruptibilem carnem.' In the Resurrection we desire not to escape from the body but to be clothed with a new body,—'nolumus corpore exspoliari, sed ejus immortalitate vestiri.' Aug. De Civ. Dei, xiv. 3, 5. He cites St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1-4.

l. 59. As men to our prisons, new soules to us are sent, &c.: 'new' is the reading of 1633 only, 'now' followed or preceded by a comma of the other editions and the MSS. It is difficult to decide between them, but Donne speaks of 'new souls' elsewhere: 'The Father creates new souls every day in the inanimation of Children, and the Sonne creates them with him.' Sermons 50. 12. 100. 'Our nature is Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) both earth and heaven; for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy, so our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed to partake earthly pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go back again; we have some errand to do here; nor is it sent into prison, because it comes innocent; and he which sent it, is just.' Letters (1651), p. 46.

Page 198, l. 72. Stand on two truths: i.e. the wickedness of the world and your goodness. You will believe neither.

Page 198. To the Countesse of Bedford.

On New-yeares day.

l. 3. of stuffe and forme perplext: i.e. whose matter and form are a perplexed, intricate, difficult question:

Donne cannot mean that the matter and form are 'intricately intertwined or intermingled', using the words as in Bacon: 'The formes of substances (as they are now by compounding and transplanting multiplied) are so perplexed.' Bacon, Adv. Learn. ii. 7. § 5. The question of meteors in all their forms was one of great interest and great difficulty to ancient science. Seneca, who gathers up most of what has been said before him, recurs to the subject again and again. See the [pg 163] Quaestiones Naturales, i. 1, and elsewhere. Aristotle, he says, attributes them to exhalations from the earth heated by the sun's rays. They are at any rate not falling stars, or parts of stars, but 'have their origin below the stars, and—being without solid foundation or fixed abode—quickly perish'. But there was great uncertainty as to their what and where. Donne compares himself to them in the uncertainty of his position and worldly affairs. 'Wind is a mixt Meteor, to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with exhalations.' Sermons 80. 31. 305.

Page 199, l. 19. cherish, us doe wast. The punctuation of 1633 is odd at the first glance, but accurate. If with all the later editions one prints 'cherish us, doe wast', the suggestion is that 'wast' is intransitive—'in cherishing us they waste themselves,' which is not Donne's meaning. It is us they waste.

Page 200, l. 44. Some pitty. I was tempted to think that Lowell's conjecture of 'piety' for 'pitty' must be right, the more so that the spelling of the two words was not always differentiated. But it is improbable that Donne would say that 'piety' in the sense of piety to God could ever be out of place. What he means is probably that at Court pity, which elsewhere is a virtue, may not be so if it induces a lady to lend a relenting ear to the complaint of a lover.

This must mean, practically repeating what has been said: 'Some vain amusements which, on this side of the line separating the cloister from the Court, would be sin; are on that side, in the Court, becoming—amusements, sinful in the cloister, are permissible at Court.' The last line thus contains a sharp antithesis. But can 'on this side' mean 'in the cloister'? Donne is not writing from the cloister, and if he had been would say 'In this place'. 'Faith', he says elsewhere, 'is not on this side Knowledge but beyond it.' Sermons 50. 36. 325. This is what he means here, and I have so punctuated it, following 1719 and subsequent editions: 'Some vain disport, so long as it falls short of actual sin, is permissible at Court.'

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 [pg 164] 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 M^r T. W.

To M^r 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. [pg 165] 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.

In 1633, which follows A18, N, TCC, TCD, the letters are headed M. T. W., M. R. W., &c., 'M' standing, as often, for 'Mr.' Seeing, however, that 'Mr.' is the general form in W, I have used it as clearer.

The first of the letters has been headed hitherto To M. I. W., and Mr. Chambers conjectured that the person addressed might be Izaak Walton. It is clear from the other MSS. that A18, N, TC, which 1633 follows, is wrong and that I. W. should be T. W., Thomas Woodward. The T and I of this MS. are very similar, though distinguishable. Unfortunately we know nothing more of Thomas Woodward than that he was Rowland's brother and Donne's friend. The 'sweet Poet' must not be taken too seriously. Donne and his friends were corresponding with one another in verse, and complimenting each other in the polite fashion of the day.

Page 204, ll. 13-16. But care not for me, &c. These lines form a crux in the textual criticism of Donne's poetry. I shall print them as they stand in W:

Some copies of the 1633 edition (including those used by myself and by the Grolier Club editor) print these words, but obscure the meaning by bracketing 'alas ... schoole'. Other copies (e.g. that used by Chambers) insert after 'Before' a 'by', which the Grolier Club editor also does as a conjecture. The 1635 editor, probably following O'F, resorted to another device to clear up the sense and changed 'Before' to 'But for', which Grosart and Chambers follow. The majority of the MSS., however, agree with W, and the case illustrates well the difficulties which beset an eclectic use of the editions.

If the bracket in 1633 is dropt, or rearranged as in the text, the reading is correct and intelligible. The printers and editors have been misled by Donne's phrase, 'In Natures, and in Fortunes gifts'. They took this to go with 'A monster and a beggar': 'I that ever was a monster and a beggar in Natures and in Fortunes gifts.' This is a strange expression, taken, I suppose, to mean that Donne never enjoyed the blessings either of Nature or of Fortune. But what Donne says is somewhat different. The phrase 'I that ever was in Natures and in Fortunes gifts' means 'I that ever was the Almsman of Nature and Fortune'. Donne is using metaphorically a phrase of which the O.E.D. quotes a single instance: 'I live in Henry the [pg 166] 7th's Gifts' (i.e. his Almshouses). T. Barker, The Art of Angling (1651). The whole sentence might be paraphrased thus: 'I, who was ever the Almsman of Nature and Fortune, am now a fool.' Parenthetically he adds, 'Till thy grace begot me, a monster and a beggar, in the Muses' school'. Possibly 'and a beggar' should be left outside the brackets and taken with 'In Natures and in Fortunes gifts': 'I, that was an almsman and beggar, was by you begotten a poet, though a monstrous one;' ('monster' goes properly with 'got') 'and am now a fool'—possibly the last allusion is to his rash marriage. Donne's prose and verse of the years following 1601 are full of this melancholy depreciation of himself and his lot. Daniel calls himself the

In W 'All haile sweet Poet' is followed at once by these lines, presumably written by Thomas Woodward and possibly in reply to the above. They are found standing by themselves in B, O'F, P, S96. In these they are apparently ascribed to Donne. I print from W:

To M^r J. D.

Thou sendst me prose and rimes, I send for those

Lynes, which, being neither, seem or verse or prose.

They'are lame and harsh, and have no heat at all

But what thy Liberall beams on them let fall.

The nimble fyre which in thy braynes doth dwell

Is it the fyre of heaven or that of hell?

It doth beget and comfort like Heavens eye,

And like hells fyre it burnes eternally.

And those whom in thy fury and judgment

Thy verse shall skourge like hell it will torment.

Have mercy on mee and my sinfull Muse

Which rub'd and tickled with thine could not chuse

But spend some of her pith, and yeild to bee

One in that chaste and mistique Tribadree.

Bassaes adultery no fruit did Leave,

Nor theirs, which their swollen thighs did nimbly weave,

And with new armes and mouths embrace and kiss,

Though they had issue was not like to this.

[pg 167]

Thy muse, Oh strange and holy Lecheree

Being a mayde still, gott this song on mee.

l. 25. Now if this song, &c. By interchanging the stops at 'evill' and at 'passe' the old editions have obscured these lines. Mr. Chambers, accepting the full stop at 'evill', prints:—

The reason for writing is not clear. 'If thou forget,' &c. explains ''Twill be good prose'. 'Read this without attending to the rhymes and you will find it good prose.' If we drop the epithet 'good', this criticism will apply to a considerable portion of metaphysical poetry.

Page 205, l. 30. thy zanee, i.e. thy imitator, as the Merry-Andrew imitates the Mountebank:

Page 205. To M^r T. W.

l. 1. Haste thee, &c. By the lines 5-6, supplied from W, this poem is restored to the compass of a sonnet, though a very irregular one in form. The letter is evidently written from London, where the plague is prevalent. The letter is to be (l. 14) Donne's pledge of affection if he lives, his testament if he dies.

Page 206. To M^r T. W.

l. 5. hand and eye is the reading of all the MSS., including W. It is written in the latter with a contraction which could easily be mistaken for 'or'.

To M^r T. W.

l. 3. I to the Nurse, they to the child of Art. The 'Nurse of Art' is probably Leisure, 'I to my soft still walks':

According to Aristotle, all the higher, more intellectual arts, as distinct from those which supply necessities or add to the pleasures of life, are the fruits of leisure: 'At first he who invented any art that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities [pg 168] of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.' Met. A. 981^b (translated by W. D. Ross).

l. 12. a Picture, or bare Sacrament. The last word would seem to be used in the legal sense: 'The sacramentum or pledge which each of the parties deposited or became bound for before a suit.' O.E.D. The letter is a picture of his mind or pledge of his affection.

Page 207. To M^r R. W.

Muse not that by, &c. l. 7. a Lay Mans Genius: i.e. his Guardian Angel. The 'Lay Man' is opposed to the 'Poet'. Donne is very familiar with the Catholic doctrine of Guardian Angels and recurs to it repeatedly. Compare Shakespeare, Macbeth, III. i. 55.

l. 11. Wright then. The version of this poem in W is probably made from Donne's autograph. One of his characteristic spellings is 'wright' for 'write'. The Losely Manuscripts (ed. Kempe, 1836), in which some of Donne's letters are printed from the originals, show this spelling on every page. It is perhaps worth noting that the irregular past participle similarly spelt, i.e. 'wrought', has occasionally misled editors by its identity of form with the past participle of the verb 'work', which has 'gh' legitimately. Thus Mr. Beeching (A Selection from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton, 1899) prints:

Here 'wrought' should be 'wrote', used, as frequently, for 'written'. In Professor Saintsbury's Patrick Carey (Caroline Poets, II.) we read:

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:

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.

ll. 5-6. oreseest ... overseene. Donne is probably punning: 'Thou from the height of Parnassus lookest down upon London; I in London am too much overlooked, disregarded.' But it is not clear. He may mean 'am too much in men's eye, or kept too strictly under observation'. The first meaning seems to me the more probable.

Page 209. To M^r R. W.

l. 3. brother. W reads 'brethren', and Morpheus had many brothers; but of these only two had with himself the power of assuming what form they would, and of these two Phantasus took forms that lack life. Donne, therefore, probably means Phobetor, but a friend copying the poem thought to amend his mythology. See Ovid, Metam. xi. 635-41.

Page 210. To M^r R. W.

l. 18. Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring. See introductory note to the Letters.

l. 23. businesse. The use of 'businesse' as a trisyllable with plural meaning is quite legitimate: 'Idle and discoursing men, that were not much affected, how businesse went, so they might talke of them.' Sermon, Judges XX. 15. p. 7.

Page 211. To M^r S. B.

Probably Samuel Brooke, the brother of Christopher. He officiated at Donne's marriage and was imprisoned. He was later Chaplain to Prince Henry, to James I, and to Charles I; professor of Divinity at Gresham College (1612-29) and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1629. He wrote Latin plays, poems, and religious treatises. The tone of Donne's letter implies that he is a student at Cambridge. It was written therefore before 1601, probably, like several of these letters, while Donne was Egerton's secretary, and living in chambers with Christopher Brooke. A poem by Samuel Brooke, On Tears, is printed in Hannah's Courtly Poets.

Page 212. To M^r J. L.

Of the J. L. of this and the letter which follows the next, nothing has been unearthed. He clearly belonged to the North of England, beyond the Trent.

To M^r B. B.

Grosart conjectures that this was Basil Brooke (1576-1646?), a Catholic, who was knighted in 1604. In 1644 he was committed to the Tower by Parliament and in 1646 imprisoned in the King's Bench. He translated Entertainments for Lent from the French. He was not a brother of Christopher and Samuel. The identification is only a conjecture. The tenor of the poem is very similar to that addressed to Mr. S. B.

Page 213, l. 18. widowhed. W here clearly gives us the form which Donne used. The rhyme requires it and the poet has used it elsewhere:

ll. 19-22. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are somewhat ambiguous:

Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, by putting a full stop or semi-colon after 'the cause being in me', connect these words with what precedes. This makes the first two lines verbose ('the cause being in me' repeating 'because I'am cold') and the last two obscure. I regard 'the cause being in me' as an explanatory participial phrase qualifying what follows. 'My Muse divorc'd me because of my coldness. The cause of this divorce, coldness, being in me, the divorced one, I lack not only the will but the power to contract a new marriage'. I have therefore, following W, placed a colon after 'selfe'.

Page 213. To M^r I. L.

l. 2. My Sun is with you. Here, as in the letter 'To Mr. C. B.' (p. 208), reference is made to some lady whose 'servant' Donne is. See the note to that poem and the quotation from Sir Henry Wotton. It seems to me most probable that the person referred to was neither Ann More nor any predecessor of her in Donne's affections, but some noble lady to whom the poet stood in the attitude of dependence masking itself in love which Spenser occupied towards Lady Carey, and so many other poets towards their patronesses. But in regard to all the references in these letters we can only grope in darkness. As Professor Saintsbury would say, we do not really know to whom one of the letters was addressed.

Page 214, ll. 11-12. These lines from W make the sense more complete and the transition to the closing invocation less abrupt. 'Sacrifice my heart to that beauteous Sunne; and since being with her you are in Paradise where joy admits of no addition, think of me at the sacrifice'; and then begins the prayer to his friend as an interceding saint. See note to p. 24, l. 22.

The lines seem to have been dropped, not in printing, but at some stage in transcription, for I have found them in no MS. but W.

l. 20. Thy Sonne ne'r Ward: i.e. 'May thy son never become a royal ward, to be handed over to the guardianship of some courtier who will plunder his estate.' Sir John Roe's father, in his will, begs his wife to procure the wardship of his son that he be not utterly ruined.

The series of letters which this to Mr. I. L. closes was probably written during the years 1597 to 1608 or 1610. Donne's first Letters were The Storme and The Calme. These were followed by Letters to Wotton before and after he went to Ireland, and this series continues them during the years of Donne's secretaryship and his subsequent residence at Pyrford and Mitcham. They are written to friends of his youth, some still at college. Clearly too, what we have preserved is Donne's side of a mutual correspondence. Of Letters to Donne I have printed one, probably from Thomas Woodward. Chance has preserved another probably in the form in which it was sent. Mr. Gosse has printed it (Life, &c., i, p. 91). I reproduce it from the original MS., Tanner 306, in the Bodleian Library:

To my ever to be respected friend

M^r John Done secretary to my

Lord Keeper give these.

As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant

Thir Tideast lambs or kids for sacrefize

Vnto thir gods, sincear beinge thir intent

Thoughe base thir gift, if that shoulde moralize

thir loves, yet noe direackt discerninge eye

Will judge thir ackt but full of piety.

[pg 172]

Soe offir I my beast affection

Apparaled in these harsh totterd rimes.

Think not they want love, though perfection

or that my loves noe truer than my lyens

Smothe is my love thoughe rugged be my years

Yet well they mean, thoughe well they ill rehears.

What tyme thou meanst to offir Idillnes

Come to my den for heer she always stayes;

If then for change of howers you seem careles

Agree with me to lose them at the playes.

farewell dear freand, my love, not lyens respeackt,

So shall you shewe, my freandship you affeckt.

Yours

William Cornwaleys.

The writer is, Mr. Gosse says, Sir William Cornwallis, the eldest son of Sir Charles Cornwallis of Beeston-in-Sprouston, Norfolk. Like Wotton, Goodyere, Roe, and others of Donne's circle he followed Essex to Ireland and was knighted at Dublin in 1599. The letter probably dates from 1600 or 1601. I have reproduced the original spelling, which is remarkable.

This letter and that to Mr. E. G. show that Donne was a frequenter of the theatre in these interesting years, 1593 to 1610, the greatest dramatic era since the age of Pericles. Sir Richard Baker, in his Chronicle of the Kings of England (1730, p. 424), recalls his 'Old Acquaintance ... Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, liv'd at the Inns of Court, not dissolute but very neat: a great Visiter of Ladies, a great Frequenter of Plays, a great Writer of conceited Verses'. But of the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's poetry. The theatres are an amusement for idle hours: 'Because I am drousie, I will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy, or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy.' Sermons 80. 38. 383.

Page 214. To Sir H. W. at his going Ambassador to Venice.

On July 8 O.S., 1604, Wotton was knighted by James, and on the 13th sailed for Venice. 'He is a gentleman', the Venetian ambassador reported, 'of excellent condition, wise, prudent, able. Your serenity, it is to be hoped, will be very well pleased with him.' Mr. Pearsall Smith adds, 'It is worth noting that while Wotton was travelling to Venice, Shakespeare was probably engaged in writing his great Venetian tragedy, Othello, which was acted before James I in November of this year.'

Page 215, ll. 21-4. To sweare much love, &c. The meaning of this verse, accepting the 1633 text, is: 'Admit this honest paper to swear much love,—a love that will not change until with your elevation to the peerage (or increasing eminence) it must be called honour rather than love.' (We honour, not love, those who are high above us.) [pg 173] 'But when that time comes I shall not more honour your fortune, the rank that fortune gives you, than I have honoured your honour ["nobleness of mind, scorn of meanness, magnanimity" (Johnson)], your high character, magnanimity, without it, i.e. when yet unhonoured.' Donne plays on the word 'honour'.

Walton's version, and the slight variant of this in 1635-69, give a different thought, and this is perhaps the correct reading, more probably either another (perhaps an earlier) version of the poet or an attempt to correct due to a failure to catch the meaning of the rather fanciful phrase 'honouring your honour'. The meaning is, 'I shall not then more honour your fortune than I have your wit while it was still unhonoured, or (1635-69) unennobled.' The 1633 version seems to me the more likely to be the correct or final form of the text, because a reference to character rather than 'wit' or intellectual ability is implied by the following verse:

This stress on character, too, and indifference to fortune, is quite in the vein of Donne's and Wotton's earlier verse correspondence and all Wotton's poetry.

For the distinction between love and honour compare Lyly's Endimion, v. iii. 150-80:

The antithesis here between 'honour' and 'fortune' is exactly that which Donne makes.

If we may accept 'noble-wanting-wit' as Donne's own phrase (and Walton's authority pleads for it) and interpret it as 'wit that yet [pg 174] wants ennoblement' it forms an interesting parallel to a phrase of Shakespeare's in Macbeth, when Banquo addresses the witches:

Some editors refer 'present grace' to the first salutation, 'Thane of Glamis'. This is unlikely as there is nothing startling in a salutation to which Macbeth was already entitled. The Clarendon Press editors refer the line, more probably, to the two prophecies, 'thane of Cawdor' and 'that shalt be King hereafter'. The word 'having' is then not quite the same as in the phrases 'my having is not great', &c., which these editors quote, but is simply opposed to 'hope'. You greet him with 'nobility in possession', with 'royalty in expectation', as being already thane of Cawdor, as to be king hereafter. Shakespeare's 'noble having' is the opposite of Donne's 'noble wanting'.

One is tempted to put, as Chambers does, an emphasizing comma after 'honour' as well as 'fortune'; but the antithesis is between 'fortune' and 'honour wanting fortune'.

'Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he affected was built upon true Worth, esteeming Fame more than Riches, and Noble actions far above Nobility it self.' Fulke Greville's Life of Sidney, c. iii. p. 38 (Tudor and Stuart Library).

Page 216. To M^rs M. H.

I.e. Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, mother of Sir Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), and of George Herbert the poet. For her friendship with Donne, see Walton's Life of Mr. George Herbert (1670), Gosse's Life and Letters of John Donne, i. 162 f., and what is said in the Introduction to this volume and the Introductory Note to the Elegies. In 1608 she married Sir John Danvers. Her funeral sermon was preached by Donne in 1627.

Page 217, l. 27. For, speech of ill, and her, thou must abstaine. The O.E.D. gives no example of 'abstain' thus used without 'from' before the object, and it is tempting with 1635-69 and all the MSS. to change 'For' to 'From'. But none of the MSS. has great authority textually, and the 'For' in 1633 is too carefully comma'd off to suggest a mere slip. Probably Donne wrote the line as it stands. One does not miss the 'from' so much when the verb comes so long after the object. 'Abstain' acquires the sense of 'forgo'.

Page 218. To the Countesse of Bedford.

l. 13. Care not then, Madam,'how low your praysers lye. I cannot but think that the 'praysers' of the MSS. is preferable to the 'prayses' of the editions. It is difficult to construe or make unambiguous sense of 'how low your prayses lie'. Donne does not wish to suggest that the praise is poor in itself, but that the giver is a 'low person'. The word 'prayser' he has already used in a letter to the Countess (p. 200), and there also it has caused some trouble to editors and copyists.

Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate these lines so as to connect 'But one' with what precedes.

I suppose 'death' in this reading is to be regarded as the one cloud which the radiation of the Countess cannot dispel. There is no indication, however, that this is the thought in Donne's mind. As punctuated (i.e. with a comma after 'subdue', which I have strengthened to a semicolon), 'But one' goes with what follows, and refers to God: 'Excepting God only, you are the most illuminating object we can contemplate.'

Page 219, l. 27. May in your through-shine front your hearts thoughts see. All the MSS. agree in reading 'your hearts thoughts', which is obviously correct. N, O'F, and TCD give the line otherwise exactly as in the editions. B drops the 'shine' after 'through'; and S96 reads:

Donne has used 'through-shine' already in 'A Valediction: of my name in the window':

If there were any evidence that Donne was, as in this lyric, playing with the idea of the identity of different souls, there would be reason to retain the 'our hearts thoughts' of the editions; but there is no trace of this. He is dwelling simply on the thought of the Countess's transparency. Donne is fond of compounds with 'through'. Other examples are 'through-light', 'through-swome', 'through-vaine', 'through-pierc'd'.

ll. 36-7. They fly not, &c. Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have here injured the sense by altering the punctuation. 'Nature's first lesson' does not complete the previous statement about the relation of the different souls, but qualifies 'discretion'. 'Just as the souls of growth and sense do not claim precedence of the rational soul, so the first lesson taught us by Nature, viz. discretion, must not grudge a place to zeal.' 'Anima rationalis est perfectior quam sensibilis, et sensibilis quam vegetabilis,' Aquinas, Summa, ii. 57. 2.

Page 220, l. 46. In those poor types, &c. The use of the circle as an emblem of infinity is very old. 'To the mystically inclined the perpendicular was the emblem of unswerving rectitude and purity; but the circle, "the foremost, richest, and most perfect of curves" was the symbol of completeness and eternity, of the endless process of generation and renascence in which all things are ever becoming new.' W. B. Frankland, The Story of Euclid, p. 70. God was described by St. Bonaventura as 'a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference nowhere'. See also supplementary note.

Page 221. A Letter to the Lady Carey, and M^rs Essex Riche, from Amyens.

Probably written when Donne was abroad with Sir Robert Drury in 1611-12. 'The two ladies', Mr. Chambers says, 'were daughters of Robert, third Lord Rich, by Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter, Earl of Essex, the Stella of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella.' Lady Rich abandoned her husband after five years' marriage and declared that the true father of her children was Charles Blount, Earl of Devonshire, to whom, after her divorce in 1605, she was married by Laud. Lettice, the eldest daughter, married Sir George Carey, of Cockington, Devon. Essex, the younger, was married, subsequently to this letter, to Sir Thomas Cheeke, of Pirgo, Essex.

ll. 10-12. Where, because Faith is in too low degree, &c. Donne refers to the Catholic doctrine of good works as necessary to salvation in opposition to the Protestant doctrine of Justification by Faith. He is fond of the antithesis. Compare:

Page 222, l. 14. where no one is growne or spent. Like the stars in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', their life is measured by ages.

l. 19. humilitie has such general support that the 'humidity' of 1669 seems to be merely a conjecture.

Page 224. To the Countesse of Salisbury. 1614.

Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.

It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of a graver course, then of a Poet'. Letters, &c., p. 103. Donne made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his graver days. Nor would he have apologized for writing to such an old friend whose prophet he had been in her younger days.

The punctuation of this poem repays careful study. The whole is a fine example of that periodic style, drawn out from line to line, and forming sonorous and impressive verse-paragraphs, in which Donne more than any other poet anticipated Milton. The first sentence closes only at the thirty-sixth line. The various clauses which lead up to the close are separated from one another by the full-stop (ll. 8, 24), the colon (ll. 2, 7 (sonnets:), 34), and the semicolon (ll. 18, 21, 30 where the old edition had a colon), all with distinct values. The only change I have made (and recorded) is at l. 30 (fantasticall), where a careful consideration of the punctuation throughout shows that a semicolon is more appropriate than a colon. The clause which begins with 'Since' in l. 25 does not close till l. 34, 'understood'.

In the rest of the poem the punctuation is also careful. The only changes I have made are—ll. 42 'that day;' and 46 'yesterday;' (a semi-colon for a colon in each case), 61 'mee:' (a colon for a full stop), and 63 'good;' (a semicolon for a comma).

Page 227. To the Lady Bedford.

l. 1. You that are she and you, that's double shee: The old punctuation suggests absurdly that the clause 'and you that's double she' is an independent co-ordinate clause.

l. 7. Cusco. I note in a catalogue, 'South America, a very early Map, with view of Cusco, the capital of Peru'.

l. 44. of Iudith. 'There is not such a woman from one end of the earth to the other, both for beauty of face and wisdom of words.' Judith xi. 21.

AN ANATOMIE OF THE WORLD.

The Anatomie of the World and Of The Progresse of the Soule were the first poems published in Donne's lifetime. The former was issued in 1611. It is exceedingly rare. The copy preserved in Lord Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House is a small octavo volume of 26 pages (Praise of the Dead, &c. 3 pp., Anatomy 19 pp., and Funerall Elegie 4 pp., all unnumbered), with title-page as given on the page opposite.

In 1612 the poem was reissued along with the Second Anniversary. A copy of this rare volume was sold at the Huth sale on the thirteenth of June this year. With the kind permission of Mr. Edward Huth and Messrs. Sotheby, Mr. Godfrey Keynes made a careful collation for me, the results of which are embodied in my notes. The separate title-pages of the two poems which the volume contains are here reproduced.

Mr. Keynes supplies the following description of the volume: A first title, A-A4 To the praise of the Dead (in italics), A5-D2 (pp. 1-44) The First Anniversary (in roman), D3-D7 (pp. 45-54) A funerall Elegie (in italics), D8 blank except for rules in margins; E1 second title, E2-E4 recto The Harbinger (in italics), E4 verso blank, E5-H5 recto (pp. 1-49) The Second Anniversarie (in roman), H5 verso—H6 blank except for rules in margins. A fresh title-page introduces the second poem.

In 1611 the introductory verses entitled To the praise of the Dead, and the Anatomy, and the Anatomy itself, are printed in italic, A Funerall Elegie following in roman type. This latter arrangement was reversed in 1612. In the second part, only the poem entitled The Harbinger to the Progresse is printed throughout in italic. Donne's own poem is in roman type.

The reason of the variety of arrangement is, I suppose, this: The Funerall Elegie was probably, as Chambers suggests, the first part of the poem, composed probably in 1610. When it was published in 1611 with the Anatomie, the latter was regarded as introductory and subordinate to the Elegie, and accordingly was printed in italic. Later, when the idea of the Anniversary poems emerged, and Of The Progresse of the Soule was written as a complement to An Anatomy of the World, these became the prominent parts of the whole work in honour of Elizabeth Drury, and the Funerall Elegie fell into the subordinate position.

The edition of 1612 does not strike one as a very careful piece of printing. It was probably printed while Donne was on the Continent. It supplies only two certain emendations of the later text.

The reprints of this volume made in 1621 and 1625 show increasing carelessness. They were issued after Donne took orders and probably without his sanction. The title-pages of the editions are here reproduced.

AN
ANATOMY
of the World.

Printed for Samuel Macham.
and are to be solde at his shop in
Paules Church-yard, at the
signe of the Bul-head.

AN
ANATOMY
of the VVorld.

Printed by M. Bradwood for S. Macham, and are
to be sold at his shop in Pauls Church-yard at the
signe of the Bull-head. 1612.

THE PROGRES
of the Soule.

the incommodities of the Soule
in this life and her exaltation in
the next, are Contem-
plated.

Printed by M. Bradwood for S. Macham, and are
to be sould at his shop in Pauls Church-yard at
the signe of the Bull-head.
1612.

AN
ANATOMY
of the World.

Printed by A. Mathewes for Tho: Dewe, and are
to be sold at his shop in Saint Dunstons Church-yard in
Fleetestreete. 1621.

THE PROGRES
of the Soule.

the incommodities of the Soule
in this life and her exaltation in
the next, are Contem-
plated.

Printed by A. Mathewes for Tho: Dewe, and are
to be sold at his shop in Saint Dunstons Church-yard
in Fleetestreete. 1621.

AN
ANATOMY
OF THE
World.

Elizabeth Drvry
the frailtie and the decay
of this whole world is
represented.

Printed by W. Stansby for Tho. Dewe,
and are to be sold in S. Dunstanes
Church-yard. 1625

THE PROGRES
of the
SOVLE

Elizabeth Drvry
the incommodities of the Soule in
this life, and her exaltation in the
next, are Contemplated.

Printed by W. Stansby for Tho. Dewe,
and are to be sold in S. Dunstanes
Church-yard. 1625.

The symbolic figures in the title-pages of 1625 probably represent the seven Liberal Arts. A feature of the editions of 1611, 1612, and 1625 is the marginal notes. These are reproduced in 1633, but a little carelessly, for some copies do not contain them all. They are omitted in the subsequent editions.

The text of the Anniversaries in 1633 has been on the whole carefully edited. It is probable, judging from several small circumstances (e.g. the omission of the first marginal note even in copies where all the rest are given), that 1633 was printed from 1625, but it is clear that the editor compared this with earlier editions, probably those of 1611-12, and corrected or amended the punctuation throughout. My collation of 1633 with 1611 has throughout vindicated the former as against 1621-5 on the one hand and the later editions on the other.¹ Of mistakes other than of punctuation I have noted only three: l. 181, thoughts 1611-12; thought 1621-33. This was corrected, from the obvious sense, in later editions (1635-69), and Grosart, Chambers, and Grolier make no note of the error in 1621-33. l. 318, proportions 1611-12; proportion 1621 and all subsequent editions without comment. l. 415, Impressions 1611; Impression 1612-25: impression 1633 and all subsequent editions. All three cases are examples of the same error, the dropping of final 's'.

In typographical respects 1611 shows the hand of the author more clearly than the later editions. Donne was fastidious in matters of punctuation and the use of italics and capital letters, witness the LXXX Sermons (1640), printed from MSS. prepared for the press by the author. But the printer had to be reckoned with, and perfection was not obtainable. In a note to one of the separately published sermons Donne says: 'Those Errors which are committed in mispointing, or in changing the form of the Character, will soone be discernd, and corrected by the Eye of any deliberate Reader'. The 1611 text shows a more consistent use in certain passages of emphasizing capitals, and at places its punctuation is better than that of 1633. My text reproduces 1633, corrected where necessary from the earlier editions; and I have occasionally followed the typography of 1611. But every case in which 1633 is modified is recorded.

Of the Second Anniversarie, in like manner, my text is that of 1633, corrected in a few details, and with a few typographical features borrowed, from the edition of 1612. The editor of 1633 had rather definite views of his own on punctuation, notably a predilection for semicolons in place of full stops. The only certain emendations which 1612 supplies are in the marginal note at p. 234 and in [pg 187] l. 421 of the Second Anniversarie 'this' for 'his'. The spelling is less ambiguous in ll. 27 and 326.

¹ 1621-25 abound in misplaced full stops which are not in 1611 and are generally corrected in 1633. The punctuation of the later editions (1635-69) is the work of the printer. Occasionally a comma is dropped or introduced with advantage to the sense, but in general the punctuation grows increasingly careless. Often the correction of one error leads to another.

The subject of the Anniversaries was the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Drury, who died in 1610. Her father, Sir Robert Drury, of Hawsted in the county of Suffolk, was a man of some note on account of his great wealth. He was knighted by Essex when about seventeen years old, at the siege of Rouen (1591-2). He served in the Low Countries, and at the battle of Nieuport (1600) brought off Sir Francis Vere when his horse was shot under him. He was courtier, traveller, member of Parliament, and in 1613 would have been glad to go as Ambassador to Paris when Sir Thomas Overbury refused the proffered honour and was sent to the Tower. Lady Drury was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper. She and her brother, Sir Edmund Bacon, were friends and patrons of Joseph Hall, Donne's rival as an early satirist. From 1600 to 1608 Hall was rector of Hawsted, and though he was not very kindly treated by Sir Robert he dedicated to him his Meditations Morall and Divine. This tie explains the fact, which we learn from Jonson's conversations with Drummond, that Hall is the author of the Harbinger to the Progresse. As he wrote this we may infer that he is also responsible for To the praise of the dead, and the Anatomie.

Readers of Donne's Life by Walton are aware of the munificence with which Sir Robert rewarded Donne for his poems, how he opened his house to him, and took him abroad. Donne's letters, on the other hand, reveal that the poem gave considerable offence to the Countess of Bedford and other older patrons and friends. In his letters to Gerrard he endeavoured to explain away his eulogies. In verse-letters to the Countess of Bedford and others he atoned for his inconstancy by subtle and erudite compliments.

The Funerall Elegie was doubtless written in 1610 and sent to Sir Robert Drury. He and Donne may already have been acquainted through Wotton, who was closely related by friendship and marriage with Sir Edmund Bacon. (See Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (1907). The Anatomie of the World was composed in 1611, Of the Progresse of the Soule in France in 1612, at some time prior to the 14th of April, when he refers to his Anniversaries in a letter to George Gerrard.

Ben Jonson declared to Drummond 'That Donnes Anniversaries were profane and full of blasphemies: that he told Mr. Done if it had been written of the Virgin Marie it had been something; to which he answered that he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was'. This is a better defence of Donne's poems than any which he advances in his letters, but it is not a complete description of his work. Rather, he interwove with a rapt and extravagantly conceited laudation of an ideal woman two topics familiar to his catholic and mediaeval learning, and developed each in a characteristically subtle and ingenious strain, a strain whose occasional sceptical, disintegrating [pg 188] reflections belong as obviously to the seventeenth century as the general content of the thought is mediaeval.

The burden of the whole is an impassioned and exalted meditatio mortis based on two themes common enough in mediaeval devotional literature—a De Contemptu Mundi, and a contemplation of the Glories of Paradise. A very brief analysis of the two poems, omitting the laudatory portions, may help a reader who cannot at once see the wood for the trees, and be better than detailed notes.

The Anatomie of the World.

l. 1. The world which suffered in her death is now fallen into the worse lethargy of oblivion. l. 60. I will anatomize the world for the benefit of those who still, by the influence of her virtue, lead a kind of glimmering life. l. 91. There is no health in the world. We are still under the curse of woman. l. 111. How short is our life compared with that of the patriarchs! l. 134. How small is our stature compared with that of the giants of old! l. 147. How shrunken of soul we are, especially since her death! l. 191. And as man, so is the whole world. The new learning or philosophy has shattered in fragments that complete scheme of the universe in which we rested so confidently, and (l. 211) in human society the same disorder prevails. l. 250. There is no beauty in the world, for, first, the beauty of proportion is lost, alike in the movements of the heavenly bodies, and (l. 285) in the earth with its mountains and hollows, and (l. 302) in the administration of justice in society. l. 339. So is Beauty's other element, Colour and Lustre. l. 377. Heaven and earth are at variance. We can no longer read terrestrial fortunes in the stars. But (l. 435) an Anatomy can be pushed too far.

The Progresse of the Soule.

l. 1. The world's life is the life that breeds in corruption. Let me, forgetting the rotten world, meditate on death. l. 85. Think, my soul, that thou art on thy death-bed, and consider death a release. l. 157. Think how the body poisoned the soul, tainting it with original sin. Set free, thou art in Heaven in a moment. l. 250. Here all our knowledge is ignorance. The new learning has thrown all in doubt. We sweat to learn trifles. In Heaven we know all we need to know. l. 321. Here, our converse is evil and corrupting. There our converse will be with Mary; the Patriarchs; Apostles, Martyrs and Virgins (compare A Litany). Here in the perpetual flux of things is no essential joy. Essential joy is to see God. And even the accidental joys of heaven surpass the essential joys of earth, were there such joys here where all is casual:

One of the most interesting strands of thought common to the twin poems is the reflection on the disintegrating effect of the New Learning. Copernicus' displacement of the earth, and the consequent [pg 189] disturbance of the accepted mediaeval cosmology with its concentric arrangement of elements and heavenly bodies, arrests and disturbs Donne's imagination much as the later geology with its revelation of vanished species and first suggestion of a doctrine of evolution absorbed and perturbed Tennyson when he wrote In Memoriam and throughout his life. No other poet of the seventeenth century known to me shows the same sensitiveness to the consequences of the new discoveries of traveller, astronomer, physiologist and physician as Donne.

To the Praise of the Dead.

Page 231, l. 43. What high part thou bearest in those best songs. The contraction of 'bearest' to 'bear'st' in the earliest editions (1611-25) led to the insertion of 'of' after 'best' in the later ones (1633-69).

An Anatomie of the World.

Page 235, ll. 133-6. Chambers alters the punctuation of these lines in such a way as to connect them more closely:

But the punctuation of 1633 is careful and correct. A new paragraph begins with 'And as in lasting, so, &c.' From length of years Donne passes to physical stature. The full stop is at 'lives', the semicolon at 'span'. Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate correctly.

Page 236, l. 160. And with new Physicke: i.e. the new mineral drugs of the Paracelsians.

Page 237, l. 190. Be more then man, or thou'rt lesse then an Ant. Compare To M^r Rowland Woodward, p. 185, ll. 16-18 and note.

l. 205. The new Philosophy calls all in doubt, &c. The philosophy of Galileo and Copernicus has displaced the earth and discredited the concentric arrangement of the elements,—earth, water, air, fire. Norton quotes: 'The fire is an element most hot and dry, pure, subtill, and so clear as it doth not hinder our sight looking through the same towards the stars, and is placed next to the Spheare of the Moon, under the which it is turned about like a celestial Spheare'. M. Blundeville His Exercises, 1594.

Burton, in the Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sect. 2, Mem. 3, tells how the new Astronomers Tycho, Rotman, Kepler, &c. by their new doctrine of the heavens are 'exploding in the meantime that element of fire, those fictitious, first watry movers, those heavens I mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius and many of the fathers affirm'. They have abolished, that is to say, the fire which surrounded the air, as that air surrounded the water and the earth (all below the moon); and they have also abolished the Crystalline Sphere and the Primum Mobile which were supposed to surround the sphere of the fixed stars, or the firmament.

Page 238, l. 215. Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things forgot. Donne has probably in mind the effect of the religious wars in Germany, France, the Low Countries, &c.

l. 217. that then can be. This is the reading of all the editions before 1669, and there is no reason to change 'then' to 'there': 'Every man thinks he has come to be a Phoenix (preferring private judgement to authority) and that then comparison ceases, for there is nothing of the same kind with which to compare himself. There is nothing left to reverence.'

Norton says that in the catalogue of Hipparchus, preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy, the stars were divided into forty-eight constellations.

l. 260. New starres. Norton says: 'It was the apparition of a new star in 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that turned Tycho Brahe to astronomy: and a new bright star in Ophiuchus, in 1604, had excited general wonder, and afforded Galileo a text for an attack on the Ptolemaic system'.

Page 240, l. 286. a Tenarif, or higher hill. 'Tenarif' is the 1611 spelling, 'Tenarus' that of 1633-69. Donne speaks of 'Tenarus' elsewhere, but it is not the same place.

It is not probable that Donne ever saw the Peak of Teneriffe, although biographers speak of this line as a descriptive touch drawn from memory. The Canary Isles are below the 30th degree of latitude. The fleet that made the Islands Exhibition was never much if at all further south than 43 degrees. After coasting off Corunna 43° N. 8° W., and some leagues south of that port, the fleet struck straight across to the Azores, 37° N. 25° W. Donne was somewhat nearer in the previous year when he was at Cadiz, 36° N. 6° W., but too far off to descry the Peak. His description, though vivid, is 'metaphysical', like that of Hell which follows: 'The Pike of Teneriff, how high is it? 79 miles or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes'. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.

ll. 295 f. If under all, a Vault infernall bee, &c. Hell, according to mediaeval philosophy, was in the middle of the earth. 'If this be true,' says Donne, 'and if at the same time the Sea is in places bottomless, then the earth is neither solid nor round. We use these words only approximately. But you may hold, on the other hand, that the deepest seas we know are but pock-holes, the highest hills but warts, on the face of the solid earth. Well, even in that case you must admit that in the moral sphere at any rate the world's proportion is disfigured by the want of all proportioning of reward and punishment to conduct.' The sudden transition from the physical to the moral sphere is very disconcerting. Compare: 'Or is it the place of hell, as Virgil in his Aeneides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think. In good earnest, Antony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian college in Millan, in his great volume de Inferno, lib. i, cap. 47, is stiffe in this tenent.... Whatsoever philosophers write (saith Surius) there be certaine mouthes of Hell, and places appointed for the punishment of mens souls, as at Hecla in Island, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living. God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God,' &c. Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.

ll. 296-8. Which sure is spacious, &c. 'Franciscus Ribera will have hell a materiall and locall fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words Exivit sanguis [pg 192] de terra ... per stadia mille sexcenta, &c. But Lessius (lib. 13, de moribus divinis, cap. 24) will have this locall hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone; because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square); which will abundantly suffice, 'cum certum sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum.' Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, ut sup. Eschatology was the 'dismal science' of those days and was studied with astonishing gusto and acumen. 'For as one Author, who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the Earth, lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid, pronounces that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse, (and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng, for their bodies must be there in their dimensions, as well as their soules) so when the Schoole-men come to measure the house in heaven (as they will measure it, and the Master, God, and all his Attributes, and tell us how Allmighty, and how Infinite he is) they pronounce that every soule in that house shall have more roome to it selfe, then all this world is.' Sermons 80. 73. 747. The reference in the margin is to Munster.

l. 311. that Ancient, &c. 'Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and originall of it' (i.e. the rational soul), 'whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates,' &c. Burton, Anat. of Melancholy, Part i, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subsec. 9. Probably Donne has the same 'Ancient' in view. It is from Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 10) that we learn that Aristoxenus held the soul to be a harmony of the body. Though a Peripatetic, Aristoxenus lived in close communion with the latest Pythagoreans, and the doctrine is attributed to Pythagoras as a consequence of his theory of numbers. Simmias, the disciple of the Pythagorean Philolaus, maintains the doctrine in Plato's Phaedo, and Socrates criticizes it. Aristotle states and examines it in the De Anima, 407b. 30. Two classes of thinkers, Bouillet says (Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, Seventh Book, note), regarded the soul as a harmony, doctors as Hippocrates and Galen, who considered it a harmony of the four elements—the hot, the cold, the dry and the moist (as the definition of health Donne refers to this more than once, e.g. The good-morrow, l. 19, and The Second Anniversary, ll. 130 f.); and musicians like Aristoxenus, who compared the soul to the harmony of the lyre. Donne leaves the sense in which he uses the word quite vague; but l. 321 suggests the medical sense.

l. 312. at next. This common Anglo-Saxon construction is very rare in later English. The O.E.D. cites no instance later than 1449, Pecock's Repression. The instance cited there is prepositional in character rather than adverbial: 'Immediatli at next to the now bifore alleggid text of Peter this proces folewith.' Donne's use seems [pg 193] to correspond exactly to the Anglo-Saxon: 'Johannes ða ofhreow þaēre mēden and ðaera licmanna drēorignysse, and āstrehte his licaman tō eorðan on langsumum gebēde, and ða aet nēxtan āras, and eft upahafenum handum langlice baed.' Aelfric (Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader, 1894, p. 67). But 'at next' in the poem possibly does not mean simply 'next', but 'immediately', i.e. 'the first thing he said would have been ...'

l. 314. Resultances: i.e. productions of, or emanations from, her. 'She is the harmony from which proceeds that harmony of our bodies which is their soul.' Donne uses the word also in the sense of 'the sum or gist of a thing': 'He speakes out of the strength and resultance of many lawes and Canons there alleadged.' Pseudo-martyr, p. 245; and Walton says that Donne 'left the resultance of 1400 Authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' Life (1675), p. 60. He is probably using Donne's own title.

Page 241, l. 318. That th'Arke to mans proportions was made. The following quotation from St. Augustine will show that the plural of 1611-12 is right, and what Donne had in view. St. Augustine is speaking of the Ark as a type of the Church: 'Procul dubio figura est peregrinantis in hoc seculo Civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae, quae fit salva per lignum in quo pependit Mediator Dei et hominum, homo Iesus Christus. (1 Tim. ii. 5.) Nam et mensurae ipsae longitudinis, altitudinis, latitudinis eius, significant corpus humanum, in cuius veritate ad homines praenuntiatus est venturus, et venit. Humani quippe corporis longitudo a vertice usque ad vestigia sexies tantum habet, quam latitudo, quae est ab uno latere ad alterum latus, et decies tantum, quam altitudo, cuius altitudinis mensura est in latere a dorso ad ventrem: velut si iacentem hominem metiaris supinum, seu pronum, sexies tantum longus est a capite ad pedes, quam latus a dextra in sinistram, vel a sinistra in dextram, et decies, quam altus a terra. Unde facta est arca trecentorum in longitudine cubitorum, et quinquaginta in latitudine, et triginta in altitudine.' De Civitate Dei, XV. 26.

Page 242, ll. 377-80. Nor in ought more, &c. 'The father' is the Heavens, i.e. the various heavenly bodies moving in their spheres; 'the mother', the earth:

Page 243, l. 389. new wormes: probably serpents, such as were described in new books of travels.

l. 394. Imprisoned in an Hearbe, or Charme, or Tree. Compare A Valediction: of my name, in the window, p. 27, ll. 33-6:

l. 409. But as some Serpents poyson, &c. Compare: 'But though all knowledge be in those Authors already, yet, as some poisons, and some medicines, hurt not, nor profit, except the creature in which they reside, contribute their lively activitie and vigor; so, much of the knowledge buried in Books perisheth, and becomes ineffectuall, if it be not applied, and refreshed by a companion, or friend. Much of their goodnesse hath the same period which some Physicians of Italy have observed to be in the biting of their Tarentola, that it affects no longer, then the flie lives.' Letters, p. 107.

Page 245, l. 460. As matter fit for Chronicle, not verse. Compare The Canonization, p. 15, ll. 31-2:

God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.

l. 467. Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c. The bracket of 1611 makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of 1633:

According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me ... invade'. The bracket shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to himself the same thoughts as God.

A Funerall Elegie.

l. 2. to confine her in a marble chest. The 'Funerall Elegie' was probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.

Page 246, l. 41. the Affrique Niger. Grosart comments on this: 'A peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according to [pg 195] Pliny (N. H. v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris.' Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought up in Barbarie ... Translated and collected by Iohn Porie, late of Gonevill and Caius College in Cambridge, 1600.' Of the Niger he says: 'This land of Negros hath a mighty river, which taking his name of the region is called Niger: this river taketh his originall from the east out of a certain desert called by the foresaide Negros Sen ... Our Cosmographers affirme that the said river of Niger is derived out of Nilus, which they imagine for some certaine space to be swallowed up of the earth, and yet at last to burst forth into such a lake as is before mentioned.' Pory is mentioned occasionally in Donne's correspondence.

Page 247, l. 50. An Angell made a Throne, or Cherubin. See Elegy XI, ll. 77-8 and note. Donne, like Shakespeare, uses 'Cherubin' as a singular. There can be no doubt that the lines in Macbeth, I. vii. 21-3, should read:

'Cherubin' is a singular in Shakespeare, and 'cherubim' as a plural he did not know.

l. 73. a Lampe of Balsamum, i.e. burning balsam instead of ordinary oil: 'And as Constantine ordained, that upon this day' (Christmas Day), 'the Church should burne no Oyle, but Balsamum in her Lamps, so let us ever celebrate this day, with a thankfull acknowledgment, that Christ who is unctus Domini, The Anointed of the Lord, hath anointed us with the Oyle of gladnesse above our fellowes.' Sermons 80. 7. 72.

ll. 75-7. Cloath'd in, &c. Chambers's arrangement of these lines is ingenious but, I think, mistaken because it alters the emphasis of the sentences. The stress is not laid by Donne on her purity, but on her early death: 'She expir'd while she was still a virgin. She went away before she was a woman.' Line 76:

Page 248, l. 83. said History is a strange phrase, but it has the support of all the editions which can be said to have any authority.

l. 92. and then inferre. Compare: 'That this honour might be inferred on some one of the blood and race of their ancient king.' Raleigh (O.E.D.). Donne's sense of 'commit', 'entrust', is not far from Raleigh's of 'confer', 'bestow', and both are natural extensions of the common though now obsolete sense, 'bring on, occasion, cause':

OF THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.
THE SECOND ANNIVERSARIE.

This is the punctuation of the editions 1612 to 1633. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions, 1635-69, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so long, &c.' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with l. 44 as the older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which are thy issue, may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase 'increase and multiply') 'so long as till, &c.' This suggests that the Hymns themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening in them virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater music of God's Venite. The modern version is compatible with the death of the hymns, but the survival of their issue.

l. 48. To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so. Here again Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the editions 1625-69 against the earlier ones, 1612 and 1621. These have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:

But surely the full stop after 'so' in 1612 is right, and 'to be Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst is the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health.'

'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But for the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee.' Sermons, &c.

Page 253, l. 72. Because shee was the forme, that made it live: i.e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the [pg 197] Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form, that in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur ... Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. Et cum vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis gradibus viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum operum vitae, est anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et sentimus, et movemur secundum locum, et similiter quo primo intelligimus. Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et haec est demonstratio Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24.' Aquinas goes on to show that any other relation as of part to whole, or mover to thing moved, is unthinkable, Summa I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth Drury in like manner was the form of the world, that in virtue of which it lived and functioned.

l. 102. Satans Sergeants, i.e. bailiffs, watching to arrest for debt. Compare:

l. 120. but a Saint Lucies night. Compare p. 44. 'Saint Lucies night' is the longest in the year, yet it too passes, is only a night. Death is a long sleep, yet a sleep from which we shall awaken. So the Psalmist compares life to 'a watch in the night', which seems so long and is so short.

ll. 123-6. Shee whose Complexion, &c.: i.e. 'in whose temperaments the humours were in such perfect equilibrium that no one could overgrow the others and bring dissolution':

Page 255, l. 127. Mithridate: a universal antidote or preservative against poison and infectious diseases, made by the compounding together of many ingredients. It was also known as 'Theriaca' and 'triacle': 'As it is truly and properly said, that there are more ingredients, more simples, more means of restoring in our dram of triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup, in which there may be 3 or 4, in the other perchance, so many hundred.' Sermons 26. 20. 286-7. Vipers were added to the other [pg 198] ingredients by Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero, whence the name 'theriaca' or 'triacle': 'Can an apothecary make a sovereign triacle of Vipers and other poysons, and cannot God admit offences and scandalls into his physick.' Sermons 50. 17. 143. See To S^r Henry Wotton, p. 180, l. 18 and note.

l. 152. Heaven was content, &c. 'And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Matthew xi. 12.

l. 158. wast made but in a sinke. Compare: 'Formatus est homo ... de spurcissimo spermate.' Pope Innocent, De Contemptu Mundi; and

Page 256, ll. 159-62. Thinke that ... first of growth. According to Aquinas, who follows Aristotle, the souls of growth, of sense, and of intelligence are not in man distinct and (as Plato had suggested) diversely located in the liver, heart, and brain, but are merged in one: 'Sic igitur anima intellectiva continet in sua virtute quidquid habet anima sensitiva brutorum et nutritiva plantarum,' Summa I. lxxvi. 3. He cites Aristotle, De Anima, ii. 30-1.

l. 190. Meteors. See note to The Storme, l. 13. A meteor was regarded as due to the effect of the air's cold region on exhalations from the earth:

l. 189 to Page 257, l. 206. Donne summarizes in these lines the old concentric arrangement of the Universe as we find it in Dante. Leaving the elements of earth and water the soul passes through the regions of the air (including the central one where snow and hail and meteors are generated), and through the element of fire to the Moon, thence to Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Firmament of the fixed stars. He has already indicated (p. 237, ll. 205 f.) how this arrangement is being disturbed by 'the New Philosophy'.

Page 257, ll. 219-20. This must, my Soule, &c. This is the punctuation of 1612-25: 1633 and all the later editions change as in the note. Chambers and Grolier follow suit. It is clearly a corruption. The 'long-short Progresse' is the passage to heaven which has been described. A new thought begins with 'T'advance these thoughts'. Grosart puts a colon after (l. 219) 'bee', but as he also places a semicolon after (l. 220) 'T'advance these thoughts' it is not quite clear how he reads the lines. The mistake seems to have arisen from forgetting that the 'she' whose progress has been described is not Elizabeth Drury but the poet's own soul emancipated by death.

Page 258, ll. 236-40. The Tutelar Angels, &c. 'And it is as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense ... That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation of society one other; and every man one other.' Letters, p. 43. Aquinas insists (Summa I. cxiii) on the assignment of a guardian angel to every individual. He mentions also, following St. Gregory, the guardian angel assigned to the Kingdom of the Persians (Dan. x. 13).

l. 242. Her body was the Electrum. 'The ancient Electrum', Bacon says, 'had in it a fifth of silver to the Gold.' Her body, then, is not pure gold, but an alloy in which are many degrees of gold. In Paracelsus' works, Electrum is the middle substance between ore and metal, neither wholly perfect nor altogether imperfect. It is on the way to perfection. The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of ... Paracelsus, Arthur E. Waite, 1894. 'Christ is not that Spectrum that Damascene speaks of, nor that Electrum that Tertullian speakes of ... a third metall made of two other metals.' Donne, Sermons 80. 40. 397.

Page 259, l. 270. breake. Here—as at p. 260, l. 326, 'choose'—I have reverted to the spelling of 1612.

l. 292. by sense, and Fantasie: i.e. by sense and the phantasmata which are conveyed by the senses to the intellect to work upon. See Aristotle, De Anima, iii. and Aquinas, Summa I. lxxxv. i. Angels obtain their knowledge of material things through immaterial, i.e. through Ideas. Their knowledge is immediate, not as ours mediate, by sense and ratiocination, 'collections'.

Page 261, l. 342. Joy in not being that, which men have said 'Joy in not being "sine labe concepta", for then she would have had no virtue in being good.' Norton. Her own goodness has gained for her a higher exaltation than the adventitious honour of being the Mother of God.

'Scriptum est in Evangelio, quod mater et fratres Christi, hoc est consanguinei carnis eius, cum illi nuntiati fuissent, et foris exspectarent, quia non possent eum adire prae turba, ille respondit: Quae est mater mea, aut qui sunt fratres mei? Et extendens manum super discipulos suos, ait: Hi sunt fratres mei; et quicumque fecerit voluntatem Patris mei, ipse mihi frater, et mater, et soror est (Matt. xii. 46-50). Quid aliud nos docens, nisi carnali cognationi genus nostrum spirituale praeponere; nec inde beatos esse homines, si iustis et sanctis carnis propinquitate iunguntur, sed si eorum doctrinae ac moribus obediendo atque imitando cohaerescunt? Beatior ergo Maria percipiendo fidem Christi, quam concipiendo carnem Christi. Nam et dicenti cuidam, Beatus venter qui te portavit; ipse respondit, Imo beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt' (Luc. xi. 27, 28), Augustini De Sancta Virginitate, I. 3. (Migne, 40. 397-8.) If a Protestant in the previous two lines, Donne is here as sound a Catholic as St. Augustine.

l. 354. joyntenants with the Holy Ghost. 'We acknowledge the Church to be the house onely of God, and that we admit no Saint, no Martyr, to be a Iointenant with him.' Sermons 50. 21. 86.

l. 360. royalties: i.e. the prerogatives, rights, or privileges pertaining to the sovereign. Donne here enumerates them as the power to make war and conclude peace, uncontrolled authority ('the King can do no wrong'), the administration of justice, the dispensing of pardon, coining money, and the granting of protection against legal arrest.

Page 262, l. 369. impressions. The plural of the first edition must, I think, be accepted. Her stamp is set upon each of our acts as the impression of the King's head on a coin: 'Ignoraunce maketh him unmeete metall for the impressions of vertue.' Fleming, Panopl. Epist. 372 (O.E.D.).

I have kept the comma after 'eyes' of 1621 (1612 seems to have no stop) rather than change it with later and modern editions to a semicolon, because I take it that the clauses are not co-ordinate; the second is a subordinate clause of degree after 'so'. 'Her face and thine eyes so flow that now neither that Saint nor that Pilgrim which your loving vow concern'd remains—neither you nor the lady you adore remain the same.' The lady is the Saint, the lover the Pilgrim, as in Romeo and Juliet:

Punctuated as the sentence is in modern editions 'so' must mean 'in like manner', referring back to the statement about the river.

Page 263, l. 421. this Center, is the reading of the first edition and is doubtless correct, the 't' having been dropped accidentally in 1621 and so in all subsequent editions. 'This Center' is 'this Earth.' The Earth could neither support such a tower nor provide material with which to build it. Compare:

Page 264, l. 442. For it is both the object and the wit. God, the Idea of Good, is the source of both being and knowing—the ultimate object of knowledge and the source of the knowledge by which Himself is known.

After discussion Aquinas concludes (I. lxiii. 5) that the devil was not evil through fault of his own will in the first instant of his creation, because this would make God the cause of evil: 'Illa operatio quae simul incipit cum esse rei est ei ab agente a quo habet esse ... Agens autem quod Angelos in esse produxit, scilicet Deus, non potest esse causa peccati.' He then considers whether there was any delay between his creation and his fall, and concludes that the most probable conclusion and most consonant with the words of the Saints is that there was none, otherwise by his first good act he would have acquired the merit whose reward is the happiness which comes from the sight of God and is enduring: 'Si diabolus in primo instanti, in gratiâ creatus, meruit, statim post primum instans beatitudinem accepisset, nisi statim impedimentum praestitisset peccando.' This 'beatitudo' is the sight of God: 'Angeli beati sunt per hoc quod Verbum vident.' And endurance is of the essence of this blessedness: 'Sed contra de ratione beatitudinis est stabilitas, sive confirmatio in bono.' Thus, as Donne says, 'Had th' Angells,' &c. Summa lxii. 1, 5; lxiii. 6.

Donne, one thinks, must have read the Vita Nuova as well as the Divina Commedia. It is possible that in the eulogy of Elizabeth Drury he is following its transcendental manner without fully appreciating the transfiguration through which Beatrice passed in Dante's mind.

ll. 511-18. Here in a place, &c. These lines show that The Second Anniversary was written while Donne was in France with Sir Robert and Lady Drury. Compare A Letter to the Lady Carey, &c., p. 221:

EPICEDES AND OBSEQUIES, &c.,

Of all Donne's poems these are the most easy to date, at least approximately. The following are the dates of the deaths which called forth the poems, arranged in chronological order:

Those about whose date and subject there is uncertainty are that entitled in 1635 Elegie on the L. C. and that headed Death. If with Chambers and Norton we assume that the former poem is an Elegy on [pg 203] the death of the Lord Chancellor, Baron Ellesmere, it will have been written in 1617. The conjecture is a natural one and may be correct, but there are difficulties, (1) This title is affixed to Elegie in 1635 for the first time. The poem bears no such heading in 1633 or in any MS. in which I have found it. Probably 'L. C.' stands for Lord Chancellor (though this is not certain); but on what authority was the poem given this reference? (2) The position which it occupies in 1633 is due to its position in the MS. from which it was printed. Now in D, H49, Lec, and in W, it is included among the Elegies, i.e. Love Elegies. But in the last of these, W, it appears with a collection of poems (Satyres, Elegies, the Lincoln's Inn Epithalamium, and a series of letters to Donne's early friends) which has the appearance of being, or being derived from, an early collection, a collection of poems written between 1597 and 1608 to 1610 at the latest. (3) The poem is contained, but again without any title, in HN, the Hawthornden MS. in Edinburgh. Now we know that Drummond was in London in 1610, and there is no poem, of those which he transcribed from a collection of Donne's, that is demonstrably later than 1609, though the two Obsequies, 'Death, I recant' and 'Language, thou art too narrowe and too weak', must have been written in that year. Drummond may have been in London at some time between 1625 and 1630, during which years his movements are undetermined (David Masson: Drummond of Hawthornden, ch. viii), but if he had made a collection of Donne's poems at this later date it would have been more complete, and would certainly have contained some of the religious poems. At a later date he seems to have been given a copy of the Hymn to the Saints and to Marquesse Hamylton, for a MS. of this poem is catalogued among the books presented to the Edinburgh University Library by Drummond. Unfortunately it has disappeared or was never actually handed over. Most probably, Drummond's small collection of poems by Donne, Pembroke, Roe, Hoskins, Rudyerd, and other 'wits' of King James's reign, now in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, was made in 1610.

All this points to the Elegie in question being older than 1617. It is very unlikely that a poem on the death of his great early patron would have been allowed by him to circulate without anything to indicate in whose honour it was written. Egerton was as great a man as Lord Harington or Marquis Hamilton, and if hope of reward from the living was the efficient cause of these poems quite as much as sorrow for the dead, Lord Ellesmere too left distinguished and wealthy successors. Yet the MS. of Donne's poems which belonged to the first Earl of Bridgewater contains this poem without any indication to whom it was addressed.

In 1610 Donne sent to the Lord Chancellor a copy of his Pseudo-Martyr, and the following hitherto unpublished letter shows in what high esteem he held him:

'As Ryvers though in there Course they are content to serve publique uses, yett there end is to returne into the Sea from whence they issued. So, though I should have much Comfort that thys Booke might give contentment to others, yet my Direct end in ytt was, to make it a testimony of my gratitude towards your Lordship and an acknowledgement that those poore sparks of Vnderstandinge or Judgement which are in mee were derived and kindled from you and owe themselves to you. All good that ys in ytt, your Lordship may be pleased to accept as yours; and for the Errors I cannot despayre of your pardon since you have long since pardond greater faults in mee.'

If Donne had written an Elegie on the death of Lord Ellesmere it would have been as formally dedicated to his memory as his Elegies to Lord Harington and Lord Hamilton. But by 1617 he was in orders. His Muse had in the long poem on Lord Harington, brother to the Countess of Bedford, 'spoke, and spoke her last'. It was only at the express instance of Sir Robert Carr that he composed in 1625 his lines on the death of the Marquis of Hamilton, and he entitled it not an Elegy but A Hymn to the Saints and to Marquesse Hamylton.

It seems to me probable that the Elegie, 'Sorrow, who to this house', was an early and tentative experiment in this kind of poetry, on the death of some one, we cannot now say whom, perhaps the father of the Woodwards or some other of his earlier correspondents and friends.

The Elegie headed Death is also printed in a somewhat puzzling fashion. In 1633 it follows the lyrics abruptly with the bald title Elegie. It is not in D, H49, Lec, nor was it in the MS. resembling this which 1633 used for the bulk of the poems. In HN also it bears no title indicating the subject of the poem. The other MSS. all describe it as an Elegie upon the death of M^ris Boulstred, and from 1633 and several MSS. it appears that it was sent to the Countess of Bedford with the verse Letter (p. 227), 'You that are shee and you, that's double shee'. It is possible that the MSS. are in error and that the dead friend is not Miss Bulstrode but Lady Markham, for the closing line of the letter compares her to Judith:

But Judith was, like Lady Markham, a widow. The tone of the poem too supports this conclusion. The Elegy on Miss Bulstrode lays stress on her youth, her premature death. In this and the other Elegy (whose title assigns it to Lady Markham) the stress is laid on the saintliness and asceticism of life becoming a widow.

Page 267. Elegie upon ... Prince Henry.

The death of Prince Henry (1594-1612) evoked more elegiac poetry Latin and English than the death of any single man has probably ever done. See Nichols's Progresses of James I, pp. 504-12. He was the hope of that party, the great majority of the nation, which would fain have taken a more active part in the defence of the [pg 205] Protestant cause in Europe than James was willing to venture upon. Donne's own Elegie appeared in a collection edited by Sylvester: 'Lachrymae Lachrymarum, or The Spirit of Teares distilled from the untimely Death of the Incomparable Prince Panaretus. By Joshua Sylvester. The Third Edition, with Additions of His Owne and Elegies. 1613. Printed by Humphrey Lownes.' Sylvester's own poem is followed by poems in Latin, Italian, and English by Joseph Hall and others, and then by a separate title-page: Sundry Funerall Elegies ... Composed by severall Authors. The authors are G. G. (probably George Gerrard), Sir P. O., Mr. Holland, Mr. Donne, Sir William Cornwallis, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyere, and Henry Burton. Jonson told Drummond 'That Done said to him, he wrott that Epitaph on Prince Henry Look to me, Faith to match Sir Ed: Herbert in obscurenesse' (Drummond's Conversations, ed. Laing). Donne's elegy was printed with some carelessness in the Lachrymae Lachrymarum. The editor of 1633 has improved the punctuation in places.

The obscurity of the poem is not so obvious as its tasteless extravagance: 'The death of Prince Henry has shaken in me both Faith and Reason, concentric circles or nearly so (l. 18), for Faith does not contradict Reason but transcend it.' See Sermons 50. 36. 'Our Faith is shaken because, contemplating his greatnesse and its influence on other nations, we believed that with him was to begin the age of peace:

But by his death this faith becomes heresy. Reason is shaken because reason passes from cause to effect. Miracle interrupts this progress, and the loss of him is such a miracle as brings all our argument to a standstill. We can predict nothing with confidence.' In his over-subtle, extravagant way Donne describes the shattering of men's hopes and expectations.

Could he but tell who she was he would be as blissful in singing her praises as they were in one another's love.

A short epitaph on Prince Henry by Henry King (1592-1669), the friend and disciple of Donne, bears marks of being inspired by this poem. It is indeed ascribed to 'J. D.' in Le Prince d'Amour (1660), but is contained in King's Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes and Sonnets (1657).

Page 269, ll. 71-6. These lines are printed as follows in the Lachrymae Lachrymarum:

Page 271. Obsequies to the Lord Harrington, &c.

The MS. from which 1633 printed this poem probably had the title as above. It stands so in D, H49, Lec. By a pure accident it was changed to Obsequies to the Lord Harringtons brother. To the Countesse of Bedford. There was no Lord Harington after the death of the subject of this poem.

John Harington, the first Baron of Exton and cousin of Sir John Harington the translator of the Orlando Furioso, died at Worms in 1613, when returning from escorting the Princess Elizabeth to her new home at Heidelberg. His children were John, who succeeded him as Second Baron of Exton, and Lucy, who had become Countess of Bedford in 1594. The young Baron had been an intimate friend of Prince Henry. In 1609 he visited Venice and was presented to the Doge as likely to be a power in England when Henry should succeed. 'He is learned', said Wotton, 'in philosophy, has Latin and Greek to perfection, is handsome, well-made as any man could be, at least among us.' His fate was as sudden and tragic as that of his patron. Travelling in France and Italy in 1613 he grew ill, it was believed he had been poisoned by accident or design, and died at his sister's house at Twickenham on the 27th of February, 1614.

There is not much in Donne's ingenious, tasteless poem which evinces affection for Harington or sorrow for his tragic end, nor is there anything of the magnificent poetry, 'ringing and echoing with music,' which in Lycidas makes us forgetful of the personality of King. Donne's poem was written to please Lady Bedford:

Apparently it served its purpose, for in a letter written a year or two later Donne says to Goodyere: 'I am almost sorry, that an Elegy should have been able to move her to so much compassion heretofore, as to offer to pay my debts; and my greater wants now, and for so good a purpose, as to come disingaged into that profession, being plainly laid open to her, should work no farther but that she sent me £30,' &c. Letters, &c., p. 219.

Of Harington, Wiffen, in his Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell, says: 'Whilst he devoted much of his time to literary study he is reported to have uniformly begun and closed the day with prayer ... and to have been among the first who kept a diary wherein his casual faults and errors were recorded, for his surer advancement in happiness and virtue.' Wiffen's authority is probably The Churches [pg 207] Lamentation for the losse of the Godly Delivered in a Sermon at the funerals of that truly noble, and most hopefull young Gentleman Iohn Lord Harington, Baron of Exton, Knight of the noble order of the Bath etc. by R. Stock. 1614. To this verses Latin and English by I. P., F. H. D. M., and Sir Thomas Roe are appended. The preacher gives details of Harington's religious life. The D. N. B. speaks of two memorial sermons. This is a mistake.

l. 15. Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest; Chambers by placing a semicolon after 'midnight' makes 'now all rest' an independent, rhetorical statement:

But surely as punctuated in the old editions the line means 'at midnight, now when all rest', 'the time when all rest'. 'I watch, while others sleep.'

Donne's description of his midnight watch recalls that of Herr Teufelsdroeckh: 'Gay mansions, with supper rooms and dancing rooms are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts, but in the Condemned Cells the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning,' &c. Sartor Resartus, i. 3.

Page 272, l. 38. Things, in proportion fit, by perspective. It is by an accident, I imagine, that 1633 drops the comma after 'fit', and I have restored it. The later punctuation, which Chambers adopts, is puzzling if not misleading:

It is with 'proportion' that 'fit' goes. Deeds of good men show us by perspective things in a proportion fitted to our comprehension. They bring the goodness or essence of things, which is seen aright only in God, down to our level. The divine is most clearly revealed to us in the human.

Page 274, l. 102. Sent hither, this worlds tempests to becalme. I have adopted the reading to which the MSS. point in preference to that of the editions. Both the chief groups read 'tempests', and 'this' (for 'the') has still more general support. Now if the 's' in 'tempests' were once dropped, 'this' would be changed to 'the', the emphasis shifting from 'this' to 'world'. I think the sense is better. If but one tempest is contemplated, then either so many 'lumps of balm' are not needed, or they fail sadly in their mission. They come rather to allay the storms with which human life is ever and again tormented. Moreover, in Donne's cosmology 'this world' is frequently contrasted with other and better worlds. Compare An Anatomie of the World, pp. 225 et seq.

l. 110. Which the whole world, or man the abridgment hath. The comma after 'man' in 1633 gives emphasis. The absence of a comma, however, after 'abridgment' gives a reader to-day the impression that it is object to 'hath'. I have, therefore, with 1635-69, dropped the comma after 'man'. The omission of commas in appositional phrases is frequent. 'Man the abridgment' means of course 'Man the microcosm': 'the Macrocosme and Microcosme, the Great and the Lesser World, man extended in the world, and the world contracted and abridged into man.' Sermons 80. 31. 304.

ll. 111-30. Thou knowst, &c. The circles running parallel to the equator are all equally circular, but diminish in size as they approach the poles. But the circles which cut these at right angles, and along which we measure the distance of any spot from the equator, from the sun, are all of equal magnitude, passing round the earth through the poles, i.e. meridians are great circles, their planes passing through the centre of the earth.

Harington's life would have been a Great Circle had it completed its course, passing through the poles of youth and age. In that case we should have had from him lessons for every phase of life, medicines to cure every moral malady.

Page 275, l. 133. Whose hand, &c. The singular is the reading of all the MSS., and is pretty certainly right. The minute and second hands were comparatively rare at the beginning of the seventeenth century. See the illustrations in F. J. Britten's Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, &c. (1904); and compare: 'But yet, as he that makes a Clock, bestowes all that labour upon the severall wheeles, that thereby the Bell might give a sound, and that thereby the hand might give knowledge to others how the time passes,' &c. Sermons 80. 55. 550.

Page 279, l. 250. French soldurii. The reading of the editions is a misprint. The correct form is given in D, H49, Lec, and is used by Donne elsewhere: 'And we may well collect that in Caesars time, [pg 209] in France, for one who dyed naturally, there dyed many by this devout violence. For hee says there were some, whom hee calls Devotos, and Clientes (the latter Lawes call them Soldurios) which enjoying many benefits, and commodities, from men of higher ranke, alwaies when the Lord dyed, celebrated his Funerall with their owne. And Caesar adds, that in the memorie of man, no one was found that ever refused it.' Biathanatos, Part I, Dist. 2, Sect. 3. The marginal note calls them 'Soldurii', and refers to Caes., Bell. Gall. 3, and Tholosa. Sym. lib. 14, cap. 10, N. 14.

Page 279. Elegie on the Lady Marckham.

The wife of Sir Anthony Markham, of Sedgebrook in the county of Notts. She was the daughter of Sir James Harington, younger brother of John, first Baron Harington of Exton. See note to last poem. She was thus first cousin to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and died at her home at Twickenham on May 4, 1609. On her tombstone it is recorded that she was 'inclytae Luciae Comitissae de Bedford sanguine (quod satis) sed et amicitia propinquissima'. It is probably to this friendship of a great patroness of poets that she owes this and other tributes of verse. Francis Beaumont wrote one which is found in several MS. collections of Donne's poems, sometimes with his, sometimes with Beaumont's initials. In it he frankly confesses that he never knew Lady Markham. I quote a few lines:

The taste of Beaumont's poem is execrable. Elegies like this, and I fear Donne's among them, were frankly addressed not so much to the memory of the dead as to the pocket of the living.

According to two MSS.(RP31 and H40) the Elegie, 'Death be not proud', was written by Lady Bedford herself on the death of her cousin. It is much simpler and sincerer in tone than Donne's or Beaumont's, but the tenor of the thought seems to connect it with the Elegie on M^ris Boulstred, 'Death I recant'. The same MSS. contain the following Epitaph uppon the Ladye Markham, which shows that she was a widow when she died:

l. 7. Then our land waters, &c. 'That hand which was wont to wipe all teares from all our eyes, doth now but presse and squeaze us as so many spunges, filled one with one, another with another cause of teares. Teares that can have no other banke to bound them, but the declared and manifested will of God: For, till our teares flow to that heighth, that they might be called a murmuring against the declared will of God, it is against our Allegiance, it is Disloyaltie, to give our teares any stop, any termination, any measure.' Sermons 50. 33. 303: On the Death of King James.

which are the waters above our firmament as opposed to the land or earthly waters which are the tears of passion. The 'these' of the MSS. seems necessary for clearness of references: 'For, Lacrymae sunt sudor animae maerentis, Teares are the sweat of a labouring soule, ... Raine water is better then River water; The water of Heaven, teares for offending thy God, are better then teares for worldly losses; But yet come to teares of any kinde, and whatsoever occasion thy teares, Deus absterget omnem lacrymam, there is the largeness of his bounty, He will wipe all teares from thine eyes; But thou must have teares first: first thou must come to this weeping, or else God cannot come to this wiping; God hath not that errand to thee, to wipe teares from thine eyes, if there be none there; If thou doe nothing for thy selfe, God finds nothing to doe for thee.' Sermons 80. 54. 539-40.

The waters above the firmament were a subject of considerable difficulty to mediaeval philosophy—so difficult indeed that St. Augustine has to strengthen himself against sceptical objections by reaffirming the authority of Scripture: Maior est Scripturae huius auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas. Unde quoquo modo et qualeslibet aquae ibi sint, eas tamen ibi esse, minime dubitamus. Aquinas, who quotes these words from Augustine, comes to two main conclusions, himself leaning to the last. If by the firmament be meant either the firmament of fixed stars, or the ninth sphere, the primum mobile, then, since heavenly bodies are not made of the elements of which earthly things are made (being incorruptible, and unchangeable except in position), the waters above the firmament are not of the same kind as those on earth (non sunt eiusdem speciei cum inferioribus). If, however, by the firmament be meant only the upper part of the air where clouds are condensed, called firmament because of the thickness of the air in that part, then the waters above the firmament are simply the vaporized waters of which rain is formed (aquae quae vaporabiliter resolutae supra aliquam partem aeris elevantur, ex quibus pluviae [pg 211] generantur). Above the firmament waters are generated, below they rest. Summa I. 68.

If I follow him, Donne to some extent blends or confounds these views. Tears shed for our sins differ in kind from tears shed for worldly losses, as the waters above from those below. But the extract from the sermon identifies the waters above the firmament with rain-water. 'Rain water is better than River-water.' It is purer; but it does not differ from it in kind.

l. 12. Wee, after Gods Noe, drowne our world againe. I think the 'our' of the majority of the MSS. must be correct. From the spelling and punctuation both, it is clear that the source from which 1633 printed closely resembled D, H49, Lec, which read 'our'. The change to 'the' was made in the spirit which prompted the grosser error of certain MSS. which read 'Noah'. Donne has in view the 'microcosm' rather than the 'macrocosm'. There is, of course, an allusion to the Flood and the promise, but the immediate reference is to Christ and the soul. 'After Christ's work of redemption and his resurrection, which forbid despair, we yet yield to the passion of sorrow.' We drown not the world but our world, the world within us, or which each one of us is. This sense is brought out more clearly in Cy's version, which is a paraphrase rather than a version:

l. 22. Porcelane, where they buried Clay. 'We are not thoroughly resolved concerning Porcelane or China dishes, that according to common belief they are made of Earth, which lieth in preparation about an hundred years under ground; for the relations thereof are not only divers, but contrary, and Authors agree not herein.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, ii. 5. Browne quotes some of the older opinions and then points out that a true account of the manufacture of porcelain had been furnished by Gonzales de Mendoza, Linschoten, and Alvarez the Jesuit, and that it was confirmed by the Dutch Embassy of 1665. The old physical theories were retained for literary purposes long after they had been exploded.

l. 29. They say, the sea, when it gaines, loseth too. 'But we passe from the circumstance of the time, to a second, that though Christ thus despised by the Gergesens, did, in his Justice, depart from them; yet, as the sea gaines in one place, what it loses in another, his abundant mercy builds up more in Capernaum, then his Justice throwes downe among the Gergesens: Because they drave him away, in Judgement he went from them, but in Mercy he went to the others, who had not intreated him to come.' Sermons 80. 11. 103.

'They flatly say that he eateth into others dominions, as the sea doth into the land, not knowing that in swallowing a poore Iland as big as Lesbos he may cast up three territories thrice as big as Phrygia: for what the sea winneth in the marshe, it looseth in the sand.' Lyly, Midas v. 2. 17.

l. 34. For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. The modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes this line clearer—'both Deaths' dust.' 'Graves are our trophies, their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger death, i.e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought in its train.' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.

Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymée de moy beaucoup plus que paternellement, et enveloppée en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection de cette tressaincte amitié ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait pu monter encores: la sincerité et la solidité de ses moeurs y sont desja bastantes.' Essais (1590), ii. 17.

Page 282. Elegie on M^ris Boulstred.

Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12, 158¾, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James Whitelocke's Liber Famelicus (Camden Society). He quotes also from the Twickenham Registers: 'M^ris Boulstred out of the parke, was buried ye 6th of August, 1609.' In a letter to Goodyere Donne speaks of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistresse Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours at this time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, and the return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all her sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me [pg 213] justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.' Poor Miss Bulstrode, whose

has not lived to fame in an altogether happy fashion, as the subject of some tortured and tasteless Epicedes, a coarse and brutal Epigram by Jonson (An Epigram on the Court Pucell in Underwoods,—Jonson told Drummond that the person intended was Mris Boulstred), a complimentary, not to say adulatory, Epitaph from the same pen, and a dubious Elegy by Sir John Roe ('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. 410). It was an ugly place, the Court of James I, as full of cruel libels as of gross flattery, a fit subject for Milton's scorn. The epitaph which Jonson wrote is found in more than one MS., and in some where Donne's poems are in the majority. Chambers very tentatively suggested that it might be by Donne himself, and I was inclined for a time to accept this conjecture, finding it in other MSS. besides those he mentioned, and because the sentiment of the closing lines is quite Donnean. But in the Farmer-Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart) it is signed B. J., and Mr. Percy Simpson tells me that a letter is extant from Jonson to George Gerrard which indicates that the epitaph was written by Jonson while Gerrard's man waited at the door. I quote it from B:

On the death of M^rs Boulstred.

The name is given as 'Sal', but corrected to 'Sil' in the margin. Other MSS. have 'Sell'. It is doubtless 'Cil', a contraction for 'Cecilia'. Chambers inadvertently printed 'still'.

The language of Jonson's Epitaph harmonizes ill with that of his Epigram. Of all titles Jonson loved best that of 'honest', but 'honest', in a man, meant with Jonson having the courage to tell people disagreeable truths, not to conceal your dislikes. He was a candid friend to the living; after death—nil nisi bonum.

For the relation of this Elegie to that beginning 'Death, be not proud' (p. 422) see Text and Canon, &c., p. cxliii.

The 1633 text of this poem is practically identical with that of D, H49, Lec. With these MSS. it reads in l. 27 'life' for the 'lives' of other MSS. and editions, and 'but' for 'though' in the last line. The only variant in 1633 is 'worke' for 'workes' in l. 45. The latter reading has the support of other MSS. and is very probably what Donne wrote. Such use of a plural verb after two singular subjects of closely allied import was common. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 673, and the examples quoted there, e.g. 'Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,' Com. of Err. IV. i. 46, where Rowe corrects to 'stay'; 'Both man and master is possessed,' ibid. IV. iv. 89.

l. 10. Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last. The 'fruite' or 'fruites' of A18, N, TC, which is as old as P (1623), is probably a genuine variant. The reference is to the elaborate dainties of the second course at Elizabethan banquets, the dessert. Sleep, in Macbeth's famous speech, is

and Donne uses the same metaphor of the Eucharist: 'This fasting then ... is but a continuation of a great feast: where the first course (that which we begin to serve in now) is Manna, food of Angels,—plentiful, frequent preaching; but the second course is the very body and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us and given to us, in that Blessed Sacrament, of which himself makes us worthy receivers at that time.' Sermons. 'The most precious and costly dishes are always reserved for the last services, but yet there is wholesome meat before too.' Ibid.

l. 18. In birds, &c.: 'birds' is here in the possessive case, 'birds' organic throats'. I have modified the punctuation so as to make this clearer.

l. 24. All the foure Monarchies: i.e. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. John Sleidan, mentioned in a note on the Satyres, wrote The Key of Historie: Or, A most Methodicall Abridgement of the foure chiefe Monarchies &c., to quote its title in the English translation.

l. 27. Our births and lives, &c. 1633 and the two groups of MSS. D, H49, Lec and A18, L74, N, TC read 'life'. If this be correct, then 'births' would surely need to be 'birth'. HN shows, I think, what has happened. The voiced 'f' was not always distinguished from the breathed sound by a different spelling ('v' for 'f'), and 'lifes' would very easily become 'life'. On the other hand 'v' was frequently written where we now have 'f', and sometimes misleads. Peele's The Old Wives Tale is not necessarily, as usually printed, Wives'. It is just an Old Woman's Tale.

Page 284. Elegie.

Page 285, l. 34. The Ethicks speake, &c. A rather strange expression for 'Ethics tell'. The article is rare. Donne says, 'No booke of Ethicks.' Sermons 80. 55. 550. In HN Drummond has altered to 'Ethnicks' a word Donne uses elsewhere: 'Of all nations the Jews have most chastely preserved that ceremony of abstaining from Ethnic names.' Essays in Divinity. It does not, however, seem appropriate here, unless Donne means to say that she had all the cardinal virtues of the heathen with the superhuman, theological virtues which are superinduced by grace:

But this is not at all clear. Apparently there is no more in the line than a somewhat vaguely expressed hyperbole: 'she had all the cardinal virtues of which we hear in Ethics'.

Page 286, l. 44. Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday: i.e. 'We should have had a saint and should have now a holiday'—her anniversary. The MS. form of the line is probably correct:

l. 48. That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray. As printed in the old editions this line, if it be correctly given, is one of the worst Donne ever wrote:

i.e. apparently 'That, the day which we turn into a feast or festival she turned into a day of prayer, a fast'. But 'she turn'd to pray' in such a sense is a hideously elliptical construction and cannot, I think, be what Donne meant to write. Two emendations suggest themselves. One occurs in HN:

When we turn'd aside from the routine of life's work to keep holiday, she did so also, but it was to pray. This is better, but it is difficult to understand how, if this be the correct reading, the error arose, and only HN reads 'when'. The emendation I have introduced presupposes only careless typography or punctuation to account for the bad line. I take it that Donne meant 'feast' and 'pray' to be imperatives, and that the line would be printed, if modernized, thus:

That the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, which we, especially Roman Catholics and Anglicans of the Catholic school, interpret as to the Christian Church a command to feast, to keep holiday, she interpreted as a command to fast and pray. Probably both Lady Markham and Lady Bedford belonged to the more Calvinist wing of the Church. There is a distinctly Calvinist flavour about Lady Bedford's own Elegy, which reads also as though it were to some extent a rebuke to Donne for the note, either too pagan or too Catholic for her taste, of his poems on Death. See p. 422, and especially:

l. 58. will be a Lemnia. All the MSS. read 'Lemnia' without the article, probably rightly, 'Lemnia' being used shortly for 'terra Lemnia', or 'Lemnian earth'—a red clay found in Lemnos and reputed an antidote to poison (Pliny, N. H. xxv. 13). It was one of the constituents of the theriaca. It may be here thought of as an antiseptic preserving from putrefaction. But Norton points out that by some of the alchemists the name was given to the essential component of the Philosopher's stone, and that what Donne was thinking of was transmuting power, changing crystal into diamond. The alchemists, however, dealt more in metals than in stones. The thought in Donne's mind is perhaps rather that which he expresses at p. 280, l. 21. As in some earths clay is turned to porcelain, so in this Lemnian earth crystal will turn to diamond.

The words 'Tombe' and 'diamond' afford so bad a rhyme that G. L. Craik conjectured, not very happily,'a wooden round'. Craik's criticism of Donne, written in 1847, Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England, is wonderfully just and appreciative.

Page 287. Elegie on the L. C.

Whoever may be the subject of this Elegie, Donne speaks as though he were a member of his household. In 1617 Donne had long ceased to be in any way attached to the Lord Chancellor's retinue. The reference to his 'children' also without any special reference to his son the new earl, soon to be Earl of Bridgewater, is very unlike Donne. Moreover, Sir Thomas Egerton never had more than two sons, one of whom was killed in Ireland in 1599.

ll. 13-16. As we for him dead: though, &c. Both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor connect the clause 'though no family ... with him in joy to share' with the next, as its principal clause, 'We lose what all friends lov'd, &c.' To me it seems that it must go with the preceding clause, 'As we [must wither] for him dead'. I take it as a clause of concession. 'With him we, his family, must die (as the briar does with the tree on which it grows); but no family could die with a more certain hope of sharing the joy into which their head has entered; with none would so many be willing to "venture estates" in that great voyage of discovery.' With the next lines,'We lose,' &c., begins a fresh argument. The thought is forced and obscure, but the figure, taken from voyages of discovery, is characteristic of Donne.

Page 288. An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton.

In the old editions this is placed among the Divine Poems, and Donne meant it to bear that character. For it was rather unwillingly that Donne, now in Orders, wrote this poem at the instance of his friend and patron Sir Robert Ker, or Carr, later (1633) Earl of Ancrum.

James Hamilton, b. 1584, succeeded his father in 1604 as Marquis of Hamilton, and his uncle in 1609 as Duke of Chatelherault and Earl of Arran. He was made a Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber and held other posts in Scotland. On the occasion of James I's visit to Scotland in 1617 he played a leading part, and thereafter became a favourite courtier, his name figuring in all the great functions described in Nichol's Progresses. In 1617 Chamberlain writes: 'I have not heard a man generally better spoken of than the Marquis, even by all the English; insomuch that he is every way held as the gallantest gentleman of both the nations.' He was High Commissioner to the Parliament held at Edinburgh in 1624, where he secured the passing of the Five Articles of Perth. In 1624 he opposed the French War policy of Buckingham, and when he died on March 2, 162⁴⁄5, it was maintained that the latter had poisoned him.

The rhetoric and rhythm of this poem depend a good deal on getting the right punctuation and a clear view of what are the periods. I have ventured to make a few emendations in the arrangement of 1633. The first sentence ends with the emphatic 'wee doe not so' (l. 8), where 'wee' might be printed in italics. The next closes with 'all lost a limbe' (l. 18), and the effect is marred if, with Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, one places a full stop after 'Music lacks a song', though a colon might be most appropriate. The last two lines clinch the detailed statement which has preceded. The next sentence again is not completed till l. 30, 'in the form thereof his bodie's there', but, though 1633 has only a semicolon here, a full stop is preferable, or at least a colon. Chambers's full stops at l. 22, 'none', and l. 28, 'a resurrection', have again the effect of breaking the logical and rhythmical structure. Lines 23-4 are entirely parenthetical and would be better enclosed in brackets. Four sustained periods compose the elegy.

Page 289, ll. 6-7. If every severall Angell bee A kind alone. Ea enim quae conveniunt specie, et differunt numero, conveniunt in formâ sed distinguuntur materialiter. Si ergo Angeli non sunt compositi ex materiâ et formâ ... sequitur quod impossibile sit esse duos Angelos unius speciei: sicut etiam impossibile esset dicere quod essent plures albedines (whitenesses) separatae aut plures humanitates: ... Si tamen Angeli haberent materiam nec sic possent esse plures Angeli unius speciei. Sic enim opporteret quod principium distinctionis unius ab alio esset materia, non quidem secundum divisionem quantitatis, cum sint incorporei, sed secundum diversitatem potentiarum: quae quidem diversitas materiae causat diversitatem non solum speciei sed generis. Aquinas, Summa I. l. 4.

Page 293. INFINITATI SACRUM, &c.

Page 294, l. 11. a Mucheron: i.e. a mushroom, here equivalent to a fungus. Chambers adopts without note the reading of the later [pg 218] editions, 'Maceron', but spells it 'Macaron'. Grosart prints 'Macheron', taking 'Mucheron' as a mis-spelling. Captain Shirley Harris first pointed out, in Notes and Queries, that 'Mucheron' must be correct, for Donne has in view, as so often elsewhere, the threefold division of the soul—vegetal, sensitive, rational. Captain Harris quoted the very apt parallel from Burton, where, speaking of metempsychosis, he says: 'Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captain:

a horse, a man, a spunge.' Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 1, Sect. 1, Mem. 2, Subs. 10. Donne's order is, a man, a horse, a fungus. But to Burton a sponge was a fungus. The word fungus is cognate with or derived from the Greek σπόγγος.

As for the form 'mucheron' (n. b. 'mushrome' in G) the O.E.D. gives it among different spellings but cites no example of this exact spelling. From the Promptorium Parvulorum it quotes, 'Muscheron, toodys hatte, boletus, fungus.' Captain Harris has supplied me with the following delightful instance of the word in use as late as 1808. It is from a catalogue of Maggs Bros. (No. 263, 1910):

'THE DISAPPOINTED KING OF SPAIN, or the downfall of the Mucheron King Joe Bonaparte, late Pettifogging Attorney's Clerk. Between two stools the Breech comes to the Ground.'

The 'Maceron' which was inserted in 1635 is not a misprint, but a pseudo-correction by some one who did not recognize 'mucheron' and knew that Donne had elsewhere used 'maceron' for a fop or puppy (see p. 163, l. 117).

'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 [pg 220] 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.

Page 299, ll. 114-17. There can be no doubt, I think, that the 1633 text is here correct, though for clearness a comma must be inserted after 'reasons'. The emendation of the 1635 editor which modern editors have followed gives an awkward and, at the close, an absurdly tautological sentence. It is not the reason, the rational faculty, of sceptics which is like the bubbles blown by boys, that stretch too thin, 'break and do themselves spill.' What Donne says, is that the reasons or arguments of those who answer sceptics, like bubbles which break themselves, injure their authors, the apologists. The verse wants a syllable—not a unique phenomenon in Donne's satires; but if one is to be supplied 'so' would give the sense better than 'and'.

Page 300, l. 129. foggie Plot. The word 'foggie' has here the in English obsolete, in Scotch and perhaps other dialects, still known meaning of 'marshy', 'boggy'. The O.E.D. quotes, 'He that is fallen into a depe foggy well and sticketh fast in it,' Coverdale, Bk. Death, I. xl. 160; 'The foggy fens in the next county,' Fuller, Worthies.

l. 137. To see the Prince, and have so fill'd the way. The grammatically and metrically correct reading of G appears to me to explain the [pg 221] subsequent variation. 'Prince' struck the editor of the 1633 edition as inconsistent with the subsequent 'she', and he therefore altered it to 'Princess'. He may have been encouraged to do so by the fact that the copy from which he printed had dropped the 'have', or he may himself have dropped the 'have' to adjust the verse to his alteration. The former is, I think, the more likely, because what would seem to be the earlier printed copies of 1633 read 'Prince': unless he himself overlooked the 'have' and then amended by 'Princess'. The 1635 editor restored 'Prince' and then amended the verse by his usual device of padding, changing 'fill'd' to 'fill up'. Of course Donne's line may have read as we give it, with 'Princess' for 'Prince', but the evidence of the MSS. is against this, so far as it goes. The title of 'Prince' was indeed applicable to a female sovereign. The O.E.D. gives: 'Yea the Prince ... as she hath most of yearely Revenewes ... so should she have most losse by this dearth,' W. Stafford, 1581; 'Cleopatra, prince of Nile,' Willobie, Avisa, 1594; 'Another most mighty prince, Mary Queene of Scots,' Camden (Holland), 1610.

The comma after guest is dropped in the printed editions, the editor regarding 'this living buried man' as an expansion of 'the guest'. But the man buried alive is the 'soul's second inn', the mandrake. 'Many Molas and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, the first from great Antiquity conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man which is a conceit not to be made out by ordinary inspection, or any other eyes, than such as regarding the clouds, behold them in shapes conformable to pre-apprehensions.' Browne, Vulgar Errors.

Page 303, ll. 203-5. The punctuation of this stanza is in the editions very chaotic, and I have amended it. A full stop should be placed at the end of l. 203, 'was not', because these lines complete the thought of the previous stanza. Possibly the semicolon after 'ill' was intended to follow 'not', but a full stop is preferable. Moreover, the colon after 'soule' (l. 204) suggests that the printer took ''twas not' with 'this soule'. The correct reading of l. 204 is obviously:

but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to make the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:

'The soul is so glad to be at last able to move (having been imprisoned hitherto in plants which have the soul of growth, not of locomotion or sense), and the body is so free of its kindnesses to the soul, that it, the sparrow, forgets the duty of self-preservation.'

l. 214. hid nets. In making my first collation of the printed texts I had queried the possibility of 'hid' being the correct reading for 'his', a conjecture which the Gosse MS. confirms.

Page 305, l. 257. None scape, but few, and fit for use, to get. I have added a comma after 'use' to make the construction a little clearer; a pause is needed. 'The nets were not wrought, as now, to let none scape, but were wrought to get few and those fit for use; as, for example, a ravenous pike, &c.'

Page 306, ll. 267-8. 'To make the water thinne, and airelike faith cares not.' What Chambers understands by 'air like faith', I do not know. What Donne says is that the manner in which fishes breathe is a matter about which faith is indifferent. Each man may hold what theory he chooses. There is not much obvious relevance in this remark, but Donne has already in this poem touched on the difference between faith and knowledge:

l. 280. It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food. If with 1650-69, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor, we alter the full stop which separates this line from the last to a comma, 'It' must mean the same as 'she', i.e. the fish. This is a harsh construction. The line is rather to be taken as an aphorism. 'To be exalted is often to become the instrument and prey of him who has exalted you.'

Page 307, l. 296. That many leagues at sea, now tir'd hee lyes. The reading of G represents probably what Donne wrote. It is quite clear that 1633 was printed from a MS. identical with A18, N, TC, and underwent considerable correction as it passed through the press. In no poem does the text of one copy vary so much from that of another as in this. Now in this MS. a word is dropped. The editor supplied the gap by inserting 'o're-past', which simply repeats 'flown long and fast'. G shows what the dropped word was. 'Many leagues at sea' is an adverbial phrase qualifying 'now tir'd he lies'.

ll. 301-10. I owe the right punctuation of this stanza to the Grolier Club edition and Grosart. The 'as' of l. 303 requires to be followed by a comma. Missing this, Chambers closes the sentence at l. 307, 'head', leaving 'This fish would seem these' in the air. The words 'when all hopes fail' play with the idea of 'the hopeful Promontory', or Cape of Good Hope.

Compare: 'A confidence in their owne strengths, a sacrificing to their own Nets, an attributing of their securitie to their own wisedome or power, may also retard the cause of God.' Sermons, Judges xv. 20 (1622).

'And though some of the Fathers pared somewhat too neare the quick in this point, yet it was not as in the Romane Church, to lay snares, and spread nets for gain.' Sermons 80. 22. 216.

'The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of comfort comes to him' (the courtier) 'but hee will die in his old religion, which is to sacrifice to his owne Nets, by which his portion is plenteous.' Sermons 80. 70. 714.

The image of the net is probably derived from Jeremiah v. 26: 'For among my people are found wicked men; they lay wait as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.' Compare also: 'he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor when he draweth him into his net.' Psalm x. 9.

Pages 310-11, ll. 381-400. Compare: 'Amongst naturall Creatures, because howsoever they differ in bignesse, yet they have some proportion to one another, we consider that some very little creatures, contemptible in themselves, are yet called enemies to great creatures, as the Mouse is to the Elephant.' Sermons 50. 40. 372. 'How great an Elephant, how small a Mouse destroys.' Devotions, p. 284.

The 1635 punctuation of this passage is right, though it is better to drop the comma after 'Kingdoms' and obviate ambiguity. The trade is the shepherd's; in it Abel is type both of Church and Kingdom, Emperor and Pope. As a type of Christ Donne refers to Abel in The Litanie, p. 341, l. 86.

Page 312, l. 419. Nor ⟨make⟩ resist. I have substituted 'make' for the 'much' of the editions, confident that it is the right reading and explains the vacillation of the MSS. The proper alternative to 'show' is 'make'. The error arose from the obsolescence of 'resist' used as a noun. But the O.E.D. cites from Lodge, Forbonius and Priscilla (1585), 'I make no resist in this my loving torment', and other examples dated 1608 and 1630. Donne is fond of verbal nouns retaining the form of the verb unchanged.

l. 439. soft Moaba. 'Moaba', 'Siphatecia' (l. 457), 'Tethlemite' (l. 487), and Themech' (l. 509) are not creatures of Donne's invention, but derived from his multifarious learning. It is, however, a little difficult to detect the immediate source from which he drew. The ultimate source of all these additions to the Biblical narrative and persons was the activity of the Jewish intellect and imagination in the interval between the time at which the Old Testament closes and [pg 224] the dispersion under Titus and Vespasian, the desire of the Jews in Palestine and Alexandria to 'round off the biblical narrative, fill up the lacunae, answer all the questions of the inquiring mind of the ancient reader'. Of the original Hebrew writings of this period none have survived, but their traditions passed into mediaeval works like the Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor and hence into popular works, e.g. the Middle English Cursor Mundi. Another compendium of this pseudo-historical lore was the Philonis Judaei Alexandrini. Libri Antiquitatum. Quaestionum et Solutionum in Genesin. de Essaeis. de Nominibus hebraicis. de Mundo. Basle. 1527. An abstract of this work is given by Annius of Viterbo in the book referred to in a previous note. Dr. Cohn has shown that this Latin work is a third- or fourth-century translation of a Greek work, itself a translation from the Hebrew. More recently Rabbi M. Gaster has brought to light the Hebrew original in portions of a compilation of the fourteenth century called the Chronicle of Jerahmeel, of which he has published an English translation under the 'Patronage of the Royal Asiatic Society', Oriental Translation Fund. New Series, iv. 1899. In chapter xxvi of this work we read: 'Adam begat three sons and three daughters, Cain and his twin wife Qualmana, Abel and his twin wife Deborah, and Seth and his twin wife Nōba. And Adam, after he had begotten Seth, lived seven hundred years, and there were eleven sons and eight daughters born to him. These are the names of his sons: Eli, Shēēl, Surei, 'Almiel, Berokh, Ke'al, Nabath, Zarh-amah, Sisha, Mahtel, and Anat; and the names of his daughters are: Havah, Gitsh, Harē, Bikha, Zifath, Hēkhiah, Shaba, and 'Azin.' In Philo this reappears as follows: 'Initio mundi Adam genuit tres filios et unam filiam, Cain, Noaba, Abel, et Seth: Et vixit Adam, postquam genuit Seth, annos DCC., et genuit filios duodecim, et filias octo: Et haec sunt nomina virorum, Aeliseel, Suris, Aelamiel, Brabal, Naat, Harama, Zas-am, Maathal, et Anath: Et hae filiae eius, Phua, Iectas, Arebica, Siphatecia, Sabaasin.' It is clear there are a good many mistakes in Philo's account as it has come to us. His numbers and names do not correspond. Clearly also some of the Latin names are due to the running together of two Hebrew ones, e.g. Aeliseel, Arebica, and Siphatecia. Of the names in Donne's poem two occur in the above lists—Noaba (Heb. Nobā) and Siphatecia. But Noaba has become Moaba: Siphatecia is 'Adams fift daughter', which is correct according to the Hebrew, but not according to Philo's list; and there is no mention in these lists of Tethlemite (or Thelemite) among Adam's sons, or of Themech as Cain's wife. In the Hebrew she is called Qualmana. Doubtless since two of the names are traceable the others are so also. We have not found Donne's immediate source. I am indebted for such information as I have brought together to Rabbi Gaster.

Page 314, l. 485. (loth). I have adopted this reading from the insertion in TCC, not that much weight can be allowed to this [pg 225] anonymous reviser (some of whose insertions are certainly wrong), but because 'loth' or 'looth' is more likely to have been changed to 'tooth' than 'wroth'. The occurrence of 'Tooth' in G as well as in 1633 led me to consult Sir James Murray as to the possibility of a rare adjectival sense of that word, e.g. 'eager, with tooth on edge for'. I venture to quote his reply: 'We know nothing of tooth as an adjective in the sense eager; or in any sense that would fit here. Nor does wroth seem to myself and my assistants to suit well. In thinking of the possible word for which tooth was a misprint, or rather misreading ... the word loth, loath, looth, occurred to myself and an assistant independently before we saw that it is mentioned in the foot-note.... Loath seems to me to be exactly the word wanted, the true antithesis to willing, and it was a very easy word to write as tooth.' Sir James Murray suggests, as just a possibility, that 'wroth' (1635-69) may have arisen from a provincial form 'wloth'. He thinks, however, as I do, that it is more probably a mere editorial conjecture.

Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have erroneously followed 1635-69 in their punctuation and attached 'keeping some quality of every past shape' to the preceding 'they'. The force of Donne's bitter comment is thus weakened. It is with 'she', i.e. the soul, that the participial phrase goes. 'She, retaining the evil qualities of all the forms through which she has passed, has thus "ills enow" (treachery, rapine, deceit, and lust) to be a woman.'

DIVINE POEMS.

The dating of Donne's Divine Poems raises some questions that have not received all the consideration they deserve. They fall into two groups—those written before and those written after he took orders. Of the former the majority would seem to belong to the years of his residence at Mitcham. The poem On the Annunciation and Passion was written on March 25, 160⁸⁄9. The Litanie was written, we gather from a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere, about the same time. The Crosse we cannot date, but I should be inclined with Mr. Gosse to connect it rather with the earlier than the later poems. It is in the same somewhat tormented, intellectual style. On the other hand the Holy Sonnets were composed, we know now from Sonnet XVII, first published by Mr. Gosse, after the death of Donne's wife in 1617; and The Lamentations of Jeremy appear to have been written [pg 226] at the same juncture. The first sermon which Donne preached after that event was on the text (Lam. iii. 1): 'I am the man that hath seen affliction,' and Walton speaks significantly of his having ended the night and begun the day in lamentations.

The more difficult question is the date of the La Corona group of sonnets. It is usual to attribute them to the later period of Donne's ministry. This is not, I think, correct. It seems to me most probable that they too were composed at Mitcham in or before 1609.

Dr. Grosart first pointed out that one of Donne's short verse-letters, headed in 1663 and later editions To E. of D. with six holy Sonnets, must have been sent with a copy of six of these sonnets, the seventh being held back on account of some imperfection. It appears with the same heading in O'F, but in W it is entitled simply To L. of D., and is placed immediately after the letter To Mr. T. W., 'Haste thee harsh verse' (p. 205), and before the next to the same person, 'Pregnant again' (p. 206). It thus belongs to this group of letters written apparently between 1597 and 1609-10.

Who is the E. of D.? Dr. Grosart, Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Gosse assume that it must be Lord Doncaster, though admitting in the same breath that the latter was not Earl of, but Viscount Doncaster, and that only between 1618 and 1622, four short years. The title 'L. of D.' might indicate Doncaster because the title 'my Lord of' is apparently given to a Viscount. In his letters from Germany Donne speaks of 'my Lord of Doncaster'. It may, therefore, be a mistake of the printer or editor of 1633; which turned 'L. of D.' into 'E. of D.'; but Hay was still alive in 1633, and the natural thing for the printer to do would have been to alter the title to 'E. of C.' or 'Earl of Carlisle'. Before 1618 Donne speaks of the 'Lord Hay' or 'the L. Hay' (see Letters, p. 145),¹ and this or 'the L. H.' is the title the poem would have borne if addressed to him in any of the years to which the other letters in the Westmoreland MS. (W) seem to belong.

Moreover, there is another of Donne's noble friends who might correctly be described as either E. of D. or L. of D. and that is Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. Donne generally speaks of him as 'my Lord of Dorset': 'I lack you here', he writes to Goodyere, 'for my L. of Dorset, he might make a cheap bargain with me now, and disingage his honour, which in good faith, is a little bound, because he admitted so many witnesses of his large disposition towards me.' Born in 1589, the grandson of the great poet of Elizabeth's early reign, Richard Sackville was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He succeeded as third Earl of Dorset on February 27, 160⁸⁄9, having two days previously married Anne, Baroness Clifford [pg 227] in her own right, the daughter of George Clifford, the buccaneering Earl of Cumberland, and Margaret, daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford. The Countess of Dorset was therefore a first cousin to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, the husband of Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

The earliest date at which the letter could have been addressed to Dorset as L. of D. or E. of D. is 1609, just after his marriage into the circle of Donne's friends. Now in Harleian MS. 4955 (H49) we find the heading,

This is followed at once by 'Deign at my hands', and then the title La Corona is given to the six sonnets which ensue. Thereafter follow, without any fresh heading, twelve of the sonnets belonging to the second group, generally entitled Holy Sonnets. It will be noticed that in the editions this last title is used twice, first for both groups and then, in italics, for the second alone. The question is, did the copyist of H49 intend that the note should apply to all the sonnets he transcribed or only to the La Corona group? If to all, he was certainly wrong as to the second lot, which were written later; but he was quite possibly right as to the first. Now twenty years before 1629, which is the date given to some of Andrewes' poems in the MS., would bring us to 1609, the year of the Earl of Dorset's accession and marriage, and the period when most of the letters among which that to L. of D. in W appears were written.

Note, moreover, the content of the letter To L. of D. Most of the letters in this group, to Thomas and Rowland Woodward, to S. B., and B. B., are poetical replies to poetical epistles. Now that To L. of D. is in the same strain:

This is in the vein of the letter To Mr. R. W., 'Muse not that by thy mind,' and of the epistle To J. D. which I have cited in the notes (p. 166). We hear nowhere that Lord Hay wrote verses, and it is very unlikely that he, already when Donne formed his aquaintance a rising courtier, should have joined with the Woodwards, and Brookes, and Cornwallis, in the game of exchanging bad verses with Donne. It is quite likely that the young Lord of Dorset, either in 1609, or earlier when he was still an Oxford student or had just come up to London, may have burned his pinch of incense to the honour of the most brilliant of the wits, now indeed a grave épistolier and moralist, but still capable of 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness'. We gather from Lord Herbert of Cherbury that the Earl of Dorset must have been an enthusiastic young man. When Herbert returned to [pg 228] England after the siege of Julyers (whither Donne had sent him a verse epistle), 'Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom otherwise I was a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, where bringing me into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, he at last brought me to a frame covered with green taffeta, and asked me who I thought was there; and therewithal presently drawing the curtain showed me my own picture; whereupon demanding how his Lordship came to have it, he answered, that he had heard so many brave things of me, that he got a copy of a picture which one Larkin a painter drew for me, the original whereof I intended before my departure to the Low Countries for Sir Thomas Lucy.' Autobiography, ed. Lee. A man so interested in Herbert may well have been interested in Donne even before his connexion by marriage with Lucy, Countess of Bedford. He became later one of Donne's kindest and most practical patrons. The grandson of a great poet may well have written verses.²

But there is another consideration besides that of the letter To E. of D. which seems to connect the La Corona sonnets with the years 1607-9. That is the sonnet To the Lady Magdalen Herbert: of St. Mary Magdalen, which I have prefixed, with that To E. of D., to the group. This was sent with a prose letter which says, 'By this messenger and on this good day, I commit the inclosed holy hymns and sonnets (which for the matter not the workmanship, have yet escaped the fire) to your judgment, and to your protection too, if you think them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed sonnet to usher them to your happy hand.' This letter is dated 'July 11, 1607', which Mr. Gosse thinks must be a mistake, because another letter bears the same date; but the date is certainly right, for July 11 is, making allowance for the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, July 22, i.e. St. Mary Magdalen's day, 'this good day.'

Walton says: 'These hymns are now lost; but doubtless they were [pg 229] such as they two now sing in heaven.' But Walton was writing long afterwards and was probably misled by the name 'hymns'. By 'hymns and sonnets' Donne possibly means the same things, as he calls his love-lyrics 'songs and sonets'. The sonnets are hymns, i.e. songs of praise. Mr. Chambers suggests—it is only a suggestion—that they are the second set, the Holy Sonnets. But these are not addressed to Christ. In them Donne addresses The Trinity, the Father, Angels, Death, his own soul, the Jews—Christ only in one (Sonnet XVIII, first published by Mr. Gosse). On the other hand, 'Hymns to his dear name addrest' is an exact description of the La Corona sonnets.

I venture to suggest, then, that the Holy Sonnets sent to Mrs. Herbert and to the E. of D. were one and the same group, viz. the La Corona sequence. Probably they were sent to Mrs. Herbert first, and later to the E. of D. Donne admits their imperfection in his letter to Mrs. Herbert. One of them seems to have been criticized, and in sending the sequence to the E. of D. he held it back for correction. If the E. of D. be the Earl of Dorset they may have been sent to him before he assumed that title. Any later transcript would adopt the title to which he succeeded in 1609. We need not, however, take too literally Donne's statement that the E. of D.'s poetical letter was 'the only-begetter' of his sonnets.

My argument is conjectural, but the assumptions that they were written about 1617 and sent to Lord Doncaster are equally so. The last is untenable; the former does not harmonize so well as that of an earlier date with the obvious fact, which I have emphasized in the essay on Donne's poetry, that these sonnets are more in the intellectual, tormented, wire-drawn style of his earlier religious verse (excellent as that is in many ways) than the passionate and plangent sonnets and hymns of the years which followed the death of his wife.

¹ This letter was written in November or December, 1608, and seems to be the first in which Donne speaks of Lord Hay as a friend and patron. The kindness he has shown in forwarding a suit seems to have come somewhat as a surprise to Donne.

² Lord Dorset is thus described by his wife: 'He was in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person: He had a great advantage in his breeding by the wisdom and discretion of his grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer of England, who was then held one of the wisest men of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all manner of learning, that in his youth when he lived in the University of Oxford, there was none of the young nobility then students there, that excelled him. He was also a good patriot to his country ... and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate; As also, with excessive prodigality in house-keeping and other noble ways at Court, as tilting, masking, and the like; Prince Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to these noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.' Collins's Peerage, ii. 194-5. quoted in Zouch's edition of Walton's Lives, 1817.

Page 317. To E. of D.

ll. 3-4. Ryme ... their ... have wrought. The concord here seems to require the plural, the rhyme the singular. Donne, I fear, does occasionally rhyme a word in the plural with one in the singular, ignoring the 's'. But possibly Donne intended 'Ryme' to be taken collectively for 'verses, poetry'. Even so the plural is the normal use.

To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, &c.

'Mary Magdalene had her surname of magdalo a castell | and was born of right noble lynage and parents | which were descended of the lynage of kynges | And her fader was named Sinus and her moder eucharye | She wyth her broder lazare and her suster martha [pg 230] possessed the castle of magdalo: whiche is two myles fro nazareth and bethanye the castel which is nygh to Iherusalem and also a gret parte of Iherusalem whiche al thise thynges they departed amonge them in suche wyse that marye had the castelle magdalo whereof she had her name magdalene | And lazare had the parte of the cytee of Iherusalem: and martha had to her parte bethanye' Legenda Aurea. See Ed. (1493), f. 184, ver. 80.

l. 4. more than the Church did know, i.e. the Resurrection. John xx. 9 and 11-18.

Page 318. La Corona.

The MSS. of these poems fall into three well-defined groups: (1) That on which the 1633 text is based is represented by D, H49; Lec does not contain these poems. (2) A version different in several details is presented by the group B, S, S96, W, of which W is the most important and correct. O'F has apparently belonged originally to this group but been corrected from the first. (3) A18, N, TC agrees now with one, now with another of the two first groups. When all the three groups unite against the printed text the case for an emendation is a strong one.

Page 319. Annunciation.

'Maria ergo faciens voluntatem Dei, corporaliter Christi tantummodo mater est, spiritualiter autem et soror et mater.' August. De Sanct. Virg. i. 5. Migne 40. 399.

Nativitie.

l. 8. The effect of Herods jealous generall doome: The singular 'effect' has the support of most of the MSS. against the plural of the editions and of D, H49, and there can be no doubt that it is right. All the effects of Herod's doom were not prevented, but the one aimed at, the death of Christ, was.

Page 320. Crucifying.

l. 8. selfe-lifes infinity to'a span. The MSS. supply the 'a' which the editions here, as elsewhere (e.g. 'a retirednesse', p. 185), have dropped. In the present case the omission is so obvious that the Grolier Club editor supplies the article conjecturally. In the editions after 1633 'infinitie' is the spelling adopted, leading to the misprint 'infinite' in 1669 and 1719, a variant which I have omitted to note.

Page 321. Resurrection.

It will be seen there are some important differences between the text of this sonnet given in 1633, D, H49, on the one hand and that of B, O'F, S, S96, W. The former has (l. 5) 'this death' where the latter gives 'thy death'. It may be noted that 'this' is always spelt [pg 231] 'thys' in D, which makes easy an error one way or the other. But the most difficult reading in 1633 is (l. 8) 'thy little booke'. Oddly enough this has the support not only of D, H49 but also of A18, N, TC, whose text seems to blend the two versions, adding some features of its own. Certainly the 'life-booke' of the second version and the later editions seems preferable. Yet this too is an odd expression, seeing that the line might have run:

Was Donne thinking vaguely or with some symbolism of his own, not of the 'book of life' (Rev. xiii. 8, and xx. 12) but of the 'little book' (Rev. x. 2) which John took and ate? Or does he say 'little book' thinking of the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it' (Matt. vii. 14)? The grimmer aspects of the Christian creed were always in Donne's mind:

In l. 9 'last long' is probably right. D, H49 had dropped both adjectives, and 'long' was probably supplied by the editor metri causa, 'last' disappearing. Between 'glorified' and 'purified' in l. 11 it is impossible to choose. The reading 'deaths' for 'death' I have adopted. Here A18, N, TC agree with B, O'F, S, W, and there can be no doubt that 'sleepe' is intended to go with both 'sinne' and 'death'.

Page 322. Holy Sonnets.

The MSS. of these sonnets evidently fall into two groups: (1) B, O'F, S96, W: of which W is by far the fullest and most correct representative. (2) A18, D, H49, N, TCC, TCD. I have kept the order in which they are given in the editions 1635 to 1669, but indicated the order of the other groups, and added at the close the three sonnets contained only in W. I cannot find a definite significance in any order, otherwise I should have followed that of W as the fullest and presumably the most authoritative. Each sonnet is a separate meditation or ejaculation.

Page 323, III. 7. That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent: I have followed the punctuation and order of B, W, because it shows a little more clearly what is (I think) the correct construction. As printed in 1635-69,

the clause 'That sufferance was' &c. is a noun clause subject to 'repent'. But the two clauses are co-ordinates and 'That' is a demonstrative pronoun. 'That suffering' (of which he has spoken [pg 232] in the six preceding lines) 'was my sin. Now I repent. Because I did suffer the pains of love, I must now suffer those of remorse.'

Page 324, V. 11. have burnt it heretofore. Donne uses 'heretofore' not infrequently in the sense of 'hitherto', and this seems to be implied in 'Let their flames retire'. I have therefore preferred the perfect tense of the MSS. to the preterite of the editions. The 'hath' of O'F is a change made in the supposed interests of grammar, if not used as a plural form, for 'their flames' implies that the fires of lust and of envy are distinguished. In speaking of the first Donne thinks mainly of his youth, of the latter he has in memory his years of suitorship at Court.

VI. 7, note. Or presently, I know not, see that Face. This line, which occurs in several independent MSS., is doubtless Donne's, but the reading of the text is probably his own emendation. The first form of the line suggested too distinctly a not approved, or even heretical, doctrine to which Donne refers more than once in his sermons: 'So Audivimus, et ab Antiquis, We have heard, and heard by them of old, That in how good state soever they dye yet the souls of the departed do not see the face of God, nor enjoy his presence, till the day of Judgement; This we have heard, and from so many of them of old, as that the voyce of that part is louder, then of the other. And amongst those reverend and blessed Fathers, which straied into these errors, some were hearers and Disciples of the Apostles themselves, as Papias was a disciple of S. John and yet Papias was a Millenarian, and expected his thousand yeares prosperity upon the earth after the Resurrection: some of them were Disciples of the Apostles, and some of them were better men then the Apostles, for they were Bishops of Rome; Clement was so: and yet Clement was one of them, who denied the fruition of the sight of God, by the Saints, till the Judgement.' Sermons 80. 73. 739-40.

There are two not strictly orthodox opinions to which Donne seems to have leant: (1) this, perhaps a remnant of his belief in Purgatory, the theory of a state of preparation, in this doctrine applied even to the saints; (2) a form of the doctrine now called 'Conditional Immortality'. See note on Letter To the Countesse of Bedford, p. 196, l. 58.

Page 325, VII. 6. dearth. This reading of the Westmoreland MS. is surely right notwithstanding the consensus of the editions and other MSS. in reading 'death'. The poet is enumerating various modes in which death comes; death itself cannot be one of these. The 'death' in l. 8 perhaps explains the error; it certainly makes the error more obvious.

VIII. 7. in us, not immediately. I have interjected a comma after 'us' in order to bring out distinctly the Scholastic doctrine of Angelic knowledge on which this sonnet turns. See note on The Dreame with the quotation from Aquinas. What Donne says here is: 'If our minds or thoughts are known to the saints in heaven as to angels, not [pg 233] immediately, but by circumstances and signs (such as blushing or a quickened pulsation) which are apparent in us, how shall the sincerity of my grief be known to them, since these signs are found in lovers, conjurers and pharisees?' 'Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae cogitationes cordium.' 'God alone who put grief in my heart knows its sincerity.'

l. 10. vile blasphemous Conjurers. The 'vilde' of the MSS. is obviously the right reading. The form too is that which Donne used if we may judge by the MSS., and by the fact that in Elegie XIV: Julia he rhymes thus:

By printing 'vile' the old and modern editions destroy the rhyme. In the sonnet indeed the rhyme is not affected, and accordingly, as I am not prepared to change every 'vile' to 'vilde' in the poems, I have printed 'vile'. W writes vile. Probably one might use either form.

Page 326, IX. 9-10. I have followed here the punctuation of W, which takes 'O God' in close connexion with the preceding line; the vocative case seems to be needed since God has not been directly addressed until l. 9. The punctuation of D, H49, which has often determined that of 1633, is not really different from that of W:

Here, as so often, the question-mark is placed immediately after the question, before the sentence is ended. But 'Oh God' goes with the question. A new strain begins with the second 'Oh'. The editions, by punctuating

(which modern editors have followed), make 'O God, Oh!' a hurried series of exclamations introducing the prayer which follows. This suits the style of these abrupt, passionate poems. But it leaves the question without an address to point it; and to my own mind the hurried, feverous effect of 'O God, Oh!' is more than compensated for by the weight which is thrown, by the punctuation adopted, upon the second 'Oh',—a sigh drawn from the very depths of the heart,

Page 327, XII. 1. Why are wee by all creatures, &c. The 'am I' of the W is probably what Donne first wrote, and I am strongly tempted to restore it. Donne's usual spelling of 'am' is 'ame' [pg 234] in his letters. This might have been changed to 'are', which would have brought the change of 'I' to 'we' in its wake. On the other hand there are evidences in this sonnet of corrections made by Donne himself (e.g. l. 9), and he may have altered the first line as being too egotistical in sound. I have therefore retained the text of the editions.

l. 4. Simple, and further from corruption? The 'simple' of 1633 and D, H49, W is preferable to the 'simpler' of the later editions and somewhat inferior MSS. which Chambers has adopted, inadvertently, I think, for he does not notice the earlier reading. The dropping of an 'r' would of course be very easy; but the simplicity of the element does not admit of comparison, and what Donne says is, I think, 'The elements are purer than we are, and (being simple) farther from corruption.'

Chambers alters the comma after 'affright' to a full stop, the Grolier Club editor to a semicolon. Both place a semicolon after 'fell'. Any change of the old punctuation seems to me to disguise the close relation in which the fifth and sixth lines stand to the third. It is with the third line they must go, not with the seventh, with which a slightly different thought is introduced. 'Mark the picture of Christ in thy heart and ask, can that countenance affright thee in whose eyes the light of anger is quenched in tears, the furrows of whose frowns are filled with blood.' Then, from the countenance Donne's thought turns to the tongue. The full stop, accidentally dropped after 'fell' in the editions of 1633 and 1635, was restored in 1639.

l. 14. assures. In this case the MSS. enable us to correct an obvious error of all the printed editions.

Page 329, XVI. 9. Yet such are thy laws. I have adopted the reading 'thy' of the Westmoreland and some other MSS. because the sense seems to require it. 'These' and 'those' referring to the same antecedent make a harsh construction. 'Thy laws necessarily transcend the limits of human capacity and therefore some doubt whether these conditions of our salvation can be fulfilled by men. They cannot, but grace and spirit revive what law and letter kill.'

l. 11. None doth; but all-healing grace and spirit. I have dropped the 'thy' of the editions, following all the MSS. I have no doubt that 'thy' has been inserted: (1) It spoils the rhyme: 'spirit' has to rhyme with 'yet', which is impossible unless the accent may fall on the second syllable; (2) 'thy' has been inserted, as 'spirit' has been spelt with a capital letter, under the impression that 'spirit' stands for the Divine Spirit, the Holy Ghost. But obviously 'spirit' is opposed to 'letter' as 'grace' is to 'law'. In W both 'grace' and 'spirit' are spelt with capitals. Either both or neither must [pg 235] be so treated. 'Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' 2 Cor. iii. 6.

If 'thy' is to be retained, then 'spirit' must be pronounced 'sprit'. Commentators on Shakespeare declare that this happens, but it is very difficult to prove it. When Donne needs a monosyllable he uses 'spright'; 'spirit' he rhymes as disyllable with 'merit'.

Page 330, XVII. 1. she whom I lov'd. This is the reference to his wife's death which dates these poems. Anne More, Donne's wife, died on August 15, 1617, on the seventh day after the birth of her twelfth child. She was buried in the church of St. Clement Danes. Her monument disappeared when the Church was rebuilt. The inscription ran:

XVIII. It is clear enough why this sonnet was not published. It would have revealed Donne, already three years in orders, as still conscious of all the difficulties involved in a choice between the three divisions of Christianity—Rome, Geneva (made to include Germany), and England. This is the theme of his earliest serious poem, the Satyre III, and the subject recurs in the letters and sermons. Donne entered the Church of England not from a conviction that it, and it alone, was the true Church, but because he had first reached the position that there is salvation in each: 'You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion; not straitening it Frierly ad Religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religion) [pg 236] nor immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittenberg, or a Geneva; they are all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they find clay hearts, they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen. They are not so contrary as the North and South Poles; and that they are connatural pieces of one circle.' Letters, p. 29. From this position it was easy to pass to the view that, this being so, the Church of England may have special claims on me, as the Church of my Country, and to a recognition of its character as primitive, and as offering a via media. As such it attracted Casaubon and Grotius. But the Church of England never made the appeal to Donne's heart and imagination it did to George Herbert:

Compare, however, the rest of Donne's poem with Herbert's description of Rome and Geneva, and also: 'Trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches; neither of a Church in the Lake, nor a Church upon seven hils'. Sermons 80. 76. 769.

Page 331. The Crosse.

Donne has evidently in view the aversion of the Puritan to the sign of the cross used in baptism.

'To make representations of men, or of other creatures, we finde two wayes; Statuaries have one way, and Painters have another: Statuaries doe it by Substraction; They take away, they pare off some parts of that stone, or that timber, which they work upon, and then that which they leave, becomes like that man, whom they would represent: Painters doe it by Addition; Whereas the cloth or table presented nothing before, they adde colours, and lights, and shadowes, and so there arises a representation.' Sermons 80. 44. 440.

Page 333, l. 47. So with harsh, &c. Chambers, I do not know why, punctuates this line:

This disguises the connexion of 'cross' with its adverbial qualifications. The meaning is that as we cross the eye by making it contemplate 'bad objects' so we must cross the rest, i.e. the other senses, with harsh (the ear), hard (touch), sour (the taste), and stinking (the sense of smell). The asceticism of Donne in his later life is strikingly evidenced in such lines as these.

l. 48. I have made an emendation here which seems to me to combine happily the text of 1633 and that of the later editions. It seems to me that 1633 has dropped 'all', 1635-69 have dropped 'call'. I thought the line as I give it was in O'F, but found on inquiry I had misread the collation. I should withdraw it, but cannot find it in my heart to do so.

l. 52. Points downewards. I think the MS. reading is probably right, because (1) 'Pants' is the same as 'hath palpitation'; (2) Donne alludes to the anatomy of the heart, in the same terms, in the Essayes in Divinity, p. 74 (ed. Jessop, 1855): 'O Man, which art said to be the epilogue, and compendium of all this world, and the Hymen and matrimonial knot of eternal and mortal things ... and was made by God's hands, not His commandment; and hast thy head erected to heaven, and all others to the centre, that yet only thy heart of all others points downward, and only trembles.'

The reference in each case is to the anatomy of the day: 'The figure of it, as Hippocrates saith in his Booke de Corde is Pyramidall, or rather turbinated and somewhat answering to the proportion of a Pine Apple, because a man is broad and short chested. For the Basis above is large and circular but not exactly round, and after it by degrees endeth in a cone or dull and blunt round point ... His lower part is called the Vertex or top, Mucro or point, the Cone, the heighth of the heart. Hippocrates calleth it the taile which Galen saith ... is the basest part, as the Basis is the noblest.' Helkiah Crooke: ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ, A Description of the Body of Man, &c. (1631), Book I, chap. ii, Of the Heart.

'The heart therefore is called καρδία ἀπὸ τοῦ κερδαίνεσθαι, (sic. i.e. κραδαίνεσθαι) which signifieth to beate because it is perpetually moved from the ingate to the outgate of life.' Ibid., Book VII, The Preface.

l. 53. dejections. Donne uses both the words given here: 'dejections of spirit,' Sermons 50. 13. 102; and 'these detorsions have small force, but (as sunbeams striking obliquely, or arrows diverted with a twig by the way) they lessen their strength, being turned upon another mark than they were destined to,' Essays in Divinity (Jessop), p. 42.

l. 61. fruitfully. The improved sense, as well as the unanimity of the MSS., justifies the adoption of this reading. A preacher [pg 238] may deal 'faithfully' with his people. The adverb refers to his action, not its result in them. The Cross of Christ, in Donne's view, must always deal faithfully; whether its action produces fruit depends on our hearts.

Page 334. The Annuntiation and Passion.

The MSS. add 'falling upon one day Anno Dñi 1608'; i.e. March 25, 160⁸⁄9. George Herbert wrote some Latin verses In Natales et Pascha concurrentes, and Sir John Beaumont an English poem 'Vpon the two great feasts of the Annuntiation and Resurrection falling on the same day, March 25, 1627'.

Page 336. Good Friday.

l. 2. The intelligence: i.e. the angel. Each sphere has its angel or intelligence that moves and directs it. Grosart quotes the arrangement,—the Sun, Raphael; the Moon, Gabriel; Mercury, Michael; Mars, Chemuel; Jupiter, Adahiel; Venus, Haniel; Saturn, Zaphiel.

l. 4. motions. Nothing is more easy and common than the dropping of the final 's', which in writing was indicated by little more than a stroke. The reference is to the doctrine of cycles and epicycles.

l. 13. But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall. Grosart and Chambers adopt the reading 'his Crosse' of 1635-69, the former without any reference to the alternative reading. Professor Norton, in the Grolier Club edition, prints this, but in a note at the end remarks' that all editions after that of 1633 give this verse, correctly,

The agreement of the later editions is of little importance. They too often agree to go wrong. The balance of the MS. evidence is on the side of 1633. To me 'this' seems the more vivid and pointed reading. The line must be taken in close connexion with what precedes. 'If I turned to the East,' says Donne, 'I should see Christ lifted on to his Cross to die, a Sun by rising set. And unless Christ had consented to rise and set on this Crosse (this Crosse which I should see in vision if I turned my head), which was raised this day, Sin would have eternally benighted all.'

l. 22. turne all spheres. The 'tune all speares' of the editions and some MSS. is tempting because of (as it is doubtless due to) the Platonic doctrine of the music of the spheres. But Donne was more of a Schoolman and Aristotelian than a Platonist, and I think there can be little doubt that he is describing Christ as the 'first mover'. On the other hand 'tune' may include 'turne'. The Dutch poet translates:

The idea that the note of each is due to the rate at which it is spun is that of Plato, The Republic, x.

Page 338. THE LITANIE.

In a letter to Goodyere written apparently in 1609 or 1610, Donne says: 'Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know imports no other then supplication, but all Churches have one forme of supplication, by that name. Amongst ancient annals I mean some 800 years, I have met two Litanies in Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my meditations, for in good faith I thought not upon them then, but they give me a defence, if any man, to a Lay man, and a private, impute it as a fault, to take such divine and publique names, to his own little thoughts. The first of these was made by Ratpertus a Monk of Suevia; and the other by S. Notker, of whom I will give you this note by the way, that he is a private Saint, for a few Parishes; they were both but monks and the Letanies poor and barbarous enough; yet Pope Nicolas the 5, valued their devotion so much, that he canonized both their Poems, and commanded them for publike service in their Churches: mine is for lesser Chappels, which are my friends, and though a copy of it were due to you, now, yet I am so unable to serve my self with writing it for you at this time (being some 30 staves of 9 lines) that I must intreat you to take a promise that you shall have the first, for a testimony of that duty which I owe to your love, and to my self, who am bound to cherish it by my best offices. That by which it will deserve best acceptation, is, that neither the Roman Church need call it defective, because it abhors not the particular mention of the blessed Triumphers in heaven; nor the Reformed can discreetly accuse it, of attributing more then a rectified devotion ought to doe.'

The Litanies referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere may be read in Migne's Patrologia Latina, vol. lxxxvii, col. 39 and 42. They are certainly barbarous enough. That of Ratpertus is entitled Litania Ratperti ad processionem diebus Dominicis, and begins:

The other is headed Notkeri Magistri cognomento Balbuli Litania rhythmica, and opens thus:

Michael, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen, martyrs and virgins, are appealed to in both. There are some differences in respect of particular saints invoked.

It is interesting also to compare Donne's series of petitions with those in a Middle English Litany preserved in the Balliol Coll. MS. 354 (published by Edward Flügel in Anglia xxv. 220). The poetry is very poor and I need not quote. The interesting feature is the list of petitions 'Vnto the ffader', 'ye sonne', 'ye holy gost', 'the trinite', 'our lady', 'ye angelles'. 'ye propre angell', 'John baptist', 'ye appostiles', 'ye martires', 'the confessours', 'ye virgins', 'unto all sayntes'. Donne, it will be observed, includes the patriarchs and the prophets, but omits any reference to a guardian angel and to the saints. Other references in his poems and sermons show that he had the thought of a guardian angel often in his mind: 'As that Angel, which God hath given to protect thee, is not weary of his office, for all thy perversenesses, so, howsoever God deale with thee, be not thou weary of bearing thy part, in his Quire here in the Militant Church.' Sermons 80. 44. 440.

'As the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished as Power (The Father), Knowledge (The Son), Love (The Holy Ghost), and are yet identical, not three but one, may in me power, love, and knowledge be thus at once distinct and identical.' The comma after 'these' in D, H49, Lec was accidentally dropped. In 1635-69 a comma was then interpolated after 'instinct' and 'Of these' was connected with what follows: 'Of these let all mee elemented bee,' 'these' being made to point forward to the next line. Chambers and the Grolier Club editor both read thus. But D, H49, Lec show what was the original punctuation. Without 'Of these' it is difficult to give a precise meaning to 'instinct'. It would be easy to change 'a such' to 'such a' with most of the MSS., but Donne seems to have affected this order. Compare Elegie X: The Dreame, p. 95, l. 17:

Page 341, l. 86. In Abel dye. Abel was to the early Church a type of Christ, as being the first martyr.

Page 343, ll. 122-4. One might omit the brackets in these lines and substitute a semicolon after 'hearken too' and a comma after 'and do', and make the sense clearer. The MSS. bear evidence to their difficulty. There is certainly no call for brackets as we use them, and the 1633 edition is more sparing of them in this poem than the later editions. What Donne says is: 'While this quire' (enumerated in the previous stanzas) 'prays for us and thou hearkenest to them, let not us whose duty is to pray, to endure patiently, [pg 241] and to do thy will, trust in their prayers so far as to forget our duty of obedience and service.'

Page 347, l. 231. Which well, if we starve, dine: 'well' has the support of all the MSS. and may be the adverb placed before its verb. 'If we starve they dine well.' In this wire-drawn and tormented poem it is hard to say what Donne may not have written. Most of the editors read 'will', and this appears in some copies of 1633.

l. 243. Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry. The 'cry' of the editions is surely right. God is at once the source of our prayers and their answerer. Our prayers are echoes of what His grace inspires in our hearts. The 'eye' of S and other MSS., which also read 'wretches' for 'ecchoes', is due to a misapprehension of the condensed thought, and 'eye' with 'ecchoes' is entirely irrelevant. JC tries another emendation: 'Oh thou heare our cry.'

'Every man who prostrates himselfe in his chamber, and poures out his soule in prayer to God;... though his faith assure him, that God hath granted all that he asked upon the first petition of his prayer, yea before he made it, (for God put that petition in to his heart and mouth, and moved him to aske it, that thereby he might be moved to grant it), yet as long as the Spirit enables him he continues his prayer,' &c. Sermons 80. 77. 786.

But indeed we do not need to go to the Sermons to see that this is Donne's meaning. He has emphasized it already in this poem: e.g. in Stanza xxiii:

'But in things of this kind (i.e. sermons), that soul that inanimates them never departs from them. The Spirit of God that dictates them in the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets him again (as we meet ourselves in a glass) in the eyes and ears and hearts of the hearers and readers.' Gosse, Life, &c., i. 123: To ... the Countess of Montgomery.

'God cannot be called a cry', Grosart says; but St. Paul so describes the work of the Spirit: 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.' Calvin thus closes his note on the passage: 'Atque ita locutus est Paulus quo significantius id totum tribueret Spiritus gratiae. Iubemur quidem pulsare, sed nemo sponte praemeditari [pg 242] vel unam syllabam poterit, nisi arcano Spiritus sui instinctu nos Deus pulset, adeoque sibi corda nostra aperiat.'

Page 348, l. 246. Gaine to thy self, or us allow. If we perish neither Christ nor we have gained anything. Both have died in vain. If 'and' is substituted for 'or' in this line (1635-69 and Chambers) then the next line becomes otiose.

Page 348. Upon the translation of the Psalmes, &c.

We do not know what was the occasion of these lines. The Countess was the mother of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and of Pembroke after his brother's death. Poems by the former are frequently found with Donne's, e.g. in the Hawthornden MS. which is made from a collection in Donne's own possession. Doubtless they were known to one another, but there is no evidence of intimacy, such as letters. To the Countess of Montgomery Donne in 1619 sent a copy of one of his sermons which she had asked for (Gosse, Life, &c., ii. 123). It may have been for her that he composed this poem.

An elaborate copy of the Psalms was prepared by John Davis of Hereford. From this they were published in 1822.

From l. 53 it is evident that Donne's poem was written after the death of the Countess of Pembroke in 1621.

Page 349, l. 38. So well attyr'd abroad, so ill at home. Donne has probably in mind the French versions of Clement Marot, which were the war-songs of the Huguenots.

Page 351. To Mr. Tilman.

Of Mr. Tilman I can find no trace in printed Oxford or Cambridge registers. The poem is a strange comment on the seventeenth century's estimate of the clergy:

In his Life of George Herbert Walton tells us of Herbert's resolution to enter the Church, and the opposition he met with: 'He did, at his return to London, acquaint a Court-friend with his resolution to enter into Sacred Orders, who perswaded him to alter it, as too mean an employment, and too much below his birth, and the excellent abilities and endowments of his mind. To whom he replied, 'It hath been formerly judg'd that the Domestick Servants of the King of Heaven, should be of the noblest Families on Earth: and, though the Iniquity of the late Times have made Clergy-men meanly valued, and the sacred name of Priest contemptible; yet, I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities, to advance the Glory of that God that gave them.' This estimate of the clergy must not be overlooked when considering the struggle that went on in Donne's mind too before he crossed the Rubicon.

Page 352, l. 43. As Angels out of clouds, &c. Walton doubtless [pg 243] had this line in his mind when he described Donne's own preaching: 'A Preacher in earnest, weeping sometimes for his Auditory, sometimes with them, alwayes preaching to himselfe, like an Angel from a cloud, though in none: carrying some (as S. Paul was) to heaven, in holy raptures; enticing others, by a sacred art and courtship, to amend their lives; and all this with a most particular grace, and un-imitable fashion of speaking.'

Page 352. A Hymne To Christ.

Page 353, ll. 9-12. Perhaps the rhetoric of these lines would be improved by shifting the semicolon from l. 10 to l. 11. 'In putting, at thy behest, the seas between my friends and me, I sacrifice them unto thee: Do thou put thy,' &c. As the verse stands the connexion between the first two lines and the next is a little vague.

l. 12. thy sea. I have adopted 'sea' from the MSS. in place of 'seas' 1633. It was easy for the printer to take over 'seas' from the preceding line, but 'sea' is the more pointed word. The sea is the blood of Christ. The 1635-69 editions indeed read 'blood', which is as though a gloss had crept in from the margin. More probably 'blood' was a first version, changed by a bold metaphor to a more striking antithesis.

Miss Spearing has drawn my attention, since writing this note, to the peroration of A Sermon of Valediction at my going into Germany, at Lincolns-Inne, April 18, 1619, which I had overlooked. It confirms the rightness of 'sea'. The whole passage is of interest in connexion with this poem: 'Now to make up a circle, by returning to our first word, remember: As we remember God, so for his sake, let us remember one another. In my long absence, and far distance from hence, remember me, as I shall do you in the ears of that God, to whom the farthest East, and the farthest West are but as the right and left ear in one of us; we hear with both at once, and he hears in both at once; remember me, not my abilities; for when I consider my Apostleship that I was sent to you, I am in St. Pauls quorum, quorum ego sum minimus, the least of them that have been sent; and when I consider my infirmities, I am in his quorum, in another commission, another way, Quorum ego maximus; the greatest of them; but remember my labors, and endeavors, at least my desire, to make sure your salvation. And I shall remember your religious cheerfulness in hearing the word, and your christianly respect towards all them that bring that word unto you, and towards myself in particular far bove my merit. And so as your eyes that stay here, and mine that must be far of, for all that distance shall meet every morning, in looking upon that same Sun, and meet every night, in looking upon the same Moon; so our hearts may meet morning and evening in that God, which sees and hears everywhere; that you may come thither to him with your prayers, that I, (if I may be of use for his glory, and your edification in this place) may be restored [pg 244] to you again; and may come to him with my prayer that what Paul soever plant amongst you, or what Apollos soever water, God himself will give us the increase: That if I never meet you again till we have all passed the gate of death, yet in the gates of heaven, I may meet you all, and there say to my Saviour and your Saviour, that which he said to his Father and our Father, Of those whom thou hast given me, have I not lost one. Remember me thus, you that stay in this Kingdome of peace, where no sword is drawn, but the sword of Justice, as I shal remember you in those Kingdomes, where ambition on one side, and a necessary defence from unjust persecution on the other side hath drawn many swords; and Christ Jesus remember us all in his Kingdome, to which, though we must sail through a sea, it is the sea of his blood, where no soul suffers shipwrack; though we must be blown with strange winds, with sighs and groans for our sins, yet it is the Spirit of God that blows all this wind, and shall blow away all contrary winds of diffidence or distrust in God's mercy; where we shall be all Souldiers of one army, the Lord of Hostes, and Children of one Quire, the God of Harmony and consent: where all Clients shall retain but one Counsellor, our Advocate Christ Jesus, nor present him any other fee but his own blood, and yet every Client have a Judgment on his side, not only in a not guilty, in the remission of his sins, but in a Venite benedicti, in being called to the participation of an immortal Crown of glory: where there shall be no difference in affection, nor in mind, but we shall agree as fully and perfectly in our Allelujah, and gloria in excelsis, as God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost agreed in the faciamus hominem at first; where we shall end, and yet begin but then; where we shall have continuall rest, and yet never grow lazie; where we shall be stronger to resist, and yet have no enemy; where we shall live and never die, where we shall meet and never part.' Sermons 26. 19. 280.

l. 28. Fame, Wit, Hopes, &c. Compare: 'How ill husbands then of this dignity are we by sinne, to forfeit it by submitting our selves to inferior things? either to gold, then which every worme, (because a worme hath life, and gold hath none) is in nature more estimable, and more precious; Or, to that which is lesse than gold, to Beauty; for there went neither labour, nor study, nor cost to the making of that; (the Father cannot diet himselfe so, nor the mother so, as to be sure of a faire child) but it is a thing that hapned by chance, wheresoever it is; and, as there are Diamonds of divers waters, so men enthrall themselves in one clime to a black, in another to a white beauty. To that which is lesse then gold or Beauty, voice, opinion, fame, honour, we sell our selves.' Sermons 50. 38. 352.

Page 354. The Lamentations of Jeremy.

Immanuel Tremellius was born in the Ghetto of Ferrara in 1510. His father was apparently a Jewish surgeon, a man of distinction in [pg 245] the Jewish community. Educated as a Jew, Tremellius became a Christian about the age of twenty, and, under the influence of the Protestant movement which was agitating Italy as well as other countries, a Calvinist. When persecution began Tremellius fled from Lucca, where he had taught Hebrew under the reformer Vermigli, to Strasburg, and thereafter his life was that of the wandering, often fugitive, scholar and reformer. He was invited to England by Cranmer in 1548, and held the Professorship of Hebrew at Cambridge until 1553. The accession of Mary drove him back to the Continent, and he was tutor to the children of the Duke of Zweibrüchen from 1554 to 1558, and rector of the Gymnasium at Hornbach from 1558 to 1560. The Duke became a Lutheran, and Tremellius was exiled, but found after a year or two a haven in the University of Heidelberg, where Duke Frederick III had rallied to the Calvinist cause. Tremellius was Professor of Theology here from 1562-77, and it was here that he issued most of his works. He had already published a Hebrew version of the Genevan Catechism intended for his Jewish brethren. The works issued at Heidelberg include a Chaldaic and Syriac Grammar, an edition of the Peschito (an old Syrian version of the New Testament), and the Latin translation of the Old Testament which Donne utilized for his paraphrase. In this work he was assisted by his son-in-law Francis Junius (father of the Anglo-Saxon and Antiquarian scholar), a native of Bourges, who had served as a field-preacher under William the Silent. Junius was responsible only for the Apocrypha, so that Donne rightly mentions Tremellius alone. The work was published at Frankfort in 1575-9; in London in 1580, 1581, and 1585; at Geneva in 1590 and 1617. In the Genevan editions it was coupled with Beza's translation of the New Testament. The whole was re-issued at Hanover as late as 1715.

Duke Frederick III's successor was a Lutheran, and Tremellius was driven into exile once more in 1577. His last years were spent as teacher in the Academy instituted by Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, in Sedan. Here he died in 1580.

I have compared Donne's version throughout with both Tremellius' translation and the Vulgate, and wherever the collation helps to fix the text I have quoted their readings in the textual notes. I add here one or two more quotations from the originals. Tremellius' version was accompanied, it must be remembered, with an elaborate commentary.

Page 356, l. 58. accite, the reading of B, O'F as well as 1635-69, I have not yet found elsewhere in Donne's works, but doubtless it occurs. Shakespeare uses it once:

Chambers has printed this poem from 1639, noting occasionally the readings of 1635 and 1650, but ignoring consistently those of 1633. Here 1633 has the support of N, TCD; B reads 'they none could get'; and O'F, if I may trust my collation, agrees with 1635-69; Grolier follows 1633 but conjectures 'the sought-for meat'. This is unnecessary. It is quite in Donne's style to close with an abrupt 'they could not get'. Modern punctuation would change the comma to a semicolon. The version of Tremellius runs: 'Expirarunt quum quaererent escam sibi, qua reficerent se ipsos.' The Vulgate, 'consumpti sunt, quia quaesierunt cibum sibi ut refocillarent animum.'

Page 357, l. 81. Of all which heare I mourne: i.e. 'which hear that I mourn.' The construction is harsh, and I was tempted for a moment to adopt the 'me' of N, but Donne is translating Tremellius, and 'me in gemitu esse' is not quite the same thing as 'me gementem'. Grosart and Chambers and the Grolier Club editor would not have followed 1639 in changing 'heare' to 'here' had they consulted the original poem which Donne is paraphrasing in any version. The Vulgate runs: 'Audierunt quia ingemisco ego, et non est qui consoletur me.'

Page 359, l. 161. poure, for thy sinnes. The 'poure out thy sinnes' of 1635-69 which Grosart and Chambers follow is obviously wrong. The words 'for thy sinnes' have no counterpart in the Latin of Tremellius or the Vulgate. The latter runs: 'Effunde sicut aquam cor tuum ante conspectum Domini.'

Cingit cicuta et molestia, Tremellius: circumdedit me felle et labore, Vulgate. Donne combines the two versions. He is fond of using 'hemlock' as the typical poison: and he tells Wotton in one of his letters that to him labour or business is the worst of evils: 'I professe that I hate businesse so much, as I am sometimes glad to remember, that the Roman Church reads that verse A negotio perambulante in tenebris, which we reade from the pestilence walking by night, so equall to me do the plague and businesse deserve avoiding.' Letters, p. 142. To Goodyere in like manner he writes, 'we who have been accustomed to one another are like in this, that we love not businesse.' Letters, p. 94.

Page 361, l. 193. the children of his quiver. Donne found this phrase in the Vulgate or in the margin of Tremellius. In the text of the latter the verse runs, 'Immitit in renes meos tela pharetrae suae.' The marginal note says, 'Heb. filios, id est, prodeuntes a pharetra.' The Vulgate reads, 'filias pharetrae suae.'

l. 197. drunke with wormewood: 'inebriavit me absinthio,' Tremellius and Vulgate.

Page 362, ll. 226-30. I have changed the full stop in l. 229, 'him', to a comma, for all these clauses are objective to 'the Lord allowes not this'. The construction is modelled on the original: 'Non enim affligit ex animo suo, moestitiaque afficit filios viri. 34. Conterere sub pedibus suis omnes vinctos terrae, 35. Detorquere ius viri coram facie superioris, 36. Pervertere hominem in causa sua, Dominus non probat.' The version of the Vulgate is similar: '33. Non enim humiliavit ex corde suo, et abiecit filios hominum, 34. Ut contereret sub pedibus suis omnes vinctos terrae; 35. Ut declinaret iudicium viri in conspectu vultus Altissimi; 36. Ut perverteret hominem in iudicio suo; Dominus ignoravit.'

Page 364, l. 299. their bone. The reading of the editions is probably right: 'Concreta est cutis eorum cum osse ipsorum,' Tremellius.

l. 302. better through pierc'd then through penury. I have no doubt that the 'through penury' of the 1635-69 editions and the MSS. is what Donne wrote. The 1633 editor changed it to 'by penury'. Donne is echoing the parallelism of 'confossi gladio quam confossi fame'. The Vulgate has simply 'Melius fuit occisio gladio quam interfectio fame'.

Page 366, l. 337. The annointed Lord, &c. Chambers, to judge from his use of capital letters, evidently reads this verse as applying to God,—'Th'Annointed Lord', 'under His shadow'. It is rather the King of Israel. Tremellius's note runs: 'Id est, Rex noster e posteritate Davidis, quo freti saltem nobis dabitur aliqua interspirandi occasio in quibuslibet angustiis: nam praefidebant Judaei dignitati illius regni, tamquam si pure et per seipsum fuisset stabile; non autem spectabant Christum, qui finis est et complementum illius typi, neque conditiones sibi imperatas.' 'The anointed of the Lord' is the translation of the Revised Version. The Vulgate version seems to indicate a prophetic reference, which may be what Chambers had in view: 'Spiritus oris nostri, Christus Dominus, captus est in peccatis nostris: In umbra tua vivemus in gentibus.' Donne took this verse as the text of a Gunpowder Plot sermon in 1622. He points out there that some commentators have applied the verse to Josiah, a good king; others to Zedekiah, a bad king: 'We argue not, we dispute not; we embrace that which arises from both, That both good Kings and bad Kings ... are the anointed of the Lord, and the breath of the nostrils, that is, the life of the people,' &c. James is 'the Josiah of our times'. James had good reasons for preferring bishops to Andrew Melville and other turbulent presbyters. But Donne, who was steeped in the Vulgate, notes a possible reference to Christ: 'Or if he lamented the future devastation of that Nation, occasioned by the death of the King of Kings, Christ Jesus, when he came into the world, this was their case prophetically.' Sermons 50. 43. 402.

l. 355. wee drunke, and pay: 'pecunia bibimus' Tremellius and Vulgate: the Latin may be present or past tense, but the verse goes on in the Vulgate, 'ligna nostra pretio comparavimus,' which shows that 'bibimus' is 'we drunk' or 'we have drunk'. The Authorized Version reads 'we have drunken'.

Page 367, l. 374. children fall. 'Juvenes ad molendum portant, et pueri ad ligna corruunt,' Tremellius; 'et pueri in ligno corruerunt,' Vulgate. But the latter translates the first half of the line quite differently.

Page 368. Hymn To God my God, in my sicknesse.

The date which Walton gives for this poem, March 23, 1630, is of course March 23, 1631, i.e. eight days before the writer's death. Donne's tense and torturing will never relaxed its hold before the final moment: Being speechlesse, he did (as Saint Stephen) look steadfastly towards heaven, till he saw the Sonne of God standing at the right hand of his Father; And being satisfied with this blessed sight, (as his soule ascended, and his last breath departed from him) he closed his owne eyes, and then disposed his hands and body into such a posture, as required no alteration by those that came to shroud him.' Walton (1670).

Donne's monument had been designed by himself and shows him thus shrouded. The epitaph too is his own composition and is the natural supplement to this hymn:

The reference in the last line of the epitaph, and the figure of the map with which he plays in the second and third stanzas of the Hymne are both illustrated by a passage in a sermon on Psalm vi. 8-10: 'In a flat Map, there goes no more, to make West East, though they be distant in an extremity, but to paste that flat Map upon a round body, and then West and East are all one. In a flat [pg 249] soule, in a dejected conscience, in a troubled spirit, there goes no more to the making of that trouble, peace, then to apply that trouble to the body of the Merits, to the body of the Gospel of Christ Jesus, and conforme thee to him, and thy West is East, thy Trouble of spirit is Tranquillity of spirit. The name of Christ is Oriens, The East; And yet Lucifer himself is called Filius Orientis, The Son of the East. If thou beest fallen by Lucifer, fallen to Lucifer, and not fallen as Lucifer, to a senselessnesse of thy fall, and an impenitiblenesse therein, but to a troubled spirit, still thy prospect is the East, still thy Climate is heaven, still thy Haven is Jerusalem; for, in our lowest dejection of all, even in the dust of the grave, we are so composed, so layed down, as that we look to the East: If I could beleeve that Trajan, or Tecla, could look Eastward, that is, towards Christ, in Hell, I could beleeve with them of Rome, that Trajan and Tecla were redeemed by prayer out of hell.' Sermons 80. 55. 558.

For 'the name of Christ is Oriens'. Donne refers in the margin to Zachariae vi. 12: 'Et loqueris ad eum dicens: Haec ait Dominus exercituum, dicens: ECCE VIR ORIENS NOMEN EJUS; et subter eum orietur, et aedificabit templum Domino.' In the English versions, Genevan and Authorized, the words run 'whose name is the Branch', but to Donne the Vulgate was the form in which he knew the Scriptures most intimately. At the same time he consulted and refers to the English versions frequently: 'that which we call the Bishops Bible, nor that which we call the Geneva Bible, and that which we may call the Kings.' Sermons 80. 50. 506.

The difference between the two versions is due, I understand, to the fact that the Hebrew participle 'rising' and the Hebrew word for 'branch' contain the same consonants. In unpointed Hebrew it was, therefore, possible to confound them. The Septuagint version is Ἀνατολὴ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ.

In describing the preparations for making Donne's tomb Walton says: 'Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so much of the sheet turned aside, as might show his lean, pale, and deathlike face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from whence he expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus.' Walton says that he stood, but Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the drapery by its folds reveals that it was modelled from a recumbent figure. Gosse, Life, &c., ii. 288.

Grosart and Chambers have boggled unnecessarily at these lines. The former inserts an unnecessary and unmetrical 'are' after 'Gibraltare'. The latter interpolates a mark of interrogation after 'Gibraltare', putting 'Anyan, and Magellan and Gibraltare' on a level with the Pacific, the 'eastern riches' and Jerusalem, i.e. six possible homes instead of three. What the poet says is simply, 'Be my home [pg 250] in the Pacific, or in the rich east, or in Jerusalem, to each I must sail through a strait, viz. Anyan (i.e. Behring Strait) if I go west by the North-West passage, or Magellan, or Gibraltar. These, all of which are straits, are ways to them, and none but straits are ways to them.' A condensed construction makes 'are ways to them' predicate to two subjects. For 'the straight of Anian' see Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, vol. vii, Glasgow, 1904, esp. the map at p. 256, which shows very distinctly how the 'Straight of Anian' was conceived to separate America from 'Cathaia in Asia' and to lead right on to Japan and the 'Ilandes of Moluccae', 'the eastern riches.' The Mare Pacificum lies further to the south and east, entered by the 'Straight of Magellanes' between Peru and the 'Terra del Fuego', which latter is not an island but part of the great 'Terra Australis'. Thus 'none but straights' lead to the 'eastern riches' or the Pacific. 'Outre ce que les navigations des modernes ont des-jà presque descouvert que ce n'est point une isle, ains terre ferme et continente avec l'Inde orientale d'un costé, et avec les terres qui sont soubs les deux poles d'autre part; ou, si elle en est separée, que c'est d'un si petit destroit et intervalle, qu'elle ne merite pas d'estre nommé isle pour cela.' Montaigne, Essais, i. 31: Des Cannibales.

The conceit about the 'straits' Donne had already used: 'a narrower way but to a better Land; thorow Straits; 'tis true; but to the Pacifique Sea, The consideration of the treasure of the Godly Man in this World, and God's treasure towards him, both in this, and the next.' Sermons 26. 5. 71.

'Who ever amongst our Fathers thought of any other way to the Moluccaes, or to China, then by the Promontory of Good Hope? Yet another way opened itself to Magellan; a Straite; it is true; but yet a way thither; and who knows yet, whether there may not be a North-East, and a North-West way thither, besides?' Sermons 80. 24. 241.

Nevertheless by the time Donne wrote his hymn the sea to the south of Terra del Fuego had recently been discovered. He is using the language of a slightly earlier date, of his own youth, when travels and far countries were much in his imagination. In 1617 George, Lord Carew, writing to Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador at the Court of the Mogul, says: 'The Hollanders have discovered to the southward of the Strayghts of Magellen an open sea and free passage to the south sea.' Letters of George, Lord Carew to Sir Thomas Roe, Camden Society, 1860. For the 'Straight of Anyan' compare also:

For 'Ænian' in this passage Grosart conjectures 'Aegean'! I have put a semicolon for a comma in the third last line quoted. I take it and the preceding to be a quotation from the traveller's talk.

Page 369. A Hymne To God the Father.

The text of the 1633 edition, which is, with one trifling exception, that of the other printed editions, is followed by Walton in the first short life of Donne prefixed to the LXXX Sermons (1640). Walton probably took it from one of the 1633, 1635, or 1639 editions; but he may have had a copy of the poem. The MSS. which contain the hymn have some important differences, and instead of noting these as variants or making a patchwork text I have thought it best to print the poem as given in A18, N, O'F, S96, TCC, TCD. The six MSS. represent three or perhaps two different sources if O'F and S96 are derived from a common original—(1) A18, N, TC, (2) S96, (3) O'F. It is not likely, therefore, that their variants are simply editorial emendations. In some respects their text seems to me to improve on that of the printed editions.

S96 and O'F differ from the third group in reading, at l. 5, 'I have not done.' On the other hand, A18 and TC at l. 4 read 'do them', and at l. 15 'this sunne' (probably a misreading of 'thie'). It seems to me that the readings of l. 2 ('is'), l. 3 ('those sinnes'), l. 7 ('by which I won'), and l. 15 ('Sweare by thyself') are undoubtedly improvements, and in a text constructed on the principle adopted by Mr. Bullen in his anthologies I should adopt them. Some of the other readings, e.g. l. 18 ('I have no more'), probably belong to a first version of the poem and were altered by the poet himself. O'F, which was prepared in 1632, strikes out 'have' and writes 'fear' above. But in a seventeenth-century poem, circulating in MS. and transcribed in commonplace-books, who can say which emendations are due to the author, which to transcribers? Moreover, the line 'I have no more', i.e. no more to ask, emphasizes the play upon his own name which runs through the poem. 'I have no more' is equivalent to 'I am Donne'.

Walton in citing this hymn adds: 'I have the rather mentioned this Hymn for that he caused it to be set to a most grave and solemn tune and to be often sung to the Organ by the Choristers of St. Pauls Church, in his own hearing, especially at the Evening Service; and at his Customary Devotions in that place, did occasionally say to a friend, The words of this Hymne have restored me to the same thoughts of joy that possest my Soul in my sicknesse when I composed it. And, O the power of Church-music! that Harmony [pg 252] added to it has raised the Affections of my heart, and quickened my graces of zeal and gratitude; and I observe, that I always return from paying this publick duty of Prayer and Praise to God, with an unexpressible tranquillity of mind, and a willingness to leave the world.'

Walton does not tell us who composed the music he refers to, but the following setting has been preserved in Egerton MS. 2013. The composer is John Hillton (d. 1657), organist to St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. See Grove's Dictionary of Music.

In a powerful sermon on Matthew xxi. 44, Donne enumerates this among the curses that will overwhelm the sinner: 'There shall fall upon him those sinnes which he hath done after anothers dehortation, and those, which others have done after his provocation.' Sermons 50. 35. 319.

ELEGIES UPON THE AUTHOR.

The first and third of these Elegies, those by King and Hyde, were affixed, without any signature, to Deaths Duell, or A Consolation to the Soule, against the dying Life, and living Death of the Body.... By that late learned and Reverend Divine John Donne, D^r in Divinity, and Deane of S. Pauls, London. Being his last Sermon, and called by his Maiesties houshold The Doctors owne Fvnerall Sermon. London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Beniamin Fisher, and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in Alders-gate street. 1632. The book was entered in the Stationers' Register to Beniamin Fisher and Richard Redmer on the 30th of September, 1631, and was issued with a dedicatory letter by Redmer to his [pg 255] sister 'M^rs Elizabeth Francis of Brumsted in Norff' and a note 'To the Reader' signed 'R'. Now we know from his own statement that King was Donne's executor and had been entrusted with his sermons which at King's 'restless importunity' Donne had prepared for the press. (Letter, dated 1664, prefixed to Walton's Lives, 1670.) The sermons and papers thus consigned to King were taken from him later at the instance apparently of Donne's son. But the presence of King's epitaph in this edition of Deaths Duell seems to show that he was responsible for, or at any rate permitted, the issue of the sermon by Redmer and Fisher. The reappearance of these Elegies signed, and accompanied by a number of others, suggests in like manner that King may have been the editor behind Marriot of the Poems in 1633. This would help to account for the general excellence of the text of that edition, for King, a poet himself as well as an intimate friend, was better fitted to edit Donne's poems than the gentle and pious Walton, who was less in sympathy with the side of Donne which his poetry reveals.

Of Henry King (1591-1669) poet, 'florid preacher', canon of Christ Church, dean of Rochester, and in 1641 Bishop of Chichester it is unnecessary to say more here. A fresh edition of his poems by Professor Saintsbury is in preparation and will show how worthy a disciple he was of Donne as love-poet, eulogist, and religious poet. Probably the finest of his poems is The Surrender.

It was to King also that Redmer was indebted for the frontispiece to Deaths Duell, the picture of Donne in his shroud, reproduced in the first volume. 'It was given', Walton says, 'to his dearest friend and Executor D^r King, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white Marble, as it now stands in the Cathedral Church of St. Pauls.'

The second of the Elegies in 1633 was apparently by the author of the Religio Medici and must be his earliest published work, written probably just after his return from the Continent. The lines were withdrawn after the first edition.

The Edw. Hyde responsible for the third Elegy, 'On the death of Dr. Donne,' is said by Professor Norton to be Edward Hyde, D.D. (1607-59), son of Sir Lawrence Hyde of Salisbury. Educated at Westminster School and Cambridge he became a notable Royalist divine; had trouble with Parliament; and wrote various sermons and treatises (see D.N.B.). 'A Latin poem by Hyde is prefixed to Dean Duport's translation of Job into Greek verse (1637) and he contributed to the "Cambridge Poems" some verses in celebration of the birth of Princess Elizabeth.'

It would be interesting to think that the author of the lines on Donne was not the divine but his kinsman the subsequent Lord Chancellor. There is this to be said for the hypothesis, that among those who contribute to the collection of complimentary verses are some of Clarendon's most intimate friends about this time, viz. Thomas Carew, Sir Lucius Carie or Lord Falkland, and (but his elegy [pg 256] appears first in 1635) Sidney Godolphin. The John Vaughan also, whose MS. lines to Donne I have printed in the introduction (Text and Canon, &c., p. lxiv, note (9)), is enrolled by Clarendon among his intimates at this time. If his friends, legal and literary, were thus eulogizing Donne, why should Hyde not have tried his hand too? However, we know of no other poetical effusions by the historian, and as these verses were first affixed with King's to Deaths Duell it is most probable that their author was a divine.

The author of the fourth elegy, Dr. C. B. of O., is Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Oxford (1582-1635). Walton reprinted the poem in the Lives (1670) as 'by Dr. Corbet ... on his Friend Dr. Donne'. We have no particulars regarding this friendship, but they were both 'wits' and their poems figure together in MS. collections. Ben Jonson was an intimate of Corbet's, who was on familiar terms with all the Jacobean wits and poets. For Corbet's life see D.N.B. His poems are in Chalmers' collection.

The Hen. Valentine of the next Elegy matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in December, 1616, and proceeded B.A. in 1620/1, M.A. 1624. He was incorporated at Oxford in 1628, where he took the degree of D.D. in 1636. On the 8th of December, 1630, he was appointed Rector of Deptford. He was either ejected under the Commonwealth or died, for Mallory, his successor, was deprived in 1662. For this information I am indebted to the Biographical Register of Christ's College, 1505-1905, &c., compiled by John Peile ... Master of the College, 1910. Of works by him the British Museum Catalogue contains Foure Sea-Sermons preached at the annual meeting of the Trinitie Companie in the Parish Church of Deptford, London, 1635, and Private devotions, digested into six litanies ... Seven and twentieth edition, London, 1706. The last was first published in 1651.

Izaak Walton's Elegie underwent a good deal of revision. Besides the variants which I have noted, 1635-69 add the following lines:

In 1658 and 1670, when the Elegie was transferred to the enlarged Life of Donne, it was again revised, and opens:

[pg 257] But the poem in its final form is included in the many reprints of Walton's Lives, and it is unnecessary to note the numerous verbal variations. The most interesting is in ll. 25-6.

Professor Norton notes that 'the name of the author of this' (the seventh) 'Elegy is given as Carie or Cary in all the early editions, by mistake for Carew'. But the spelling (common in the MSS.) simply represents the way in which the name was pronounced. Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?) was sewer-in-ordinary to King Charles in 1633, and in February 163¾ his most elaborate work, the Coelum Britannicum, was performed at Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday. It was published immediately afterwards, 1634. His collected Poems were issued in 1640 and contained this Elegie. I note the following variants from the text of 1640 as reproduced by Arthur Vincent (Muses Library, 1899):

3. dare we not trust 1633: did we not trust 1640; 5. Churchman 1633: lecturer 1640; 8. thy Ashes 1633: the ashes 1640; 9. no voice, no tune? 1633: nor tune, nor voice? 1640; 17. our Will, 1633: the will, 1640; 44. dust 1633: dung 1640; rak'd 1633: search'd 1640; 50. stubborne language 1633: troublesome language 1640; 58. is purely thine 1633: was only thine 1640; 59. thy smallest worke 1633: their smallest work 1640; 63. repeale 1633: recall 1640; 65. Were banish'd 1633: Was banish'd 1640; 66. o'th'Metamorphoses 1633: i'th'Metamorphoses 1640;

Surely 'in this last Age' goes with 'Turne ballad rime'; 73. awfull solemne 1633; solemn awful 1640; 74. faint lines 1633: rude lines 1640; 81. maintaine 1633: retain 1640; 88. our losse 1633: the loss 1640; 89. an Elegie, 1633: one Elegy, 1640;

Some of these differences are trifling, but in several instances (3, 8, 50, 59, 66, 91-2) the 1633 text is so much better that it seems probable that the poem was printed in 1640 from an early, unrevised version. In 87. 'the' 1633, 1640 should be 'thee'.

Sir Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), was a young man of twenty-one when Donne died, and succeeded his father in the year in which this poem was published. He had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin. 'His first years of reason', [pg 258] Wood says, 'were spent in poetry and polite learning, into the first of which he made divers plausible sallies, which caused him therefore to be admired by the poets of those times, particularly by Ben Jonson ... by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield ... and by Sir John Suckling, who afterwards brought him into his poem called The Session of Poets thus,

But Falkland is best known through his friendship with Clarendon, whose account of him is classical: 'With these advantages' (of birth and fortune) 'he had one great disadvantage (which in the first entrance into the world is attended with too much prejudice) in his person and presence, which was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful; and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity; and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody would have expected music from that tongue; and sure no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world: but then no man sooner or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice: that little person and small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition of the strongest limbs, and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strength, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures: and that untuned voice and tongue easily discovered itself to be supplied and governed by a mind and understanding so excellent that the wit and weight of all he said carried another kind of lustre and admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the persons present, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is usually attended with; and his disposition and nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1827) i. 42-50. Coming from him, Falkland's poem is an interesting testimony to the influence of Donne's poetry, presence, and character.

Jaspar Mayne (1604-72), author of The City Match, was a student and graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, a poet, dramatist, and divine. He wrote complimentary verses on the Earl of Pembroke, Charles I, Queen Henrietta, Cartwright, and Ben Jonson—all, like those on Donne, very bad. He was the translator of the Epigrams ascribed to Donne and published with some of his Paradoxes, Problemes, Essays, Characters in 1651.

Arthur Wilson (1595-1652), historian and dramatist, author of The [pg 259] Inconstant Lady and The Swisser, had in 1633 just completed a rather belated course at Trinity College, Oxford, whither he had gone after leaving the service of the third Earl of Essex. For Wilson's Life see D.N.B. and Feuillerat: The Swisser ... avec une Introduction et des Notes, Paris, 1904.

The 'Mr. R. B.' who wrote these lines is said by Mr. Gosse to be the voluminous versifier Richard Brathwaite (1588-1673), author of A Strappado for the Divell and other works, satirical and pious. He is perhaps the most likely candidate for the initials, which are all we have to go by. At the same time it is a little surprising that a poet whose name was so well known should have concealed himself under initials, the device generally of a young man venturing among more experienced poets. If he had not been too young in 1633, I should have ventured to suggest that the author was Ralph Brideoak, who proceeded B.A. at Oxford 1634, and in 1638 contributed lines to Jonsonus Virbius. He was afterwards chaplain to Speaker Lenthall, and died Bishop of Chichester. In the lines on Jonson, Brideoak describes the reception of Jonson's plays with something of the vividness with which the poet here describes the reception of Donne's sermons. He also refers to Donne:

This last line echoes Donne (p. 204, l. 24). Most of Donne's eulogists were young men.

Brathwaite's wife died in 1633, and, perhaps following Donne, he for some years wrote Anniversaries upon his Panarete. W. C. Hazlitt suggests Brome as the author of the lines on Donne, which is not likely.

Endymion Porter (1587-1649) may have had a common interest with Donne in the Spanish language and literature, for the former owed his early success as an ambassador and courtier to his Spanish descent and upbringing. He owes his reputation now mainly to his patronage of art and poetry and to the songs of Herrick. For his life see D.N.B. and E. B. de Fonblanque's Lives of the Lords Strangford, 1877.

Daniel Darnelly, the author of the long Latin elegy added to the collection in 1635, was, according to Foster (Alumni Oxonienses, vol. i. 1891), the son of a Londoner, and matriculated at Oxford on Nov. 14, 1623, at the age of nineteen. He proceeded B.A. in 1627, M.A. 16²⁹⁄30, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1634. He is described in Musgrave's Obituary as of Trinity Hall. In 1632 he was appointed rector of Curry Mallet, Somersetshire, and of Walden St. Paul, Herts., 1634. This would bring him into closer touch with London, and probably explains his writing an elegy for the forthcoming [pg 260] second edition of Donne's Poems. He was rector of Teversham, Cambridgeshire, from 1635 to 1645, when his living was sequestered. He died on the 23rd of November, 1659.

The heading of this poem shows that it was written at the request of some one, probably King. In l. 35 Nilusque minus strepuisset the reference is to the great cataract. See Macrobius, Somn. Scip. ii. 4.

Of Sidney Godolphin (1610-43) Clarendon says, 'There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body: so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he was pleased to be found in his company, where he was the properer man; and it may be the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness of his wit, and the composed quickness of his judgement and understanding the more notable.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, i. 51-2. He was killed at Chagford in the civil war. Professor Saintsbury has not included this poem in his collection of Godolphin's poems, Caroline Poets, ii. pp. 227-61.

John Chudleigh's name appears in MSS. occasionally at the end of different poems. In the second collection in the Trinity College, Dublin MS. G. 2. 21 (TCD Second Collection) he is credited with the authorship of Donne's lyric A Feaver, but two other poems are also ascribed to him. He is the author of another in Addl. MS. 33998. f. 62 b. Who he was, I am not sure, but probably he may be identified with John Chudleigh described in 1620 (Visitation of Devonshire) as son and heir of George Chudley of Asheriston, or Ashton, in the county of Devon, and then aged fourteen. On the 1st of June, 1621, aged 15, he matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford. He proceeded B.A. 1623-4, being described as 'equ. aur. fil.' for his father, a member of Parliament, had been created a baronet on the 1st of August, 1622. He took his M.A. in 1626, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1629 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 276). Just before taking his M.A. he was elected to represent East Looe. He died, however, before May 10, 1634, which is difficult to reconcile with his being the author of these verses in 1635, unless they were written some time before.

APPENDIX A.

LATIN POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.

Who the Dr. Andrews referred to was we do not know. Dr. Grosart identifies him with the Andrews whose poems are transcribed in H49, but this is purely conjectural.

The lines which I have taken out and made into a separate Epigram are printed in the old editions as the third and fourth lines of the letter. As Professor Norton pointed out, they have no connexion with it. They seem to be addressed to some one who had [pg 261] travelled to Paris from Frankfort, on an Embassy to the King of France, and had returned. 'The Maine passed to the Seine, into the house of the Victor, and with your return comes to Frankfort.'

If Grosart's conjecture be correct, the author of the epigram may be the Francis Andrews whose poems appear along with Donne's in H49, for among these are some political poems in somewhat the same vein:

Page 398. To Mr. George Herbert, &c.

Walton has described the incident of the seals: 'Not long before his death he caused to be drawn the figure of the Body of Christ, extended upon an Anchor, like those which Painters draw when they would present us with the picture of Christ crucified on the Cross; his varying no otherwise than to affix him not to a Cross, but to an Anchor (the Emblem of hope); this he caused to be drawn in little, and then many of those figures thus drawn to be ingraven very small in Helitropian Stones, and set in gold, and of these he sent to many of his dearest friends, to be used as Seals or Rings, and kept as memorials of him, and of his affection to them.'

These seals have been figured and described in The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxvii, p. 313 (1807); and Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, viii. 170, 216; 6th Series, x. 426, 473.

Herbert's epistle to Donne is given in 1650. In Walton's Life the first two and a half lines of Donne's Latin poem and the whole of the English one are given, and so with Herbert's reply. As printed in 1650 Herbert's reply is apparently interrupted by the insertion between the eighth and ninth lines of two disconnected stanzas, which may or may not be by Herbert. The first of these ('When Love' &c.) with some variants is given in the 1658 edition of the Life of Donne; but [pg 262] in the collected Lives (1670, 1675) it is withdrawn. The second I have not found elsewhere.

In the Life of Herbert Walton refers again to the seals and adds, 'At Mr. Herbert's death these verses were found wrapped up with that seal which was by the Doctor given to him.

Page 400, l. 22. 〈Wishes〉 I have ventured to change 'Works' to 'Wishes'. It corrects the metre and corresponds to the Latin.

Page 400. Translated out of Gazaeus, &c.

PIA
H I L A R I A
VARIAQVE
CARMINA

Formis Academicis

Cum auctoritate Superiorum.

Apud Vdalricum Rem

CIↃ. IↃC. XXIII.

The folios of this edition do not correspond to those of that which Donne seems to have used.

APPENDIX B.

POEMS WHICH HAVE BEEN ATTRIBUTED TO DONNE.

For a full discussion of the authorship of these poems see Text and Canon of Donne's Poems, pp. cxxix et seq.

Page 401. To S^r Nicholas Smyth.

Chambers points out that a Nicholas Smyth has a set of verses in Coryats Crudities, 1611.

In the Visitation of the County of Devon, 1620, a long genealogy is given, the closing portion of which shows who this Nicholas Smith or Smyth of Exeter (l. 15) and his father were:

Seven children of Sir Nicholas are given, including another Nicholas (aet. 14), and the whole is signed 'Nich Smith'.

This is doubtless Roe's friend. With Roe as a Falstaff he had [pg 264] probably 'heard the chimes at midnight' in London before he settled down to raise a family in Devonshire.

l. 7. sleeps House, &c. Ovid xi; Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, Canto xiv; Spenser, Faerie Queene, I. i.

Page 402, l. 26. Epps. 'This afternoon a servingman of the Earl of Northumberland fought with swaggering Eps, and ran him through the ear.' Manninghams Diary, 8th April, 1603 (Camden Club, p. 165). This is the only certain reference to Epps I have been able to find, but Grosart declares he is the soldier described in Dekker's Knights Conjuring as behaving with great courage at the siege of Ostend (1601-4), where he was killed. I can find no name in Dekker's work.

ll. 27-31. As printed in 1669 these lines are not very intelligible, and neither Grosart nor Chambers has corrected them. As given in the MSS. (e.g. TCD) they are a little clearer:

The purpose of bracketing 'which came too late' is obviously to keep it from being taken with ''Gainst whores and dice'—the very mistake that 1669 has fallen into and Grosart and Chambers have preserved. The drawback to this use of the bracket is that it disguises, at least to modern readers, that 'which came too late' must be taken with 'For his Body and State'. I have therefore dropped it and placed a comma after 'late'. The meaning I take to be as follows: 'The physic and counsel against whores and dice, which came too late for his own body and estate, he now bestows on me in a superficial fashion; for I found by him that of whores and dice those speak least soundly who know most from personal experience.' A rather shrewd remark. There are some spheres where experience does not teach, but corrupt.

l. 40. in that or those: 'that' the Duello, 'those' the laws of the Duello. There is not much to choose between 'these' and 'those'.

The MSS. improve both the metre and the sense of the first of these lines, which in 1669 and Chambers runs:

It is when he is sober that he never fights, though he may quarrel. Roe knows exactly how much drink it would take to make this undubb'd Don Quixote charge a windmill, or like a windmill. But the poem is too early for an actual reference to Don Quixote.

By 'braver' the poet means, not more courageous, but more splendidly attired, more 'braw'.

Page 404, l. 88. Abraham France—who wrote English hexameters. His chief works are The Countess of Pembrokes Ivy Church (1591) and The Countess of Pembrokes Emmanuel (1591). He was alive in 1633.

Page 405, l. 113. So they their weakness hide, and greatness show. Grosart refused the reading 'weakness', which he found in his favourite MS. S, and Chambers ignored it. It has, however, the support of B, O'F, and L74 (which is strong in Roe's poetry), and seems to me to give the right edge to the sarcasm. 'By giving to flatterers what they owe to worth, Kings and Lords think to hide their weakness of character, and to display the greatness of their wealth and station.' They make a double revelation of their weakness in their credulity and their love of display.

l. 128. Cuff. Henry Cuff (1563-1601), secretary to Essex and an abettor of the conspiracy.

l. 131. that Scot. It is incredible that Donne wrote these lines. He found some of his best friends among the Scotch—Hay, Sir Robert Ker, Essex, and Hamilton, to say nothing of the King.

Page 406. Satyre.

Page 407, ll. 32-3. A time to come, &c. I have adopted Grosart's punctuation and think his interpretation of 'beg' must be the right one—'beg thee as an idiot or natural.' The O.E.D. gives: '†5a. To beg a person: to petition the Court of Wards (established by Henry VIII and suppressed under Charles II) for the custody of a minor, an heiress, or an idiot, as feudal superior or as having interest in the matter: hence also fig. To beg (any one) for a fool or idiot: to take him for, set him down as. Obs.' Among other examples is, 'He proved a wiser man by much than he that begged him. Harington, Met. Ajax 46.' What the satirist says is, 'The time will come when she will beg to have wardship of thee as an idiot. If you continue she will take you for one now.'

l. 35. Besides, her〈s〉. My reading combines the variants. I think 'here' must be wrong.

Page 407. An Elegie.

Page 408, l. 5. Else, if you were, and just, in equitie &c. This is the punctuation of H39, and is obviously right, 'in equitie' going with what follows. He has denied the existence or, at least, the influence of the Fates, and now continues, 'For if you existed or had power, and if you were just, then, according to all equity I should have vanquish'd her as you did me.' Grosart and the Grolier Club editor follow 1635-54, and read:

Page 412. An Elegie.

Grosart prints this very incorrectly. He does not even reproduce correctly the MS. S, which he professes to follow. Chambers follows Grosart, adopting some of the variants of the Haslewood-Kingsborough MS. reported by Grosart. They both have the strange reading 'cut in bands' in l. 11, which as a fact is not even in S, from which Grosart professes to derive it. The reading of all the MSS., 'but in his handes,' makes quite good sense. The Scot wants matter, except in his hands, i.e. dirt, which is 'matter out of place'. The reading, 'writ in his hands', which Chambers reports after Grosart, is probably a mistake of the latter's. Indeed his own note suggests that the reading of H-K is 'but in's hands'.

Page 417. To the Countesse of Huntington.

It looks as if some lines of this poem had been lost. The first sentence has no subject unless 'That' in the second line be a demonstrative—a very awkward construction.

If written by Donne this poem must have been composed about the same time as The Storme and The Calme. He is writing apparently from the New World, from the Azores. But it is as impossible to recover the circumstances in which the poem was written as to be sure who wrote it.

Page 422. Elegie.

ll. 5-6. denounce ... pronounce. The reading of the MSS. seems to me plainly the correct one. 'In others, terror, anguish and grief announce the approach of death. Her courage, ease and joy in dying pronounce the happiness of her state.' The reading of the printed texts is due to the error by which 1635 and 1639 took 'comming' as an epithet to 'terror' as 'happy' is to 'state'. Some MSS. read 'terrors' and 'joyes'.

l. 22. Their spoyles, &c. I have adopted the MS. reading here, though with some hesitation, because (1) it is the more difficult reading: 'Soules to thy conquest beare' seems more like a conjectural emendation than the other reading, (2) The construction of the line in the printed texts is harsh—one does not bear anything 'to a conquest', (3) the meaning suits the context better. It is not souls that are spoken of, but bodies. The bodies of the wicked become the spoil of death, trophies of his victory over Adam; not so those of the good, which shall rise again. See 1 Cor. xv. 54-5.

Page 424. Psalme 137.

This Psalm is found in a MS. collection of metrical psalms (Rawlinson Poetical 161), in the Bodleian Library, transcribed by a certain R. Crane. The list of authors is Fr. Dav., Jos. Be., [pg 267] Rich. Cripps, Chr. Dav., Th. Carry. That Davison is the author of this particular Psalm is strongly suggested by the poetical Induction which in style and verse resembles the psalm. The induction is signed 'Fr. Dav.' The first verse runs:

Page 429. Song.

Soules joy, now I am gone, &c. George Herbert, in the Temple, gives A Parodie of this poem, opening:

It was one of the aims of Herbert to turn the Muse from profane love verses to sacred purposes. Mr. Chambers points to another reference to this poem in some very bad verses by Sir Kenelm Digby in Bright's edition of Digby's Poems (p. 8), The Roxburghe Club.

APPENDIX C.

I. POEMS FROM ADDITIONAL MS. 25707. Page 433.

The authorship of the four poems here printed from A25 has been discussed in the Text and Canon, &c. There is not much reason to doubt that the first is what it professes to be. The order of the names in the heading, and the character of the verses both suggest that the second and corresponding verses are Donne's contribution. There is a characteristic touch in each one. I cannot find anything eminently characteristic in any of the rest of the group. The third poem refers to the poetical controversy on Love and Reason carried on with much spirit between the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd in their Poems as printed by the younger Donne in 1660. A much finer fragment of the debate, beginning—

is attributed to Donne by the Bridgewater MS. and the MS. in the library of the Marquess of Crewe. It is part of a poem by Rudyerd in the debate in the volume referred to.

II. POEMS FROM THE BURLEY MS. Page 437.

Of the poems here printed from the Burley-on-the-Hill MS., none I think is Donne's. The chief interest of the collection is that it [pg 268] comes from a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton, and therefore presumably represents the work of the group of wits to which Donne, Bacon, and Wotton belonged. I have found only one of them in other MSS., viz. that which I have called Life a Play. This occurs in quite a number of MSS. in the British Museum, and has been published in Hannah's Courtly Poets. It is generally ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh; and Harleian MS. 733 entitles it Verses made by Sir Walter Raleigh made the same morning he was executed. I have printed it because with the first, and another in the Reliquiae Wottonianae, it illustrates Wotton's taste for this comparison of life to a stage, a comparison probably derived from an epigram in the Greek Anthology, which may be the source of Shakespeare's famous lines in As You Like It. The epitaph by Jonson on Hemmings, Shakespeare's fellow-actor and executor, is interesting. A similar epitaph on Burbage is found in Sloane MS. 1786:

An Epitaph on Mr Richard Burbage the Player.

III. POEMS FROM VARIOUS MSS. Page 443.

Of the miscellaneous poems here collected there is very little to be said. The first eight or nine come from the O'Flaherty MS. (O'F), which professes to be a collection of Donne's poems, and may, Mr. Warwick Bond thinks, have been made by the younger Donne, as it contains a poem by him. It is careless enough to be his work. They illustrate well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because of their subject-matter. Donne had written some improper poems as a young man; it was tempting therefore to assign any wandering poem of this kind to the famous Dean of St. Paul's. The first poem, The Annuntiation, has nothing to do with Donne's poem The Annuntiation and Passion, but has been attached to it in a manner which is common enough in the MSS. The poem Love's Exchange is obviously an imitation of Donne's Lovers infinitenesse (p. 17). A Paradoxe of a Painted Face was attributed to Donne because he had written a prose Paradox entitled That Women ought to paint. The poem was not published till 1660. In Harleian MS. it is said to be 'By my Lo: of Cant. follower Mr. Baker'. The lines on Black Hayre and Eyes (p. 460) are found in fifteen or more different MSS. in the British Museum alone, and were printed in Parnassus Biceps (1656) [pg 269] and Pembroke and Ruddier's Poems (1660). Two of the MSS. attribute the poem to Ben Jonson, but others assign it to W. P. or Walton Poole. Mr. Chambers points out that a Walton Poole has verses in Annalia Dubrensia (1636), and also cites from Foster's Alumni Oxonienses: 'Walton Poole of Wilts arm. matr. 9.1.1580 at Trinity Coll. aged 15.' These may be the same person. The signature A. P. or W. P. at the foot of several pages suggests that the Stowe MS. 961 of Donne's poems had belonged to some member of this family. The fragment of an Elegy at p. 462 occurs only in P, where it forms part of an Heroicall Epistle with which it has obviously nothing to do. I have thought it worth preserving because of its intense though mannered style. The line, 'Fortune now do thy worst' recalls Elegie XII, l. 67. The closing poem,'Farewell ye guilded follies,' comes from Walton's Complete Angler (1658), where it is thus introduced: 'I will requite you with a very good copy of verses: it is a farewell to the vanities of the world, and some say written by Dr. D. But let they be written by whom they will, he that writ them had a brave soul, and must needs be possest with happy thoughts of their composure.' In the third edition (1661) the words were changed to 'And some say written by Sir Harry Wotton, who I told you was an excellent Angler.' In one MS. they are attributed to Henry King, Donne's friend and literary executor, and in two others they are assigned to Sir Kenelm Digby, as by whom they are printed in Wits Interpreter (1655). Mr. Chambers points out that 'The closing lines of King's The Farewell are curiously similar to those of this poem.' He quotes:

I cannot understand why Mr. Chambers, to whom I am indebted for most of this information, was content to print so inadequate a text when Walton was in his hand. Two of his lines completely puzzled me:

'Groans' are generally the sign of care, not of its absence. However, I find that Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian, and some others read:

This explains the mystery. But Mr. Chambers followed Grosart; and Grosart was inclined to prefer the version of a bad MS. which he had found to a good printed version.

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.

Pages 5, 6. The poems of Ben Jonson are here printed just as they stand in the 1650, 1654, 1669 editions of Donne's Poems. A comparison with the 1616 edition of Jonson's Works shows some errors. The poem To John Donne (p. 5) is xxiii of the Epigrammes. The sixth line runs

The absurd 'no'n' of 1650 seems to have arisen from the printing 'no'affection' of the 1640 edition of Jonson's Works. The 1719 editor of Donne's Poems corrected this mistake. A more serious mistake occurs in the ninth line, which in the Works (1616) runs:

The error 'mean' comes from the 1640 edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, which prints 'meane'.

To John Donne (p. 6) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' is in 1616 more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.

Pages 7, 175, 369. I am indebted for the excellent copies of the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems along with which they are placed. The first is the young man of the Songs and Sonets, the Elegies and the Satyres, the counterpart of Biron and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of Shakespeare's Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in his Scrinia Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams ... Archbishop of York (1693), 'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising features.'

The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the author of the Letters, Epicedes, Anniversaries and earlier Divine Poems, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy yet ever and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness', writing at one time the serious Pseudo-Martyr, at another the outrageous Ignatius his Conclave, and again the strangely-mooded, self-revealing Biathanatos: 'mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword.'

After describing the circumstances attending the execution of the last portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the Lives (the passage is not in the earlier editions of the Life of Donne): 'And now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities of a various life: even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire is, he may rest till I have told my Reader, that I have seen many Pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in several postures: And I now mention this, because, I have seen one Picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen; with his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the present fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age: and his Motto then was,

And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set together, every beholder might say, Lord! How much is Dr. Donne already chang'd, before he is chang'd!' The change written in the portrait is the change from the poet of the Songs and Sonets to the poet of the Holy Sonnets and last Hymns.

The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made from it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on the figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also 'a board of the just height of his body'. What was this for? Walton does not explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the folds of the drapery show the statue was modelled from a recumbent figure. Can it be that Walton's account confuses two things? The incident of the picture is not in the 1640 Life, but was added in 1658. How could Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with his winding-sheet knotted 'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable that he was painted lying in his winding-sheet on the board referred to; but that the monument, as designed by himself, and executed by Nicholas Stone, was intended to represent him rising at the Last Day from the urn, habited as he had lain down—a symbolic rendering of the faith expressed in the closing words of the inscription

Page 37, l. 14. The textual note should have indicated that in most or all of the MSS. cited the whole line runs:

This is probably the original form of the line, corrected later to avoid the clashing of the 'but's.

Page 96, l. 6, note. The R212 cited here is Rawlinson Poetical MS. 212, a miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century prose and [pg 272] poetry (e.g. Davies' Epigrams. See II. p. 101). I had cited it once or twice in my first draft. The present instance escaped my eye. It helps to show how general the reading 'tyde' was.

Page 115, l. 54. goeing on it fashions. The correct reading is probably 'growing on it fashions', which has the support of both JC, and 1650-69 where 'its' is a mere error. I had made my text before JC came into my hand. To 'grow on' for 'to increase' is an Elizabethan idiom: 'And this quarrel grew on so far,' North's Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, ad fin. See also O.E.D.

I should like in closing to express my indebtedness throughout to the Oxford English Dictionary, an invaluable help and safeguard to the editor of an English text, and also to Franz's admirable Shakespeare-Grammatik (1909), which should be translated.

Page 133, l. 58. To what is said in the note on the taking of yellow amber as a drug add: 'Divers men may walke by the Sea side, and the same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all, one gathereth by the benefit of that light pebles, or speckled shells, for curious vanitie, and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall Ambar, by the same light.' Sermons 80. 36. 326.

Pages 156-7. Seeke true religion, &c. All this passage savours a little of Montaigne: 'Tout cela, c'est un signe tres-evident que nous ne recevons nostre religion qu'à nostre façon et par nos mains, et non autrement que comme les autres religions se reçoyvent. Nous nous sommes rencontrez au païs où elle estoit en usage; ou nous regardons son ancienneté ou l'authorité des hommes qui l'ont maintenue; ou creignons les menaces qu'ell' attache aux mescreans, ou suyvons ses promesses. Ces considerations là doivent estre employées à nostre creance, mais comme subsidiaires: ce sont liaisons humaines. Une autre region, d'autres tesmoings, pareilles promesses et menasses nous pourroyent imprimer par mesme voye une croyance contraire. Nous sommes chrestiens à mesme titre que nous sommes ou perigordins ou alemans.' Essais (1580), II. 12. Apologie de Raimond Sebond.

Page 220, l. 46. Compare: 'One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God loves, hee loves to the end ... His hailestones and his thunderbolts, and his showres of blood (emblemes and instruments of his Judgements) fall downe in a direct line, and affect or strike some one person, or place: His Sun, and Moone, and Starres (Emblemes and Instruments of his Blessings) move circularly, and communicate themselves to all. His Church is his chariot; in that he moves more gloriously, then in the Sun; as much more, as his begotten Son exceeds his created Sun, and his Son of glory, and of his right hand, the Sun of the firmament; and this Church, his chariot, moves [pg 273] in that communicable motion, circularly; It began in the East, it came to us, and is passing now, shining out now, in the farthest West.' Sermons 80. 2. 13-4.

l. 47. Religious tipes, is the reading of 1633. The comma has been accidentally dropped. There is no comma in 1635-69, which print 'types'.

Page 251, ll. 9-18. The source of this simile is probably Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, III. 642-56.

'Piercing of substances,' the actual penetration of one substance by another, was the Stoic as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of mixture of substance (κρᾶσις), what is now called chemical combination. The Peripatetics held that, while the qualities of the two bodies combined to produce a new quality, the substances remained in juxtaposition. Plotinus devotes the seventh book of the Enneades to the subject; and one of the arguments of the Stoics which he cites resembles Donne's problem: 'Sweat comes out of the human body without dividing it and without the body being pierced with holes.' The pores were apparently unknown. See Bouillet's Enneades de Plotin, I. 243 f. and 488-9, for references.

Page 368. Hymne To God my God, in my sicknesse.

Professor Moore Smith has at the last moment reminded me of a fact, the significance of which should have been discussed in the note on the Divine Poems, that a copy of this poem found (Gosse, Life &c. ii. 279) among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar bears the statement that the verses were written in Donne's 'great sickness in December 1623'. Professor Moore Smith is of opinion that Sir Julius Caesar may have been right and Walton mistaken, and there is a good deal to be said for this view. 'It seems', he says, 'more likely that Walton should have attributed the poem wrongly to Donne's last illness, than that the MS. copy should antedate it by seven years.' In 1640 Walton simply referred it to his deathbed; the precise date was given in 1658. Moreover the date 1623 seems to Professor Moore Smith confirmed by a letter to Sir Robert Ker (later Lord Ancrum) in 1624 (Gosse, Life &c. ii. 191), in which Donne writes, 'If a flat map be but pasted upon a round globe the farthest east and the farthest west meet and are all one.'

On the other hand, Walton's final date is very precise, and was probably given to him by King. If the poem was written at the same time as that 'to God the Father', why did it not pass into wider circulation? Stowe MS. 961 is the only collection in which I have found it. The use of the simile in the letter to Ker is not so conclusive as it seems. In that same letter Donne says, 'Sir, I took up this paper to write a letter; but my imagination was full of a sermon before, for I write but a few hours before I am to preach.' Now I have in my note cited this simile from an undated sermon on one of the Penitentiary Psalms. This, not the poem, may have been the occasion of its repetition in this letter. Donne is very prone to repeat a favourite figure—inundation, the king's stamped face &c. It is quite likely that the poem was the last, not the first, occasion on which he used the flat map. Note that the other chief figure in the poem, the straits which lead to the Pacific Sea, was used in a sermon (see note) dated February 12, 1629.

The figure of the flat map is not used, as one might expect, in the section of the Devotions headed The Patient takes his bed, but the last line of the poem is recalled by some words there: 'and therefore am I cast downe, that I might not be cast away.'

Walton's dates are often inaccurate, but here the balance of the evidence seems to me in his favour. As Mr. Gosse says, Sir Julius Caesar may have confounded this hymn with 'Wilt thou forgive'. In re-reading the Devotions with Professor Moore Smith's statement in view I have come on two other points of interest. Donne's views on the immortality of the soul (see II. pp. 160-2) are very clearly stated: 'That light, which is the very emanation of the light of God ... only that bends not to this Center, to Ruine; that which was not made of Nothing, is not thretned with this annihilation. All other things are; even Angels, even our soules; they move upon the same Poles, they [pg 275] bend to the same Center; and if they were not made immortall by preservation, their Nature could not keep them from sinking to this center, Annihilation' (pp. 216-17).

The difficult line in the sonnet Resurrection (p. 321, l. 8) is perhaps illuminated by pp. 206-8, where Donne speaks of 'thy first booke, the booke of life', 'thy second book, the booke of Nature,' and closes a further list with 'to those, the booke with seven seals, which only the Lamb which was slain, was found worthy to open; which, I hope, it shal not disagree with the measure of thy blessed spirit, to interpret, the promulgation of their pardon, and righteousnes, who are washed in the blood of the Lamb'. This is possibly the 'little booke' of the sonnet, perhaps changed by Donne to 'life-book' to simplify the reference. But the two are not the same.

ADDENDUM.

Vol. I, p. 368, l. 6. Whilst my Physitions by their love are growne Cosmographers ... Sir Julius Caesar's MS. (Addl. MS. 34324) has Loer, scil. Lore. This is probably the true reading.

ERRATUM.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.

Transcriber's Note:

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Although Scotland had accepted the Gregorian calendar in 1600, until 1752, England still followed the Julian calendar (after Julius Caesar, 44 B.C.), and celebrated New Year's Day on March 25th (Annunciation Day). Most Catholic countries accepted the Gregorian calendar (after Pope Gregory XIII) from some time after 1582 (the Catholic countries of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy in 1582, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland within a year or two, Hungary in 1587, and Scotland in 1600), and celebrated New Year's Day on January 1st. England finally changed to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

This is the reason for the double dates in the early months of the years in some parts of this book. e.g., there is a statement, on page 134, that "He died February 7, 1627/8. (i.e. 1627 in England; 1628 in Scotland). Only after March 25th (Julian New Years Day) was the year the same in the two countries. The Julian calendar was known as 'Old Style', and the Gregorian calendar as 'New Style' (N.S.).

Page lxiv, Footnote 9: 'Garrard att his quarters in ??' Perhaps 'ϑermyte' with U+03D1 GREEK THETA SYMBOL: thermyte ? perhaps meaning "(at the sign of) The Hermit"? (The printer, rightly or wrongly, seems to have used a 'theta' at the beginning of the word).

Page lxv, a facsimile of a Title Page, split a cross-page paragraph. One sentence was on page lxiv; the rest of the paragraph was on page lxvi. In the interest of a link to the page, it seemed beneficial to leave the paragraph as it was split.

Page lxv: 'VVith' is as printed.

Page lxxxvi: 'Lo:' retained, although 'Ld.' is printed above. From the context, 'Lo:' may not be a typo, as this form occurs elsewhere.

and the Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington."

Page cxvi, footnote 39 (cont.: '17-8.' corrected to '17-18.'. "To Sr Henry Wotton, p. 180, ll. 17-18."

Page cxxx: 'p. 406' corrected to 'p. 412'

"'Dear Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412)"

Pages cxxxi-cxxxii: missing word at page-turn? 'and' added in brackets.

"And as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very strong evidence,...

Page 23: 'll. 140-6' corrected to 'll. 440-6'

"The Second Anniversary, ll. 440-6 (p. 264)

Page 34: 'coporales' corrected to 'corporales'.

"'quanto subtilius huiusmodi immutationes occultas corporales perpendunt.'"

Some poems have associated music pages (starting p. 54). Html links have been added to playable and printable music files (prepared by the transcriber).

Page 57: This is only the first page of the original two pages (28 and 29) from William Corkine's "Second Book of Ayres" (1612), for 'Page 46. The Baite'. It is possible that John Donne wrote "The Baite" for a different melody, which no longer exists. The melody on page 57 may have been intended for Christopher Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love:

Come live with me and be my love:

And we will all the pleasures prove

That hills and valleys, dales and fields,

Woods or sleepy mountain yields."

As Donne's 'The Baite' ("Come live with me and be my love...."), was a parody of Marlowe's "Come live with me....", the same tune may have later been used for both.

The PDF and Midi files are an approximate transcription of the melody line for the first 16 bars, i.e., the first stanza, up to the first double barline. There appear to be only 11 bars in this section, but it can be seen from the image that a lot of the barlines are missing. These have been restored in the PDF and Midi files, so that the transcription actually makes sense, and fits the words.

The melody was transcribed using John Dowland's lute fretting chart, which gives the open strings, ascending, as: G, C, F, A, D, G, with open string, a, first fret, b, then c, d, e, f, g, h, i, k, l.

Page 84: 'p. 308, ll. 27-8' corrected to p. 308, ll. 317-8

"in the Progresse of the Soule, p. 308, ll. 317-8:"

Page 214: p. 416 corrected to p. 422.

"For the relation of this _Elegie_ to that beginning 'Death, be not proud' (p. 422) see Text and Canon, &c., p. cxliii."

Page 213: 'p. 404' corrected to p. 410'

"('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. 410)"

Pages 235, 263: The inscriptions have a character which looks like a reversed capital C, but which is actually a ROMAN NUMERAL REVERSED ONE HUNDRED (U+2183).

(Note: This works in compliant browsers.)

On Page 235, the date of Anne (More) Donne's death is given as CIↃ. DC. XVII.
i.e. hundreds, ten, (1000) plus 600 plus 17, or the year 1617, which is correct.

On Page 263, the date given is CIↃ. IↃC. XXIII.
CIↃ = 1000;
IↃC = 500+100 (600),
XXIII = 23, so the date is 1623.

(Reference for page 263: [http:// hypotheses.org/17871] ... 'Le latin de Locke ... Goudae apud Justum Ab Hoeve

CIↃ IↃC LXXXIX ...
CIↃ = 1000
IↃC se décompose en IↃ = 500 + C = 100 soit 600
LXXXIX = 89
La date correspondante est 1689 ¹⁰.

¹⁰ 2011 serait CIↃ CIↃ XI '.)

(Thus 2015 would be CIↃ CIↃ XV.)

Page 251: S69 corrected to S96

"S96 and O'F differ from the third group...."

Page 275: Erratum, p. 274.... This has been corrected.

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	Annae
Georgii	More de	Filiae
Robert	Lothesley	Soror.
Wilielmi	Equitum	Nept.
Christopheri	Aurator	Pronept.
Foeminae lectissimae, dilectissimaeq'
Conjugi charissimae, castissimaeq'
Matri piissimae, indulgentissimaeq'
xv annis in conjugio transactis,
vii post xii partum (quorum vii superstant) dies
immani febre correptae
(quod hoc saxum fari jussit
Ipse prae dolore infans)
Maritus (miserrimum dictu) olim charae charus
cineribus cineres spondet suos,
novo matrimonio (annuat Deus) hoc loco sociandos,
JOHANNE DONNE
Sacr: Theol: Profess:
Secessit
An^o xxxiii aetat. suae et sui Jesu
CIↃ. DC. XVII.
Aug. xv

		PAGE
INTRODUCTION		v
I.	The Poetry of Donne	v
II.	The Text and Canon of Donne's Poems	lvi
COMMENTARY		1
INDEX OF FIRST LINES		276

Divine Poems, beginning Pag.	1
Satyres	57
Elegies	113
Epicedes and Obsequies	161
Letters to severall personages[pg xcviii]	189
Songs and Sonnets	245
Epithalamions	317
Epigrams	337
With his paradoxes and problems	421
finished this 12 of October 1632.'

	PAGE
A learned Bishop of this Land	53
Amongst the Poets Dacus numbered is	101
An ill year of a Goodyere us bereft	145
As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant	171
Esteemed knight take triumph over death	145
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky	12
Henrie the greate, greate both in peace and war	261
How often hath my pen (mine hearts Solicitor)	103
Loe her's a man worthy indeede to travell	129
No want of duty did my mind possess	7
Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such	213
This Lifes a play groaned out by natures Arte	268
Thou send'st me prose and rimes, I send for those	160
Though Ister have put down the Rhene	261
'Tis not a coate of gray or Shepheardes Life	141
Titus the brave and valorous young gallant	101
Whoso termes love a fire, may like a poet	52
Wotton the country and the country swaine	141

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2), by John Donne, Edited by Sir Herbert John Clifford Grierson

E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek, Stephen Rowland, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

Transcriber's Note

Link to

Volume I

THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I

II

THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS

POEMS,

POEMS,

POEMS,

POEMS,

POEMS,

POEMS,

POEMS, &c.

POEMS

Epigram 84.

13o September, 1632

CANON.

XXXII.

COMMENTARY.

THE PRINTER TO &c.

Page 3. Hexastichon Bibliopolae.

A Letter.

SONGS AND SONETS.

Page 7. The Good-morrow.

Page 8. Song.

Page 10. The Undertaking.

Page 11. The Sunne Rising.

Page 12. The Indifferent.

Page 13. Loves Usury.

Page 14. The Canonization.

Page 16. The Triple Foole.

Page 17. Lovers Infiniteness.

Page 18. Song.

Page 20. The Legacie.

Page 21. A Feaver.

Page 22. Aire and Angels.

Page 23. Breake of day.

Page 24. The Anniversarie.

Page 25. A Valediction: of my name in the window.

Page 28. Twicknam Garden.

Page 29. A Valediction: of the Booke.

Page 33. Loves Growth.

Page 34. Loves Exchange.

Page 36. Confined Love.

Page 37. The Dreame.

Page 38. A Valediction: of Weeping.

Page 39. Loves Alchymie.

Page 40. The Flea.

De Vloy.

Page 41. The Curse.

Page 43. The Message.

Page 44. A Nocturnall, &c.

Page 47. The Apparition.

Page 48. The Broken Heart.

Page 49. A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.

Page 51. The Extasie.

Page 55. Loves Diet.

Page 56. The Will.

Page 58. The Funerall.

Page 59. The Blossome.

Page 61. The Primrose, &c.

Page 62. The Relique.

Page 64. The Dissolution.

Page 66. Negative Love.

Page 67. The Prohibition.

Page 68. The Expiration.

Page 70. The Paradox.

A Paradox.

Page 71. Farewell to Love.

Page 71. A Lecture upon the Shadow.

Note on the music to which certain of Donne's songs were set.

Page 8. Song.

Page 23. Breake of Day.

Page 46. The Baite.

EPIGRAMS.

E-text prepared by
Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek, Stephen Rowland,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

13^o September, 1632

Page 180. To S^r Henry Wotton.

To J: D: from M^r H: W:

Page 183. To S^r Henry Goodyere.

Page 185. To M^r Rowland Woodward.

Page 187. To S^r Henry Wootton.

Page 193. To S^r Edward Herbert. at Iulyers.

Page 198. To the Countesse of Bedford.

On New-yeares day.

Page 203. To M^r T. W.

To M^r J. D.

Page 205. To M^r T. W.

Page 206. To M^r T. W.

To M^r T. W.

Page 207. To M^r R. W.

Page 208. To M^r C. B.

To M^r E. G.

Page 209. To M^r R. W.

Page 210. To M^r R. W.

Page 211. To M^r S. B.

Page 212. To M^r J. L.

To M^r B. B.

Page 213. To M^r I. L.

Page 216. To M^rs M. H.