Chapter XIV: Part 14

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 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.

PAGE =181=, ll. 19-20. _Cities are worst of all three; of all three
(O knottie riddle) each is worst equally._

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:

Cities are worst of all three; of all three?
O knotty riddle! each is worst equally.

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:

And where's the citty from foul vice so free
But may be term'd the worst of all the three?

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 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:

If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should I bee?
Why should intent or reason, borne in mee,
Make sinnes, else equall, in mee more heinous?
_Holy Sonnets_, IX, p. 326.

And in this same letter, ll. 41-2, he develops the thought further.

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.

Additional MS. 23229 (_A23_) contains the following:

Funerall Verses sett on the hearse } of Polesworth.
of Henry Goodere knighte; late }
[March 18. 1627/8 c.]

Esteemed knight take triumph over deathe,
And over tyme by the eternal fame
Of Natures workes, while God did lende thee breath;
Adornd with witt and skill to rule the same.
But what avayles thy gifts in such degrees
Since fortune frownd, and worlde had spite at these.

Heaven be thy rest, on earth thy lot was toyle;
Thy private loss, ment to thy countryes gayne,
Bredde grief of mynde, which in thy brest did boyle,
Confyning cares whereof the scarres remayne.
Enjoy by death such passage into lyfe
As frees thee quyte from thoughts of worldly stryfe.
WM. GOODERE.

Camden transcribes his epitaph:

An ill yeare of a Goodyere us bereft,
Who gon to God much lacke of him here left;
Full of good gifts, of body and of minde,
Wise, comely, learned, eloquent and kinde.

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, 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:

The fable is inverted, and far more
A block inflicts now, then a stork before.
_The Calme_, ll. 4-5.

O wretch, that thy fortunes should moralize
Aesop's fables, and make tales prophesies.
_Satyre V._

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 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:

Thoughe to use it, seeme and be light and thin.

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 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. 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's metaphor is perhaps borrowed by Benlowes when he says of the soul:

She her own farmer, stock'd from Heav'n is bent
To thrive; care 'bout the pay-day's spent.
Strange! she alone is farmer, farm, and stock, and rent.

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.

ll. 10-11. _Fate, (Gods Commissary)_: i.e. God's Deputy or Delegate. Compare:

Fate, which God made, but doth not control.
_The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 2.

Great Destiny the Commissary of God
That hast mark'd out a path and period
For every thing ...
Ibid., p. 296, ll. 31 f.

The idea that Fate or Fortune is the deputy of God in the sphere of external goods ([Greek: ta ektos agatha], 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 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.'

l. 11. _yong death_: i.e. early death, death that comes to you while young.

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 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, 1612/3), 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 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.

See notes on _Twicknam Garden_ and the _Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day_.

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. 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.'

l. 27. _A methridate_: i.e. an antidote. See note to p. 255, l. 127.

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.

ll. 35-6. _Make your returne home gracious; and bestow
This life on that; so make one life of two._

'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:

And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.

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.

And I (though with paine)
Lessen our losse, to magnifie thy gaine
Of triumph, when I say, It was more fit,
That all men should lacke thee, then thou lack it.

Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place upon earth.' _Letters_, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to p. 112, l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.

PAGE =191=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.

ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions (which the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers completed the confusion by printing the lines thus,

You have refined me, and to worthiest things--
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.

Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as of the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,

Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues.

But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man is refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to boast of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, and strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and sharpened my judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things owe their value to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but depends on circumstances.' This, the next two verses add, explains why at Court it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your beauty. To Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court the focus of wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative nature of all goodness he has touched in the _Progresse of the Soule_, p. 316, ll. 518-20:

There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.

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_.

ll. 8-9. (_Where a transcendent height, (as lownesse mee)
Makes her not be, or not show_)

I have completed the enclosure of (Where ... show) in brackets 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 failed to seek out the Cherubim.' The construction is elliptical. Compare:

Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday.

P. 286, l. 44.

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 ... 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:

we're led awry
By them, who man to us in little show,
Greater than due; no form we can bestow
On him, for man into himself can draw
All;

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:

for man into himself can draw
All; all his faith can swallow or reason chaw,
All that is filled, and all that which doth fill;

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 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.

The emendations which I have accepted from _1635_ are--

l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.

l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.

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'.

ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free._

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 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.