Chapter XVII: Part 17

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:

And they who write to Lords rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at dores for meat?

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 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:

Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest;

The Grolier Club editor varies it:

Thou seest me here at midnight now, all rest;

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:

Things, in proportion, fit by perspective.

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.

In _The Crosse_ Donne writes:

All the Globes frame and spheares, is nothing else
But the Meridians crossing Parallels.

And in the _Anatomie of the World_, p. 239, ll. 278-80:

For of Meridians, and Parallels,
Man hath weav'd out a net, and this net throwne
Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne.

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 =276=, l. 154. _And great Sun-dyall to have set us All._ Compare:

The lives of princes should like dyals move,
Whose regular example is so strong,
They make the times by them go right or wrong.
Webster, _White Devil_, I. ii. 313.

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, 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:

As unthrifts grieve in strawe for their pawnd Beds,
As women weepe for their lost Maidenheads
(When both are without hope of Remedie)
Such an untimelie Griefe, have I for thee.
I never sawe thy face; nor did my hart
Urge forth mine eyes unto it whilst thou wert,
But being lifted hence, that which to thee
Was Deaths sad dart, prov'd Cupids shafte to me.

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:

A Mayde, a Wyfe shee liv'd, a Widdowe dy'd:
Her vertue, through all womans state was varyed.
The widdowes Bodye which this vayle doth hide
Keepes in, expecting to bee justlie [highly _H40_] marryed,
When that great Bridegroome from the cloudes shall call
And ioyne, earth to his owne, himself to all.

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_.

PAGE =280=, l. 11. _And even these teares, &c._: i.e. the

Teares which our Soule doth for her sins let fall,

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 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:

Wee after Gods mercy drowne our Soules againe.

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.

Compare also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.

Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in _An Essay on Criticism_, ll. 54-9:

As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.

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'.

PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8. _this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee._

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, 1583/4, 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 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

voice was
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,

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._

Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such
Reade here a little, that thou mayest know much.
It covers first a Virgin, and then one
That durst be so in Court; a Virtue alone
To fill an Epitaph; but shee hath more:
Shee might have claym'd to have made the Graces foure,
Taught Pallas language, Cynthia modesty;
As fit to have encreas'd the harmonye
Of Spheares, as light of Starres; she was Earths eye,
The sole religious house and votary
Not bound by rites but Conscience; wouldst thou all?
She was Sil. Boulstred, in which name I call
Up so much truth, as could I here pursue,
Might make the fable of good Woemen true.

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. 416) 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

great Nature's second course,

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:

Her soul was Paradise, &c.

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:

We hád had á Saint, nów a hólidáy.

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:

That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray,

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_:

That when we turn'd to feast, she turn'd to pray.

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 what we turn to 'feast!' she turn'd to 'pray!'

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:

Goe then to people curst before they were,
Their spoyles in triumph of thy conquest weare.

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 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:

Ille ego (nam memini Troiani tempore belli)
Panthoides Euphorbus eram,

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 [Greek: spongos].

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 caricature is etched by G. Cruikshank and is dated 1808.

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 [Greek: Metempsychôsis] was that he sought the soule of that aple which Eve pulled and thereafter made it the soule of a bitch, then of a shee wolf, and so of a woman; his generall purpose was to have brought in all the bodies of the Hereticks from the soule of Cain, and at last left in the bodie of Calvin. Of this he never wrotte but one sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems.'

Jonson was clearly recalling the poem somewhat inaccurately, and at the same time giving the substance of what Donne had told him. Probably Donne mystified him on purpose, for it is evident from the poem that in his first intention Queen Elizabeth herself was to be the soul's last host. It is impossible to attach any other meaning to the seventh stanza; and that intention also explains the bitter tone in which women are satirized in the fragment. Women and courtiers are the chief subject of Donne's sardonic satire in this poem, as of Shakespeare's in _Hamlet_.

I have indicated elsewhere what I think is the most probable motive of the poem. It reflects the mood of mind into which Donne, like many others, was thrown by the tragic fate of Essex in the spring of the year. In _Cynthia's Revels_, acted in the same year as Donne's poem was composed, Jonson speaks of 'some black and envious slanders breath'd against her' (i.e. Diana, who is Elizabeth) 'for her divine justice on Actaeon', and it is well known that she incurred both odium and the pangs of remorse. Donne, who was still a Catholic in the sympathies that come of education and association, seems to have contemplated a satirical history of the great heretic in lineal descent from the wife of Cain to Elizabeth--for private circulation. See _The Poetry of John Donne_, II. pp. xvii-xx.

PAGE =295=, l. 9. _Seths pillars._ Norton's note on this runs: 'Seth, the son of Adam, left children who imitated his virtues. 'They were the discoverers of the wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit these discoveries to mankind.... Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.' Josephus, _Antiquities of the Jews_ (Whiston's translation), I. 2, §3.

PAGE =296=, l. 21. _holy Ianus._ 'Janus, whom Annius of Viterbo and the chorographers of Italy do make to be the same with Noah.' Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, vi. 6. The work referred to is the _Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII_ (1498, reprinted and re-arranged 1511), by Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), a Dominican friar, Fra Giovanni Nanni. Each of the books, after the first, consists of a digest with commentary of various works on ancient history, the aim being apparently to reconcile Biblical and heathen chronology and to establish the genealogy of Christ. _Liber XIIII_ is a digest, or 'defloratio', of Philo (of whom later); _Liber XV_ of Berosus, a reputed Chaldaean historian ('patria Babylonicus; et dignitate Chaldaeus'), cited by Josephus. From him Annius derives this identification of Janus with Noah: 'Hoc vltimo loco Berosus de tribus cognominibus rationes tradit: Noa: Cam & Tythea. De Noa dicit quod fuit illi tributum cognomen Ianus a Iain: quod apud Aramaeos et Hebraeos sonat vinum: a quo Ianus id est vinifer et vinosus: quia primus vinum invenit et inebriatus est: vt dicit Berosus: et supra insinuavit Propertius: et item Moyses Genesis cap ix. vbi etiam Iain vinum Iani nominat: vbi nos habemus: Cum Noa evigilasset a vino. Cato etiam in fragmentis originum; et Fabius Pictor in de origine vrbis Romae dicunt Ianum dictum priscum Oenotrium: quia invenit vinum et far ad religionem magis quam ad vsum,' &c., XV, Fo. cxv. Elsewhere the identity is based not on this common interest in wine but on their priestly office, they being the first to offer 'sacrificia et holocausta', VII, Fo. lviii. Again, 'Ex his probatur irrevincibiliter a tempore demonstrato a Solino et propriis Epithetis Iani: eundem fuisse Ogygem: Ianum et Noam ... Sed Noa fuit proprium: Ogyges verum Ianus et Proteus id est Vertumnus sunt solum praenomina ejus,' XV, Fo. cv. No mention of the ark as a link occurs, but a ship figured on the copper coins distributed at Rome on New Year's day, which was sacred to Janus. The original connexion is probably found in Macrobius' statement (_Saturn._ I. 9) that among other titles Janus was invoked as 'Consivius ... a conserendo id est a propagine generis humani quae Iano auctore conseritur'. Noah is the father of the extant human race.

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 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.

PAGE =301=, ll. 159-160. _built by the guest,
This living buried man, &c._

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:

So jolly, that it can move, this soul is.

Chambers prefers:

So jolly, that it can move this soul, is
The body ...

but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to make the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:

thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
_Satyre III_, ll. 41-2.

'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:

better proofes the law
Of sense then faith requires.

A vein of restless scepticism runs through the whole.

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.

PAGE =308=, ll. 321-2. _He hunts not fish, but as an officer,
Stayes in his court, at his owne net._

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.

ll. 405-6. _Who in that trade, of Church, and kingdomes, there
Was the first type._

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.