Chapter XVIII: Part 18

l. 439. _soft Moaba._ 'Moaba', 'Siphatecia' (l. 457), 'Tethlemite' (l. 487), and Themech' (l. 509) are not creatures of Donne's invention, but derived from his multifarious learning. It is, however, a little difficult to detect the immediate source from which he drew. The ultimate source of all these additions to the Biblical narrative and persons was the activity of the Jewish intellect and imagination in the interval between the time at which the Old Testament closes and the dispersion under Titus and Vespasian, the desire of the Jews in Palestine and Alexandria to 'round off the biblical narrative, fill up the lacunae, answer all the questions of the inquiring mind of the ancient reader'. Of the original Hebrew writings of this period none have survived, but their traditions passed into mediaeval works like the _Historia Scholastica_ of Petrus Comestor and hence into popular works, e.g. the Middle English _Cursor Mundi_. Another compendium of this pseudo-historical lore was the _Philonis Judaei Alexandrini. Libri Antiquitatum. Quaestionum et Solutionum in Genesin. de Essaeis. de Nominibus hebraicis. de Mundo. Basle._ 1527. An abstract of this work is given by Annius of Viterbo in the book referred to in a previous note. Dr. Cohn has shown that this Latin work is a third- or fourth-century translation of a Greek work, itself a translation from the Hebrew. More recently Rabbi M. Gaster has brought to light the Hebrew original in portions of a compilation of the fourteenth century called the _Chronicle of Jerahmeel_, of which he has published an English translation under the 'Patronage of the Royal Asiatic Society', _Oriental Translation Fund_. New Series, iv. 1899. In chapter xxvi of this work we read: 'Adam begat three sons and three daughters, Cain and his twin wife Qualmana, Abel and his twin wife Deborah, and Seth and his twin wife Nōba. And Adam, after he had begotten Seth, lived seven hundred years, and there were eleven sons and eight daughters born to him. These are the names of his sons: Eli, Shēēl, Surei, 'Almiel, Berokh, Ke'al, Nabath, Zarh-amah, Sisha, Mahtel, and Anat; and the names of his daughters are: Havah, Gitsh, Harē, Bikha, Zifath, Hēkhiah, Shaba, and 'Azin.' In Philo this reappears as follows: 'Initio mundi Adam genuit tres filios et unam filiam, Cain, Noaba, Abel, et Seth: Et vixit Adam, postquam genuit Seth, annos DCC., et genuit filios duodecim, et filias octo: Et haec sunt nomina virorum, Aeliseel, Suris, Aelamiel, Brabal, Naat, Harama, Zas-am, Maathal, et Anath: Et hae filiae eius, Phua, Iectas, Arebica, Siphatecia, Sabaasin.' It is clear there are a good many mistakes in Philo's account as it has come to us. His numbers and names do not correspond. Clearly also some of the Latin names are due to the running together of two Hebrew ones, e.g. Aeliseel, Arebica, and Siphatecia. Of the names in Donne's poem two occur in the above lists--Noaba (Heb. Nobā) and Siphatecia. But Noaba has become Moaba: Siphatecia is 'Adams fift daughter', which is correct according to the Hebrew, but not according to Philo's list; and there is no mention in these lists of Tethlemite (or Thelemite) among Adam's sons, or of Themech as Cain's wife. In the Hebrew she is called Qualmana. Doubtless since two of the names are traceable the others are so also. We have not found Donne's immediate source. I am indebted for such information as I have brought together to Rabbi Gaster.

PAGE =314=, l. 485. (_loth_). I have adopted this reading from the insertion in _TCC_, not that much weight can be allowed to this anonymous reviser (some of whose insertions are certainly wrong), but because 'loth' or 'looth' is more likely to have been changed to 'tooth' than 'wroth'. The occurrence of 'Tooth' in _G_ as well as in _1633_ led me to consult Sir James Murray as to the possibility of a rare adjectival sense of that word, e.g. 'eager, with tooth on edge for'. I venture to quote his reply: 'We know nothing of _tooth_ as an adjective in the sense _eager_; or in any sense that would fit here. Nor does _wroth_ seem to myself and my assistants to suit well. In thinking of the possible word for which _tooth_ was a misprint, or rather misreading ... the word _loth_, _loath_, _looth_, occurred to myself and an assistant independently before we saw that it is mentioned in the foot-note.... _Loath_ seems to me to be exactly the word wanted, the true antithesis to willing, and it was a very easy word to write as _tooth_.' Sir James Murray suggests, as just a possibility, that 'wroth' (_1635-69_) may have arisen from a provincial form 'wloth'. He thinks, however, as I do, that it is more probably a mere editorial conjecture.

PAGE =315=, ll. 505-9. _these limbes a soule attend;
And now they joyn'd: keeping some quality
Of every past shape, she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enow
To be a woman._

Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have erroneously followed _1635-69_ in their punctuation and attached 'keeping some quality of every past shape' to the preceding 'they'. The force of Donne's bitter comment is thus weakened. It is with 'she', i.e. the soul, that the participial phrase goes. 'She, retaining the evil qualities of all the forms through which she has passed, has thus "ills enow" (treachery, rapine, deceit, and lust) to be a woman.'

DIVINE POEMS.

The dating of Donne's _Divine Poems_ raises some questions that have not received all the consideration they deserve. They fall into two groups--those written before and those written after he took orders. Of the former the majority would seem to belong to the years of his residence at Mitcham. The poem _On the Annunciation and Passion_ was written on March 25, 1608/9. _The Litanie_ was written, we gather from a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere, about the same time. _The Crosse_ we cannot date, but I should be inclined with Mr. Gosse to connect it rather with the earlier than the later poems. It is in the same somewhat tormented, intellectual style. On the other hand the _Holy Sonnets_ were composed, we know now from Sonnet XVII, first published by Mr. Gosse, after the death of Donne's wife in 1617; and _The Lamentations of Jeremy_ appear to have been written at the same juncture. The first sermon which Donne preached after that event was on the text (Lam. iii. 1): 'I am the man that hath seen affliction,' and Walton speaks significantly of his having ended the night and begun the day in _lamentations_.

The more difficult question is the date of the _La Corona_ group of sonnets. It is usual to attribute them to the later period of Donne's ministry. This is not, I think, correct. It seems to me most probable that they too were composed at Mitcham in or before 1609.

Dr. Grosart first pointed out that one of Donne's short verse-letters, headed in _1663_ and later editions _To E. of D. with six holy Sonnets_, must have been sent with a copy of six of these sonnets, the seventh being held back on account of some imperfection. It appears with the same heading in _O'F_, but in _W_ it is entitled simply _To L. of D._, and is placed immediately after the letter _To Mr. T. W._, 'Haste thee harsh verse' (p. 205), and before the next to the same person, 'Pregnant again' (p. 206). It thus belongs to this group of letters written apparently between 1597 and 1609-10.

Who is the E. of D.? Dr. Grosart, Mr. Chambers, and Mr. Gosse assume that it must be Lord Doncaster, though admitting in the same breath that the latter was not Earl of, but Viscount Doncaster, and that only between 1618 and 1622, four short years. The title 'L. of D.' might indicate Doncaster because the title 'my Lord of' is apparently given to a Viscount. In his letters from Germany Donne speaks of 'my Lord of Doncaster'. It may, therefore, be a mistake of the printer or editor of _1633_; which turned 'L. of D.' into 'E. of D.'; but Hay was still alive in 1633, and the natural thing for the printer to do would have been to alter the title to 'E. of C.' or 'Earl of Carlisle'. Before 1618 Donne speaks of the 'Lord Hay' or 'the L. Hay' (see _Letters_, p. 145),[1] and this or 'the L. H.' is the title the poem would have borne if addressed to him in any of the years to which the other letters in the Westmoreland MS. (_W_) seem to belong.

Moreover, there is another of Donne's noble friends who might correctly be described as either E. of D. or L. of D. and that is Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset. Donne generally speaks of him as 'my Lord of Dorset': 'I lack you here', he writes to Goodyere, 'for my L. of Dorset, he might make a cheap bargain with me now, and disingage his honour, which in good faith, is a little bound, because he admitted so many witnesses of his large disposition towards me.' Born in 1589, the grandson of the great poet of Elizabeth's early reign, Richard Sackville was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He succeeded as third Earl of Dorset on February 27, 1608/9, having two days previously married Anne, Baroness Clifford in her own right, the daughter of George Clifford, the buccaneering Earl of Cumberland, and Margaret, daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford. The Countess of Dorset was therefore a first cousin to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, the husband of Donne's patroness Lucy, Countess of Bedford.

The earliest date at which the letter could have been addressed to Dorset as L. of D. or E. of D. is 1609, just after his marriage into the circle of Donne's friends. Now in Harleian MS. 4955 (_H49_) we find the heading,

Holy Sonnets: written 20 yeares since.

This is followed at once by 'Deign at my hands', and then the title _La Corona_ is given to the six sonnets which ensue. Thereafter follow, without any fresh heading, twelve of the sonnets belonging to the second group, generally entitled _Holy Sonnets_. It will be noticed that in the editions this last title is used twice, first for both groups and then, in italics, for the second alone. The question is, did the copyist of _H49_ intend that the note should apply to all the sonnets he transcribed or only to the _La Corona_ group? If to all, he was certainly wrong as to the second lot, which were written later; but he was quite possibly right as to the first. Now twenty years before 1629, which is the date given to some of Andrewes' poems in the MS., would bring us to 1609, the year of the Earl of Dorset's accession and marriage, and the period when most of the letters among which that to L. of D. in _W_ appears were written.

Note, moreover, the content of the letter _To L. of D._ Most of the letters in this group, to Thomas and Rowland Woodward, to S. B., and B. B., are poetical replies to poetical epistles. Now that _To L. of D._ is in the same strain:

See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime,
In me, your fatherly yet lusty Ryme
(For, these songs are their fruits) have wrought the same.

This is in the vein of the letter _To Mr. R. W._, 'Muse not that by thy mind,' and of the epistle _To J. D._ which I have cited in the notes (p. 166). We hear nowhere that Lord Hay wrote verses, and it is very unlikely that he, already when Donne formed his aquaintance a rising courtier, should have joined with the Woodwards, and Brookes, and Cornwallis, in the game of exchanging bad verses with Donne. It is quite likely that the young Lord of Dorset, either in 1609, or earlier when he was still an Oxford student or had just come up to London, may have burned his pinch of incense to the honour of the most brilliant of the wits, now indeed a grave _épistolier_ and moralist, but still capable of 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness'. We gather from Lord Herbert of Cherbury that the Earl of Dorset must have been an enthusiastic young man. When Herbert returned to England after the siege of Julyers (whither Donne had sent him a verse epistle), 'Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom otherwise I was a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, where bringing me into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, he at last brought me to a frame covered with green taffeta, and asked me who I thought was there; and therewithal presently drawing the curtain showed me my own picture; whereupon demanding how his Lordship came to have it, he answered, that he had heard so many brave things of me, that he got a copy of a picture which one Larkin a painter drew for me, the original whereof I intended before my departure to the Low Countries for Sir Thomas Lucy.' _Autobiography_, ed. Lee. A man so interested in Herbert may well have been interested in Donne even before his connexion by marriage with Lucy, Countess of Bedford. He became later one of Donne's kindest and most practical patrons. The grandson of a great poet may well have written verses.[2]

But there is another consideration besides that of the letter _To E. of D._ which seems to connect the _La Corona_ sonnets with the years 1607-9. That is the sonnet _To the Lady Magdalen Herbert: of St. Mary Magdalen_, which I have prefixed, with that _To E. of D._, to the group. This was sent with a prose letter which says, 'By this messenger and on this good day, I commit the inclosed holy hymns and sonnets (which for the matter not the workmanship, have yet escaped the fire) to your judgment, and to your protection too, if you think them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed sonnet to usher them to your happy hand.' This letter is dated 'July 11, 1607', which Mr. Gosse thinks must be a mistake, because another letter bears the same date; but the date is certainly right, for July 11 is, making allowance for the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, July 22, i.e. St. Mary Magdalen's day, 'this good day.'

What were the 'holy hymns and sonnets', of which Donne says:

and in some recompence
That they did harbour Christ himself, a Guest,
Harbour these Hymns, to his dear name addrest?

Walton says: 'These hymns are now lost; but doubtless they were such as they two now sing in heaven.' But Walton was writing long afterwards and was probably misled by the name 'hymns'. By 'hymns and sonnets' Donne possibly means the same things, as he calls his love-lyrics 'songs and sonets'. The sonnets are hymns, i.e. songs of praise. Mr. Chambers suggests--it is only a suggestion--that they are the second set, the _Holy Sonnets_. But these are not addressed to Christ. In them Donne addresses The Trinity, the Father, Angels, Death, his own soul, the Jews--Christ only in one (Sonnet XVIII, first published by Mr. Gosse). On the other hand, 'Hymns to his dear name addrest' is an exact description of the _La Corona_ sonnets.

I venture to suggest, then, that the Holy Sonnets sent to Mrs. Herbert and to the E. of D. were one and the same group, viz. the _La Corona_ sequence. Probably they were sent to Mrs. Herbert first, and later to the E. of D. Donne admits their imperfection in his letter to Mrs. Herbert. One of them seems to have been criticized, and in sending the sequence to the E. of D. he held it back for correction. If the E. of D. be the Earl of Dorset they may have been sent to him before he assumed that title. Any later transcript would adopt the title to which he succeeded in 1609. We need not, however, take too literally Donne's statement that the E. of D.'s poetical letter was 'the only-begetter' of his sonnets.

My argument is conjectural, but the assumptions that they were written about 1617 and sent to Lord Doncaster are equally so. The last is untenable; the former does not harmonize so well as that of an earlier date with the obvious fact, which I have emphasized in the essay on Donne's poetry, that these sonnets are more in the intellectual, tormented, wire-drawn style of his earlier religious verse (excellent as that is in many ways) than the passionate and plangent sonnets and hymns of the years which followed the death of his wife.

[Footnote 1: This letter was written in November or December,
1608, and seems to be the first in which Donne speaks of
Lord Hay as a friend and patron. The kindness he has shown in
forwarding a suit seems to have come somewhat as a surprise to
Donne.]

[Footnote 2: Lord Dorset is thus described by his wife: 'He
was in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition,
and very valiant in his own person: He had a great advantage
in his breeding by the wisdom and discretion of his
grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer of
England, who was then held one of the wisest men of that
time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all manner of
learning, that in his youth when he lived in the University
of Oxford, there was none of the young nobility then students
there, that excelled him. He was also a good patriot to his
country ... and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as
that with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of
worth that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate;
As also, with excessive prodigality in house-keeping and other
noble ways at Court, as tilting, masking, and the like; Prince
Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to these
noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.' Collins's
_Peerage_, ii. 194-5. quoted in Zouch's edition of Walton's
_Lives_, 1817.]

PAGE =317=. TO E. OF D.

ll. 3-4. _Ryme ... their ... have wrought._ The concord here seems to require the plural, the rhyme the singular. Donne, I fear, does occasionally rhyme a word in the plural with one in the singular, ignoring the 's'. But possibly Donne intended 'Ryme' to be taken collectively for 'verses, poetry'. Even so the plural is the normal use.

TO THE LADY MAGDALEN HERBERT, &c.

ll. 1-2. _whose faire inheritance
Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo._

'Mary Magdalene had her surname of magdalo a castell | and was born of right noble lynage and parents | which were descended of the lynage of kynges | And her fader was named Sinus and her moder eucharye | She wyth her broder lazare and her suster martha possessed the castle of magdalo: whiche is two myles fro nazareth and bethanye the castel which is nygh to Iherusalem and also a gret parte of Iherusalem whiche al thise thynges they departed amonge them in suche wyse that marye had the castelle magdalo whereof she had her name magdalene | And lazare had the parte of the cytee of Iherusalem: and martha had to her parte bethanye' _Legenda Aurea_. See Ed. (1493), f. 184, ver. 80.

l. 4. _more than the Church did know_, i.e. the Resurrection. John xx. 9 and 11-18.

PAGE =318=. LA CORONA.

The MSS. of these poems fall into three well-defined groups: (1) That on which the 1633 text is based is represented by _D_, _H49_; _Lec_ does not contain these poems. (2) A version different in several details is presented by the group _B_, _S_, _S96_, _W_, of which _W_ is the most important and correct. _O'F_ has apparently belonged originally to this group but been corrected from the first. (3) _A18_, _N_, _TC_ agrees now with one, now with another of the two first groups. When all the three groups unite against the printed text the case for an emendation is a strong one.

PAGE =319=. ANNUNCIATION.

l. 10. _who is thy Sonne and Brother._

'Maria ergo faciens voluntatem Dei, corporaliter Christi tantummodo mater est, spiritualiter autem et soror et mater.' August. _De Sanct. Virg._ i. 5. Migne 40. 399.

NATIVITIE.

l. 8. _The effect of Herods jealous generall doome_: The singular 'effect' has the support of most of the MSS. against the plural of the editions and of _D_, _H49_, and there can be no doubt that it is right. All the effects of Herod's doom were not prevented, but the one aimed at, the death of Christ, was.

PAGE =320=. CRUCIFYING.

l. 8. _selfe-lifes infinity to'a span._ The MSS. supply the 'a' which the editions here, as elsewhere (e.g. 'a retirednesse', p. 185), have dropped. In the present case the omission is so obvious that the Grolier Club editor supplies the article conjecturally. In the editions after _1633_ 'infinitie' is the spelling adopted, leading to the misprint 'infinite' in _1669_ and _1719_, a variant which I have omitted to note.

PAGE =321=. RESURRECTION.

It will be seen there are some important differences between the text of this sonnet given in _1633_, _D_, _H49_, on the one hand and that of _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_, _W_. The former has (l. 5) 'this death' where the latter gives 'thy death'. It may be noted that 'this' is always spelt 'thys' in _D_, which makes easy an error one way or the other. But the most difficult reading in _1633_ is (l. 8) 'thy little booke'. Oddly enough this has the support not only of _D_, _H49_ but also of _A18_, _N_, _TC_, whose text seems to blend the two versions, adding some features of its own. Certainly the 'life-booke' of the second version and the later editions seems preferable. Yet this too is an odd expression, seeing that the line might have run:

If in thy Book of Life my name thou'enroule.

Was Donne thinking vaguely or with some symbolism of his own, not of the 'book of life' (Rev. xiii. 8, and xx. 12) but of the 'little book' (Rev. x. 2) which John took and ate? Or does he say 'little book' thinking of the text, 'Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it' (Matt. vii. 14)? The grimmer aspects of the Christian creed were always in Donne's mind:

And though thou beest, O mighty bird of prey,
So much reclaim'd by God, that thou must lay
All that thou kill'st at his feet, yet doth hee
Reserve but few, and leave the most to thee.

In l. 9 'last long' is probably right. _D_, _H49_ had dropped both adjectives, and 'long' was probably supplied by the editor _metri causa_, 'last' disappearing. Between 'glorified' and 'purified' in l. 11 it is impossible to choose. The reading 'deaths' for 'death' I have adopted. Here _A18_, _N_, _TC_ agree with _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _W_, and there can be no doubt that 'sleepe' is intended to go with both 'sinne' and 'death'.

PAGE =322=. HOLY SONNETS.

The MSS. of these sonnets evidently fall into two groups: (1) _B_, _O'F_, _S96_, _W_: of which _W_ is by far the fullest and most correct representative. (2) _A18_, _D_, _H49_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_. I have kept the order in which they are given in the editions _1635_ to _1669_, but indicated the order of the other groups, and added at the close the three sonnets contained only in _W_. I cannot find a definite significance in any order, otherwise I should have followed that of _W_ as the fullest and presumably the most authoritative. Each sonnet is a separate meditation or ejaculation.

PAGE =323=, III. 7. _That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent_: I have followed the punctuation and order of _B_, _W_, because it shows a little more clearly what is (I think) the correct construction. As printed in _1635-69_,

That sufferance was my sinne I now repent,

the clause 'That sufferance was' &c. is a noun clause subject to 'repent'. But the two clauses are co-ordinates and 'That' is a demonstrative pronoun. '_That_ suffering' (of which he has spoken in the six preceding lines) 'was my sin. Now I repent. Because I did suffer the pains of love, I must now suffer those of remorse.'

PAGE =324=, V. 11. _have burnt it heretofore._ Donne uses 'heretofore' not infrequently in the sense of 'hitherto', and this seems to be implied in 'Let their flames retire'. I have therefore preferred the perfect tense of the MSS. to the preterite of the editions. The 'hath' of _O'F_ is a change made in the supposed interests of grammar, if not used as a plural form, for 'their flames' implies that the fires of lust and of envy are distinguished. In speaking of the first Donne thinks mainly of his youth, of the latter he has in memory his years of suitorship at Court.

VI. 7, note. _Or presently, I know not, see that Face._ This line, which occurs in several independent MSS., is doubtless Donne's, but the reading of the text is probably his own emendation. The first form of the line suggested too distinctly a not approved, or even heretical, doctrine to which Donne refers more than once in his sermons: 'So _Audivimus, et ab Antiquis_, We have heard, and heard by them of old, That in how good state soever they dye yet the souls of the departed do not see the face of God, nor enjoy his presence, till the day of Judgement; This we have heard, and from so many of them of old, as that the voyce of that part is louder, then of the other. And amongst those reverend and blessed Fathers, which straied into these errors, some were hearers and Disciples of the Apostles themselves, as Papias was a disciple of S. John and yet Papias was a Millenarian, and expected his thousand yeares prosperity upon the earth after the Resurrection: some of them were Disciples of the Apostles, and some of them were better men then the Apostles, for they were Bishops of Rome; _Clement_ was so: and yet _Clement_ was one of them, who denied the fruition of the sight of God, by the Saints, till the Judgement.' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 739-40.

There are two not strictly orthodox opinions to which Donne seems to have leant: (1) this, perhaps a remnant of his belief in Purgatory, the theory of a state of preparation, in this doctrine applied even to the saints; (2) a form of the doctrine now called 'Conditional Immortality'. See note on Letter _To the Countesse of Bedford_, p. 196, l. 58.

PAGE =325=, VII. 6. _dearth._ This reading of the Westmoreland MS. is surely right notwithstanding the consensus of the editions and other MSS. in reading 'death'. The poet is enumerating various modes in which death comes; death itself cannot be one of these. The 'death' in l. 8 perhaps explains the error; it certainly makes the error more obvious.

VIII. 7. _in us, not immediately._ I have interjected a comma after 'us' in order to bring out distinctly the Scholastic doctrine of Angelic knowledge on which this sonnet turns. See note on _The Dreame_ with the quotation from Aquinas. What Donne says here is: 'If our minds or thoughts are known to the saints in heaven as to angels, not immediately, but by circumstances and signs (such as blushing or a quickened pulsation) which are apparent in us, how shall the sincerity of my grief be known to them, since these signs are found in lovers, conjurers and pharisees?' 'Deo tantum sunt naturaliter cognitae cogitationes cordium.' 'God alone who put grief in my heart knows its sincerity.'

l. 10. _vile blasphemous Conjurers._ The 'vilde' of the MSS. is obviously the right reading. The form too is that which Donne used if we may judge by the MSS., and by the fact that in _Elegie XIV: Julia_ he rhymes thus:

and (which is worse than vilde)
Sticke jealousie in wedlock, her owne childe
Scapes not the showers of envie.

By printing 'vile' the old and modern editions destroy the rhyme. In the sonnet indeed the rhyme is not affected, and accordingly, as I am not prepared to change every 'vile' to 'vilde' in the poems, I have printed 'vile'. _W_ writes vile. Probably one might use either form.

PAGE =326=, IX. 9-10. I have followed here the punctuation of _W_, which takes 'O God' in close connexion with the preceding line; the vocative case seems to be needed since God has not been directly addressed until l. 9. The punctuation of _D_, _H49_, which has often determined that of _1633_, is not really different from that of _W_:

But who am I, that dare dispute with Thee?
Oh God; Oh of thyne, &c.

Here, as so often, the question-mark is placed immediately after the question, before the sentence is ended. But 'Oh God' goes with the question. A new strain begins with the second 'Oh'. The editions, by punctuating

But who am I that dare dispute with thee?
O God, Oh! &c.

(which modern editors have followed), make 'O God, Oh!' a hurried series of exclamations introducing the prayer which follows. This suits the style of these abrupt, passionate poems. But it leaves the question without an address to point it; and to my own mind the hurried, feverous effect of 'O God, Oh!' is more than compensated for by the weight which is thrown, by the punctuation adopted, upon the second 'Oh',--a sigh drawn from the very depths of the heart,

so piteous and profound
As it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being.

PAGE =327=, XII. 1. _Why are wee by all creatures, &c._ The 'am I' of the _W_ is probably what Donne first wrote, and I am strongly tempted to restore it. Donne's usual spelling of 'am' is 'ame' in his letters. This might have been changed to 'are', which would have brought the change of 'I' to 'we' in its wake. On the other hand there are evidences in this sonnet of corrections made by Donne himself (e.g. l. 9), and he may have altered the first line as being too egotistical in sound. I have therefore retained the text of the editions.

l. 4. _Simple, and further from corruption?_ The 'simple' of _1633_ and _D_, _H49_, _W_ is preferable to the 'simpler' of the later editions and somewhat inferior MSS. which Chambers has adopted, inadvertently, I think, for he does not notice the earlier reading. The dropping of an 'r' would of course be very easy; but the simplicity of the element does not admit of comparison, and what Donne says is, I think, 'The elements are purer than we are, and (being simple) farther from corruption.'

PAGE =328=, XIII. 4-6. _Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell._

Chambers alters the comma after 'affright' to a full stop, the Grolier Club editor to a semicolon. Both place a semicolon after 'fell'. Any change of the old punctuation seems to me to disguise the close relation in which the fifth and sixth lines stand to the third. It is with the third line they must go, not with the seventh, with which a slightly different thought is introduced. 'Mark the picture of Christ in thy heart and ask, can that countenance affright thee in whose eyes the light of anger is quenched in tears, the furrows of whose frowns are filled with blood.' Then, from the countenance Donne's thought turns to the tongue. The full stop, accidentally dropped after 'fell' in the editions of _1633_ and _1635_, was restored in _1639_.

l. 14. _assures._ In this case the MSS. enable us to correct an obvious error of _all_ the printed editions.

PAGE =329=, XVI. 9. _Yet such are thy laws._ I have adopted the reading 'thy' of the Westmoreland and some other MSS. because the sense seems to require it. 'These' and 'those' referring to the same antecedent make a harsh construction. 'Thy laws necessarily transcend the limits of human capacity and therefore some doubt whether these conditions of our salvation can be fulfilled by men. They cannot, but grace and spirit revive what law and letter kill.'

l. 11. _None doth; but all-healing grace and spirit._ I have dropped the 'thy' of the editions, following all the MSS. I have no doubt that 'thy' has been inserted: (1) It spoils the rhyme: 'spirit' has to rhyme with 'yet', which is impossible unless the accent may fall on the second syllable; (2) 'thy' has been inserted, as 'spirit' has been spelt with a capital letter, under the impression that 'spirit' stands for the Divine Spirit, the Holy Ghost. But obviously 'spirit' is opposed to 'letter' as 'grace' is to 'law'. In _W_ both 'grace' and 'spirit' are spelt with capitals. Either both or neither must be so treated. 'Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' 2 Cor. iii. 6.

If 'thy' is to be retained, then 'spirit' must be pronounced 'sprit'. Commentators on Shakespeare declare that this happens, but it is very difficult to prove it. When Donne needs a monosyllable he uses 'spright'; 'spirit' he rhymes as disyllable with 'merit'.

PAGE =330=, XVII. 1. _she whom I lov'd._ This is the reference to his wife's death which dates these poems. Anne More, Donne's wife, died on August 15, 1617, on the seventh day after the birth of her twelfth child. She was buried in the church of St. Clement Danes. Her monument disappeared when the Church was rebuilt. The inscription ran:

{ ANNAE }
GEORGII} { MORE de } {Filiae
ROBERT} {Lothesley} {Soror.
WILIELMI} { Equitum } {Nept.
CHRISTOPHERI} { Aurator } {Pronept.
Foeminae lectissimae, dilectissimaeq'
Conjugi charissimae, castissimaeq'
Matri piissimae, indulgentissimaeq'
xv annis in conjugio transactis,
vii post xii partum (quorum vii superstant) dies
immani febre correptae
(quod hoc saxum fari jussit
Ipse prae dolore infans)
Maritus (miserrimum dictu) olim charae charus
cineribus cineres spondet suos,
novo matrimonio (annuat Deus) hoc loco sociandos,
JOHANNE DONNE
Sacr: Theol: Profess:
Secessit
An^o xxxiii aetat. suae et sui Jesu
CIↃ. DC. XVII.
Aug. xv

XVIII. It is clear enough why this sonnet was not published. It would have revealed Donne, already three years in orders, as still conscious of all the difficulties involved in a choice between the three divisions of Christianity--Rome, Geneva (made to include Germany), and England. This is the theme of his earliest serious poem, the _Satyre III_, and the subject recurs in the letters and sermons. Donne entered the Church of England not from a conviction that it, and it alone, was the true Church, but because he had first reached the position that there is salvation in each: 'You know I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion; not straitening it Frierly _ad Religiones factitias_, (as the _Romans_ call well their orders of Religion) nor immuring it in a Rome, or a _Wittenberg_, or a _Geneva_; they are all virtuall beams of one Sun, and wheresoever they find clay hearts, they harden them, and moulder them into dust; and they entender and mollifie waxen. They are not so contrary as the North and South Poles; and that they are connatural pieces of one circle.' _Letters_, p. 29. From this position it was easy to pass to the view that, this being so, the Church of England may have special claims on _me_, as the Church of my Country, and to a recognition of its character as primitive, and as offering a _via media_. As such it attracted Casaubon and Grotius. But the Church of England never made the appeal to Donne's heart and imagination it did to George Herbert:

Beautie in thee takes up her place
And dates her letters from thy face
When she doth write.
Herbert, _The British Church_.

Compare, however, the rest of Donne's poem with Herbert's description of Rome and Geneva, and also: 'Trouble not thy selfe to know the formes and fashions of forraine particular Churches; neither of a Church in the Lake, nor a Church upon seven hils'. _Sermons_ 80. 76. 769.

PAGE =331=. THE CROSSE.

Donne has evidently in view the aversion of the Puritan to the sign of the cross used in baptism.

With the latter part of the poem compare George Herbert's _The Crosse_.

PAGE =332=, l. 27. _extracted chimique medicine._ Compare:

Only in this one thing, be no Galenist; To make
Courts hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dramme of Countries dulnesse; do not adde
Correctives, but as chymiques, purge the bad.
_Letters to, &c._, p. 182, ll. 59-62.

ll. 33-4. _As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take._

'To make representations of men, or of other creatures, we finde two wayes; Statuaries have one way, and Painters have another: Statuaries doe it by Substraction; They take away, they pare off some parts of that stone, or that timber, which they work upon, and then that which they leave, becomes like that man, whom they would represent: Painters doe it by Addition; Whereas the cloth or table presented nothing before, they adde colours, and lights, and shadowes, and so there arises a representation.' _Sermons_ 80. 44. 440.

Norton compares Michelangelo's lines:

Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.

PAGE =333=, l. 47. _So with harsh, &c._ Chambers, I do not know why, punctuates this line:

So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest;

This disguises the connexion of 'cross' with its adverbial qualifications. The meaning is that as we cross the eye by making it contemplate 'bad objects' so we must cross the rest, i.e. the other senses, with harsh (the ear), hard (touch), sour (the taste), and stinking (the sense of smell). The asceticism of Donne in his later life is strikingly evidenced in such lines as these.

l. 48. I have made an emendation here which seems to me to combine happily the text of _1633_ and that of the later editions. It seems to me that _1633_ has dropped 'all', _1635-69_ have dropped 'call'. I thought the line as I give it was in _O'F_, but found on inquiry I had misread the collation. I should withdraw it, but cannot find it in my heart to do so.

l. 52. _Points downewards._ I think the MS. reading is probably right, because (1) 'Pants' is the same as 'hath palpitation'; (2) Donne alludes to the anatomy of the heart, in the same terms, in the _Essayes in Divinity_, p. 74 (ed. Jessop, 1855): 'O Man, which art said to be the epilogue, and compendium of all this world, and the Hymen and matrimonial knot of eternal and mortal things ... and was made by God's hands, not His commandment; and hast thy head erected to heaven, and all others to the centre, that yet only thy heart of all others points downward, and only trembles.'

The reference in each case is to the anatomy of the day: 'The figure of it, as Hippocrates saith in his Booke _de Corde_ is Pyramidall, or rather turbinated and somewhat answering to the proportion of a Pine Apple, because a man is broad and short chested. For the Basis above is large and circular but not exactly round, and after it by degrees endeth in a cone or dull and blunt round point ... His lower part is called the Vertex or top, _Mucro_ or point, the Cone, the heighth of the heart. Hippocrates calleth it the taile which Galen saith ... is the basest part, as the Basis is the noblest.' Helkiah Crooke: [Greek: MIKROKOSMOGRΑPHIΑ], _A Description of the Body of Man, &c._ (1631), Book I, chap. ii, _Of the Heart_.

'The heart therefore is called [Greek: kardia apo tou kerdainesthai], (_sic. i.e._ [Greek: kradainesthai]) which signifieth _to beate_ because it is perpetually moved from the ingate to the outgate of life.' _Ibid._, Book VII, _The Preface_.

l. 53. _dejections._ Donne uses both the words given here: 'dejections of spirit,' _Sermons_ 50. 13. 102; and 'these detorsions have small force, but (as sunbeams striking obliquely, or arrows diverted with a twig by the way) they lessen their strength, being turned upon another mark than they were destined to,' _Essays in Divinity_ (Jessop), p. 42.

l. 61. _fruitfully._ The improved sense, as well as the unanimity of the MSS., justifies the adoption of this reading. A preacher may deal 'faithfully' with his people. The adverb refers to his action, not its result in them. The Cross of Christ, in Donne's view, must always deal faithfully; whether its action produces fruit depends on our hearts.

PAGE =334=. THE ANNUNTIATION AND PASSION.

The MSS. add 'falling upon one day Anno Dñi 1608'; i.e. March 25, 1608/9. George Herbert wrote some Latin verses _In Natales et Pascha concurrentes_, and Sir John Beaumont an English poem 'Vpon the two great feasts of the Annuntiation and Resurrection falling on the same day, March 25, 1627'.

PAGE =336=. GOOD FRIDAY.

l. 2. _The intelligence_: i.e. the angel. Each sphere has its angel or intelligence that moves and directs it. Grosart quotes the arrangement,--the Sun, Raphael; the Moon, Gabriel; Mercury, Michael; Mars, Chemuel; Jupiter, Adahiel; Venus, Haniel; Saturn, Zaphiel.

l. 4. _motions._ Nothing is more easy and common than the dropping of the final 's', which in writing was indicated by little more than a stroke. The reference is to the doctrine of cycles and epicycles.

l. 13. _But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall._ Grosart and Chambers adopt the reading 'his Crosse' of _1635-69_, the former without any reference to the alternative reading. Professor Norton, in the Grolier Club edition, prints this, but in a note at the end remarks' that all editions after that of 1633 give this verse, correctly,

But that Christ on his cross did rise and fall'.

The agreement of the later editions is of little importance. They too often agree to go wrong. The balance of the MS. evidence is on the side of _1633_. To me 'this' seems the more vivid and pointed reading. The line must be taken in close connexion with what precedes. 'If I turned to the East,' says Donne, 'I should see Christ lifted on to his Cross to die, a Sun by rising set. And unless Christ had consented to rise and set on _this_ Crosse (this Crosse which I should see in vision if I turned my head), which was raised this day, Sin would have eternally benighted all.'

l. 22. _turne all spheres._ The 'tune all speares' of the editions and some MSS. is tempting because of (as it is doubtless due to) the Platonic doctrine of the music of the spheres. But Donne was more of a Schoolman and Aristotelian than a Platonist, and I think there can be little doubt that he is describing Christ as the 'first mover'. On the other hand 'tune' may include 'turne'. The Dutch poet translates:

Die 't Noord en Zuyder-punt bereicken,
daer Sy 't spanden
Er geven met een' draeg elck Hemel-rond
sijn toon.

The idea that the note of each is due to the rate at which it is spun is that of Plato, _The Republic_, x.

PAGE =338=. THE LITANIE.

In a letter to Goodyere written apparently in 1609 or 1610, Donne says: 'Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know imports no other then supplication, but all Churches have one forme of supplication, by that name. Amongst ancient annals I mean some 800 years, I have met two Litanies in Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my meditations, for in good faith I thought not upon them then, but they give me a defence, if any man, to a Lay man, and a private, impute it as a fault, to take such divine and publique names, to his own little thoughts. The first of these was made by Ratpertus a Monk of Suevia; and the other by S. Notker, of whom I will give you this note by the way, that he is a private Saint, for a few Parishes; they were both but monks and the Letanies poor and barbarous enough; yet Pope Nicolas the 5, valued their devotion so much, that he canonized both their Poems, and commanded them for publike service in their Churches: mine is for lesser Chappels, which are my friends, and though a copy of it were due to you, now, yet I am so unable to serve my self with writing it for you at this time (being some 30 staves of 9 lines) that I must intreat you to take a promise that you shall have the first, for a testimony of that duty which I owe to your love, and to my self, who am bound to cherish it by my best offices. That by which it will deserve best acceptation, is, that neither the Roman Church need call it defective, because it abhors not the particular mention of the blessed Triumphers in heaven; nor the Reformed can discreetly accuse it, of attributing more then a rectified devotion ought to doe.'

The Litanies referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere may be read in Migne's _Patrologia Latina_, vol. lxxxvii, col. 39 and 42. They are certainly barbarous enough. That of Ratpertus is entitled _Litania Ratperti ad processionem diebus Dominicis_, and begins:

Ardua spes mundi, solidator et inclyte coeli
Christe, exaudi nos propitius famulos.
Virgo Dei Genetrix rutilans in honore perennis,
Ora pro famulis, sancta Maria, tuis.

The other is headed _Notkeri Magistri cognomento Balbuli Litania rhythmica_, and opens thus:

Votis supplicibus voces super astra feramus,
Trinus ut et simplex nos regat omnipotens.
Sancte Pater, adiuva nos, Sancte Fili, adiuva nos,
Compar his et Spiritus, ungue nos intrinsecus.

Michael, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen, martyrs and virgins, are appealed to in both. There are some differences in respect of particular saints invoked.

It is interesting also to compare Donne's series of petitions with those in a Middle English Litany preserved in the Balliol Coll. MS. 354 (published by Edward Flügel in _Anglia_ xxv. 220). The poetry is very poor and I need not quote. The interesting feature is the list of petitions 'Vnto the ffader', 'ye sonne', 'ye holy gost', 'the trinite', 'our lady', 'ye angelles'. 'ye propre angell', 'John baptist', 'ye appostiles', 'ye martires', 'the confessours', 'ye virgins', 'unto all sayntes'. Donne, it will be observed, includes the patriarchs and the prophets, but omits any reference to a guardian angel and to the saints. Other references in his poems and sermons show that he had the thought of a guardian angel often in his mind: 'As that Angel, which God hath given to protect thee, is not weary of his office, for all thy perversenesses, so, howsoever God deale with thee, be not thou weary of bearing thy part, in his Quire here in the Militant Church.' _Sermons_ 80. 44. 440.

PAGE =339=, l. 34. _a such selfe different instinct
Of these;_

'As the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished as Power (The Father), Knowledge (The Son), Love (The Holy Ghost), and are yet identical, not three but one, may in me power, love, and knowledge be thus at once distinct and identical.' The comma after 'these' in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was accidentally dropped. In _1635-69_ a comma was then interpolated after 'instinct' and 'Of these' was connected with what follows: 'Of these let all mee elemented bee,' 'these' being made to point forward to the next line. Chambers and the Grolier Club editor both read thus. But _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ show what was the original punctuation. Without 'Of these' it is difficult to give a precise meaning to 'instinct'. It would be easy to change 'a such' to 'such a' with most of the MSS., but Donne seems to have affected this order. Compare _Elegie X: The Dreame_, p. 95, l. 17:

After a such fruition I shall wake.

PAGE =341=, l. 86. _In Abel dye._ Abel was to the early Church a type of Christ, as being the first martyr.

PAGE =343=, ll. 122-4. One might omit the brackets in these lines and substitute a semicolon after 'hearken too' and a comma after 'and do', and make the sense clearer. The MSS. bear evidence to their difficulty. There is certainly no call for brackets as we use them, and the 1633 edition is more sparing of them in this poem than the later editions. What Donne says is: 'While this quire' (enumerated in the previous stanzas) 'prays for us and thou hearkenest to them, let not us whose duty is to pray, to endure patiently, and to do thy will, trust in their prayers so far as to forget our duty of obedience and service.'

PAGE =347=, l. 231. _Which well, if we starve, dine_: 'well' has the support of all the MSS. and may be the adverb placed before its verb. 'If we starve they dine well.' In this wire-drawn and tormented poem it is hard to say what Donne may not have written. Most of the editors read 'will', and this appears in some copies of _1633_.

l. 243. _Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry._ The 'cry' of the editions is surely right. God is at once the source of our prayers and their answerer. Our prayers are echoes of what His grace inspires in our hearts. The 'eye' of _S_ and other MSS., which also read 'wretches' for 'ecchoes', is due to a misapprehension of the condensed thought, and 'eye' with 'ecchoes' is entirely irrelevant. _JC_ tries another emendation: 'Oh thou heare our cry.'

'Every man who prostrates himselfe in his chamber, and poures out his soule in prayer to God;... though his faith assure him, that God hath granted all that he asked upon the first petition of his prayer, yea before he made it, (for God put that petition in to his heart and mouth, and moved him to aske it, that thereby he might be moved to grant it), yet as long as the Spirit enables him he continues his prayer,' &c. _Sermons_ 80. 77. 786.

But indeed we do not need to go to the _Sermons_ to see that this is Donne's meaning. He has emphasized it already in this poem: e.g. in Stanza xxiii:

Heare us, for till thou heare us, Lord
We know not what to say:
Thine eare to'our sighes, teares, thoughts gives voice and word.
O Thou who Satan heard'st in Jobs sicke day,
Heare thy selfe now, for thou in us dost pray.

'But in things of this kind (i.e. sermons), that soul that inanimates them never departs from them. The Spirit of God that dictates them in the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets him again (as we meet ourselves in a glass) in the eyes and ears and hearts of the hearers and readers.' Gosse, _Life, &c._, i. 123: To ... the Countess of Montgomery.

'God cannot be called a cry', Grosart says; but St. Paul so describes the work of the Spirit: 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.' Calvin thus closes his note on the passage: 'Atque ita locutus est Paulus quo significantius id totum tribueret Spiritus gratiae. Iubemur quidem pulsare, sed nemo sponte praemeditari vel unam syllabam poterit, nisi arcano Spiritus sui instinctu nos Deus pulset, adeoque sibi corda nostra aperiat.'

PAGE =348=, l. 246. _Gaine to thy self, or us allow._ If we perish neither Christ nor we have gained anything. Both have died in vain. If 'and' is substituted for 'or' in this line (_1635-69_ and Chambers) then the next line becomes otiose.

PAGE =348=. UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMES, &c.

We do not know what was the occasion of these lines. The Countess was the mother of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery, and of Pembroke after his brother's death. Poems by the former are frequently found with Donne's, e.g. in the Hawthornden MS. which is made from a collection in Donne's own possession. Doubtless they were known to one another, but there is no evidence of intimacy, such as letters. To the Countess of Montgomery Donne in 1619 sent a copy of one of his sermons which she had asked for (Gosse, _Life, &c_., ii. 123). It may have been for her that he composed this poem.

An elaborate copy of the Psalms was prepared by John Davis of Hereford. From this they were published in 1822.

From l. 53 it is evident that Donne's poem was written after the death of the Countess of Pembroke in 1621.