Chapter VII: Part 7

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

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

[Sidenote: _Donne's Learning._]

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

[Sidenote: _Classical Literature._]

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

[Sidenote: _Italian._]

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

[Sidenote: _French._]

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

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

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

[Sidenote: _Spanish._]

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

[Sidenote: _Scholastic Philosophy._]

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

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

They also serve who only stand and wait,

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

[Sidenote: _The Fathers, &c._]

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

[Sidenote: _Law._]

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

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

[Sidenote: _Travels._]

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

a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;

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

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

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

THE PRINTER TO &c.

See _Text and Canon of Donne's Poems_, p. lix.

PAGE =1=, ll. 17-18. _it would have come to us from beyond the Seas_: e.g. from Holland.

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

PAGE =3=. _Hexastichon Bibliopolae._

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

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

PAGE =4=. _William, Lord Craven, &c._ This is the younger Donne's dedication. See _Text and Canon, &c._, p. lxx.

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

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

A LETTER.

No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That w^{ch} I feare I doe too soone pursue
W^{ch} is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yo^r sonne am prouder of yo^r band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.

Yo^r obedient sonne
JO. DONNE.

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

'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things.'

'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging.'

'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish.'

SONGS AND SONETS.

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

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

Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth.'

The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of outlook on men and women. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of _Ignatius his Conclave_, were all written long after his marriage and when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'. Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little. These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that _none_ of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.

Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations' of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe and catche', _Womans constancy_, _The Indifferent_, _Loves Vsury_, _The Legacie_, _Communitie_, _Confined Love_, _Loves Alchymie_, _The Flea_, _The Message_, _Witchcraft by a picture_, _The Apparition_, _Loves Deitie_, _Loves diet_, _The Will_, _A Jeat Ring sent_, _Negative love_, _Farewell to love_. In another group the wit in Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such are _The good-morrow_, _The Sunne Rising_, _The Canonization_, _Lovers infiniteness_, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' _A Feaver_, _Aire and Angells_ (touched with cynical humour at the close), _Breake of day_, _The Anniversarie_, _A Valediction: of the booke_, _Loves growth_, _The Dreame_, _A Valediction: of weeping_, _The Baite_, _A Valediction: forbidding mourning_, _The Extasie_, _The Prohibition_, _The Expiration_, _Lecture upon the Shadow_. It would, of course, be rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like _The Baite_, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments. But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before and after their marriage.

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

PAGE =7=. THE GOOD-MORROW.

The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which is given in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and in _1633_, reads, 3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better. The other, which is the most common in the MSS., reads, 3. childish pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of 1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer 'set up' from _1633_, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. collection, probably _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In _TCD_ the second recension is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the MS.; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ seems the more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether 'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two hemispheres that fit one another more exactly?' But this is not, I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other. Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world. The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find a _better_ hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.

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

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

PAGE =8=. SONG.

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

They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.

Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.

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

Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.

JOHN DUNNE.

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

PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.

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

l. 6. _The skill of specular stone._ Compare _To the Countesse of Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:

You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.

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

'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.

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

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

Compare _To Mrs. M. H._, p. 217, ll. 31-2.

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

PAGE =11=. THE SUNNE RISING.

Compare Ovid, _Amores_, I. 13.

Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.

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

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

and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.

And _The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 17:

thy Western land of Myne.

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

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

PAGE =12=. THE INDIFFERENT.

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

PAGE =13=. LOVES USURY.

l. 5. _My body raigne._ Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from _1635-69_. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could

mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.

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

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Shakespeare, _Venus and Adonis_, v. cxxxiv.

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

Only let me love none; no, not the sport
From country-grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.

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

PAGE =14=. THE CANONIZATION.

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

l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. except _Lec_, which here as in several other little details appears to resemble _1633_ more closely than either of the other MSS., _D_, _H49_. It is quite possible that 'man' is correct--a vivid and concrete touch, but in view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words are frequently interchanged in the MSS.

ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first (l. 24) to a semicolon and connects

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.

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

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

Who did the whole worlds soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize--
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love.

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

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

l. 40. The 'contract' of the printed editions is doubtless correct, despite the preference of the MSS. for 'extract'. This goes in several MSS. with other errors which show confusion. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ read 'and drawe', a bad rhyme; and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_ (the verse is lost in _TCD_) drop 'soule', reading 'the world extract'. The reading 'extract' is due to what Dr. Moore calls 'the extraordinary short-sightedness of the copyists in respect of a construction. Their vision seems often to be bounded by a single line.' To 'extract the soul' of things is a not uncommon phrase with Donne. Here it does not suit the thought which is coming so well as 'contract': 'As the spirit and soule of the whole booke of Psalmes is contracted into this psalme, so is the spirit and soule of this whole psalme contracted into this verse.' _Sermons_ 80. 66. 663. (Psal. lxiii. 7. _Because thou hast beene my helpe, Therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice._)

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

The God of Souldiers:
With the consent of supreame Jove, informe
Thy thoughts with Noblenesse.
Shakespeare, _Cor._ V. iii. 70-2 (Simpson, _Shakespearian
Punctuation_, p. 98).

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

PAGE =16=. THE TRIPLE FOOLE.

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

PAGE =17=. LOVERS INFINITENESS.

This song, which is one of the obviously authentic lyrics which is not included in the _A18_, _N_, _TC_ collection, would seem to have undergone some revision after its first issue. The version given in _A25_, from which _Cy_ is copied, would seem to be the original, at least the readings of ll. 25-6 and ll. 29-30 do not look like corruptions. The reading 'beget' at l. 25 gives a better rhyme to 'yet' than 'admit'. In l. 29 _A25_ has obviously interchanged 'thine' and 'mine'. The slightly different version of _JC_ gives the correct order. The generally careful _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ group has an unusually faulty text of this poem. Among other mistakes it reads (with _S96_) 'Thee' for 'them' in l. 32.

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

so we shall
Be one, and one anothers All.

For a poem in obvious imitation of this, see _Appendix C_, p. 439.

ll. 1-11. The rhetoric and rhythm of Donne's elaborate stanzas depends a good deal on their right punctuation. Mine is an attempt to correct that of _1633_ without modernizing. The full stop after 'fall' is obviously an error, and so is, I think, the comma after 'spent'. The first six lines state in a rapid succession of clauses all that the poet has done to gain his lady's love. A new thought begins with 'Yet no more', &c.

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

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate, &c.

PAGE =18=. SONG.

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

ll. 6-8. I have retained the text of _1633_, which has the support of all the MSS. That of _1635-54_ is an attempt to accommodate the lines, by a little padding, to the rhythm of the corresponding lines in the other stanzas.

PAGE =20=. THE LEGACIE.

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

I heard me say, 'Tell her anon,
That myself', that is you not I,
'Did kill me', and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none;
When I had ripp'd and search'd where hearts should lie,
It killed me again, that I who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.

The Grolier Club version has no inverted commas, and runs:

I heard me say, Tell her anon,
That myself, that's you not I,
Did kill me; and when I felt me die,
I bid me send my heart, when I was gone;
But I alas! could there find none.
When I had ripped me and searched where hearts did lie,
It killed me again that I, who still was true
In life, in my last will should cozen you.

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

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

Maer, oh, ick vond er geen, al scheurd ick mijn geraemt,
En socht door d'oude plaets die 't Hert is toegeraemt.

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

l. 20. _It was intire to none_: i.e. 'It was tied to no one lover.' The word 'entire' in this sense is still found on public-house signs, and misled the American Pinkerton in Stevenson's _The Wrecker_. Compare: 'But this evening I will spie upon the B[ishop] and give you an account to-morrow morning of his disposition; when, if he cannot be intire to you, since you are gone so farre downwards in your favours to me, be pleased to pursue your humiliation so farre as to chuse your day, and either to suffer the solitude of this place, or to change it, by such company, as shall waite upon you.' _Letters_, p. 315 (To ... Sir Robert Karre). This seems to mean, 'if the Bishop cannot fulfill, be faithful to, his engagement to you, come and dine here.'

ll. 21-24. These lines are also printed or punctuated in a misleading fashion by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. The former, following _1669_, but altering the punctuation, prints:

As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our loss be sad.
I meant to send that heart instead of mine,
But O! no man could hold it, for 'twas thine.

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

The Grolier Club editor, following the words of _1633_, but altering the punctuation, reads:

As good as could be made by art
It seemed, and therefore for our losses sad;
I meant to send this heart instead of mine
But oh! no man could hold it, for twas thine.

Apparently the heart was sad for our losses because it was no better than might be made by art. The confusion arises from deserting the punctuation of _1633_. 'For our losses sad' is an adjectival qualification of 'I'. 'I, sad to have lost my heart, which by legacy was yours, resolved as a _pis aller_ to send this, which seemed as good as could be made by art. But to send it was impossible, for no man could hold it. It was thine.'

Huyghens translates:

Soo meenden ick 't verlies dat ick vergelden most
Te boeten met dit Hert, en doen 't u toebehooren:
Maer, oh, 't en kost niet zijn, 't was uw al lang te voren.

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

PAGE =21=. A FEAVER.

ll. 13-14. _O wrangling schooles, that search what fire
Shall burne this world._

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

Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.

There yet remaines to th'World one common fire
Wherein our Bones with Stars shall make one pyre.

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

PAGE =22=. AIRE AND ANGELS.

l. 19. _Ev'ry thy haire._ This, the reading of _1633-39_ and the MSS., is, I think, preferable to the amended 'Thy every hair', &c., of the 1650-69 editions (which Chambers adopts, ascribing it to _1669_ alone), though the difference is slight. 'Every thy hair' has the force of 'Thy every hair' with the additional suggestion of 'even thy least hair' derived from the construction with a superlative adjective. 'Every the least remembrance.' J. King, _Sermons_ 28. 'Every, the most complex, web of thought may be reduced to simple syllogisms.' Sir W. Hamilton. See note to _The Funerall_, l. 3.

ll. 23-4. _Then as an Angell face and wings
Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare._

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

Tasso, familiar like Donne with Catholic doctrine, thus clothes his angels:

Così parlògli, e Gabriel s' accinse
Veloce ad eseguir l' imposte cose.
_La sua forma invisibil d'aria cinse,
Ed al senso mortal la sottopose_:
Umane membra, aspetto uman si finse,
Ma di celeste maestà il compose.
Tra giovane e fanciullo età confine
Prese, ed ornò di raggi il biondo crine.
_Gerus. Lib._ I. 13.

Fairfax translates the relevant lines:

In form of airy members fair imbared,
His spirits pure were subject to our sight.

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

the ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible; and from the gash
A stream of nectarous humour issuing flowed
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed.
. . . . . . . . . .
Yet soon he healed; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, (not as frail man
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,)
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, _no more than can the fluid air_.
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense; _and as they please,
They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare_.

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

to his proper shape returns
A Seraph winged, &c.