Chapter IX: Part 9

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

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

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

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

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

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

They'are ours, though not wee, wee are

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

Then let us at these mimicke antiques jeast,
Whose deepest projects, and egregious gests
Are but dull Moralls of a game of Chests.
_To S^r Henry Wotton_, p. 188, ll. 22-4.

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

Wee owe them thanks, because they thus, &c.

The Dutch translation runs:

Het Hemel-rond zijn sy,
Wy haren _Hemel-geest_.

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

thy faire goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy.
_Satyre III._

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

T'affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend.

ll. 57-8. _On man heavens influence workes not so,
But that it first imprints the ayre._

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

l. 59. _Soe soule into the soule may flow._ The 'Soe' of the MSS. must, I think, be right rather than the 'For' of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and the editions. It corresponds to the 'So' in l. 65, and it expresses the simpler and more intelligible thought. In references to the heavenly bodies and their influence on men one must remember certain aspects of older thought which have become unfamiliar to us. They were bodies of great dignity, 'aeterna corpora,' not composed of any of the four elements, and subject to no change in time but movement, change of position. If not as the older philosophers and some of the Fathers had held, 'animata corpora,' having a soul united to the body, yet each was guided by an Intelligence operating by contact: 'Ad hoc autem quod moveat, non opportet quod uniatur ei ut forma, sed per contactum virtutis, sicut motor unitur mobili.' Aquinas, _Summa_ I. lxx. 3. Such bodies, it was claimed, influence human actions: 'Corpora enim coelestia, cum moveantur a spiritualibus substantiis ... agunt in virtute earum quasi instrumenta. Sed illae substantiae spirituales sunt superiores animabus nostris. Ergo videtur quod possint _imprimere in animas nostras_, et sic causare actus humanos.' Aquinas, however, disputes this, as Plotinus had before him, and distinguishes: As bodies, the stars affect us only indirectly, in so far namely as the mind and will of man are subject to the influence of physical and corporeal disturbances. But man's will remains free. '_Sapiens homo dominatur astris_ in quantum scilicet dominatur suis passionibus.' As Intelligences, the stars do not operate on man thus mediately and controllingly: 'sed in intellectum humanum agunt _immediate illuminando_: voluntatem autem immutare non possunt.' Aquinas, _Summa_ I. cxv. 4.

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

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

Of noblemen Donne says: 'They are _Intelligences_ that move great _Spheares_.' _Sermon_, Judges xv. 20, p. 20 (1622).

ll. 61-4. _As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like soules as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot, which makes us man._

'Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, and the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common tye or _medium_ betwixt the body and the soule, as some will have it; or as _Paracelsus_, a fourth soule of itselfe. _Melancthon_ holds the fountaine of these spirits to be the _Heart_, begotten there; and afterward convayed to the Braine, they take another nature to them. Of these spirits there be three kindes, according to the three principall parts, _Braine_, _Heart_, _Liver_; _Naturall_, _Vitall_, _Animall_. The _Naturall_ are begotten in the _Liver_, and thence dispersed through the Veines, to performe those naturall actions. The _Vitall Spirits_ are made in the Heart, of the _Naturall_, which by the Arteries are transported to all the other parts: if these _Spirits_ cease, then life ceaseth, as in a _Syncope_ or Swowning. The _Animall spirits_ formed of the _Vitall_, brought up to the Braine, and diffused by the Nerves, to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.' Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1638), p. 15. 'The spirits in a man which are the thin and active part of the blood, and so are of a kind of middle nature, between soul and body, those spirits are able to doe, and they doe the office, to unite and apply the faculties of the soul to the organs of the body, and so there is a man.' _Sermons_ 26. 20. 291.

PAGE =55=. LOVES DIET.

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

ll. 25-7. _reclaim'd ... sport._ In _1633_ 'reclaim'd' became 'redeem'd', probably owing to the frequent misreading of 'cl' as 'd'. The mistake here increases the probability that 'sports' is an error for 'sport' or 'sporte'. It is doubtful if 'sports' was used as now.

PAGE =56=. THE WILL.

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

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

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

PAGE =58=. THE FUNERALL.

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

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

It is probable that this sequence of poems, _The Funerall_, _The Blossome_, _The Primrose_ and _The Relique_, was addressed to Mrs. Herbert in the earlier days of Donne's intimacy with her in Oxford or London.

l. 24. _That since you would save none of me, I bury some of you._ I have hesitated a good deal over this line. The reading of the editions is 'have none of me'; and in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, while _H49_ reads 'save', _D_ has corrected 'have' to what _may_ be 'save', and _Lec_ reads 'have'. The reading of the editions is the full form of the construction, which is more common without the 'have'. 'It's four to one she'll none of me,' _Twelfth Night_, I. iii. 113; 'She will none of him,' Ibid. II. ii. 9, are among Schmidt's examples (_Shakespeare Lexicon_), in none of which 'have' occurs. The reading of the MSS., 'save none of me,' is also quite idiomatic, resembling the ' fear none of this' (i.e. 'do not fear this') of _Winter's Tale_, IV. iv. 601; and I have preferred it because: (1) It seems difficult to understand how it could have arisen if 'have none' was the original. (2) It gives a sharper antithesis, 'You would not save me, keep me alive. Therefore I will bury, not you indeed, but a part of you.' (3) To be saved is the lover's usual prayer; and the idea of the poem is that his death is due to the lady's cruelty.

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry;
But thou go by.

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

When thou art there, if any, whom we know,
Were sav'd before, and did that heaven partake, &c.

PAGE =59=. THE BLOSSOME.

l. 10. _labour'st._ The form with 't' occurs in most of the MSS., and 't' is restored in _1635_. The 'labours' of _1633_ represents a common dropping of the 't' for ease of pronunciation. See Franz, _Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 152. It is colloquial, and I doubt if Donne would have preserved it if he had printed the poem, supposing that he wrote the word so, and not some copyist.

ll. 21-4. _You goe to friends, whose love and meanes present
Various content
To your eyes, eares, and tongue, and every part:
If then your body goe, what need you a heart?_

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

What need us so many instances abroad.
_Andros Tracts_, 1691.

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

PAGE =61=. THE PRIMROSE, &c.

It is noteworthy that the addition 'being at Montgomery Castle', &c. was made in _1635_. It is unknown to _1633_ and the MSS. It may be unwarranted. If it be accurate, then the poem is probably addressed to Mrs. Herbert and is a half mystical, half cynical description of Platonic passion. The perfect primrose has apparently five petals, but more or less may be found. Seeking for one to symbolize his love, he fears to find either more or less. What can be less than woman? But if more than woman she becomes that unreal thing, the object of Platonic affection and Petrarchian adoration: but, as he says elsewhere,

Love's not so pure and abstract as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse.

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

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

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

l. 30. _this, five,_ I have introduced a comma after 'this' to show what, I think, must be the relation of the words. The later editions drop 'this', and it seems to me probable that an original reading and a correction have survived side by side. Donne may have written 'this' alone, referring back to 'five', and then, thinking the reference too remote, he may have substituted 'five' in the margin, whence it crept into the text without completely displacing 'this'. The support which the MSS. lend to _1633_ make it dangerous to remove either word now, but I have thought it well to show that 'this' _is_ 'five'. In the MSS. when a word is erased a line is drawn under it and the substituted word placed in the margin.

PAGE =62=. THE RELIQUE.

l. 13. _Where mis-devotion doth command._ The unanimity of the earlier editions and the MSS. shows clearly that 'Mass-devotion' (which Chambers adopts) is merely an ingenious conjecture of the _1669_ editor. Donne uses the word frequently, e.g.:

Here in a place, where miss-devotion frames
A thousand Prayers to Saints, whose very names
The ancient Church knew not, &c.
_Of the Progresse of the Soule_, p. 266, ll. 511-13.

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

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

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

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

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

PAGE =64=. THE DISSOLUTION.

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

PAGE =66=. NEGATIVE LOVE.

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

PAGE =67=. THE PROHIBITION.

l. 18. _So, these extreames shall neithers office doe._ The 'neithers' of _D_, _H40_, _JC_, supported by 'neyther' in _O'F_ and 'neyther their' in _Cy_, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for 'ne'er their'. The reading of _Cy_ shows how the phrase puzzled an ordinary copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other prevent either from fulfilling his function.' Compare, 'As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i.e. each to the other's purpose). Shakespeare, _Hen. V_, II. ii. 107.

l. 22. _So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee._ I have placed a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not the verb. The 'stay' of _1633_ is defensible, but the _1633_ editor was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting of l. 5. All the MSS. I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph, a thing achieved once, never to be repeated.' Compare:

And cause her leave to triumph in this wise
Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!
That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,
And must their glory to the world impart.
Daniel, _Delia_, X.

ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from _1633_. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:

Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,
O let me live, O love and hate me too.

The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed are quite intelligible. As given in the editions _1635-69_ they are nonsensical.

PAGE =68=. THE EXPIRATION.

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

ll. 7 f. _Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too_.

Compare:

_Val._ No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 236 f.

PAGE =70=. THE PARADOX.

l. 14. _lights life._ The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the editions, 'lifes light.' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun. In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an epitaph. This poem is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _1633_ has printed it from _A18_, _N_, _TC_.

In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by another of the same kind, which is found also in _H40_, _RP31_, and _O'F_, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from _TCC_:

A PARADOX.

Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet
Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.
For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare
But Love doth at most distance most appeare.
Yet out of fire water did never goe,
But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.
Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.
Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.
Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.
Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.
The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came
Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,
Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine
Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.

FINIS.

PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.

l. 12. _His highnesse &c._ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt gingerbread.' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.

ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are unintelligible:

Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.

Grosart prints:

Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.

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

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

of being short,
And only for a minute made to be,
Eagers [i.e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity.'

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

A learned Bishop of this land
Thinking to make religion stand,
In equall poise on every syde
The mixture of them thus he tryde:
An ounce of protestants he singles
And a dramme of papists mingles,
Then adds a scruple of a puritan
And melts them down in his brayne pan,
But where hee lookes they should digest
The scruple eagers all the rest.

In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:

That scruple troubles all the rest.

PAGE =71=. A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.

The text of this poem in the editions is that of _A18_, _N_, _TC_ among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of the other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for 'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for 'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'. It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an obvious blunder.

NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.

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

But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.

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

PAGE =8=. SONG.

The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:

[Music:

Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.]

PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.

This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire, omitting the lute accompaniment:

[Music:

'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?
And will you there-fore rise from me?
What, will you rise, What, will you rise be-cause 'tis light?
Did we lye downe be-cause 'twas night?
Love that in spight of dark-nesse brought us he-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther.]

PAGE =46=. THE BAITE.

From Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612).

[Music: _Lessons for the Lyra Violl._

Come liue with me, and be my Loue.]

EPIGRAMS.

PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions, _1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_, both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_ are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:

Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.

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

Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.

PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the first line of this epigram,

Two by themselves each other love and fear,

which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in _1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought them together here.' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv. 55-165. The closing line runs:

Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.

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

PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:

Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.

Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c._, 1607.

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

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

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

PHRYNE. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond, _Conversations_, ed. Laing, 842.

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

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

THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in _HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish fare.

l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar._ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I have not much skill in grass.' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV. v.

THE ELEGIES.

Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated before the larger collections were made or publication took place. Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house,' afterwards called _Elegie on the L. C._ The order in the one group, as we find it in e.g. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is _The Bracelet_,[1] _Going to Bed_, _Jealousie_, _The Anagram_, _Change_, _The Perfume_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let mee not serve,' _Loves Warr_, _On his Mistris_, 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Progress_. The second group, as we find it in _A25_, _JC_, and _W_, contains _The Bracelet_, _The Comparison_, _The Perfume_, _Jealousie_, 'Oh, let not me (_sic_ _W_) serve,' 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Warr_, _Going to Bed_, _Change_, _The Anagram_, _On his Mistris_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow, who to this house.' The last is not given in _A25_. It will be noticed that _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ drops _The Comparison_; _A25_, _JC_, _W_, _Loves Progress_; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.

[Footnote 1: I take the titles given in the editions for ease
of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title
which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ have is _On Loves Progresse_;
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_ have none. Other MSS. give one or other
occasionally.]

These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of Donne's _Elegies_, taken as such. Of the rest _The Dreame_ is given in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but among the songs, and _The Autumnall_ is placed by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed to get into general circulation.

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

slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:
mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.

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

France in her lunatique giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet shee relies upon our Angels well
Which nere retorne

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

And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give

(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:

Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring
I feare, &c., p. 210),

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

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

The twelfth (_His parting from her_) and fifteenth (_The Expostulation_) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not _likely_ that they were written after his marriage. _Julia_ is quite undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before 1615. But the fourteenth (_A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife_) was certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.

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

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

Minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas.

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

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.'
_Essais_, ii. 17.

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

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

Who is the president?

_True._ The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.

_Cler._ A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no
man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has
painted and perfumed ... I have made a song (I pray thee
hear it) on the subject

Still to be neat, still to be drest...

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

PAGE =79=. ELEGIE I.

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

a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.

ll. 19-20. _Nor, at his board together being sat
With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate._