If the same
omission
was in the MS.
John Donne
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 terra vel aqua: 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:
Cosi parlogli, 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 maesta il compose.
Tra giovane e fanciullo eta confine
Prese, ed orno 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.
Nash says, speaking of Satan, 'Lucifer (before his fall) an Archangel,
was a cleere body, compact of the purest and brightest of the ayre,
but after his fall hee was vayled with a grosser substance, and tooke
a new forme of darke and thicke ayre, which he still reteyneth. '
_Pierce Penniless_ (Grosart), ii. 102. The popular mind had difficulty
in appreciating the scholastic doctrine of the purely spiritual nature
of angels who do not possess but only assume bodies; who do not occupy
any point in space but are _virtually_ present as operating at that
point. 'Per applicationem igitur virtutis angelicae ad aliquem locum
qualitercumque dicitur Angelus esse in loco corporeo. ' The popular
mind gave them thin bodies and wondered how many could stand on a
needle.
The Scholastic doctrine of Angelic bodies was an inheritance from the
Neo-Platonic doctrine of the bodies of demons, the beings intermediary
between gods and men. According to Plotinus these could assume a body
of air or of fire, but the generally entertained view of the school
was, that their bodies were of air. Apuleius was the author of a
definition of demons which was transmitted through the Middle Ages:
'Daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio rationalia, animo passiva,
corpore aeria, tempore aeterna. ' See also Dante, _Purgatorio_, xv. The
aerial or aetherial body is a tenet of mysticism. It has been defended
by such different thinkers as Leibnitz and Charles Bonnet. See
Bouillet's note to Plotinus's _Enneads_, I. 454.
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not _vice
versa_, though the fact has eluded some of the copyists, who have
tried to change the pronouns. It is strange to find the subtle and
erudite Donne in his quest of realism falling into line with the
popular song-writer. Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his learned and
delightful essay on the mediaeval lyric (_Early English Lyrics_, 1907)
that the popular as opposed to the courtly love-song was frequently
put into the mouth of the woman. One has only to turn to Burns and
the Scotch lyrists to find the same thing true. This song, indeed, is
clearly descended from the popular _aube_, or lyric dialogue of lovers
parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened by the
punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.
Why should we rise? Because 'tis light?
ll. 13-18. _Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c. _ 'It is a good
definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is _Animae
vacantis passio_, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind.
For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love. '
_Sermons_ 26. 384.
PAGE =24=. THE ANNIVERSARIE.
l. 3. _The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe_: i. e. which
makes times and seasons as they pass.
Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd.
_The Second Anniversary_, l. 23.
The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone being
given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be supplied
with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers,
inadvertently or from some copy of _1633_, reads 'time', and this
makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not
improve the construction.
l. 22. _But wee no more, then all the rest. _ The 'wee' of every MS.
which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading.
The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of _1633_
imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. But he
was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we are in
heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven indeed we
shall be 'throughly blest', but _all_ in heaven are equally happy,
whereas here on earth,
we'are kings and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than
all the rest'.
The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are
equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves on
the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John xiv. 2,
they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according to their
merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision of God:
Only who have enjoy'd
The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it;
For it is both the object and the wit.
This is essential joy, where neither hee
Can suffer diminution, nor wee;
'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;
Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood.
_The Second Anniversary_, ll. 140-6 (p. 264).
But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to
understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and
each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an in
gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De hoc
August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo erunt,
scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia in
omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod habebunt
singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis omnium erit
per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod par gaudium omnes
habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, quia per charitatem
quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque gaudebit de bono
alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. Sed si par erit
cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium beatitudo; quod constat
omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest quod beatitudo par esset si ita
esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit,
non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem beatitudinis. Potest etiam
sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur paritas ad intensionem
affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem rerum de quibus
laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, gaudebunt omnes. '
Petri Lombardi . . . _Sententiarum_ Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare
Aquinas, _Summa, Supplement. _ Quaest. xciii.
All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, is
Piccardo's answer to Dante (_Paradiso_, iii. 70-88): 'So that our
being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is a
joy to all the realm, as to the King, who draweth our wills to what he
willeth: and his will is our peace. '
ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that _1633_ has in this
poem followed not _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ but _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
PAGE =25=. A VALEDICTION: OF MY NAME IN THE WINDOW.
I have adopted from the title of this poem in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ the
correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions
the titles run straight on, _A Valediction of my name, in the window_.
This has led in the case of the next of these poems, _A Valediction
of the booke_, to the mistake expressed in the title of _1633_,
_Valediction to his Booke_, and repeated by Grosart, that the latter
was a dedication, 'formed the concluding poem of the missing edition
of his poems. ' This is a complete mistake. _Valediction_ is the
general title of a poem bidding farewell. _Of the Booke_, _Of teares_,
&c. , indicate the particular themes. This is clearly brought out in
_O'F_, where they are brought together and numbered. _Valediction 2.
of Teares_, &c.
PAGE =26=, l. 28. _The Rafters of my body, bone. _ Compare: 'First,
_Ossa_, bones, We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation, what
they are; They are these Beames, and Timbers, and Rafters of these
Tabernacles, these Temples of the Holy Ghost, these bodies of ours. '
_Sermons_ 80. 51. 516.
PAGE =27=, ll. 31-2. _Till my returne, repaire
And recompact my scattered body so. _
This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 it
went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent
editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but
corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' was
changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption that 'so'
pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, 'so'
refers _back_ to the preceding verse. Donne has described how from his
anatomy or skeleton, i. e. his name scratched in the glass, the lady
may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens the new verse
by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter . . . we have Job's
Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced. . . . Job felt
the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation
too; and it was all one hand: This is God's Method . . . even God's
demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections
are so many recompactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the
Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole peece, and he cuts us
out of the whole peece into peeces, that he may make us up into a
whole garment. ' _Sermons_ 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce
and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 552. With the third line, 'As all the virtuous
powers,' Donne begins a new comparison which is completed in the next
stanza. Therefore the sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text
with a colon. The full stop of the later editions, which Chambers
adopts, is obviously wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains
the comma at 'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous
stanza, the sense becomes very obscure.
PAGE =28=. TWICKNAM GARDEN.
l. 1. _surrounded with tears_: i. e. overflowed with tears, the root
idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:
Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.
Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which are
so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures
themselves, and suppresse and surround them. ' _Sermons_ 80. 59. 599.
With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and season
where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent some of
my meditations to you. . . . The pleasantnesse of the season displeases
me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older and not
better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being to pass
more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out all my
ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and so
am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught
myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary
wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. _Letters_ (1651), pp. 78-9 (_To
Sir Henry Goodyere_).
l. 15. _Indure, nor yet leave loving. _ This is at first sight a
strange reading, and I was disposed to think that _1635-69_, which
has the support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority),
must be right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is
probably addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving'
as though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden'
suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to linger
here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.
It is remarkable that _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _H40_ omit this half
line.
If the same omission was in the MS. from which _1633_ printed,
the present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older
than that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet
Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce the
effect of the alliteration:
Maer, om my noch te decken
Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min
Te voeren in mijn zin,
Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.
Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be
ever the faithful lover. ' Compare _Loves Deitie_, l. 24. 'Love might
make me leave loving. ' The remainder of the verse may have been
suggested by Jonson's
Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.
_Cynthias Revels_ (1600).
l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and
'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from _A18_, _N_, _TC_; _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_; and _H40_. It is surely much more in Donne's style than
the colourless and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with
the next line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the
mandrake, then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or
'flow'. The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that
the mandrake is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to
groan:
I prethee yet remember
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shreeking.
Webster, _The White Devil_, V. vi. 64.
On the other hand the lover most often groans:
Thy face hath not the power to make love grone.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 131. 6.
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 133. 1.
_Ros. _ I would be glad to see it. (_i. e. _ _his heart_)
_Bir. _ I would you heard it groan.
_Love's Labour's Lost. _
In a metaphor where two objects are identified such a transference of
attributes is quite permissible. Moreover, although 'shriek' is the
more common word, 'groan' is used of the mandrake:
Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms, &c.
_2 Hen. VI_, III. ii. 310.
In the _Elegie upon . . . Prince Henry_ (p. 269, ll. 53-4) Donne writes:
though such a life wee have
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.
i. e. a life of groans.
PAGE =29=. A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOKE.
l. 3. _Esloygne. _ Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good
English form.
From worldly care himself he did esloyne.
Spenser, _F. Q. _ I. iv. 20.
The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with
's' disappears after the seventeenth century.
PAGE =30=, l. 7. _Her who from Pindar could allure. _ Corinna, who
five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, _Var. Hist. _ xiii. 25,
referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix.
22.
l. 8. _And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame. _ His wife, Polla
Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first
books of his _Pharsalia_'. Lempriere. The source of this tradition
I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to
Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among
a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe versum
. . . complevit . . . Argentaria cum Lucano. '
l. 9. _And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name. _ I
owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers
to the _Myriobiblon_ or _Bibliotheca_ of Photius, of which the first
edition was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an
abstract of a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that
Musaeus' daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her
work Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers to
Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work Homer
got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This last source
is mentioned by Lempriere, who knows nothing of the other. Probably,
therefore, it is the better known tradition.
ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of l. 21
and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines of the
stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, in
cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the only
instruments for Loves clergy--their Missal and Breviary. ' I presume
this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor,
who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems to me that
with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the
end of l. 22.
l. 25. _Vandals and Goths inundate us. _ This, the reading of quite a
number of independent MSS. , seems to me greatly preferable to that of
the printed texts:
Vandals and the Goths invade us.
The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for
any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are
errors due to misunderstanding, e. g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb'
show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving,
or conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor
mistook 'in? date' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the
metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why the
epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not extended
to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by Donne in the
sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which invasive Armies pour
upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name of Law, _The Law of
Armes_. ' _Sermons_ 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
_Paradise Lost_, i. 351-4.
Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of the
Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here:
'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes et
multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet super
omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per
Iudam, _inundans_, et transiens usque ad collum veniet. ' Isaiah viii.
7-8.
Donne uses the word exactly as here in the _Essays in Divinity_: 'To
which foreign sojourning . . . many have assimilated and compared the
Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded in Avignon
seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of the Goths in
Italy. ' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.
PAGE =31=, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very
characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the
whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our
mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They
will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour
or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by
transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we
pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood,
and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going
beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover
who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or
"conscience". '
'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and
statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of
"bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman
and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or
inspiring fear in those who descry it. '
l. 53. _In this thy booke, such will their nothing see. _ After some
hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of
1633 and 1669, 'there something. ' I do so because (1) the MSS. support
it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance;
(2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic
enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more
difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a
statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own
Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton,
and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having
this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are
nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the _Cambridge History of
Literature_, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully
rounded 'no'. Compare _Negative Love_, l. 16.
With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their
whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in
Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation
into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for
Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture. '
_Sermons_ 80. 78. 791.
'Un personnage de grande dignite, me voulant approuver par authorite
cette queste de la pierre philosophale ou il est tout plonge,
m'allegua dernierement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur
lesquels il disoit s'estre premierement fonde pour la descharge de sa
conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, a la verite,
l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien
proprement accommodee a la defence de cette belle science. ' Montaigne,
_Apologie de Raimond Sebond_ (_Les Essais_, ii. 12).
PAGE =32=, ll. 59-61. _To take a latitude, &c. _ The latitude of a spot
may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a
star whose altitude, i. e. distance from the equator, is known. The
words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with
the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.
ll. 61-3. _but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee_.
This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered
by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela
was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an
instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at
Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the
time of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the
difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn
have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a
practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to
observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. In
certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another
method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the
most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted and
carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.
The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis.
'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore
longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love
will be. ' There is no real appropriateness.
PAGE =33=. LOVES GROWTH.
ll. 7-8. _But if this medicine, &c. _ 'The quintessence then is a
certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced,
and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter
most subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from
all the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is,
so to say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut
up within things but now free from any domicile and from all outward
incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties
of things. . . . Now the fact _that this quintessence cures all diseases_
does not arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely
its great cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner,
it alters the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it. . .
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 terra vel aqua: 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:
Cosi parlogli, 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 maesta il compose.
Tra giovane e fanciullo eta confine
Prese, ed orno 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.
Nash says, speaking of Satan, 'Lucifer (before his fall) an Archangel,
was a cleere body, compact of the purest and brightest of the ayre,
but after his fall hee was vayled with a grosser substance, and tooke
a new forme of darke and thicke ayre, which he still reteyneth. '
_Pierce Penniless_ (Grosart), ii. 102. The popular mind had difficulty
in appreciating the scholastic doctrine of the purely spiritual nature
of angels who do not possess but only assume bodies; who do not occupy
any point in space but are _virtually_ present as operating at that
point. 'Per applicationem igitur virtutis angelicae ad aliquem locum
qualitercumque dicitur Angelus esse in loco corporeo. ' The popular
mind gave them thin bodies and wondered how many could stand on a
needle.
The Scholastic doctrine of Angelic bodies was an inheritance from the
Neo-Platonic doctrine of the bodies of demons, the beings intermediary
between gods and men. According to Plotinus these could assume a body
of air or of fire, but the generally entertained view of the school
was, that their bodies were of air. Apuleius was the author of a
definition of demons which was transmitted through the Middle Ages:
'Daemones sunt genere animalia, ingenio rationalia, animo passiva,
corpore aeria, tempore aeterna. ' See also Dante, _Purgatorio_, xv. The
aerial or aetherial body is a tenet of mysticism. It has been defended
by such different thinkers as Leibnitz and Charles Bonnet. See
Bouillet's note to Plotinus's _Enneads_, I. 454.
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This poem is obviously addressed by a woman to her lover, not _vice
versa_, though the fact has eluded some of the copyists, who have
tried to change the pronouns. It is strange to find the subtle and
erudite Donne in his quest of realism falling into line with the
popular song-writer. Mr. Chambers has pointed out in his learned and
delightful essay on the mediaeval lyric (_Early English Lyrics_, 1907)
that the popular as opposed to the courtly love-song was frequently
put into the mouth of the woman. One has only to turn to Burns and
the Scotch lyrists to find the same thing true. This song, indeed, is
clearly descended from the popular _aube_, or lyric dialogue of lovers
parting at daybreak. The dialogue suggestion is heightened by the
punctuation of l. 3 in some MSS.
Why should we rise? Because 'tis light?
ll. 13-18. _Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c. _ 'It is a good
definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is _Animae
vacantis passio_, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind.
For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love. '
_Sermons_ 26. 384.
PAGE =24=. THE ANNIVERSARIE.
l. 3. _The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe_: i. e. which
makes times and seasons as they pass.
Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd.
_The Second Anniversary_, l. 23.
The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone being
given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be supplied
with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers,
inadvertently or from some copy of _1633_, reads 'time', and this
makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not
improve the construction.
l. 22. _But wee no more, then all the rest. _ The 'wee' of every MS.
which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading.
The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of _1633_
imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. But he
was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we are in
heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven indeed we
shall be 'throughly blest', but _all_ in heaven are equally happy,
whereas here on earth,
we'are kings and none but we
Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than
all the rest'.
The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are
equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves on
the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John xiv. 2,
they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according to their
merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision of God:
Only who have enjoy'd
The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it;
For it is both the object and the wit.
This is essential joy, where neither hee
Can suffer diminution, nor wee;
'Tis such a full, and such a filling good;
Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood.
_The Second Anniversary_, ll. 140-6 (p. 264).
But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to
understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and
each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an in
gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De hoc
August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo erunt,
scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia in
omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod habebunt
singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis omnium erit
per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod par gaudium omnes
habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, quia per charitatem
quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque gaudebit de bono
alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. Sed si par erit
cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium beatitudo; quod constat
omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest quod beatitudo par esset si ita
esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit,
non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem beatitudinis. Potest etiam
sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur paritas ad intensionem
affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem rerum de quibus
laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, gaudebunt omnes. '
Petri Lombardi . . . _Sententiarum_ Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare
Aquinas, _Summa, Supplement. _ Quaest. xciii.
All in heaven are perfectly happy in the place assigned to them, is
Piccardo's answer to Dante (_Paradiso_, iii. 70-88): 'So that our
being thus, from threshold unto threshold throughout the realm, is a
joy to all the realm, as to the King, who draweth our wills to what he
willeth: and his will is our peace. '
ll. 23-4. The variants in these lines show that _1633_ has in this
poem followed not _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ but _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
PAGE =25=. A VALEDICTION: OF MY NAME IN THE WINDOW.
I have adopted from the title of this poem in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ the
correct manner of entitling all these poems. In the printed editions
the titles run straight on, _A Valediction of my name, in the window_.
This has led in the case of the next of these poems, _A Valediction
of the booke_, to the mistake expressed in the title of _1633_,
_Valediction to his Booke_, and repeated by Grosart, that the latter
was a dedication, 'formed the concluding poem of the missing edition
of his poems. ' This is a complete mistake. _Valediction_ is the
general title of a poem bidding farewell. _Of the Booke_, _Of teares_,
&c. , indicate the particular themes. This is clearly brought out in
_O'F_, where they are brought together and numbered. _Valediction 2.
of Teares_, &c.
PAGE =26=, l. 28. _The Rafters of my body, bone. _ Compare: 'First,
_Ossa_, bones, We know in the naturall and ordinary acceptation, what
they are; They are these Beames, and Timbers, and Rafters of these
Tabernacles, these Temples of the Holy Ghost, these bodies of ours. '
_Sermons_ 80. 51. 516.
PAGE =27=, ll. 31-2. _Till my returne, repaire
And recompact my scattered body so. _
This verse is rightly printed in the 1633 edition. In that of 1635 it
went wrong; and the errors were transmitted through all the subsequent
editions, and have been retained by Grosart and Chambers, but
corrected in the Grolier Club edition. The full stop after 'so' was
changed to a comma on the natural but mistaken assumption that 'so'
pointed forward to the immediately following 'as'. In fact, 'so'
refers _back_ to the preceding verse. Donne has described how from his
anatomy or skeleton, i. e. his name scratched in the glass, the lady
may repair and recompact his whole frame, and he opens the new verse
by bidding her do so. Compare: 'In this chapter . . . we have Job's
Anatomy, Jobs Sceleton, the ruins to which he was reduced. . . . Job felt
the hand of destruction upon him, and he felt the hand of preservation
too; and it was all one hand: This is God's Method . . . even God's
demolitions are super-edifications, his Anatomies, his dissections
are so many recompactings, so many resurrections; God winds us off the
Skein, that he may weave us up into the whole peece, and he cuts us
out of the whole peece into peeces, that he may make us up into a
whole garment. ' _Sermons_ 80. 43. 127-9. Again, 'It is a divorce
and no super-induction, it is a separating, and no redintegration. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 552. With the third line, 'As all the virtuous
powers,' Donne begins a new comparison which is completed in the next
stanza. Therefore the sixth stanza closes rightly in the 1633 text
with a colon. The full stop of the later editions, which Chambers
adopts, is obviously wrong. Grosart has a semicolon, but as he retains
the comma at 'so' and puts a semicolon at the end of the previous
stanza, the sense becomes very obscure.
PAGE =28=. TWICKNAM GARDEN.
l. 1. _surrounded with tears_: i. e. overflowed with tears, the root
idea of 'surrounded'. The Dutch poet translates:
Van suchten hytgedort, van tranen overvloeyt.
Compare: 'The traditional doctrines in the Roman Church, which are
so many, as that they overflow even the water of life, the Scriptures
themselves, and suppresse and surround them. ' _Sermons_ 80. 59. 599.
With this whole poem compare: 'Sir, Because I am in a place and season
where I see every thing bud forth, I must do so too, and vent some of
my meditations to you. . . . The pleasantnesse of the season displeases
me. Everything refreshes, and I wither, and I grow older and not
better, my strength diminishes and my load growes, and being to pass
more and more stormes, I finde that I have not onely cast out all my
ballast, which nature and time gives, Reason and discretion, and so
am as empty and light as Vanity can make me, but I have overfraught
myself with vice, and so am ridd(l)ingly subject to two contrary
wracks, Sinking and Oversetting,' &c. _Letters_ (1651), pp. 78-9 (_To
Sir Henry Goodyere_).
l. 15. _Indure, nor yet leave loving. _ This is at first sight a
strange reading, and I was disposed to think that _1635-69_, which
has the support of several MSS. (none of very high textual authority),
must be right. It is strange to hear the Petrarchian lover (Donne is
probably addressing the Countess of Bedford) speak of 'leaving loving'
as though it were in his power. The reading 'nor leave this garden'
suits what follows: 'Not to be mocked by the garden and yet to linger
here in the vicinity of her I love let me become,' &c.
It is remarkable that _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _H40_ omit this half
line.
If the same omission was in the MS. from which _1633_ printed,
the present reading might be an editor's emendation. But it is older
than that, for it was the reading of the MS. from which the Dutch poet
Huyghens translated, and he has tried by his rhymes to produce the
effect of the alliteration:
Maer, om my noch te decken
Voor sulcken ongeval, en niet te min de Min
Te voeren in mijn zin,
Komt Min, en laet my hier yet ongevoelicks wezen.
Donne means, I suppose, 'Not to be mocked by the garden, and yet to be
ever the faithful lover. ' Compare _Loves Deitie_, l. 24. 'Love might
make me leave loving. ' The remainder of the verse may have been
suggested by Jonson's
Slow, slow, fresh Fount, keep time with my salt Tears.
_Cynthias Revels_ (1600).
l. 17. I have ventured to adopt 'groane' for 'grow' ('grone' and
'growe' are almost indistinguishable) from _A18_, _N_, _TC_; _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_; and _H40_. It is surely much more in Donne's style than
the colourless and pointless 'growe'. It is, too, in closer touch with
the next line. If 'growing' is all we are to have predicated of the
mandrake, then it should be sufficient for the fountain to 'stand', or
'flow'. The chief difficulty in accepting the MS. reading is that
the mandrake is most often said to shriek, sometimes to howl, not to
groan:
I prethee yet remember
Millions are now in graves, which at last day
Like mandrakes shall rise shreeking.
Webster, _The White Devil_, V. vi. 64.
On the other hand the lover most often groans:
Thy face hath not the power to make love grone.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 131. 6.
Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groane.
Shakespeare, _Sonnets_, 133. 1.
_Ros. _ I would be glad to see it. (_i. e. _ _his heart_)
_Bir. _ I would you heard it groan.
_Love's Labour's Lost. _
In a metaphor where two objects are identified such a transference of
attributes is quite permissible. Moreover, although 'shriek' is the
more common word, 'groan' is used of the mandrake:
Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
I would invent as bitter searching terms, &c.
_2 Hen. VI_, III. ii. 310.
In the _Elegie upon . . . Prince Henry_ (p. 269, ll. 53-4) Donne writes:
though such a life wee have
As but so many mandrakes on his grave.
i. e. a life of groans.
PAGE =29=. A VALEDICTION: OF THE BOOKE.
l. 3. _Esloygne. _ Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good
English form.
From worldly care himself he did esloyne.
Spenser, _F. Q. _ I. iv. 20.
The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with
's' disappears after the seventeenth century.
PAGE =30=, l. 7. _Her who from Pindar could allure. _ Corinna, who
five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, _Var. Hist. _ xiii. 25,
referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix.
22.
l. 8. _And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame. _ His wife, Polla
Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first
books of his _Pharsalia_'. Lempriere. The source of this tradition
I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to
Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among
a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe versum
. . . complevit . . . Argentaria cum Lucano. '
l. 9. _And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name. _ I
owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers
to the _Myriobiblon_ or _Bibliotheca_ of Photius, of which the first
edition was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an
abstract of a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that
Musaeus' daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her
work Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers to
Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work Homer
got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This last source
is mentioned by Lempriere, who knows nothing of the other. Probably,
therefore, it is the better known tradition.
ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of l. 21
and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines of the
stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, in
cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the only
instruments for Loves clergy--their Missal and Breviary. ' I presume
this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor,
who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems to me that
with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the
end of l. 22.
l. 25. _Vandals and Goths inundate us. _ This, the reading of quite a
number of independent MSS. , seems to me greatly preferable to that of
the printed texts:
Vandals and the Goths invade us.
The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for
any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are
errors due to misunderstanding, e. g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb'
show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving,
or conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor
mistook 'in? date' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the
metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why the
epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not extended
to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by Donne in the
sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which invasive Armies pour
upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name of Law, _The Law of
Armes_. ' _Sermons_ 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
_Paradise Lost_, i. 351-4.
Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of the
Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here:
'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes et
multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet super
omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per
Iudam, _inundans_, et transiens usque ad collum veniet. ' Isaiah viii.
7-8.
Donne uses the word exactly as here in the _Essays in Divinity_: 'To
which foreign sojourning . . . many have assimilated and compared the
Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded in Avignon
seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of the Goths in
Italy. ' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.
PAGE =31=, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very
characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the
whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our
mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They
will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour
or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by
transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we
pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood,
and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going
beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover
who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or
"conscience". '
'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and
statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of
"bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman
and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or
inspiring fear in those who descry it. '
l. 53. _In this thy booke, such will their nothing see. _ After some
hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of
1633 and 1669, 'there something. ' I do so because (1) the MSS. support
it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance;
(2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic
enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more
difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a
statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own
Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton,
and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having
this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are
nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the _Cambridge History of
Literature_, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully
rounded 'no'. Compare _Negative Love_, l. 16.
With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their
whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in
Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation
into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for
Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture. '
_Sermons_ 80. 78. 791.
'Un personnage de grande dignite, me voulant approuver par authorite
cette queste de la pierre philosophale ou il est tout plonge,
m'allegua dernierement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur
lesquels il disoit s'estre premierement fonde pour la descharge de sa
conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, a la verite,
l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien
proprement accommodee a la defence de cette belle science. ' Montaigne,
_Apologie de Raimond Sebond_ (_Les Essais_, ii. 12).
PAGE =32=, ll. 59-61. _To take a latitude, &c. _ The latitude of a spot
may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a
star whose altitude, i. e. distance from the equator, is known. The
words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with
the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.
ll. 61-3. _but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee_.
This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered
by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela
was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an
instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at
Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the
time of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the
difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn
have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a
practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to
observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. In
certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another
method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the
most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted and
carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.
The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis.
'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore
longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love
will be. ' There is no real appropriateness.
PAGE =33=. LOVES GROWTH.
ll. 7-8. _But if this medicine, &c. _ 'The quintessence then is a
certain matter extracted from all things which Nature has produced,
and from everything which has life corporeally in itself, a matter
most subtly purged of all impurities and mortality, and separated from
all the elements. From this it is evident that the quintessence is,
so to say, a nature, a force, a virtue, and a medicine, once shut
up within things but now free from any domicile and from all outward
incorporation. The same is also the colour, the life, the properties
of things. . . . Now the fact _that this quintessence cures all diseases_
does not arise from temperature, but from an innate property, namely
its great cleanliness and purity, by which, after a wonderful manner,
it alters the body into its own purity, and entirely changes it. . .
