The
argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi to
the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your fame
guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are so bad
that they may not be thus led.
argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi to
the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your fame
guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are so bad
that they may not be thus led.
Donne - 2
TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
l. 1. _T'have written then, &c. _ This is one of the most difficult of
Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment Donne
has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way
theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the poem is one
of those for which the MS. resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was not
available. The text of _1633_ was taken from a MS. belonging to the
group _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, and contains several errors. Some of
these were corrected in _1635_ from _O'F_ or a MS. resembling it,
but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in
_1633_ was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.
The emendations which I have accepted from _1635_ are--
l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.
l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.
l. 20. 'or all It; You. ' for 'or all, in you. ' There is not much
to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very
logical expression. But the _1633_ reading may mean 'the world's
best part, or the world's all,--you. ' The alteration of _1635_ is not
necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.
l. 4. _Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse. _ 'Naturall and
morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of
thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are
with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all
_Solomons_ bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of
thankefulnesse, as you shall in _Seneca_ and in _Plutarch_. No book of
Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost
in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 550.
PAGE =197=, l. 54. _Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove. _
Following the hint of _O'F_, I have bracketed all these words to show
that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.
ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free. _
Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction
has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But _1633_ is right. If
'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne
free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form
of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the
Penitential Psalms (_Sermons_ 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full
cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above
those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian
Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere
understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by
nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die
or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being
preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i. e. immortal) is presented as
sharply as in this line of the verse _Letter_. But Donne states
the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any
constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for
the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by
preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying,
then, that it cannot dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 27. 269. This makes the
correct reading of the line quite certain.
The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is
speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body
which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well
as labour (ll. 43-8). He returns in ll. 49-52 to the main theme of the
body's corrupting influence, and this leads him to a new thought. It
is not only the soul which suffers by this absorption in the body, but
the body itself:
What hate could hurt our bodies like our love?
By this descent of the soul into the body we deprive the latter of
its proper dignity, to be the Casket, Temple, Palace of the Soul.
Then Donne turns aside to enforce the dignity of the Body. It will be
redeemed from death, and the Soul is only preserved. No more than
the Body is the Soul naturally immortal. These lines are almost
a parenthesis. The poet returns once more to his main theme, the
degradation of the soul by our exclusive regard for the body.
Thus the deepest thought of Donne's poetry, his love poetry and
his religious poetry, emerges here again. He will not accept the
antithesis between soul and body. The dignity of the body is hardly
less than that of the soul. But we cannot exalt the body at the
expense of the soul. If we immerse the soul in the body it is not the
soul alone which suffers but the body also. In the highest spiritual
life, as in the fullest and most perfect love, body and soul are
complementary, are merged in each other; and after death the life
of the soul is in some measure incomplete, the end for which it was
created is not obtained until it is reunited to the body. 'Yet have
not those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text,
acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule, mistaken nor miscalled the
matter. Take _Damascens_ owne definition of Resurrection: _Resurrectio
est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio_: A Resurrection is a second
rising to that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now
though by death, the soule do not fall into any such state, as that it
can complaine, (for what can that lack, which God fils? ) yet by death,
the soule fals from that, for which it was infused, and poured into
man at first; that is to be the forme of that body, the King of that
Kingdome; and therefore, when in the generall Resurrection, the soule
returns to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath
had an affection, and a desire, even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of
Heaven, then, when the soule returns to her office, to make up
the man, because the whole man hath, therefore the soule hath a
Resurrection: not from death, but from a deprivation of her former
state; that state which she was made for, and is ever enclined to. '
_Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
Here, as before, Donne is probably following St. Augustine, who
combats the Neo-Platonic view (to which mediaeval thought tended to
recur) that a direct source of evil was the descent of the soul into
the body. The body is not essentially evil. It is not the body as such
that weighs down the soul (aggravat animam), but the body corrupted
by sin: 'Nam corruptio corporis . . . non peccati primi est causa, sed
poena; nec caro corruptibilis animam peccatricem, sed anima peccatrix
fecit esse corruptibilem carnem. ' In the Resurrection we desire not
to escape from the body but to be clothed with a new body,--'nolumus
corpore exspoliari, sed ejus immortalitate vestiri. ' Aug. _De Civ.
Dei_, xiv. 3, 5. He cites St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1-4.
l. 59. _As men to our prisons, new soules to us are sent, &c. _: 'new'
is the reading of _1633_ only, 'now' followed or preceded by a comma
of the other editions and the MSS. It is difficult to decide between
them, but Donne speaks of 'new souls' elsewhere: 'The Father creates
new souls every day in the inanimation of Children, and the Sonne
creates them with him. ' _Sermons_ 50. 12. 100. 'Our nature is
Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) both earth and heaven;
for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy, so
our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed to partake earthly
pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go back again; we have
some errand to do here; nor is it sent into prison, because it comes
innocent; and he which sent it, is just. ' _Letters_ (1651), p. 46.
l. 68. _Two new starres. _ See Introductory Note to _Letters_.
PAGE =198=, l. 72. _Stand on two truths_: i. e. the wickedness of the
world and your goodness. You will believe neither.
PAGE =198=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
ON NEW-YEARES DAY.
l. 3. _of stuffe and forme perplext_: i. e. whose matter and form are a
perplexed, intricate, difficult question:
Whose _what_, and _where_ in disputation is.
Donne cannot mean that the matter and form are 'intricately
intertwined or intermingled', using the words as in Bacon: 'The
formes of substances (as they are now by compounding and transplanting
multiplied) are so perplexed. ' Bacon, _Adv. Learn. _ ii. 7. § 5. The
question of meteors in all their forms was one of great interest and
great difficulty to ancient science. Seneca, who gathers up most of
what has been said before him, recurs to the subject again and again.
See the _Quaestiones Naturales_, i. 1, and elsewhere. Aristotle, he
says, attributes them to exhalations from the earth heated by the
sun's rays. They are at any rate not falling stars, or parts of stars,
but 'have their origin below the stars, and--being without solid
foundation or fixed abode--quickly perish'. But there was great
uncertainty as to their _what_ and _where_. Donne compares himself to
them in the uncertainty of his position and worldly affairs. 'Wind is
a mixt Meteor, to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with
exhalations. ' _Sermons_ 80. 31. 305.
PAGE =199=, l. 19. _cherish, us doe wast. _ The punctuation of _1633_
is odd at the first glance, but accurate. If with all the later
editions one prints 'cherish us, doe wast', the suggestion is that
'wast' is intransitive--'in cherishing us they waste themselves,'
which is not Donne's meaning. It is us they waste.
PAGE =200=, l. 44. _Some pitty. _ I was tempted to think that Lowell's
conjecture of 'piety' for 'pitty' must be right, the more so that the
spelling of the two words was not always differentiated. But it is
improbable that Donne would say that 'piety' in the sense of piety
to God could ever be out of place. What he means is probably that at
Court pity, which elsewhere is a virtue, may not be so if it induces a
lady to lend a relenting ear to the complaint of a lover.
Beware faire maides of musky courtiers oathes
Take heed what giftes and favors you receive,
. . . . . . . . .
Beleeve not oathes or much protesting men,
Credit no vowes nor no bewayling songs.
Joshua Sylvester (_attributed to_ Donne).
What follows is ambiguous. As punctuated in _1633_ the lines run:
some vaine disport,
On this side, sinne: with that place may comport.
This must mean, practically repeating what has been said: 'Some vain
amusements which, on this side of the line separating the cloister
from the Court, would be sin; are on that side, in the Court,
becoming--amusements, sinful in the cloister, are permissible at
Court. ' The last line thus contains a sharp antithesis. But can 'on
this side' mean 'in the cloister'? Donne is not writing from the
cloister, and if he had been would say 'In this place'. 'Faith',
he says elsewhere, 'is not on this side Knowledge but beyond it. '
_Sermons_ 50. 36. 325. This is what he means here, and I have so
punctuated it, following _1719_ and subsequent editions: 'Some vain
disport, so long as it falls short of actual sin, is permissible at
Court. '
l. 48. _what none else lost_: i. e. innocence. Others never had it.
PAGE =201=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF HUNTINGDON.
Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby,
married Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, in 1603. Her
mother's second husband was Sir Thomas Egerton, whom Lady Derby
married in 1600. Donne was then Egerton's secretary, and in lines
57-60 he refers to his early acquaintance with her, then Lady Alice
Stanley. If the letter in _Appendix A_, p. 417, 'That unripe side',
&c. , be also by Donne, and addressed to the Countess of Huntingdon,
it must have been written earlier than this letter, which belongs
probably to the period immediately before Donne's ordination.
l. 13. _the Magi. _ The MSS. give _Magis_, and in _The First
Anniversary_ (l. 390) Donne writes, 'The Aegyptian Mages'.
The
argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi to
the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your fame
guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are so bad
that they may not be thus led. Your light can illumine and guide the
darkest. '
l. 18. _the Sunnes fall. _ In Autumn? or does Donne refer to the fall
of the sun to the centre in the new Astronomy? In the _Letters_, p.
102, he says that 'Copernicisme in the Mathematiques hath carried
earth farther up from the stupid Center; and yet not honoured it,
because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so
much higher from it'. Compare _An Anatomie of the World_, l. 274.
PAGE 202, l. 25. _She guilded us: But you are gold, and Shee;_
The _1633_ reading is the more pregnant, and therefore the more
characteristic of Donne. 'She guilded us, but you she changed into
_her own_ substance. ' The _1635_ reading implies transubstantiation,
but does not indicate so clearly the identity of the new substance
with virtue's own essence.
ll. 33-6. _Else being alike pure, &c. _ This verse follows in the
closest way on what has gone before, and should not be separated from
it by a full stop as in Chambers and Grolier. The last line of this
stanza concludes the whole argument which began at l. 29. 'The high
grace of virginity indeed is not yours, because virtue, having made
you one with herself, wished in you to reveal herself. Virtue and
Virginity are each too pure for earthly vision. As air and aqueous
vapour are each invisible till both are changed into thickened air or
cloud, so virtue becomes manifest in you as mother and wife. It is for
_our_ sake you take these low names. '
ll. 41-4. _So you, as woman, one doth comprehend, &c. _ 'One, your
husband, comprehends your being. To others it is revealed, but under
the veil of kindred; to still others of friendship; to me, who stand
more remote, under the relationship of prince to subject. '
l. 47. _I, which doe soe. _ The edition of 1633 reads, 'I, which to
you', making a logical and grammatical construction of the sentence
impossible. The editor has failed to note that the personal reference
of 'owe' is supplied in l. 45, 'To whom'. 'I, which doe so' means 'I,
who contemplate you'.
PAGE =203=. TO M^r T. W.
_To M^r T. W. _ The group of letters which begins with this I have
arranged according to the order in which they are found in _W_, Mr.
Gosse's Westmoreland MS. In this MS. a better text of these poems is
given than that of _1633_; lines are supplied which have been dropped,
and a few whole letters. The series contains also a reply to one of
Donne's letters. For these reasons it seems to me preferable to follow
an order which _may_ correspond to the order of composition.
In _1633_, which follows _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, the letters are
headed M. T. W. , M. R. W. , &c. , 'M' standing, as often, for 'Mr. '
Seeing, however, that 'Mr. ' is the general form in _W_, I have used it
as clearer.
The first of the letters has been headed hitherto To M. I. W. , and
Mr. Chambers conjectured that the person addressed _might_ be Izaak
Walton. It is clear from the other MSS. that _A18_, _N_, _TC_, which
_1633_ follows, is wrong and that I. W. should be T. W. , Thomas
Woodward. The T and I of this MS. are very similar, though
distinguishable. Unfortunately we know nothing more of Thomas Woodward
than that he was Rowland's brother and Donne's friend. The 'sweet
Poet' must not be taken too seriously. Donne and his friends were
corresponding with one another in verse, and complimenting each other
in the polite fashion of the day.
PAGE =204=, ll. 13-16. _But care not for me, &c. _ These lines form a
crux in the textual criticism of Donne's poetry. I shall print them as
they stand in _W_:
But care not for mee: I y^t ever was
In natures & in fortunes guifts alas
Before thy grace got in the Muses schoole
A monster & a begger, am now a foole.
Some copies of the 1633 edition (including those used by myself and by
the Grolier Club editor) print these words, but obscure the meaning
by bracketing 'alas . . . schoole'. Other copies (e. g. that used by
Chambers) insert after 'Before' a 'by', which the Grolier Club editor
also does as a conjecture. The 1635 editor, probably following _O'F_,
resorted to another device to clear up the sense and changed 'Before'
to 'But for', which Grosart and Chambers follow. The majority of
the MSS. , however, agree with _W_, and the case illustrates well the
difficulties which beset an eclectic use of the editions.
If the bracket in _1633_ is dropt, or rearranged as in the text, the
reading is correct and intelligible. The printers and editors have
been misled by Donne's phrase, 'In Natures, and in Fortunes gifts'.
They took this to go with 'A monster and a beggar': 'I that ever was
a monster and a beggar in Natures and in Fortunes gifts. ' This is a
strange expression, taken, I suppose, to mean that Donne never enjoyed
the blessings either of Nature or of Fortune. But what Donne says
is somewhat different. The phrase 'I that ever was in Natures and
in Fortunes gifts' means 'I that ever was the Almsman of Nature and
Fortune'. Donne is using metaphorically a phrase of which the O. E. D.
quotes a single instance: 'I live in Henry the 7th's Gifts' (i. e.
his Almshouses). T. Barker, _The Art of Angling_ (1651). The whole
sentence might be paraphrased thus: 'I, who was ever the Almsman of
Nature and Fortune, am now a fool. ' Parenthetically he adds, 'Till
thy grace begot me, a monster and a beggar, in the Muses' school'.
Possibly 'and a beggar' should be left outside the brackets and taken
with 'In Natures and in Fortunes gifts': 'I, that _was_ an almsman
and beggar, was by you begotten a poet, though a monstrous one;'
('monster' goes properly with 'got') 'and am now a fool'--possibly the
last allusion is to his rash marriage. Donne's prose and verse of
the years following 1601 are full of this melancholy depreciation of
himself and his lot. Daniel calls himself the
Orphan of Fortune, borne to be her scorne.
_Delia_, 26.
Compare also:
O I am fortune's fool.
Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_, III. i. 129.
Let your study
Be to content your lord, who hath received you
At fortune's alms.
Shakespeare, _King Lear_, I. i. 277-9.
So shall I clothe me in a forced content,
And shut myself up in some other course,
To fortune's alms.
Shakespeare, _Othello_, III. iv. 120-2.
In _W_ 'All haile sweet Poet' is followed at once by these lines,
presumably written by Thomas Woodward and possibly in reply to the
above. They are found standing by themselves in _B_, _O'F_, _P_,
_S96_. In these they are apparently ascribed to Donne. I print from
_W_:
TO M^r J. D.
Thou sendst me prose and rimes, I send for those
Lynes, which, being neither, seem or verse or prose.
They'are lame and harsh, and have no heat at all
But what thy Liberall beams on them let fall.
The nimble fyre which in thy braynes doth dwell
Is it the fyre of heaven or that of hell?
It doth beget and comfort like Heavens eye,
And like hells fyre it burnes eternally.
And those whom in thy fury and judgment
Thy verse shall skourge like hell it will torment.
Have mercy on mee and my sinfull Muse
Which rub'd and tickled with thine could not chuse
But spend some of her pith, and yeild to bee
One in that chaste and mistique Tribadree.
Bassaes adultery no fruit did Leave,
Nor theirs, which their swollen thighs did nimbly weave,
And with new armes and mouths embrace and kiss,
Though they had issue was not like to this.
Thy muse, Oh strange and holy Lecheree
Being a mayde still, gott this song on mee.
l. 25. _Now if this song, &c. _ By interchanging the stops at 'evill'
and at 'passe' the old editions have obscured these lines. Mr.
Chambers, accepting the full stop at 'evill', prints:--
If thou forget the rhyme as thou dost pass,
Then write;
The reason for writing is not clear. 'If thou forget,' &c. explains
''Twill be good prose'. 'Read this without attending to the rhymes
and you will find it good prose. ' If we drop the epithet 'good', this
criticism will apply to a considerable portion of metaphysical poetry.
PAGE =205=, l. 30. _thy zanee_, i. e. thy imitator, as the Merry-Andrew
imitates the Mountebank:
He's like the Zani to a tumbler
That tries tricks after him to make men laugh.
Jonson, _Every Man out of his Humour_, IV. i.
PAGE =205=. TO M^r T. W.
l. 1. _Haste thee, &c. _ By the lines 5-6, supplied from _W_, this poem
is restored to the compass of a sonnet, though a very irregular one in
form. The letter is evidently written from London, where the plague is
prevalent. The letter is to be (l. 14) Donne's pledge of affection if
he lives, his testament if he dies.
PAGE =206=. TO M^r T. W.
l. 5. _hand and eye_ is the reading of all the MSS. , including _W_.
It is written in the latter with a contraction which could easily be
mistaken for 'or'.
TO M^r T. W.
l. 3. _I to the Nurse, they to the child of Art. _ The 'Nurse of Art'
is probably Leisure, 'I to my soft still walks':
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
According to Aristotle, all the higher, more intellectual arts, as
distinct from those which supply necessities or add to the pleasures
of life, are the fruits of leisure: 'At first he who invented any art
that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired
by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions,
but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more
arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life,
others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally
always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because
their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all
such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not
aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered,
and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This
is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there
the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. ' _Met. _ A. 981^b
(translated by W. D. Ross).
l. 12. _a Picture, or bare Sacrament. _ The last word would seem to be
used in the legal sense: 'The _sacramentum_ or pledge which each of
the parties deposited or became bound for before a suit. ' O. E. D. The
letter is a picture of his mind or pledge of his affection.
PAGE =207=. TO M^r R. W.
_Muse not that by, &c. _ l. 7. _a Lay Mans Genius_: i. e.
l. 1. _T'have written then, &c. _ This is one of the most difficult of
Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment Donne
has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way
theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the poem is one
of those for which the MS. resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was not
available. The text of _1633_ was taken from a MS. belonging to the
group _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, and contains several errors. Some of
these were corrected in _1635_ from _O'F_ or a MS. resembling it,
but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in
_1633_ was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.
The emendations which I have accepted from _1635_ are--
l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.
l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.
l. 20. 'or all It; You. ' for 'or all, in you. ' There is not much
to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very
logical expression. But the _1633_ reading may mean 'the world's
best part, or the world's all,--you. ' The alteration of _1635_ is not
necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.
l. 4. _Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse. _ 'Naturall and
morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of
thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are
with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all
_Solomons_ bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of
thankefulnesse, as you shall in _Seneca_ and in _Plutarch_. No book of
Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost
in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 550.
PAGE =197=, l. 54. _Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove. _
Following the hint of _O'F_, I have bracketed all these words to show
that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.
ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free. _
Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction
has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But _1633_ is right. If
'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne
free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form
of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the
Penitential Psalms (_Sermons_ 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full
cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above
those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian
Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere
understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by
nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die
or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being
preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i. e. immortal) is presented as
sharply as in this line of the verse _Letter_. But Donne states
the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any
constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for
the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by
preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying,
then, that it cannot dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 27. 269. This makes the
correct reading of the line quite certain.
The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is
speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body
which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well
as labour (ll. 43-8). He returns in ll. 49-52 to the main theme of the
body's corrupting influence, and this leads him to a new thought. It
is not only the soul which suffers by this absorption in the body, but
the body itself:
What hate could hurt our bodies like our love?
By this descent of the soul into the body we deprive the latter of
its proper dignity, to be the Casket, Temple, Palace of the Soul.
Then Donne turns aside to enforce the dignity of the Body. It will be
redeemed from death, and the Soul is only preserved. No more than
the Body is the Soul naturally immortal. These lines are almost
a parenthesis. The poet returns once more to his main theme, the
degradation of the soul by our exclusive regard for the body.
Thus the deepest thought of Donne's poetry, his love poetry and
his religious poetry, emerges here again. He will not accept the
antithesis between soul and body. The dignity of the body is hardly
less than that of the soul. But we cannot exalt the body at the
expense of the soul. If we immerse the soul in the body it is not the
soul alone which suffers but the body also. In the highest spiritual
life, as in the fullest and most perfect love, body and soul are
complementary, are merged in each other; and after death the life
of the soul is in some measure incomplete, the end for which it was
created is not obtained until it is reunited to the body. 'Yet have
not those Fathers, nor those Expositors, who have in this text,
acknowledged a Resurrection of the soule, mistaken nor miscalled the
matter. Take _Damascens_ owne definition of Resurrection: _Resurrectio
est ejus quod cecidit secunda surrectio_: A Resurrection is a second
rising to that state, from which anything is formerly fallen. Now
though by death, the soule do not fall into any such state, as that it
can complaine, (for what can that lack, which God fils? ) yet by death,
the soule fals from that, for which it was infused, and poured into
man at first; that is to be the forme of that body, the King of that
Kingdome; and therefore, when in the generall Resurrection, the soule
returns to that state, for which it was created, and to which it hath
had an affection, and a desire, even in the fulnesse of the Joyes of
Heaven, then, when the soule returns to her office, to make up
the man, because the whole man hath, therefore the soule hath a
Resurrection: not from death, but from a deprivation of her former
state; that state which she was made for, and is ever enclined to. '
_Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
Here, as before, Donne is probably following St. Augustine, who
combats the Neo-Platonic view (to which mediaeval thought tended to
recur) that a direct source of evil was the descent of the soul into
the body. The body is not essentially evil. It is not the body as such
that weighs down the soul (aggravat animam), but the body corrupted
by sin: 'Nam corruptio corporis . . . non peccati primi est causa, sed
poena; nec caro corruptibilis animam peccatricem, sed anima peccatrix
fecit esse corruptibilem carnem. ' In the Resurrection we desire not
to escape from the body but to be clothed with a new body,--'nolumus
corpore exspoliari, sed ejus immortalitate vestiri. ' Aug. _De Civ.
Dei_, xiv. 3, 5. He cites St. Paul, 2 Cor. v. 1-4.
l. 59. _As men to our prisons, new soules to us are sent, &c. _: 'new'
is the reading of _1633_ only, 'now' followed or preceded by a comma
of the other editions and the MSS. It is difficult to decide between
them, but Donne speaks of 'new souls' elsewhere: 'The Father creates
new souls every day in the inanimation of Children, and the Sonne
creates them with him. ' _Sermons_ 50. 12. 100. 'Our nature is
Meteorique, we respect (because we partake so) both earth and heaven;
for as our bodies glorified shall be capable of spirituall joy, so
our souls demerged into those bodies, are allowed to partake earthly
pleasure. Our soul is not sent hither, only to go back again; we have
some errand to do here; nor is it sent into prison, because it comes
innocent; and he which sent it, is just. ' _Letters_ (1651), p. 46.
l. 68. _Two new starres. _ See Introductory Note to _Letters_.
PAGE =198=, l. 72. _Stand on two truths_: i. e. the wickedness of the
world and your goodness. You will believe neither.
PAGE =198=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
ON NEW-YEARES DAY.
l. 3. _of stuffe and forme perplext_: i. e. whose matter and form are a
perplexed, intricate, difficult question:
Whose _what_, and _where_ in disputation is.
Donne cannot mean that the matter and form are 'intricately
intertwined or intermingled', using the words as in Bacon: 'The
formes of substances (as they are now by compounding and transplanting
multiplied) are so perplexed. ' Bacon, _Adv. Learn. _ ii. 7. § 5. The
question of meteors in all their forms was one of great interest and
great difficulty to ancient science. Seneca, who gathers up most of
what has been said before him, recurs to the subject again and again.
See the _Quaestiones Naturales_, i. 1, and elsewhere. Aristotle, he
says, attributes them to exhalations from the earth heated by the
sun's rays. They are at any rate not falling stars, or parts of stars,
but 'have their origin below the stars, and--being without solid
foundation or fixed abode--quickly perish'. But there was great
uncertainty as to their _what_ and _where_. Donne compares himself to
them in the uncertainty of his position and worldly affairs. 'Wind is
a mixt Meteor, to the making whereof divers occasions concurre with
exhalations. ' _Sermons_ 80. 31. 305.
PAGE =199=, l. 19. _cherish, us doe wast. _ The punctuation of _1633_
is odd at the first glance, but accurate. If with all the later
editions one prints 'cherish us, doe wast', the suggestion is that
'wast' is intransitive--'in cherishing us they waste themselves,'
which is not Donne's meaning. It is us they waste.
PAGE =200=, l. 44. _Some pitty. _ I was tempted to think that Lowell's
conjecture of 'piety' for 'pitty' must be right, the more so that the
spelling of the two words was not always differentiated. But it is
improbable that Donne would say that 'piety' in the sense of piety
to God could ever be out of place. What he means is probably that at
Court pity, which elsewhere is a virtue, may not be so if it induces a
lady to lend a relenting ear to the complaint of a lover.
Beware faire maides of musky courtiers oathes
Take heed what giftes and favors you receive,
. . . . . . . . .
Beleeve not oathes or much protesting men,
Credit no vowes nor no bewayling songs.
Joshua Sylvester (_attributed to_ Donne).
What follows is ambiguous. As punctuated in _1633_ the lines run:
some vaine disport,
On this side, sinne: with that place may comport.
This must mean, practically repeating what has been said: 'Some vain
amusements which, on this side of the line separating the cloister
from the Court, would be sin; are on that side, in the Court,
becoming--amusements, sinful in the cloister, are permissible at
Court. ' The last line thus contains a sharp antithesis. But can 'on
this side' mean 'in the cloister'? Donne is not writing from the
cloister, and if he had been would say 'In this place'. 'Faith',
he says elsewhere, 'is not on this side Knowledge but beyond it. '
_Sermons_ 50. 36. 325. This is what he means here, and I have so
punctuated it, following _1719_ and subsequent editions: 'Some vain
disport, so long as it falls short of actual sin, is permissible at
Court. '
l. 48. _what none else lost_: i. e. innocence. Others never had it.
PAGE =201=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF HUNTINGDON.
Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby,
married Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon, in 1603. Her
mother's second husband was Sir Thomas Egerton, whom Lady Derby
married in 1600. Donne was then Egerton's secretary, and in lines
57-60 he refers to his early acquaintance with her, then Lady Alice
Stanley. If the letter in _Appendix A_, p. 417, 'That unripe side',
&c. , be also by Donne, and addressed to the Countess of Huntingdon,
it must have been written earlier than this letter, which belongs
probably to the period immediately before Donne's ordination.
l. 13. _the Magi. _ The MSS. give _Magis_, and in _The First
Anniversary_ (l. 390) Donne writes, 'The Aegyptian Mages'.
The
argument of the verse is: 'As such a miraculous star led the Magi to
the infant Christ, so may the beams of virtue transmitted by your fame
guide fit souls to the knowledge of virtue; and indeed none are so bad
that they may not be thus led. Your light can illumine and guide the
darkest. '
l. 18. _the Sunnes fall. _ In Autumn? or does Donne refer to the fall
of the sun to the centre in the new Astronomy? In the _Letters_, p.
102, he says that 'Copernicisme in the Mathematiques hath carried
earth farther up from the stupid Center; and yet not honoured it,
because for the necessity of appearances, it hath carried heaven so
much higher from it'. Compare _An Anatomie of the World_, l. 274.
PAGE 202, l. 25. _She guilded us: But you are gold, and Shee;_
The _1633_ reading is the more pregnant, and therefore the more
characteristic of Donne. 'She guilded us, but you she changed into
_her own_ substance. ' The _1635_ reading implies transubstantiation,
but does not indicate so clearly the identity of the new substance
with virtue's own essence.
ll. 33-6. _Else being alike pure, &c. _ This verse follows in the
closest way on what has gone before, and should not be separated from
it by a full stop as in Chambers and Grolier. The last line of this
stanza concludes the whole argument which began at l. 29. 'The high
grace of virginity indeed is not yours, because virtue, having made
you one with herself, wished in you to reveal herself. Virtue and
Virginity are each too pure for earthly vision. As air and aqueous
vapour are each invisible till both are changed into thickened air or
cloud, so virtue becomes manifest in you as mother and wife. It is for
_our_ sake you take these low names. '
ll. 41-4. _So you, as woman, one doth comprehend, &c. _ 'One, your
husband, comprehends your being. To others it is revealed, but under
the veil of kindred; to still others of friendship; to me, who stand
more remote, under the relationship of prince to subject. '
l. 47. _I, which doe soe. _ The edition of 1633 reads, 'I, which to
you', making a logical and grammatical construction of the sentence
impossible. The editor has failed to note that the personal reference
of 'owe' is supplied in l. 45, 'To whom'. 'I, which doe so' means 'I,
who contemplate you'.
PAGE =203=. TO M^r T. W.
_To M^r T. W. _ The group of letters which begins with this I have
arranged according to the order in which they are found in _W_, Mr.
Gosse's Westmoreland MS. In this MS. a better text of these poems is
given than that of _1633_; lines are supplied which have been dropped,
and a few whole letters. The series contains also a reply to one of
Donne's letters. For these reasons it seems to me preferable to follow
an order which _may_ correspond to the order of composition.
In _1633_, which follows _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, the letters are
headed M. T. W. , M. R. W. , &c. , 'M' standing, as often, for 'Mr. '
Seeing, however, that 'Mr. ' is the general form in _W_, I have used it
as clearer.
The first of the letters has been headed hitherto To M. I. W. , and
Mr. Chambers conjectured that the person addressed _might_ be Izaak
Walton. It is clear from the other MSS. that _A18_, _N_, _TC_, which
_1633_ follows, is wrong and that I. W. should be T. W. , Thomas
Woodward. The T and I of this MS. are very similar, though
distinguishable. Unfortunately we know nothing more of Thomas Woodward
than that he was Rowland's brother and Donne's friend. The 'sweet
Poet' must not be taken too seriously. Donne and his friends were
corresponding with one another in verse, and complimenting each other
in the polite fashion of the day.
PAGE =204=, ll. 13-16. _But care not for me, &c. _ These lines form a
crux in the textual criticism of Donne's poetry. I shall print them as
they stand in _W_:
But care not for mee: I y^t ever was
In natures & in fortunes guifts alas
Before thy grace got in the Muses schoole
A monster & a begger, am now a foole.
Some copies of the 1633 edition (including those used by myself and by
the Grolier Club editor) print these words, but obscure the meaning
by bracketing 'alas . . . schoole'. Other copies (e. g. that used by
Chambers) insert after 'Before' a 'by', which the Grolier Club editor
also does as a conjecture. The 1635 editor, probably following _O'F_,
resorted to another device to clear up the sense and changed 'Before'
to 'But for', which Grosart and Chambers follow. The majority of
the MSS. , however, agree with _W_, and the case illustrates well the
difficulties which beset an eclectic use of the editions.
If the bracket in _1633_ is dropt, or rearranged as in the text, the
reading is correct and intelligible. The printers and editors have
been misled by Donne's phrase, 'In Natures, and in Fortunes gifts'.
They took this to go with 'A monster and a beggar': 'I that ever was
a monster and a beggar in Natures and in Fortunes gifts. ' This is a
strange expression, taken, I suppose, to mean that Donne never enjoyed
the blessings either of Nature or of Fortune. But what Donne says
is somewhat different. The phrase 'I that ever was in Natures and
in Fortunes gifts' means 'I that ever was the Almsman of Nature and
Fortune'. Donne is using metaphorically a phrase of which the O. E. D.
quotes a single instance: 'I live in Henry the 7th's Gifts' (i. e.
his Almshouses). T. Barker, _The Art of Angling_ (1651). The whole
sentence might be paraphrased thus: 'I, who was ever the Almsman of
Nature and Fortune, am now a fool. ' Parenthetically he adds, 'Till
thy grace begot me, a monster and a beggar, in the Muses' school'.
Possibly 'and a beggar' should be left outside the brackets and taken
with 'In Natures and in Fortunes gifts': 'I, that _was_ an almsman
and beggar, was by you begotten a poet, though a monstrous one;'
('monster' goes properly with 'got') 'and am now a fool'--possibly the
last allusion is to his rash marriage. Donne's prose and verse of
the years following 1601 are full of this melancholy depreciation of
himself and his lot. Daniel calls himself the
Orphan of Fortune, borne to be her scorne.
_Delia_, 26.
Compare also:
O I am fortune's fool.
Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_, III. i. 129.
Let your study
Be to content your lord, who hath received you
At fortune's alms.
Shakespeare, _King Lear_, I. i. 277-9.
So shall I clothe me in a forced content,
And shut myself up in some other course,
To fortune's alms.
Shakespeare, _Othello_, III. iv. 120-2.
In _W_ 'All haile sweet Poet' is followed at once by these lines,
presumably written by Thomas Woodward and possibly in reply to the
above. They are found standing by themselves in _B_, _O'F_, _P_,
_S96_. In these they are apparently ascribed to Donne. I print from
_W_:
TO M^r J. D.
Thou sendst me prose and rimes, I send for those
Lynes, which, being neither, seem or verse or prose.
They'are lame and harsh, and have no heat at all
But what thy Liberall beams on them let fall.
The nimble fyre which in thy braynes doth dwell
Is it the fyre of heaven or that of hell?
It doth beget and comfort like Heavens eye,
And like hells fyre it burnes eternally.
And those whom in thy fury and judgment
Thy verse shall skourge like hell it will torment.
Have mercy on mee and my sinfull Muse
Which rub'd and tickled with thine could not chuse
But spend some of her pith, and yeild to bee
One in that chaste and mistique Tribadree.
Bassaes adultery no fruit did Leave,
Nor theirs, which their swollen thighs did nimbly weave,
And with new armes and mouths embrace and kiss,
Though they had issue was not like to this.
Thy muse, Oh strange and holy Lecheree
Being a mayde still, gott this song on mee.
l. 25. _Now if this song, &c. _ By interchanging the stops at 'evill'
and at 'passe' the old editions have obscured these lines. Mr.
Chambers, accepting the full stop at 'evill', prints:--
If thou forget the rhyme as thou dost pass,
Then write;
The reason for writing is not clear. 'If thou forget,' &c. explains
''Twill be good prose'. 'Read this without attending to the rhymes
and you will find it good prose. ' If we drop the epithet 'good', this
criticism will apply to a considerable portion of metaphysical poetry.
PAGE =205=, l. 30. _thy zanee_, i. e. thy imitator, as the Merry-Andrew
imitates the Mountebank:
He's like the Zani to a tumbler
That tries tricks after him to make men laugh.
Jonson, _Every Man out of his Humour_, IV. i.
PAGE =205=. TO M^r T. W.
l. 1. _Haste thee, &c. _ By the lines 5-6, supplied from _W_, this poem
is restored to the compass of a sonnet, though a very irregular one in
form. The letter is evidently written from London, where the plague is
prevalent. The letter is to be (l. 14) Donne's pledge of affection if
he lives, his testament if he dies.
PAGE =206=. TO M^r T. W.
l. 5. _hand and eye_ is the reading of all the MSS. , including _W_.
It is written in the latter with a contraction which could easily be
mistaken for 'or'.
TO M^r T. W.
l. 3. _I to the Nurse, they to the child of Art. _ The 'Nurse of Art'
is probably Leisure, 'I to my soft still walks':
And add to these retired Leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
According to Aristotle, all the higher, more intellectual arts, as
distinct from those which supply necessities or add to the pleasures
of life, are the fruits of leisure: 'At first he who invented any art
that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired
by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions,
but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more
arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life,
others to its recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally
always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because
their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all
such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not
aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered,
and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This
is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there
the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. ' _Met. _ A. 981^b
(translated by W. D. Ross).
l. 12. _a Picture, or bare Sacrament. _ The last word would seem to be
used in the legal sense: 'The _sacramentum_ or pledge which each of
the parties deposited or became bound for before a suit. ' O. E. D. The
letter is a picture of his mind or pledge of his affection.
PAGE =207=. TO M^r R. W.
_Muse not that by, &c. _ l. 7. _a Lay Mans Genius_: i. e.
