No More Learning

11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest
of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure.
To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written.
Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue
between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed
to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had
I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I
should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text
materially.

With regard to the _Elegie on Mistris Boulstred_ (18 on the list) I
cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured
to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own
mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne
certainly did write, viz.

Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;

and another, entitled _Death_, beginning

Language thou art too narrow, and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.

Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts
and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged
with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in
the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D. '),
and that it is not included in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. It is certainly
Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris.
Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to
Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford
with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham
is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred,
says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he
may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.

In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p. 67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:

Death be not proud!

I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.

The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:

Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.

Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears,
_B_, _Cy_, _H40_, _RP31_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, the best, _RP31_, assigns
it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i. e. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. [17] Mr. Chambers, indeed, inadvertently stated that in this
manuscript 'it is said to have been written to George Herbert'. The
name 'Sr Edw. Herbert' is written beside the poem, and that in such
cases is meant to indicate the author of the poem. It seems to me
quite possible that it was written by Lord Herbert, but until more
evidence be forthcoming I have let it stand, because (1) the letters
'I. D. ' printed after the poem show that the poem must have been
so initialled in the manuscript from which it was printed, and (2)
because, though not in the style of Donne's later religious poems, it
is somewhat in the style of the philosophical, stoical letter which
Donne addressed to Sir Edward Herbert at the siege of Juliers in 1610.
The poem was possibly composed at the same time. (3) The thought of
the last verse, our ignorance of ourselves, recurs in Donne's poems
and prose. Compare _Negative Love_ (p. 66):

If any who deciphers best,
What we know not, our selves,

and the passage quoted in the note to this poem.

The poem _Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney,
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister_, if by Donne, was probably
written late in his life and never widely circulated. It occurred
to me that the author might be John Davies of Hereford, who was
a dependent of the Countess and her two sons, and who made a
calligraphic copy of the _Psalms_ of Sidney and his sister, from
which they were printed by Singer in 1823. But Professor Saintsbury
considers, I think justly, that the 'wit' of the opening lines,

Eternall God (for whom who ever dare
Seeke new expressions, doe the Circle square,
And thrust into strait corners of poore wit
Thee who art cornerlesse and infinite),

is above Davies' level, and indeed the whole poem is. The lines _To
Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders_ (22 on the list) were also
probably privately communicated to the person to whom they were
addressed. The best argument for their genuineness is that Walton
seems to quote from them when he describes Donne's preaching.

For they doe
As Angels out of clouds, from Pulpits speake,

must have suggested 'always preaching to himself, like an angel from a
cloud, but in none'. This does not, however, carry us very far. Walton
had seen the editions of 1635 and 1639 before he wrote these lines in
1640.

The verse _On the Sacrament_ (23 on the list) is probably assigned to
Donne by a pure conjecture. It is very frequently attributed to Queen
Elizabeth.

Of the two poems added in _1649_ the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats
Crudities_ are of course Donne's. They appeared with his name in his
lifetime, and Donne is one of the friends mentioned by Coryat in his
letters from India. _The Token_ (4 on the list) may or may not be
Donne's. It is found in several, but no very good, manuscripts.
Its wit is quite in Donne's style, though not absolutely beyond the
compass of another. The poems which the younger Donne added in _1650_
are in much the same position. 'He that cannot chose but love' (5
on the list) is a trifle, whoever wrote it. 'The heavens rejoice in
motion' (10 on the list) is in a much stronger strain of paradox, and
if not Donne's is by an ambitious and witty disciple. If genuine, it
is strange that it did not find its way into more collections. It is
found in _A10_, where a few of Donne's poems are given with others by
Roe, Hoskins, and other wits of his circle. It is also, however, given
in _JC_, a manuscript containing in its first part few poems that are
not demonstrably genuine. As things stand, the balance of evidence is
in favour of Donne's authorship.

Besides the _Elegies XVIII_ and _XIX_, which are Donne's, as we have
seen, and the _Satyre_ 'Sleep next Society', which is not Donne's, the
edition of 1669 prefixed to the song _Breake of Day_ a fresh stanza:

Stay, O sweet, and do not rise.

It appears in the same position in _S96_, but is given as a separate
poem in _A25_, _C_, _O'F_, and _P_. It certainly has no connexion with
Donne's poem, for the metre is entirely different and the strain of
the poetry less metaphysical.

The separate stanza was a favourite one in Song-Books of the
seventeenth century. It was printed apparently for the first time in
1612, in _The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of five Parts: apt for
Viols and Voices. Newly composed by Orlando Gibbons_. Here it begins

Ah, deare hart why doe you rise?

In the same year it was printed in _A Pilgrimes Solace. Wherein is
contained Musicall Harmonie of 3, 4 and 5 parts, to be sung and plaid
with the Lute and Viols. By John Dowland. _ The stanza begins

Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?

Mr. Chambers conjectures that the affixing of Dowland's initials to
the verse in some collection led to Donne being credited with it,
which is quite likely; but we are not sure that Dowland wrote it, and
the common theme appears to have drawn the poems together. In _The
Academy of Complements, Wherein Ladies, Gentlewomen, Schollers,
and Strangers may accomodate their Courtly practice with gentile
Ceremonies, Complemental amorous high expressions, and Formes of
speaking or writing of Letters most in fashion_ (1650) the verse is
connected with a variation of the first stanza of Donne's poem so as
to make a consistent song:

Lie still, my dear, why dost thou rise?
The light that shines comes from thine eyes.
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay or else my joys will die,
And perish in their infancy.
'Tis time, 'tis day, what if it be?
Wilt thou therefore arise from me?
Did we lie down because of night,
And shall we rise for fear of light?
No, since in darkness we came hither,
In spight of light we'll lye together.
Oh! let me dye on thy sweet breast
Far sweeter than the Phœœnix nest.

It was probably some such combination as this which suggested to the
editor of _1669_ to prefix the stanza to Donne's poem. The poem in
_The Academy of Compliments_ was repeated in _Wits Interpreter, the
English Parnassus, a sure guide to those Admirable Accomplishments
that compleat our English Gentry in the most acceptable Qualifications
of Discourse or Writing_ (1655). But the first stanza is given again
in this collection as a separate poem.

The translation of the _Psalme 137_, which was inserted in _1633_
and never withdrawn (as the _Epitaph on Shakespeare_ was) is pretty
certainly not by Donne. The only manuscript which ascribes it to him
is _A25_ followed by _C_. On the other hand it is assigned to Francis
Davison, editor of the _Poetical Rhapsody_, in _RP61_ (Bodleian
Library). In one manuscript, Addl. MS. 27407, the poem is accompanied
with a letter, unsigned and undirected, which speaks of this as one
out of several translations made by the author. The handwriting and
style of the letter are not Donne's, but the letter explains why this
one Psalm is found floating around by itself. It was, the translator
says, a freer paraphrase than the others. Apparently it proved a
favourite.

When one turns from the poems attributed to Donne in the old editions
to those which some of the more recent editors have added, one
launches into a sea which I have no intention of attempting to
navigate in its entirety. Both Sir John Simeon and Dr. Grosart were
disposed to cry 'Eureka' too readily, and assigned to Donne a number
of poems culled from various manuscripts for the genuineness of which
there is no evidence external or internal. I shall confine my remarks
to the few poems I have myself incorporated for the first time in an
edition of Donne's poems; to the Song 'Absence hear my protestation',
which it is now the fashion to ascribe to Donne absolutely, letting
evidence 'go hang'; and to the four poems which Mr. Chambers printed
from _A25_. I have added some more in my Appendix C, because they are
interesting [Greek: adespota] illustrative of the influence in
seventeenth-century poetry of Donne's realistic passion and his
paradoxical wit.

Of the poems which appear here for the first time in a collected
edition, it is not necessary to say much of those which are taken from
_W_, the Westmoreland MS. now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who with
the greatest and most spontaneous kindness has permitted me to print
them all. These include two Epigrams, four additional Letters, and
three Holy Sonnets. The Epigrams, the Holy Sonnets, and two of the
Letters have been already printed by Mr. Gosse in his _Life of John
Donne_, 1899. There can be no doubt of their genuineness. They enlarge
a series of Letters and a series of Sonnets which appear in _1633_ and
in all the best manuscript collections. In their arrangement I have
followed _W_ in preference to _1633_, which is based on _A18_, _N_,
_TC_. Of the letter taken from the Burley MS. there may be greater
doubt in some minds. To me it seems unquestionably Donne's (aut Donne
aut Diabolus), an addition to the series of letters which he wrote
to Sir Henry Wotton between the return of the Islands Expedition and
Essex's return from Ireland. The Burley MS. is a commonplace-book
of Wotton's and includes poems which we know as Donne's, e. g. 'Come,
Madam, come'; some of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; other
letters which from their substance and style seem to be Donne's; and a
number of poems, including this which alone of all the doubtful poems
in the manuscript is initialled 'J. D. ' The manuscript contains work
by Donne. Does this come under that head? Only internal evidence can
decide. Of the other poems in the manuscript, most of which I print in
Appendix C, none are certainly Donne's.

'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's lifetime
in Davison's _A Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602, 1608, 1621), but with no
reference to Donne's authorship, although his name was yearly growing
a more popular hostel for wandering, unclaimed poems. [18] It was not
printed in any edition of his poems from _1633_ to _1719_. It is not
found in either of the most trustworthy manuscript collections, _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_, or _A18_, _N_, _TC_. It _is_ found in _B_, _Cy_, _L74_,
_O'F_, _P_, _S96_, but none of these can be counted an authority. In
1711 it was for the first time ascribed to Donne in _The Grove_,
a miscellaneous collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old
Manuscript of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'.
On the other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, _HN_, it is
transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what he describes
as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' (not '_by_ Donne'),
and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H. ' That other poem called

_His Melancholy. _

Love is a foolish melancholy, &c. ,

is by a Manchester manuscript (Farmer-Chetham MS. , ed. Grosart,
_Chetham Society Publications_, lxxxix, xc) assigned to 'Mr. Hoskins',
and in another manuscript (_A10_) it is signed 'H' with the left leg
of H so written as to suggest JH run together. Clearly at any rate
the _onus probandi_ lies with those who say the poem is by Donne.
Internally it has never seemed to me so since I came to know Donne
well. The metaphysical, subtle strain is like Donne, as it is in
_Soules Joy_, but here as there (though there is more feeling in
_Absence_, the closing line has a very Donne-like note of sudden
anguish, 'and so miss her') the tone is airier, the prosody more
tripping. The stressed syllables are less weighted emotionally and
vocally. Compare

Sweetest love, I do not goe,
For wearinesse of thee
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for me;

or

Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,
Weepe me not dead, in thine armes, but forbeare
To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone;

with the more tripping measure, in which one touches the stressed
syllables as with tiptoe, of

By absence this good means I gaine,
That I can catch her
Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my braine.
There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript volume of
poems which he left behind ('bigger than those of Dr. Donne') was lost
in 1653.

Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers (op. cit. ,
Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. 25707 (_A25_), and, so
far as I know, there only. I have placed them first in Appendix C,
as the only pieces in that Appendix which are at all likely to be by
Donne. _A25_ is a manuscript written in a number of different hands,
some six within the portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative
age of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence.
What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three poems,
viz. Donne's _Elegye_: 'What [_sic_] that in Color it was like thy
haire,' his _Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt last died_, and the
_Elegie of Loves progresse_. It is in Elizabethan secretary's hand,
and seems to me identical with the writing in which the same poems are
copied in C, the Cambridge University Library MS. A second hand, B,
inserts the larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in
close succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne
along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A fourth hand,
D, seems to be the latest because it is the handwriting in which the
Index was made out, and the poems inserted in this hand are inserted
in odd spaces left by the other writers. Now of the poems in question,
one, _A letter written by S^{r} H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus_,
is copied by D, and the same hand adds immediately _An Elegie on the
Death of my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First_, by
Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was therefore not entered
here till after 1649. But of course it may have come from an older
source, and it has quite the appearance of being genuine. Whoever made
the collection would seem to have had access to some of Goodyere's
work, for this poem is almost immediately preceded by an _Epithalamion
of the Princess Mariage_, by S^{r} H. G. , and a little earlier the
_Good Friday_ poem by Donne is headed _Mr J. Dun goeing from Sir H. G.
on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the waye_. That reads
like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be what happened, the copyist
may have ascribed to Donne some of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly
there is nothing in the other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,'
'Fie, fie, you sons of Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the
handwriting C) which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later
in the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy body
come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D. , but _P_ assigns it to F. B. ,
and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on Beaumont occupy a
considerable space in _A25_. He is a quite possible candidate for the
authorship of some of the poems assigned to Donne in the hand C.

Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (_General Index to Hazlitt's Handbook,
&c. _, p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip Stanhope, who
died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not been able to find the volume
in which it appears; but, as it is said to be by John Donne _Alumnus_,
the author must be the younger Donne.


[Footnote 1: Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these,
but only in an Appendix and under the title of _Doubtful
Poems_. He has added a few more from _A25_, from _Coryats
Crudities_, and from some manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.
If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were not
reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much
the worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has,
I presume, taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and
Grosart. ]

[Footnote 2: All three editors have also dropped the song
'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', David Laing having
pointed out (_Archaeologia Scotica_, iv. 73-6) that this poem
occurs in the Hawthornden MSS, with the signature 'J. R. '
Chambers also rejects the sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_,
probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the
lines _On the Sacrament_. ]

[Footnote 3: I have given with each poem a list of the
editions and manuscripts (known to me) in which it is
contained. A glance at these will show the weight of the
external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be
judge for himself. ]

[Footnote 4: To these must of course be added poems already
published in Donne's name. See II. lvi. ]

[Footnote 5: In F. G. Waldron's _A Collection of Miscellaneous
Poetry_. 1802. ]

[Footnote 6: Chambers includes it in his Appendix A, _Doubtful
Poems_, but seems to lean to the view that it is by Roe. The
second is printed as Donne's by Grosart and as presumably
Donne's by Chambers. ]

[Footnote 7: In _O'F_ and _S_, where they also occur, they
are more dispersed; but these manuscripts have, like _1635_,
adopted a classification of the poems they contain which
involves their distribution as songs, elegies, letters
and satires. _A10_ is the most significant witness. This
manuscript contains very few poems by Donne. Why should it
select just this suspicious group? ]

[Footnote 8: Among the marriage licences granted by the Bishop
of London in 1601 (_Harleian Society Publications_) is the
following: 'Henry Sackford the younger, of the Charter House,
Gent; 27, father dead, and Sarah Rowe of St Johns in St John's
Street, co. Middlesex, Maiden, dau. of John Rowe of Clapham,
Beds, Esq. decd (i. e. deceas'd) about 9 years since,' &c. ]

[Footnote 9: See the genealogies given in the _Harleian
Society Publications_, vol. xiii, 1878, from the _Visitation
of Essex_ 1612 (pp. 282-3) and the _Visitation of Essex_ 1634
(p. 479). ]

[Footnote 10: The oldest was the John Rowe of Clapham, Beds.
The second, Henry, was also Mayor of London and was knighted
in 1603. The fourth, Robert, was the father of the
ambassador, and died while his son was a child. There were two
daughters--Mary, who married Thomas Randall, and Elizabeth,
who married William Garret of Dorney, co. Bucks. The son of
the latter couple was Donne's intimate friend George Gerrard
or Garrard. ]

[Footnote 11: Row, John, of Essex. arm. matric. 14 Oct. , 1597,
aged 16. (Joseph Foster, _Alumni Oxonienses_, iii, 1284). The
Provost of Queen's has kindly informed me that in the College
books his name is entered simply as 'Rowe' and as having
entered 'Ter. Mich. 1597'. He tells me further that in Andrew
Clark's edition of the University Matriculation Registers it
is stated that the date of his matriculation was between Oct.
14 and Dec. 2, 1597. There can be no doubt, I think, that
this is our Roe. There are not likely to have been two in the
County of Essex with the right to be called 'armiger'. Had his
father still lived he would have been entered as 'fil. gen. '
or 'fil. arm. ']

[Footnote 12: _Hist. MSS. Com. _: _Buccleugh MSS. _ (Montague
House), vol. i, pp. 56, 58. The letters are dated May 13, Nov.
7. ]

[Footnote 13: _Calendar of State Papers. _ Ireland, 1606-8,
p. 538. I owe this and the last reference to Mr. Murray L. R.
Beavan, University Assistant in History, Aberdeen University. ]

[Footnote 14: Other poems by Pembroke are found in the
manuscript collections of Donne's poems. A scholarly edition
of the poems of Pembroke and Rudyard would be a boon. Many
ascribed to them by the younger Donne in his edition of 1660
could be removed and others added from manuscript sources. ]

[Footnote 15: It is one of the worst printed in _1635_ and
_1669_ (where it first appeared in full), and has admitted
of many emendations from the manuscripts. Grosart has already
introduced some from the Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS. , but he
left some gross errors. In the lines,

That I may grow enamoured on your mind,
When my own thoughts I there reflected find,

all the three modern editions are content still to read,

When my own thoughts I there neglected find

--a strange reason for being enamoured. Some difficult and
perhaps corrupt lines still remain. ]

[Footnote 16: In forming this Appendix it was not my intention
to remove these poems dogmatically from under the aegis of
Donne's name. I wished rather to separate them from those
which are indubitably his and facilitate comparison. Further
evidence may show that I have erred as to one or other. This
letter is the only one about which I feel any doubt myself. I
have taken as much trouble with their text as with the rest of
the poems. ]

[Footnote 17: _H40_ has no ascription. In the poem
just discussed the ascription made correctly, at least
intelligibly, in _RP31_, was transposed in _H40_. This must be
the later collection. See II. p. cxiv. ]

[Footnote 18: _Absence_ is printed, again unsigned, in _Wit
Restored in severall Select Poems not formerly published_.
(1658. )]




* * * * *




COMMENTARY.


[Sidenote: _Metaphysical Poetry. _]

Donne is a 'metaphysical' poet. The term was perhaps first applied
by Dryden, from whom Johnson borrowed it: 'He' (Donne) 'affects the
metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where
nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with
the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts,
and entertain them with the softness of love. ' _Essay on Satire_. 'The
metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning
was their whole endeavour. ' Johnson, _Life of Cowley_. The parade of
learning, and a philosophical or abstract treatment of love had been
a strain in mediaeval poetry from the outset, manifesting itself
most fully in the Tuscan poets of the 'dolce stil nuovo', but never
altogether absent from mediaeval love-poetry. The Italian poet Testi
(1593-1646), describing his choice of classical in preference to
Italian models (he is thinking specially of Marino), says: 'poichè
lasciando quei concetti metafisici ed ideali di cui sono piene le
poesie italiane, mi sono provato di spiegare cose più domestiche, e
di maneggiarle con effetti più famigliari a imitazione d'Ovidio, di
Tibullo, di Properzio, e degli altri migliori. ' Donne's love-poetry is
often classical in spirit; his conceits are the 'concetti metafisici'
of mediaeval poetry given a character due to his own individuality and
the scientific interests of his age.

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

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

[Sidenote: _Donne's Learning. _]

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

[Sidenote: _Classical Literature. _]

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

[Sidenote: _Italian. _]

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

[Sidenote: _French. _]

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

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

Of the most characteristic features of Du Bartas's rhetoric, his
affected antitheses, his studied alliterative effects, and especially
his double-epithets 'aime-carnage', 'charme-souci', 'blesse-honneur',
Sylvester's 'forbidden-Bit-lost-glory', 'the Act-simply-pure', &c. ,
Mr. Upham admits that Donne makes sparing use. Donne uses a fair
number of compounds but the majority of these are nouns and verbs. Of
the epithets only one or two are of the sentence-compressing
character which the French poet cultivated. The most like is
'full-on-both-side-written rolls'. The real link between Du Bartas and
Donne is that they are metaphysical poets. Following Lucretius, whom
he often translates, the Frenchman set himself to give a scientific
account of the creation of the universe as outlined in _Genesis_. He
describes with the utmost minuteness of detail, and necessarily uses
similes better fitted to elucidate and illustrate than to give poetic
pleasure, drawn from the most everyday sources as well as arts and
sciences. It was part of the programme of the _Pléiade_ thus to annex
the vocabulary of learning and the crafts.