_And like vile lying stones in
saffrond
tinne,
Or warts, or wheales, they hang upon her skinne.
Or warts, or wheales, they hang upon her skinne.
John Donne
The meaning of
'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed. ' The O. E. D. quotes: 'I can
nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused. ' Palsgr. (1530).
'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret. '
Baxter, _Reformed Pastor_ (1656).
It seems to me probable that _P_ preserves an early form of these
lines:
who now is grown tough enough
To feed on that which to disused tastes seems rough.
The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's
mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the
recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O. E. D.
quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583).
'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, _Antony and
Cleopatra_, I. iv. 64 (1608).
Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the
monotonous sound of 'tough enough . . . rough', and this ultimately led
to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close of the
last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem tough
to the taste? Even meat does not _taste_ tough: and it is not of meat
that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed to return
to the reading of _P_, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as
improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.
PAGE =87=. ELEGIE VI.
l. 6. _Their Princes stiles, with many Realmes fulfill. _ This is the
reading of all the best MSS. The 'which' for 'with' of the editions
is due to an easy confusion of two contractions invariably used in
the MSS. Grosart and Chambers accept 'with' from _S_ and _A25_, but
further alter 'styles' to 'style', following these generally inferior
MSS. The plural is correct. Donne refers to more than one prince and
style. The stock instance is
the poor king Reignier, whose large style
Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.
_2 Henry VI_, I. i. 111-12.
But the English monarchs themselves bore in their 'style' the kingdom
of France, and for some years (1558-1566) Mary, Queen of Scots, bore
in her 'style' the arms of England and Ireland.
PAGE =88=, ll. 21-34. These lines evidently suggested Carew's poem,
_To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side, An Eddy_:
Mark how yon eddy steals away
From the rude stream into the bay;
There, locked up safe, she doth divorce
Her waters from the channel's course,
And scorns the torrent that did bring
Her headlong from her native spring, &c.
ll. 23-4. _calmely ride
Her wedded channels bosome, and then chide. _
The number of MSS. and editions is in favour of 'there', but the
quality (e. g. _1633_ and _W_) of those which read 'then', and the
sense of the lines, favour 'then'. The stream is at one moment in
'speechless slumber', and the next chiding. She cannot in the same
place do both at once:
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;
And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean.
Shakespeare, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. vii. 25-32.
ll. 27-8. _Yet if her often gnawing kisses winne
The traiterous banke to gape, and let her in. _
The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather
than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final
'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its
course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks
through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for
another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak or
treacherous spot in its bank'.
PAGE =89=. ELEGIE VII.
l. 1. _Natures lay Ideot. _ Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant',
as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the meaning of
'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That word has a
different origin from 'lay' (Lat. _laicus_), and the earliest example
of it given in O. E. D. is dated 1688.
ll. 7-8. _Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie
Desperately hot, or changing feaverously. _
The 'call' of _1633_ is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is
dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast',
from _S_; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how
little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase
'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O. E. D. gives
one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word
here:
Able to cast his disease without his water.
Greene's _Menaphon_.
I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken
in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the
eyes water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing
feverously. '
If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease.
Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, V. iii. 50.
The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease,
calling it this or that.
ll. 9 f. _I had not taught thee then, the Alphabet
Of flowers, &c. _
'_Posy_, in both its senses, is a contraction of _poesy_, the flowers
of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that
engraved on a ring. ' Weekly, _Romance of Words_, London, 1912, p. 134.
She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.
l. 13. _Remember since, &c. _ For the idiom compare:
Beseech you, sir,
Remember since you owed no more to time
Than I do now.
Shakespeare, _Winter's Tale_, V. i. 219.
See Franz, _Shakespeare-Grammatik_, ? 559.
l. 22. _Inlaid thee. _ The O. E. D. cites this line as the only example
of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or
preservation. ' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word has
perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in another
substance. ' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such a setting
as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined and
heightened those charms. '
l. 25. _Thy graces and good words my creatures bee. _ I was tempted
to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of _1669_ and some MSS. , the
theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the kind of
conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of _1633-54_ has the
support of so good a MS. as _W_, and 'good words' is an Elizabethan
idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:
He that will give,
Good words to thee will flatter neath abhorring.
Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, I. i. 170-1.
In your bad strokes you give good words.
Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, V. i. 30.
Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces and
commendations are my work', i. e. either the commendations you receive,
or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with which you
can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of conversation
did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne sentences'. Compare,
in _Elegie IX: The Autumnall_, the description of Lady Danvers'
conversation:
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at Revels, you at Counsaile, sit.
And again, _Elegie XVIII: Loves Progresse_:
So we her ayres contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues.
l. 28. _Frame and enamell Plate. _ Compare: 'And therefore they that
thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions
of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good,
will make God bad. ' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of course,
'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The elaborate
enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as common as in the
case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. Britten's _Old Clocks and
Watches and their Makers_, 1904.
PAGE =90=. ELEGIE VIII.
l. 2. _Muskats_, i. e. 'Musk-cats. ' The 'muskets' of _1669_ is only a
misprint.
ll. 5-6. In these lines as they stand in the editions and most of the
MSS. there is clearly something wrong:
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seeme no sweat drops but pearle coronets.
A 'coronet' is not an ornament of the neck, but of the head. The
obvious emendation is that of _A25_, _C_, _JC_, and _W_, which Grosart
and Chambers have adopted. A 'carcanet' is a necklace, and carcanets
of pearl were not unusual: see O. E. D. , _s. v. _ But why then do the
editions and so many MSS. read 'coronets'? Consideration of this
has convinced me that the original error is not here but in the word
'neck'. Article by article, as in an inventory, Donne contrasts his
mistress and his enemy's. But in the next line he goes on:
Ranke sweaty froth thy Mistresse's _brow_ defiles,
contrasting her brow with that of his mistress, where the sweat drops
seem 'no sweat drops but pearle coronets'.
The explanation of the error is, probably, that an early copyist
passed in his mind from breast to neck more easily than to brow.
Another explanation is that Donne altered 'brow' to 'neck' and forgot
to alter 'coronets' to 'carcanets'. I do not think this likely. The
force of the poem lies in its contrasts, and the brow is proverbially
connected with sweat. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' &c. Possibly Donne
himself in the first version, or a copy of it, wrote 'neck', meaning
to write 'brow', misled by the proximity and associations of 'breast'.
Mr. J. C. Smith has shown that Spenser occasionally wrote a word which
association brought into his mind, but which was clearly not the word
he intended to use, as it is destructive of the rhyme-scheme. Oddly
enough the late Francis Thompson used 'carcanet' in the sense of
'coronet':
Who scarfed her with the morning? and who set
Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet?
_Ode to the Setting Sun. _
PAGE =91=, l. 10. _Sanserra's starved men. _ 'When I consider what God
did for Goshen in Egypt . . . How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from
famines, how many Genevas from plots and machinations. ' _Sermons. _
The Protestants in Sancerra were besieged by the Catholics for nine
months in 1573, and suffered extreme privations. Norton quotes Henri
Martin, _Histoire de France_, ix. 364: 'On se disputa les debris les
plus immondes de toute substance animale ou vegetale; on crea, pour
ainsi dire, des aliments monstrueux, impossibles. '
ll. 13-14.
_And like vile lying stones in saffrond tinne,
Or warts, or wheales, they hang upon her skinne. _
Following the MSS. I have made 'lying' an epithet attached to 'stones'
and substituted 'they hang' for the superficially more grammatical 'it
hangs'. The readings of _1633_, 'vile stones lying' and 'it hangs',
seem to me just the kind of changes a hasty editor would make, the
kind of changes which characterize the Second Folio of Shakespeare.
The stones are not only 'vile'; they are 'lying', inasmuch as they
pretend to be what they are not, as the 'saffron'd tinne' pretends to
be gold.
l. 19. _Thy head_: i. e. 'the head of thy mistress. ' Donne continues
this construction in ll. 25, 32, 39, and I have restored it from the
later editions and MSS. at l. 34, 'thy gouty hand. '
l. 34. _thy gouty hand_: 'thy' is the reading of all the editions
except _1633_ and of all the MSS. except _JC_ and _S_. It is probably
right, corresponding to l. 19 'Thy head' and l. 32 'thy tann'd
skins'. Donne uses 'thy' in a condensed fashion for 'the head of thy
mistress', &c.
PAGE =92=, l. 51. _And such. _ The 'such' of the MSS. is doubtless
right, the 'nice' of the editions being repeated from l. 49.
PAGE =92=. ELEGIE IX.
For the date, &c. , of this poem, see the introductory note on the
_Elegies_.
The text of _1633_ diverges in some points from that of all the MSS. ,
in some others it agrees with _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. In the latter case I
have retained it, but where _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ agree with the rest of
the MSS. I have corrected _1633_, e. g. :
PAGE =93=, l. 6. _Affection here takes Reverences name_: where
'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. _But
now shee's gold_: where 'They are gold' of _1633_ involves a very
loose use of 'they'. Possibly _1633_ here gives a first version
afterwards corrected.
ll. 29-32. _Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c. _ Herodotus (vii. 31) tells
how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which
for its beauty ([Greek: kalleos heineka]) he decked with gold
ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, _Variae Historiae_,
ii. 14, _De platano Xerxe amato_, attributes his admiration to its
size: [Greek: en Lydia goun, phasin, idon phyton eumegethes platanou,]
&c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858)
size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram
platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, _N.
H. _ 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which
companies of men camped and slept.
The quotation from Aelian confirms the _1633_ reading, 'none being so
large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow.
The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do
not understand.
PAGE =94=, l. 47. _naturall lation. _ This, the reading of the
great majority of the MSS. , is obviously correct and explains the
vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The
O. E. D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to
another. ' Fotherby (1619);
Make me the straight and oblique lines,
The motions, lations, and the signs.
(Herrick, _Hesper. _ 64);
and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially
astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of _1633_ is an unusual
order in Donne; the 'natural station' of _1635-69_ is the opposite
of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the
editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a
misreading of 'lation'.
PAGE =95=. ELEGIE X.
The title of this Elegy, _The Dream_, was given it in _1635_, perhaps
wrongly. _S96_ seems to come nearer with _Picture_. The 'Image of
her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a
picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams come
to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat
obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be
strengthened if the lady herself were present.
l. 26. _Mad with much heart, &c. _ Aristotle made the heart the source
of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these to the
brain. See note to p. 99, l. 100.
PAGE =96=. ELEGIE XI.
Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a
metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite
Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond of
the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; she
hath a legion of angels' (_Merry Wives_, I. iii. 60). But Donne knows
more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can pursue the
analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun on angels the
only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, pistolets, and gold
are all played with in turn. The poem was a favourite with Ben
Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart' (_Drummond's
Conversations_, ed. Laing).
The text of the poem, which was first printed in _1635_ (Marriot
having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633),
is based on a MS. closely resembling _Cy_ and _P_, and differing
in several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS. ,
including _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _W_. I have endeavoured rather to
give this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either
to substitute another or contaminate the two. When _Cy_ and _P_ go
over to the side of the other MSS. it is a fair inference that the
editions have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more
open one.
PAGE =97=, l. 24. _their naturall Countreys rot_: i. e. 'their native
Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of
that Countrey', Greene, _News from Hell_ (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This
is the reading of _Cy_, and the order of the words in the other MSS.
points to its being the reading of the MS. from which _1635_ was
printed.
l. 26. _So pale, so lame, &c. _ The chipping and debasement of the
French crown is frequently referred to, and Shakespeare is fond
of punning on the word. But two extracts from Stow's _Chronicle_
(_continued . . . by_ Edmund Howes), 1631, will throw some light on the
references to coins in this poem: In the year 1559 took place the last
abasement of English money whereby testons and groats were lowered in
value and called in, 'and according to the last valuation of them,
she gave them fine money of cleane silver for them commonly called
Sterling money, and from this time there was no manner of base money
coyned or used in England . . . but all English monies were made of gold
and silver, which is not so in any other nation whatsoever, but have
sundry sorts of copper money. '
'The 9. of November, the French crowne that went currant for six
shillings foure pence, was proclaimed to be sixe shillings. '
In 1561, 'The fifteenth of November, the Queenes Maiestie published a
Proclamation for divers small pieces of silver money to be currant,
as the sixe pence, foure pence, three pence, 2 pence and a peny, three
half-pence, and 3 farthings: and also forbad all forraigne coynes to
be currant within the same Realme, as well gold as silver, calling
them all into her Maiesties Mints, except two sorts of crownes of
gold, the one the French crowne, the other the Flemish crowne. ' The
result was the bringing in of large sums in 'silver plates: and as
much or more in pistolets, and other gold of Spanish coynes, and one
weeke in pistolets and other Spanish gold 16000 pounds, all these to
be coyned with the Queenes stamps. '
l. 29. _Spanish Stamps still travelling. _ Grosart regards this as an
allusion to the wide diffusion of Spanish coins. The reference is more
pointed. It is to the prevalence of Spanish bribery, the policy of
securing paid agents in every country. It was by money that Parma
secured his first hold on the revolted provinces. Gardiner has shown
that Lord Cranborne, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, accepted a pension
from the Spanish king (_Hist. of England_, i, p. 215). The discovery
of the number of his Court who were in Spanish pay came as a profound
shock to James at a later period. The invariable charge brought by
one Dutch statesman against another was of being in the pay of the
Spaniard.
'It is his Indian gold,' says Raleigh, speaking of the King of Spain
in 1596, 'that endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it
creeps into councils, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty
at liberty in the greatest monarchies thereof. '
ll. 40-1. _Gorgeous France ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day:_
The punctuation of _1669_ has the support generally of the MSS. ,
but in matters of punctuation these are not a very safe guide. As
punctuated in _1635_, 'ragged and decay'd' are epithets of Scotland,
contrasting her with 'Gorgeous France'. I think, however, that the
antithesis to 'gorgeous' is 'ruin'd, ragged and decay'd', describing
the condition of France after the pistolets of Spain had done their
work. The epithet applied to Scotland is 'which knew no state', the
antithesis being 'proud in one day'.
PAGE =98=, ll. 51-4. _Much hope which they should nourish, &c. _
Professor Norton proposed that the last two of these lines should run:
Will vanish if thou, Love, let them alone,
For thou wilt love me less when they are gone;
but that 'alone' is a misprint for 'atone. ' This is unnecessary, and
there is no authority for 'atone'. What Donne says, in the cynical
vein of _Elegie VI_, 9-10, is: 'If thou love me let my crowns alone,
for the poorer I grow the less you will love me. I shall lose the
qualities which you admired in me when you saw them through the
glamour of wealth. '
l. 55. _And be content. _ The majority of the MSS. begin a new
paragraph here and read:
Oh, be content, &c.
Donne would almost seem to have read or seen (he was a frequent
theatre-goer) the old play of _Soliman and Perseda_ (pr. 1599). There
the lover, having lost a carcanet, sends a cryer through the street
and offers one hundred crowns reward. Chambers notes a similar case in
_The Puritan_ (1607). Lost property is still cried by the bellman
in northern Scottish towns. The custom of resorting in such cases
to 'some dread Conjurer' is frequently referred to. See Jonson's
_Alchemist_ for the questions with which their customers approached
conjurers.
ll. 71-2. _So in the first falne angels, &c. _ Aquinas discusses the
question: 'Utrum intellectus daemonis sit obtenebratus per privationem
cognitionis omnis veritatis. ' After stating the arguments for such
privation he replies: 'Sed contra est quod Dionysius dicit . . . quod
"data sunt daemonibus aliqua dona, quae nequaquam mutata esse dicimus,
sed sunt integra et splendidissima. " Inter ista, autem, naturalia
dona est cognitio veritatis. ' Aquinas then explains that knowledge is
twofold, that which comes by nature, and that which comes by
grace: and that the latter again is twofold, that which is purely
speculative, and that which is 'affectiva, producens amorem Dei'.
'Harum autem trium cognitionum prima in daemonibus nec est ablata nec
diminuta: consequitur enim ipsam naturam Angeli, qui secundum suam
naturam est quidam intellectus vel mens. Propter simplicitatem autem
suae substantiae a natura eius aliquid subtrahi non potest. '
Devils, therefore, have natural knowledge in an eminent degree
(_splendidissima_); they have even the knowledge which comes by grace
in so far as God chooses to bestow it, for His own purposes, by
the mediation of angels or 'per aliqua temporalia divinae virtutis
effecta' (Augustine). But of the knowledge which leads to good they
have nothing: 'tenendum est firmiter secundum fidem catholicam, quod
et voluntas bonorum Angelorum confirmata est in bono, et voluntas
daemonum obstinata est in malo. ' _Summa_ I.
lxiv. 1-2. They have 'wisdom and knowledge', but it is immovably set
to do ill.
ll. 77-8. _Pitty these Angels; yet their dignities
Passe Vertues, Powers and Principalities. _
There is a good deal of vacillation in the MSS. as to the punctuation
of 'Angels yet', some placing the semicolon before, others after
'yet'. The difference is not great, but that which I have adopted,
though it has least authority, brings out best what I take to be the
meaning of these somewhat difficult lines. 'Pity these Angels, for yet
(i. e. until they are melted down and lose their form) they, as good
angels, are superior in dignity to Vertues, Powers, and Principalities
among the bad angels. ' The order of the Angelic beings, which the
Middle Ages took from Pseudo-Dionysius, consisted of nine Orders in
three Hierarchies. The first and highest Hierarchy included (beginning
with the highest Order) Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the second,
Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; the third, Principalities, Archangels,
Angels.
'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed. ' The O. E. D. quotes: 'I can
nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused. ' Palsgr. (1530).
'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret. '
Baxter, _Reformed Pastor_ (1656).
It seems to me probable that _P_ preserves an early form of these
lines:
who now is grown tough enough
To feed on that which to disused tastes seems rough.
The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's
mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the
recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O. E. D.
quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583).
'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, _Antony and
Cleopatra_, I. iv. 64 (1608).
Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the
monotonous sound of 'tough enough . . . rough', and this ultimately led
to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close of the
last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem tough
to the taste? Even meat does not _taste_ tough: and it is not of meat
that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed to return
to the reading of _P_, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as
improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.
PAGE =87=. ELEGIE VI.
l. 6. _Their Princes stiles, with many Realmes fulfill. _ This is the
reading of all the best MSS. The 'which' for 'with' of the editions
is due to an easy confusion of two contractions invariably used in
the MSS. Grosart and Chambers accept 'with' from _S_ and _A25_, but
further alter 'styles' to 'style', following these generally inferior
MSS. The plural is correct. Donne refers to more than one prince and
style. The stock instance is
the poor king Reignier, whose large style
Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.
_2 Henry VI_, I. i. 111-12.
But the English monarchs themselves bore in their 'style' the kingdom
of France, and for some years (1558-1566) Mary, Queen of Scots, bore
in her 'style' the arms of England and Ireland.
PAGE =88=, ll. 21-34. These lines evidently suggested Carew's poem,
_To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side, An Eddy_:
Mark how yon eddy steals away
From the rude stream into the bay;
There, locked up safe, she doth divorce
Her waters from the channel's course,
And scorns the torrent that did bring
Her headlong from her native spring, &c.
ll. 23-4. _calmely ride
Her wedded channels bosome, and then chide. _
The number of MSS. and editions is in favour of 'there', but the
quality (e. g. _1633_ and _W_) of those which read 'then', and the
sense of the lines, favour 'then'. The stream is at one moment in
'speechless slumber', and the next chiding. She cannot in the same
place do both at once:
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;
And so by many winding nooks he strays,
With willing sport to the wild ocean.
Shakespeare, _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II. vii. 25-32.
ll. 27-8. _Yet if her often gnawing kisses winne
The traiterous banke to gape, and let her in. _
The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather
than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final
'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its
course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks
through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for
another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak or
treacherous spot in its bank'.
PAGE =89=. ELEGIE VII.
l. 1. _Natures lay Ideot. _ Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant',
as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the meaning of
'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That word has a
different origin from 'lay' (Lat. _laicus_), and the earliest example
of it given in O. E. D. is dated 1688.
ll. 7-8. _Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie
Desperately hot, or changing feaverously. _
The 'call' of _1633_ is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is
dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast',
from _S_; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how
little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase
'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O. E. D. gives
one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word
here:
Able to cast his disease without his water.
Greene's _Menaphon_.
I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken
in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the
eyes water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing
feverously. '
If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease.
Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, V. iii. 50.
The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease,
calling it this or that.
ll. 9 f. _I had not taught thee then, the Alphabet
Of flowers, &c. _
'_Posy_, in both its senses, is a contraction of _poesy_, the flowers
of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that
engraved on a ring. ' Weekly, _Romance of Words_, London, 1912, p. 134.
She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.
l. 13. _Remember since, &c. _ For the idiom compare:
Beseech you, sir,
Remember since you owed no more to time
Than I do now.
Shakespeare, _Winter's Tale_, V. i. 219.
See Franz, _Shakespeare-Grammatik_, ? 559.
l. 22. _Inlaid thee. _ The O. E. D. cites this line as the only example
of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or
preservation. ' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word has
perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in another
substance. ' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such a setting
as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined and
heightened those charms. '
l. 25. _Thy graces and good words my creatures bee. _ I was tempted
to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of _1669_ and some MSS. , the
theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the kind of
conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of _1633-54_ has the
support of so good a MS. as _W_, and 'good words' is an Elizabethan
idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:
He that will give,
Good words to thee will flatter neath abhorring.
Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, I. i. 170-1.
In your bad strokes you give good words.
Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, V. i. 30.
Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces and
commendations are my work', i. e. either the commendations you receive,
or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with which you
can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of conversation
did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne sentences'. Compare,
in _Elegie IX: The Autumnall_, the description of Lady Danvers'
conversation:
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at Revels, you at Counsaile, sit.
And again, _Elegie XVIII: Loves Progresse_:
So we her ayres contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues.
l. 28. _Frame and enamell Plate. _ Compare: 'And therefore they that
thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions
of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good,
will make God bad. ' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of course,
'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The elaborate
enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as common as in the
case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. Britten's _Old Clocks and
Watches and their Makers_, 1904.
PAGE =90=. ELEGIE VIII.
l. 2. _Muskats_, i. e. 'Musk-cats. ' The 'muskets' of _1669_ is only a
misprint.
ll. 5-6. In these lines as they stand in the editions and most of the
MSS. there is clearly something wrong:
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seeme no sweat drops but pearle coronets.
A 'coronet' is not an ornament of the neck, but of the head. The
obvious emendation is that of _A25_, _C_, _JC_, and _W_, which Grosart
and Chambers have adopted. A 'carcanet' is a necklace, and carcanets
of pearl were not unusual: see O. E. D. , _s. v. _ But why then do the
editions and so many MSS. read 'coronets'? Consideration of this
has convinced me that the original error is not here but in the word
'neck'. Article by article, as in an inventory, Donne contrasts his
mistress and his enemy's. But in the next line he goes on:
Ranke sweaty froth thy Mistresse's _brow_ defiles,
contrasting her brow with that of his mistress, where the sweat drops
seem 'no sweat drops but pearle coronets'.
The explanation of the error is, probably, that an early copyist
passed in his mind from breast to neck more easily than to brow.
Another explanation is that Donne altered 'brow' to 'neck' and forgot
to alter 'coronets' to 'carcanets'. I do not think this likely. The
force of the poem lies in its contrasts, and the brow is proverbially
connected with sweat. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' &c. Possibly Donne
himself in the first version, or a copy of it, wrote 'neck', meaning
to write 'brow', misled by the proximity and associations of 'breast'.
Mr. J. C. Smith has shown that Spenser occasionally wrote a word which
association brought into his mind, but which was clearly not the word
he intended to use, as it is destructive of the rhyme-scheme. Oddly
enough the late Francis Thompson used 'carcanet' in the sense of
'coronet':
Who scarfed her with the morning? and who set
Upon her brow the day-fall's carcanet?
_Ode to the Setting Sun. _
PAGE =91=, l. 10. _Sanserra's starved men. _ 'When I consider what God
did for Goshen in Egypt . . . How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from
famines, how many Genevas from plots and machinations. ' _Sermons. _
The Protestants in Sancerra were besieged by the Catholics for nine
months in 1573, and suffered extreme privations. Norton quotes Henri
Martin, _Histoire de France_, ix. 364: 'On se disputa les debris les
plus immondes de toute substance animale ou vegetale; on crea, pour
ainsi dire, des aliments monstrueux, impossibles. '
ll. 13-14.
_And like vile lying stones in saffrond tinne,
Or warts, or wheales, they hang upon her skinne. _
Following the MSS. I have made 'lying' an epithet attached to 'stones'
and substituted 'they hang' for the superficially more grammatical 'it
hangs'. The readings of _1633_, 'vile stones lying' and 'it hangs',
seem to me just the kind of changes a hasty editor would make, the
kind of changes which characterize the Second Folio of Shakespeare.
The stones are not only 'vile'; they are 'lying', inasmuch as they
pretend to be what they are not, as the 'saffron'd tinne' pretends to
be gold.
l. 19. _Thy head_: i. e. 'the head of thy mistress. ' Donne continues
this construction in ll. 25, 32, 39, and I have restored it from the
later editions and MSS. at l. 34, 'thy gouty hand. '
l. 34. _thy gouty hand_: 'thy' is the reading of all the editions
except _1633_ and of all the MSS. except _JC_ and _S_. It is probably
right, corresponding to l. 19 'Thy head' and l. 32 'thy tann'd
skins'. Donne uses 'thy' in a condensed fashion for 'the head of thy
mistress', &c.
PAGE =92=, l. 51. _And such. _ The 'such' of the MSS. is doubtless
right, the 'nice' of the editions being repeated from l. 49.
PAGE =92=. ELEGIE IX.
For the date, &c. , of this poem, see the introductory note on the
_Elegies_.
The text of _1633_ diverges in some points from that of all the MSS. ,
in some others it agrees with _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. In the latter case I
have retained it, but where _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ agree with the rest of
the MSS. I have corrected _1633_, e. g. :
PAGE =93=, l. 6. _Affection here takes Reverences name_: where
'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. _But
now shee's gold_: where 'They are gold' of _1633_ involves a very
loose use of 'they'. Possibly _1633_ here gives a first version
afterwards corrected.
ll. 29-32. _Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c. _ Herodotus (vii. 31) tells
how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which
for its beauty ([Greek: kalleos heineka]) he decked with gold
ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, _Variae Historiae_,
ii. 14, _De platano Xerxe amato_, attributes his admiration to its
size: [Greek: en Lydia goun, phasin, idon phyton eumegethes platanou,]
&c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858)
size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram
platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, _N.
H. _ 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which
companies of men camped and slept.
The quotation from Aelian confirms the _1633_ reading, 'none being so
large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow.
The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do
not understand.
PAGE =94=, l. 47. _naturall lation. _ This, the reading of the
great majority of the MSS. , is obviously correct and explains the
vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The
O. E. D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to
another. ' Fotherby (1619);
Make me the straight and oblique lines,
The motions, lations, and the signs.
(Herrick, _Hesper. _ 64);
and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially
astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of _1633_ is an unusual
order in Donne; the 'natural station' of _1635-69_ is the opposite
of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the
editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a
misreading of 'lation'.
PAGE =95=. ELEGIE X.
The title of this Elegy, _The Dream_, was given it in _1635_, perhaps
wrongly. _S96_ seems to come nearer with _Picture_. The 'Image of
her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a
picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams come
to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat
obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be
strengthened if the lady herself were present.
l. 26. _Mad with much heart, &c. _ Aristotle made the heart the source
of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these to the
brain. See note to p. 99, l. 100.
PAGE =96=. ELEGIE XI.
Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a
metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite
Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond of
the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; she
hath a legion of angels' (_Merry Wives_, I. iii. 60). But Donne knows
more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can pursue the
analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun on angels the
only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, pistolets, and gold
are all played with in turn. The poem was a favourite with Ben
Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart' (_Drummond's
Conversations_, ed. Laing).
The text of the poem, which was first printed in _1635_ (Marriot
having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633),
is based on a MS. closely resembling _Cy_ and _P_, and differing
in several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS. ,
including _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _W_. I have endeavoured rather to
give this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either
to substitute another or contaminate the two. When _Cy_ and _P_ go
over to the side of the other MSS. it is a fair inference that the
editions have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more
open one.
PAGE =97=, l. 24. _their naturall Countreys rot_: i. e. 'their native
Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of
that Countrey', Greene, _News from Hell_ (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This
is the reading of _Cy_, and the order of the words in the other MSS.
points to its being the reading of the MS. from which _1635_ was
printed.
l. 26. _So pale, so lame, &c. _ The chipping and debasement of the
French crown is frequently referred to, and Shakespeare is fond
of punning on the word. But two extracts from Stow's _Chronicle_
(_continued . . . by_ Edmund Howes), 1631, will throw some light on the
references to coins in this poem: In the year 1559 took place the last
abasement of English money whereby testons and groats were lowered in
value and called in, 'and according to the last valuation of them,
she gave them fine money of cleane silver for them commonly called
Sterling money, and from this time there was no manner of base money
coyned or used in England . . . but all English monies were made of gold
and silver, which is not so in any other nation whatsoever, but have
sundry sorts of copper money. '
'The 9. of November, the French crowne that went currant for six
shillings foure pence, was proclaimed to be sixe shillings. '
In 1561, 'The fifteenth of November, the Queenes Maiestie published a
Proclamation for divers small pieces of silver money to be currant,
as the sixe pence, foure pence, three pence, 2 pence and a peny, three
half-pence, and 3 farthings: and also forbad all forraigne coynes to
be currant within the same Realme, as well gold as silver, calling
them all into her Maiesties Mints, except two sorts of crownes of
gold, the one the French crowne, the other the Flemish crowne. ' The
result was the bringing in of large sums in 'silver plates: and as
much or more in pistolets, and other gold of Spanish coynes, and one
weeke in pistolets and other Spanish gold 16000 pounds, all these to
be coyned with the Queenes stamps. '
l. 29. _Spanish Stamps still travelling. _ Grosart regards this as an
allusion to the wide diffusion of Spanish coins. The reference is more
pointed. It is to the prevalence of Spanish bribery, the policy of
securing paid agents in every country. It was by money that Parma
secured his first hold on the revolted provinces. Gardiner has shown
that Lord Cranborne, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, accepted a pension
from the Spanish king (_Hist. of England_, i, p. 215). The discovery
of the number of his Court who were in Spanish pay came as a profound
shock to James at a later period. The invariable charge brought by
one Dutch statesman against another was of being in the pay of the
Spaniard.
'It is his Indian gold,' says Raleigh, speaking of the King of Spain
in 1596, 'that endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it
creeps into councils, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty
at liberty in the greatest monarchies thereof. '
ll. 40-1. _Gorgeous France ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland, which knew no state, proud in one day:_
The punctuation of _1669_ has the support generally of the MSS. ,
but in matters of punctuation these are not a very safe guide. As
punctuated in _1635_, 'ragged and decay'd' are epithets of Scotland,
contrasting her with 'Gorgeous France'. I think, however, that the
antithesis to 'gorgeous' is 'ruin'd, ragged and decay'd', describing
the condition of France after the pistolets of Spain had done their
work. The epithet applied to Scotland is 'which knew no state', the
antithesis being 'proud in one day'.
PAGE =98=, ll. 51-4. _Much hope which they should nourish, &c. _
Professor Norton proposed that the last two of these lines should run:
Will vanish if thou, Love, let them alone,
For thou wilt love me less when they are gone;
but that 'alone' is a misprint for 'atone. ' This is unnecessary, and
there is no authority for 'atone'. What Donne says, in the cynical
vein of _Elegie VI_, 9-10, is: 'If thou love me let my crowns alone,
for the poorer I grow the less you will love me. I shall lose the
qualities which you admired in me when you saw them through the
glamour of wealth. '
l. 55. _And be content. _ The majority of the MSS. begin a new
paragraph here and read:
Oh, be content, &c.
Donne would almost seem to have read or seen (he was a frequent
theatre-goer) the old play of _Soliman and Perseda_ (pr. 1599). There
the lover, having lost a carcanet, sends a cryer through the street
and offers one hundred crowns reward. Chambers notes a similar case in
_The Puritan_ (1607). Lost property is still cried by the bellman
in northern Scottish towns. The custom of resorting in such cases
to 'some dread Conjurer' is frequently referred to. See Jonson's
_Alchemist_ for the questions with which their customers approached
conjurers.
ll. 71-2. _So in the first falne angels, &c. _ Aquinas discusses the
question: 'Utrum intellectus daemonis sit obtenebratus per privationem
cognitionis omnis veritatis. ' After stating the arguments for such
privation he replies: 'Sed contra est quod Dionysius dicit . . . quod
"data sunt daemonibus aliqua dona, quae nequaquam mutata esse dicimus,
sed sunt integra et splendidissima. " Inter ista, autem, naturalia
dona est cognitio veritatis. ' Aquinas then explains that knowledge is
twofold, that which comes by nature, and that which comes by
grace: and that the latter again is twofold, that which is purely
speculative, and that which is 'affectiva, producens amorem Dei'.
'Harum autem trium cognitionum prima in daemonibus nec est ablata nec
diminuta: consequitur enim ipsam naturam Angeli, qui secundum suam
naturam est quidam intellectus vel mens. Propter simplicitatem autem
suae substantiae a natura eius aliquid subtrahi non potest. '
Devils, therefore, have natural knowledge in an eminent degree
(_splendidissima_); they have even the knowledge which comes by grace
in so far as God chooses to bestow it, for His own purposes, by
the mediation of angels or 'per aliqua temporalia divinae virtutis
effecta' (Augustine). But of the knowledge which leads to good they
have nothing: 'tenendum est firmiter secundum fidem catholicam, quod
et voluntas bonorum Angelorum confirmata est in bono, et voluntas
daemonum obstinata est in malo. ' _Summa_ I.
lxiv. 1-2. They have 'wisdom and knowledge', but it is immovably set
to do ill.
ll. 77-8. _Pitty these Angels; yet their dignities
Passe Vertues, Powers and Principalities. _
There is a good deal of vacillation in the MSS. as to the punctuation
of 'Angels yet', some placing the semicolon before, others after
'yet'. The difference is not great, but that which I have adopted,
though it has least authority, brings out best what I take to be the
meaning of these somewhat difficult lines. 'Pity these Angels, for yet
(i. e. until they are melted down and lose their form) they, as good
angels, are superior in dignity to Vertues, Powers, and Principalities
among the bad angels. ' The order of the Angelic beings, which the
Middle Ages took from Pseudo-Dionysius, consisted of nine Orders in
three Hierarchies. The first and highest Hierarchy included (beginning
with the highest Order) Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the second,
Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; the third, Principalities, Archangels,
Angels.
