It is on
this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a
bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a
crown or two.
this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a
bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a
crown or two.
Donne - 2
Donne's companion looks
so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest
from Rome, or Douay. See Strype's _Annals_, passim, and Meyer, _Die
Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth_, 1910.
PAGE =160=, l. 35. _and saith_: 'saith' is the reading of all the
earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
silently alter it to an exclamatory 'faith'--turning it into a
statement which Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a
harshly interpolated 'so he says'. One MS. adds 'he', and possibly the
pronoun in some form has been dropped, e. g. 'sayth a speakes'.
ll. 37-8. _Made of the Accents, &c. _ It is perhaps rash to accept
the 'no language' of _A25_, _Q_, and the Dyce MS. But the last
two represent, I think, an early version of the _Satyres_, and 'no
language' (like 'nill be delayed', _Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn_)
is just the sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated
transmission. It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But
its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better sense;
and it is echoed by Jonson in his _Discoveries_: 'Spenser in affecting
the ancients writ no language. ' In like manner Donne's companion, in
affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, spoke none. I
confess that seems to me a more pointed remark than that he spoke one
made up of these.
l. 48. _Jovius or Surius_: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, among many
other works wrote _Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV. 1553_. Chambers
quotes from the _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_: 'Ses œuvres sont
pleines des mensonges dont profita sa cupidité. '
Laurentius Surius (1522-78) was a Carthusian monk who wrote
ecclesiastical history. Among his works are a _Commentarius brevis
rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno 1550_ (1568), and a _Vitae Sanctorum,
1570 et seq. _ He was accused of inaccuracy by Protestant writers.
It is worth while noting that _Q_ and _O'F_ read 'Sleydan', i. e.
Sleidanus. John Sleidan (1506-56) was a Protestant historian who,
like Surius, wrote both general and ecclesiastical history, e. g. _De
quatuor Summis Imperiis, Babylonico, Persico, Graeco, et Romano_, 1556
(an English translation appeared in 1635), and _De Statu Religionis et
Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii_ (1555-9). The latter
is a history of the Reformation written from the Protestant point of
view, to which Surius' work is a reply. Sleidan's history did not
give entire satisfaction to the reformers. It is quite possible
that Donne's first sneer was at the Protestant historian and that he
thought it safer later to substitute the Catholic Surius.
l. 54. _Calepines Dictionarie. _ A well-known polyglot dictionary
edited by Ambrose Calepine (1455-1511) in 1502. It grew later to
a _Dictionarium Octolingue_, and ultimately to a _Dictionarium XI
Linguarum_ (Basel, 1590).
l. 56. _Some other Jesuites. _ The 'other' is found only in _HN_, which
is no very reliable authority. Without it the line wants a whole
foot, not merely a syllable. Donne more than once drops a syllable,
compensating for it by the length and stress which is given to
another. Nothing can make up for the want of a whole foot, though in
dramatic verse an incomplete line may be effective. To me, too, it
seems very like Donne to introduce this condensed and sudden stroke at
Beza and nothing more likely to have been dropped later, either by
way of precaution or because it was not understood. No one of the
reformers was more disliked by Catholics than Beza. The licence of
his early life, his loose Latin verses, the scurrilous wit of his own
controversial method--all exposed him to and provoked attack. The _De
Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezae, Omnium Haereticorum nostri temporis
facile principis, &c. : Authore Jacobo Laingaeo Doctore Sorbonico_
(1585), is a bitter and calumnious attack. There was, too, something
of the Jesuit, both in the character of the arguments used and in the
claim made on behalf of the Church to direct the civil arm, in Beza's
defence of the execution of Servetus. Moreover, the _Vindiciae contra
Tyrannos_ was sometimes attributed to Beza, and the views of the
reformers regarding the rights of kings put forward there, and those
held by the Jesuits, approximate closely. (See _Cambridge Modern
History_, iii. 22, _Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century_, pp.
759-66. ) In his subsequent attacks upon the Jesuits, Donne always
singles out the danger of their doctrines and practice to the
authority of kings. Throughout the _Satyres_ Donne's veiled Catholic
prejudices have to be constantly borne in mind.
PAGE =161=, l. 59. _and so Panurge was. _ See Rabelais, _Pantagruel_
ii. 9. One day that Pantagruel was walking with his friends he met
'un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineaments de corps,
mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux, et tant mal en ordre qu'il
sembloit estre eschappe es chiens'. Pantagruel, convinced from his
appearance that 'il n'est pauvre que par fortune', demands of him his
name and story. He replies; but, to the dismay of Pantagruel and his
friends, his answer is couched first in German, then in Arabic (? ),
then in Italian, in English (or what passes as such), in Basque,
in Lanternoy (an Esperanto of Rabelais's invention), in Dutch, in
Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in the language of
Utopia, and finally in Latin. '"Dea, mon amy," dist Pantagruel, "ne
sçavez-vous parler françoys? " "Si faict tresbien, Seigneur," respondit
le compaignon; "Dieu mercy! c'est ma langue naturelle et maternelle,
car je suis né et ay esté nourry jeune au jardin de France: c'est
Touraine. "--"Doncques," dist Pantagruel, "racomtez nous quel est votre
nom et dont vous venez. ". . . "Seigneur," dist le compagnon, "mon vray
et propre nom de baptesmes est Panurge. "' Panurge was not much behind
Calepine's Dictionary, and if Donne's companion spoke in the
'accent and best phrase' of all these tongues he certainly spoke 'no
language'.
l. 69. _doth not last_: 'last' has the support of several good
MSS. , 'taste' (i. e. savour, go down, be acceptable) of some. It is
impossible to decide on intrinsic grounds between them.
l. 70. _Aretines pictures. _ The lascivious pictures of Giulio Romano,
for which Aretino wrote sonnets.
l. 75. _the man that keepes the Abbey tombes. _ See Davies' epigram,
_On Dacus_, quoted in the general note on the _Satyres_.
l. 80. _Kingstreet. _ From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at
Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the
north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government
offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's _Survey of London_, ed. Charles
Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.
ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:
_Companion. _ Are not your Frenchmen neat?
_Donne. _ Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, look he
follows me.
_Companion (ignoring this impertinence). _ Certes they (i. e.
Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only
wearing is your grogaram.
_Donne. _ Not so Sir, I have more.
The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's
colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne
applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only
one suit. ' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he
follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes . . . grogaram' to Donne,
and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted commas,
and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new speech at
'Mine'.
For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in
_A Midsummer Nights Dream_: 'I will discharge it in either your
straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not
a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances
quoted by Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making
fun of an affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant
appears from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this
Letter . . . and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according
to your addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it. ' To Sir G. B. ,
_Letters_, p. 201.
PAGE =162=, l. 97. _ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes. _ Every
reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their
account of the greater events of each year mention of trifling events,
strange births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is
reflected in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these
'lay-chroniclers that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and
the deere yere and the great frost'. _Pierce Penniless. _
ll. 98. _he knowes; He knowes. _ I have followed _D_, _H49_, _Lec_
in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of
triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne does
not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.
PAGE =163=, l. 113-4. _since The Spaniards came, &c. _: i. e. from 1588
to 1597.
l. 117. _To heare this Makeron talke. _ This is the earliest instance
of this Italian word used in English which the O. E. D. quotes, and is
a proof of Donne's Italian travels. The _Vocabolario degli Accademici
della Crusca_ (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this
meaning, _homo crassâ Minerva_, in Italian:
O maccheron, ben hai la vista corta.
Bellina, _Sonetti_, 29.
Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one of
the _Elegies to the Author_, and led to the absurd substitution, in
the editions after _1633_, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in
the epistle prefixed to _The Progress of the Soule_.
l. 124. _Perpetuities. _ 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because
they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised
daily from fines and recoveries. ' _Manningham's Diary_, April 22,
1602. Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many
centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights,
i. e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable
rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's
or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic
went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.
l. 133. _To sucke me in; for_. . . . I have, with some of the MSS. and
with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' with
what follows. But _1633_ and the better MSS. read:
To sucke me in for hearing him. I found. . . .
Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for
hearing him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the
superstition about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as
. . . leachers, &c. , . . . so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he
free. ' 'I should be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy
who had spoken treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of
trials of suspected traitors before Walsingham and others.
It is on
this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a
bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a
crown or two.
PAGE =164=, l. 148. _complementall thankes. _ The word 'complement'
or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened and
brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the most part,
in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not
answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire
tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives
an addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the
heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his
condemnation that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me
a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine,
and in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good
intentions well too. ' _Sermons_ 80. 18. 176.
l. 164. _th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility. _ I have followed the MSS.
in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be
more easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is
commoner as a noun. The O. E. D. gives no example of the adjectival use
earlier than 1613. Compare:
The huft, puft, curld, purld, wanton Pride.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas_, i. 2.
PAGE =165=, l. 169. _your waxen garden_ or _yon waxen garden_--it
is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the
artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or
'motion' exhibitors. Compare:
I smile to think how fond the Italians are,
To judge their artificial gardens rare,
When London in thy cheekes can shew them heere
Roses and Lillies growing all the yeere.
Drayton, _Heroical Epistles_ (1597), _Edward IV to Jane Shore_.
l. 176. _Baloune. _ A game played with a large wind-ball or football
struck to and fro with the arm or foot.
l. 179. _and I, (God pardon mee. )_ This, the reading of the _1633_
edition, is obviously right. Mr. Chambers, misled by the dropping
of the full stop after 'me' in the editions from _1639_ onwards, has
adopted a reading of his own:
and aye--God pardon me--
As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be
The fields they sold to buy them.
But what, in this case, does Donne ask God's pardon for? It is not
_his_ fault that their apparels are fresh or costly. 'God pardon
them! ' would be the appropriate exclamation. What Donne asks God's
pardon for is, that he too should be found in the 'Presence' again,
after what he has already seen of Court life and 'the wretchedness
of suitors': as though Dante, who had seen Hell and escaped, should
wilfully return thither.
l. 189. _Cutchannel_: i. e. Cochineal. The ladies' painted faces
suggest the comparison. In or shortly before 1603 an English ship, the
_Margaret and John_, made a piratical attack on the Venetian ship,
_La Babiana_. An indemnity was paid, and among the stolen articles
are mentioned 54 weights of cochineal, valued at £50-7. Our school
Histories tell us of Turkish and Moorish pirates, not so much of
the piracy which was conducted by English merchant ships, not always
confining themselves to the ships of nations at war with their
country.
PAGE =166=, ll. 205-6. _trye . . . thighe. _ I have, with the support of
_Ash. _ 38, printed thus instead of _tryes . . . thighes_. If we retain
'tryes', then we should also, with several MSS. , read (l. 204)
'survayes'; and if 'thighes' be correct we should expect 'legges'.
The regular construction keeps the infinitive throughout, 'refine',
'lift', 'call', 'survay', 'trye'. If we suppose that Donne shifted the
construction as he got away from the governing verb, the change would
naturally begin with 'survayes'.
ll. 215-6. _A Pursevant would have ravish'd him away. _ The reading
of three independent MSS. , _Q_, _O'F_, and _JC_, of 'Topcliffe' for
'Pursevant' is a very interesting clue to the Catholic point of
view from which Donne's _Satyres_ were written. Richard Topcliffe
(1532-1609) was one of the cruellest of the creatures employed to
ferret out and examine by torture Catholics and Jesuits. It was he who
tortured Southwell the poet. In 1593 he was on the commission against
Jesuits, and in 1594-5 was in prison. John Hammond, the civilist, who
is possibly referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, sat with him on several
inquiries. See _D. N. B. _ and authorities quoted there; also Meyer, _Die
Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth_, 1910.
PAGE =167=, ll. 233-4. _men big enough to throw
Charing Crosse for a barre. _
Of one of Harvey's pamphlets Nash writes: 'Credibly it was once
rumoured about the Court, that the Guard meant to try masteries with
it before the Queene, and, instead of throwing the sledge or the
hammer, to hurle it foorth at the armes end for a wager. ' _Have with
you, &c. _ (M^{c}Kerrow, iii, p. 36. )
ll. 235-6. _Queenes man, and fine
Living, barrells of beefe, flaggons of wine. _
Compare Cowley's _Loves Riddle_, III. i:
_Apl. _ He shew thee first all the coelestial signs,
And to begin, look on that horned head.
_Aln. _ Whose is't? Jupiters?
_Apl. _ No, tis the Ram!
Next that the spacious Bull fills up the place.
_Aln. _ The Bull? Tis well the fellows of the Guard
Intend not to come thither; if they did
The Gods might chance to lose their beef.
The name 'beefeater' has, I suppose, some responsibility for the jest.
Nash refers to their size: 'The big-bodied Halbordiers that guard
her Majesty,' Nash (Grosart), i. 102; and to their capacities as
trenchermen: 'Lies as big as one of the Guardes chynes of beefe,' Nash
(M^{c}Kerrow), i. 269.
'Ascapart is a giant thirty feet high who figures in the legend of Sir
Bevis of Southampton. ' Chambers.
l. 240. _a scarce brooke_. Donne uses 'scarce' in this sense, i. e.
'scanty'. It is not common. See note to l. 4.
PAGE =168=, l. 242. _Macchabees modestie. _ 'And if I have done well,
and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired; but
if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto. ' 2
Maccabees xv. 38.
PAGE =168=. SATYRE V.
l. 9. _If all things be in all. _ 'All things are concealed in all.
One of them all is the concealer of the rest--their corporeal vessel,
external, visible and movable. ' Paracelsus, _Coelum Philosophorum: The
First Canon, Concerning the Nature and Properties of Mercury_.
PAGE =169=, l. 31. _You Sir, &c. _: i. e. Sir Thomas Egerton, whose
service Donne entered probably in 1598 and left in 1601-2. Norton says
1596 to 1600. In 1596 Egerton was made Lord Keeper. In 1597 he
was busy with the reform of some of the abuses connected with the
Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and this is probably what Donne has in
view throughout the Satyre. 'For some years the administration of this
office had given rise to complaints. In the last Parliament a bill
had been brought in . . . for the reformation of it; but by a little
management on the part of the Speaker had been thrown out on the
second reading. Upon this I suppose the complainants addressed
themselves to the Queen. For it appears that the matter was under
inquiry in 1595, when Puckering was Lord Keeper; and it is certain
that at a later period some of the fees claimed by the Clerk of
Council were by authority of the Lord Keeper Egerton restrained. '
Spedding, _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, ii. 56. In the note
Spedding refers to a MS. at Bridgewater House containing 'The humble
petition of the Clerk of the Council concerning his fees restrained
by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Keeper'. Bacon held the reversion to this
Clerkship and in a long letter to Egerton he discusses in detail the
nature of the 'claim'd fees'. The question was not settled till 1605.
It will be noticed that in several editions and MSS. the reading is
'claim'd fees'.
ll. 37-41. These lines are correctly printed in _1633_, though the old
use of the semicolon to indicate at one time a little less than a
full stop, at another just a little more than a comma, has caused
confusion. I have, therefore, ventured to alter the first (after
'farre') to a full stop, and the second (after 'duties') to a comma.
'_That_', says Donne (the italics give emphasis), 'was the iron age
when justice was sold. Now' (in this 'age of rusty iron') 'injustice
is sold dearer. Once you have allowed all the demands made on you, you
find, suitors (and suitors are gamblers), that the money you toiled
for has passed into other hands, the lands for which you urged your
rival claims has escaped you, as Angelica escaped while Ferrau and
Rinaldo fought for her. '
To the reading of the editions _1635-54_, which Chambers has adopted
(but by printing in roman letters he makes 'that' a relative pronoun,
and 'iron age' subject to 'did allow'), I can attach no meaning:
The iron Age _that_ was, when justice was sold (now
Injustice is sold dearer) did allow
All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters anon.
How did the iron age allow fees and duties? The text of _1669_ reverts
to that of _1633_ (keeping the 'claim'd fees' of _1635-54_), but does
not improve the punctuation by changing the semicolon after 'farre' to
a comma.
Mr. Allen (_Rise of Formal Satire, &c. _) points out that the allusion
to the age of 'rusty iron', which deserves some worse name, is
obviously derived from Juvenal XIII. 28 ff. :
Nunc aetas agitur, peioraque saecula ferri
Temporibus: quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo.
With Donne's
so controverted lands
Scape, like Angelica, the strivers hands
compare Chaucer's
We strive as did the houndes for the boon
Thei foughte al day and yet hir parte was noon:
Ther cam a kyte, whil that they were so wrothe,
And bar away the boon betwixt hem bothe.
And therfore at the kynges country brother
Eche man for himself, there is noon other.
_Knightes Tale_, ll. 319 ff.
ll. 45-6. _powre of the Courts below Flow. _ Grosart and Chambers
silently alter to 'Flows', but both the editions and MSS. have the
plural form. Franz notes the construction in Shakespeare:
The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality.
_Hen. V_, V. ii. 18.
All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience.
_Lear_, III. v. 4.
The last is a very close parallel. The proximity of the plural noun in
the prepositional phrase is the chief determining factor, but in
some cases the combined noun and qualifying phrase has a plural
force--'such venomous looks', 'his mental powers or faculties. '
PAGE =170=, l. 61. _heavens Courts. _ There can be no doubt that the
plural is right: 'so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and refine
our wills from earthly Drugs, and Lees, more then the Reformed, and so
seems to bring us nearer heaven, but then that carries heaven farther
from us, by making us pass so many Courts, and Offices of Saints in
this life, in all our petitions,' &c. _Letters_, 102.
so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest
from Rome, or Douay. See Strype's _Annals_, passim, and Meyer, _Die
Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth_, 1910.
PAGE =160=, l. 35. _and saith_: 'saith' is the reading of all the
earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
silently alter it to an exclamatory 'faith'--turning it into a
statement which Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a
harshly interpolated 'so he says'. One MS. adds 'he', and possibly the
pronoun in some form has been dropped, e. g. 'sayth a speakes'.
ll. 37-8. _Made of the Accents, &c. _ It is perhaps rash to accept
the 'no language' of _A25_, _Q_, and the Dyce MS. But the last
two represent, I think, an early version of the _Satyres_, and 'no
language' (like 'nill be delayed', _Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn_)
is just the sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated
transmission. It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But
its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better sense;
and it is echoed by Jonson in his _Discoveries_: 'Spenser in affecting
the ancients writ no language. ' In like manner Donne's companion, in
affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, spoke none. I
confess that seems to me a more pointed remark than that he spoke one
made up of these.
l. 48. _Jovius or Surius_: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, among many
other works wrote _Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV. 1553_. Chambers
quotes from the _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_: 'Ses œuvres sont
pleines des mensonges dont profita sa cupidité. '
Laurentius Surius (1522-78) was a Carthusian monk who wrote
ecclesiastical history. Among his works are a _Commentarius brevis
rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno 1550_ (1568), and a _Vitae Sanctorum,
1570 et seq. _ He was accused of inaccuracy by Protestant writers.
It is worth while noting that _Q_ and _O'F_ read 'Sleydan', i. e.
Sleidanus. John Sleidan (1506-56) was a Protestant historian who,
like Surius, wrote both general and ecclesiastical history, e. g. _De
quatuor Summis Imperiis, Babylonico, Persico, Graeco, et Romano_, 1556
(an English translation appeared in 1635), and _De Statu Religionis et
Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii_ (1555-9). The latter
is a history of the Reformation written from the Protestant point of
view, to which Surius' work is a reply. Sleidan's history did not
give entire satisfaction to the reformers. It is quite possible
that Donne's first sneer was at the Protestant historian and that he
thought it safer later to substitute the Catholic Surius.
l. 54. _Calepines Dictionarie. _ A well-known polyglot dictionary
edited by Ambrose Calepine (1455-1511) in 1502. It grew later to
a _Dictionarium Octolingue_, and ultimately to a _Dictionarium XI
Linguarum_ (Basel, 1590).
l. 56. _Some other Jesuites. _ The 'other' is found only in _HN_, which
is no very reliable authority. Without it the line wants a whole
foot, not merely a syllable. Donne more than once drops a syllable,
compensating for it by the length and stress which is given to
another. Nothing can make up for the want of a whole foot, though in
dramatic verse an incomplete line may be effective. To me, too, it
seems very like Donne to introduce this condensed and sudden stroke at
Beza and nothing more likely to have been dropped later, either by
way of precaution or because it was not understood. No one of the
reformers was more disliked by Catholics than Beza. The licence of
his early life, his loose Latin verses, the scurrilous wit of his own
controversial method--all exposed him to and provoked attack. The _De
Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezae, Omnium Haereticorum nostri temporis
facile principis, &c. : Authore Jacobo Laingaeo Doctore Sorbonico_
(1585), is a bitter and calumnious attack. There was, too, something
of the Jesuit, both in the character of the arguments used and in the
claim made on behalf of the Church to direct the civil arm, in Beza's
defence of the execution of Servetus. Moreover, the _Vindiciae contra
Tyrannos_ was sometimes attributed to Beza, and the views of the
reformers regarding the rights of kings put forward there, and those
held by the Jesuits, approximate closely. (See _Cambridge Modern
History_, iii. 22, _Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century_, pp.
759-66. ) In his subsequent attacks upon the Jesuits, Donne always
singles out the danger of their doctrines and practice to the
authority of kings. Throughout the _Satyres_ Donne's veiled Catholic
prejudices have to be constantly borne in mind.
PAGE =161=, l. 59. _and so Panurge was. _ See Rabelais, _Pantagruel_
ii. 9. One day that Pantagruel was walking with his friends he met
'un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineaments de corps,
mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux, et tant mal en ordre qu'il
sembloit estre eschappe es chiens'. Pantagruel, convinced from his
appearance that 'il n'est pauvre que par fortune', demands of him his
name and story. He replies; but, to the dismay of Pantagruel and his
friends, his answer is couched first in German, then in Arabic (? ),
then in Italian, in English (or what passes as such), in Basque,
in Lanternoy (an Esperanto of Rabelais's invention), in Dutch, in
Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in the language of
Utopia, and finally in Latin. '"Dea, mon amy," dist Pantagruel, "ne
sçavez-vous parler françoys? " "Si faict tresbien, Seigneur," respondit
le compaignon; "Dieu mercy! c'est ma langue naturelle et maternelle,
car je suis né et ay esté nourry jeune au jardin de France: c'est
Touraine. "--"Doncques," dist Pantagruel, "racomtez nous quel est votre
nom et dont vous venez. ". . . "Seigneur," dist le compagnon, "mon vray
et propre nom de baptesmes est Panurge. "' Panurge was not much behind
Calepine's Dictionary, and if Donne's companion spoke in the
'accent and best phrase' of all these tongues he certainly spoke 'no
language'.
l. 69. _doth not last_: 'last' has the support of several good
MSS. , 'taste' (i. e. savour, go down, be acceptable) of some. It is
impossible to decide on intrinsic grounds between them.
l. 70. _Aretines pictures. _ The lascivious pictures of Giulio Romano,
for which Aretino wrote sonnets.
l. 75. _the man that keepes the Abbey tombes. _ See Davies' epigram,
_On Dacus_, quoted in the general note on the _Satyres_.
l. 80. _Kingstreet. _ From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at
Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the
north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government
offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's _Survey of London_, ed. Charles
Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.
ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:
_Companion. _ Are not your Frenchmen neat?
_Donne. _ Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, look he
follows me.
_Companion (ignoring this impertinence). _ Certes they (i. e.
Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only
wearing is your grogaram.
_Donne. _ Not so Sir, I have more.
The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's
colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne
applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only
one suit. ' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he
follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes . . . grogaram' to Donne,
and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted commas,
and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new speech at
'Mine'.
For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in
_A Midsummer Nights Dream_: 'I will discharge it in either your
straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not
a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances
quoted by Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making
fun of an affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant
appears from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this
Letter . . . and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according
to your addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it. ' To Sir G. B. ,
_Letters_, p. 201.
PAGE =162=, l. 97. _ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes. _ Every
reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their
account of the greater events of each year mention of trifling events,
strange births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is
reflected in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these
'lay-chroniclers that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and
the deere yere and the great frost'. _Pierce Penniless. _
ll. 98. _he knowes; He knowes. _ I have followed _D_, _H49_, _Lec_
in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of
triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne does
not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.
PAGE =163=, l. 113-4. _since The Spaniards came, &c. _: i. e. from 1588
to 1597.
l. 117. _To heare this Makeron talke. _ This is the earliest instance
of this Italian word used in English which the O. E. D. quotes, and is
a proof of Donne's Italian travels. The _Vocabolario degli Accademici
della Crusca_ (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this
meaning, _homo crassâ Minerva_, in Italian:
O maccheron, ben hai la vista corta.
Bellina, _Sonetti_, 29.
Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one of
the _Elegies to the Author_, and led to the absurd substitution, in
the editions after _1633_, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in
the epistle prefixed to _The Progress of the Soule_.
l. 124. _Perpetuities. _ 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because
they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised
daily from fines and recoveries. ' _Manningham's Diary_, April 22,
1602. Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many
centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights,
i. e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable
rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's
or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic
went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.
l. 133. _To sucke me in; for_. . . . I have, with some of the MSS. and
with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' with
what follows. But _1633_ and the better MSS. read:
To sucke me in for hearing him. I found. . . .
Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for
hearing him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the
superstition about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as
. . . leachers, &c. , . . . so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he
free. ' 'I should be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy
who had spoken treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of
trials of suspected traitors before Walsingham and others.
It is on
this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a
bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a
crown or two.
PAGE =164=, l. 148. _complementall thankes. _ The word 'complement'
or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened and
brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the most part,
in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not
answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire
tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives
an addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the
heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his
condemnation that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me
a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine,
and in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good
intentions well too. ' _Sermons_ 80. 18. 176.
l. 164. _th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility. _ I have followed the MSS.
in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be
more easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is
commoner as a noun. The O. E. D. gives no example of the adjectival use
earlier than 1613. Compare:
The huft, puft, curld, purld, wanton Pride.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas_, i. 2.
PAGE =165=, l. 169. _your waxen garden_ or _yon waxen garden_--it
is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the
artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or
'motion' exhibitors. Compare:
I smile to think how fond the Italians are,
To judge their artificial gardens rare,
When London in thy cheekes can shew them heere
Roses and Lillies growing all the yeere.
Drayton, _Heroical Epistles_ (1597), _Edward IV to Jane Shore_.
l. 176. _Baloune. _ A game played with a large wind-ball or football
struck to and fro with the arm or foot.
l. 179. _and I, (God pardon mee. )_ This, the reading of the _1633_
edition, is obviously right. Mr. Chambers, misled by the dropping
of the full stop after 'me' in the editions from _1639_ onwards, has
adopted a reading of his own:
and aye--God pardon me--
As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be
The fields they sold to buy them.
But what, in this case, does Donne ask God's pardon for? It is not
_his_ fault that their apparels are fresh or costly. 'God pardon
them! ' would be the appropriate exclamation. What Donne asks God's
pardon for is, that he too should be found in the 'Presence' again,
after what he has already seen of Court life and 'the wretchedness
of suitors': as though Dante, who had seen Hell and escaped, should
wilfully return thither.
l. 189. _Cutchannel_: i. e. Cochineal. The ladies' painted faces
suggest the comparison. In or shortly before 1603 an English ship, the
_Margaret and John_, made a piratical attack on the Venetian ship,
_La Babiana_. An indemnity was paid, and among the stolen articles
are mentioned 54 weights of cochineal, valued at £50-7. Our school
Histories tell us of Turkish and Moorish pirates, not so much of
the piracy which was conducted by English merchant ships, not always
confining themselves to the ships of nations at war with their
country.
PAGE =166=, ll. 205-6. _trye . . . thighe. _ I have, with the support of
_Ash. _ 38, printed thus instead of _tryes . . . thighes_. If we retain
'tryes', then we should also, with several MSS. , read (l. 204)
'survayes'; and if 'thighes' be correct we should expect 'legges'.
The regular construction keeps the infinitive throughout, 'refine',
'lift', 'call', 'survay', 'trye'. If we suppose that Donne shifted the
construction as he got away from the governing verb, the change would
naturally begin with 'survayes'.
ll. 215-6. _A Pursevant would have ravish'd him away. _ The reading
of three independent MSS. , _Q_, _O'F_, and _JC_, of 'Topcliffe' for
'Pursevant' is a very interesting clue to the Catholic point of
view from which Donne's _Satyres_ were written. Richard Topcliffe
(1532-1609) was one of the cruellest of the creatures employed to
ferret out and examine by torture Catholics and Jesuits. It was he who
tortured Southwell the poet. In 1593 he was on the commission against
Jesuits, and in 1594-5 was in prison. John Hammond, the civilist, who
is possibly referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, sat with him on several
inquiries. See _D. N. B. _ and authorities quoted there; also Meyer, _Die
Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth_, 1910.
PAGE =167=, ll. 233-4. _men big enough to throw
Charing Crosse for a barre. _
Of one of Harvey's pamphlets Nash writes: 'Credibly it was once
rumoured about the Court, that the Guard meant to try masteries with
it before the Queene, and, instead of throwing the sledge or the
hammer, to hurle it foorth at the armes end for a wager. ' _Have with
you, &c. _ (M^{c}Kerrow, iii, p. 36. )
ll. 235-6. _Queenes man, and fine
Living, barrells of beefe, flaggons of wine. _
Compare Cowley's _Loves Riddle_, III. i:
_Apl. _ He shew thee first all the coelestial signs,
And to begin, look on that horned head.
_Aln. _ Whose is't? Jupiters?
_Apl. _ No, tis the Ram!
Next that the spacious Bull fills up the place.
_Aln. _ The Bull? Tis well the fellows of the Guard
Intend not to come thither; if they did
The Gods might chance to lose their beef.
The name 'beefeater' has, I suppose, some responsibility for the jest.
Nash refers to their size: 'The big-bodied Halbordiers that guard
her Majesty,' Nash (Grosart), i. 102; and to their capacities as
trenchermen: 'Lies as big as one of the Guardes chynes of beefe,' Nash
(M^{c}Kerrow), i. 269.
'Ascapart is a giant thirty feet high who figures in the legend of Sir
Bevis of Southampton. ' Chambers.
l. 240. _a scarce brooke_. Donne uses 'scarce' in this sense, i. e.
'scanty'. It is not common. See note to l. 4.
PAGE =168=, l. 242. _Macchabees modestie. _ 'And if I have done well,
and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired; but
if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto. ' 2
Maccabees xv. 38.
PAGE =168=. SATYRE V.
l. 9. _If all things be in all. _ 'All things are concealed in all.
One of them all is the concealer of the rest--their corporeal vessel,
external, visible and movable. ' Paracelsus, _Coelum Philosophorum: The
First Canon, Concerning the Nature and Properties of Mercury_.
PAGE =169=, l. 31. _You Sir, &c. _: i. e. Sir Thomas Egerton, whose
service Donne entered probably in 1598 and left in 1601-2. Norton says
1596 to 1600. In 1596 Egerton was made Lord Keeper. In 1597 he
was busy with the reform of some of the abuses connected with the
Clerkship of the Star Chamber, and this is probably what Donne has in
view throughout the Satyre. 'For some years the administration of this
office had given rise to complaints. In the last Parliament a bill
had been brought in . . . for the reformation of it; but by a little
management on the part of the Speaker had been thrown out on the
second reading. Upon this I suppose the complainants addressed
themselves to the Queen. For it appears that the matter was under
inquiry in 1595, when Puckering was Lord Keeper; and it is certain
that at a later period some of the fees claimed by the Clerk of
Council were by authority of the Lord Keeper Egerton restrained. '
Spedding, _Letters and Life of Francis Bacon_, ii. 56. In the note
Spedding refers to a MS. at Bridgewater House containing 'The humble
petition of the Clerk of the Council concerning his fees restrained
by the Rt. Hon. the Lord Keeper'. Bacon held the reversion to this
Clerkship and in a long letter to Egerton he discusses in detail the
nature of the 'claim'd fees'. The question was not settled till 1605.
It will be noticed that in several editions and MSS. the reading is
'claim'd fees'.
ll. 37-41. These lines are correctly printed in _1633_, though the old
use of the semicolon to indicate at one time a little less than a
full stop, at another just a little more than a comma, has caused
confusion. I have, therefore, ventured to alter the first (after
'farre') to a full stop, and the second (after 'duties') to a comma.
'_That_', says Donne (the italics give emphasis), 'was the iron age
when justice was sold. Now' (in this 'age of rusty iron') 'injustice
is sold dearer. Once you have allowed all the demands made on you, you
find, suitors (and suitors are gamblers), that the money you toiled
for has passed into other hands, the lands for which you urged your
rival claims has escaped you, as Angelica escaped while Ferrau and
Rinaldo fought for her. '
To the reading of the editions _1635-54_, which Chambers has adopted
(but by printing in roman letters he makes 'that' a relative pronoun,
and 'iron age' subject to 'did allow'), I can attach no meaning:
The iron Age _that_ was, when justice was sold (now
Injustice is sold dearer) did allow
All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters anon.
How did the iron age allow fees and duties? The text of _1669_ reverts
to that of _1633_ (keeping the 'claim'd fees' of _1635-54_), but does
not improve the punctuation by changing the semicolon after 'farre' to
a comma.
Mr. Allen (_Rise of Formal Satire, &c. _) points out that the allusion
to the age of 'rusty iron', which deserves some worse name, is
obviously derived from Juvenal XIII. 28 ff. :
Nunc aetas agitur, peioraque saecula ferri
Temporibus: quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo.
With Donne's
so controverted lands
Scape, like Angelica, the strivers hands
compare Chaucer's
We strive as did the houndes for the boon
Thei foughte al day and yet hir parte was noon:
Ther cam a kyte, whil that they were so wrothe,
And bar away the boon betwixt hem bothe.
And therfore at the kynges country brother
Eche man for himself, there is noon other.
_Knightes Tale_, ll. 319 ff.
ll. 45-6. _powre of the Courts below Flow. _ Grosart and Chambers
silently alter to 'Flows', but both the editions and MSS. have the
plural form. Franz notes the construction in Shakespeare:
The venom of such looks, we fairly hope,
Have lost their quality.
_Hen. V_, V. ii. 18.
All the power of his wits have given way to his impatience.
_Lear_, III. v. 4.
The last is a very close parallel. The proximity of the plural noun in
the prepositional phrase is the chief determining factor, but in
some cases the combined noun and qualifying phrase has a plural
force--'such venomous looks', 'his mental powers or faculties. '
PAGE =170=, l. 61. _heavens Courts. _ There can be no doubt that the
plural is right: 'so the Roman profession seems to exhale, and refine
our wills from earthly Drugs, and Lees, more then the Reformed, and so
seems to bring us nearer heaven, but then that carries heaven farther
from us, by making us pass so many Courts, and Offices of Saints in
this life, in all our petitions,' &c. _Letters_, 102.
