, reads:
Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.
Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.
John Donne
Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others
of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could
not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition
which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue
which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene
thing can be uttered in it). . . . ' The reason which Donne gives is that
'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and
mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they
gelde. ' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is
therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS. A journal or register of news started at
Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was
entitled: _Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia
potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia,
vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594
gestarum, nuncius_. In the seventeenth century it was published
half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable
(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', _Poetaster_, V. i), nor its
news always trustworthy.
THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished
Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his
Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in
_HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to
be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and
contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish
fare.
l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar. _ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar,
sir; I have not much skill in grass. ' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV.
v.
THE ELEGIES.
Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated
before the larger collections were made or publication took place.
Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being
made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who
to this house,' afterwards called _Elegie on the L. C. _ The order
in the one group, as we find it in e. g. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is _The
Bracelet_,[1] _Going to Bed_, _Jealousie_, _The Anagram_, _Change_,
_The Perfume_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let
mee not serve,' _Loves Warr_, _On his Mistris_, 'Natures lay Ideott,
I taught,' _Loves Progress_. The second group, as we find it in
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_, contains _The Bracelet_, _The Comparison_, _The
Perfume_, _Jealousie_, 'Oh, let not me (_sic_ _W_) serve,' 'Natures
lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Warr_, _Going to Bed_, _Change_, _The
Anagram_, _On his Mistris_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow, who to this
house. ' The last is not given in _A25_. It will be noticed that
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ drops _The Comparison_; _A25_, _JC_, _W_, _Loves
Progress_; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups
together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.
[Footnote 1: I take the titles given in the editions for ease
of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title
which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ have is _On Loves Progresse_;
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_ have none. Other MSS. give one or other
occasionally. ]
These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of
Donne's _Elegies_, taken as such. Of the rest _The Dreame_ is given in
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but among the songs, and _The Autumnall_ is placed
by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed
to get into general circulation.
Can we to any extent date the _Elegies_? There are some hints which
help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably
belong. In _The Bracelet_ Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having
slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:
mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.
The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean
that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us
very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between
the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly
subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in
1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained
the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the
only determinable date. In _Loves Warre_ we are brought nearer to a
definite date.
France in her lunatique giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet shee relies upon our Angels well
Which nere retorne
points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of
late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598.
The line,
And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give
(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:
Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring
I feare, &c. , p. 210),
refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the
fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz
expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference
to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of
1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated
joining it.
To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their
paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly
conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and
Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in
1598.
The twelfth (_His parting from her_) and fifteenth (_The
Expostulation_) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not
_likely_ that they were written after his marriage. _Julia_ is quite
undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before
1615. But the fourteenth (_A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife_) was
certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.
_The Autumnall_ raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has
argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's
dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (_Life of Mr. George
Herbert_, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs.
Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her
son Edward, Donne being then near to (about _First Ed. _) the Fortieth
year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of
man's life. ' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and
brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of
Essex, i. e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary
to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or
thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford
between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton
portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which
Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he
writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to
the best part of it your house. ' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John
Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs.
Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's
evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this
poem.
Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded _a priori_, very
persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and
beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity;
to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the
bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste
and good manners' (_Life, &c. _, ii. 228). It is, however, somewhat
hazardous to fix a standard of taste for the age of James I, and above
all others for John Donne. To the taste of the time and the temper
of Donne such a poem might more becomingly be addressed to a widow
of forty, the mother of ten children, one already an accomplished
courtier, than it might be written by a priest in orders. Donne would
have been startled to hear that in 1625 he had spent any time in such
a vain amusement as composing a secular elegy. The poem he wrote
to Mrs. Herbert before 1609 was probably thought by her and him an
exquisite compliment. He expressly disclaims speaking of the old age
which disfigures. He writes of one whose youthful beauty has flown.
Forty seemed old for a woman, even to Jane Austen, and in Montaigne's
opinion it is old for a man: 'J'estois tel, car je ne me considere pas
a cette heure, que je suis engage dans les avenues de la vieillesse,
ayant pieca franchy les quarante ans:
Minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas.
Ce que je seray doresnevant ce ne sera plus qu'un demy estre, ce ne
sera plus moy; je m'eschappe les jours et me desrobe a moy mesme:
Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes. '
_Essais_, ii. 17.
Mrs. Herbert's marriage was due to no 'heyday of the blood'. It was
the gravity of Danvers' temper which attracted her, and he became the
steady friend and adviser of her children.
There are, moreover, some items of evidence which go to support
Walton's testimony. The poem is found in one MS. , _S_, dated 1620,
which gives us a downward date; and in 1610 occurs what looks very
like an allusion to Donne's poem in Ben Jonson's _Silent Woman_.
Clerimont and True-wit are speaking of the Collegiate ladies, and the
former asks,
Who is the president?
_True. _ The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.
_Cler. _ A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no
man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has
painted and perfumed . . . I have made a song (I pray thee
hear it) on the subject
Still to be neat, still to be drest. . .
The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which the
poem is dubbed _An Autumnal Face_ or _The Autumnall_ shows that the
phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such allusions,
and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's paradoxes,
perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' Lady Danvers.
We cannot _prove_ that the poem was written so early, but the evidence
on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.
PAGE =79=. ELEGIE I.
l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' is
clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and from the
vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which Donne uses
more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to bruises,'
_Sermons_ 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' Ibid.
80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' would be
to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' with
which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. Both Chambers
and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's poisoned father:
a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
ll. 19-20. _Nor, at his board together being sat
With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate. _
Quum premit ille torum, vultu comes ipsa modesto
Ibis, ut adcumbas; clam mihi tange pedem,
Me specta, nutusque meos, vultumque loquacem:
Excipe furtivas, et refer ipsa, notas.
Verba superciliis sine voce loquentia dicam:
Verba leges digitis, verba notata mero.
Quum tibi succurrit Veneris lascivia nostrae,
Purpureas tenero pollice tange genas.
Si quid erit, de me tacita quod mente queraris,
Pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus:
Quum tibi, quae faciam, mea lux, dicamve placebunt,
Versetur digitis annulus usque tuis,
Tange manu mensam, quo tangunt more precantes,
Optabis merito quum mala multa viro.
Quod tibi miscuerit sapias, bibat ipse iubeto;
Tu puerum leviter posce, quod ipsa velis.
Quae tu reddideris, ego primus pocula sumam,
Et qua tu biberis, hac ego parte bibam.
Ovid, _Amores_, I. iv. 15-32.
Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate
His inward grief, by meanes to him well knowne:
Now Bacchus fruit out of the silver plate
He on the table dasht as overthrowne,
Or of the fruitfull liquor overflowne,
And by the dancing bubbles did divine,
Or therein write to let his love be showne;
Which well she red out of the learned line;
(A sacrament profane in mysterie of wine. )
Spenser, _Faerie Queene_, III. ix.
ll. 21 f. _Nor when he, swoln and pamper'd with great fare
Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair, &c. _
Vir bibat usque roga: precibus tamen oscula desint;
Dumque bibit, furtim, si potes, adde merum.
Si bene compositus somno vinoque iacebit;
Consilium nobis resque locusque dabunt.
Ovid, _Amores_, I. iv. 51-4.
PAGE =80=. ELEGIE II.
l. 4. _Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth be jeat_: i. e. 'Though her
eyes be yellow as ivory, her teeth are black as jet. ' The edition
of 1669 substitutes 'theirs' for 'they', referring back to 'others'.
Grosart follows.
l. 6. _rough_ is the reading of _1633_, _1669_, and all the best MSS.
Chambers and Grosart prefer the 'tough' of _1635-54_, but 'rough'
means probably 'hairy, shaggy, hirsute'. O. E. D. , _Rough_, B. I. 2. Her
hair is in the wrong place. To have hair on her face and none on her
head are alike disadvantageous to a woman's beauty.
PAGE =81=, ll. 17-21. _If we might put the letters, &c. _ Compare:
As six sweet Notes, curiously varied
In skilfull Musick, make a hundred kindes
Of Heav'nly sounds, that ravish hardest mindes;
And with Division (of a choice device)
The Hearers soules out at their ears intice:
Or, as of twice-twelve Letters, thus transpos'd,
The World of Words, is variously compos'd;
And of these Words, in divers orders sow'n
This sacred _Volume_ that you read is grow'n
(Through gracious succour of th'Eternal Deity)
Rich in discourse, with infinite Variety.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas_, First Week, Second Day.
Sylvester follows the French closely. Du Bartas' source is probably:
Quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis
Multa elementa vides multis communia verbis,
Cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest
Confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti,
Tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo.
Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, I. 824-7.
Compare Aristotle, _De Gen. et Corr. _ I. 2.
l. 22. _unfit. _ I have changed the semicolon after this word to a full
stop. The former suggests that the next two lines are an expansion
or explanation of this statement. But the poet is giving a series of
different reasons why Flavia may be loved.
ll. 41-2. _When Belgias citties, the round countries drowne,
That durty foulenesse guards, and armes the towne:_
Chambers, adopting a composite text from editions and MSS.
, reads:
Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.
Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the
relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities
the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. agree
with _1633-54_, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is probably
correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their foes, drown
(i. e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus produced
is their protection. ' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. The
reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's _Rise of the
Dutch Republic_, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden.
'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given to land
overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.
PAGE =82=. ELEGIE III.
l. 5. _forc'd unto none_ is a strange expression, and the 'forbid
to none' of _B_ is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none'
probably means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In
woman's love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from
a favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a
monopoly:
Is sibi responsum hoc habeat, in medio omnibus
Palmam esse positam, qui artem tractant musicam.
Ter. _Phorm. _ Prol. 16-17.
l. 8. _these meanes, as I,_ It is difficult to say whether the 'these'
of the editions and of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ or the 'those' of the rest of
the MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of
'the same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.
Shakespeare, _Jul. Caes. _ I. ii. 174.
l. 17. _Who hath a plow-land, &c. _ This has nothing to do, as Grosart
seems to think, with the name for a certain measurement of land in the
north of England corresponding to a hide in the south. A 'plow-land'
here is an arable or cultivated field. Possibly the 'a' has crept in
and one should read simply 'plow-land', or, like _P_, 'plow-lands. '
Otherwise 'Who hath' is to be slurred in reading the line. The meaning
of the passage seems to be that though a man puts all his own seed
into his land, he is quite willing to reap the corn which has sprung
from others' seed, brought thither, it may be, by wind or birds.
l. 30. _To runne all countries, a wild roguery. _ The Oxford English
Dictionary quotes this line, giving to 'roguery' the meaning of 'a
knavish, rascally act'. But Grosart is certainly right in explaining
it as 'vagrancy'. In love, Donne does not wish to be a captive bound
to one, but he does not wish on the other hand to be a vagrant with
no settled abode. The O. E. D. dates the poem c. 1620, which is much too
late. Donne was not writing in this manner after he took orders. It
cannot be later than 1601, and is probably earlier.
l. 32. _more putrifi'd_, or, as in the MSS. , 'worse putrifi'd. '
The latter is probably correct, but the difference is trifling. By
'putrifi'd' Donne means 'made salt' and so less fit for drinking. The
'purifi'd' of some editions points to a misunderstanding of Donne's
meaning; for saltness and putrefaction were not identical: 'For Salt
as incorruptible was the Symbol of friendship, and before the other
service was offered unto their guests. ' Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, v.
22.
PAGE =84=. ELEGIE IV.
l. 2. _All thy suppos'd escapes. _ He is addressing the lady. All her
supposed transgressions (e. g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's
charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo,
venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous
transgression. ) Applied _esp. _ to breaches of chastity. ' O. E. D. It is
probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:
_Brabantio. _ For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them.
Shakespeare, _Othello_, I. iii. 195-8.
ll. 7-8.
_Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,_
i. e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of
the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':
I met a lion
Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me.
Shakespeare, _Jul. Caes. _ I. iii. 20-2.
The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's
deformed hand' (_Com. of Err. _ V. i. 298), i. e. 'deforming hand';
'deserved children' (_Cor. _ III. i. 292), i. e. 'deserving'. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, ? 661.
The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:
Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.
Shakespeare, _Lucrece_, 540-1.
The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror
lest he be stricken himself.
If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would
be needed:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.
Shakespeare, _Rich. II_, II. ii. 16.
ll. 9, 15. _have . . . take. _ I have noted the subjunctive forms
found in certain MSS. , because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual
construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in
the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against
seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these
ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e. g.
Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.
_Elegie II_, 3 ff.
Though poetry indeed be such a sin.
_Satire II_, 5.
Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where
the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.
ll. 10-11. _Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods. _
Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as
'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c. ). I fear
that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress
is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole
poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken
too seriously.
l. 22. _palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats. _ All the MSS. read
'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two
singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns
as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon
increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so
deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your
Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or
blushing here. ' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 611.
l. 29. _ingled_: i. e. fondled, caressed. O. E. D.
ll. 33-4. _He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride. _
Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those
big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies
bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks. ' Dekker.
l. 37. _were hir'd to this. _ All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to'
is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not
taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for
this piece of work:
This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,
Hir'd to it by your brother.
Shakespeare, _Much Ado_, V. i. 307.
l. 44. _the pale wretch shivered. _ I have (with the support of the
best MSS. ) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as
the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is
ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor.
By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial
clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some
bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought . . . had wrought'. This
seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the
pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not to what follows. As soon
as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A
new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.
The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less
than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads
occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have
made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to
obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating
the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.
l. 49. _The precious Vnicornes. _ See Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, iii. 23:
'Great account and much profit is made of _Unicornes horn_, at least
of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the
various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet
doubtless has the same application, i. e. to the horns.
PAGE =86=. ELEGIE V.
l. 8.
of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could
not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition
which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue
which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene
thing can be uttered in it). . . . ' The reason which Donne gives is that
'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and
mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they
gelde. ' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is
therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS. A journal or register of news started at
Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was
entitled: _Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia
potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia,
vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594
gestarum, nuncius_. In the seventeenth century it was published
half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable
(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', _Poetaster_, V. i), nor its
news always trustworthy.
THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished
Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his
Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in
_HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to
be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and
contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish
fare.
l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar. _ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar,
sir; I have not much skill in grass. ' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV.
v.
THE ELEGIES.
Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated
before the larger collections were made or publication took place.
Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being
made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who
to this house,' afterwards called _Elegie on the L. C. _ The order
in the one group, as we find it in e. g. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is _The
Bracelet_,[1] _Going to Bed_, _Jealousie_, _The Anagram_, _Change_,
_The Perfume_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let
mee not serve,' _Loves Warr_, _On his Mistris_, 'Natures lay Ideott,
I taught,' _Loves Progress_. The second group, as we find it in
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_, contains _The Bracelet_, _The Comparison_, _The
Perfume_, _Jealousie_, 'Oh, let not me (_sic_ _W_) serve,' 'Natures
lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Warr_, _Going to Bed_, _Change_, _The
Anagram_, _On his Mistris_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow, who to this
house. ' The last is not given in _A25_. It will be noticed that
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ drops _The Comparison_; _A25_, _JC_, _W_, _Loves
Progress_; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups
together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.
[Footnote 1: I take the titles given in the editions for ease
of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title
which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ have is _On Loves Progresse_;
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_ have none. Other MSS. give one or other
occasionally. ]
These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of
Donne's _Elegies_, taken as such. Of the rest _The Dreame_ is given in
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but among the songs, and _The Autumnall_ is placed
by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed
to get into general circulation.
Can we to any extent date the _Elegies_? There are some hints which
help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably
belong. In _The Bracelet_ Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having
slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:
mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.
The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean
that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us
very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between
the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly
subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in
1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained
the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the
only determinable date. In _Loves Warre_ we are brought nearer to a
definite date.
France in her lunatique giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet shee relies upon our Angels well
Which nere retorne
points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of
late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598.
The line,
And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give
(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:
Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring
I feare, &c. , p. 210),
refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the
fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz
expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference
to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of
1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated
joining it.
To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their
paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly
conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and
Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in
1598.
The twelfth (_His parting from her_) and fifteenth (_The
Expostulation_) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not
_likely_ that they were written after his marriage. _Julia_ is quite
undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before
1615. But the fourteenth (_A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife_) was
certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.
_The Autumnall_ raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has
argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's
dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (_Life of Mr. George
Herbert_, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs.
Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her
son Edward, Donne being then near to (about _First Ed. _) the Fortieth
year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of
man's life. ' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and
brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of
Essex, i. e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary
to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or
thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford
between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton
portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which
Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he
writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to
the best part of it your house. ' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John
Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs.
Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's
evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this
poem.
Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded _a priori_, very
persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and
beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity;
to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the
bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste
and good manners' (_Life, &c. _, ii. 228). It is, however, somewhat
hazardous to fix a standard of taste for the age of James I, and above
all others for John Donne. To the taste of the time and the temper
of Donne such a poem might more becomingly be addressed to a widow
of forty, the mother of ten children, one already an accomplished
courtier, than it might be written by a priest in orders. Donne would
have been startled to hear that in 1625 he had spent any time in such
a vain amusement as composing a secular elegy. The poem he wrote
to Mrs. Herbert before 1609 was probably thought by her and him an
exquisite compliment. He expressly disclaims speaking of the old age
which disfigures. He writes of one whose youthful beauty has flown.
Forty seemed old for a woman, even to Jane Austen, and in Montaigne's
opinion it is old for a man: 'J'estois tel, car je ne me considere pas
a cette heure, que je suis engage dans les avenues de la vieillesse,
ayant pieca franchy les quarante ans:
Minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas.
Ce que je seray doresnevant ce ne sera plus qu'un demy estre, ce ne
sera plus moy; je m'eschappe les jours et me desrobe a moy mesme:
Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes. '
_Essais_, ii. 17.
Mrs. Herbert's marriage was due to no 'heyday of the blood'. It was
the gravity of Danvers' temper which attracted her, and he became the
steady friend and adviser of her children.
There are, moreover, some items of evidence which go to support
Walton's testimony. The poem is found in one MS. , _S_, dated 1620,
which gives us a downward date; and in 1610 occurs what looks very
like an allusion to Donne's poem in Ben Jonson's _Silent Woman_.
Clerimont and True-wit are speaking of the Collegiate ladies, and the
former asks,
Who is the president?
_True. _ The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.
_Cler. _ A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no
man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has
painted and perfumed . . . I have made a song (I pray thee
hear it) on the subject
Still to be neat, still to be drest. . .
The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which the
poem is dubbed _An Autumnal Face_ or _The Autumnall_ shows that the
phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such allusions,
and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's paradoxes,
perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' Lady Danvers.
We cannot _prove_ that the poem was written so early, but the evidence
on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.
PAGE =79=. ELEGIE I.
l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' is
clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and from the
vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which Donne uses
more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to bruises,'
_Sermons_ 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' Ibid.
80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' would be
to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' with
which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. Both Chambers
and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's poisoned father:
a most instant tetter barked about,
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body.
ll. 19-20. _Nor, at his board together being sat
With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate. _
Quum premit ille torum, vultu comes ipsa modesto
Ibis, ut adcumbas; clam mihi tange pedem,
Me specta, nutusque meos, vultumque loquacem:
Excipe furtivas, et refer ipsa, notas.
Verba superciliis sine voce loquentia dicam:
Verba leges digitis, verba notata mero.
Quum tibi succurrit Veneris lascivia nostrae,
Purpureas tenero pollice tange genas.
Si quid erit, de me tacita quod mente queraris,
Pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus:
Quum tibi, quae faciam, mea lux, dicamve placebunt,
Versetur digitis annulus usque tuis,
Tange manu mensam, quo tangunt more precantes,
Optabis merito quum mala multa viro.
Quod tibi miscuerit sapias, bibat ipse iubeto;
Tu puerum leviter posce, quod ipsa velis.
Quae tu reddideris, ego primus pocula sumam,
Et qua tu biberis, hac ego parte bibam.
Ovid, _Amores_, I. iv. 15-32.
Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate
His inward grief, by meanes to him well knowne:
Now Bacchus fruit out of the silver plate
He on the table dasht as overthrowne,
Or of the fruitfull liquor overflowne,
And by the dancing bubbles did divine,
Or therein write to let his love be showne;
Which well she red out of the learned line;
(A sacrament profane in mysterie of wine. )
Spenser, _Faerie Queene_, III. ix.
ll. 21 f. _Nor when he, swoln and pamper'd with great fare
Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair, &c. _
Vir bibat usque roga: precibus tamen oscula desint;
Dumque bibit, furtim, si potes, adde merum.
Si bene compositus somno vinoque iacebit;
Consilium nobis resque locusque dabunt.
Ovid, _Amores_, I. iv. 51-4.
PAGE =80=. ELEGIE II.
l. 4. _Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth be jeat_: i. e. 'Though her
eyes be yellow as ivory, her teeth are black as jet. ' The edition
of 1669 substitutes 'theirs' for 'they', referring back to 'others'.
Grosart follows.
l. 6. _rough_ is the reading of _1633_, _1669_, and all the best MSS.
Chambers and Grosart prefer the 'tough' of _1635-54_, but 'rough'
means probably 'hairy, shaggy, hirsute'. O. E. D. , _Rough_, B. I. 2. Her
hair is in the wrong place. To have hair on her face and none on her
head are alike disadvantageous to a woman's beauty.
PAGE =81=, ll. 17-21. _If we might put the letters, &c. _ Compare:
As six sweet Notes, curiously varied
In skilfull Musick, make a hundred kindes
Of Heav'nly sounds, that ravish hardest mindes;
And with Division (of a choice device)
The Hearers soules out at their ears intice:
Or, as of twice-twelve Letters, thus transpos'd,
The World of Words, is variously compos'd;
And of these Words, in divers orders sow'n
This sacred _Volume_ that you read is grow'n
(Through gracious succour of th'Eternal Deity)
Rich in discourse, with infinite Variety.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas_, First Week, Second Day.
Sylvester follows the French closely. Du Bartas' source is probably:
Quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis
Multa elementa vides multis communia verbis,
Cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest
Confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti,
Tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo.
Lucretius, _De Rerum Natura_, I. 824-7.
Compare Aristotle, _De Gen. et Corr. _ I. 2.
l. 22. _unfit. _ I have changed the semicolon after this word to a full
stop. The former suggests that the next two lines are an expansion
or explanation of this statement. But the poet is giving a series of
different reasons why Flavia may be loved.
ll. 41-2. _When Belgias citties, the round countries drowne,
That durty foulenesse guards, and armes the towne:_
Chambers, adopting a composite text from editions and MSS.
, reads:
Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.
Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the
relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities
the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. agree
with _1633-54_, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is probably
correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their foes, drown
(i. e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus produced
is their protection. ' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. The
reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's _Rise of the
Dutch Republic_, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden.
'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given to land
overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.
PAGE =82=. ELEGIE III.
l. 5. _forc'd unto none_ is a strange expression, and the 'forbid
to none' of _B_ is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none'
probably means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In
woman's love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from
a favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a
monopoly:
Is sibi responsum hoc habeat, in medio omnibus
Palmam esse positam, qui artem tractant musicam.
Ter. _Phorm. _ Prol. 16-17.
l. 8. _these meanes, as I,_ It is difficult to say whether the 'these'
of the editions and of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ or the 'those' of the rest of
the MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of
'the same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.
Shakespeare, _Jul. Caes. _ I. ii. 174.
l. 17. _Who hath a plow-land, &c. _ This has nothing to do, as Grosart
seems to think, with the name for a certain measurement of land in the
north of England corresponding to a hide in the south. A 'plow-land'
here is an arable or cultivated field. Possibly the 'a' has crept in
and one should read simply 'plow-land', or, like _P_, 'plow-lands. '
Otherwise 'Who hath' is to be slurred in reading the line. The meaning
of the passage seems to be that though a man puts all his own seed
into his land, he is quite willing to reap the corn which has sprung
from others' seed, brought thither, it may be, by wind or birds.
l. 30. _To runne all countries, a wild roguery. _ The Oxford English
Dictionary quotes this line, giving to 'roguery' the meaning of 'a
knavish, rascally act'. But Grosart is certainly right in explaining
it as 'vagrancy'. In love, Donne does not wish to be a captive bound
to one, but he does not wish on the other hand to be a vagrant with
no settled abode. The O. E. D. dates the poem c. 1620, which is much too
late. Donne was not writing in this manner after he took orders. It
cannot be later than 1601, and is probably earlier.
l. 32. _more putrifi'd_, or, as in the MSS. , 'worse putrifi'd. '
The latter is probably correct, but the difference is trifling. By
'putrifi'd' Donne means 'made salt' and so less fit for drinking. The
'purifi'd' of some editions points to a misunderstanding of Donne's
meaning; for saltness and putrefaction were not identical: 'For Salt
as incorruptible was the Symbol of friendship, and before the other
service was offered unto their guests. ' Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, v.
22.
PAGE =84=. ELEGIE IV.
l. 2. _All thy suppos'd escapes. _ He is addressing the lady. All her
supposed transgressions (e. g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's
charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo,
venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous
transgression. ) Applied _esp. _ to breaches of chastity. ' O. E. D. It is
probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:
_Brabantio. _ For your sake, jewel,
I am glad at soul I have no other child;
For thy escape would teach me tyranny,
To hang clogs on them.
Shakespeare, _Othello_, I. iii. 195-8.
ll. 7-8.
_Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,
As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,_
i. e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of
the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':
I met a lion
Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,
Without annoying me.
Shakespeare, _Jul. Caes. _ I. iii. 20-2.
The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's
deformed hand' (_Com. of Err. _ V. i. 298), i. e. 'deforming hand';
'deserved children' (_Cor. _ III. i. 292), i. e. 'deserving'. See Franz,
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_, ? 661.
The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:
Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye
He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.
Shakespeare, _Lucrece_, 540-1.
The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror
lest he be stricken himself.
If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would
be needed:
For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.
Shakespeare, _Rich. II_, II. ii. 16.
ll. 9, 15. _have . . . take. _ I have noted the subjunctive forms
found in certain MSS. , because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual
construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in
the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against
seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these
ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e. g.
Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.
_Elegie II_, 3 ff.
Though poetry indeed be such a sin.
_Satire II_, 5.
Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where
the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.
ll. 10-11. _Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,
Hope of his goods. _
Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as
'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c. ). I fear
that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress
is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole
poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken
too seriously.
l. 22. _palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats. _ All the MSS. read
'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two
singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns
as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon
increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so
deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your
Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or
blushing here. ' _Sermons_ 80. 61. 611.
l. 29. _ingled_: i. e. fondled, caressed. O. E. D.
ll. 33-4. _He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide
As the great Rhodian Colossus stride. _
Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those
big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies
bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks. ' Dekker.
l. 37. _were hir'd to this. _ All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to'
is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not
taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for
this piece of work:
This naughty man
Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,
Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,
Hir'd to it by your brother.
Shakespeare, _Much Ado_, V. i. 307.
l. 44. _the pale wretch shivered. _ I have (with the support of the
best MSS. ) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as
the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is
ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor.
By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial
clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some
bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought . . . had wrought'. This
seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the
pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not to what follows. As soon
as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A
new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.
The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less
than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads
occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have
made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to
obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating
the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.
l. 49. _The precious Vnicornes. _ See Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, iii. 23:
'Great account and much profit is made of _Unicornes horn_, at least
of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the
various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet
doubtless has the same application, i. e. to the horns.
PAGE =86=. ELEGIE V.
l. 8.
