Even meat does not _taste_ tough: and it is not of meat
that Donne is thinking but of wine.
that Donne is thinking but of wine.
John Donne
(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. _With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread. _ I have
let the _1633_ reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not
responsible for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from _D_, _H49_, _Lec_,
in which probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or
printer supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it
because I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has
undergone some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is
suggested by _B_, _S_, _S96_,
With Cares rash sudden storms o'rpressed,
where 'o'erpress' means 'conquer, overwhelm'. Compare Shakespeare's
but in my sight
Deare heart forbear to glance thine eye aside.
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'erprest defence can bide.
_Sonnets_, 139. 8.
He bestrid an o'erpressed Roman.
_Coriolanus_, II. ii. 97.
To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold synecdoche,
leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed,
o'ermastered by Cares storms. ' But 'o'erpressed' was harshly used and
was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was made more appropriate by
substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the cause, 'Cares storms. '
This is what we find in _JC_ and such a good MS. as _W_:
With cares rash sudden horiness o'erspread.
In _B_ and _P_ 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse
when 'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to
'o'erspread'. In _1635-69_ the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been
altered to 'harsh'.
With cares harsh, sodaine horinesse o'rspread.
The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's final
version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and more
in the style of Shakespeare's
That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,
Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.
_Sonnets_, 72. 1-4.
l. 16. _Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see. _ Here again
there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor.
Most MSS. read:
Should like and love less what hee did love to see.
To 'like and love' was an Elizabethan combination:
And yet we both make shew we like and love.
Farmer, _Chetham MS. _ (ed. Grosart), i. 90.
Yet every one her likte, and every one her lov'd.
Spenser, _Faerie Queene_, III. ix. 24.
Donne or his editor has made the line smoother.
l. 20. _To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough. _ I have
made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs in
_A25_ and _B_, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. The
'weak' of _1650-69_ adjusts the metre, but for that very reason one
a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or
'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. 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.
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. _With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread. _ I have
let the _1633_ reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not
responsible for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from _D_, _H49_, _Lec_,
in which probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or
printer supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it
because I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has
undergone some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is
suggested by _B_, _S_, _S96_,
With Cares rash sudden storms o'rpressed,
where 'o'erpress' means 'conquer, overwhelm'. Compare Shakespeare's
but in my sight
Deare heart forbear to glance thine eye aside.
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'erprest defence can bide.
_Sonnets_, 139. 8.
He bestrid an o'erpressed Roman.
_Coriolanus_, II. ii. 97.
To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold synecdoche,
leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed,
o'ermastered by Cares storms. ' But 'o'erpressed' was harshly used and
was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was made more appropriate by
substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the cause, 'Cares storms. '
This is what we find in _JC_ and such a good MS. as _W_:
With cares rash sudden horiness o'erspread.
In _B_ and _P_ 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse
when 'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to
'o'erspread'. In _1635-69_ the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been
altered to 'harsh'.
With cares harsh, sodaine horinesse o'rspread.
The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's final
version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and more
in the style of Shakespeare's
That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,
When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange
Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,
Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.
_Sonnets_, 72. 1-4.
l. 16. _Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see. _ Here again
there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor.
Most MSS. read:
Should like and love less what hee did love to see.
To 'like and love' was an Elizabethan combination:
And yet we both make shew we like and love.
Farmer, _Chetham MS. _ (ed. Grosart), i. 90.
Yet every one her likte, and every one her lov'd.
Spenser, _Faerie Queene_, III. ix. 24.
Donne or his editor has made the line smoother.
l. 20. _To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough. _ I have
made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs in
_A25_ and _B_, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. The
'weak' of _1650-69_ adjusts the metre, but for that very reason one
a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or
'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. 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.
