Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on
internal
evidence alone.
John Donne
Song.
'Soules joy, now I am gone.
'
2. _Farewell to love. _
3. Song. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste. '
4. Sonnet. _The Token. _
5. 'He that cannot chuse but love. '
6. Elegie (XIII in _1635_). 'Come, Fates; I feare you not. '
7. Elegie XII (XIIII in _1635_). _His parting from her. _
'Since she must goe, and I must mourne. '
8. Elegie XIII (XV in _1635_). _Julia. _
'Harke newes, o envy. '
9. Elegie XIV (XVI in _1635_). _A Tale of a Citizen and his
Wife. _ 'I sing no harme. '
10. Elegie XVII. _Variety. _ 'The heavens rejoice. '
11. Satyre (VI in _1635_, VII in _1669_).
'Men write that love and reason disagree. '
12. Satyre (VI in _1669_).
'Sleep, next society and true friendship. '
13. To the Countesse of Huntington.
'That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime. '
14. A Dialogue between Sr Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne.
'If her disdayne least change in you can move. '
15. To Ben Iohnson, 6. Jan. 1603.
'The state and mens affaires. '
16. To Ben Iohnson, 9. Novembris, 1603.
'If great men wrong me. '
17. To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603.
Deare Thom: 'Tell her, if she to hired servants shew. '
18. Elegie on Mistresse Boulstred.
'Death be not proud. '
19. On the blessed Virgin Mary.
'In that, o Queene of Queenes. '
20. Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister.
'Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare). '
21. Ode.
'Vengeance will sit. '
22. To Mr. Tilman after he had taken Orders.
'Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now. '
23. On the Sacrament.
'He was the Word that spake it. '
Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me
fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the
author.
Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered
together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True
love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in _Le Prince
d'Amour_, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as
the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led
me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they
form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument
starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden
regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved
him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a
Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to
playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings,
Kings Lords [as] Lords do us. ' (_Drummond's Conversations with
Jonson_), ed. Laing.
Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of
the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these
append the initials 'J. R. ' But all the manuscripts which contain the
one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though
none have added the initials 'J. R. ', _B_, in which it has been
separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems,
appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one
of Donne's poems). The third poem, _To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603_ (p. 410),
is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are
one, _H40_ and _RP31_) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally
in their immediate proximity, and in _B_ initialled 'J. R. ' In the
others the poem is unsigned, and in _L74_ a much later hand has added
'J. D. '
Of the other poems, the first--the poem which was in _1669_ printed
as Donne's seventh _Satyre_, was dropped in _1719_ but restored by
Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers--is said in _B_ to be 'By Sir John
Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R. ' in _TCD_. Even an undiscriminating
manuscript like _O'F_ adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th:
Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in
1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear
Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412) and 'Shall I goe force an
Elegie? ' (p. 410) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in
which I have found them.
But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive
argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep
next Society' is initialled 'J. R. ' in so carefully prepared a
collection of Donne's poems as _TCD_ is valuable evidence, and the
initials in a collection so well vouched for as _HN_, Drummond's copy
of a collection of poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set
aside by a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble.
But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement of any
other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these poems occur,
any more than on that of the 1635 and later editions. The best of
them (_H40_, _RP31_) are often silent, and the others are too often
mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If we are to get the truth from
them it must be by cross-examination.
For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems to Roe
is based is the singular regularity with which they adhere to one
another. If a manuscript has one it generally has the rest in close
proximity. Thus _B_, after giving thirty-six poems by Donne, of which
only one is wrongly ascribed, continues with a number that are clearly
by other authors as well as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are
'Sleep next Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds
witt,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she. ' A
fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes rather
later. _H40_ and _RP31_ give in immediate sequence 'The State and mens
affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True Love finds witt,' 'Shall
I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; I fear you not. ' _L74_, a
collection not only of poems by Donne but of the work of other wits of
the day, transcribes in immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The
State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force
an elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates,
I fear you not. ' Lastly _A10_, a quite miscellaneous collection, gives
in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] Tell her if she,'
'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue nice and chaste,' 'Shall I
goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that love and reason disagree. ' 'Come
Fates; I fear you not' follows after a considerable interval.
It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus recur in
manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common origin. [7] And
as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very
strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne out by a general
resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, that they are all by
Roe.
To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little
resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle,
brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but
not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and
ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's
peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm,
of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are
coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of
witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and
Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern
and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what
was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the
professional armies serving in the Low Countries.
For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his
poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire,
'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in
the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's
_Satyres_. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes
to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to
identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir
Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers
accepts this and when referring to Jonson, _Epigram 98_, on Roe the
ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his
uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe. ' Who this uncle was they do not
tell us, but Hunter in the _Chorus Vatum_ notes that, if Gifford's
conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in
Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.
It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle
(he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)--a kind of Sir Toby Belch,
taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire
which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of
Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before
1603, when these poems were written. [8] Sir John Roe the poet was the
cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of
William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county
of Essex. [9] William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor
of the name Roe. [10] He had two sons, John and William, the latter
of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's _Epigrammes_,
cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's _History
of Essex_ (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the
fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a
minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will,
proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his
wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be
prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being
made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated
at Queen's College, Oxford. [11] How long he stayed there is not known,
probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his
first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he
is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone
thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605
that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as
one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and
then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds
that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour
Roe shall receive. [12] By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains
discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England
and dead in 1608--Sir John Roe. '[13]
Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly
between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as
one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets
whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's
epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours
wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe
to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and
tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his _Satyre_, a
duellist:
XXXII.
ON SIR IOHN ROE.
What two brave perills of the private sword
Could not effect, not all the furies doe,
That selfe-devided _Belgia_ did afford;
What not the envie of the seas reach'd too,
The cold of _Mosco_, and fat _Irish_ ayre,
His often change of clime (though not of mind)
What could not worke; at home in his repaire
Was his blest fate, but our hard lot to find.
Which shewes, where ever death doth please t' appeare,
Seas, serenes, swords, shot, sicknesse, all are there.
In his conversations with Drummond Jonson as usual gave more intimate
and less complimentary details: 'Sir John Roe was an infinite spender,
and used to say, when he had no more to spend he could die. He died
in his (i. e. Jonson's) arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges
20lb. , which was given him back,' doubtless by his brother William.
Morant states that 'Sir John the eldest son, having no issue, sold
this Manor (i. e. Higham-hill) to his father-in-law Sir Reginald
Argall, of whom it was purchased by the second son--Sir William Rowe'.
Such a career is much more likely than Donne's to have produced the
satire 'Sleep, next Society', with its lurid picture of cashiered
captains, taverns, stews, duellists, hard drinkers, and parasites.
It is much more like a scene out of _Bartholomew Fair_ than any of
Donne's five _Satyres_. Nor was Donne likely at any time to have
written of James I as Roe does. He moved in higher circles, and was
more politic. But Roe had ability. 'Deare Love, continue nice and
chaste' is not quite in the taste of to-day, but it is a good example
of the paradoxical, metaphysical lyric; and there are both feeling
and wit in 'Come, Fates; I feare you not', unlike as it is to Donne's
subtle, erudite, intenser strain.
Returning to the list of poems open to question on pp. cxxviii-ix we
have sixteen left to consider. Of some of these there is very little
to say.
Nos. 1 and 14 are most probably by the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl
of Pembroke collaborating with Sir Benjamin Rudyard. Both were wits
and poets of Donne's circle. The first song,
'Soules joy, now I am gone'
is ascribed to Donne only in _1635-69_, and is there inaccurately
printed. It is assigned to Pembroke in the younger Donne's edition
of Pembroke and Ruddier's _Poems_ (1660), a bad witness, but also
by Lansdowne MS. 777, which Mr. Chambers justly calls 'a very good
authority'. [14] The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's
because the central idea--the inseparableness of souls--is his, and so
is the contemptuous tone of
Fooles have no meanes to meet,
But by their feet.
But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing
common. We get it again in Lovelace's
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee.
The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, or
the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this cheerful,
confident strain. He consoles himself at times with the doctrine of
inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never absent. He cannot
cheat his passionate heart and senses with metaphysical subtleties.
The song _Farewell to love_, the second in the list of poems added
in _1635_, is found only in _O'F_ and _S96_. There is therefore no
weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, but no one can
read it without feeling that it is his. The cynical yet passionate
strain of wit, the condensed style, and the metaphysical turn given to
the argument, are all in his manner. As printed in _1635_ the point
of the third stanza is obscured. As I have ventured to amend it, an
Aristotelian doctrine is referred to in a way that only Donne would
have done in quite such a setting.
The three _Elegies_, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must
also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be
advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, _His
parting from her_, is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think any
unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it
is one of the finest of the _Elegies_,[15] and in this sincerer
note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like _The
Bracelet_ and _The Perfume_ and resembles the fine elegy called _His
Picture_ and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the
general tenor of the _Elegies_, namely, the famous elegy _On his
Mistris_, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a
page:
By our first strange and fatal interview,
and that rather enigmatical poem _The Expostulation_, which found its
way into Jonson's _Underwoods_:
To make the doubt clear that no woman's true,
Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?
All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, and to
this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative rareness with which
_His parting from her_ is found in manuscripts, and that it finally
appeared in a mutilated form. The poet may have given copies only to
a few friends and desired that it should not be circulated. In the
Second Collection of poems in _TCD_ it is signed at the close, 'Sir
Franc: Wryothlesse. ' Who is intended by this I do not know. The
ascriptions in this collection are many of them purely fanciful.
Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.
Of the other two elegies, _Julia_, which is found in only two
manuscripts, _B_ and _O'F_, is quite the kind of thing Donne might
have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style of Horace's
invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by Mantuan and other
Humanists. The chief difficulty with regard to the second, _A Tale of
a Citizen and his Wife_, is to find Donne writing in this vein at
so late a period as 1609 or 1610, the date implied in several of the
allusions. He was already the author of religious poems, including
probably _La Corona_. In 1610 he wrote his _Litanie_, and, as
Professor Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of
the writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature,
the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, and
says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask and have his
comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn in myself that I
have given my wit such evaporations as those, if they be free from
profaneness, or obscene provocations. ' Whether this would cover the
elegy in question is a point on which perhaps our age and Donne's
would not decide alike. Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne
and the grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a
little time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice
rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. But
once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in this case
been made responsible for what is another's. Every one wrote this
occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.
There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign to or from
Donne than the long letter headed _To the Countesse of Huntington_, 13
on the list, which, for the time being, I have placed in the Appendix
B. On internal grounds there is more to be said for ascribing it to
Donne than any other single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I
have resolved to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it
deserves. [16] The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are
these:
(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it found in
either of the groups _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_.
It was added in _1635_ with four other spurious poems, the dialogue
ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by the great majority of
manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two
epistles to Ben Jonson, and the Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe,
which we have assigned, for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The
poem is found in only two manuscript collections, viz. _P_ and the
second, miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in
_TCD_. In both of these it is headed _Sr Walter Ashton_ (or _Aston_)
_to the Countesse of Huntingtone_, and no reference whatsoever is made
to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. Imaginary
headings were quite common in the case of poems circulating in
manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been written by the Earl of
Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he died, or as found in
the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. Editors have occasionally taken
these too seriously. Drayton's _Heroicall Epistles_ made it a fashion
to write such letters in the case of any notorious love affair or
intrigue. The manuscript _P_ contains a long imaginary letter from Sir
Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. In
the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of Pembroke,
'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed _The Mar: B to the
Lady Fe: Her. _, i. e. the Marquis of Buckingham to--I am not sure what
lady is intended. The only thing which the title given to the letter
in question suggests is that it was not an actual letter to the
Countess but an imaginary one.
(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 became
the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not been able to tell
us very much. He must have met her at the house of Sir Thomas Egerton
when her mother, the dowager Countess of Derby, married that statesman
in 1600. Donne says:
I was your Prophet in your yonger dayes,
And now your Chaplaine, God in you to praise.
(p. 203, ll. 69-70. )
Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had relations with
her either directly or through her first cousin, the Countess of
Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, 'I remember that
about this time you purpose a journey to fetch, or meet the Lady
_Huntington_. ' This fact lends support to the view of Mr. Chambers
and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the Countesse' referred to in the following
extract from a letter to Goodyere, which has an important bearing on
the poem under consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and
Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in which it
may have been written. The latter places it in April, 1615, when
Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was approaching his noble
patronesses for help in clearing himself of debt. But Mr. Chambers
points to the closing reference to 'a Christning at _Peckam_', and
dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne was at Peckham after leaving
Pyrford and before settling at Mitcham. I am not sure that this is
conclusive, for in Donne's unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might
at any time have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival
to the house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the tone
of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the letters to
Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme of the letter, a
comparison of the different Churches, is that of other letters of
the same period. The one in question (_Letters_ 1651, p. 100;
Gosse, _Life_, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation of another
(_Letters_, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, _Life_, i. 225). Whatever be its date,
this is what Donne says: 'For the other part of your Letter, spent
in the praise of the Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of
her, and can never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when
it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort
as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline it.
That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of
a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that I may also keep my
dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. The Spanish proverb informes
me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad
which makes two. The other strong reason is my integrity to the other
Countesse' (i. e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which
follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible
with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though I swallowed
your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a
knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had
reserved not only all the verses which I should make, but all the
thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because I hope she will not
disdain, that I should write well of her Picture, I have obeyed you
thus far as to write; but intreat you by your friendship, that by this
occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that
Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved
you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant
not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too
good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive
them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this
was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the
poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written
to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone
of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable,
earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere
thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not
present it.
(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in
declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit
and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he
could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not
seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the
other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the
_Elegies_. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the
tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble
patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess
of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph,
ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, or some one on
a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a
dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse
which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young',
e. g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which
compare in the _Letter_ to Wotton, here added, at p. 188:
Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best.
(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my
attention:
35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.
61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.
88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.
113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.
I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification
throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic
couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the
_Satyres_. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across
the metrical scheme--that is, the sense overflows from line to line,
and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the
paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65.
Graccus loves all as one, &c.
In the _Elegies_ and in the _Letters_ the structure is not so
irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i. e. the
lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together
by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full
meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples
are _Elegie I. _ ll. 1 to 16, _Elegie IV. _ ll. 13 to 26, _Elegie V. _ l.
5 to the end, _Elegie VIII. _ ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also
the letter _To the Countesse of Salisbury_ and the _Hymn to the Saints
and the Marquesse Hamylton_. Each of these is composed of three or
four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration
there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's
manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest
of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure.
To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written.
Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue
between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed
to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had
I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I
should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text
materially.
With regard to the _Elegie on Mistris Boulstred_ (18 on the list) I
cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured
to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own
mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne
certainly did write, viz.
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;
and another, entitled _Death_, beginning
Language thou art too narrow, and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.
Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts
and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged
with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in
the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D. '),
and that it is not included in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. It is certainly
Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris.
Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to
Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford
with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham
is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred,
says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he
may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.
In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p. 67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears,
_B_, _Cy_, _H40_, _RP31_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, the best, _RP31_, assigns
it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i. e. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. [17] Mr.
2. _Farewell to love. _
3. Song. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste. '
4. Sonnet. _The Token. _
5. 'He that cannot chuse but love. '
6. Elegie (XIII in _1635_). 'Come, Fates; I feare you not. '
7. Elegie XII (XIIII in _1635_). _His parting from her. _
'Since she must goe, and I must mourne. '
8. Elegie XIII (XV in _1635_). _Julia. _
'Harke newes, o envy. '
9. Elegie XIV (XVI in _1635_). _A Tale of a Citizen and his
Wife. _ 'I sing no harme. '
10. Elegie XVII. _Variety. _ 'The heavens rejoice. '
11. Satyre (VI in _1635_, VII in _1669_).
'Men write that love and reason disagree. '
12. Satyre (VI in _1669_).
'Sleep, next society and true friendship. '
13. To the Countesse of Huntington.
'That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime. '
14. A Dialogue between Sr Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne.
'If her disdayne least change in you can move. '
15. To Ben Iohnson, 6. Jan. 1603.
'The state and mens affaires. '
16. To Ben Iohnson, 9. Novembris, 1603.
'If great men wrong me. '
17. To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603.
Deare Thom: 'Tell her, if she to hired servants shew. '
18. Elegie on Mistresse Boulstred.
'Death be not proud. '
19. On the blessed Virgin Mary.
'In that, o Queene of Queenes. '
20. Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister.
'Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare). '
21. Ode.
'Vengeance will sit. '
22. To Mr. Tilman after he had taken Orders.
'Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now. '
23. On the Sacrament.
'He was the Word that spake it. '
Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me
fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the
author.
Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered
together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True
love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in _Le Prince
d'Amour_, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as
the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led
me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they
form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument
starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden
regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved
him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a
Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to
playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings,
Kings Lords [as] Lords do us. ' (_Drummond's Conversations with
Jonson_), ed. Laing.
Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of
the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these
append the initials 'J. R. ' But all the manuscripts which contain the
one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though
none have added the initials 'J. R. ', _B_, in which it has been
separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems,
appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one
of Donne's poems). The third poem, _To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603_ (p. 410),
is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are
one, _H40_ and _RP31_) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally
in their immediate proximity, and in _B_ initialled 'J. R. ' In the
others the poem is unsigned, and in _L74_ a much later hand has added
'J. D. '
Of the other poems, the first--the poem which was in _1669_ printed
as Donne's seventh _Satyre_, was dropped in _1719_ but restored by
Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers--is said in _B_ to be 'By Sir John
Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R. ' in _TCD_. Even an undiscriminating
manuscript like _O'F_ adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th:
Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in
1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear
Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412) and 'Shall I goe force an
Elegie? ' (p. 410) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in
which I have found them.
But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive
argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep
next Society' is initialled 'J. R. ' in so carefully prepared a
collection of Donne's poems as _TCD_ is valuable evidence, and the
initials in a collection so well vouched for as _HN_, Drummond's copy
of a collection of poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set
aside by a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble.
But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement of any
other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these poems occur,
any more than on that of the 1635 and later editions. The best of
them (_H40_, _RP31_) are often silent, and the others are too often
mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If we are to get the truth from
them it must be by cross-examination.
For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems to Roe
is based is the singular regularity with which they adhere to one
another. If a manuscript has one it generally has the rest in close
proximity. Thus _B_, after giving thirty-six poems by Donne, of which
only one is wrongly ascribed, continues with a number that are clearly
by other authors as well as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are
'Sleep next Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds
witt,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she. ' A
fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes rather
later. _H40_ and _RP31_ give in immediate sequence 'The State and mens
affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True Love finds witt,' 'Shall
I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; I fear you not. ' _L74_, a
collection not only of poems by Donne but of the work of other wits of
the day, transcribes in immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The
State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force
an elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates,
I fear you not. ' Lastly _A10_, a quite miscellaneous collection, gives
in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] Tell her if she,'
'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue nice and chaste,' 'Shall I
goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that love and reason disagree. ' 'Come
Fates; I fear you not' follows after a considerable interval.
It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus recur in
manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common origin. [7] And
as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very
strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne out by a general
resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, that they are all by
Roe.
To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little
resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle,
brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but
not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and
ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's
peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm,
of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are
coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of
witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and
Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern
and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what
was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the
professional armies serving in the Low Countries.
For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his
poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire,
'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in
the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's
_Satyres_. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes
to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to
identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir
Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers
accepts this and when referring to Jonson, _Epigram 98_, on Roe the
ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his
uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe. ' Who this uncle was they do not
tell us, but Hunter in the _Chorus Vatum_ notes that, if Gifford's
conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in
Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.
It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle
(he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)--a kind of Sir Toby Belch,
taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire
which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of
Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before
1603, when these poems were written. [8] Sir John Roe the poet was the
cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of
William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county
of Essex. [9] William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor
of the name Roe. [10] He had two sons, John and William, the latter
of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's _Epigrammes_,
cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's _History
of Essex_ (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the
fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a
minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will,
proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his
wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be
prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being
made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated
at Queen's College, Oxford. [11] How long he stayed there is not known,
probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his
first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he
is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone
thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605
that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as
one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and
then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds
that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour
Roe shall receive. [12] By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains
discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England
and dead in 1608--Sir John Roe. '[13]
Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly
between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as
one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets
whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's
epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours
wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe
to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and
tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his _Satyre_, a
duellist:
XXXII.
ON SIR IOHN ROE.
What two brave perills of the private sword
Could not effect, not all the furies doe,
That selfe-devided _Belgia_ did afford;
What not the envie of the seas reach'd too,
The cold of _Mosco_, and fat _Irish_ ayre,
His often change of clime (though not of mind)
What could not worke; at home in his repaire
Was his blest fate, but our hard lot to find.
Which shewes, where ever death doth please t' appeare,
Seas, serenes, swords, shot, sicknesse, all are there.
In his conversations with Drummond Jonson as usual gave more intimate
and less complimentary details: 'Sir John Roe was an infinite spender,
and used to say, when he had no more to spend he could die. He died
in his (i. e. Jonson's) arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges
20lb. , which was given him back,' doubtless by his brother William.
Morant states that 'Sir John the eldest son, having no issue, sold
this Manor (i. e. Higham-hill) to his father-in-law Sir Reginald
Argall, of whom it was purchased by the second son--Sir William Rowe'.
Such a career is much more likely than Donne's to have produced the
satire 'Sleep, next Society', with its lurid picture of cashiered
captains, taverns, stews, duellists, hard drinkers, and parasites.
It is much more like a scene out of _Bartholomew Fair_ than any of
Donne's five _Satyres_. Nor was Donne likely at any time to have
written of James I as Roe does. He moved in higher circles, and was
more politic. But Roe had ability. 'Deare Love, continue nice and
chaste' is not quite in the taste of to-day, but it is a good example
of the paradoxical, metaphysical lyric; and there are both feeling
and wit in 'Come, Fates; I feare you not', unlike as it is to Donne's
subtle, erudite, intenser strain.
Returning to the list of poems open to question on pp. cxxviii-ix we
have sixteen left to consider. Of some of these there is very little
to say.
Nos. 1 and 14 are most probably by the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl
of Pembroke collaborating with Sir Benjamin Rudyard. Both were wits
and poets of Donne's circle. The first song,
'Soules joy, now I am gone'
is ascribed to Donne only in _1635-69_, and is there inaccurately
printed. It is assigned to Pembroke in the younger Donne's edition
of Pembroke and Ruddier's _Poems_ (1660), a bad witness, but also
by Lansdowne MS. 777, which Mr. Chambers justly calls 'a very good
authority'. [14] The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's
because the central idea--the inseparableness of souls--is his, and so
is the contemptuous tone of
Fooles have no meanes to meet,
But by their feet.
But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing
common. We get it again in Lovelace's
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee.
The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, or
the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this cheerful,
confident strain. He consoles himself at times with the doctrine of
inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never absent. He cannot
cheat his passionate heart and senses with metaphysical subtleties.
The song _Farewell to love_, the second in the list of poems added
in _1635_, is found only in _O'F_ and _S96_. There is therefore no
weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, but no one can
read it without feeling that it is his. The cynical yet passionate
strain of wit, the condensed style, and the metaphysical turn given to
the argument, are all in his manner. As printed in _1635_ the point
of the third stanza is obscured. As I have ventured to amend it, an
Aristotelian doctrine is referred to in a way that only Donne would
have done in quite such a setting.
The three _Elegies_, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must
also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be
advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, _His
parting from her_, is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think any
unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it
is one of the finest of the _Elegies_,[15] and in this sincerer
note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like _The
Bracelet_ and _The Perfume_ and resembles the fine elegy called _His
Picture_ and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the
general tenor of the _Elegies_, namely, the famous elegy _On his
Mistris_, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a
page:
By our first strange and fatal interview,
and that rather enigmatical poem _The Expostulation_, which found its
way into Jonson's _Underwoods_:
To make the doubt clear that no woman's true,
Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?
All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, and to
this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative rareness with which
_His parting from her_ is found in manuscripts, and that it finally
appeared in a mutilated form. The poet may have given copies only to
a few friends and desired that it should not be circulated. In the
Second Collection of poems in _TCD_ it is signed at the close, 'Sir
Franc: Wryothlesse. ' Who is intended by this I do not know. The
ascriptions in this collection are many of them purely fanciful.
Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.
Of the other two elegies, _Julia_, which is found in only two
manuscripts, _B_ and _O'F_, is quite the kind of thing Donne might
have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style of Horace's
invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by Mantuan and other
Humanists. The chief difficulty with regard to the second, _A Tale of
a Citizen and his Wife_, is to find Donne writing in this vein at
so late a period as 1609 or 1610, the date implied in several of the
allusions. He was already the author of religious poems, including
probably _La Corona_. In 1610 he wrote his _Litanie_, and, as
Professor Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of
the writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature,
the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, and
says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask and have his
comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn in myself that I
have given my wit such evaporations as those, if they be free from
profaneness, or obscene provocations. ' Whether this would cover the
elegy in question is a point on which perhaps our age and Donne's
would not decide alike. Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne
and the grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a
little time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice
rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. But
once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in this case
been made responsible for what is another's. Every one wrote this
occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.
There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign to or from
Donne than the long letter headed _To the Countesse of Huntington_, 13
on the list, which, for the time being, I have placed in the Appendix
B. On internal grounds there is more to be said for ascribing it to
Donne than any other single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I
have resolved to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it
deserves. [16] The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are
these:
(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it found in
either of the groups _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_.
It was added in _1635_ with four other spurious poems, the dialogue
ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by the great majority of
manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two
epistles to Ben Jonson, and the Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe,
which we have assigned, for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The
poem is found in only two manuscript collections, viz. _P_ and the
second, miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in
_TCD_. In both of these it is headed _Sr Walter Ashton_ (or _Aston_)
_to the Countesse of Huntingtone_, and no reference whatsoever is made
to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. Imaginary
headings were quite common in the case of poems circulating in
manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been written by the Earl of
Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he died, or as found in
the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. Editors have occasionally taken
these too seriously. Drayton's _Heroicall Epistles_ made it a fashion
to write such letters in the case of any notorious love affair or
intrigue. The manuscript _P_ contains a long imaginary letter from Sir
Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. In
the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of Pembroke,
'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed _The Mar: B to the
Lady Fe: Her. _, i. e. the Marquis of Buckingham to--I am not sure what
lady is intended. The only thing which the title given to the letter
in question suggests is that it was not an actual letter to the
Countess but an imaginary one.
(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 became
the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not been able to tell
us very much. He must have met her at the house of Sir Thomas Egerton
when her mother, the dowager Countess of Derby, married that statesman
in 1600. Donne says:
I was your Prophet in your yonger dayes,
And now your Chaplaine, God in you to praise.
(p. 203, ll. 69-70. )
Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had relations with
her either directly or through her first cousin, the Countess of
Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, 'I remember that
about this time you purpose a journey to fetch, or meet the Lady
_Huntington_. ' This fact lends support to the view of Mr. Chambers
and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the Countesse' referred to in the following
extract from a letter to Goodyere, which has an important bearing on
the poem under consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and
Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in which it
may have been written. The latter places it in April, 1615, when
Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was approaching his noble
patronesses for help in clearing himself of debt. But Mr. Chambers
points to the closing reference to 'a Christning at _Peckam_', and
dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne was at Peckham after leaving
Pyrford and before settling at Mitcham. I am not sure that this is
conclusive, for in Donne's unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might
at any time have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival
to the house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the tone
of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the letters to
Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme of the letter, a
comparison of the different Churches, is that of other letters of
the same period. The one in question (_Letters_ 1651, p. 100;
Gosse, _Life_, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation of another
(_Letters_, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, _Life_, i. 225). Whatever be its date,
this is what Donne says: 'For the other part of your Letter, spent
in the praise of the Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of
her, and can never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when
it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort
as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline it.
That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of
a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that I may also keep my
dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. The Spanish proverb informes
me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad
which makes two. The other strong reason is my integrity to the other
Countesse' (i. e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which
follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible
with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though I swallowed
your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a
knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had
reserved not only all the verses which I should make, but all the
thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because I hope she will not
disdain, that I should write well of her Picture, I have obeyed you
thus far as to write; but intreat you by your friendship, that by this
occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that
Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved
you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant
not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too
good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive
them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this
was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the
poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written
to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone
of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable,
earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere
thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not
present it.
(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in
declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit
and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he
could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not
seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the
other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the
_Elegies_. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the
tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble
patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess
of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph,
ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, or some one on
a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a
dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse
which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young',
e. g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which
compare in the _Letter_ to Wotton, here added, at p. 188:
Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best.
(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my
attention:
35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.
61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.
88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.
113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.
I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification
throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic
couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the
_Satyres_. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across
the metrical scheme--that is, the sense overflows from line to line,
and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the
paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65.
Graccus loves all as one, &c.
In the _Elegies_ and in the _Letters_ the structure is not so
irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i. e. the
lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together
by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full
meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples
are _Elegie I. _ ll. 1 to 16, _Elegie IV. _ ll. 13 to 26, _Elegie V. _ l.
5 to the end, _Elegie VIII. _ ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also
the letter _To the Countesse of Salisbury_ and the _Hymn to the Saints
and the Marquesse Hamylton_. Each of these is composed of three or
four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration
there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's
manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest
of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure.
To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written.
Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue
between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed
to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had
I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I
should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text
materially.
With regard to the _Elegie on Mistris Boulstred_ (18 on the list) I
cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured
to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own
mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne
certainly did write, viz.
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;
and another, entitled _Death_, beginning
Language thou art too narrow, and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.
Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts
and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged
with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in
the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D. '),
and that it is not included in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. It is certainly
Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris.
Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to
Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford
with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham
is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred,
says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he
may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.
In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p. 67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears,
_B_, _Cy_, _H40_, _RP31_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, the best, _RP31_, assigns
it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i. e. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. [17] Mr.
