No More Learning

Grosart and Chambers refer this, and 'the Spanish businesse' below,
to 1613-14. The more probable reference is to the disappointment of
Raleigh's hopes, in 1596 and the years immediately following, that the
Government might be persuaded to make a settlement in Guiana, both on
account of its wealth and as a strategic point to be used in harassing
the King of Spain. Coolly received by Burleigh, Raleigh's scheme
excited considerable enthusiasm, and Chapman wrote his _De Guiana:
Carmen Epicum_, prefixed to Lawrence Keymis's _A Relation of the
Second Voyage to Guiana_ (1596), to celebrate Raleigh's achievement
and to promote his scheme. The 'Spanish businesse', i. e. businesses,
which, Donne complains,

as the Earth between the Moone and Sun
Eclipse the light which Guiana would give,

are probably the efforts in the direction of peace made by the party
in the Government opposed to Essex. Guiana is referred to in the
_Satyres_ which certainly belong to these years, and in _Elegie
XX: Loves War_, which cannot be dated so late as 1613-14. In 1598
Chamberlain writes to Carleton: 'Sir John Gilbert, with six or seven
saile, one and other, is gone for Guiana, and I heare that Sir Walter
Raleigh should be so deeply discontented because he thrives no better,
that he is not far off from making that way himself'. Chamberlain's
_Letters_, Camd. Soc. 1861. Compare also: 'The Queene seemede troubled
to-daye; Hatton came out from her presence with ill countenance, and
pulled me aside by the gyrdle and saide in a secrete waie; If you have
any suite to-day praie you put it aside, The sunne doth not shine.
Tis _this accursede Spanish businesse_; so will I not adventure
her Highnesse choler, lest she should collar me also. ' Sir John
Harington's _Nugae Antiquae_, i. 176. (Note dated 1598. ) All these
letters are found in the Westmoreland MS. (_W_), whose order I
have adopted, and the titles they bear--'To Mr H. W. ', 'To Mr C.
B. '--suggest that they belong to a period before either Wotton or
Brooke was well known, at least before Wotton had been knighted. The
tone throughout points to their belonging to the same time. They are
full of allusions now difficult or impossible to explain. They are
written to intimate friends. 'Thou' is the pronoun used throughout,
whereas 'You' is the formula in the letters to noble ladies. Wotton,
Christopher and Samuel Brooke, Rowland and Thomas Woodward are among
the names which can be identified, and they are the names of Donne's
most intimate friends in his earlier years. Probably there were
answers to Donne's letters. He refers to poems which have called forth
his poems. One of these has been preserved in the Westmoreland MS. ,
though we cannot tell who wrote it. A Bodleian MS. contains another
verse letter written to Donne in the same style as these letters,
a little crabbed and enigmatical, and it is addressed to him as
Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. This whole correspondence, then,
I should be inclined to date from 1597 to about 1607-8. The last is
probably the date of the letter _To E. of D. _ or _To L. of D. _ (so in
_W_), beginning:

See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime.

This I have transferred to the _Divine Poems_, and shall give reasons
later for ascribing it to about this year, and for questioning the
identification of its recipient with Viscount Doncaster, later Earl of
Carlisle.

Of the remaining _Letters_ some date themselves pretty definitely.
Donne formed the acquaintance of Lady Bedford about 1607-8 when she
came to Twickenham, and the two letters to her--'Reason is our Soules
left hand' (p. 189) and 'You have refin'd mee' (p. 191)--probably
belong to the early years of their friendship. The second suggests
that the poet is himself at Mitcham. The long, difficult letter,
'T'have written then' (p. 195), belongs probably to some year
following 1609. There is an allusion to Virginia, in which there was a
quickening of interest in 1609 (see _Elegie XIV_, Note), and the 'two
new starres' sent 'lately to the firmament' may be Lady Markham
(died May 4, 1609) and Mris Boulstred (died Aug. 4, 1609). This is
Chambers's conjecture; but Norton identifies them with Prince Henry
(died Nov. 6, 1612) and the Countess's brother, Lord Harington, who
died early in 1614. Public characters like these are more fittingly
described as stars, so that the poem probably belongs to 1614,
to which year certainly belongs the letter _To the Countesse of
Salisbury_ (p. 224). What New Year called forth the letter to Lady
Bedford, beginning 'This twilight of two years' (p. 198), we do not
know, nor the date of the long letter in triplets, 'Honour is so
sublime perfection' (p. 218). But the latter was most probably written
from France in 1611-12, like the fragmentary letter which follows, and
the letter, similar in verse and in 'metaphysics', _To the Lady Carey
and Mrs Essex Riche_ (p. 221). Donne had a little shocked his noble
lady friends by the extravagance of his adulation of the dead child
Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, in 1611, and these letters are written to make
his peace and to show the pitch he is capable of soaring to in praise
of their maturer virtues.

To Sir Henry Wotton (p. 214), Donne wrote in a somewhat more elevated
and respectful strain than that of his earlier letters, when the
former set out on his embassy to Venice in 1604. The letter to Sir
Henry Goodyere (p. 183) belongs to the Mitcham days, 1605-8. To Sir
Edward Herbert (p. 193) he wrote 'at Julyers', therefore in 1610. The
letter _To the Countesse of Huntingdon_ (p. 201) was probably written
just before Donne took orders, 1614-15. The date of the letter _To
Mris M. H. _ (p. 216), that is, to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, not yet Lady
Danvers, must have been earlier than her second marriage in 1608--the
exact day of that marriage I do not know--probably in 1604, as the
verse, style and tone closely resemble that of the letter to Wotton of
that year. This suits the tenor of the letter, which implies that she
had not yet married Sir John Danvers.

The last in the collection of the letters to Lady Bedford, 'You that
are she and you' (p. 227), seems from its position in _1633_ and
several MSS. to have been sent to her with the elegy called _Death_,
and to have been evoked by the death of Lady Markham or Mrs. Boulstred
in 1609.

The majority of the letters thus belong to the years 1596-7 to 1607-8,
the remainder to the next six years. With the _Funerall Elegies_ and
the earlier of the _Divine Poems_ they represent the middle and on the
whole least attractive period of Donne's life and work. The _Songs and
Sonets_ and _Elegies_ are the expression of his brilliant and stormy
youth, the _Holy Sonnets_ and the hymns are the utterance of his
ascetic and penitent last years. In the interval between the two, the
wit, the courtier, the man of the world, and the divine jostle each
other in Donne's works in a way that is not a little disconcerting to
readers of an age and temper less habituated to strong contrasts.


PAGE =175=. THE STORME.

After the Cadiz expedition in 1596, the King of Spain began the
preparation of a second Armada. With a view to destroying this
Elizabeth fitted out a large fleet under the command of Essex, Howard,
and Raleigh. The storm described in Donne's letter so damaged the
fleet that the larger purpose was abandoned and a smaller expedition,
after visiting the Spanish coast, proceeded to the Azores, with a
view to intercepting the silver fleet returning from America. Owing to
dissensions between Raleigh and Essex, it failed of its purpose. This
was the famous 'Islands Expedition'.

The description of the departure and the storm which followed was
probably written in Plymouth, whither the ships had to put back,
and whence they sailed again about a month later; therefore in
July-August, 1597. 'We imbarked our Army, and set sayle about the
ninth of July, and for two dayes space were accompanied with a faire
leading North-easterly wind. ' (Mildly it kist our sailes, &c. ). . . . . .
'Wee now being in this faire course, some sixtie leagues onwards our
journey with our whole Fleet together, there suddenly arose a fierce
and tempestuous storme full in our teethe, continuing for foure dayes
with so great violence, as that now everyone was inforced rather to
looke to his own safetie, and with a low saile to serve the Seas,
then to beate it up against the stormy windes to keep together, or to
follow the directions for the places of meeting. ' _A larger Relation
of the said Iland Voyage written by Sir Arthur Gorges, &c. Purchas
his Pilgrimes. _ Glasg. MCMVII. While at Plymouth Donne wrote a prose
letter, to whom is not clear, preserved in the Burley Commonplace
Book. There he speaks of 'so very bad wether y^t even some of y^e
mariners have been drawen to think it were not altogether amiss to
pray, and myself heard one of them say, God help us'.

_To Mr. Christopher Brooke. _ Donne's intimate friend and
chamber-fellow at Lincoln's Inn. He was Donne's chief abetter in his
secret marriage, his younger brother Samuel performing the ceremony.
They were the sons of Robert Brooke, Alderman of and once M. P. for
York, and his wife Jane Maltby. The Alderman had other sons who
followed in his footsteps and figure among the Freemen of York, but
Christopher and Samuel earned a wider reputation. At Lincoln's Inn,
Christopher wrote verses and cultivated the society of the wits. Wood
mentions as his friends and admirers Selden and Jonson, Drayton and
Browne, Wither and Davies of Hereford. Browne sings his praises in the
second song of the second book of _Britannia's Pastorals_, and in _The
Shepherds Pipe_ (1614) urges him to sing a higher strain. His poems,
which have been collected and edited by the late Dr. Grosart, include
an Elegy on Prince Henry, and a long poem of no merit, _The Ghost of
Richard the Third_ (_Miscellanies_ of the _Fuller Worthies Library_,
vol. iv, 1872). In 1614 he became a bencher and Summer Reader at
Lincoln's Inn. He died February 7, 1627/8.

l. 4. _By Hilliard drawne. _ Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619), the first
English miniature painter. He was goldsmith, carver, and limner to
Queen Elizabeth, and engraved her second great seal in 1586. He drew a
portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, at eighteen, and executed miniatures
of many contemporaries. He also wrote a treatise on miniature
painting. Mr. Laurence Binyon thinks it is quite possible that the
miniature from which Marshall, about 1635, engraved the portrait of
Donne as a young man, was by Hilliard. It is, he says, quite in his
style.

l. 13. _From out her pregnant intrailes. _ The ancients attributed
winds to the effect of exhalations from the earth. Seneca,
_Quaestiones Naturales_, v. 4, discusses various causes but mentions
this first: 'Sometimes the earth herself emits a great quantity of
air, which she breathes out of her hidden recesses . . . A suggestion
has been made which I cannot make up my mind to believe, and yet
I cannot pass over without mention. In our bodies food produces
flatulence, the emission of which causes great offence to ones nasal
susceptibilities; sometimes a report accompanies the relief of the
stomach, sometimes there is more polite smothering of it. In like
manner it is supposed the great frame of things when assimilating
its nourishment emits air. It is a lucky thing for us that nature's
digestion is good, else we might apprehend some less agreeable
consequences. ' (_Q. N. translated by John Clarke, with notes by Sir
Archibald Geikie_, 1910. ) These exhalations, according to one view,
mounting up were driven back by the violence of the stars, or
by inability to pass the frozen middle region of the air--hence
commotions. (Pliny, _Nat. Hist. _ ii. 38, 45, 47, 48. ) This explains
Donne's 'middle marble room', where 'marble' may mean 'hard', or
_possibly_ 'blue' referring to the colour of the heavens. It is so
used by Studley in his translations of Seneca's tragedies: 'Whereas
the marble sea doth fleete,' _Hipp. _ i. 25; 'When marble skies no
filthy fog doth dim,' _Herc. Oet. _ ii. 8; 'The monstrous hags of
marble seas' (monstra caerulei maris), _Hipp. _ v. 5, I owe this
suggestion to Miss Evelyn Spearing (_The Elizabethan 'Tenne Tragedies
of Seneca'. _ _Mod. Lang. Review_, iv. 4). But the peripatetic view
was that the heavens were made of hard, solid, though transparent,
concentric spheres: 'Tycho will have two distinct matters of heaven
and ayre; but to say truth, with some small modifications, they'
(i. e. Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman) 'have one and the self same
opinion about the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard
and impenetrable, as Peripateticks hold, transparent, of a _quinta
essentia_, but that it is penetrable and soft as the ayre itself is,
and that the planets move in it', (according to the older view each
was fixed in its sphere) 'as birds in the ayre, fishes in the sea. '
Burton, _Anat. of Melancholy_, part ii, sect. 2, Men. 3.

'Wind', says Donne elsewhere, 'is a mixt Meteor, to the making
whereof, diverse occasions concurre with exhalations. ' _Sermons_ 80.
31. 305.

The movement which Donne has in view is described by Du Bartas:

If heav'ns bright torches, from earth's Kidneys, sup
Som somwhat dry and heatfull Vapours up,
Th' ambitious lightning of their nimble Fire
Would suddenly neer th' Azure Cirques aspire:
But scarce so soon their fuming crest hath raught,
Or toucht the Coldness of the middle Vault,
And felt what force their mortall Enemy
In Garrison keeps there continually;
When down again towards their Dam they bear,
Holp by the weight which they have drawn from her.
But in the instant, to their aid arrives
Another new heat, which their heart revives,
Re-arms their hand, and having staied their flight,
Better resolv'd brings them again to fight.
Well fortifi'd then by these fresh supplies,
More bravely they renew their enterprize:
And one-while th' upper hand (with honor) getting,
Another-while disgracefully retreating,
Our lower Aire they tosse in sundry sort,
As weak or strong their matter doth comport.
This lasts not long; because the heat and cold,
Equall in force and fortune, equall bold
In these assaults; to end this sudden brall,
Th' one stops their mounting, th' other stayes their fall:
So that this vapour, never resting stound,
Stands never still, but makes his motion round,
Posteth from Pole to Pole, and flies amain
From _Spain_ to _India_, and from _Inde_ to _Spain_.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas_, First Week, Second Day.

l. 18. _prisoners, which lye but for fees_, i. e. the fees due to the
gaoler. 'And as prisoners discharg'd of actions may lye for fees; so
when,' &c.

_Deaths Duell_ (1632), p. 9. Thirty-three years after this poem was
written, Donne thus uses the same figure in the last sermon he ever
preached.

PAGE =176=, l. 38. _I, and the Sunne. _ The 'Yea, and the Sunne' of _Q_
shows that 'I' here is probably the adverb, not the pronoun, though
the passage is ambiguous. Modern editors have all taken 'I' as the
pronoun.

ll. 49-50. _And do hear so
Like jealous husbands, what they would not know. _

Compare:

Crede mihi; nulli sunt crimina grata marito;
Nec quemquam, quamvis audiat illa, iuvant.
Seu tepet, indicium securas perdis ad aures;
Sive amat, officio fit miser ille tuo.
Culpa nec ex facili, quamvis manifesta, probatur:
Iudicis illa sui tuta favore venit.
Viderit ipse licet, credet tamen ipse neganti;
Damnabitque oculos, et sibi verba dabit.
Adspiciet dominae lacrimas; plorabit et ipse:
Et dicet, poenas garrulus iste dabit.
Ovid, _Amores_, II. ii. 51-60.

PAGE =177=, l. 60. _Strive. _ Later editions and Chambers read
'strives', but 'ordinance' was used as a plural: 'The goodly ordinance
which were xii great Bombardes of brasse', and 'these six small iron
ordinance. ' O. E. D. The word in this sense is now spelt 'ordnance'.

l. 66. _the'Bermuda_. It is probably unnecessary to change this to
'the'Bermudas. ' The singular without the article is quite regular.

l. 67. _Darknesse, lights elder brother. _ The 'elder' of the MSS. is
grammatically more correct than the 'eldest' of the editions. 'We must
return again to our stronghold, faith, and end with this, that this
beginning was, and before it, nothing. It is elder than darkness,
which is elder than light; and was before confusion, which is elder
than order, by how much the universal Chaos preceded forms and
distinctions. ' _Essays in Divinity_ (ed. Jessop, 1855), p. 46.


PAGE =178=. THE CALME.

l. 4. _A blocke afflicts, &c. _ Aesop's _Fables_. Sir Thomas Rowe
recalled Donne's use of the fable, when he was Ambassador at the Court
of the Mogul. Of Ibrahim Khan, the Governor of Surat after Zufilkhar
Khan, he writes: 'He was good but soe easy that he does no good; wee
are not lesse afflicted with a block then before with a storck. ' _The
Embassy, &c. _ (Hakl. Soc. ), i. 82.

l. 8. _thy mistresse glasse. _ This poem, like the last, is _probably_
addressed to Christopher Brooke, but it is not so headed in any
edition or MS. The Grolier Club editor ascribes the first heading to
both.

l. 14. _or like ended playes. _ This suggests that the Elizabethan
stage was not so bare of furniture as used to be stated, and also that
furniture was not confined to the curtained-off rear-stage. What Donne
recalls is a stage deserted by the actors but cumbered with furniture
and decorations.

l. 16. _a frippery_, i. e. 'A place where cast-off clothes are sold',
O. E. D. 'Oh, ho, Monster; wee know what belongs to a frippery. '
_Tempest_, IV. i. 225. Here the rigging has the appearance of an
old-clothes shop.

l. 17. _No use of lanthornes. _ The reference is to the lanterns in the
high sterns of the ships, used to keep the fleet together. 'There
is no fear now of our losing one another. ' Each squadron of a fleet
followed the light of its Admiral. Essex speaks of having lost, or
missing, 'Sir Walter Raleigh with thirty sailes that in the night
followed his light. ' _Purchas_, xx. 24-5.

l. 18. _Feathers and dust. _ 'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in
the world for some things: his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by
heart; and that passage of the Calme, That dust and feathers doe not
stirre, all was soe quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have written all
his best peeces ere he was twenty-five yeares old. ' _Jonson's
Conversations with Drummond. _ When Donne wrote _The Calme_ he was in
his twenty-fifth year.

l. 21. _lost friends. _ Raleigh and his squadron lost the main fleet
while off the coast of Spain, before they set sail definitely for
the Azores. He rejoined the fleet at the Islands. Donne's poem was
probably written in the interval.

The reading of some MSS. , 'lefte friends,' is quite a possible one.
Carleton, writing from Venice to Chamberlain, says: 'Let me tell you,
for your comfort (for I imagine what is mine is yours) that my last
news from the left island . . . took knowledge of my vigilancy and
diligency. ' The 'left island' is Great Britain, and Donne may mean no
more than that 'we can neither get back to our friends nor on to our
enemies. ' There may be no allusion to Raleigh's ships.

l. 23. _the Calenture. _ 'A disease incident to sailors within the
tropics, characterized by delirium in which the patient, it is said,
fancies the sea to be green fields, and desires to leap into it. '
O. E. D. Theobald had the Calenture in mind when he conjectured that
Falstaff 'babbled o' green fields'.

PAGE =179=, l. 33. _Like Bajazet encaged, &c. _: an echo of Marlowe's
_Tamburlaine_:

There whiles he lives shall Bajazet be kept;
And where I go be thus in triumph drawn:
. . . . . . . .
This is my mind, and I will have it so.
Not all the kings and emperors of the earth,
If they would lay their crowns before my feet,
Shall ransom him or take him from his cage:
The ages that shall talk of Tamburlaine,
Even from this day to Plato's wondrous year,
Shall talk how I have handled Bajazet.

There are frequent references to this scene in contemporary
literature.

ll. 35-6. _a Miriade Of Ants, &c. _ 'Erat ei' (i. e. Tiberius) 'in
oblectamentis serpens draco, quem ex consuetudine manu sua cibaturus,
cum consumptum a formicis invenisset, monitus est ut vim multitudinis
caveret. ' Suetonius, _Tib. _ 72.

l. 37. _Sea-goales_, i. e. sea-gaols. 'goale' was a common spelling.
See next poem, l. 52, 'the worlds thy goale. ' Strangely enough,
neither the Grolier Club editor nor Chambers seems to have recognized
the word here, in _The Calme_, though in the next poem they change
'goale' to 'gaol' without comment. The Grolier Club editor retains
'goales' and Chambers adopts the reading of the later editions,
'sea-gulls. ' A gull would have no difficulty in overtaking the
swiftest ship which ever sailed. Grosart takes the passage correctly.
'Sea-goales' is an accurate definition of the galleys. ' Finny-chips'
is a vivid description of their appearance. Compare:

One of these small bodies fitted so,
This soul inform'd, and abled it to row
Itselfe with finnie oars.
_Progresse of the Soule_, I. 23.

Never again shall I with finny oar
Put from, or draw unto the faithful shore.
Herrick, _His Tears to Thamesis_.

l. 38. _our Pinnaces. _ 'Venices' is the reading of _1633_ and most of
the MSS. , where, as in _1669_, the word is often spelt 'Vinices'. But
I can find no example of the word 'Venice' used for a species of ship,
and Mr. W. A. Craigie of the _Oxford English Dictionary_ tells me that
he has no example recorded. The mistake probably arose in a confusion
of P and V. The word 'Pinnace' is variously spelt, 'pynice', 'pinnes',
'pinace', &c. , &c. The pinnaces were the small, light-rigged,
quick-sailing vessels which acted as scouts for the fleet.

l. 48. _A scourge, 'gainst which wee all forget to pray. _ The 'forgot'
of _1669_ and several MSS. is tempting--'a scourge against which we
all in setting out forgot to pray. ' I rather think, however, that what
Donne means is 'a scourge against which we all at sea always forget to
pray, for to pray for wind at sea is generally to pray for cold under
the poles, for heat in hell'. The 'forgot' makes the reference too
definite. At the same time, 'forgot' is so obvious a reading that it
is difficult to account for 'forget' except on the supposition that it
is right.

ll. 51-4. _How little more alas,
Is man now, then before he was? he was
Nothing; for us, wee are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves still disproportion it. _

Donne is here playing with an antithesis which apparently he owes to
the rhetoric of Tertullian. 'Canst thou choose', says the poet in one
of his later sermons, 'but think God as perfect now, at least as he
was at first, and can he not as easily make thee up againe of nothing,
as he made thee of nothing at first? _Recogita quid fueris antequam
esses. _ Think over thyselfe; what wast thou before thou wast anything?
_Meminisses utique, si fuisses_: if thou had'st been anything than,
surely thou would'st remember it now. _Qui non eras, factus es; cum
iterum non eris, fies. _ Thou that wast once nothing, wast made this
that thou art now; and when thou shalt be nothing again, thou shalt be
made better then thou art yet. ' _Sermons_ 50. 14. 109. A note in the
margin indicates that the quotations are from Tertullian, and Donne is
echoing here the antithetical _Recogita quid fueris antequam esses_.

This echo is certainly made more obvious to the ear by the punctuation
of _1669_, which Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and Chambers all
follow. The last reads:

How little more, alas,
Is man now, than, before he was, he was?
Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit;
Chance, or ourselves, still disproportion it.

This may be right; but after careful consideration I have retained the
punctuation of _1633_. In the first place, if the _1669_ text be right
it is not clear why the poet did not preserve the regular order:

Is man now than he was before he was.

To place 'he was' at the end of the line was in the circumstances to
court ambiguity, and is not metrically requisite. In the second place,
the rhetorical question asked requires an answer, and that is given
most clearly by the punctuation of _1633_. 'How little more, alas, is
man now than [he was] before he was? He was nothing; and as for us,
we are fit for nothing. Chance or ourselves still throw us out of gear
with everything. ' To be nothing and to be fit for nothing--there is
all the difference. In the _1669_ version it is not easy to see the
relevance of the rhetorical question and of the line which follows:
'Nothing for us, we are for nothing fit. ' This seems to introduce a
new thought, a fresh antithesis. It is not quite true. A breeze would
fit them very well.

The use of 'for' in 'for us', as I have taken it, is quite idiomatic:

For me, I am the mistress of my fate.
Shakespeare, _Rape of Lucrece_, 1021.

For the rest o' the fleet, they all have met again.
Id. , _The Tempest_, I. i. 232.


PAGE =180=.