But of
the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's poetry.
the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's poetry.
Donne - 2
e.
'wrought', has
occasionally misled editors by its identity of form with the past
participle of the verb 'work', which has 'gh' legitimately. Thus Mr.
Beeching (_A Selection from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael
Drayton_, 1899) prints:
Read in my face a volume of despairs,
The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe,
Drawn with my blood, and painted with my cares,
Wrought by her hand that I have honoured so.
Here 'wrought' should be 'wrote', used, as frequently, for 'written'.
In Professor Saintsbury's _Patrick Carey_ (Caroline Poets, II. ) we
read:
Who writ this song would little care
Although at the end his name were wrought.
i. e. 'wrote'.
See also Donne's _The Litanie_, i. p. 342, l. 112.
PAGE =208=. TO M^r C. B.
Pretty certainly Christopher Brooke, to whom _The Storme_ and _The
Calme_, are addressed. Chambers takes 'the Saint of his affection' to
be Donne's wife, and dates the letter after 1600. But surely the
last two lines would not have been written of a wife. They are in the
conventional tone of the poet to his cruel Mistress. If Ann More is
the 'Saint' referred to, she was not yet Donne's wife. Possibly it is
some one else. Writing from Wales in 1599, Wotton says (in a letter
which Mr. Pearsall Smith thinks is addressed to Donne, but this is not
at all certain), 'May I after these, kiss that fair and learned
hand of your mistress, than whom the world doth possess nothing more
virtuous. ' (_Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton_, i. 306. )
l. 10. _Heavens liberall and earths thrice fairer Sunne. _ I prefer the
_1633_ and _1669_ reading, amended from _W_ which reads 'fairer', to
that of the later editions, 'the thrice faire Sunne', which Chambers
adopts. There are obviously _two_ suns in question--the Heavens'
liberal sun, and the earth's thrice-fairer one, i. e. the lady. Exiled
from both, Donne carries with him sufficient fire to melt the ice of
the wintry regions he must visit--not 'that which walls her heart'.
Commenting on a similar conceit in Petrarch:
Ite caldi sospiri al freddo core,
Rompete il ghiaccio, che pietà contende,
Tassoni tells how while writing he found himself detained at an Inn
by a severe frost, and that sighs were of little use to melt it.
_Considerazioni, &c. _ (1609), p. 228.
TO M^r E. G.
Gosse conjectures that the person addressed is Edward Guilpin, or
Gilpin, author of _Skialetheia_ (1598), a collection of epigrams and
satires. Guilpin imitates one of Donne's _Satyres_, which may imply
acquaintance. He makes no traceable reference to Donne in his works,
and we know so little of Guilpin that it is impossible to affirm
anything with confidence. Whoever is meant is in Suffolk. There were
Gilpins of Bungay there in 1664. It is worth noting that Sir Henry
Goodyere begins one of his poems (preserved in MS. at the Record
Office, _State Papers Dom. _, 1623) with the line: 'Even as lame things
thirst their perfection. ' Goodyere's poem was written before the
issue of Donne's poems in 1633, and that edition does not contain this
letter. One suspects that E. G. may be a Goodyere.
ll. 5-6. _oreseest . . . overseene. _ Donne is probably punning: 'Thou
from the height of Parnassus lookest down upon London; I in London am
too much overlooked, disregarded. ' But it is not clear. He may mean
'am too much in men's eye, or kept too strictly under observation'.
The first meaning seems to me the more probable.
PAGE =209=. TO M^r R. W.
l. 3. _brother. _ _W_ reads 'brethren', and Morpheus _had_ many
brothers; but of these only two had with himself the power of assuming
what form they would, and of these two Phantasus took forms that lack
life. Donne, therefore, probably means Phobetor, but a friend copying
the poem thought to amend his mythology. See Ovid, _Metam. _ xi.
635-41.
PAGE =210=. TO M^r R. W.
l. 18. _Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring. _ See introductory
note to the _Letters_.
l. 23. _businesse. _ The use of 'businesse' as a trisyllable with
plural meaning is quite legitimate: 'Idle and discoursing men, that
were not much affected, how businesse went, so they might talke of
them. ' _Sermon_, Judges XX. 15. p. 7.
PAGE =211=. TO M^r S. B.
Probably Samuel Brooke, the brother of Christopher. He officiated at
Donne's marriage and was imprisoned. He was later Chaplain to Prince
Henry, to James I, and to Charles I; professor of Divinity at Gresham
College (1612-29) and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1629. He
wrote Latin plays, poems, and religious treatises. The tone of Donne's
letter implies that he is a student at Cambridge. It was written
therefore before 1601, probably, like several of these letters, while
Donne was Egerton's secretary, and living in chambers with Christopher
Brooke. A poem by Samuel Brooke, _On Tears_, is printed in Hannah's
_Courtly Poets_.
PAGE =212=. TO M^r J. L.
Of the J. L. of this and the letter which follows the next, nothing
has been unearthed. He clearly belonged to the North of England,
beyond the Trent.
TO M^r B. B.
Grosart conjectures that this was Basil Brooke (1576-1646? ), a
Catholic, who was knighted in 1604. In 1644 he was committed to the
Tower by Parliament and in 1646 imprisoned in the King's Bench. He
translated _Entertainments for Lent_ from the French. He was not
a brother of Christopher and Samuel. The identification is only a
conjecture. The tenor of the poem is very similar to that addressed to
Mr. S. B.
PAGE =213=, l. 18. _widowhed. _ _W_ here clearly gives us the form
which Donne used. The rhyme requires it and the poet has used it
elsewhere:
And call chast widowhead Virginitie.
_The Litanie_, xii. 108.
ll. 19-22. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are somewhat
ambiguous:
My Muse, (for I had one) because I'am cold,
Divorc'd her self, the cause being in me,
That I can take no new in Bigamye,
Not my will only but power doth withhold.
Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, by putting a full stop or
semi-colon after 'the cause being in me', connect these words with
what precedes. This makes the first two lines verbose ('the cause
being in me' repeating 'because I'am cold') and the last two obscure.
I regard 'the cause being in me' as an explanatory participial phrase
qualifying what follows. 'My Muse divorc'd me because of my coldness.
The cause of this divorce, coldness, being in me, the divorced one,
I lack not only the will but the power to contract a new marriage'. I
have therefore, following _W_, placed a colon after 'selfe'.
PAGE =213=. TO M^r I. L.
l. 2. _My Sun is with you. _ Here, as in the letter 'To Mr. C. B. ' (p.
208), reference is made to some lady whose 'servant' Donne is. See the
note to that poem and the quotation from Sir Henry Wotton. It seems to
me most probable that the person referred to was neither Ann More nor
any predecessor of her in Donne's affections, but some noble lady to
whom the poet stood in the attitude of dependence masking itself in
love which Spenser occupied towards Lady Carey, and so many other
poets towards their patronesses. But in regard to all the references
in these letters we can only grope in darkness. As Professor
Saintsbury would say, we do not _really know_ to whom one of the
letters was addressed.
PAGE =214=, ll. 11-12. These lines from _W_ make the sense more
complete and the transition to the closing invocation less abrupt.
'Sacrifice my heart to that beauteous Sunne; and since being with her
you are in Paradise where joy admits of no addition, think of me
at the sacrifice'; and then begins the prayer to his friend as an
interceding saint. See note to p. 24, l. 22.
The lines seem to have been dropped, not in printing, but at some
stage in transcription, for I have found them in no MS. but _W_.
l. 20. _Thy Sonne ne'r Ward_: i. e. 'May thy son never become a royal
ward, to be handed over to the guardianship of some courtier who will
plunder his estate. ' Sir John Roe's father, in his will, begs his wife
to procure the wardship of his son that he be not utterly ruined.
The series of letters which this to Mr. I. L. closes was probably
written during the years 1597 to 1608 or 1610. Donne's first Letters
were _The Storme_ and _The Calme_. These were followed by Letters to
Wotton before and after he went to Ireland, and this series continues
them during the years of Donne's secretaryship and his subsequent
residence at Pyrford and Mitcham. They are written to friends of his
youth, some still at college. Clearly too, what we have preserved is
Donne's side of a mutual correspondence. Of Letters to Donne I have
printed one, probably from Thomas Woodward. Chance has preserved
another probably in the form in which it was sent. Mr. Gosse has
printed it (_Life, &c. _, i, p. 91). I reproduce it from the original
MS. , Tanner 306, in the Bodleian Library:
To my ever to be respected friend
M^r John Done secretary to my
Lord Keeper give these.
As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant
Thir Tideast lambs or kids for sacrefize
Vnto thir gods, sincear beinge thir intent
Thoughe base thir gift, if that shoulde moralize
thir loves, yet noe direackt discerninge eye
Will judge thir ackt but full of piety.
Soe offir I my beast affection
Apparaled in these harsh totterd rimes.
Think not they want love, though perfection
or that my loves noe truer than my lyens
Smothe is my love thoughe rugged be my years
Yet well they mean, thoughe well they ill rehears.
What tyme thou meanst to offir Idillnes
Come to my den for heer she always stayes;
If then for change of howers you seem careles
Agree with me to lose them at the playes.
farewell dear freand, my love, not lyens respeackt,
So shall you shewe, my freandship you affeckt.
Yours
William Cornwaleys.
The writer is, Mr. Gosse says, Sir William Cornwallis, the eldest
son of Sir Charles Cornwallis of Beeston-in-Sprouston, Norfolk. Like
Wotton, Goodyere, Roe, and others of Donne's circle he followed Essex
to Ireland and was knighted at Dublin in 1599. The letter probably
dates from 1600 or 1601. I have reproduced the original spelling,
which is remarkable.
This letter and that to Mr. E. G. show that Donne was a frequenter
of the theatre in these interesting years, 1593 to 1610, the greatest
dramatic era since the age of Pericles. Sir Richard Baker, in his
_Chronicle of the Kings of England_ (1730, p. 424), recalls his 'Old
Acquaintance . . . Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, liv'd at the Inns
of Court, not dissolute but very neat: a great Visiter of Ladies, a
great Frequenter of Plays, a great Writer of conceited Verses'.
But of
the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's poetry. The
theatres are an amusement for idle hours: 'Because I am drousie, I
will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy,
or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy. ' _Sermons_ 80. 38. 383.
PAGE =214=. TO SIR H. W. AT HIS GOING AMBASSADOR TO VENICE.
On July 8 O. S. , 1604, Wotton was knighted by James, and on the 13th
sailed for Venice. 'He is a gentleman', the Venetian ambassador
reported, 'of excellent condition, wise, prudent, able. Your serenity,
it is to be hoped, will be very well pleased with him. ' Mr. Pearsall
Smith adds, 'It is worth noting that while Wotton was travelling to
Venice, Shakespeare was probably engaged in writing his great Venetian
tragedy, _Othello_, which was acted before James I in November of this
year. '
PAGE =215=, ll. 21-4. _To sweare much love, &c. _ The meaning of this
verse, accepting the 1633 text, is: 'Admit this honest paper to swear
much love,--a love that will not change until with your elevation to
the peerage (or increasing eminence) it must be called _honour_ rather
than _love_. ' (We _honour_, not _love_, those who are high above us. )
'But when that time comes I shall not more honour your fortune,
the rank that fortune gives you, than I have honoured your honour
["nobleness of mind, scorn of meanness, magnanimity" (Johnson)], your
high character, magnanimity, without it, i. e. when yet unhonoured. '
Donne plays on the word 'honour'.
Walton's version, and the slight variant of this in _1635-69_, give
a different thought, and this is perhaps the correct reading, more
probably either another (perhaps an earlier) version of the poet or an
attempt to correct due to a failure to catch the meaning of the rather
fanciful phrase 'honouring your honour'. The meaning is, 'I shall not
then more honour your fortune than I have your wit while it was still
unhonoured, or (_1635-69_) unennobled. ' The 1633 version seems to me
the more likely to be the correct or final form of the text, because
a reference to character rather than 'wit' or intellectual ability is
implied by the following verse:
But 'tis an easier load (though both oppresse)
To want then governe greatnesse, &c.
This stress on character, too, and indifference to fortune, is quite
in the vein of Donne's and Wotton's earlier verse correspondence and
all Wotton's poetry.
For the distinction between love and honour compare Lyly's _Endimion_,
V. iii. 150-80:
'_Cinthia. _ Was there such a time when as for my love thou
did'st vow thyself to death, and in respect of it loth'd thy
life? Speake Endimion, I will not revenge it with hate . . .
_Endimion. _ My unspotted thoughts, my languishing bodie, my
discontented life, let them obtaine by princelie favour that,
which to challenge they must not presume, onelie wishing of
impossibilities: with imagination of which I will spend my
spirits, and to myselfe that no creature may heare, softlie
call it love. And if any urge to utter what I whisper, then
will I name it honor. . . .
. . . _Cinthia. _ Endimion, this honourable respect of thine,
shalbe christened love in thee, and my reward for it favor. '
With the lines,
Nor shall I then honour your fortune, &c. ,
compare in the same play:
'O Endimion, Tellus was faire, but what availeth Beautie
without wisdom? Nay, Endimion, she was wise, but what availeth
wisdom without honour? She was honourable, Endimion, belie her
not. I, but how obscure is honour without fortune? '
II. iii. 11-17.
The antithesis here between 'honour' and 'fortune' is exactly that
which Donne makes.
If we may accept 'noble-wanting-wit' as Donne's own phrase (and
Walton's authority pleads for it) and interpret it as 'wit that yet
wants ennoblement' it forms an interesting parallel to a phrase of
Shakespeare's in _Macbeth_, when Banquo addresses the witches:
My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction,
Of noble having and of royal hope.
_Macbeth_, I. iii. 55-7.
Some editors refer 'present grace' to the first salutation, 'Thane
of Glamis'. This is unlikely as there is nothing startling in a
salutation to which Macbeth was already entitled. The Clarendon Press
editors refer the line, more probably, to the two prophecies, 'thane
of Cawdor' and 'that shalt be King hereafter'. The word 'having' is
then not _quite_ the same as in the phrases 'my having is not great',
&c. , which these editors quote, but is simply opposed to 'hope'.
You greet him with 'nobility in possession', with 'royalty in
expectation', as being already thane of Cawdor, as to be king
hereafter. Shakespeare's 'noble having' is the opposite of Donne's
'noble wanting'.
One is tempted to put, as Chambers does, an emphasizing comma after
'honour' as well as 'fortune'; but the antithesis is between 'fortune'
and 'honour wanting fortune'.
'Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he
affected was built upon true Worth, esteeming Fame more than Riches,
and Noble actions far above Nobility it self. ' Fulke Greville's _Life
of Sidney_, c. iii. p. 38 (_Tudor and Stuart Library_).
PAGE =216=. TO M^{rs} M. H.
I. e. Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, mother of
Sir Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), and of George Herbert
the poet. For her friendship with Donne, see Walton's _Life of Mr.
George Herbert_ (1670), Gosse's _Life and Letters of John Donne_, i.
162 f. , and what is said in the _Introduction_ to this volume and
the Introductory Note to the _Elegies_. In 1608 she married Sir John
Danvers. Her funeral sermon was preached by Donne in 1627.
PAGE =217=, l. 27. _For, speech of ill, and her, thou must abstaine. _
The O. E. D. gives no example of 'abstain' thus used without 'from'
before the object, and it is tempting with _1635-69_ and all the MSS.
to change 'For' to 'From'. But none of the MSS. has great authority
textually, and the 'For' in _1633_ is too carefully comma'd off to
suggest a mere slip. Probably Donne wrote the line as it stands. One
does not miss the 'from' so much when the verb comes so long after the
object. 'Abstain' acquires the sense of 'forgo'.
ll. 31-2. _And since they'are but her cloathes, &c. _ Compare:
For he who colour loves and skinne,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
_The Undertaking_, p. 10.
PAGE =218=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
l. 13. _Care not then, Madam,'how low your praysers lye. _ I cannot but
think that the 'praysers' of the MSS. is preferable to the 'prayses'
of the editions. It is difficult to construe or make unambiguous sense
of 'how low your prayses lie'. Donne does not wish to suggest that the
praise is poor in itself, but that the giver is a 'low person'. The
word 'prayser' he has already used in a letter to the Countess
(p. 200), and there also it has caused some trouble to editors and
copyists.
ll. 20-1. _Your radiation can all clouds subdue;
But one, 'tis best light to contemplate you. _
Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate these lines so as to
connect 'But one' with what precedes.
Your radiation can all clouds subdue
But one; 'tis best light to contemplate you.
I suppose 'death' in this reading is to be regarded as the one
cloud which the radiation of the Countess cannot dispel. There is
no indication, however, that this is the thought in Donne's mind.
As punctuated (i. e. with a comma after 'subdue', which I have
strengthened to a semicolon), 'But one' goes with what follows, and
refers to God: 'Excepting God only, you are the most illuminating
object we can contemplate. '
PAGE =219=, l. 27. _May in your through-shine front your hearts
thoughts see. _ All the MSS. agree in reading 'your hearts thoughts',
which is obviously correct. _N_, _O'F_, and _TCD_ give the line
otherwise exactly as in the editions. _B_ drops the 'shine' after
'through'; and _S96_ reads:
May in you, through your face, your hearts thoughts see.
Donne has used 'through-shine' already in '_A Valediction: of my name
in the window_':
'Tis much that glasse should bee
As all confessing, and through-shine as I,
'Tis more that it shewes thee to thee,
And cleare reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules, loves magique can undoe,
Here you see mee, and I am you.
If there were any evidence that Donne was, as in this lyric, playing
with the idea of the identity of different souls, there would be
reason to retain the 'our hearts thoughts' of the editions; but there
is no trace of this. He is dwelling simply on the thought of the
Countess's transparency. Donne is fond of compounds with 'through'.
Other examples are 'through-light', 'through-swome', 'through-vaine',
'through-pierc'd'.
ll. 36-7. _They fly not, &c. _ Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
have here injured the sense by altering the punctuation. 'Nature's
first lesson' does not complete the previous statement about the
relation of the different souls, but qualifies 'discretion'. 'Just as
the souls of growth and sense do not claim precedence of the rational
soul, so the first lesson taught us by Nature, viz. _discretion_, must
not grudge a place to zeal. ' 'Anima rationalis est perfectior quam
sensibilis, et sensibilis quam vegetabilis,' Aquinas, _Summa_, ii. 57.
2.
PAGE =220=, l. 46. _In those poor types, &c. _ The use of the circle
as an emblem of infinity is very old. 'To the mystically inclined the
perpendicular was the emblem of unswerving rectitude and purity; but
the circle, "the foremost, richest, and most perfect of curves" was
the symbol of completeness and eternity, of the endless process of
generation and renascence in which all things are ever becoming new. '
W. B. Frankland, _The Story of Euclid_, p. 70. God was described
by St. Bonaventura as 'a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose
circumference nowhere'. See also supplementary note.
PAGE =221=. A LETTER TO THE LADY CAREY, AND M^{rs} ESSEX RICHE, FROM
AMYENS.
Probably written when Donne was abroad with Sir Robert Drury in
1611-12. 'The two ladies', Mr. Chambers says, 'were daughters of
Robert, third Lord Rich, by Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter,
Earl of Essex, the Stella of Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_. ' Lady
Rich abandoned her husband after five years' marriage and declared
that the true father of her children was Charles Blount, Earl of
Devonshire, to whom, after her divorce in 1605, she was married by
Laud. Lettice, the eldest daughter, married Sir George Carey, of
Cockington, Devon. Essex, the younger, was married, subsequently to
this letter, to Sir Thomas Cheeke, of Pirgo, Essex.
ll. 10-12. _Where, because Faith is in too low degree, &c. _ Donne
refers to the Catholic doctrine of good works as necessary to
salvation in opposition to the Protestant doctrine of Justification by
Faith. He is fond of the antithesis. Compare:
My faith I give to Roman Catholiques;
All my good workes unto the Schismaticks
Of Amsterdam;. . .
Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
_The Will_, p. 57.
PAGE =222=, l. 14. _where no one is growne or spent. _ Like the stars
in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to
Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not
temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not
eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', their
life is measured by ages.
l. 19. _humilitie_ has such general support that the 'humidity' of
_1669_ seems to be merely a conjecture.
PAGE =224=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF SALISBURY. 1614.
Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.
It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the
Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's
letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's
poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon
the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning
of a graver course, then of a Poet'. _Letters, &c. _, p. 103. Donne
made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas
Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his
graver days.
occasionally misled editors by its identity of form with the past
participle of the verb 'work', which has 'gh' legitimately. Thus Mr.
Beeching (_A Selection from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael
Drayton_, 1899) prints:
Read in my face a volume of despairs,
The wailing Iliads of my tragic woe,
Drawn with my blood, and painted with my cares,
Wrought by her hand that I have honoured so.
Here 'wrought' should be 'wrote', used, as frequently, for 'written'.
In Professor Saintsbury's _Patrick Carey_ (Caroline Poets, II. ) we
read:
Who writ this song would little care
Although at the end his name were wrought.
i. e. 'wrote'.
See also Donne's _The Litanie_, i. p. 342, l. 112.
PAGE =208=. TO M^r C. B.
Pretty certainly Christopher Brooke, to whom _The Storme_ and _The
Calme_, are addressed. Chambers takes 'the Saint of his affection' to
be Donne's wife, and dates the letter after 1600. But surely the
last two lines would not have been written of a wife. They are in the
conventional tone of the poet to his cruel Mistress. If Ann More is
the 'Saint' referred to, she was not yet Donne's wife. Possibly it is
some one else. Writing from Wales in 1599, Wotton says (in a letter
which Mr. Pearsall Smith thinks is addressed to Donne, but this is not
at all certain), 'May I after these, kiss that fair and learned
hand of your mistress, than whom the world doth possess nothing more
virtuous. ' (_Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton_, i. 306. )
l. 10. _Heavens liberall and earths thrice fairer Sunne. _ I prefer the
_1633_ and _1669_ reading, amended from _W_ which reads 'fairer', to
that of the later editions, 'the thrice faire Sunne', which Chambers
adopts. There are obviously _two_ suns in question--the Heavens'
liberal sun, and the earth's thrice-fairer one, i. e. the lady. Exiled
from both, Donne carries with him sufficient fire to melt the ice of
the wintry regions he must visit--not 'that which walls her heart'.
Commenting on a similar conceit in Petrarch:
Ite caldi sospiri al freddo core,
Rompete il ghiaccio, che pietà contende,
Tassoni tells how while writing he found himself detained at an Inn
by a severe frost, and that sighs were of little use to melt it.
_Considerazioni, &c. _ (1609), p. 228.
TO M^r E. G.
Gosse conjectures that the person addressed is Edward Guilpin, or
Gilpin, author of _Skialetheia_ (1598), a collection of epigrams and
satires. Guilpin imitates one of Donne's _Satyres_, which may imply
acquaintance. He makes no traceable reference to Donne in his works,
and we know so little of Guilpin that it is impossible to affirm
anything with confidence. Whoever is meant is in Suffolk. There were
Gilpins of Bungay there in 1664. It is worth noting that Sir Henry
Goodyere begins one of his poems (preserved in MS. at the Record
Office, _State Papers Dom. _, 1623) with the line: 'Even as lame things
thirst their perfection. ' Goodyere's poem was written before the
issue of Donne's poems in 1633, and that edition does not contain this
letter. One suspects that E. G. may be a Goodyere.
ll. 5-6. _oreseest . . . overseene. _ Donne is probably punning: 'Thou
from the height of Parnassus lookest down upon London; I in London am
too much overlooked, disregarded. ' But it is not clear. He may mean
'am too much in men's eye, or kept too strictly under observation'.
The first meaning seems to me the more probable.
PAGE =209=. TO M^r R. W.
l. 3. _brother. _ _W_ reads 'brethren', and Morpheus _had_ many
brothers; but of these only two had with himself the power of assuming
what form they would, and of these two Phantasus took forms that lack
life. Donne, therefore, probably means Phobetor, but a friend copying
the poem thought to amend his mythology. See Ovid, _Metam. _ xi.
635-41.
PAGE =210=. TO M^r R. W.
l. 18. _Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring. _ See introductory
note to the _Letters_.
l. 23. _businesse. _ The use of 'businesse' as a trisyllable with
plural meaning is quite legitimate: 'Idle and discoursing men, that
were not much affected, how businesse went, so they might talke of
them. ' _Sermon_, Judges XX. 15. p. 7.
PAGE =211=. TO M^r S. B.
Probably Samuel Brooke, the brother of Christopher. He officiated at
Donne's marriage and was imprisoned. He was later Chaplain to Prince
Henry, to James I, and to Charles I; professor of Divinity at Gresham
College (1612-29) and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1629. He
wrote Latin plays, poems, and religious treatises. The tone of Donne's
letter implies that he is a student at Cambridge. It was written
therefore before 1601, probably, like several of these letters, while
Donne was Egerton's secretary, and living in chambers with Christopher
Brooke. A poem by Samuel Brooke, _On Tears_, is printed in Hannah's
_Courtly Poets_.
PAGE =212=. TO M^r J. L.
Of the J. L. of this and the letter which follows the next, nothing
has been unearthed. He clearly belonged to the North of England,
beyond the Trent.
TO M^r B. B.
Grosart conjectures that this was Basil Brooke (1576-1646? ), a
Catholic, who was knighted in 1604. In 1644 he was committed to the
Tower by Parliament and in 1646 imprisoned in the King's Bench. He
translated _Entertainments for Lent_ from the French. He was not
a brother of Christopher and Samuel. The identification is only a
conjecture. The tenor of the poem is very similar to that addressed to
Mr. S. B.
PAGE =213=, l. 18. _widowhed. _ _W_ here clearly gives us the form
which Donne used. The rhyme requires it and the poet has used it
elsewhere:
And call chast widowhead Virginitie.
_The Litanie_, xii. 108.
ll. 19-22. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are somewhat
ambiguous:
My Muse, (for I had one) because I'am cold,
Divorc'd her self, the cause being in me,
That I can take no new in Bigamye,
Not my will only but power doth withhold.
Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, by putting a full stop or
semi-colon after 'the cause being in me', connect these words with
what precedes. This makes the first two lines verbose ('the cause
being in me' repeating 'because I'am cold') and the last two obscure.
I regard 'the cause being in me' as an explanatory participial phrase
qualifying what follows. 'My Muse divorc'd me because of my coldness.
The cause of this divorce, coldness, being in me, the divorced one,
I lack not only the will but the power to contract a new marriage'. I
have therefore, following _W_, placed a colon after 'selfe'.
PAGE =213=. TO M^r I. L.
l. 2. _My Sun is with you. _ Here, as in the letter 'To Mr. C. B. ' (p.
208), reference is made to some lady whose 'servant' Donne is. See the
note to that poem and the quotation from Sir Henry Wotton. It seems to
me most probable that the person referred to was neither Ann More nor
any predecessor of her in Donne's affections, but some noble lady to
whom the poet stood in the attitude of dependence masking itself in
love which Spenser occupied towards Lady Carey, and so many other
poets towards their patronesses. But in regard to all the references
in these letters we can only grope in darkness. As Professor
Saintsbury would say, we do not _really know_ to whom one of the
letters was addressed.
PAGE =214=, ll. 11-12. These lines from _W_ make the sense more
complete and the transition to the closing invocation less abrupt.
'Sacrifice my heart to that beauteous Sunne; and since being with her
you are in Paradise where joy admits of no addition, think of me
at the sacrifice'; and then begins the prayer to his friend as an
interceding saint. See note to p. 24, l. 22.
The lines seem to have been dropped, not in printing, but at some
stage in transcription, for I have found them in no MS. but _W_.
l. 20. _Thy Sonne ne'r Ward_: i. e. 'May thy son never become a royal
ward, to be handed over to the guardianship of some courtier who will
plunder his estate. ' Sir John Roe's father, in his will, begs his wife
to procure the wardship of his son that he be not utterly ruined.
The series of letters which this to Mr. I. L. closes was probably
written during the years 1597 to 1608 or 1610. Donne's first Letters
were _The Storme_ and _The Calme_. These were followed by Letters to
Wotton before and after he went to Ireland, and this series continues
them during the years of Donne's secretaryship and his subsequent
residence at Pyrford and Mitcham. They are written to friends of his
youth, some still at college. Clearly too, what we have preserved is
Donne's side of a mutual correspondence. Of Letters to Donne I have
printed one, probably from Thomas Woodward. Chance has preserved
another probably in the form in which it was sent. Mr. Gosse has
printed it (_Life, &c. _, i, p. 91). I reproduce it from the original
MS. , Tanner 306, in the Bodleian Library:
To my ever to be respected friend
M^r John Done secretary to my
Lord Keeper give these.
As in tymes past the rusticke shepheards sceant
Thir Tideast lambs or kids for sacrefize
Vnto thir gods, sincear beinge thir intent
Thoughe base thir gift, if that shoulde moralize
thir loves, yet noe direackt discerninge eye
Will judge thir ackt but full of piety.
Soe offir I my beast affection
Apparaled in these harsh totterd rimes.
Think not they want love, though perfection
or that my loves noe truer than my lyens
Smothe is my love thoughe rugged be my years
Yet well they mean, thoughe well they ill rehears.
What tyme thou meanst to offir Idillnes
Come to my den for heer she always stayes;
If then for change of howers you seem careles
Agree with me to lose them at the playes.
farewell dear freand, my love, not lyens respeackt,
So shall you shewe, my freandship you affeckt.
Yours
William Cornwaleys.
The writer is, Mr. Gosse says, Sir William Cornwallis, the eldest
son of Sir Charles Cornwallis of Beeston-in-Sprouston, Norfolk. Like
Wotton, Goodyere, Roe, and others of Donne's circle he followed Essex
to Ireland and was knighted at Dublin in 1599. The letter probably
dates from 1600 or 1601. I have reproduced the original spelling,
which is remarkable.
This letter and that to Mr. E. G. show that Donne was a frequenter
of the theatre in these interesting years, 1593 to 1610, the greatest
dramatic era since the age of Pericles. Sir Richard Baker, in his
_Chronicle of the Kings of England_ (1730, p. 424), recalls his 'Old
Acquaintance . . . Mr. John Dunne, who leaving Oxford, liv'd at the Inns
of Court, not dissolute but very neat: a great Visiter of Ladies, a
great Frequenter of Plays, a great Writer of conceited Verses'.
But of
the Elizabethan drama there is almost no echo in Donne's poetry. The
theatres are an amusement for idle hours: 'Because I am drousie, I
will be kept awake with the obscenities and scurrilities of a Comedy,
or the drums and ejulations of a Tragedy. ' _Sermons_ 80. 38. 383.
PAGE =214=. TO SIR H. W. AT HIS GOING AMBASSADOR TO VENICE.
On July 8 O. S. , 1604, Wotton was knighted by James, and on the 13th
sailed for Venice. 'He is a gentleman', the Venetian ambassador
reported, 'of excellent condition, wise, prudent, able. Your serenity,
it is to be hoped, will be very well pleased with him. ' Mr. Pearsall
Smith adds, 'It is worth noting that while Wotton was travelling to
Venice, Shakespeare was probably engaged in writing his great Venetian
tragedy, _Othello_, which was acted before James I in November of this
year. '
PAGE =215=, ll. 21-4. _To sweare much love, &c. _ The meaning of this
verse, accepting the 1633 text, is: 'Admit this honest paper to swear
much love,--a love that will not change until with your elevation to
the peerage (or increasing eminence) it must be called _honour_ rather
than _love_. ' (We _honour_, not _love_, those who are high above us. )
'But when that time comes I shall not more honour your fortune,
the rank that fortune gives you, than I have honoured your honour
["nobleness of mind, scorn of meanness, magnanimity" (Johnson)], your
high character, magnanimity, without it, i. e. when yet unhonoured. '
Donne plays on the word 'honour'.
Walton's version, and the slight variant of this in _1635-69_, give
a different thought, and this is perhaps the correct reading, more
probably either another (perhaps an earlier) version of the poet or an
attempt to correct due to a failure to catch the meaning of the rather
fanciful phrase 'honouring your honour'. The meaning is, 'I shall not
then more honour your fortune than I have your wit while it was still
unhonoured, or (_1635-69_) unennobled. ' The 1633 version seems to me
the more likely to be the correct or final form of the text, because
a reference to character rather than 'wit' or intellectual ability is
implied by the following verse:
But 'tis an easier load (though both oppresse)
To want then governe greatnesse, &c.
This stress on character, too, and indifference to fortune, is quite
in the vein of Donne's and Wotton's earlier verse correspondence and
all Wotton's poetry.
For the distinction between love and honour compare Lyly's _Endimion_,
V. iii. 150-80:
'_Cinthia. _ Was there such a time when as for my love thou
did'st vow thyself to death, and in respect of it loth'd thy
life? Speake Endimion, I will not revenge it with hate . . .
_Endimion. _ My unspotted thoughts, my languishing bodie, my
discontented life, let them obtaine by princelie favour that,
which to challenge they must not presume, onelie wishing of
impossibilities: with imagination of which I will spend my
spirits, and to myselfe that no creature may heare, softlie
call it love. And if any urge to utter what I whisper, then
will I name it honor. . . .
. . . _Cinthia. _ Endimion, this honourable respect of thine,
shalbe christened love in thee, and my reward for it favor. '
With the lines,
Nor shall I then honour your fortune, &c. ,
compare in the same play:
'O Endimion, Tellus was faire, but what availeth Beautie
without wisdom? Nay, Endimion, she was wise, but what availeth
wisdom without honour? She was honourable, Endimion, belie her
not. I, but how obscure is honour without fortune? '
II. iii. 11-17.
The antithesis here between 'honour' and 'fortune' is exactly that
which Donne makes.
If we may accept 'noble-wanting-wit' as Donne's own phrase (and
Walton's authority pleads for it) and interpret it as 'wit that yet
wants ennoblement' it forms an interesting parallel to a phrase of
Shakespeare's in _Macbeth_, when Banquo addresses the witches:
My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction,
Of noble having and of royal hope.
_Macbeth_, I. iii. 55-7.
Some editors refer 'present grace' to the first salutation, 'Thane
of Glamis'. This is unlikely as there is nothing startling in a
salutation to which Macbeth was already entitled. The Clarendon Press
editors refer the line, more probably, to the two prophecies, 'thane
of Cawdor' and 'that shalt be King hereafter'. The word 'having' is
then not _quite_ the same as in the phrases 'my having is not great',
&c. , which these editors quote, but is simply opposed to 'hope'.
You greet him with 'nobility in possession', with 'royalty in
expectation', as being already thane of Cawdor, as to be king
hereafter. Shakespeare's 'noble having' is the opposite of Donne's
'noble wanting'.
One is tempted to put, as Chambers does, an emphasizing comma after
'honour' as well as 'fortune'; but the antithesis is between 'fortune'
and 'honour wanting fortune'.
'Sir Philip Sidney is none of this number; for the greatness which he
affected was built upon true Worth, esteeming Fame more than Riches,
and Noble actions far above Nobility it self. ' Fulke Greville's _Life
of Sidney_, c. iii. p. 38 (_Tudor and Stuart Library_).
PAGE =216=. TO M^{rs} M. H.
I. e. Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, daughter of Sir Richard Newport, mother of
Sir Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), and of George Herbert
the poet. For her friendship with Donne, see Walton's _Life of Mr.
George Herbert_ (1670), Gosse's _Life and Letters of John Donne_, i.
162 f. , and what is said in the _Introduction_ to this volume and
the Introductory Note to the _Elegies_. In 1608 she married Sir John
Danvers. Her funeral sermon was preached by Donne in 1627.
PAGE =217=, l. 27. _For, speech of ill, and her, thou must abstaine. _
The O. E. D. gives no example of 'abstain' thus used without 'from'
before the object, and it is tempting with _1635-69_ and all the MSS.
to change 'For' to 'From'. But none of the MSS. has great authority
textually, and the 'For' in _1633_ is too carefully comma'd off to
suggest a mere slip. Probably Donne wrote the line as it stands. One
does not miss the 'from' so much when the verb comes so long after the
object. 'Abstain' acquires the sense of 'forgo'.
ll. 31-2. _And since they'are but her cloathes, &c. _ Compare:
For he who colour loves and skinne,
Loves but their oldest clothes.
_The Undertaking_, p. 10.
PAGE =218=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
l. 13. _Care not then, Madam,'how low your praysers lye. _ I cannot but
think that the 'praysers' of the MSS. is preferable to the 'prayses'
of the editions. It is difficult to construe or make unambiguous sense
of 'how low your prayses lie'. Donne does not wish to suggest that the
praise is poor in itself, but that the giver is a 'low person'. The
word 'prayser' he has already used in a letter to the Countess
(p. 200), and there also it has caused some trouble to editors and
copyists.
ll. 20-1. _Your radiation can all clouds subdue;
But one, 'tis best light to contemplate you. _
Grosart and the Grolier Club editor punctuate these lines so as to
connect 'But one' with what precedes.
Your radiation can all clouds subdue
But one; 'tis best light to contemplate you.
I suppose 'death' in this reading is to be regarded as the one
cloud which the radiation of the Countess cannot dispel. There is
no indication, however, that this is the thought in Donne's mind.
As punctuated (i. e. with a comma after 'subdue', which I have
strengthened to a semicolon), 'But one' goes with what follows, and
refers to God: 'Excepting God only, you are the most illuminating
object we can contemplate. '
PAGE =219=, l. 27. _May in your through-shine front your hearts
thoughts see. _ All the MSS. agree in reading 'your hearts thoughts',
which is obviously correct. _N_, _O'F_, and _TCD_ give the line
otherwise exactly as in the editions. _B_ drops the 'shine' after
'through'; and _S96_ reads:
May in you, through your face, your hearts thoughts see.
Donne has used 'through-shine' already in '_A Valediction: of my name
in the window_':
'Tis much that glasse should bee
As all confessing, and through-shine as I,
'Tis more that it shewes thee to thee,
And cleare reflects thee to thine eye.
But all such rules, loves magique can undoe,
Here you see mee, and I am you.
If there were any evidence that Donne was, as in this lyric, playing
with the idea of the identity of different souls, there would be
reason to retain the 'our hearts thoughts' of the editions; but there
is no trace of this. He is dwelling simply on the thought of the
Countess's transparency. Donne is fond of compounds with 'through'.
Other examples are 'through-light', 'through-swome', 'through-vaine',
'through-pierc'd'.
ll. 36-7. _They fly not, &c. _ Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
have here injured the sense by altering the punctuation. 'Nature's
first lesson' does not complete the previous statement about the
relation of the different souls, but qualifies 'discretion'. 'Just as
the souls of growth and sense do not claim precedence of the rational
soul, so the first lesson taught us by Nature, viz. _discretion_, must
not grudge a place to zeal. ' 'Anima rationalis est perfectior quam
sensibilis, et sensibilis quam vegetabilis,' Aquinas, _Summa_, ii. 57.
2.
PAGE =220=, l. 46. _In those poor types, &c. _ The use of the circle
as an emblem of infinity is very old. 'To the mystically inclined the
perpendicular was the emblem of unswerving rectitude and purity; but
the circle, "the foremost, richest, and most perfect of curves" was
the symbol of completeness and eternity, of the endless process of
generation and renascence in which all things are ever becoming new. '
W. B. Frankland, _The Story of Euclid_, p. 70. God was described
by St. Bonaventura as 'a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose
circumference nowhere'. See also supplementary note.
PAGE =221=. A LETTER TO THE LADY CAREY, AND M^{rs} ESSEX RICHE, FROM
AMYENS.
Probably written when Donne was abroad with Sir Robert Drury in
1611-12. 'The two ladies', Mr. Chambers says, 'were daughters of
Robert, third Lord Rich, by Penelope Devereux, daughter of Walter,
Earl of Essex, the Stella of Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_. ' Lady
Rich abandoned her husband after five years' marriage and declared
that the true father of her children was Charles Blount, Earl of
Devonshire, to whom, after her divorce in 1605, she was married by
Laud. Lettice, the eldest daughter, married Sir George Carey, of
Cockington, Devon. Essex, the younger, was married, subsequently to
this letter, to Sir Thomas Cheeke, of Pirgo, Essex.
ll. 10-12. _Where, because Faith is in too low degree, &c. _ Donne
refers to the Catholic doctrine of good works as necessary to
salvation in opposition to the Protestant doctrine of Justification by
Faith. He is fond of the antithesis. Compare:
My faith I give to Roman Catholiques;
All my good workes unto the Schismaticks
Of Amsterdam;. . .
Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
_The Will_, p. 57.
PAGE =222=, l. 14. _where no one is growne or spent. _ Like the stars
in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to
Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not
temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not
eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', their
life is measured by ages.
l. 19. _humilitie_ has such general support that the 'humidity' of
_1669_ seems to be merely a conjecture.
PAGE =224=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF SALISBURY. 1614.
Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.
It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the
Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's
letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's
poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon
the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning
of a graver course, then of a Poet'. _Letters, &c. _, p. 103. Donne
made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas
Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his
graver days.
