We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns.
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns.
Donne - 2
H.
', and remember that Mrs.
Herbert's name was Magdalen.
ll. 27-8. _Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not
between those meales_: i. e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a
sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne enumerates
the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this among them: 'Now
by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first
part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, though defamed by
treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, since God invites us to
it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. It is an imputation laid
upon _Nero_, that _Neque adveniens neque proficiscens_, That whether
comming or going he never kissed any: And Christ himself imputes it
to _Simon_, as a neglect of him, That when he _came into his house_ he
did not _kisse_ him. This then was in use', &c. _Sermons_ 80. 41. 407.
The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later
eighteenth century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's _Confessions_,
Bk. 9, and Byron's _Childe Harold_, III. lxxix.
But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English
custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venis,
omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris;
redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; disceditur
abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur affatim;
denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia. '
PAGE =64=. THE DISSOLUTION.
l. 10. _earthly sad despaire. _ Cf. O. E. D. : 'Earthly. 3. Partaking of
the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of
earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete. ' The form was
used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne
indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare,'A young
man of a softly disposition. ' Camden's _Reign of Elizabeth_ (English
transl. ).
PAGE =66=. NEGATIVE LOVE.
l. 15. _What we know not, our selves. _ 'All creatures were brought to
Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures,
he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to himselfe it
may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe lesse then
he did other creatures. ' _Sermons_ 80. 50. 563.
PAGE =67=. THE PROHIBITION.
l. 18. _So, these extreames shall neithers office doe. _ The 'neithers'
of _D_, _H40_, _JC_, supported by 'neyther' in _O'F_ and 'neyther
their' in _Cy_, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and
more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for
'ne'er their'. The reading of _Cy_ shows how the phrase puzzled an
ordinary copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other
prevent either from fulfilling his function. ' Compare, 'As two
yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i. e. each to the other's
purpose). Shakespeare, _Hen. V_, II. ii. 107.
l. 22. _So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee. _ I have placed
a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not
the verb. The 'stay' of _1633_ is defensible, but the _1633_ editor
was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced
while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting
of l. 5. All the MSS. I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated. ' Compare:
And cause her leave to triumph in this wise
Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!
That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,
And must their glory to the world impart.
Daniel, _Delia_, X.
ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the
later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from
_1633_. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:
Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,
O let me live, O love and hate me too.
The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed
are quite intelligible. As given in the editions _1635-69_ they are
nonsensical.
PAGE =68=. THE EXPIRATION.
l. 5. _We ask'd. _ The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis
and sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin
with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting. '
ll. 7 f. _Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too_.
Compare:
_Val. _ No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 236 f.
PAGE =70=. THE PARADOX.
l. 14. _lights life. _ The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the
editions, 'lifes light. ' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun.
In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an
epitaph. This poem is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _1633_ has printed
it from _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by
another of the same kind, which is found also in _H40_, _RP31_, and
_O'F_, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from _TCC_:
A PARADOX.
Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet
Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.
For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare
But Love doth at most distance most appeare.
Yet out of fire water did never goe,
But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.
Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.
Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.
Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.
Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.
The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came
Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,
Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine
Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.
FINIS.
PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.
l. 12. _His highnesse &c. _ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt
gingerbread. ' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.
ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Grosart prints:
Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.
This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than
the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless
Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as
she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a
sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise
posterity. ' Surely this is Abracadabra!
What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used
an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The
copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, and
made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire'
to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was
the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is
an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural
function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not
maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that
so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation
is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable
individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous
existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the
same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some
more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i. e. in the species, not
in the individual. ' (_De Anima_, B. 4. 415 A-B. ) Donne's argument then
is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone this feeling of depression
and remorse after the act of love? Is it a device of nature to
restrain us from an act which shortens the life of the individual (he
refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious effect of the
act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam brought upon
man, the curse of mortality,
of being short,
And only for a minute made to be,
Eagers [i. e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity. '
The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O. E. D. is from
Mulcaster's _Positions_ (1581), where the sense is that of imitating
physically: 'They that be gawled . . . may neither runne nor wrastle
for eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's:
'The nature of som men is so . . . unconvenable that . . . poverte myhte
rather egren hym to don felonies. ' Chaucer, Boëth. _De Consol. Phil. _
In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram on
Bancroft appears:
A learned Bishop of this land
Thinking to make religion stand,
In equall poise on every syde
The mixture of them thus he tryde:
An ounce of protestants he singles
And a dramme of papists mingles,
Then adds a scruple of a puritan
And melts them down in his brayne pan,
But where hee lookes they should digest
The scruple eagers all the rest.
In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:
That scruple troubles all the rest.
PAGE =71=. A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.
The text of this poem in the editions is that of _A18_, _N_, _TC_
among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of the
other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for
'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for
'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'.
It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation
from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the
MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an
obvious blunder.
NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.
A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung,
generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no
thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:
But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.
Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's
_Songs and Sonets_ as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and
rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged
periods of the _Elegies_, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic
verse-paragraph, suggest speech,--impassioned, rhythmical speech
rather than the melody of song.
We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's
songs _were_ set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three
of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made
before'. One of these is _The Baite_, which must have been set to
the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment
found in William Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). The airs of
the other two (see p. 18) I have not been able to find, nor are they
known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in
this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the
music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of
Donne's great _Hymns_.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has
been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:
[Music:
Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind. ]
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_
(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire,
omitting the lute accompaniment:
[Music:
'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?
And will you there-fore rise from me?
What, will you rise, What, will you rise be-cause 'tis light?
Did we lye downe be-cause 'twas night?
Love that in spight of dark-nesse brought us he-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther. ]
PAGE =46=. THE BAITE.
From Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612).
[Music: _Lessons for the Lyra Violl. _
Come liue with me, and be my Loue. ]
EPIGRAMS.
PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions,
_1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here. ' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them. . . . I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth. ' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS. , quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c. _, 1607.
PAGE =76=. SIR JOHN WINGEFIELD. _In that late Island. _ Mr. Gosse has
inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of _O'F_
is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of
course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme
point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. 'Then
we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says Captain
Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's _Annals_, iv. 398. Another
account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of Cadiz and at
the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. Here the
severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to Cadiz'. What
does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island we lately visited
so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets late, that western
island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It would not be unlike
Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed force. Compare (if the
reading be right) 'far faith' (p. 189, l. 4) and the note.
PAGES =75-6=. The series of Epigrams _A burnt ship_, _Fall of a wall_,
_A lame begger_, _Cales and Guyana_, _Sir John Wingefield_ seem to
me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first
suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour when
so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The _Fall of a wall_ may
mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced its
way into the city. _A lame begger_ records a common spectacle in a
Spanish and Catholic town. _Cales and Guyana_ must clearly have been
written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the leaders were
debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on Essex's side) urged
that the fleet should sail west and intercept the silver fleet, but
Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate return to England.
The last of the series chronicles the one death to which every account
of the expedition refers.
PAGE =77=. ANTIQUARY. Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is evidently
the subject of this epigram and is referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, I
cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, LL. D. ,
the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's
chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist
and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to
the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the
examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in Strype's
_Annals_ collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.
PHRYNE. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond,
_Conversations_, ed. Laing, 842.
PAGE =78=. RADERUS. 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German Jesuit,
published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in 1602. '
Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others
of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could
not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition
which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue
which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene
thing can be uttered in it). . . . ' The reason which Donne gives is that
'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and
mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they
gelde. ' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is
therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS. A journal or register of news started at
Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was
entitled: _Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia
potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia,
vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594
gestarum, nuncius_. In the seventeenth century it was published
half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable
(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', _Poetaster_, V. i), nor its
news always trustworthy.
THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished
Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his
Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in
_HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to
be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and
contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish
fare.
l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar. _ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar,
sir; I have not much skill in grass. ' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV.
v.
THE ELEGIES.
Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated
before the larger collections were made or publication took place.
Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being
made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who
to this house,' afterwards called _Elegie on the L. C. _ The order
in the one group, as we find it in e. g. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is _The
Bracelet_,[1] _Going to Bed_, _Jealousie_, _The Anagram_, _Change_,
_The Perfume_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let
mee not serve,' _Loves Warr_, _On his Mistris_, 'Natures lay Ideott,
I taught,' _Loves Progress_. The second group, as we find it in
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_, contains _The Bracelet_, _The Comparison_, _The
Perfume_, _Jealousie_, 'Oh, let not me (_sic_ _W_) serve,' 'Natures
lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Warr_, _Going to Bed_, _Change_, _The
Anagram_, _On his Mistris_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow, who to this
house. ' The last is not given in _A25_. It will be noticed that
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ drops _The Comparison_; _A25_, _JC_, _W_, _Loves
Progress_; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups
together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.
[Footnote 1: I take the titles given in the editions for ease
of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title
which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ have is _On Loves Progresse_;
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_ have none. Other MSS. give one or other
occasionally. ]
These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of
Donne's _Elegies_, taken as such. Of the rest _The Dreame_ is given in
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but among the songs, and _The Autumnall_ is placed
by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed
to get into general circulation.
Can we to any extent date the _Elegies_? There are some hints which
help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably
belong. In _The Bracelet_ Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having
slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:
mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.
The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean
that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us
very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between
the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly
subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in
1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained
the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the
only determinable date. In _Loves Warre_ we are brought nearer to a
definite date.
France in her lunatique giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet shee relies upon our Angels well
Which nere retorne
points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of
late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598.
The line,
And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give
(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:
Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring
I feare, &c. , p. 210),
refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the
fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz
expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference
to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of
1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated
joining it.
To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their
paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly
conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and
Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in
1598.
The twelfth (_His parting from her_) and fifteenth (_The
Expostulation_) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not
_likely_ that they were written after his marriage. _Julia_ is quite
undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before
1615. But the fourteenth (_A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife_) was
certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.
_The Autumnall_ raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has
argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's
dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (_Life of Mr. George
Herbert_, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs.
Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her
son Edward, Donne being then near to (about _First Ed. _) the Fortieth
year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of
man's life. ' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and
brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of
Essex, i. e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary
to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or
thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford
between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton
portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which
Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he
writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to
the best part of it your house. ' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John
Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs.
Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's
evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this
poem.
Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded _a priori_, very
persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and
beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity;
to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the
bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste
and good manners' (_Life, &c. _, ii. 228).
Herbert's name was Magdalen.
ll. 27-8. _Comming and going, wee Perchance might kisse, but not
between those meales_: i. e. the kiss of salutation and parting. In a
sermon on the text 'Kisse the Son, lest he be angry', Donne enumerates
the uses of kissing sanctioned by the Bible, and this among them: 'Now
by this we are slid into our fourth and last branch of our first
part, The perswasion to come to this holy kisse, though defamed by
treachery, though depraved by licentiousnesse, since God invites us to
it, by so many good uses thereof in his Word. It is an imputation laid
upon _Nero_, that _Neque adveniens neque proficiscens_, That whether
comming or going he never kissed any: And Christ himself imputes it
to _Simon_, as a neglect of him, That when he _came into his house_ he
did not _kisse_ him. This then was in use', &c. _Sermons_ 80. 41. 407.
The kiss of salutation lasted in some countries till the later
eighteenth century, perhaps still lasts. See Rousseau's _Confessions_,
Bk. 9, and Byron's _Childe Harold_, III. lxxix.
But Erasmus, in 1499, speaks as though it were a specially English
custom: 'Est praeterea mos nunquam satis laudatus. Sive quo venis,
omnium osculis exciperis; sive discedis aliquo, osculis dimitteris;
redis, redduntur suavia; venitur ad te, propinantur suavia; disceditur
abs te, dividuntur basia; occurritur alicubi, basiatur affatim;
denique quocunque te moves, suaviorum plena sunt omnia. '
PAGE =64=. THE DISSOLUTION.
l. 10. _earthly sad despaire. _ Cf. O. E. D. : 'Earthly. 3. Partaking of
the nature of earth, resembling earth as a substance, consisting of
earth as an element; = Earthy, archaic or obsolete. ' The form was
used as late as 1843, but the change in the later editions of Donne
indicates that it was growing rare in this sense. Compare,'A young
man of a softly disposition. ' Camden's _Reign of Elizabeth_ (English
transl. ).
PAGE =66=. NEGATIVE LOVE.
l. 15. _What we know not, our selves. _ 'All creatures were brought to
Adam, and, because he understood the natures of all those creatures,
he gave them names accordingly. In that he gave no name to himselfe it
may be by some perhaps argued, that he understood himselfe lesse then
he did other creatures. ' _Sermons_ 80. 50. 563.
PAGE =67=. THE PROHIBITION.
l. 18. _So, these extreames shall neithers office doe. _ The 'neithers'
of _D_, _H40_, _JC_, supported by 'neyther' in _O'F_ and 'neyther
their' in _Cy_, is much more characteristic than 'ne'er their', and
more likely to have been altered than to have been substituted for
'ne'er their'. The reading of _Cy_ shows how the phrase puzzled an
ordinary copyist. 'These extremes shall by counteracting each other
prevent either from fulfilling his function. ' Compare, 'As two
yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose' (i. e. each to the other's
purpose). Shakespeare, _Hen. V_, II. ii. 107.
l. 22. _So shall I, live, thy stage not triumph bee. _ I have placed
a comma after I to make quite clear that 'live' is the adjective, not
the verb. The 'stay' of _1633_ is defensible, but the _1633_ editor
was somewhat at sea about this poem, witness the variations introduced
while the edition was printing in ll. 20 and 24 and the misprinting
of l. 5. All the MSS. I have consulted support 'stage'; and this gives
the best meaning: 'Alive, I shall continue to be the stage on which
your victories are daily set forth; dead, I shall be but your triumph,
a thing achieved once, never to be repeated. ' Compare:
And cause her leave to triumph in this wise
Upon the prostrate spoil of that poor heart!
That serves a Trophy to her conquering eyes,
And must their glory to the world impart.
Daniel, _Delia_, X.
ll. 23, 24. There are obviously two versions of these lines which the
later editions have confounded. The first is that of the text, from
_1633_. The second is that of the MSS. and runs, properly pointed:
Then lest thy love, hate, and mee thou undoe,
O let me live, O love and hate me too.
The punctuation of the MSS. is very careless, but the lines as printed
are quite intelligible. As given in the editions _1635-69_ they are
nonsensical.
PAGE =68=. THE EXPIRATION.
l. 5. _We ask'd. _ The past tense of the MSS. makes the antithesis
and sense more pointed. 'It was with no one's leave we lov'd to begin
with, and we will owe to no one the death that comes with parting. '
ll. 7 f. _Goe: and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too_.
Compare:
_Val. _ No more: unless the next word that thou speak'st
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee, breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, III. i. 236 f.
PAGE =70=. THE PARADOX.
l. 14. _lights life. _ The MSS. correct the obvious mistake of the
editions, 'lifes light. ' The 'lights life' is, of course, the sun.
In the same way at 21 'lye' is surely better suited than 'dye' to an
epitaph. This poem is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _1633_ has printed
it from _A18_, _N_, _TC_.
In the latter group of MSS. this poem is followed immediately by
another of the same kind, which is found also in _H40_, _RP31_, and
_O'F_, as well as several more miscellaneous MSS. I print from _TCC_:
A PARADOX.
Whosoe termes Love a fire, may like a poet
Faine what he will, for certaine cannot showe it.
For Fire nere burnes, but when the fuell's neare
But Love doth at most distance most appeare.
Yet out of fire water did never goe,
But teares from Love abundantly doe flowe.
Fire still mounts upward; but Love oft descendeth.
Fire leaves the midst: Love to the Center tendeth.
Fire dryes and hardens: Love doth mollifie.
Fire doth consume, but Love doth fructifie.
The powerful Queene of Love (faire Venus) came
Descended from the Sea, not from the flame,
Whence passions ebbe and flowe, and from the braine
Run to the hart like streames, and back againe.
Yea Love oft fills mens breasts with melting snow
Drowning their Love-sick minds in flouds of woe.
What is Love, water then? it may be soe;
But hee saith trueth, that saith hee doth not knowe.
FINIS.
PAGE =71=. FAREWELL TO LOVE.
l. 12. _His highnesse &c. _ 'Presumably his highness was made of gilt
gingerbread. ' Chambers. See Jonson, _Bartholomew Fair_, III. i.
ll. 28-30. As these lines stand in the old editions they are
unintelligible:
Because that other curse of being short,
And only for a minute made to be
Eager, desires to raise posterity.
Grosart prints:
Because that other curse of being short
And--only-for-a-minute-made-to-be--
Eager desires to raise posterity.
This and the note which he appends I find more incomprehensible than
the old text. This is his note: 'The whole sense then is: Unless
Nature decreed this in order that man should despise it, (just) as
she made it short, that man might for that reason also despise a
sport that was only for a minute made to be eager desires to raise
posterity. ' Surely this is Abracadabra!
What has happened is, I believe, this: Donne here, as elsewhere, used
an obsolescent word, viz. 'eagers', the verb, meaning 'sharpens'. The
copyist did not recognize the form, took 'desire' for the verb, and
made 'eager' the adjectival complement to 'be', changing 'desire'
to 'desires' as predicate to 'curse'. What Donne had in mind was
the Aristotelian doctrine that the desire to beget children is
an expression of man's craving for immortality. The most natural
function, according to Aristotle, of every living thing which is not
maimed in any way is to beget another living thing like itself, that
so it may partake of what is eternal and divine. This participation
is the goal of all desire, and of all natural activity. But perishable
individuals cannot partake of the immortal and divine by continuous
existence. Nothing that is perishable can continue always one and the
same individual. Each, therefore, participates as best he may, some
more, some less; remaining the same in a way, i. e. in the species, not
in the individual. ' (_De Anima_, B. 4. 415 A-B. ) Donne's argument then
is this: 'Why of all animals have we alone this feeling of depression
and remorse after the act of love? Is it a device of nature to
restrain us from an act which shortens the life of the individual (he
refers here to a prevalent belief as to the deleterious effect of the
act of love), needed because that other curse which Adam brought upon
man, the curse of mortality,
of being short,
And only for a minute made to be,
Eagers [i. e. whets or provokes] desire to raise posterity. '
The latest use of 'eager' as a verb quoted by the O. E. D. is from
Mulcaster's _Positions_ (1581), where the sense is that of imitating
physically: 'They that be gawled . . . may neither runne nor wrastle
for eagering the inward'. The Middle English use is closer to Donne's:
'The nature of som men is so . . . unconvenable that . . . poverte myhte
rather egren hym to don felonies. ' Chaucer, Boëth. _De Consol. Phil. _
In the Burley MS. (seventeenth century) the following epigram on
Bancroft appears:
A learned Bishop of this land
Thinking to make religion stand,
In equall poise on every syde
The mixture of them thus he tryde:
An ounce of protestants he singles
And a dramme of papists mingles,
Then adds a scruple of a puritan
And melts them down in his brayne pan,
But where hee lookes they should digest
The scruple eagers all the rest.
In Harl. MS. 4908 f. 83 the last line reads:
That scruple troubles all the rest.
PAGE =71=. A LECTURE UPON THE SHADOW.
The text of this poem in the editions is that of _A18_, _N_, _TC_
among the MSS. A slightly different recension is found in most of the
other MSS. The chief difference is that the latter read 'love' for
'loves' at ll. 9, 14, and 19. They also, however, read 'least' for
'high'st' at l. 12. In l. 19 they vacillate between 'once' and 'our'.
It would not be difficult to defend either version. The only variation
from the printed text which I have admitted is that on which all the
MSS. are unanimous, viz. 'first' for 'short' in l. 26; 'short' is an
obvious blunder.
NOTE ON THE MUSIC TO WHICH CERTAIN OF DONNE'S SONGS WERE SET.
A song meant for the Elizabethans a poem intended to be sung,
generally to the accompaniment of the lute. Donne had clearly no
thought of his songs being an exception to this rule:
But when I have done so,
Some man his art and voice to show
Doth set and sing my paine.
Yet it is difficult to think of some, perhaps the majority, of Donne's
_Songs and Sonets_ as being written to be sung. Their sonorous and
rhetorical rhythm, the elaborate stanzas which, like the prolonged
periods of the _Elegies_, seem to give us a foretaste of the Miltonic
verse-paragraph, suggest speech,--impassioned, rhythmical speech
rather than the melody of song.
We are not haunted by a sense of the
tune to which the song should go, as we are in reading the lyrics of
the Elizabethan Anthologies or of Robert Burns. Yet some of Donne's
songs _were_ set to music. A note in one group of MSS. describes three
of them as 'Songs which were made to certain ayres which were made
before'. One of these is _The Baite_, which must have been set to
the same air as Marlowe's song. I reproduce here a lute-accompaniment
found in William Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612). The airs of
the other two (see p. 18) I have not been able to find, nor are they
known to Mr. Barclay Squire, who has kindly helped and guided me in
this matter of the music. With his aid I have reproduced here the
music of two other songs, and, at another place, that of one of
Donne's great _Hymns_.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The following air is found in Egerton MS. 2013. As given here it has
been conjecturally corrected by Mr. Barclay Squire:
[Music:
Go and catch a falling star
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past times are
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaid's singing
Or to keep of Envy's singing
And find
what wind
Serves to advance an honest mind. ]
PAGE =23=. BREAKE OF DAY.
This is set to the following air in Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_
(1612). As given here it has been transcribed by Mr. Barclay Squire,
omitting the lute accompaniment:
[Music:
'Tis true 'tis day, What though it be?
And will you there-fore rise from me?
What, will you rise, What, will you rise be-cause 'tis light?
Did we lye downe be-cause 'twas night?
Love that in spight of dark-nesse brought us he-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther,
In spight of light should keepe us still to-ge-ther. ]
PAGE =46=. THE BAITE.
From Corkine's _Second Book of Ayres_ (1612).
[Music: _Lessons for the Lyra Violl. _
Come liue with me, and be my Loue. ]
EPIGRAMS.
PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions,
_1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here. ' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them. . . . I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth. ' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS. , quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c. _, 1607.
PAGE =76=. SIR JOHN WINGEFIELD. _In that late Island. _ Mr. Gosse has
inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of _O'F_
is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of
course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme
point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. 'Then
we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says Captain
Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's _Annals_, iv. 398. Another
account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of Cadiz and at
the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. Here the
severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to Cadiz'. What
does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island we lately visited
so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets late, that western
island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It would not be unlike
Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed force. Compare (if the
reading be right) 'far faith' (p. 189, l. 4) and the note.
PAGES =75-6=. The series of Epigrams _A burnt ship_, _Fall of a wall_,
_A lame begger_, _Cales and Guyana_, _Sir John Wingefield_ seem to
me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first
suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour when
so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The _Fall of a wall_ may
mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced its
way into the city. _A lame begger_ records a common spectacle in a
Spanish and Catholic town. _Cales and Guyana_ must clearly have been
written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the leaders were
debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on Essex's side) urged
that the fleet should sail west and intercept the silver fleet, but
Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate return to England.
The last of the series chronicles the one death to which every account
of the expedition refers.
PAGE =77=. ANTIQUARY. Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is evidently
the subject of this epigram and is referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, I
cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, LL. D. ,
the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's
chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist
and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to
the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the
examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in Strype's
_Annals_ collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.
PHRYNE. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond,
_Conversations_, ed. Laing, 842.
PAGE =78=. RADERUS. 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German Jesuit,
published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in 1602. '
Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others
of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could
not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition
which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue
which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene
thing can be uttered in it). . . . ' The reason which Donne gives is that
'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and
mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they
gelde. ' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is
therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS. A journal or register of news started at
Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was
entitled: _Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia
potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia,
vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594
gestarum, nuncius_. In the seventeenth century it was published
half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable
(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', _Poetaster_, V. i), nor its
news always trustworthy.
THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished
Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his
Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in
_HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to
be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and
contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish
fare.
l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar. _ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar,
sir; I have not much skill in grass. ' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV.
v.
THE ELEGIES.
Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated
before the larger collections were made or publication took place.
Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being
made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who
to this house,' afterwards called _Elegie on the L. C. _ The order
in the one group, as we find it in e. g. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is _The
Bracelet_,[1] _Going to Bed_, _Jealousie_, _The Anagram_, _Change_,
_The Perfume_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let
mee not serve,' _Loves Warr_, _On his Mistris_, 'Natures lay Ideott,
I taught,' _Loves Progress_. The second group, as we find it in
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_, contains _The Bracelet_, _The Comparison_, _The
Perfume_, _Jealousie_, 'Oh, let not me (_sic_ _W_) serve,' 'Natures
lay Ideott, I taught,' _Loves Warr_, _Going to Bed_, _Change_, _The
Anagram_, _On his Mistris_, _His Picture_, 'Sorrow, who to this
house. ' The last is not given in _A25_. It will be noticed that
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_ drops _The Comparison_; _A25_, _JC_, _W_, _Loves
Progress_; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups
together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.
[Footnote 1: I take the titles given in the editions for ease
of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title
which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ have is _On Loves Progresse_;
_A25_, _JC_, and _W_ have none. Other MSS. give one or other
occasionally. ]
These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of
Donne's _Elegies_, taken as such. Of the rest _The Dreame_ is given in
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but among the songs, and _The Autumnall_ is placed
by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed
to get into general circulation.
Can we to any extent date the _Elegies_? There are some hints which
help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably
belong. In _The Bracelet_ Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having
slily made
Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;
Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:
mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.
The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean
that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us
very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between
the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly
subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in
1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained
the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the
only determinable date. In _Loves Warre_ we are brought nearer to a
definite date.
France in her lunatique giddiness did hate
Ever our men, yea and our God of late;
Yet shee relies upon our Angels well
Which nere retorne
points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of
late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598.
The line,
And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give
(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:
Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring
I feare, &c. , p. 210),
refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the
fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz
expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference
to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of
1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated
joining it.
To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their
paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly
conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and
Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in
1598.
The twelfth (_His parting from her_) and fifteenth (_The
Expostulation_) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not
_likely_ that they were written after his marriage. _Julia_ is quite
undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before
1615. But the fourteenth (_A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife_) was
certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.
_The Autumnall_ raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has
argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's
dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (_Life of Mr. George
Herbert_, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs.
Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her
son Edward, Donne being then near to (about _First Ed. _) the Fortieth
year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of
man's life. ' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and
brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of
Essex, i. e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary
to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or
thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford
between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton
portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which
Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he
writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to
the best part of it your house. ' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John
Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs.
Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's
evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this
poem.
Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded _a priori_, very
persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and
beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity;
to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the
bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste
and good manners' (_Life, &c. _, ii. 228).
