She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen there, as
I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low.
I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low.
John Donne
The relation of Fate or Destiny to God or
Divine Providence is discussed by Boethius, _De Cons. Phil. _ IV.
_Prose_ III, whom Aquinas follows, _Summa_, I. cxvi. Ultimately the
immovable Providence of God is the cause of all things; but viewed in
the world of change and becoming, accidents or events are ascribed to
Destiny. 'Uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio; ad id quod est, id quod
gignitur; ad aeternitatem, tempus; ad punctum medium, circulus; ita
est fati series mobilis ad Providentiae stabilem simplicitatem. '
Boethius. This is clearly what Donne has in view when he calls Destiny
the Commissary of God or declares that God made but doth not control
her. The idea of Fate in Greek thought which Christian Philosophy
had some difficulty in adjusting to its doctrines of freedom
and providence came from the astronomico-religious ideas of the
Chaldaeans. The idea of Fate 'arose from the observation of the
regularity of the sidereal movements'. Franz Cumont, _Astrology and
Religion among the Greeks and Romans_, 1912, pp. 28, 69.
l. 14. _wishing prayers. _ This may be a phrase corresponding to
'bidding prayers', but 'wishing' is comma'd off as a noun in some MSS.
and 'wishes' may be the author's correction.
PAGE =188=, l. 24. _dull Moralls of a game at Chests. _ The comparison
of life and especially politics to a game of chess is probably an old
one. Sancho Panza develops it with considerable eloquence.
PAGE =188=. H: W: IN HIBER: BELLIGERANTI.
This poem is taken from the Burley MS. , where it is found along with
a number of poems some of which are by Donne, viz. : the _Satyres_, one
of the _Elegies_, and several of the _Epigrams_. Of the others this
alone has the initials 'J. D. ' added in the margin. There can
be little doubt that it is by Donne,--a continuation of the
correspondence of the years 1597-9 to which the last letter and
'Letters more than kisses' belong. In _Life and Letters of Sir Henry
Wotton_ Mr. Pearsall Smith prints what he takes to be a reply to this
letter and the charge of indolence. 'Sir, It is worth my wondering
that you can complain of my seldom writing, when your own letters come
so fearfully as if they tread all the way upon a bog. I have received
from you a few, and almost every one hath a commission to speak of
divers others of their fellows, like you know who in the old comedy
that asks for the rest of his servants. But you make no mention of
any of mine, yet it is not long since I ventured much of my experience
unto you in a long piece of paper, and perhaps not of my credit; it is
that which I sent you by A. R. , whereof till you advertise me I shall
live in fits or agues. ' After referring to the malicious reports in
circulation regarding the Irish expedition he concludes in the style
of the previous letters: 'These be the wise rules of policy, and of
courts, which are upon earth the vainest places. '
l. 11. _yong death_: i. e. early death, death that comes to you while
young.
ll. 13-15. These lines are enough of themselves to prove Donne's
authorship of this poem. Compare _To S^r Henry Goodyere_, p. 183, ll.
17-20.
PAGE =189=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
Lucy, Countess of Bedford, occupies the central place among Donne's
noble patrons and friends. No one was more consistently his friend; to
none does he address himselfe in terms of sincerer and more respectful
eulogy.
The eldest child of John Harington, created by James first Baron
Harington of Exton, was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, in
1594 and was a lady in waiting under Elizabeth. She was one of the
group of noble ladies who hastened north on the death of the Queen
to welcome, and secure the favour of, James and Anne of Denmark. Her
father and mother were granted the tutorship of the young Princess
Elizabeth, and she herself was admitted at once as a Lady of the
Chamber. Her beauty and talent secured her a distinguished place
at Court, and in the years that Donne was a prisoner at Mitcham the
Countess was a brilliant figure in more than one of Ben Jonson's
masques. 'She was "the crowning rose" in that garland of English
beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired Madame Beaumont, the Lady
of the French ambassador, to bring with her to an entertainment on the
8th of December, 1603: the three others being Lady Rich, Lady Susan
Vere, and Lady Dorothy (Sidney); "and", says the Lady Arabella
Stewart, "great cheer they had. "' Wiffen, _Historical Memoirs of the
House of Russell_, 1833. She figured also in Daniel's Masque, _The
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses_, which was published (1604) with an
explanatory letter addressed to her. In praising her beauty Donne
is thus echoing 'the Catholic voice'. The latest Masque in which she
figured was the _Masque of Queens_, 2nd of February, 1609-10.
In Court politics the Countess of Bedford seems to have taken some
part in the early promotion of Villiers as a rival to the Earl of
Somerset; and in 1617 she promoted the marriage of Donne's patron Lord
Hay to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, against
the wish of the bride's father. Match-making seems to have been a
hobby of hers, for in 1625 she was an active agent in arranging the
match between James, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, and Lady
Charlotte de la Tremouille, the heroic Countess of Derby who defended
Lathom House against the Roundheads.
An active and gay life at Court was no proof of the want of a more
serious spirit. Lady Bedford was a student and a poet, and the patron
of scholars and poets. Sir Thomas Roe presented her with coins and
medals; and Drayton, Daniel, Jonson, and Donne were each in turn among
the poets whom she befriended and who sang her praises. She loved
gardens. One of Donne's finest lyrics is written in the garden of
Twickenham Park, which the Countess occupied from 1608 to 1617; and
the laying out of the garden at Moore Park in Hertfordshire, where she
lived from 1617 to her death in 1627, is commended by her successor in
that place, Sir William Temple.
Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir Henry
Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions the death
of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his intimacy
with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his verse
letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises her
beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part
of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the
religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she
herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of
a simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier
phase.
In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November
22-3 (II. p. 10). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies
attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 1612/3),
but Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her
behaviour. After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he
continues: 'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of
money, shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a
manner vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, _Nemo
ex morbo melior_. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and
forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely
among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered
hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from
another at the first view. ' Birch, _The Court and Times of James the
First_, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems
to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis
which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious
and pious verses after this crisis.
See notes on _Twicknam Garden_ and the _Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day_.
PAGE =189=, ll. 4-5. _light . . . faire faith. _ I have retained the
'light' and 'faire faith' of the editions, but the MS. readings
'sight' and 'farr Faith' are quite possibly correct. There is not much
to choose between 'light' and 'sight', but 'farr' is an interesting
reading. Indeed at first sight 'fair' is a rather otiose epithet, a
vaguely complimentary adjective. There is, however, probably more
in it than that. 'Fair' as an epithet of 'Faith' is probably
an antithesis to the 'squint ungracious left-handedness' of
understanding. If 'farr' be the right reading, then Donne is
contrasting faith and sight: 'Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ' Heb. xi. 1. The use of
'far' as an adjective is not uncommon: 'Pulling far history nearer,'
Crashaw; 'His own far blood,' Tennyson; 'Far travellers may lie by
authority,' Gataker (1625), are some examples quoted in the O. E. D.
But there is no parallel to Donne's use of 'far faith' for 'faith
that lays hold on things at a distance'. 'These all died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them afar off', Heb. xi.
13, is probably the source of the phrase. Such a condensed elliptical
construction is quite in Donne's manner. Compare 'Neere death', p. 28,
l. 63. Both versions may be original. The variants in l. 19 point to
some revision of the poem.
PAGE =190=, l. 22. _In every thing there naturally grows, &c. _
'Every thing hath in it as, as Physicians use to call it, _Naturale
Balsamum_, a naturall Balsamum, which, if any wound or hurt which that
creature hath received, be kept clean from extrinseque putrefaction,
will heal of itself. We are so far from that naturall Balsamum, as
that we have a naturall poyson in us, Originall sin:' &c. _Sermons_
80. 32. 313.
'Now Physitians say, that man hath in his Constitution, in his
Complexion, a naturall Vertue, which they call _Balsamum suum_, his
owne Balsamum, by which, any wound which a man could receive in
his body, would cure itself, if it could be kept cleane from the
annoiances of the aire, and all extrinseque encumbrances. Something
that hath some proportion and analogy to this Balsamum of the body,
there is in the soul of man too: The soule hath _Nardum suum_, her
Spikenard, as the Spouse says, _Nardus mea dedit odorem suum_, she
hath a spikenard, a perfume, a fragrancy, a sweet savour in her
selfe. For _virtutes germanius attingunt animam, quam corpus sanitas_,
vertuous inclinations, and disposition to morall goodness, is more
naturall to the soule of man, and nearer of kin to the soule of man,
then health is to the body. And then if we consider bodily health,
_Nulla oratio, nulla doctrinae formula nos docet morbum odisse_, sayes
that Father: There needs no Art, there needs no outward Eloquence, to
persuade a man to be loath to be sick: _Ita in anima inest naturalis
et citra doctrinam mali evitatio_, sayes he: So the soule hath a
naturall and untaught hatred, and detestation of that which is evill,'
&c. _Sermons_ 80. 51. 514.
Paracelsus has a great deal to say about this natural balsam, though
he declares that 'the spirit is _most_ truly the life and balsome of
all Corporeal things'. It was to supply the want of this balsam that
mummy was used as a medicine. Of a man suddenly slain Paracelsus says:
'His whole body is profitable and good and may be prepared into a most
precious Mummie. For, although the spirit of life went out of such a
Body, yet the Balsome, in which lies the Life, remains, which doth as
Balsome preserve other mens. '
l. 27. _A methridate_: i. e. an antidote. See note to p. 255, l. 127.
ll. 31-2. _The first good Angell, &c. _ 'Our first consideration
is upon the persons; and those we finde to be Angelicall women and
Evangelicall Angels: . . . And to recompense that observation, that
never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman, here are good
women made Angels, that is, Messengers, publishers of the greatest
mysteries of our Religion. ' _Sermons_ 80. 25. 242.
ll. 35-6. _Make your returne home gracious; and bestow
This life on that; so make one life of two. _
'Make a present of this life to the next, by living now as you will
live then; and so make this life and the next one'--or, as another
poet puts it:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
This I take to be Donne's meaning. The 'This' of _1635-69_ and
the MSS. , which Chambers also has adopted, seems required by the
antithesis. If one recalls that 'this' is very commonly written
'thys', and that final 's' is little more than a tail, it is easy to
account for 'Thy' in _1633_. The meaning too is not clear at a glance,
and 'Thy' might seem to an editor to make it easier. The thought is
much the same as in the _Obsequies to the Lord Harrington_, p. 279.
And I (though with paine)
Lessen our losse, to magnifie thy gaine
Of triumph, when I say, It was more fit,
That all men should lacke thee, then thou lack it.
Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then
the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place
upon earth. ' _Letters_, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to p.
112, l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.
PAGE =191=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in
the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of
a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct
punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent
editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions (which
the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers completed the
confusion by printing the lines thus,
You have refined me, and to worthiest things--
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.
Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and
enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as of
the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,
Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues.
But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man is
refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to boast
of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, and
strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and sharpened my
judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things owe their value
to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but depends on
circumstances. ' This, the next two verses add, explains why at Court
it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your beauty. To
Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court the focus of
wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative nature of all
goodness he has touched in the _Progresse of the Soule_, p. 316, ll.
518-20:
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.
With the sentiment regarding Courts compare: 'Beauty, in courts, is
so necessary to the young, that those who are without it, seem to be
there to no other purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair; to
attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon and stars do the sun
by day; or at best to be the refuge of those hearts which others have
despised; and by the unworthiness of both to give and take a miserable
comfort. ' Dryden, Dedication of the _Indian Emperor_.
ll. 8-9. (_Where a transcendent height, (as lownesse mee)
Makes her not be, or not show_)
I have completed the enclosure of (Where . . . show) in brackets which
_1633_ began but forgot to carry out. The statement is parenthetical,
and it is of the essence of Donne's wit to turn aside in one
parenthesis to make another, dart from one distracting thought to
a further, returning at the end to the main track. He has left the
Countess for a moment to explain why the Court 'is not Vertues clime'.
She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen there, as
I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low. Then taking up again the
thought of the first line he continues: 'all my rhyme is claimed
there by your vertues, for _there_ rareness gives them value. I am the
comment on what _there_ is a dark text; the usher who announces one
that is a stranger. '
For brackets within brackets compare: 'And yet it is imperfect which
is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense (I dare
not say to reason (though it have appearance of that too) because
none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is
reasonablest) That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all
Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation
and every civill coagulation or society one other; and every man one
other. ' _Letters_, p. 43.
l. 13. _To this place_: i. e. Twickenham. _O'F_ heads the poem _To the
Countesse of Bedford, Twitnam_. The poem is written to welcome her
home. See l. 70.
The development of Donne's subtle and extravagant conceits is a little
difficult. The Countess is the sun which exhales the sweetness of the
country when she comes thither (13-18). Apparently the Countess
has returned to Twickenham in Autumn, perhaps arriving late in the
evening. When she emerges from her chariot it is the breaking of a new
day, the beginning of a new year or new world. Both the Julian and the
Gregorian computations are thus falsified (19-22). It shows her truth
to nature that she will not suffer a day which begins at a stated
hour, but only one that begins with the actual appearance of the light
(23-4: a momentary digression). Since she, the Sun, has thus come to
Twickenham, the Court is made the Antipodes. While the 'vulgar sun' is
an Autumnal one, this Sun which is in Spring, receives our sacrifices.
Her priests, or instruments, we celebrate her (25-30). Then Donne
draws back from the religious strain into which he is launching. He
will not sing Hymns as to a Deity, but offer petitions as to a King,
that he may view the beauty of this Temple, and not as Temple, but as
Edifice. The rest of the argument is simpler.
l. 60. _The same thinge. _ The singular of the MSS. seems to be
required by 'you cannot two'. The 's' of the editions is probably
due to the final 'e'. But 'things' is the reading of _Lec_, the MS.
representing most closely that from which _1633_ was printed.
ll. 71-2. _Who hath seene one, &c. _ 'Who hath seen one, e. g.
Twickenham, which your dwelling there makes a Paradise, would fain see
you too, as whoever had been in Paradise would not have failed to seek
out the Cherubim. ' The construction is elliptical. Compare:
Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday.
P. 286, l. 44.
The Cherubim are specially mentioned (although the Seraphim are the
highest order) because they are traditionally the beautiful angels:
'The Spirit of Chastity . . . in the likenesse of a faire beautifull
Cherubine. ' Bacon, _New Atlantis_ (1658), 22 (O. E. D. ).
PAGE =193=. TO S^r EDWARD HERBERT. AT IULYERS.
Edward Herbert, first Baron of Cherbury (1563-1648), the eldest son of
Donne's friend Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, had not long returned from his
first visit to France when he set out again in 1610 with Lord Chandos
'to pass to the city of Juliers which the Prince of Orange resolved to
besiege. Making all haste thither we found the siege newly begun; the
Low Country army assisted by 4,000 English under the command of
Sir Edward Cecil. We had not long been there when the Marquis de
la Chartre, instead of Henry IV, who was killed by that villain
Ravaillac, came with a brave French army thither'. _Autobiography_,
ed. Sidney Lee. The city was held by the Archduke Leopold for the
Emperor. The Dutch, French, and English were besieging the town in the
interest of the Protestant candidates, the Elector of Brandenburg, and
the Palatine of Neuburg. The siege marked the beginning of the Thirty
Years' War. Herbert was a man of both ability and courage but of
a vanity which outweighed both. Donne's letter humours both his
Philosophical pose and his love of obscurity and harshness in poetry.
His own poems with a few exceptions are intolerably difficult and
unmusical, and Jonson told Drummond that 'Donne said to him he wrote
that Epitaph upon Prince Henry, _Look to me Faith_, to match Sir Ed.
Herbert in obscureness'. (Jonson's _Conversations_, ed. Laing. ) The
poems have been reprinted by the late Professor Churton Collins. In
1609 when Herbert was in England he and Donne both wrote Elegies on
Mistress Boulstred.
l. 1. _Man is a lumpe, &c. _ The image of the beasts Donne has borrowed
from Plato, _The Republic_, ix. 588 B-E.
PAGE =194=, ll. 23-6. A food which to chickens is harmless poisons
men. Our own nature contributes the factor which makes a food into a
poison either corrosive or killing by intensity of heat or cold:
'Et hic nota quod tantus est ordo naturae, ut quod est venenosum et
inconveniens uni est utile et conveniens alteri; sicut jusquiamus
qui est cibus passeris licet homini sit venenosus; et sicut napellus
interficit hominem solum portatus, et mulierem praegnantem non laesit
manducatus, teste Galieno; et mus qui pascitur napello est tiriaca
contra napellum. ' Benvenuto on Dante, _Div. Comm. _: _Paradiso_, i. The
plants here mentioned are henbane and aconite. Concerning hemlock the
O. E. D. quotes Swan, _Spec. M. _ vi. ? 4 (1643), 'Hemlock . . . is meat to
storks and poison to men. ' Donne probably uses the word 'chickens' as
equivalent to 'young birds', not for the young of the domestic
fowl. For the cold of the hemlock see Persius, _Sat. _ v. 145; Ovid,
_Amores_, iii. 7. 13; and Juvenal, _Sat. _ vii. 206, a reference to
Socrates' gift from the Athenians of 'gelidas . . . cicutas'.
ll. 31-2. _Thus man, that might be'his pleasure, &c. _ These lines
are condensed and obscure. The 'his' must mean 'his own'. 'Man who in
virtue of that gift of reason which makes him man might be to himself
a source of joy, becomes instead, by the abuse of reason, his own rod.
Reason which should be the God directing his life becomes the devil
which misleads him. ' Chambers prints 'His pleasure', 'His rod',
referring 'his' to God--which seems hardly possible.
ll. 34-8. _wee'are led awry, &c. _ Chambers's punctuation of this
passage is clearly erroneous:
we're led awry
By them, who man to us in little show,
Greater than due; no form we can bestow
On him, for man into himself can draw
All;
This must mean that we are led astray by those who, in their
abridgement of man, still show him to us greater than he really is.
But this is the opposite of what Donne says. 'Greater than due' goes
with 'no form'. Compare:
'And therefore the Philosopher draws man into too narrow a table, when
he says he is _Microcosmos_, an Abridgement of the world in little:
_Nazianzen_ gives him but his due, when he calls him _Mundum Magnum_,
a world to which all the rest of the world is but subordinate: For
all the world besides, is but God's Foot-stool; Man sits down upon his
right-hand,' &c. _Sermons_ 26. 25. 370.
'It is too little to call Man a little world; Except God, Man is a
diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than
the world; than the world doth, nay than the world is. ' _Devotions
upon Emergent Occasions, &c. _ (1624), p. 64.
On the other hand the Grolier Club editor has erroneously followed
_1635-69_ in altering the full stop after 'chaw' to a comma; and has
substituted a semicolon for the comma after 'fill' (l. 39), reading:
for man into himself can draw
All; all his faith can swallow or reason chaw,
All that is filled, and all that which doth fill;
But 'All that is fill'd,' &c. is not _object_ to 'can draw'. It is
_subject_ (in apposition with 'All the round world') to 'is but a
pill'.
PAGE =195=, l. 47. _This makes it credible. _ I have changed the comma
after 'credible' to a semicolon to avoid the misapprehension, into
which the Grolier Club editor seems to have fallen, that what is
credible is 'that you have dwelt upon all worthy books'. It is because
Lord Herbert has dwelt upon all worthy books that it is credible that
he knows man.
PAGE =195=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
l. 1. _T'have written then, &c. _ This is one of the most difficult of
Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment Donne
has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way
theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the poem is one
of those for which the MS. resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was not
available. The text of _1633_ was taken from a MS. belonging to the
group _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, and contains several errors. Some of
these were corrected in _1635_ from _O'F_ or a MS. resembling it,
but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in
_1633_ was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.
The emendations which I have accepted from _1635_ are--
l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.
l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.
l. 20. 'or all It; You. ' for 'or all, in you. ' There is not much
to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very
logical expression. But the _1633_ reading may mean 'the world's
best part, or the world's all,--you. ' The alteration of _1635_ is not
necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.
l. 4. _Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse. _ 'Naturall and
morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of
thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are
with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all
_Solomons_ bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of
thankefulnesse, as you shall in _Seneca_ and in _Plutarch_. No book of
Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost
in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 550.
PAGE =197=, l. 54. _Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove. _
Following the hint of _O'F_, I have bracketed all these words to show
that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.
ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free. _
Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction
has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But _1633_ is right. If
'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne
free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form
of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the
Penitential Psalms (_Sermons_ 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full
cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above
those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian
Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere
understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by
nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die
or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being
preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i. e. immortal) is presented as
sharply as in this line of the verse _Letter_. But Donne states
the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any
constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for
the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by
preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying,
then, that it cannot dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 27. 269. This makes the
correct reading of the line quite certain.
The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is
speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body
which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well
as labour (ll.
Divine Providence is discussed by Boethius, _De Cons. Phil. _ IV.
_Prose_ III, whom Aquinas follows, _Summa_, I. cxvi. Ultimately the
immovable Providence of God is the cause of all things; but viewed in
the world of change and becoming, accidents or events are ascribed to
Destiny. 'Uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio; ad id quod est, id quod
gignitur; ad aeternitatem, tempus; ad punctum medium, circulus; ita
est fati series mobilis ad Providentiae stabilem simplicitatem. '
Boethius. This is clearly what Donne has in view when he calls Destiny
the Commissary of God or declares that God made but doth not control
her. The idea of Fate in Greek thought which Christian Philosophy
had some difficulty in adjusting to its doctrines of freedom
and providence came from the astronomico-religious ideas of the
Chaldaeans. The idea of Fate 'arose from the observation of the
regularity of the sidereal movements'. Franz Cumont, _Astrology and
Religion among the Greeks and Romans_, 1912, pp. 28, 69.
l. 14. _wishing prayers. _ This may be a phrase corresponding to
'bidding prayers', but 'wishing' is comma'd off as a noun in some MSS.
and 'wishes' may be the author's correction.
PAGE =188=, l. 24. _dull Moralls of a game at Chests. _ The comparison
of life and especially politics to a game of chess is probably an old
one. Sancho Panza develops it with considerable eloquence.
PAGE =188=. H: W: IN HIBER: BELLIGERANTI.
This poem is taken from the Burley MS. , where it is found along with
a number of poems some of which are by Donne, viz. : the _Satyres_, one
of the _Elegies_, and several of the _Epigrams_. Of the others this
alone has the initials 'J. D. ' added in the margin. There can
be little doubt that it is by Donne,--a continuation of the
correspondence of the years 1597-9 to which the last letter and
'Letters more than kisses' belong. In _Life and Letters of Sir Henry
Wotton_ Mr. Pearsall Smith prints what he takes to be a reply to this
letter and the charge of indolence. 'Sir, It is worth my wondering
that you can complain of my seldom writing, when your own letters come
so fearfully as if they tread all the way upon a bog. I have received
from you a few, and almost every one hath a commission to speak of
divers others of their fellows, like you know who in the old comedy
that asks for the rest of his servants. But you make no mention of
any of mine, yet it is not long since I ventured much of my experience
unto you in a long piece of paper, and perhaps not of my credit; it is
that which I sent you by A. R. , whereof till you advertise me I shall
live in fits or agues. ' After referring to the malicious reports in
circulation regarding the Irish expedition he concludes in the style
of the previous letters: 'These be the wise rules of policy, and of
courts, which are upon earth the vainest places. '
l. 11. _yong death_: i. e. early death, death that comes to you while
young.
ll. 13-15. These lines are enough of themselves to prove Donne's
authorship of this poem. Compare _To S^r Henry Goodyere_, p. 183, ll.
17-20.
PAGE =189=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
Lucy, Countess of Bedford, occupies the central place among Donne's
noble patrons and friends. No one was more consistently his friend; to
none does he address himselfe in terms of sincerer and more respectful
eulogy.
The eldest child of John Harington, created by James first Baron
Harington of Exton, was married to Edward, third Earl of Bedford, in
1594 and was a lady in waiting under Elizabeth. She was one of the
group of noble ladies who hastened north on the death of the Queen
to welcome, and secure the favour of, James and Anne of Denmark. Her
father and mother were granted the tutorship of the young Princess
Elizabeth, and she herself was admitted at once as a Lady of the
Chamber. Her beauty and talent secured her a distinguished place
at Court, and in the years that Donne was a prisoner at Mitcham the
Countess was a brilliant figure in more than one of Ben Jonson's
masques. 'She was "the crowning rose" in that garland of English
beauty which the Spanish ambassador desired Madame Beaumont, the Lady
of the French ambassador, to bring with her to an entertainment on the
8th of December, 1603: the three others being Lady Rich, Lady Susan
Vere, and Lady Dorothy (Sidney); "and", says the Lady Arabella
Stewart, "great cheer they had. "' Wiffen, _Historical Memoirs of the
House of Russell_, 1833. She figured also in Daniel's Masque, _The
Vision of the Twelve Goddesses_, which was published (1604) with an
explanatory letter addressed to her. In praising her beauty Donne
is thus echoing 'the Catholic voice'. The latest Masque in which she
figured was the _Masque of Queens_, 2nd of February, 1609-10.
In Court politics the Countess of Bedford seems to have taken some
part in the early promotion of Villiers as a rival to the Earl of
Somerset; and in 1617 she promoted the marriage of Donne's patron Lord
Hay to the youngest daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, against
the wish of the bride's father. Match-making seems to have been a
hobby of hers, for in 1625 she was an active agent in arranging the
match between James, Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, and Lady
Charlotte de la Tremouille, the heroic Countess of Derby who defended
Lathom House against the Roundheads.
An active and gay life at Court was no proof of the want of a more
serious spirit. Lady Bedford was a student and a poet, and the patron
of scholars and poets. Sir Thomas Roe presented her with coins and
medals; and Drayton, Daniel, Jonson, and Donne were each in turn among
the poets whom she befriended and who sang her praises. She loved
gardens. One of Donne's finest lyrics is written in the garden of
Twickenham Park, which the Countess occupied from 1608 to 1617; and
the laying out of the garden at Moore Park in Hertfordshire, where she
lived from 1617 to her death in 1627, is commended by her successor in
that place, Sir William Temple.
Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir Henry
Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions the death
of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his intimacy
with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his verse
letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises her
beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part
of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the
religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she
herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of
a simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier
phase.
In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November
22-3 (II. p. 10). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies
attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 1612/3),
but Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her
behaviour. After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he
continues: 'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of
money, shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a
manner vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, _Nemo
ex morbo melior_. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and
forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely
among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered
hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from
another at the first view. ' Birch, _The Court and Times of James the
First_, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems
to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis
which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious
and pious verses after this crisis.
See notes on _Twicknam Garden_ and the _Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day_.
PAGE =189=, ll. 4-5. _light . . . faire faith. _ I have retained the
'light' and 'faire faith' of the editions, but the MS. readings
'sight' and 'farr Faith' are quite possibly correct. There is not much
to choose between 'light' and 'sight', but 'farr' is an interesting
reading. Indeed at first sight 'fair' is a rather otiose epithet, a
vaguely complimentary adjective. There is, however, probably more
in it than that. 'Fair' as an epithet of 'Faith' is probably
an antithesis to the 'squint ungracious left-handedness' of
understanding. If 'farr' be the right reading, then Donne is
contrasting faith and sight: 'Now faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ' Heb. xi. 1. The use of
'far' as an adjective is not uncommon: 'Pulling far history nearer,'
Crashaw; 'His own far blood,' Tennyson; 'Far travellers may lie by
authority,' Gataker (1625), are some examples quoted in the O. E. D.
But there is no parallel to Donne's use of 'far faith' for 'faith
that lays hold on things at a distance'. 'These all died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen them afar off', Heb. xi.
13, is probably the source of the phrase. Such a condensed elliptical
construction is quite in Donne's manner. Compare 'Neere death', p. 28,
l. 63. Both versions may be original. The variants in l. 19 point to
some revision of the poem.
PAGE =190=, l. 22. _In every thing there naturally grows, &c. _
'Every thing hath in it as, as Physicians use to call it, _Naturale
Balsamum_, a naturall Balsamum, which, if any wound or hurt which that
creature hath received, be kept clean from extrinseque putrefaction,
will heal of itself. We are so far from that naturall Balsamum, as
that we have a naturall poyson in us, Originall sin:' &c. _Sermons_
80. 32. 313.
'Now Physitians say, that man hath in his Constitution, in his
Complexion, a naturall Vertue, which they call _Balsamum suum_, his
owne Balsamum, by which, any wound which a man could receive in
his body, would cure itself, if it could be kept cleane from the
annoiances of the aire, and all extrinseque encumbrances. Something
that hath some proportion and analogy to this Balsamum of the body,
there is in the soul of man too: The soule hath _Nardum suum_, her
Spikenard, as the Spouse says, _Nardus mea dedit odorem suum_, she
hath a spikenard, a perfume, a fragrancy, a sweet savour in her
selfe. For _virtutes germanius attingunt animam, quam corpus sanitas_,
vertuous inclinations, and disposition to morall goodness, is more
naturall to the soule of man, and nearer of kin to the soule of man,
then health is to the body. And then if we consider bodily health,
_Nulla oratio, nulla doctrinae formula nos docet morbum odisse_, sayes
that Father: There needs no Art, there needs no outward Eloquence, to
persuade a man to be loath to be sick: _Ita in anima inest naturalis
et citra doctrinam mali evitatio_, sayes he: So the soule hath a
naturall and untaught hatred, and detestation of that which is evill,'
&c. _Sermons_ 80. 51. 514.
Paracelsus has a great deal to say about this natural balsam, though
he declares that 'the spirit is _most_ truly the life and balsome of
all Corporeal things'. It was to supply the want of this balsam that
mummy was used as a medicine. Of a man suddenly slain Paracelsus says:
'His whole body is profitable and good and may be prepared into a most
precious Mummie. For, although the spirit of life went out of such a
Body, yet the Balsome, in which lies the Life, remains, which doth as
Balsome preserve other mens. '
l. 27. _A methridate_: i. e. an antidote. See note to p. 255, l. 127.
ll. 31-2. _The first good Angell, &c. _ 'Our first consideration
is upon the persons; and those we finde to be Angelicall women and
Evangelicall Angels: . . . And to recompense that observation, that
never good Angel appeared in the likenesse of woman, here are good
women made Angels, that is, Messengers, publishers of the greatest
mysteries of our Religion. ' _Sermons_ 80. 25. 242.
ll. 35-6. _Make your returne home gracious; and bestow
This life on that; so make one life of two. _
'Make a present of this life to the next, by living now as you will
live then; and so make this life and the next one'--or, as another
poet puts it:
And so make life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song.
This I take to be Donne's meaning. The 'This' of _1635-69_ and
the MSS. , which Chambers also has adopted, seems required by the
antithesis. If one recalls that 'this' is very commonly written
'thys', and that final 's' is little more than a tail, it is easy to
account for 'Thy' in _1633_. The meaning too is not clear at a glance,
and 'Thy' might seem to an editor to make it easier. The thought is
much the same as in the _Obsequies to the Lord Harrington_, p. 279.
And I (though with paine)
Lessen our losse, to magnifie thy gaine
Of triumph, when I say, It was more fit,
That all men should lacke thee, then thou lack it.
Compare also: 'Sir, our greatest businesse is more in our power then
the least, and we may be surer to meet in heaven than in any place
upon earth. ' _Letters_, p. 188. And see the quotation in note to p.
112, l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.
PAGE =191=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in
the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of
a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct
punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent
editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions (which
the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers completed the
confusion by printing the lines thus,
You have refined me, and to worthiest things--
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.
Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and
enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as of
the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,
Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues.
But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man is
refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to boast
of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, and
strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and sharpened my
judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things owe their value
to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but depends on
circumstances. ' This, the next two verses add, explains why at Court
it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your beauty. To
Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court the focus of
wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative nature of all
goodness he has touched in the _Progresse of the Soule_, p. 316, ll.
518-20:
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.
With the sentiment regarding Courts compare: 'Beauty, in courts, is
so necessary to the young, that those who are without it, seem to be
there to no other purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair; to
attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon and stars do the sun
by day; or at best to be the refuge of those hearts which others have
despised; and by the unworthiness of both to give and take a miserable
comfort. ' Dryden, Dedication of the _Indian Emperor_.
ll. 8-9. (_Where a transcendent height, (as lownesse mee)
Makes her not be, or not show_)
I have completed the enclosure of (Where . . . show) in brackets which
_1633_ began but forgot to carry out. The statement is parenthetical,
and it is of the essence of Donne's wit to turn aside in one
parenthesis to make another, dart from one distracting thought to
a further, returning at the end to the main track. He has left the
Countess for a moment to explain why the Court 'is not Vertues clime'.
She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen there, as
I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low. Then taking up again the
thought of the first line he continues: 'all my rhyme is claimed
there by your vertues, for _there_ rareness gives them value. I am the
comment on what _there_ is a dark text; the usher who announces one
that is a stranger. '
For brackets within brackets compare: 'And yet it is imperfect which
is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense (I dare
not say to reason (though it have appearance of that too) because
none may doubt but that that religion is certainly best which is
reasonablest) That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all
Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation
and every civill coagulation or society one other; and every man one
other. ' _Letters_, p. 43.
l. 13. _To this place_: i. e. Twickenham. _O'F_ heads the poem _To the
Countesse of Bedford, Twitnam_. The poem is written to welcome her
home. See l. 70.
The development of Donne's subtle and extravagant conceits is a little
difficult. The Countess is the sun which exhales the sweetness of the
country when she comes thither (13-18). Apparently the Countess
has returned to Twickenham in Autumn, perhaps arriving late in the
evening. When she emerges from her chariot it is the breaking of a new
day, the beginning of a new year or new world. Both the Julian and the
Gregorian computations are thus falsified (19-22). It shows her truth
to nature that she will not suffer a day which begins at a stated
hour, but only one that begins with the actual appearance of the light
(23-4: a momentary digression). Since she, the Sun, has thus come to
Twickenham, the Court is made the Antipodes. While the 'vulgar sun' is
an Autumnal one, this Sun which is in Spring, receives our sacrifices.
Her priests, or instruments, we celebrate her (25-30). Then Donne
draws back from the religious strain into which he is launching. He
will not sing Hymns as to a Deity, but offer petitions as to a King,
that he may view the beauty of this Temple, and not as Temple, but as
Edifice. The rest of the argument is simpler.
l. 60. _The same thinge. _ The singular of the MSS. seems to be
required by 'you cannot two'. The 's' of the editions is probably
due to the final 'e'. But 'things' is the reading of _Lec_, the MS.
representing most closely that from which _1633_ was printed.
ll. 71-2. _Who hath seene one, &c. _ 'Who hath seen one, e. g.
Twickenham, which your dwelling there makes a Paradise, would fain see
you too, as whoever had been in Paradise would not have failed to seek
out the Cherubim. ' The construction is elliptical. Compare:
Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday.
P. 286, l. 44.
The Cherubim are specially mentioned (although the Seraphim are the
highest order) because they are traditionally the beautiful angels:
'The Spirit of Chastity . . . in the likenesse of a faire beautifull
Cherubine. ' Bacon, _New Atlantis_ (1658), 22 (O. E. D. ).
PAGE =193=. TO S^r EDWARD HERBERT. AT IULYERS.
Edward Herbert, first Baron of Cherbury (1563-1648), the eldest son of
Donne's friend Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, had not long returned from his
first visit to France when he set out again in 1610 with Lord Chandos
'to pass to the city of Juliers which the Prince of Orange resolved to
besiege. Making all haste thither we found the siege newly begun; the
Low Country army assisted by 4,000 English under the command of
Sir Edward Cecil. We had not long been there when the Marquis de
la Chartre, instead of Henry IV, who was killed by that villain
Ravaillac, came with a brave French army thither'. _Autobiography_,
ed. Sidney Lee. The city was held by the Archduke Leopold for the
Emperor. The Dutch, French, and English were besieging the town in the
interest of the Protestant candidates, the Elector of Brandenburg, and
the Palatine of Neuburg. The siege marked the beginning of the Thirty
Years' War. Herbert was a man of both ability and courage but of
a vanity which outweighed both. Donne's letter humours both his
Philosophical pose and his love of obscurity and harshness in poetry.
His own poems with a few exceptions are intolerably difficult and
unmusical, and Jonson told Drummond that 'Donne said to him he wrote
that Epitaph upon Prince Henry, _Look to me Faith_, to match Sir Ed.
Herbert in obscureness'. (Jonson's _Conversations_, ed. Laing. ) The
poems have been reprinted by the late Professor Churton Collins. In
1609 when Herbert was in England he and Donne both wrote Elegies on
Mistress Boulstred.
l. 1. _Man is a lumpe, &c. _ The image of the beasts Donne has borrowed
from Plato, _The Republic_, ix. 588 B-E.
PAGE =194=, ll. 23-6. A food which to chickens is harmless poisons
men. Our own nature contributes the factor which makes a food into a
poison either corrosive or killing by intensity of heat or cold:
'Et hic nota quod tantus est ordo naturae, ut quod est venenosum et
inconveniens uni est utile et conveniens alteri; sicut jusquiamus
qui est cibus passeris licet homini sit venenosus; et sicut napellus
interficit hominem solum portatus, et mulierem praegnantem non laesit
manducatus, teste Galieno; et mus qui pascitur napello est tiriaca
contra napellum. ' Benvenuto on Dante, _Div. Comm. _: _Paradiso_, i. The
plants here mentioned are henbane and aconite. Concerning hemlock the
O. E. D. quotes Swan, _Spec. M. _ vi. ? 4 (1643), 'Hemlock . . . is meat to
storks and poison to men. ' Donne probably uses the word 'chickens' as
equivalent to 'young birds', not for the young of the domestic
fowl. For the cold of the hemlock see Persius, _Sat. _ v. 145; Ovid,
_Amores_, iii. 7. 13; and Juvenal, _Sat. _ vii. 206, a reference to
Socrates' gift from the Athenians of 'gelidas . . . cicutas'.
ll. 31-2. _Thus man, that might be'his pleasure, &c. _ These lines
are condensed and obscure. The 'his' must mean 'his own'. 'Man who in
virtue of that gift of reason which makes him man might be to himself
a source of joy, becomes instead, by the abuse of reason, his own rod.
Reason which should be the God directing his life becomes the devil
which misleads him. ' Chambers prints 'His pleasure', 'His rod',
referring 'his' to God--which seems hardly possible.
ll. 34-8. _wee'are led awry, &c. _ Chambers's punctuation of this
passage is clearly erroneous:
we're led awry
By them, who man to us in little show,
Greater than due; no form we can bestow
On him, for man into himself can draw
All;
This must mean that we are led astray by those who, in their
abridgement of man, still show him to us greater than he really is.
But this is the opposite of what Donne says. 'Greater than due' goes
with 'no form'. Compare:
'And therefore the Philosopher draws man into too narrow a table, when
he says he is _Microcosmos_, an Abridgement of the world in little:
_Nazianzen_ gives him but his due, when he calls him _Mundum Magnum_,
a world to which all the rest of the world is but subordinate: For
all the world besides, is but God's Foot-stool; Man sits down upon his
right-hand,' &c. _Sermons_ 26. 25. 370.
'It is too little to call Man a little world; Except God, Man is a
diminutive to nothing. Man consists of more pieces, more parts, than
the world; than the world doth, nay than the world is. ' _Devotions
upon Emergent Occasions, &c. _ (1624), p. 64.
On the other hand the Grolier Club editor has erroneously followed
_1635-69_ in altering the full stop after 'chaw' to a comma; and has
substituted a semicolon for the comma after 'fill' (l. 39), reading:
for man into himself can draw
All; all his faith can swallow or reason chaw,
All that is filled, and all that which doth fill;
But 'All that is fill'd,' &c. is not _object_ to 'can draw'. It is
_subject_ (in apposition with 'All the round world') to 'is but a
pill'.
PAGE =195=, l. 47. _This makes it credible. _ I have changed the comma
after 'credible' to a semicolon to avoid the misapprehension, into
which the Grolier Club editor seems to have fallen, that what is
credible is 'that you have dwelt upon all worthy books'. It is because
Lord Herbert has dwelt upon all worthy books that it is credible that
he knows man.
PAGE =195=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.
l. 1. _T'have written then, &c. _ This is one of the most difficult of
Donne's poems. With his usual strain of extravagant compliment Donne
has interwoven some of his deepest thought and most out-of-the-way
theological erudition and scientific lore. Moreover the poem is one
of those for which the MS. resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was not
available. The text of _1633_ was taken from a MS. belonging to the
group _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_, and contains several errors. Some of
these were corrected in _1635_ from _O'F_ or a MS. resembling it,
but in the most vital case what was a right but difficult reading in
_1633_ was changed for an apparently easier but erroneous reading.
The emendations which I have accepted from _1635_ are--
l. 5. 'debt' for 'doubt'.
l. 7. '_nothings_' for '_nothing_'.
l. 20. 'or all It; You. ' for 'or all, in you. ' There is not much
to choose between the two, but 'the world's best all' is not a very
logical expression. But the _1633_ reading may mean 'the world's
best part, or the world's all,--you. ' The alteration of _1635_ is not
necessary, but looks to me like the author's own emendation.
l. 4. _Then worst of civill vices, thanklessenesse. _ 'Naturall and
morall men are better acquainted with the duty of gratitude, of
thankesgiving, before they come to the Scriptures, then they are
with the other duty of repentance which belongs to Prayer; for in all
_Solomons_ bookes, you shall not finde halfe so much of the duty of
thankefulnesse, as you shall in _Seneca_ and in _Plutarch_. No book of
Ethicks, of moral doctrine, is come to us, where there is not, almost
in every leafe, some detestation, some Anathema against ingratitude. '
_Sermons_ 80. 55. 550.
PAGE =197=, l. 54. _Wee (but no forraine tyrants could) remove. _
Following the hint of _O'F_, I have bracketed all these words to show
that the verb to 'Wee' is 'remove', not 'could remove'.
ll. 57-8. _For, bodies shall from death redeemed bee,
Soules but preserved, not naturally free. _
Here the later editions change 'not' to 'borne', and the correction
has been accepted by Grosart and Chambers. But _1633_ is right. If
'not' be changed, the force of the antithesis is lost. What is 'borne
free' does not need to be preserved. What Donne expresses is a form
of the doctrine of conditional immortality. In a sermon on the
Penitential Psalms (_Sermons_ 80. 53. 532) he says: 'We have a full
cleerenesse of the state of the soule after this life, not only above
those of the old Law, but above those of the Primitive Christian
Church, which, in some hundreds of years, came not to a cleere
understanding in that point, whether the soule were immortall by
nature, or but by preservation, whether the soule could not die
or only should not die,' &c. Here the antithesis between 'being
preserved' and 'being naturally free' (i. e. immortal) is presented as
sharply as in this line of the verse _Letter_. But Donne states
the doctrine tentatively 'because that perchance may be without any
constant cleerenesse yet'. Elsewhere he seems to accept it: 'And for
the Immortality of the Soule, it is safelier said to be immortall by
preservation, then immortal, by nature; That God keepes it from dying,
then, that it cannot dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 27. 269. This makes the
correct reading of the line quite certain.
The tenor of Donne's thought seems to me to be as follows: He is
speaking of the soul's eclipse by the body (ll. 40-2), by the body
which should itself be an organ of the soul's life, of prayer as well
as labour (ll.
