The two
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S.
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S.
John Donne
_]
One of Regnier's satires opens in a manner resembling the fourth of
Donne's, and in a letter written from France apparently in 1612 he
refers to 'a book of French Satires', which Mr. Gosse conjectures to
be Regnier's. The resemblance may be accidental, for Donne's _Satyres_
were written before the publication of Regnier's (1608, 1613), and
Donne makes no explicit mention of him or any other French poet.
We learn, however, from his letters that he had read Montaigne and
Rabelais; and it is improbable that he did not share the general
interest of his contemporaries in the poetry of the _Pleiade_. The
one poet to whom recent criticism has pointed as the inspiration
of Donne's metaphysical verse is the Protestant poet Du Bartas. Mr.
Alfred Horatio Upham (_The French Influence in English Literature. _
New York, 1908), and following him Sir Sidney Lee (_The French
Renaissance in England. _ Oxford, 1910), have insisted strongly on the
importance of this influence. The latter goes so far as to say that
'Donne clothed elegies, eclogues, divine poems, epicedes, obsequies,
satires, in a garb barely distinguishable from the style of Du Bartas
and Sylvester', and that the metaphysical style in English poetry is a
heritage from Du Bartas.
I confess this seems to me a somewhat exaggerated statement. When
I turn from Donne's passionate and subtle songs and elegies to
Sylvester's hum-drum and yet 'conceited' work, I find their styles
eminently distinguishable. Mr. Upham indeed allows that Donne's
genius makes 'vital and impressive' what in the original is 'vapid
and commonplace'. He pleads for no more than an 'element of French
suggestion'.
Of the most characteristic features of Du Bartas's rhetoric, his
affected antitheses, his studied alliterative effects, and especially
his double-epithets 'aime-carnage', 'charme-souci', 'blesse-honneur',
Sylvester's 'forbidden-Bit-lost-glory', 'the Act-simply-pure', &c. ,
Mr. Upham admits that Donne makes sparing use. Donne uses a fair
number of compounds but the majority of these are nouns and verbs. Of
the epithets only one or two are of the sentence-compressing
character which the French poet cultivated. The most like is
'full-on-both-side-written rolls'. The real link between Du Bartas and
Donne is that they are metaphysical poets. Following Lucretius, whom
he often translates, the Frenchman set himself to give a scientific
account of the creation of the universe as outlined in _Genesis_. He
describes with the utmost minuteness of detail, and necessarily uses
similes better fitted to elucidate and illustrate than to give poetic
pleasure, drawn from the most everyday sources as well as arts and
sciences. It was part of the programme of the _Pleiade_ thus to annex
the vocabulary of learning and the crafts. Now Donne may have read Du
Bartas in the original, or he may have seen some parts of Sylvester's
translation (it did not appear till 1598), as it was in preparation,
though to a Catholic, as Donne was, the poem would not have the
attraction it had for Protestant poets in England, Holland, and
Germany. The bent of his own mind was to metaphysics, to erudition,
and also to figures realistic and surprising rather than beautiful.
It would be rash to deny that he may have found in Du Bartas a style
which he preferred to the Italianate picturesqueness of sonneteers and
idyllists, and been encouraged to follow his bent. That he borrowed
his style from Du Bartas is _non proven_: and there are in his work
strains of feeling, thought, and learning which cannot be traced
to the French poet. Two poets more essentially unlike it would be
difficult to imagine. There are very few passages where one can trace
or conjecture echoes or borrowings (see note, II. p. 193). I agree
indeed with Mr. Upham that the poems which most strongly suggest
that Donne had been reading Du Bartas are the First and Second
_Anniversaries_, which Sir Sidney Lee inadvertently calls early
poems. Here at least he is often dealing with the same themes. One
can illustrate his thought from Du Bartas. Perhaps it was the latter's
poem which suggested the use of marginal notes, giving the argument of
the poem.
[Sidenote: _Spanish. _]
We know from Donne's explicit statement that his library was full both
of Spanish poets and Spanish theologians, and there has been some talk
of Spanish influence in his poetry. But no one has adduced evidence.
Gongora is out of the question, for Gongora did not begin to cultivate
the extravagant conceits of his later poetry till he came under the
influence of Carillo's posthumous poems in 1611 (Fitzmaurice Kelly:
_Spanish Literature_, 283-5); nor is there much resemblance between
his high-flown Marinism and Donne's metaphysical subtleties. It is
possible that Spanish mysticism and religious eloquence have left
traces in Donne's _Divine Poems_ and sermons. The subject awaits
investigation.
[Sidenote: _Scholastic Philosophy. _]
A commentator on Donne is, therefore, not called on to trace literary
echoes in his poetry as Bishop Newton and others have done in Milton's
poems. It is reading of another kind, though a kind also traceable
in Milton, that he has to note. Donne was steeped in Scholastic
Philosophy and Theology. Often under his most playful conceits lurk
Scholastic definitions and distinctions. The question of the influence
of Plato on the poets of the Renaissance has been discussed of recent
years, but generally without a sufficient preliminary inquiry as
to the Scholastic inheritance of these poets. Doctrines that derive
ultimately, it may be, from Plato and Aristotle were familiar to Donne
and others in the first place from Aquinas and the theology of the
Schools, and, as Professor Picavet has insisted (_Esquisse d'une
histoire generale et comparee des philosophies medievales. _ Paris,
1907), they entered the Scholastic Philosophy through Plotinus and
were modified in the passage. [1] The present editor is in no way a
specialist in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given
here concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text
and to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this
as far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further
investigation must follow. An expert will doubtless note many
allusions that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have
endeavoured to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.
[Footnote 1: The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and
Theology in English poetry deserves attention. When Milton
states that
They also serve who only stand and wait,
he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the
Areopagite (adopted by Aquinas), that the four highest
orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, and
Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages. ]
[Sidenote: _The Fathers, &c. _]
Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen,
especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes use
in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton had
familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy from
Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and casuists.
_The Progresse of the Soule_ reveals his acquaintance with Jewish
apocryphal legends.
[Sidenote: _Law. _]
But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student
he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic
immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; but his legal
studies have left their mark in his _Songs and Sonets_. Of Medicine he
had made an extensive study, and the poems abound in allusions to both
the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new Paracelsian medicine with
its chemical drugs and homoeopathic cures. [2] In Physics he knows,
like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, their concentric
arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c. , and at the same
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
[Footnote 2: In the _Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c. _
(1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, Donne gives a short sketch of the history
of medical doctrines from Hippocrates through Galen to Paracelsus,
but declares that the new principles are attributed to the latter
'too much to his honour'. ]
[Sidenote: _Travels. _]
A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn from
the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh has not
included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering the
influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination (_The English
Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. _ Glasgow, 1906, iii), but perhaps
none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my America,
my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at least in
imagination,
a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;
he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the
North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.
In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's
erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not so
much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the form
in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to his own
works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or but slightly
later works, as Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and Browne's
_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. I have made constant use of the _Summa
Theologiae_ of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne's
_Patrologiae Cursus Completus_ (1845). By Professor Picavet my
attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's _Enneads_
with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic
thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's _Philosophie der
Griechen_, on Plotinus, and Harnack's _History of Dogma_. Throughout,
my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to
accumulate parallels.
*** In the following notes the _LXXX Sermons &c. _ (1640), _Fifty
Sermons &c. _ (1649), and _XXVI Sermons &c. _ (1669/70) are referred to
thus:--80. 19. 189, i. e. the _LXXX Sermons_, the nineteenth sermon,
page 189. References to page and line simply of the poems are to the
first volume of this edition. References to the second are given thus,
II. p. 249.
THE PRINTER TO &c.
See _Text and Canon of Donne's Poems_, p. lix.
PAGE =1=, ll. 17-18. _it would have come to us from beyond the Seas_:
e. g. from Holland.
ll. 19-20. _My charge and pains in procuring of it_: A significant
statement as to the source of the edition.
PAGE =3=. _Hexastichon Bibliopolae. _
l. 1. _his last preach'd, and printed Booke_, i. e. _Deaths Duell or
a Consolation to the Soule against the dying Life and living Death
of the body. Delivered in a sermon at Whitehall, before the Kings
Majesty in the beginning of Lent 1630, &c. . . . Being his last Sermon
and called by his Majesties household the Doctors owne Funerall
Sermon. 1632, 1633. _
This has for frontispiece a bust of Donne in his shroud, engraved by
Martin Dr[oeshout] from the drawing from which Nicholas Stone cut the
figure on Donne's tomb (Gosse's _Life, &c. _ ii. 288). Walton's account
of the manner in which this picture was prepared is well known. See
II. p. 249.
PAGE =4=. _William, Lord Craven, &c. _ This is the younger Donne's
dedication. See _Text and Canon, &c. _, p. lxx.
William Craven (1606-1697) entered the service of Maurice, Prince of
Nassau in 1623. He served later, 1631, under Gustavus Adolphus; and
became a devoted adherent of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the cause of the
Palatine house. He lost his estates in the Rebellion, but after the
Restoration was created successively Baron Craven of Hampsted-Marsham,
Viscount Craven of Uffington, and Earl of Craven. He was an early
member of the Royal Society.
Of the younger John Donne, D. C. L. , whose life was dissolute and
poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem
addressed to his father. It is found in _O'F_ and has been printed by
Mr. Warwick Bond:
A LETTER.
No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That w^{ch} I feare I doe too soone pursue
W^{ch} is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yo^r sonne am prouder of yo^r band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.
Yo^r obedient sonne
JO. DONNE.
PAGES =5, 6=. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the sheets
hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of Donne's
poems prepared for the press in 1649. See _Text and Canon, &c. _
They were taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_ (1616), where they are Nos.
xxiii. , xciv. , and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three
memorable criticisms in his _Conversations with Drummond_ (ed. Laing,
Shakespeare Society, 1842):
'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things. '
'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging. '
'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish. '
SONGS AND SONETS.
Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any
definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written
all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be
before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as
are discoverable in the _Elegies_, poems similar in theme and tone
to the _Songs and Sonets_. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and
cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says,
'All Donne's Love-poems . . . seem to me to fall into two divisions.
There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat
deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his
earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period
before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom
he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore
from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of
the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love. ' This is
a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and
it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before
1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from
Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering
at least courtly adoration to some other lady.
Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex
nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more
cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth
about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better
angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a continual
contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his
Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth. '
The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he
took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of
outlook on men and women. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and
Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr.
Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the
Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of
_Ignatius his Conclave_, were all written long after his marriage and
when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'.
Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little.
These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in
the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which
disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one
with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the
history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that
_none_ of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than
two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit
is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the
first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations'
of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own
inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe
and catche', _Womans constancy_, _The Indifferent_, _Loves Vsury_,
_The Legacie_, _Communitie_, _Confined Love_, _Loves Alchymie_, _The
Flea_, _The Message_, _Witchcraft by a picture_, _The Apparition_,
_Loves Deitie_, _Loves diet_, _The Will_, _A Jeat Ring sent_,
_Negative love_, _Farewell to love_. In another group the wit in
Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the
lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and
intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such
are _The good-morrow_, _The Sunne Rising_, _The Canonization_, _Lovers
infiniteness_, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' _A Feaver_, _Aire and
Angells_ (touched with cynical humour at the close), _Breake of day_,
_The Anniversarie_, _A Valediction: of the booke_, _Loves growth_,
_The Dreame_, _A Valediction: of weeping_, _The Baite_, _A
Valediction: forbidding mourning_, _The Extasie_, _The Prohibition_,
_The Expiration_, _Lecture upon the Shadow_. It would, of course, be
rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like
_The Baite_, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse
side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments.
But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with
elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before
and after their marriage.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine
examples of his subtler moods as _The Funerall_, _The Blossome_, _The
Primrose_, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the
case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him
or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think,
have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear
connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford.
The two
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day_. Yet the very names 'Twicknam
Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of
Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford
was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of
the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless,
and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on
November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in
a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common
complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne
may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is
hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of
Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright
all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention.
It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS.
collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.
PAGE =7=. THE GOOD-MORROW.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which
is given in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and in _1633_, reads,
3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better.
The other, which is the most common in the MSS. , reads, 3. childish
pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of
1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer
'set up' from _1633_, and he or the editor corrected from a MS.
collection, probably _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In _TCD_ the second recension
is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the
MS. ; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem
is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem
to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two
versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ seems the
more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first
version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the
alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether
'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to
say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that
the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two
hemispheres that fit one another more exactly? ' But this is not,
I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is
implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other.
Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world.
The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find
a _better_ hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe
North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. _Let Maps to other. _ The edition may have dropped the 's',
which occurs in most of the MSS. , but the plural without 's' is common
even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things. '
Bunyan, _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, p. 106 (Cambridge English
Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show
their teeth in way of smile. ' Shakespeare, _Merchant of Venice_, I. i.
54.
ll. 20-1. _If our two loves be one, &c. _ If our two loves are _one_,
dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though _two_,
they are always alike. What is simple--as God or the soul--cannot
be dissolved; nor compounds, e. g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose
elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma
separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens
desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et
forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam
incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur
contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in
contraria sunt' &c. , Aquinas, _Summa_ I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 6. The
body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential
immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest
their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they
shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish;
but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they
shall alwaies know they shall never dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of
the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title _A Raritie_. It is
set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that
Habington's poem, _Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of
Women_ (_Castara_, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.
Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.
A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in _The
Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. _ (1669)
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.
JOHN DUNNE.
l. 2. _Get with child a mandrake root. _ 'Many Mola's and false
conceptions there are of _Mandrakes_, the first from great Antiquity,
conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man. . . . Now
whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting
many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived
similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of
the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs. ' Sir
Thomas Browne's _Vulgar Errors_ (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also
_The Progresse of the Soule_, st. xv, p. 300.
PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.
l. 2. _the Worthies. _ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua,
David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick
is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions
Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a
wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and
pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled
in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred
guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174.
l. 6. _The skill of specular stone. _ Compare _To the Countesse of
Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take
'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i. e.
glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare
not affirm for certain. ' This is the 'pierre speculaire' or 'pierre a
miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent
stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians
(among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the
Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely
Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the
_Coelum Philosophorum_:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know
and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air.
Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and
the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror
in which an inverted copy of an object is seen. ' The old name for
crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably
that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone',
but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the
stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the
other.
l. 16. _Loves but their oldest clothes. _ The 'her' of _B_ is a
tempting reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their'
is the common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro
between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic use
of the pronoun is striking in either case.
Compare _To Mrs. M. H. _, p. 217, ll. 31-2.
l. 18. _Vertue attir'd in woman see. _ The reading of the 1633
edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's
characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in
woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible
form of woman and love that. '
PAGE =11=. THE SUNNE RISING.
Compare Ovid, _Amores_, I. 13.
Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.
A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections with
Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly what
Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical and the
metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.
l. 17. _both th' India's of spice and Myne. _ A distinction that Donne
is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines
of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne. '
Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O. E. D. does not contradict this, for
the word had a wider connotation. Compare _Loves exchange_, p. 35, ll.
34-35:
and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.
And _The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 17:
thy Western land of Myne.
And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in
Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the
East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies. ' _Sermons_ 50. 15. 123. And
'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the
land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that
is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. _To Sir Robert Ker. _
Gosse's _Life, &c. _, ii. 191.
l.
One of Regnier's satires opens in a manner resembling the fourth of
Donne's, and in a letter written from France apparently in 1612 he
refers to 'a book of French Satires', which Mr. Gosse conjectures to
be Regnier's. The resemblance may be accidental, for Donne's _Satyres_
were written before the publication of Regnier's (1608, 1613), and
Donne makes no explicit mention of him or any other French poet.
We learn, however, from his letters that he had read Montaigne and
Rabelais; and it is improbable that he did not share the general
interest of his contemporaries in the poetry of the _Pleiade_. The
one poet to whom recent criticism has pointed as the inspiration
of Donne's metaphysical verse is the Protestant poet Du Bartas. Mr.
Alfred Horatio Upham (_The French Influence in English Literature. _
New York, 1908), and following him Sir Sidney Lee (_The French
Renaissance in England. _ Oxford, 1910), have insisted strongly on the
importance of this influence. The latter goes so far as to say that
'Donne clothed elegies, eclogues, divine poems, epicedes, obsequies,
satires, in a garb barely distinguishable from the style of Du Bartas
and Sylvester', and that the metaphysical style in English poetry is a
heritage from Du Bartas.
I confess this seems to me a somewhat exaggerated statement. When
I turn from Donne's passionate and subtle songs and elegies to
Sylvester's hum-drum and yet 'conceited' work, I find their styles
eminently distinguishable. Mr. Upham indeed allows that Donne's
genius makes 'vital and impressive' what in the original is 'vapid
and commonplace'. He pleads for no more than an 'element of French
suggestion'.
Of the most characteristic features of Du Bartas's rhetoric, his
affected antitheses, his studied alliterative effects, and especially
his double-epithets 'aime-carnage', 'charme-souci', 'blesse-honneur',
Sylvester's 'forbidden-Bit-lost-glory', 'the Act-simply-pure', &c. ,
Mr. Upham admits that Donne makes sparing use. Donne uses a fair
number of compounds but the majority of these are nouns and verbs. Of
the epithets only one or two are of the sentence-compressing
character which the French poet cultivated. The most like is
'full-on-both-side-written rolls'. The real link between Du Bartas and
Donne is that they are metaphysical poets. Following Lucretius, whom
he often translates, the Frenchman set himself to give a scientific
account of the creation of the universe as outlined in _Genesis_. He
describes with the utmost minuteness of detail, and necessarily uses
similes better fitted to elucidate and illustrate than to give poetic
pleasure, drawn from the most everyday sources as well as arts and
sciences. It was part of the programme of the _Pleiade_ thus to annex
the vocabulary of learning and the crafts. Now Donne may have read Du
Bartas in the original, or he may have seen some parts of Sylvester's
translation (it did not appear till 1598), as it was in preparation,
though to a Catholic, as Donne was, the poem would not have the
attraction it had for Protestant poets in England, Holland, and
Germany. The bent of his own mind was to metaphysics, to erudition,
and also to figures realistic and surprising rather than beautiful.
It would be rash to deny that he may have found in Du Bartas a style
which he preferred to the Italianate picturesqueness of sonneteers and
idyllists, and been encouraged to follow his bent. That he borrowed
his style from Du Bartas is _non proven_: and there are in his work
strains of feeling, thought, and learning which cannot be traced
to the French poet. Two poets more essentially unlike it would be
difficult to imagine. There are very few passages where one can trace
or conjecture echoes or borrowings (see note, II. p. 193). I agree
indeed with Mr. Upham that the poems which most strongly suggest
that Donne had been reading Du Bartas are the First and Second
_Anniversaries_, which Sir Sidney Lee inadvertently calls early
poems. Here at least he is often dealing with the same themes. One
can illustrate his thought from Du Bartas. Perhaps it was the latter's
poem which suggested the use of marginal notes, giving the argument of
the poem.
[Sidenote: _Spanish. _]
We know from Donne's explicit statement that his library was full both
of Spanish poets and Spanish theologians, and there has been some talk
of Spanish influence in his poetry. But no one has adduced evidence.
Gongora is out of the question, for Gongora did not begin to cultivate
the extravagant conceits of his later poetry till he came under the
influence of Carillo's posthumous poems in 1611 (Fitzmaurice Kelly:
_Spanish Literature_, 283-5); nor is there much resemblance between
his high-flown Marinism and Donne's metaphysical subtleties. It is
possible that Spanish mysticism and religious eloquence have left
traces in Donne's _Divine Poems_ and sermons. The subject awaits
investigation.
[Sidenote: _Scholastic Philosophy. _]
A commentator on Donne is, therefore, not called on to trace literary
echoes in his poetry as Bishop Newton and others have done in Milton's
poems. It is reading of another kind, though a kind also traceable
in Milton, that he has to note. Donne was steeped in Scholastic
Philosophy and Theology. Often under his most playful conceits lurk
Scholastic definitions and distinctions. The question of the influence
of Plato on the poets of the Renaissance has been discussed of recent
years, but generally without a sufficient preliminary inquiry as
to the Scholastic inheritance of these poets. Doctrines that derive
ultimately, it may be, from Plato and Aristotle were familiar to Donne
and others in the first place from Aquinas and the theology of the
Schools, and, as Professor Picavet has insisted (_Esquisse d'une
histoire generale et comparee des philosophies medievales. _ Paris,
1907), they entered the Scholastic Philosophy through Plotinus and
were modified in the passage. [1] The present editor is in no way a
specialist in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given
here concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text
and to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this
as far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further
investigation must follow. An expert will doubtless note many
allusions that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have
endeavoured to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.
[Footnote 1: The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and
Theology in English poetry deserves attention. When Milton
states that
They also serve who only stand and wait,
he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the
Areopagite (adopted by Aquinas), that the four highest
orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, and
Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages. ]
[Sidenote: _The Fathers, &c. _]
Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen,
especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes use
in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton had
familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy from
Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and casuists.
_The Progresse of the Soule_ reveals his acquaintance with Jewish
apocryphal legends.
[Sidenote: _Law. _]
But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student
he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic
immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; but his legal
studies have left their mark in his _Songs and Sonets_. Of Medicine he
had made an extensive study, and the poems abound in allusions to both
the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new Paracelsian medicine with
its chemical drugs and homoeopathic cures. [2] In Physics he knows,
like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, their concentric
arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c. , and at the same
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
[Footnote 2: In the _Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c. _
(1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, Donne gives a short sketch of the history
of medical doctrines from Hippocrates through Galen to Paracelsus,
but declares that the new principles are attributed to the latter
'too much to his honour'. ]
[Sidenote: _Travels. _]
A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn from
the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh has not
included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering the
influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination (_The English
Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. _ Glasgow, 1906, iii), but perhaps
none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my America,
my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at least in
imagination,
a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;
he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the
North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.
In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's
erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not so
much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the form
in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to his own
works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or but slightly
later works, as Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and Browne's
_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. I have made constant use of the _Summa
Theologiae_ of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne's
_Patrologiae Cursus Completus_ (1845). By Professor Picavet my
attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's _Enneads_
with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic
thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's _Philosophie der
Griechen_, on Plotinus, and Harnack's _History of Dogma_. Throughout,
my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to
accumulate parallels.
*** In the following notes the _LXXX Sermons &c. _ (1640), _Fifty
Sermons &c. _ (1649), and _XXVI Sermons &c. _ (1669/70) are referred to
thus:--80. 19. 189, i. e. the _LXXX Sermons_, the nineteenth sermon,
page 189. References to page and line simply of the poems are to the
first volume of this edition. References to the second are given thus,
II. p. 249.
THE PRINTER TO &c.
See _Text and Canon of Donne's Poems_, p. lix.
PAGE =1=, ll. 17-18. _it would have come to us from beyond the Seas_:
e. g. from Holland.
ll. 19-20. _My charge and pains in procuring of it_: A significant
statement as to the source of the edition.
PAGE =3=. _Hexastichon Bibliopolae. _
l. 1. _his last preach'd, and printed Booke_, i. e. _Deaths Duell or
a Consolation to the Soule against the dying Life and living Death
of the body. Delivered in a sermon at Whitehall, before the Kings
Majesty in the beginning of Lent 1630, &c. . . . Being his last Sermon
and called by his Majesties household the Doctors owne Funerall
Sermon. 1632, 1633. _
This has for frontispiece a bust of Donne in his shroud, engraved by
Martin Dr[oeshout] from the drawing from which Nicholas Stone cut the
figure on Donne's tomb (Gosse's _Life, &c. _ ii. 288). Walton's account
of the manner in which this picture was prepared is well known. See
II. p. 249.
PAGE =4=. _William, Lord Craven, &c. _ This is the younger Donne's
dedication. See _Text and Canon, &c. _, p. lxx.
William Craven (1606-1697) entered the service of Maurice, Prince of
Nassau in 1623. He served later, 1631, under Gustavus Adolphus; and
became a devoted adherent of Elizabeth of Bohemia and the cause of the
Palatine house. He lost his estates in the Rebellion, but after the
Restoration was created successively Baron Craven of Hampsted-Marsham,
Viscount Craven of Uffington, and Earl of Craven. He was an early
member of the Royal Society.
Of the younger John Donne, D. C. L. , whose life was dissolute and
poetry indecent, perhaps the most pleasing relic is the following poem
addressed to his father. It is found in _O'F_ and has been printed by
Mr. Warwick Bond:
A LETTER.
No want of duty did my mind possesse,
I through a dearth of words could not expresse
That w^{ch} I feare I doe too soone pursue
W^{ch} is to pay my duty due to you.
For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this way
I shall diminish what I hope to pay.
And this consider, T'was the sonne of May
And not Apollo that did rule the day.
Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;
In gratefull verse or else in thankfull prose
I would have told you (father) by my hand
That I yo^r sonne am prouder of yo^r band
Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay
Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.
Yo^r obedient sonne
JO. DONNE.
PAGES =5, 6=. The three poems by Jonson were printed in the sheets
hastily added by the younger Donne in 1650 to the edition of Donne's
poems prepared for the press in 1649. See _Text and Canon, &c. _
They were taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_ (1616), where they are Nos.
xxiii. , xciv. , and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three
memorable criticisms in his _Conversations with Drummond_ (ed. Laing,
Shakespeare Society, 1842):
'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things. '
'That Done for not keeping of accent deserved hanging. '
'That Done himself, for not being understood, would perish. '
SONGS AND SONETS.
Of all Donne's poems these are the most difficult to date with any
definiteness. Jonson, Drummond notes, 'affirmeth Done to have written
all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old,' that would be
before 1598, the year in which Donne became secretary to Sir Thomas
Egerton. This harmonizes fairly well with such indications of date as
are discoverable in the _Elegies_, poems similar in theme and tone
to the _Songs and Sonets_. Mr. Chambers pushes the more daring and
cynical of these poems in both these groups further back. He says,
'All Donne's Love-poems . . . seem to me to fall into two divisions.
There is one, marked by cynicism, ethical laxity and a somewhat
deliberate profession of inconstancy. This I believe to be his
earliest style, and ascribe the poems marked by it to the period
before 1596. About that date he became acquainted with Anne More, whom
he evidently loved devotedly and sincerely ever after. And therefore
from 1596 onwards I place the second division, with its emphasis of
the spiritual, and deep insight into the real things of love. ' This is
a little too early. Anne More was only twelve years old in 1596, and
it is unlikely that she and Donne were known to each other before
1598. Their affection probably ripened later. It almost seems from
Donne's letters to his friends as though about 1599 he was proffering
at least courtly adoration to some other lady.
Moreover, it is to conceive somewhat inadequately of Donne's complex
nature to make too sharp a temporal division between his gayer, more
cynical effusions and his graver, even religious pieces. The truth
about Donne is well stated by Professor Norton: 'Donne's "better
angel" and his "worser spirit" seem to have kept up a continual
contest, now the one, now the other, gaining the mastery in his
Poor soul, the centre of his sinful earth. '
The 'evaporations' which he allowed his wit from time to time till he
took orders showed always a certain 'ethical laxity' and 'cynicism' of
outlook on men and women. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and
Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr.
Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the
Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of
_Ignatius his Conclave_, were all written long after his marriage and
when he was already the author of moral epistles and 'divine poems'.
Even Professor Norton's statement exaggerates the 'contest' a little.
These things were evaporations of wit, and even a serious man in
the seventeenth century allowed to his wit satyric gambols which
disconcert our staider and more fastidious taste. I am quite at one
with Mr. Chambers in accepting his marriage as a turning-point in the
history of Donne's life and mind. But it would be rash to affirm that
_none_ of his wittier lyrics were written after this date.
Donne's 'songs and sonets' seem to me to fall into three rather than
two classes, though there is a good deal of overlapping. Donne's wit
is always touched with passion; his passion is always witty. In the
first class I would place those which are frankly 'evaporations'
of more or less cynical wit, the poems in which he parades his own
inconstancy or enlarges on the weaknesses of women, poems such as 'Goe
and catche', _Womans constancy_, _The Indifferent_, _Loves Vsury_,
_The Legacie_, _Communitie_, _Confined Love_, _Loves Alchymie_, _The
Flea_, _The Message_, _Witchcraft by a picture_, _The Apparition_,
_Loves Deitie_, _Loves diet_, _The Will_, _A Jeat Ring sent_,
_Negative love_, _Farewell to love_. In another group the wit in
Donne, whether gaily or passionately cynical, is subordinate to the
lover, pure and simple, singing, at times with amazing simplicity and
intensity of feeling, the joys of love and the sorrow of parting. Such
are _The good-morrow_, _The Sunne Rising_, _The Canonization_, _Lovers
infiniteness_, 'Sweetest love, I do not goe,' _A Feaver_, _Aire and
Angells_ (touched with cynical humour at the close), _Breake of day_,
_The Anniversarie_, _A Valediction: of the booke_, _Loves growth_,
_The Dreame_, _A Valediction: of weeping_, _The Baite_, _A
Valediction: forbidding mourning_, _The Extasie_, _The Prohibition_,
_The Expiration_, _Lecture upon the Shadow_. It would, of course, be
rash to say that all such poems were addressed to his wife. Some, like
_The Baite_, are purely literary in origin; others present the obverse
side of the passion portrayed in the first group, its happier moments.
But one must believe that those in which ardour is combined with
elevation and delicacy of feeling were addressed to Anne More before
and after their marriage.
In the third and smallest group, which includes, however, such fine
examples of his subtler moods as _The Funerall_, _The Blossome_, _The
Primrose_, Donne adopts the tone (as sincerely as was generally the
case) of the Petrarchian lover whose mistress's coldness has slain him
or provokes his passionate protestations. Some of these must, I think,
have been written after Donne's marriage. The titles one or two bear
connect them with Mrs. Herbert and the Countess of Bedford.
The two
most enigmatical poems in the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day_. Yet the very names 'Twicknam
Garden' and 'S. Lucies day' suggest a reference to the Countess of
Bedford. It is possible that the last was written when Lady Bedford
was ill in December, 1612? 'My Lady Bedford last night about one of
the clock was suddenly, and has continued ever since, speechless,
and is past all hopes though yet alive,' writes the Earl of Dorset on
November 23, 1612. It is probable that on December 13 she was still in
a critical condition, supposing the illness to have been that common
complaint of an age of bad drains, namely typhoid fever, and Donne
may have written in anticipation of her death. But the suggestion is
hazardous. The third verse speaks a stronger language than that of
Petrarchian adoration. Still it is difficult for us to estimate aright
all that was allowed to a 'servant' under the accepted convention.
It is noteworthy that the poem is not included in any known MS.
collection made before 1630. The Countess died in 1627.
PAGE =7=. THE GOOD-MORROW.
The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which
is given in the group of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and in _1633_, reads,
3. countrey pleasures childishly 4. snorted 14. one world 17. better.
The other, which is the most common in the MSS. , reads, 3. childish
pleasures seelily 4. slumbred 14. our world 17. fitter. The edition of
1635 shows a contamination of the two due to the fact that the printer
'set up' from _1633_, and he or the editor corrected from a MS.
collection, probably _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In _TCD_ the second recension
is given in the collection of Donne's poems in the first part of the
MS. ; in the second part, a miscellaneous collection of poems, the poem
is given again, but according to the other version. It does not seem
to me possible to decide absolutely the relative authority of the two
versions, but to my mind that of 1633 and _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ seems the
more racy and characteristic. It probably represents the first
version of the poem, whether Donne or another be responsible for the
alterations. The only point of importance to be decided is whether
'better' or 'fitter' expresses more exactly what the poet meant to
say. The 1635 editor preferred 'fitter', thinking probably that
the idea of exact correspondence is emphasized, 'where find two
hemispheres that fit one another more exactly? ' But this is not,
I think, what Donne meant. The mutual fittingness of the lovers is
implied already in the idea that each is a whole world to the other.
Gazing in each other's eyes each beholds a hemisphere of this world.
The whole cannot, of course, be reflected. And where could either find
a _better_ hemisphere, one in which there is as here neither 'sharpe
North' nor 'declining West', neither coldness nor alteration.
l. 13. _Let Maps to other. _ The edition may have dropped the 's',
which occurs in most of the MSS. , but the plural without 's' is common
even till a later period: 'These, as his other, were naughty things. '
Bunyan, _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, p. 106 (Cambridge English
Classics). 'And other of such vinegar aspect That they'll not show
their teeth in way of smile. ' Shakespeare, _Merchant of Venice_, I. i.
54.
ll. 20-1. _If our two loves be one, &c. _ If our two loves are _one_,
dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, though _two_,
they are always alike. What is simple--as God or the soul--cannot
be dissolved; nor compounds, e. g. the Heavenly bodies, between whose
elements there is no contrariety. 'Impossibile autem est quod forma
separetur a se ipsa. Unde impossibile est, quod forma subsistens
desinat esse. Dato etiam, quod anima esset ex materia et
forma composita, ut quidam dicunt, adhuc oporteret ponere eam
incorruptibilem. Non enim invenitur corruptio nisi ubi invenitur
contrarietas; generationes enim et corruptiones ex contrariis et in
contraria sunt' &c. , Aquinas, _Summa_ I. Quaest. lxxv, Art. 6. The
body, being composed of contrary elements, has not this essential
immortality: 'In Heaven we doe not say, that our bodies shall devest
their mortality, so, as that naturally they could not dye; for they
shall have a composition still; and every compounded thing may perish;
but they shall be so assured, and with such a preservation, as they
shall alwaies know they shall never dye. ' _Sermons_ 80. 19. 189.
PAGE =8=. SONG.
The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of
the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the title _A Raritie_. It is
set to music in Eg. MS. 2013, f. 58. Mr. Chambers points out that
Habington's poem, _Against them who lay Unchastity to the Sex of
Women_ (_Castara_, ed. Elton, p. 231), evidently refers to this poem:
They meet but with unwholesome springs
And summers which infectious are:
They hear but when the meremaid sings,
And only see the falling starre:
Who ever dare
Affirme no woman chaste and faire.
Goe cure your feavers; and you'le say
The Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:
In copper mines no longer stay,
But travel to the west, and there
The right ones see,
And grant all gold's not alchimie.
A poem modelled on Donne's appears in Harleian MS. 6057, and in _The
Treasury of Music. By Mr. Lawes and others. _ (1669)
Goe catch a star that's falling from the sky,
Cause an immortal creature for to die;
Stop with thy hand the current of the seas,
Post ore the earth to the Antipodes;
Cause times return and call back yesterday,
Cloake January with the month of May;
Weigh out an ounce of flame, blow back the winde:
And then find faith within a womans minde.
JOHN DUNNE.
l. 2. _Get with child a mandrake root. _ 'Many Mola's and false
conceptions there are of _Mandrakes_, the first from great Antiquity,
conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man. . . . Now
whatever encourageth the first invention, there have not been wanting
many ways of its promotion. The first a Catachrestical and far derived
similitude it holds with Man; that is, in a bifurcation or division of
the Root into two parts, which some are content to call Thighs. ' Sir
Thomas Browne's _Vulgar Errors_ (1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare also
_The Progresse of the Soule_, st. xv, p. 300.
PAGE =10=. THE UNDERTAKING.
l. 2. _the Worthies. _ The nine worthies usually named are Joshua,
David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Arthur,
Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon, but they varied. Guy of Warwick
is mentioned by Gerard Legh, _Accedens of Armorye_. Nash mentions
Solomon and Gideon; and Shakespeare introduces Hercules and Pompey
in _Love's Labour's Lost_. _All the Worthies_ therefore covers a
wide field. The Worthies figured largely in decorative designs and
pageants. On a target taken at the siege of Ostend 'was enammeled
in gold the seven [_sic_] Worthies, worth seven or eight hundred
guilders'. Vere's _Commentaries_ (1657), p. 174.
l. 6. _The skill of specular stone. _ Compare _To the Countesse of
Bedford_, p. 219, ll. 28-30:
You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowne
To our late times, the use of specular stone,
Through which all things within without were shown.
Grosart (ii. 48-9) and Professor Norton (Grolier, i. 217) take
'specular' as meaning simply 'translucent', and the latter quotes
Holinshed's _Chronicle_, ii. ch. 10: 'I find obscure mention of the
specular stone also to have been found and applied to this use' (i. e.
glazing windows) 'in England, but in such doubtful sort as I dare
not affirm for certain. ' This is the 'pierre speculaire' or 'pierre a
miroir' which Cotgrave describes as 'A light, white, and transparent
stone, easily cleft into thinne flakes, and used by th' Arabians
(among whom it growes) instead of glasse; anight it represents the
Moon, and even increases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely
Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in the
_Coelum Philosophorum_:
'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things may
be seen in it.
'To conjure is nothing else than to observe anything rightly, to know
and to understand what it is. The crystal is a figure of the air.
Whatever appears in the air, movable or immovable, the same appears
also in the speculum or crystal as a wave. For the air, the water, and
the crystal, so far as vision is concerned, are one, like a mirror
in which an inverted copy of an object is seen. ' The old name for
crystal-gazers was 'specularii'. Mr. Chambers suggests very probably
that there is a reference to Dr. Dee's magic mirrors or 'show stone',
but one would like to explain the reference to the cutting of the
stone on the one hand, and its being no longer to be found on the
other.
l. 16. _Loves but their oldest clothes. _ The 'her' of _B_ is a
tempting reading in view of the 'woman' which follows, but 'their'
is the common version and the poet's mind passes rapidly to and fro
between the abstract and its concrete embodiments. The proleptic use
of the pronoun is striking in either case.
Compare _To Mrs. M. H. _, p. 217, ll. 31-2.
l. 18. _Vertue attir'd in woman see. _ The reading of the 1633
edition, which is that of the best manuscripts, has more of Donne's
characteristic hyperbole than the metrically more regular 'Vertue in
woman see'. 'If you can see the Idea of Vertue attired in the visible
form of woman and love that. '
PAGE =11=. THE SUNNE RISING.
Compare Ovid, _Amores_, I. 13.
Iam super oceanum venit a seniore marito,
Flava pruinoso quae vehit axe diem.
Quo properas, Aurora?
. . .
Quo properas, ingrata viris, ingrata puellis?
. . .
Tu pueros somno fraudas, tradisque magistris,
Ut subeant tenerae verbera saeva manus.
A comparison of Ovid's simple and natural images and reflections with
Donne's passionate but ingenious hyperboles will show exactly what
Testi meant by his contrast of the homely imagery of classical and the
metaphysical manner of Italian love poetry.
l. 17. _both th' India's of spice and Myne. _ A distinction that Donne
is never tired of. 'The use of the word mine specifically for mines
of gold, silver, or precious stone is, I believe, peculiar to Donne. '
Coleridge, quoted by Norton. The O. E. D. does not contradict this, for
the word had a wider connotation. Compare _Loves exchange_, p. 35, ll.
34-35:
and make more
Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.
And _The Progresse of the Soule_, p. 295, l. 17:
thy Western land of Myne.
And for the two Indias: 'As hee that hath a plentifull fortune in
Europe, cares not much though there be no land of perfumes in the
East, nor of gold, in the West-Indies. ' _Sermons_ 50. 15. 123. And
'Sir. Your way into Spain was eastward, and that is the way to the
land of perfumes and spices; their way hither is westward, and that
is the way to the land of gold and of mines,' &c. _To Sir Robert Ker. _
Gosse's _Life, &c. _, ii. 191.
l.
