A
FUNERALL
ELEGIE.
Donne - 2
PAGE =238=, l. 215. _Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things
forgot. _ Donne has probably in mind the effect of the religious wars
in Germany, France, the Low Countries, &c.
l. 217. _that then can be. _ This is the reading of all the editions
before _1669_, and there is no reason to change 'then' to 'there':
'Every man thinks he has come to be a Phoenix (preferring private
judgement to authority) and that then comparison ceases, for there
is nothing of the same kind with which to compare himself. There is
nothing left to reverence. '
PAGE =239=, l. 258. _It teares
The Firmament in eight and forty sheires. _
Norton says that in the catalogue of Hipparchus, preserved in
the Almagest of Ptolemy, the stars were divided into forty-eight
constellations.
l. 260. _New starres. _ Norton says: 'It was the apparition of a new
star in 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that turned Tycho
Brahe to astronomy: and a new bright star in Ophiuchus, in 1604, had
excited general wonder, and afforded Galileo a text for an attack on
the Ptolemaic system'.
At p. 247, l. 70, Donne notes that the 'new starres' went out again.
PAGE =240=, l. 286. _a Tenarif, or higher hill. _ 'Tenarif' is
the _1611_ spelling, 'Tenarus' that of _1633-69_. Donne speaks of
'Tenarus' elsewhere, but it is not the same place.
It is not probable that Donne ever saw the Peak of Teneriffe, although
biographers speak of this line as a descriptive touch drawn from
memory. The Canary Isles are below the 30th degree of latitude.
The fleet that made the Islands Exhibition was never much if at all
further south than 43 degrees. After coasting off Corunna 43° N. 8°
W. , and some leagues south of that port, the fleet struck straight
across to the Azores, 37° N. 25° W. Donne was somewhat nearer in the
previous year when he was at Cadiz, 36° N. 6° W. , but too far off to
descry the Peak. His description, though vivid, is 'metaphysical',
like that of Hell which follows: 'The Pike of Teneriff, how high is
it? 79 miles or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates
in his Eratosthenes'. Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sec. 2,
Mem. 3.
On the other side, Satan, alarm'd,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremov'd.
Milton, _Par. Lost_, iv. 985-7.
ll. 295 f. _If under all, a Vault infernall bee, &c. _ Hell, according
to mediaeval philosophy, was in the middle of the earth. 'If this
be true,' says Donne, 'and if at the same time the Sea is in places
bottomless, then the earth is neither solid nor round. We use these
words only approximately. But you may hold, on the other hand, that
the deepest seas we know are but pock-holes, the highest hills but
warts, on the face of the solid earth. Well, even in that case you
must admit that in the moral sphere at any rate the world's proportion
is disfigured by the want of all proportioning of reward and
punishment to conduct. ' The sudden transition from the physical to the
moral sphere is very disconcerting. Compare: 'Or is it the place of
hell, as Virgil in his Aeneides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others
poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think. In good
earnest, Antony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian college in
Millan, in his great volume _de Inferno_, lib. i, cap. 47, is stiffe
in this tenent. . . . Whatsoever philosophers write (saith Surius) there
be certaine mouthes of Hell, and places appointed for the punishment
of mens souls, as at Hecla in Island, where the ghosts of dead men are
familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living. God would have
such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that
there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God,'
&c. Burton, _Anat. of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.
ll. 296-8. _Which sure is spacious, &c. _ 'Franciscus Ribera will
have hell a materiall and locall fire in the centre of the earth, 200
Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words _Exivit
sanguis de terra . . . per stadia mille sexcenta, &c. _ But Lessius
(lib. 13, _de moribus divinis_, cap. 24) will have this locall
hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and
brimstone; because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically
multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand
millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square); which
will abundantly suffice, '_cum certum sit, inquit, facta subductione,
non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum_. ' Burton, _Anat. of
Melancholy_, _ut sup. _ Eschatology was the 'dismal science' of those
days and was studied with astonishing gusto and acumen. 'For as one
Author, who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the
Earth, lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid, pronounces
that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse,
(and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng, for their
bodies must be there in their dimensions, as well as their soules) so
when the Schoole-men come to measure the house in heaven (as they will
measure it, and the Master, God, and all his Attributes, and tell us
how Allmighty, and how Infinite he is) they pronounce that every soule
in that house shall have more roome to it selfe, then all this world
is. ' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 747. The reference in the margin is to Munster.
l. 311. _that Ancient, &c. _ 'Many erroneous opinions are about the
essence and originall of it' (i. e. the rational soul), 'whether it be
fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates,'
&c. Burton, _Anat. of Melancholy_, Part i, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subsec.
9. Probably Donne has the same 'Ancient' in view. It is from Cicero
(_Tusc. Disp. _ i. 10) that we learn that Aristoxenus held the soul to
be a harmony of the body. Though a Peripatetic, Aristoxenus lived
in close communion with the latest Pythagoreans, and the doctrine is
attributed to Pythagoras as a consequence of his theory of numbers.
Simmias, the disciple of the Pythagorean Philolaus, maintains the
doctrine in Plato's _Phaedo_, and Socrates criticizes it. Aristotle
states and examines it in the _De Anima_, 407b. 30. Two classes of
thinkers, Bouillet says (Plotinus, _Fourth Ennead_, _Seventh Book_,
note), regarded the soul as a harmony, doctors as Hippocrates and
Galen, who considered it a harmony of the four elements--the hot, the
cold, the dry and the moist (as the definition of health Donne refers
to this more than once, e. g. _The good-morrow_, l. 19, and _The
Second Anniversary_, ll. 130 f. ); and musicians like Aristoxenus, who
compared the soul to the harmony of the lyre. Donne leaves the sense
in which he uses the word quite vague; but l. 321 suggests the medical
sense.
l. 312. _at next. _ This common Anglo-Saxon construction is very
rare in later English. The O. E. D. cites no instance later than 1449,
Pecock's _Repression_. The instance cited there is prepositional in
character rather than adverbial: 'Immediatli at next to the now bifore
alleggid text of Peter this proces folewith. ' Donne's use seems to
correspond exactly to the Anglo-Saxon: 'Johannes ða ofhreow þaēre
mēden and ðaera licmanna drēorignysse, and āstrehte his
licaman tō eorðan on langsumum gebēde, and ða _aet nēxtan_
āras, and eft upahafenum handum langlice baed. ' Aelfric (Sweet's
_Anglo-Saxon Reader_, 1894, p. 67). But 'at next' in the poem possibly
does not mean simply 'next', but 'immediately', i. e. 'the first thing
he said would have been . . . '
l. 314. _Resultances_: i. e. productions of, or emanations from, her.
'She is the harmony from which proceeds that harmony of our bodies
which is their soul. ' Donne uses the word also in the sense of
'the sum or gist of a thing': 'He speakes out of the strength and
resultance of many lawes and Canons there alleadged. ' _Pseudo-martyr_,
p. 245; and Walton says that Donne 'left the resultance of 1400
Authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand. ' _Life_
(1675), p. 60. He is probably using Donne's own title.
PAGE =241=, l. 318. _That th'Arke to mans proportions was made. _ The
following quotation from St. Augustine will show that the plural
of _1611-12_ is right, and what Donne had in view. St. Augustine is
speaking of the Ark as a type of the Church: 'Procul dubio figura est
peregrinantis in hoc seculo Civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae, quae fit
salva per lignum in quo pependit Mediator Dei et hominum, homo
Iesus Christus. (1 Tim. ii. 5. ) Nam et mensurae ipsae longitudinis,
altitudinis, latitudinis eius, significant corpus humanum, in cuius
veritate ad homines praenuntiatus est venturus, et venit. Humani
quippe corporis longitudo a vertice usque ad vestigia sexies tantum
habet, quam latitudo, quae est ab uno latere ad alterum latus, et
decies tantum, quam altitudo, cuius altitudinis mensura est in latere
a dorso ad ventrem: velut si iacentem hominem metiaris supinum, seu
pronum, sexies tantum longus est a capite ad pedes, quam latus a
dextra in sinistram, vel a sinistra in dextram, et decies, quam altus
a terra. Unde facta est arca trecentorum in longitudine cubitorum, et
quinquaginta in latitudine, et triginta in altitudine. ' _De Civitate
Dei_, XV. 26.
PAGE =242=, ll. 377-80. _Nor in ought more, &c. _ 'The father' is the
Heavens, i. e. the various heavenly bodies moving in their spheres;
'the mother', the earth:
As the bright Sun shines through the smoothest Glasse
The turning Planets influence doth passe
Without impeachment through the glistering Tent
Of the tralucing (_French_ diafane) Fiery Element,
The Aires triple Regions, the transparent Water;
But not the firm base of this faire Theater.
And therefore rightly may we call those Trines
(Fire, Aire and Water) but Heav'ns Concubines:
For, never Sun, nor Moon, nor Stars injoy
The love of these, but only by the way,
As passing by: whereas incessantly
The lusty Heav'n with Earth doth company;
And with a fruitfull seed which lends All life,
With childes each moment, his own lawfull wife;
And with her lovely Babes, in form and nature
So divers, decks this beautiful Theater.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas, Second Day, First Week. _
PAGE =243=, l. 389. _new wormes_: probably serpents, such as were
described in new books of travels.
l. 394. _Imprisoned in an Hearbe, or Charme, or Tree. _ Compare _A
Valediction: of my name, in the window_, p. 27, ll. 33-6:
As all the vertuous powers which are
Fix'd in the starres, are said to flow
Into such characters, as graved bee
When these starres have supremacie.
l. 409. _But as some Serpents poyson, &c. _ Compare: 'But though all
knowledge be in those Authors already, yet, as some poisons, and some
medicines, hurt not, nor profit, except the creature in which they
reside, contribute their lively activitie and vigor; so, much of the
knowledge buried in Books perisheth, and becomes ineffectuall, if it
be not applied, and refreshed by a companion, or friend. Much of their
goodnesse hath the same period which some Physicians of _Italy_ have
observed to be in the biting of their _Tarentola_, that it affects no
longer, then the flie lives. ' _Letters_, p. 107.
PAGE =245=, l. 460. _As matter fit for Chronicle, not verse. _ Compare
_The Canonization_, p. 15, ll. 31-2:
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes . . .
God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in
Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.
l. 467. _Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c. _ The bracket of
_1611_ makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of _1633_:
Such an opinion, in due measure, made.
According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus
comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me . . . invade'. The bracket
shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with
all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to
himself the same thoughts as God.
A FUNERALL ELEGIE.
l. 2. _to confine her in a marble chest. _ The 'Funerall Elegie' was
probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents
erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.
PAGE =246=, l. 41. _the Affrique Niger. _ Grosart comments on this: 'A
peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken
of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according
to Pliny (_N. H. _ v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the
second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris. '
Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa
written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought
up in Barbarie . . . Translated and collected by Iohn Porie, late of
Gonevill and Caius College in Cambridge, 1600. ' Of the Niger he says:
'This land of Negros hath a mighty river, which taking his name of the
region is called Niger: this river taketh his originall from the east
out of a certain desert called by the foresaide Negros _Sen_ . . . Our
Cosmographers affirme that the said river of Niger is derived out of
Nilus, which they imagine for some certaine space to be swallowed up
of the earth, and yet at last to burst forth into such a lake as
is before mentioned. ' Pory is mentioned occasionally in Donne's
correspondence.
PAGE =247=, l. 50. _An Angell made a Throne, or Cherubin. _ See _Elegy
XI_, ll. 77-8 and note. Donne, like Shakespeare, uses 'Cherubin' as a
singular. There can be no doubt that the lines in _Macbeth_, I. vii.
21-3, should read:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast, or heavens cherubins horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, &c.
It is an echo of:
He rode upon the cherubins and did fly;
He came flying upon the wings of the wind.
Psalm xviii. 10.
'Cherubin' is a singular in Shakespeare, and 'cherubim' as a plural he
did not know.
l. 73. _a Lampe of Balsamum_, i. e. burning balsam instead of ordinary
oil: 'And as _Constantine_ ordained, that upon this day' (Christmas
Day), 'the Church should burne no Oyle, but Balsamum in her Lamps, so
let us ever celebrate this day, with a thankfull acknowledgment, that
Christ who is _unctus Domini_, The Anointed of the Lord, hath anointed
us with the Oyle of gladnesse above our fellowes. ' _Sermons_ 80. 7.
72.
ll. 75-7. _Cloath'd in, &c. _ Chambers's arrangement of these lines is
ingenious but, I think, mistaken because it alters the emphasis of the
sentences. The stress is not laid by Donne on her purity, but on her
early death: 'She expir'd while she was still a virgin. She went away
before she was a woman. ' Line 76:
For marriage, though it doe not staine, doth dye.
is a sudden digression. Dryden filches these lines:
All white, a Virgin-Saint, she sought the skies
For Marriage, tho' it sullies not, it dies.
_The Monument of a Faire Maiden Lady. _
PAGE =248=, l. 83. _said History_ is a strange phrase, but it has the
support of all the editions which can be said to have any authority.
l. 92. _and then inferre. _ Compare: 'That this honour might be
inferred on some one of the blood and race of their ancient king. '
Raleigh (O. E. D. ). Donne's sense of 'commit', 'entrust', is not far
from Raleigh's of 'confer', 'bestow', and both are natural extensions
of the common though now obsolete sense, 'bring on, occasion, cause':
Inferre faire Englands peace by this Alliance.
Shakespeare, _Rich. III_, IV. iv. 343.
l. 94. _thus much to die. _ To die so far as this life is concerned.
OF THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.
THE SECOND ANNIVERSARIE.
PAGE =252=, l. 43.
_These Hymnes thy issue, may encrease so long,
As till Gods great Venite change the song_.
This is the punctuation of the editions _1612_ to _1633_. Grosart,
Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions,
_1635-69_, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes
object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so long,
&c. ' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with l. 44 as the
older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which are thy issue,
may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase 'increase and
multiply') 'so long as till, &c. ' This suggests that the Hymns
themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening in them
virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater music of
God's _Venite_. The modern version is compatible with the death of the
hymns, but the survival of their issue.
l. 48. _To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so. _ Here again Grosart,
Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the
editions _1625-69_ against the earlier ones, _1612_ and _1621_. These
have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:
to be hydroptic so,
Forget this rotten world . . .
But surely the full stop after 'so' in _1612_ is right, and 'to be
Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst is
the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing
bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health. '
'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou
commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will
give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary
and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the
Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But
for the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his
leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee. ' _Sermons, &c. _
PAGE =253=, l. 72. _Because shee was the forme, that made it live_:
i. e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the
Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form,
that in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo
primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur . . .
Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. Et cum
vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis gradibus
viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum operum vitae, est
anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et sentimus, et movemur
secundum locum, et similiter quo primo intelligimus. Hoc ergo
principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur intellectus, sive
anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et haec est demonstratio
Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24. ' Aquinas goes on to show that
any other relation as of part to whole, or mover to thing moved, is
unthinkable, _Summa_ I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth Drury in like manner
was the form of the world, that in virtue of which it lived and
functioned.
PAGE =254=, l. 92. _Division_: a series of notes forming one melodic
sequence:
and streightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily,
Into a thousand sweet distinguish'd Tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions
Quicke volumes of wild Notes.
Crashaw, _Musicks Duell_.
l. 102. _Satans Sergeants_, i. e. bailiffs, watching to arrest for
debt. Compare:
as this fell Sergeant, Death,
Is strict in his arrest.
Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, V.
l. 120. _but a Saint Lucies night. _ Compare p. 44. 'Saint Lucies
night' is the longest in the year, yet it too passes, is only a night.
Death is a long sleep, yet a sleep from which we shall awaken. So the
Psalmist compares life to 'a watch in the night', which _seems_ so
long and _is_ so short.
ll. 123-6. _Shee whose Complexion, &c. _: i. e. 'in whose temperaments
the humours were in such perfect equilibrium that no one could
overgrow the others and bring dissolution':
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally.
_The good-morrow. _
And see the note to p. 182, ll. 59-62.
PAGE =255=, l. 127. _Mithridate_: a universal antidote or preservative
against poison and infectious diseases, made by the compounding
together of many ingredients. It was also known as 'Theriaca' and
'triacle': 'As it is truly and properly said, that there are more
ingredients, more simples, more means of restoring in our dram of
triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup, in
which there may be 3 or 4, in the other perchance, so many hundred. '
_Sermons_ 26. 20. 286-7. Vipers were added to the other ingredients by
Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero, whence the name 'theriaca'
or 'triacle': 'Can an apothecary make a sovereign triacle of Vipers
and other poysons, and cannot God admit offences and scandalls into
his physick. ' _Sermons_ 50. 17. 143. See _To S^r Henry Wotton_, p.
180, l. 18 and note.
ll. 143-6. Compare p. 269, ll. 71-6.
l. 152. _Heaven was content, &c. _ 'And from the days of John the
Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the
violent take it by force. ' Matthew xi. 12.
l. 158. _wast made but in a sinke. _ Compare: 'Formatus est homo . . . de
spurcissimo spermate. ' Pope Innocent, _De Contemptu Mundi_; and
With Goddes owene finger wroght was he,
And nat begeten of mannes sperme unclene.
Chaucer, _Monkes Tale_.
PAGE =256=, ll. 159-62. _Thinke that . . . first of growth. _ According
to Aquinas, who follows Aristotle, the souls of growth, of sense, and
of intelligence are not in man distinct and (as Plato had suggested)
diversely located in the liver, heart, and brain, but are merged in
one: 'Sic igitur anima intellectiva continet in sua virtute quidquid
habet anima sensitiva brutorum et nutritiva plantarum,' _Summa_ I.
lxxvi. 3. He cites Aristotle, _De Anima_, ii. 30-1.
l. 190. _Meteors. _ See note to _The Storme_, l. 13. A meteor was
regarded as due to the effect of the air's cold region on exhalations
from the earth:
If th'Exhalation hot and oily prove,
And yet (as feeble) giveth place above
To th'Airy Regions ever-lasting Frost,
Incessantly th'apt-tinding fume is tost
Till it inflame: then like a Squib it falls,
Or fire-wing'd shaft, or sulphry Powder-Balls.
But if this kind of Exhalation tour
Above the walls of Winters icy bowr
'T-inflameth also; and anon becomes
A new strange Star, presaging wofull dooms.
Sylvester's _Du Bartas. Second Day of the First Weeke. _
i.
