They
illustrate
well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the
seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because
of their subject-matter.
seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because
of their subject-matter.
Donne - 2
g.
_TCD_) they are a little clearer:
For his Body and State
The Physick and Counsel (which came too late)
'Gainst whores and dice, hee nowe on mee bestowes
Most superficially: hee speakes of those,
(I found by him) least soundly whoe most knows:
The purpose of bracketing 'which came too late' is obviously to keep
it from being taken with ''Gainst whores and dice'--the very mistake
that _1669_ has fallen into and Grosart and Chambers have preserved.
The drawback to this use of the bracket is that it disguises, at least
to modern readers, that 'which came too late' must be taken with 'For
his Body and State'. I have therefore dropped it and placed a comma
after 'late'. The meaning I take to be as follows: 'The physic and
counsel against whores and dice, which came too late for his own body
and estate, he now bestows on me in a superficial fashion; for I found
by him that of whores and dice those speak least soundly who know
most from personal experience. ' A rather shrewd remark. There are some
spheres where experience does not teach, but corrupt.
l. 40. _in that or those_: 'that' the Duello, 'those' the laws of the
Duello. There is not much to choose between 'these' and 'those'.
ll. 41-3. _Though sober; but so never fought. I know
What made his Valour, undubb'd, Windmill go,
Within a Pint at most:_
The MSS. improve both the metre and the sense of the first of these
lines, which in _1669_ and Chambers runs:
Though sober; but nere fought. I know . . .
It is when he is sober that he never fights, though he may quarrel.
Roe knows exactly how much drink it would take to make this undubb'd
Don Quixote charge a windmill, or like a windmill. But the poem is too
early for an actual reference to _Don Quixote_
PAGE =403=, ll. 67-8. _and he is braver now
Than his captain. _
By 'braver' the poet means, not more courageous, but more splendidly
attired, more 'braw'.
PAGE =404=, l. 88. _Abraham France_--who wrote English hexameters. His
chief works are _The Countess of Pembrokes Ivy Church_ (1591) and _The
Countess of Pembrokes Emmanuel_ (1591). He was alive in 1633.
PAGE =405=, l. 113. _So they their weakness hide, and greatness
show. _ Grosart refused the reading 'weakness', which he found in
his favourite MS. _S_, and Chambers ignored it. It has, however, the
support of _B_, _O'F_, and _L74_ (which is strong in Roe's poetry),
and seems to me to give the right edge to the sarcasm. 'By giving to
flatterers what they owe to worth, Kings and Lords think to hide their
weakness of character, and to display the greatness of their wealth
and station. ' They make a double revelation of their weakness in their
credulity and their love of display.
l. 128. _Cuff. _ Henry Cuff (1563-1601), secretary to Essex and an
abettor of the conspiracy.
l. 131. _that Scot. _ It is incredible that Donne wrote these lines. He
found some of his best friends among the Scotch--Hay, Sir Robert Ker,
Essex, and Hamilton, to say nothing of the King.
PAGE =406=. SATYRE.
PAGE =407=, ll. 32-3. _A time to come, &c. _ I have adopted Grosart's
punctuation and think his interpretation of 'beg' must be the right
one--'beg thee as an idiot or natural. ' The O. E. D. gives: '† 5a. _To
beg a person_: to petition the Court of Wards (established by Henry
VIII and suppressed under Charles II) for the custody of a minor, an
heiress, or an idiot, as feudal superior or as having interest in the
matter: hence also fig. _To beg_ (any one) _for a fool_ or _idiot_: to
take him for, set him down as. _Obs. _' Among other examples is, 'He
proved a wiser man by much than he that begged him. Harington, _Met.
Ajax_ 46. ' What the satirist says is, 'The time will come when she
will beg to have wardship of thee as an idiot. If you continue she
will take you for one now. '
l. 35. _Besides, her<s>. _ My reading combines the variants. I think
'here' must be wrong.
PAGE =407=. AN ELEGIE.
PAGE =408=, l. 5. _Else, if you were, and just, in equitie &c. _ This
is the punctuation of _H39_, and is obviously right, 'in equitie'
going with what follows. He has denied the existence or, at least, the
influence of the Fates, and now continues, 'For if you existed or had
power, and if you were just, then, according to all equity I should
have vanquish'd her as you did me. ' Grosart and the Grolier Club
editor follow _1635-54_, and read:
Else, if you were, and just in equity, &c.
Chambers accepts the attempt of _1669_ to amend this, and prints:
True if you were, and just in equity, &c.
But 'just in equity' is not a phrase to which any meaning can be
attached.
PAGE =412=. AN ELEGIE.
Grosart prints this very incorrectly. He does not even reproduce
correctly the MS. _S_, which he professes to follow. Chambers follows
Grosart, adopting some of the variants of the Haslewood-Kingsborough
MS. reported by Grosart. They both have the strange reading 'cut
in bands' in l. 11, which as a fact is not even in _S_, from which
Grosart professes to derive it. The reading of all the MSS. , 'but in
his handes,' makes quite good sense. The Scot wants matter, except
in his hands, i. e. dirt, which is 'matter out of place'. The reading,
'writ in his hands', which Chambers reports after Grosart, is probably
a mistake of the latter's. Indeed his own note suggests that the
reading of _H-K_ is 'but in's hands'.
PAGE =417=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF HUNTINGTON.
It looks as if some lines of this poem had been lost. The first
sentence has no subject unless 'That' in the second line be a
demonstrative--a very awkward construction.
If written by Donne this poem must have been composed about the same
time as _The Storme_ and _The Calme_. He is writing apparently from
the New World, from the Azores. But it is as impossible to recover the
circumstances in which the poem was written as to be sure who wrote
it.
PAGE =422=. ELEGIE.
ll. 5-6. _denounce . . . pronounce. _ The reading of the MSS. seems to
me plainly the correct one. 'In others, terror, anguish and grief
announce the approach of death. Her courage, ease and joy in dying
pronounce the happiness of her state. ' The reading of the printed
texts is due to the error by which _1635_ and _1639_ took 'comming'
as an epithet to 'terror' as 'happy' is to 'state'. Some MSS. read
'terrors' and 'joyes'.
l. 22. _Their spoyles, &c. _ I have adopted the MS. reading here,
though with some hesitation, because (1) it is the more difficult
reading: 'Soules to thy conquest beare' seems more like a conjectural
emendation than the other reading, (2) The construction of the line
in the printed texts is harsh--one does not bear anything 'to a
conquest', (3) the meaning suits the context better. It is not souls
that are spoken of, but bodies. The bodies of the wicked become the
spoil of death, trophies of his victory over Adam; not so those of the
good, which shall rise again. See 1 Cor. xv. 54-5.
PAGE =424=. PSALME 137.
This Psalm is found in a MS. collection of metrical psalms (Rawlinson
Poetical 161), in the Bodleian Library, transcribed by a certain R.
Crane. The list of authors is Fr. Dav. , Jos. Be. , Rich. Cripps, Chr.
Dav. , Th. Carry. That Davison is the author of this particular Psalm
is strongly suggested by the poetical _Induction_ which in style and
verse resembles the psalm. The induction is signed 'Fr. Dav. ' The
first verse runs:
Come Urania, heavenly Muse,
and infuse
Sacred flame to my invention;
Sing so loud that Angells may
heare thy lay,
Lending to thy note attention.
PAGE =429=. SONG.
_Soules joy, now I am gone, &c. _ George Herbert, in the _Temple_,
gives _A Parodie_ of this poem, opening:
Soul's joy, when thou art gone,
And I alone,
Which cannot be,
Because Thou dost abide with me,
And I depend on Thee.
The parody does not extend beyond the first verse.
It was one of the aims of Herbert to turn the Muse from profane love
verses to sacred purposes. Mr. Chambers points to another reference
to this poem in some very bad verses by Sir Kenelm Digby in Bright's
edition of Digby's _Poems_ (p. 8), _The Roxburghe Club_.
APPENDIX C.
I. POEMS FROM ADDITIONAL MS. 25707. PAGE =433=.
The authorship of the four poems here printed from _A25_ has been
discussed in the _Text and Canon, &c. _ There is not much reason to
doubt that the first is what it professes to be. The order of the
names in the heading, and the character of the verses both suggest
that the second and corresponding verses are Donne's contribution.
There is a characteristic touch in each one. I cannot find anything
eminently characteristic in any of the rest of the group. The third
poem refers to the poetical controversy on Love and Reason carried on
with much spirit between the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd
in their _Poems_ as printed by the younger Donne in 1660. A much finer
fragment of the debate, beginning--
And why should Love a footboy's place despise?
is attributed to Donne by the Bridgewater MS. and the MS. in the
library of the Marquess of Crewe. It is part of a poem by Rudyerd in
the debate in the volume referred to.
II. POEMS FROM THE BURLEY MS. PAGE =437=.
Of the poems here printed from the Burley-on-the-Hill MS. , none I
think is Donne's. The chief interest of the collection is that it
comes from a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton, and therefore
presumably represents the work of the group of wits to which Donne,
Bacon, and Wotton belonged. I have found only one of them in other
MSS. , viz. that which I have called _Life a Play_. This occurs in
quite a number of MSS. in the British Museum, and has been published
in Hannah's _Courtly Poets_. It is generally ascribed to Sir Walter
Raleigh; and Harleian MS. 733 entitles it _Verses made by Sir Walter
Raleigh made the same morning he was executed_. I have printed it
because with the first, and another in the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, it
illustrates Wotton's taste for this comparison of life to a stage, a
comparison probably derived from an epigram in the Greek Anthology,
which may be the source of Shakespeare's famous lines in _As You Like
It_. The epitaph by Jonson on Hemmings, Shakespeare's fellow-actor
and executor, is interesting. A similar epitaph on Burbage is found in
Sloane MS. 1786:
An Epitaph on Mr Richard Burbage the Player.
This life's a play groaned out by natures Arte
Where every man hath his alloted parte.
This man hath now as many men can tell
Ended his part, and he hath done it well.
The Play now ended, think his grave to bee
The retiring house of his sad Tragedie.
Where to give his fame this, be not afraid:
Here lies the best Tragedian ever plaid.
III. POEMS FROM VARIOUS MSS. PAGE =443=.
Of the miscellaneous poems here collected there is very little to be
said. The first eight or nine come from the O'Flaherty MS. (_O'F_),
which professes to be a collection of Donne's poems, and may, Mr.
Warwick Bond thinks, have been made by the younger Donne, as it
contains a poem by him. It is careless enough to be his work.
They illustrate well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the
seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because
of their subject-matter. Donne had written some improper poems as a
young man; it was tempting therefore to assign any wandering poem
of this kind to the famous Dean of St. Paul's. The first poem, _The
Annuntiation_, has nothing to do with Donne's poem _The Annuntiation
and Passion_, but has been attached to it in a manner which is
common enough in the MSS. The poem _Love's Exchange_ is obviously an
imitation of Donne's _Lovers infinitenesse_ (p. 17). _A Paradoxe of a
Painted Face_ was attributed to Donne because he had written a prose
_Paradox_ entitled _That Women ought to paint_. The poem was not
published till 1660. In Harleian MS. it is said to be 'By my Lo: of
Cant. follower Mr. Baker'. The lines on _Black Hayre and Eyes_ (p.
460) are found in fifteen or more different MSS. in the British Museum
alone, and were printed in _Parnassus Biceps_ (1656) and Pembroke and
Ruddier's _Poems_ (1660). Two of the MSS. attribute the poem to Ben
Jonson, but others assign it to W. P. or Walton Poole. Mr. Chambers
points out that a Walton Poole has verses in _Annalia Dubrensia_
(1636), and also cites from Foster's _Alumni Oxonienses_: 'Walton
Poole of Wilts arm. matr. 9. 1. 1580 at Trinity Coll. aged 15. ' These
may be the same person. The signature A. P. or W. P. at the foot of
several pages suggests that the Stowe MS. 961 of Donne's poems had
belonged to some member of this family. The fragment of an Elegy at
p. 462 occurs only in _P_, where it forms part of an Heroicall Epistle
with which it has obviously nothing to do. I have thought it worth
preserving because of its intense though mannered style. The line,
'Fortune now do thy worst' recalls _Elegie XII_, l. 67. The closing
poem,'Farewell ye guilded follies,' comes from Walton's _Complete
Angler_ (1658), where it is thus introduced: 'I will requite you with
a very good copy of verses: it is a farewell to the vanities of the
world, and some say written by Dr. D. But let they be written by
whom they will, he that writ them had a brave soul, and must needs be
possest with happy thoughts of their composure. ' In the third edition
(1661) the words were changed to 'And some say written by Sir Harry
Wotton, who I told you was an excellent Angler. ' In one MS. they are
attributed to Henry King, Donne's friend and literary executor, and in
two others they are assigned to Sir Kenelm Digby, as by whom they are
printed in _Wits Interpreter_ (1655). Mr. Chambers points out that
'The closing lines of King's _The Farewell_ are curiously similar to
those of this poem. ' He quotes:
My woeful Monument shall be a cell,
The murmur of the purling brook my knell;
My lasting Epitaph the Rock shall groan;
Thus when sad lovers ask the weeping stone,
What wretched thing does in that centre lie,
The hollow echo will reply, 'twas I.
I cannot understand why Mr. Chambers, to whom I am indebted for most
of this information, was content to print so inadequate a text when
Walton was in his hand. Two of his lines completely puzzled me:
Welcome pure thoughts! welcome, ye careless groans!
These are my guests, this is that courtage tones.
'Groans' are generally the sign of care, not of its absence. However,
I find that Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian, and some others read:
Welcome pure thoughts! welcome ye careless groves!
These are my guests, this is that court age loves.
This explains the mystery. But Mr. Chambers followed Grosart; and
Grosart was inclined to prefer the version of a bad MS. which he had
found to a good printed version.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.
PAGES =5=, =6=. The poems of Ben Jonson are here printed just as
they stand in the 1650, 1654, 1669 editions of Donne's _Poems_.
A comparison with the 1616 edition of Jonson's _Works_ shows some
errors. The poem _To John Donne_ (p. 5) is xxiii of the _Epigrammes_.
The sixth line runs
And which no affection praise enough can give!
The absurd 'no'n' of 1650 seems to have arisen from the printing
'no'affection' of the 1640 edition of Jonson's _Works_. The 1719
editor of Donne's _Poems_ corrected this mistake. A more serious
mistake occurs in the ninth line, which in the _Works_ (1616) runs:
All which I meant to praise, and, yet I would.
The error 'mean' comes from the 1640 edition of the _Works of Ben
Jonson_, which prints 'meane'.
_To Lucy, &c. _, is xciii of the _Epigrammes_. The fourteenth line
runs:
Be of the best; and 'mongst those, best are you.
The comma makes the sense clearer. In l. 3, 1616 reads 'looke,' with
comma.
_To John Donne_ (p. 6) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' is
in _1616_ more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.
PAGES =7=, =175=, =369=. I am indebted for the excellent copies of
the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence
Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems along
with which they are placed. The first is the young man of the _Songs
and Sonets_, the _Elegies_ and the _Satyres_, the counterpart of Biron
and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of Shakespeare's
Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in his _Scrinia
Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams . . . Archbishop of York_ (1693),
'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising features. '
The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the
author of the _Letters_, _Epicedes_, _Anniversaries_ and earlier
_Divine Poems_, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy
yet ever and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into
sportiveness', writing at one time the serious _Pseudo-Martyr_,
at another the outrageous _Ignatius his Conclave_, and again the
strangely-mooded, self-revealing _Biathanatos_: 'mee thinks I have the
keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe
so soone to my heart, as mine own sword. '
After describing the circumstances attending the execution of the last
portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the _Lives_ (the
passage is not in the earlier editions of the _Life of Donne_): 'And
now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities
of a various life: even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire
is, he may rest till I have told my Reader, that I have seen many
Pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in
several postures: And I now mention this, because, I have seen one
Picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen; with
his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the present
fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age: and his Motto
then was,
How much shall I be chang'd,
Before I am chang'd.
And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, _Lord! How much is_ Dr. Donne
_already chang'd, before he is chang'd! _' The change written in the
portrait is the change from the poet of the _Songs and Sonets_ to the
poet of the _Holy Sonnets_ and last _Hymns_.
The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made from
it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on the
figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also 'a board
of the just height of his body'. What was this for? Walton does not
explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the folds of
the drapery show the statue was modelled from a recumbent figure. Can
it be that Walton's account confuses two things? The incident of the
picture is not in the 1640 _Life_, but was added in 1658. How could
Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with his winding-sheet knotted
'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable that he was painted lying
in his winding-sheet on the board referred to; but that the monument,
as designed by himself, and executed by Nicholas Stone, was intended
to represent him rising at the Last Day from the urn, habited as he
had lain down--a symbolic rendering of the faith expressed in the
closing words of the inscription
Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere
Aspicit Eum
Cuius nomen est Oriens.
PAGE =37=, l. 14. The textual note should have indicated that in most
or all of the MSS. cited the whole line runs:
(Thou lovest Truth) but an Angell at first sight.
This is probably the original form of the line, corrected later to
avoid the clashing of the 'but's.
PAGE =96=, l. 6, note. The _R212_ cited here is Rawlinson Poetical
MS. 212, a miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century prose and
poetry (e. g. Davies' _Epigrams_. See II. p. 101). I had cited it once
or twice in my first draft. The present instance escaped my eye. It
helps to show how general the reading 'tyde' was.
PAGE =115=, l. 54. _goeing on it fashions_. The correct reading is
probably 'growing on it fashions', which has the support of both _JC_,
and _1650-69_ where 'its' is a mere error. I had made my text
before _JC_ came into my hand. To 'grow on' for 'to increase' is
an Elizabethan idiom: 'And this quarrel grew on so far,' North's
_Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, ad fin. _ See also O. E. D.
I should like in closing to express my indebtedness throughout to the
_Oxford English Dictionary_, an invaluable help and safeguard to
the editor of an English text, and also to Franz's admirable
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_ (1909), which should be translated.
PAGE =133=, l. 58. To what is said in the note on the taking of yellow
amber as a drug add: 'Divers men may walke by the Sea side, and the
same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all, one gathereth by
the benefit of that light pebles, or speckled shells, for curious
vanitie, and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall Ambar, by
the same light. ' _Sermons_ 80. 36. 326.
PAGES =156-7=. _Seeke true religion, &c. _ All this passage savours a
little of Montaigne: 'Tout cela, c'est un signe tres-evident que nous
ne recevons nostre religion qu'à nostre façon et par nos mains, et
non autrement que comme les autres religions se reçoyvent. Nous nous
sommes rencontrez au païs où elle estoit en usage; ou nous regardons
son ancienneté ou l'authorité des hommes qui l'ont maintenue; ou
creignons les menaces qu'ell' attache aux mescreans, ou suyvons ses
promesses. Ces considerations là doivent estre employées à nostre
creance, mais comme subsidiaires: ce sont liaisons humaines. Une
autre region, d'autres tesmoings, pareilles promesses et menasses nous
pourroyent imprimer par mesme voye une croyance contraire. Nous sommes
chrestiens à mesme titre que nous sommes ou perigordins ou alemans. '
_Essais_ (1580), II. 12. _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_.
PAGE =220=, l. 46. Compare: 'One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks
of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God loves, hee
loves to the end . . . His hailestones and his thunderbolts, and his
showres of blood (emblemes and instruments of his Judgements) fall
downe in a direct line, and affect or strike some one person, or
place: His Sun, and Moone, and Starres (Emblemes and Instruments of
his Blessings) move circularly, and communicate themselves to all. His
Church is his chariot; in that he moves more gloriously, then in the
Sun; as much more, as his begotten Son exceeds his created Sun, and
his Son of glory, and of his right hand, the Sun of the firmament;
and this Church, his chariot, moves in that communicable motion,
circularly; It began in the East, it came to us, and is passing now,
shining out now, in the farthest West. ' _Sermons_ 80. 2. 13-4.
l. 47. _Religious tipes_, is the reading of _1633_. The comma has
been accidentally dropped. There is no comma in _1635-69_, which print
'types'.
PAGE =241=, ll. 343-4. _As a compassionate Turcoyse, &c. _ Compare:
And therefore Cynthia, as a turquoise bought,
Or stol'n, or found, is virtueless, and nought,
It must be freely given by a friend,
Whose love and bounty doth such virtue lend,
As makes it to compassionate, and tell
By looking pale, the wearer is not well.
Sir Francis Kynaston, _To Cynthia_.
Saintsbury, _Caroline Poets_, ii. 161.
PAGE =251=, ll. 9-18. The source of this simile is probably Lucretius,
_De Rerum Natura_, III. 642-56.
Falciferos memorant currus abscidere membra
Saepe ita de subito permixta caede calentis,
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscisum, cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali non quit sentire dolorem;
Et semel in pugnae studio quod dedita mens est,
Corpore reliquo pugnam caedesque petessit,
Nec tenet amissam laevam cum tegmine saepe
Inter equos abstraxe rotas falcesque rapaces,
Nec cecidisse alius dextram, cum scandit et instat.
Inde alius conatur adempto surgere crure,
Cum digitos agitat propter moribundus humi pes.
Et caput abscisum calido viventeque trunco
Servat humi voltum vitalem oculosque patentis,
Donec reliquias animai reddidit omnes.
PAGE =259=, ll. 275-6. _so that there is
(For aught thou know'st) piercing of substances. _
'Piercing of substances,' the actual penetration of one substance by
another, was the Stoic as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of
mixture of substance ([Greek: krasis]), what is now called chemical
combination. The Peripatetics held that, while the qualities of the
two bodies combined to produce a new quality, the substances remained
in juxtaposition. Plotinus devotes the seventh book of the _Enneades_
to the subject; and one of the arguments of the Stoics which he cites
resembles Donne's problem: 'Sweat comes out of the human body without
dividing it and without the body being pierced with holes. ' The pores
were apparently unknown. See Bouillet's _Enneades de Plotin_, I. 243
f. and 488-9, for references.
PAGE =368=. HYMNE TO GOD MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESSE.
Professor Moore Smith has at the last moment reminded me of a fact,
the significance of which should have been discussed in the note on
the _Divine Poems_, that a copy of this poem found (Gosse, _Life &c. _
ii. 279) among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar bears the statement
that the verses were written in Donne's 'great sickness in December
1623'. Professor Moore Smith is of opinion that Sir Julius Caesar may
have been right and Walton mistaken, and there is a good deal to be
said for this view. 'It seems', he says, 'more likely that Walton
should have attributed the poem wrongly to Donne's last illness, than
that the MS. copy should antedate it by seven years. ' In 1640 Walton
simply referred it to his deathbed; the precise date was given in
1658. Moreover the date 1623 seems to Professor Moore Smith confirmed
by a letter to Sir Robert Ker (later Lord Ancrum) in 1624 (Gosse,
_Life &c. _ ii. 191), in which Donne writes, 'If a flat map be but
pasted upon a round globe the farthest east and the farthest west meet
and are all one.
For his Body and State
The Physick and Counsel (which came too late)
'Gainst whores and dice, hee nowe on mee bestowes
Most superficially: hee speakes of those,
(I found by him) least soundly whoe most knows:
The purpose of bracketing 'which came too late' is obviously to keep
it from being taken with ''Gainst whores and dice'--the very mistake
that _1669_ has fallen into and Grosart and Chambers have preserved.
The drawback to this use of the bracket is that it disguises, at least
to modern readers, that 'which came too late' must be taken with 'For
his Body and State'. I have therefore dropped it and placed a comma
after 'late'. The meaning I take to be as follows: 'The physic and
counsel against whores and dice, which came too late for his own body
and estate, he now bestows on me in a superficial fashion; for I found
by him that of whores and dice those speak least soundly who know
most from personal experience. ' A rather shrewd remark. There are some
spheres where experience does not teach, but corrupt.
l. 40. _in that or those_: 'that' the Duello, 'those' the laws of the
Duello. There is not much to choose between 'these' and 'those'.
ll. 41-3. _Though sober; but so never fought. I know
What made his Valour, undubb'd, Windmill go,
Within a Pint at most:_
The MSS. improve both the metre and the sense of the first of these
lines, which in _1669_ and Chambers runs:
Though sober; but nere fought. I know . . .
It is when he is sober that he never fights, though he may quarrel.
Roe knows exactly how much drink it would take to make this undubb'd
Don Quixote charge a windmill, or like a windmill. But the poem is too
early for an actual reference to _Don Quixote_
PAGE =403=, ll. 67-8. _and he is braver now
Than his captain. _
By 'braver' the poet means, not more courageous, but more splendidly
attired, more 'braw'.
PAGE =404=, l. 88. _Abraham France_--who wrote English hexameters. His
chief works are _The Countess of Pembrokes Ivy Church_ (1591) and _The
Countess of Pembrokes Emmanuel_ (1591). He was alive in 1633.
PAGE =405=, l. 113. _So they their weakness hide, and greatness
show. _ Grosart refused the reading 'weakness', which he found in
his favourite MS. _S_, and Chambers ignored it. It has, however, the
support of _B_, _O'F_, and _L74_ (which is strong in Roe's poetry),
and seems to me to give the right edge to the sarcasm. 'By giving to
flatterers what they owe to worth, Kings and Lords think to hide their
weakness of character, and to display the greatness of their wealth
and station. ' They make a double revelation of their weakness in their
credulity and their love of display.
l. 128. _Cuff. _ Henry Cuff (1563-1601), secretary to Essex and an
abettor of the conspiracy.
l. 131. _that Scot. _ It is incredible that Donne wrote these lines. He
found some of his best friends among the Scotch--Hay, Sir Robert Ker,
Essex, and Hamilton, to say nothing of the King.
PAGE =406=. SATYRE.
PAGE =407=, ll. 32-3. _A time to come, &c. _ I have adopted Grosart's
punctuation and think his interpretation of 'beg' must be the right
one--'beg thee as an idiot or natural. ' The O. E. D. gives: '† 5a. _To
beg a person_: to petition the Court of Wards (established by Henry
VIII and suppressed under Charles II) for the custody of a minor, an
heiress, or an idiot, as feudal superior or as having interest in the
matter: hence also fig. _To beg_ (any one) _for a fool_ or _idiot_: to
take him for, set him down as. _Obs. _' Among other examples is, 'He
proved a wiser man by much than he that begged him. Harington, _Met.
Ajax_ 46. ' What the satirist says is, 'The time will come when she
will beg to have wardship of thee as an idiot. If you continue she
will take you for one now. '
l. 35. _Besides, her<s>. _ My reading combines the variants. I think
'here' must be wrong.
PAGE =407=. AN ELEGIE.
PAGE =408=, l. 5. _Else, if you were, and just, in equitie &c. _ This
is the punctuation of _H39_, and is obviously right, 'in equitie'
going with what follows. He has denied the existence or, at least, the
influence of the Fates, and now continues, 'For if you existed or had
power, and if you were just, then, according to all equity I should
have vanquish'd her as you did me. ' Grosart and the Grolier Club
editor follow _1635-54_, and read:
Else, if you were, and just in equity, &c.
Chambers accepts the attempt of _1669_ to amend this, and prints:
True if you were, and just in equity, &c.
But 'just in equity' is not a phrase to which any meaning can be
attached.
PAGE =412=. AN ELEGIE.
Grosart prints this very incorrectly. He does not even reproduce
correctly the MS. _S_, which he professes to follow. Chambers follows
Grosart, adopting some of the variants of the Haslewood-Kingsborough
MS. reported by Grosart. They both have the strange reading 'cut
in bands' in l. 11, which as a fact is not even in _S_, from which
Grosart professes to derive it. The reading of all the MSS. , 'but in
his handes,' makes quite good sense. The Scot wants matter, except
in his hands, i. e. dirt, which is 'matter out of place'. The reading,
'writ in his hands', which Chambers reports after Grosart, is probably
a mistake of the latter's. Indeed his own note suggests that the
reading of _H-K_ is 'but in's hands'.
PAGE =417=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF HUNTINGTON.
It looks as if some lines of this poem had been lost. The first
sentence has no subject unless 'That' in the second line be a
demonstrative--a very awkward construction.
If written by Donne this poem must have been composed about the same
time as _The Storme_ and _The Calme_. He is writing apparently from
the New World, from the Azores. But it is as impossible to recover the
circumstances in which the poem was written as to be sure who wrote
it.
PAGE =422=. ELEGIE.
ll. 5-6. _denounce . . . pronounce. _ The reading of the MSS. seems to
me plainly the correct one. 'In others, terror, anguish and grief
announce the approach of death. Her courage, ease and joy in dying
pronounce the happiness of her state. ' The reading of the printed
texts is due to the error by which _1635_ and _1639_ took 'comming'
as an epithet to 'terror' as 'happy' is to 'state'. Some MSS. read
'terrors' and 'joyes'.
l. 22. _Their spoyles, &c. _ I have adopted the MS. reading here,
though with some hesitation, because (1) it is the more difficult
reading: 'Soules to thy conquest beare' seems more like a conjectural
emendation than the other reading, (2) The construction of the line
in the printed texts is harsh--one does not bear anything 'to a
conquest', (3) the meaning suits the context better. It is not souls
that are spoken of, but bodies. The bodies of the wicked become the
spoil of death, trophies of his victory over Adam; not so those of the
good, which shall rise again. See 1 Cor. xv. 54-5.
PAGE =424=. PSALME 137.
This Psalm is found in a MS. collection of metrical psalms (Rawlinson
Poetical 161), in the Bodleian Library, transcribed by a certain R.
Crane. The list of authors is Fr. Dav. , Jos. Be. , Rich. Cripps, Chr.
Dav. , Th. Carry. That Davison is the author of this particular Psalm
is strongly suggested by the poetical _Induction_ which in style and
verse resembles the psalm. The induction is signed 'Fr. Dav. ' The
first verse runs:
Come Urania, heavenly Muse,
and infuse
Sacred flame to my invention;
Sing so loud that Angells may
heare thy lay,
Lending to thy note attention.
PAGE =429=. SONG.
_Soules joy, now I am gone, &c. _ George Herbert, in the _Temple_,
gives _A Parodie_ of this poem, opening:
Soul's joy, when thou art gone,
And I alone,
Which cannot be,
Because Thou dost abide with me,
And I depend on Thee.
The parody does not extend beyond the first verse.
It was one of the aims of Herbert to turn the Muse from profane love
verses to sacred purposes. Mr. Chambers points to another reference
to this poem in some very bad verses by Sir Kenelm Digby in Bright's
edition of Digby's _Poems_ (p. 8), _The Roxburghe Club_.
APPENDIX C.
I. POEMS FROM ADDITIONAL MS. 25707. PAGE =433=.
The authorship of the four poems here printed from _A25_ has been
discussed in the _Text and Canon, &c. _ There is not much reason to
doubt that the first is what it professes to be. The order of the
names in the heading, and the character of the verses both suggest
that the second and corresponding verses are Donne's contribution.
There is a characteristic touch in each one. I cannot find anything
eminently characteristic in any of the rest of the group. The third
poem refers to the poetical controversy on Love and Reason carried on
with much spirit between the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyerd
in their _Poems_ as printed by the younger Donne in 1660. A much finer
fragment of the debate, beginning--
And why should Love a footboy's place despise?
is attributed to Donne by the Bridgewater MS. and the MS. in the
library of the Marquess of Crewe. It is part of a poem by Rudyerd in
the debate in the volume referred to.
II. POEMS FROM THE BURLEY MS. PAGE =437=.
Of the poems here printed from the Burley-on-the-Hill MS. , none I
think is Donne's. The chief interest of the collection is that it
comes from a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton, and therefore
presumably represents the work of the group of wits to which Donne,
Bacon, and Wotton belonged. I have found only one of them in other
MSS. , viz. that which I have called _Life a Play_. This occurs in
quite a number of MSS. in the British Museum, and has been published
in Hannah's _Courtly Poets_. It is generally ascribed to Sir Walter
Raleigh; and Harleian MS. 733 entitles it _Verses made by Sir Walter
Raleigh made the same morning he was executed_. I have printed it
because with the first, and another in the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, it
illustrates Wotton's taste for this comparison of life to a stage, a
comparison probably derived from an epigram in the Greek Anthology,
which may be the source of Shakespeare's famous lines in _As You Like
It_. The epitaph by Jonson on Hemmings, Shakespeare's fellow-actor
and executor, is interesting. A similar epitaph on Burbage is found in
Sloane MS. 1786:
An Epitaph on Mr Richard Burbage the Player.
This life's a play groaned out by natures Arte
Where every man hath his alloted parte.
This man hath now as many men can tell
Ended his part, and he hath done it well.
The Play now ended, think his grave to bee
The retiring house of his sad Tragedie.
Where to give his fame this, be not afraid:
Here lies the best Tragedian ever plaid.
III. POEMS FROM VARIOUS MSS. PAGE =443=.
Of the miscellaneous poems here collected there is very little to be
said. The first eight or nine come from the O'Flaherty MS. (_O'F_),
which professes to be a collection of Donne's poems, and may, Mr.
Warwick Bond thinks, have been made by the younger Donne, as it
contains a poem by him. It is careless enough to be his work.
They illustrate well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the
seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because
of their subject-matter. Donne had written some improper poems as a
young man; it was tempting therefore to assign any wandering poem
of this kind to the famous Dean of St. Paul's. The first poem, _The
Annuntiation_, has nothing to do with Donne's poem _The Annuntiation
and Passion_, but has been attached to it in a manner which is
common enough in the MSS. The poem _Love's Exchange_ is obviously an
imitation of Donne's _Lovers infinitenesse_ (p. 17). _A Paradoxe of a
Painted Face_ was attributed to Donne because he had written a prose
_Paradox_ entitled _That Women ought to paint_. The poem was not
published till 1660. In Harleian MS. it is said to be 'By my Lo: of
Cant. follower Mr. Baker'. The lines on _Black Hayre and Eyes_ (p.
460) are found in fifteen or more different MSS. in the British Museum
alone, and were printed in _Parnassus Biceps_ (1656) and Pembroke and
Ruddier's _Poems_ (1660). Two of the MSS. attribute the poem to Ben
Jonson, but others assign it to W. P. or Walton Poole. Mr. Chambers
points out that a Walton Poole has verses in _Annalia Dubrensia_
(1636), and also cites from Foster's _Alumni Oxonienses_: 'Walton
Poole of Wilts arm. matr. 9. 1. 1580 at Trinity Coll. aged 15. ' These
may be the same person. The signature A. P. or W. P. at the foot of
several pages suggests that the Stowe MS. 961 of Donne's poems had
belonged to some member of this family. The fragment of an Elegy at
p. 462 occurs only in _P_, where it forms part of an Heroicall Epistle
with which it has obviously nothing to do. I have thought it worth
preserving because of its intense though mannered style. The line,
'Fortune now do thy worst' recalls _Elegie XII_, l. 67. The closing
poem,'Farewell ye guilded follies,' comes from Walton's _Complete
Angler_ (1658), where it is thus introduced: 'I will requite you with
a very good copy of verses: it is a farewell to the vanities of the
world, and some say written by Dr. D. But let they be written by
whom they will, he that writ them had a brave soul, and must needs be
possest with happy thoughts of their composure. ' In the third edition
(1661) the words were changed to 'And some say written by Sir Harry
Wotton, who I told you was an excellent Angler. ' In one MS. they are
attributed to Henry King, Donne's friend and literary executor, and in
two others they are assigned to Sir Kenelm Digby, as by whom they are
printed in _Wits Interpreter_ (1655). Mr. Chambers points out that
'The closing lines of King's _The Farewell_ are curiously similar to
those of this poem. ' He quotes:
My woeful Monument shall be a cell,
The murmur of the purling brook my knell;
My lasting Epitaph the Rock shall groan;
Thus when sad lovers ask the weeping stone,
What wretched thing does in that centre lie,
The hollow echo will reply, 'twas I.
I cannot understand why Mr. Chambers, to whom I am indebted for most
of this information, was content to print so inadequate a text when
Walton was in his hand. Two of his lines completely puzzled me:
Welcome pure thoughts! welcome, ye careless groans!
These are my guests, this is that courtage tones.
'Groans' are generally the sign of care, not of its absence. However,
I find that Ashmole MS. 38, in the Bodleian, and some others read:
Welcome pure thoughts! welcome ye careless groves!
These are my guests, this is that court age loves.
This explains the mystery. But Mr. Chambers followed Grosart; and
Grosart was inclined to prefer the version of a bad MS. which he had
found to a good printed version.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.
PAGES =5=, =6=. The poems of Ben Jonson are here printed just as
they stand in the 1650, 1654, 1669 editions of Donne's _Poems_.
A comparison with the 1616 edition of Jonson's _Works_ shows some
errors. The poem _To John Donne_ (p. 5) is xxiii of the _Epigrammes_.
The sixth line runs
And which no affection praise enough can give!
The absurd 'no'n' of 1650 seems to have arisen from the printing
'no'affection' of the 1640 edition of Jonson's _Works_. The 1719
editor of Donne's _Poems_ corrected this mistake. A more serious
mistake occurs in the ninth line, which in the _Works_ (1616) runs:
All which I meant to praise, and, yet I would.
The error 'mean' comes from the 1640 edition of the _Works of Ben
Jonson_, which prints 'meane'.
_To Lucy, &c. _, is xciii of the _Epigrammes_. The fourteenth line
runs:
Be of the best; and 'mongst those, best are you.
The comma makes the sense clearer. In l. 3, 1616 reads 'looke,' with
comma.
_To John Donne_ (p. 6) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' is
in _1616_ more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.
PAGES =7=, =175=, =369=. I am indebted for the excellent copies of
the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence
Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems along
with which they are placed. The first is the young man of the _Songs
and Sonets_, the _Elegies_ and the _Satyres_, the counterpart of Biron
and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of Shakespeare's
Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in his _Scrinia
Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams . . . Archbishop of York_ (1693),
'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising features. '
The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the
author of the _Letters_, _Epicedes_, _Anniversaries_ and earlier
_Divine Poems_, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy
yet ever and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into
sportiveness', writing at one time the serious _Pseudo-Martyr_,
at another the outrageous _Ignatius his Conclave_, and again the
strangely-mooded, self-revealing _Biathanatos_: 'mee thinks I have the
keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe
so soone to my heart, as mine own sword. '
After describing the circumstances attending the execution of the last
portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the _Lives_ (the
passage is not in the earlier editions of the _Life of Donne_): 'And
now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities
of a various life: even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire
is, he may rest till I have told my Reader, that I have seen many
Pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in
several postures: And I now mention this, because, I have seen one
Picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen; with
his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the present
fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age: and his Motto
then was,
How much shall I be chang'd,
Before I am chang'd.
And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, _Lord! How much is_ Dr. Donne
_already chang'd, before he is chang'd! _' The change written in the
portrait is the change from the poet of the _Songs and Sonets_ to the
poet of the _Holy Sonnets_ and last _Hymns_.
The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made from
it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on the
figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also 'a board
of the just height of his body'. What was this for? Walton does not
explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the folds of
the drapery show the statue was modelled from a recumbent figure. Can
it be that Walton's account confuses two things? The incident of the
picture is not in the 1640 _Life_, but was added in 1658. How could
Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with his winding-sheet knotted
'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable that he was painted lying
in his winding-sheet on the board referred to; but that the monument,
as designed by himself, and executed by Nicholas Stone, was intended
to represent him rising at the Last Day from the urn, habited as he
had lain down--a symbolic rendering of the faith expressed in the
closing words of the inscription
Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere
Aspicit Eum
Cuius nomen est Oriens.
PAGE =37=, l. 14. The textual note should have indicated that in most
or all of the MSS. cited the whole line runs:
(Thou lovest Truth) but an Angell at first sight.
This is probably the original form of the line, corrected later to
avoid the clashing of the 'but's.
PAGE =96=, l. 6, note. The _R212_ cited here is Rawlinson Poetical
MS. 212, a miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century prose and
poetry (e. g. Davies' _Epigrams_. See II. p. 101). I had cited it once
or twice in my first draft. The present instance escaped my eye. It
helps to show how general the reading 'tyde' was.
PAGE =115=, l. 54. _goeing on it fashions_. The correct reading is
probably 'growing on it fashions', which has the support of both _JC_,
and _1650-69_ where 'its' is a mere error. I had made my text
before _JC_ came into my hand. To 'grow on' for 'to increase' is
an Elizabethan idiom: 'And this quarrel grew on so far,' North's
_Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, ad fin. _ See also O. E. D.
I should like in closing to express my indebtedness throughout to the
_Oxford English Dictionary_, an invaluable help and safeguard to
the editor of an English text, and also to Franz's admirable
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_ (1909), which should be translated.
PAGE =133=, l. 58. To what is said in the note on the taking of yellow
amber as a drug add: 'Divers men may walke by the Sea side, and the
same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all, one gathereth by
the benefit of that light pebles, or speckled shells, for curious
vanitie, and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall Ambar, by
the same light. ' _Sermons_ 80. 36. 326.
PAGES =156-7=. _Seeke true religion, &c. _ All this passage savours a
little of Montaigne: 'Tout cela, c'est un signe tres-evident que nous
ne recevons nostre religion qu'à nostre façon et par nos mains, et
non autrement que comme les autres religions se reçoyvent. Nous nous
sommes rencontrez au païs où elle estoit en usage; ou nous regardons
son ancienneté ou l'authorité des hommes qui l'ont maintenue; ou
creignons les menaces qu'ell' attache aux mescreans, ou suyvons ses
promesses. Ces considerations là doivent estre employées à nostre
creance, mais comme subsidiaires: ce sont liaisons humaines. Une
autre region, d'autres tesmoings, pareilles promesses et menasses nous
pourroyent imprimer par mesme voye une croyance contraire. Nous sommes
chrestiens à mesme titre que nous sommes ou perigordins ou alemans. '
_Essais_ (1580), II. 12. _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_.
PAGE =220=, l. 46. Compare: 'One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks
of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God loves, hee
loves to the end . . . His hailestones and his thunderbolts, and his
showres of blood (emblemes and instruments of his Judgements) fall
downe in a direct line, and affect or strike some one person, or
place: His Sun, and Moone, and Starres (Emblemes and Instruments of
his Blessings) move circularly, and communicate themselves to all. His
Church is his chariot; in that he moves more gloriously, then in the
Sun; as much more, as his begotten Son exceeds his created Sun, and
his Son of glory, and of his right hand, the Sun of the firmament;
and this Church, his chariot, moves in that communicable motion,
circularly; It began in the East, it came to us, and is passing now,
shining out now, in the farthest West. ' _Sermons_ 80. 2. 13-4.
l. 47. _Religious tipes_, is the reading of _1633_. The comma has
been accidentally dropped. There is no comma in _1635-69_, which print
'types'.
PAGE =241=, ll. 343-4. _As a compassionate Turcoyse, &c. _ Compare:
And therefore Cynthia, as a turquoise bought,
Or stol'n, or found, is virtueless, and nought,
It must be freely given by a friend,
Whose love and bounty doth such virtue lend,
As makes it to compassionate, and tell
By looking pale, the wearer is not well.
Sir Francis Kynaston, _To Cynthia_.
Saintsbury, _Caroline Poets_, ii. 161.
PAGE =251=, ll. 9-18. The source of this simile is probably Lucretius,
_De Rerum Natura_, III. 642-56.
Falciferos memorant currus abscidere membra
Saepe ita de subito permixta caede calentis,
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscisum, cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali non quit sentire dolorem;
Et semel in pugnae studio quod dedita mens est,
Corpore reliquo pugnam caedesque petessit,
Nec tenet amissam laevam cum tegmine saepe
Inter equos abstraxe rotas falcesque rapaces,
Nec cecidisse alius dextram, cum scandit et instat.
Inde alius conatur adempto surgere crure,
Cum digitos agitat propter moribundus humi pes.
Et caput abscisum calido viventeque trunco
Servat humi voltum vitalem oculosque patentis,
Donec reliquias animai reddidit omnes.
PAGE =259=, ll. 275-6. _so that there is
(For aught thou know'st) piercing of substances. _
'Piercing of substances,' the actual penetration of one substance by
another, was the Stoic as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of
mixture of substance ([Greek: krasis]), what is now called chemical
combination. The Peripatetics held that, while the qualities of the
two bodies combined to produce a new quality, the substances remained
in juxtaposition. Plotinus devotes the seventh book of the _Enneades_
to the subject; and one of the arguments of the Stoics which he cites
resembles Donne's problem: 'Sweat comes out of the human body without
dividing it and without the body being pierced with holes. ' The pores
were apparently unknown. See Bouillet's _Enneades de Plotin_, I. 243
f. and 488-9, for references.
PAGE =368=. HYMNE TO GOD MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESSE.
Professor Moore Smith has at the last moment reminded me of a fact,
the significance of which should have been discussed in the note on
the _Divine Poems_, that a copy of this poem found (Gosse, _Life &c. _
ii. 279) among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar bears the statement
that the verses were written in Donne's 'great sickness in December
1623'. Professor Moore Smith is of opinion that Sir Julius Caesar may
have been right and Walton mistaken, and there is a good deal to be
said for this view. 'It seems', he says, 'more likely that Walton
should have attributed the poem wrongly to Donne's last illness, than
that the MS. copy should antedate it by seven years. ' In 1640 Walton
simply referred it to his deathbed; the precise date was given in
1658. Moreover the date 1623 seems to Professor Moore Smith confirmed
by a letter to Sir Robert Ker (later Lord Ancrum) in 1624 (Gosse,
_Life &c. _ ii. 191), in which Donne writes, 'If a flat map be but
pasted upon a round globe the farthest east and the farthest west meet
and are all one.
