COMMENTARY.

That I may grow enamoured on your mind,When my own thoughts I there reflected find,

That I may grow enamoured on your mind,

When my own thoughts I there reflected find,

all the three modern editions are content still to read,

When my own thoughts I there neglected find

—a strange reason for being enamoured. Some difficult and perhaps corrupt lines still remain.]

16In forming this Appendix it was not my intention to remove these poems dogmatically from under the aegis of Donne's name. I wished rather to separate them from those which are indubitably his and facilitate comparison. Further evidence may show that I have erred as to one or other. This letter is the only one about which I feel any doubt myself. I have taken as much trouble with their text as with the rest of the poems.

17H40has no ascription. In the poem just discussed the ascription made correctly, at least intelligibly, inRP31, was transposed inH40. This must be the later collection. See II. p.cxiv.

18Absenceis printed, again unsigned, inWit Restored in severall Select Poems not formerly published. (1658.)

MetaphysicalPoetry.

Donne is a 'metaphysical' poet. The term was perhaps first applied by Dryden, from whom Johnson borrowed it: 'He' (Donne) 'affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with the speculations of philosophy, where he should engage their hearts, and entertain them with the softness of love.'Essay on Satire. 'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour.' Johnson,Life of Cowley. The parade of learning, and a philosophical or abstract treatment of love had been a strain in mediaeval poetry from the outset, manifesting itself most fully in the Tuscan poets of the 'dolce stil nuovo', but never altogether absent from mediaeval love-poetry. The Italian poet Testi (1593-1646), describing his choice of classical in preference to Italian models (he is thinking specially of Marino), says: 'poichè lasciando quei concetti metafisici ed ideali di cui sono piene le poesie italiane, mi sono provato di spiegare cose più domestiche, e di maneggiarle con effetti più famigliari a imitazione d'Ovidio, di Tibullo, di Properzio, e degli altri migliori.' Donne's love-poetry is often classical in spirit; his conceits are the 'concetti metafisici' of mediaeval poetry given a character due to his own individuality and the scientific interests of his age.

A metaphysical poet in the full sense of the word is a poet who finds his inspiration in learning; not in the world as his own and common sense reveal it, but in the world as science and philosophy report of it. The two greatest metaphysical poets of Europe are Lucretius and Dante. What the philosophy of Epicurus was to Lucretius, that of Thomas Aquinas was to Dante. Their poetry is the product of their learning, transfigured by the imagination, and it is not to be understood without some study of their thought and knowledge.

Donne is not a metaphysical poet of the compass of Lucretius and Dante. He sets forth in his poetry no ordered system of the universe.The ordered system which Dante had set forth was breaking in pieces while Donne lived, under the criticism of Copernicus, Galileo, and others, and no poet was so conscious as Donne of the effect on the imagination of that disintegration. In the twoAnniversariesmystical religion is made an escape from scientific scepticism. Moreover, Donne's use of metaphysics is often frivolous and flippant, at best simply poetical. But he is a learned poet, and he is a philosophical poet, and without some attention to the philosophy and science underlying his conceits and his graver thought it is impossible to understand or appreciate either aright. Failure to do so has led occasionally to the corruption of his text.

Donne'sLearning.

Walton tells us that Donne's learning, in his eleventh year when he went to Oxford, 'made one then give this censure of him, "That this age had brought forth another Picus Mirandula; of whom story says that he was rather born than made wise by study."' 'In the most unsettled days of his youth', the same authority reports, 'his bed was not able to detain him beyond the hour of four in the morning; and it was no common business that drew him out of his chamber till past ten; all which time was employed in study; though he took great liberty after it.' 'He left the resultances of 1,400 authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' The lists of authors prefixed to his prose treatises and the allusions and definite references in the sermons corroborate Walton's statement regarding the range of Donne's theological and controversial reading.

ClassicalLiterature.

Confining attention here to Donne's poetry, and the spontaneous evidence of learning which it affords, one would gather that his reading was less literary and poetic in character than was Milton's during the years spent at Horton. It is clear that he knew the classical poets, but there are few specific allusions. Ovid, Horace, and Juvenal one can trace, not any other with certainty, nor in his sermons do references to Virgil, Horace, or other poets abound.

Italian.

Like Milton, Donne had doubtless read the Italian romances. One reference to Angelica and an incident in theOrlando Furiosooccur in theSatyres, and from the same source as well as from an unpublished letter we learn that he had read Dante. Aretino is the only other Italian to whom he makes explicit reference.

French.

One of Régnier'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 tobe Régnier's. The resemblance may be accidental, for Donne'sSatyreswere written before the publication of Régnier'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 thePléiade. 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 inGenesis. 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 programmeof thePléiadethus 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 isnon 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 SecondAnniversaries, 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.

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'sDivine Poemsand sermons. The subject awaits investigation.

ScholasticPhilosophy.

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 questionof 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 générale et comparée des philosophies médiévales.Paris, 1907), they entered the Scholastic Philosophy through Plotinus and were modified in the passage.1The 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.

1The 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.

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 Soulereveals his acquaintance with Jewish apocryphal legends.

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 hisSongs 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.2In 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.

2In theLetters 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'.

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 HillRise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinkeThe floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;

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'sAnatomy of Melancholyand Browne'sPseudodoxia Epidemica. I have made constant use of theSumma Theologiaeof St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne'sPatrologiae Cursus Completus(1845). By Professor Picavet my attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus'sEnneadswith ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller'sPhilosophie der Griechen, on Plotinus, and Harnack'sHistory of Dogma. Throughout, my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to accumulate parallels.

***In the following notes theLXXX Sermons &c.(1640),Fifty Sermons &c.(1649), andXXVI Sermons &c.(1669/70) are referred to thus:—80. 19. 189, i.e. theLXXX 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.

SeeText and Canon of Donne's Poems, p.lix.

Page1, 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.

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'sLife, &c.ii. 288). Walton's account of the manner in which this picture was prepared is well known. See II. p.249.

Page4.William, Lord Craven, &c.This is the younger Donne's dedication. SeeText 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 inO'Fand has been printed by Mr. Warwick Bond:

No want of duty did my mind possesse,I through a dearth of words could not expresseThat wchI feare I doe too soone pursueWchis to pay my duty due to you.For, through the weaknesse of my witt, this wayI shall diminish what I hope to pay.And this consider, T'was the sonne of MayAnd not Apollo that did rule the day.Had it bin hee then somthing would have rose;In gratefull verse or else in thankfull proseI would have told you (father) by my handThat I yorsonne am prouder of yorbandThen others of theyr freedome, And to payThinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.Yorobedient sonneJo. Donne.

No want of duty did my mind possesse,

I through a dearth of words could not expresse

That wchI feare I doe too soone pursue

Wchis 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 yorsonne am prouder of yorband

Then others of theyr freedome, And to pay

Thinke it good service to kneele downe and pray.

Yorobedient sonne

Jo. Donne.

Pages5,6. 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. SeeText and Canon, &c.They were taken from Jonson'sEpigrams(1616), where they are Nos. xxiii., xciv., and xcvi. Of Donne as a poet Jonson uttered three memorable criticisms in hisConversations 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.'

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 theElegies, poems similar in theme and tone to theSongs 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 acontinual 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. TheElegie XIV(if it be Donne's, and Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the linesUpon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities, the two frankly paganEpithalamiaon the Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing ofIgnatius 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 thatnoneof 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 areThe 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, likeThe 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 fineexamples of his subtler moods asThe 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 theSongs and SonetsareTwicknam GardenandA 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.

The MSS. point to two distinct recensions of this poem. The one which is given in the group of MSS.D,H49,Lec, and in1633, 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' from1633, and he or the editor corrected from a MS. collection, probablyA18,N,TC. InTCDthe 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 andD,H49,Lecseems 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 theother. 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 abetterhemisphere, 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 areone, dissolution is impossible; and the same is true if, thoughtwo, 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,SummaI. 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.'Sermons80. 19. 189.

The first two stanzas of this song are printed in the 1653 edition of the Poems of Francis Beaumont, with the titleA 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 springsAnd summers which infectious are:They hear but when the meremaid sings,And only see the falling starre:Who ever dareAffirme no woman chaste and faire.Goe cure your feavers; and you'le sayThe Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:In copper mines no longer stay,But travel to the west, and thereThe right ones see,And grant all gold's not alchimie.

They meet but with unwholesome springsAnd summers which infectious are:They hear but when the meremaid sings,And only see the falling starre:Who ever dareAffirme no woman chaste and faire.

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 sayThe Dog-dayes scorch not all the yeare:In copper mines no longer stay,But travel to the west, and thereThe right ones see,And grant all gold's not alchimie.

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 inThe 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.

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 ofMandrakes, 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'sVulgar Errors(1686), ii. 6, p. 72. Compare alsoThe Progresse of the Soule, st. xv, p. 300.

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 inLove's Labour's Lost.All the Worthiestherefore 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'sCommentaries(1657), p. 174.

l. 6.The skill of specular stone.CompareTo the Countesse of Bedford, p.219, ll. 28-30:

You teach (though wee learne not) a thing unknowneTo our late times, the use of specular stone,Through which all things within without were shown.

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'sChronicle, 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 spéculaire' or 'pierre à 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 evenincreases or decreases, as the Moon doth'. But surely Donne refers to crystal-gazing. Paracelsus has a paragraph in theCoelum Philosophorum:

'How to conjure the Crystal so that all Things maybe seen in it.

'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' ofBis 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.

CompareTo 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.'

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.

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. CompareLoves exchange, p.35, ll. 34-35:

and make moreMynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.

and make more

Mynes in the earth, then Quarries were before.

AndThe 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.'Sermons50. 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'sLife, &c., ii. 191.

l. 24.All wealth alchimie: i.e. imposture or 'glittering dross' (O.E.D.). 'Though the show of it were glorious, the substance of it was dross, and nothing but alchymy and cozenage.' Harrington,Orlando Furioso(1591). See also poem cited II. p. 11.

l. 7.dry corke.Cork was a favourite metaphor for what was dry and withered. To our taste it is hardly congruous with love or tragic poetry, perhaps because of its associations. 'Bind fast his corky arms,' says Cornwall, speaking of Gloucester (King Lear,III.vii. 31), but Shakespeare seems to have taken the epithet from Harsnett'sDeclaration of Egregious Popishe Impostures, &c.(1603): 'It would pose all the cunning exorcists ... to teach an old corkie woman to writhe, tumble, curvet,' c. 5, p. 23.

l. 5.My body raigne.Grosart and Chambers substitute 'range', from1635-69. Perhaps they are right; but I feel doubtful. All the best MSS. read 'raigne.' Donne contrasts the reign of love and the reign of lust on the body, and frankly declares for the latter. A lover might range, 'I can love both fair and brown,' but no lover could

mistake by the wayThe maid, and tell the lady of that delay.

mistake by the way

The maid, and tell the lady of that delay.

Adonis, with graver rhetoric, states the other side of Donne's paradoxical thesis:

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.Shakespeare,Venus and Adonis,v.cxxxiv.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;

Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

Shakespeare,Venus and Adonis,v.cxxxiv.

ll. 13-16. Chambers and Grosart have adopted, with some modification of punctuation, the reading of the 1633-54 editions, and the lines are frequently quoted as printed by Chambers:

Only let me love none; no, not the sportFrom country-grass to confitures of court,Or city's quelque-choses; let not reportMy mind transport.

Only let me love none; no, not the sport

From country-grass to confitures of court,

Or city's quelque-choses; let not report

My mind transport.

I confess I find it difficult to attach any exact meaning to them. Are there any instances of 'sport' thus used apparently for 'sportive lady'? The difficulty seems to me to have arisen from the accidental dropping in the 1633 edition of the semicolon after 'sport', which the 1669 editor rightly restored. What Donne means by 'the sport' is clear enough from other passages, e.g. 'the short scorn of a bridegroom's play' (Loves Alchimie), 'as she would man should despise the sport' (Farewell to Love). The prayer that reportmay('let', not 'let not') carry his roving fancy from one to another, is in keeping with the whole tenor of the poem. The Grolier Club edition has the punctuation I have given, which I had adopted before I saw that edition. I find it difficult to attach any meaning to 'let not report'.

l. 7.Or the Kings reall, or his stamped face Contemplate.Donne's conceits reappear in his sermons in a different setting. 'Beloved in Christ Jesus, the heart of your gracious God is set upon you; and we his servants have told you so, and brought you thus neare him, into his Court, into his house, into the Church, but yet we cannot get you to see his face, to come to that tendernesse of conscience as to remember and consider that all your most secret actions are done in his sight and his presence; Caesars face, and Caesars inscription you can see: The face of the Prince in his coyne you can rise before the Sun to see, and sit up till mid-night to see; but if you do not see the face of God upon every piece of that mony too, all that mony is counterfeit; If Christ have not brought that fish to the hook, that brings the mony in the mouth (as he did toPeter) that mony is ill fished for.'Sermons80. 12. 122.

l. 15. 'Man' is the reading of every MS. exceptLec, which here as in several other little details appears to resemble1633more closely than either of the other MSS.,D,H49. It is quite possible that 'man' is correct—a vivid and concrete touch, but in view of the 'men' which follows 'more' is preferable. The two words are frequently interchanged in the MSS.

ll. 24-5. The punctuation of these lines is that ofD,H49,Lec, though I adopted it independently as required by the sense. The editions put a full stop after each line. Chambers alters the first (l. 24) to a semicolon and connects

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