Page 127. The dates of the two chief Marriage Songs are: the Princess Elizabeth, Feb. 14, 1613; the Earl of Somerset, Dec. 26, 1613. The third is an earlier piece of work, dating from the years when Donne was a student at Lincoln's Inn. It is found in W, following the Satyres and Elegies and preceding the Letters, being probably the only one written when the collection in the first part of that MS. was made.

While quite himself in his treatment of the theme of this kind of poem, Donne comes in it nearer to Spenser than in any other kind. In glow and colour nothing he has written surpasses the Somerset Epithalamion:

An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song, &c. 'In February following, the Prince Palatine and that lovely Princess, the Lady Elizabeth, were married on Bishop Valentine's Day, in all the Pomp and Glory that so much grandeur could express. Her vestments were white, the Emblem of Innocency; her Hair dishevel'd hanging down her Back at length, an Ornament of Virginity; a Crown of pure Gold upon her Head, the Cognizance of Majesty, being all over beset with precious Gems, shining like a Constellation; her Train supported by Twelve young Ladies in White Garments, so adorned with Jewels, that her passage looked like a Milky-way. She was led to Church by her Brother Prince Charles, and the Earl of Northampton; the young Batchelor on the Right Hand, and the old on the left.' Camden, Annales.

A full description of the festivities will be found in Nichol's Progresses of King James, in Stow's Chronicle, and other works. In a letter to Mrs. Carleton, Chamberlain gives an account of what he saw: 'It were long and tedious to tell you all the particulars of the excessive bravery, both of men and women, but you may conceive the rest by one or two. The Lady Wotton had a gown that cost fifty pounds a yard the embroidery.... The Viscount Rochester, the Lord Hay, and the Lord Dingwall were exceeding rich and costly; but above all, they speak of the Earl of Dorset. But this extreme cost and riches makes us all poor.' Court and Times of James I, i. 226. The princess had been educated by Lord and Lady Harington, the parents of Donne's patroness, the Countess of Bedford. They accompanied her to Heidelberg, but Lord Harington died on his way home, Lady Harington shortly after her return. Donne had thus links with the Princess, and these were renewed and strengthened later when with Lord Doncaster he visited Heidelberg in 1619, and preached before her and her husband. He sent her his first printed sermon and his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, &c. (1624), and to the latter she, then in exile and trouble, replied in a courteous strain.

Page 128. Compare with the opening stanzas Chaucer's Parliament of Foules and Skeat's note (Works of Chaucer, i. 516). Birds were supposed to choose their mates on St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14).

l. 42. this, thy Valentine. This is the reading of all the editions except 1669 and of all the MSS. except two of no independent value. I think it is better than 'this day, Valentine', which Chambers adopts from 1669. The bride is addressed throughout the stanza, and it would be a very abrupt change to refer 'thou' in l. 41 to Valentine. I take 'this, thy Valentine' to mean 'this which is thy day, par excellence', 'thy Saint Valentine's day', 'the day which saw you paired'. But 'a Valentine' is a 'true-love': 'to be your Valentine' (Hamlet, IV. v. 50), and the reference may be to Frederick,—Frederick's Day is to become an era.

ll. 43-50. The punctuation of these lines requires attention. That of the editions, which Chambers follows, arranges them thus:

In this it will be seen that the clause 'Since separation ... can disunite' is attached to the previous verb. It gives the reason why they should 'go to an unseparable union'. In that which I have adopted, which is that of several good MSS., the clause 'Since separation ... can disunite' goes with what follows, explains 'You are twice inseparable, great, and one.' This is obviously right. My attention was first called to this emendation by the punctuation of the Grolier Club editor, who changes the comma after 'goe' (l. 46) to a semicolon.

l. 46. To an unseparable union growe. I have adopted 'growe' from the MSS. in place of 'goe' from the editions. The former are unanimous with the strange exception of Lec. This MS., which in several respects seems to be most like that from which 1633 was printed, varies here from its fellows D and H49, probably for the same reason that the editor of 1633 did, because he did not quite understand the phrase 'growe to' as used here, and 'goe' follows later. But it is unlikely that 'goe' would have been changed to 'growe', and

is, I think, preferable, because (1) both the words used in l. 44 are thus echoed.

(2) 'To an unseparable union growe', meaning 'Become inseparably incorporated with one another', is a slightly violent but not unnatural application of the phrase 'grow to' so common in Elizabethan English:

'I grow to you, and our parting is a tortured body.' All's Well that Ends Well, II. i. 36.

l. 56. The 'or' of the MSS. must, I think, be right. 'O Bishop Valentine' does not make good sense. Chambers's ingenious emendation of 1669, by which he connects 'of Bishop Valentine' with 'one way left', lacks support. Bishop Valentine has paired them; the Bishop in church has united them; the consummation is their own act.

Page 131. Ecclogue. 1613. December 26, &c.

It is unnecessary to detail all the ugly history of this notorious marriage. See Gardiner, History of England, ii. 16 and 20. Frances Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk, was married in 1606 to the youthful Earl of Essex, the later Parliamentary general. In 1613, after a prolonged suit she was granted a divorce, or a decree of nullity, and was at once married to King James's ruling favourite, Robert Carr, created Viscount Rochester in 1611, and Earl of Somerset in 1613. Donne, like every one else, had sought assiduously to win the favour of the all-powerful favourite. Mr. Gosse was in error in attributing to him a report on 'the proceedings in the nullity of the marriage of Essex and Lady Frances Howard' (Harl. MS. 39, f. 416), which was the work of his namesake, Sir Daniell Dunn. None the less, Donne's own letters show that he was quite willing to lend a hand in promoting the divorce; and that before the decree was granted he was already busy polishing his epithalamium. One of these letters is addressed to Sir Robert Ker, afterwards Earl of Ancrum, a friend of Donne's and a protÉgÉ of Somerset's. It seems to me probable that Sir Robert Ker is the 'Allophanes' of the Induction. Donne is of course 'Idios', the private man, who holds no place at Court. 'Allophanes' is one who seems like another, who bears the same name as another, i.e. the bridegroom. The name of both Sir Robert and the Earl of Somerset was Robert Ker or Carr.

Page 132, l. 34. in darke plotts. Here the reading of 1635, 'plotts,' has the support of all the MSS., and the 'places' of 1633, to which 1669 returns, is probably an emendation accidental or intentional of the editor or printer. It disturbs the metre. The word 'plot' of a piece of ground was, and is, not infrequent, and here its meaning is only a little extended. In the Progresse of the Soule, l. 129, Donne speaks of 'a darke and foggie plot'.

fire without light. Compare: 'Fool, saies Christ, this night they will fetch away thy soul; but he neither tells him, who they be that shall fetch it, nor whither they shall carry it; he hath no light but lightnings; a sodain flash of horror first, and then he goes into fire without light.' Sermons 26. 19. 273. 'This dark fire, which was not prepared for us.' Ibid.

l. 57. In the East-Indian fleet. The MSS. here give us back a word which 1633 had dropped, the other editions following suit. It was the East-Indian fleet which brought spices, the West-Indian brought 'plate', i.e. gold or (more properly) silver, to which there is no reference here.

l. 58. or Amber in thy taste? 'Amber' is here of course 'Ambergris', which was much used in old cookery, in which considerable importance was attached to scent as well as flavour. Compare:

and

This was the original meaning of the word 'amber', which was extended to the yellow fossil resin through some mistaken identification of the two substances. Mr. Gosse has called my attention to some passages which seem to indicate that the other amber was also eaten. Tallemant des RÉaux says of the Marquise de Rambouillet, 'Elle bransle un peu la teste, et cela lui vient d'avoir trop mangÉ d'ambre autrefois.' This may be ambergris; but Olivier de Serres, in his ThÉÂtre d'Agriculture (1600), speaks of persons who had formed a taste for drinking 'de l'ambre jaune subtilement pulvÉrisÉ'.

This is the reading of 1633 and gives, I think, Donne's meaning. Missing this, later editions placed a full stop after 'more', so that each line concludes a sentence. Mr. Chambers emends by changing the full stop after 'before' into a comma, and reading:

This looks ingenious, but I confess I do not know what it means. When was Cupid wise? When had he been so before? And with what special propriety is Cupid here called 'an earnest lover'? What Donne says is: 'Here was all this,—a court such as I have described, and more—an earnest lover (viz. the Earl of Somerset), wise in love (when most men are foolish), and wise before, as is approved by the King's confidence. In being admitted to that breast Cupid has ceased to be a child, has attained his majority, and the right to administer his own affairs.' Compare: 'I love them that love me, &c.... The Person that professes love in this place is Wisdom herself ... so that sapere et amare, to be wise and to love, which perchance never met before nor since, are met in this text.' Sermons 26. 18, Dec. 14, 1617.

Page 135. I have inserted the title Epithalamion after the Ecclogue from D, H49, Lec, O'F, S96, as otherwise the latter title is extended to the whole poem. This poem is headed in two different ways in the MSS. In A18, N, TC, the title at the beginning is: Eclogue Inducing an Epithalamion at the marriage of the E. of S. The proper titles of the two parts are thus given at once, and no second title is needed later. In the other MSS. the title at the beginning is Eclogue. 1613. Decemb. 26. Later follows the title Epithalamion. As 1633 follows this fashion at the beginning, it should have done so throughout.

Page 136, l. 126. Since both have both th'enflaming eyes. This is the reading of all the MSS. and it explains the fact that 'th'enflaming' is so printed in 1633. Without the 'both' this destroys the metre and, accordingly, the later editions read 'the enflaming'. It was natural to bring 'eye' into the singular and make 'th'enflaming eye' balance 'the loving heart'. Moreover 'both th'enflaming eyes' may have puzzled a printer. It is a Donnean device for emphasis. He has spoken of her flaming eyes, and now that he identifies the lovers, that identity must be complete. Both the eyes of both are lit with the same flame, both their hearts kindled at the same fire. Compare later: 225. 'One fire of foure inflaming eyes,' &c.

l. 129. Yet let A23, O'F. The first of these MSS. is an early copy of the poem. 'Yet' improves both the sense and the metre. It would be easily dropped from its likeness to 'let' suggesting a duplication of that word.

Page 137, l. 150. Who can the Sun in water see. The Grolier Club edition alters the full stop here to a semicolon; and Chambers quotes the reading of A18, N, TC, 'winter' for 'water', as worth noting. Both the change and the suggestion imply some misapprehension of the reference of these lines, which is to the preceding verse:

The opening of a stanza with two lines which in thought belong to the previous one is not unprecedented in Donne's poems. Compare the sixth stanza of A Valediction: of my name in the window, and note.

Dryden has borrowed this image—like many another of Donne's:

l. 156. as their spheares are. The crystalline sphere in which each planet is fixed.

Page 138, ll. 171-81. The Benediction. The accurate punctuation of Donne's poetry is not an easy matter. In the 1633 edition the last five lines of this stanza have no stronger stop than a comma. This may be quite right, but it leaves ambiguous what is the exact force and what the connexion of the line—

The editions of 1635-69, by placing a full stop after 'give' (l. 178), connect 'Nature and grace' with what follows, and Chambers and the Grolier Club editor have accepted this, though they place a semicolon after 'Art'. It seems to me that the line must go with what precedes. The force of 'may' is carried on to 'doe all':

'May there always be heirs of James to receive thanks, of you two to give; and may this mutual relation owe everything to nature and grace, the goodness of your descendants, the grace of the king, nothing to art, to policy and flattery.' That is the only meaning I can give to the line. The only change in 1633 is that of a comma to a full stop, a big change in value, a small one typographically.

Page 139, l. 200. they doe not set so too; I have changed the full stop after 'too' to a semicolon, as the 'Therefore thou maist' which follows is an immediate inference from these two lines. 'You rose at the same hour this morning, but you (the bride) must go first to bed.'

ll. 204-5. As he that sees, &c. 'I have sometimes wondered in the reading what was become of those glaring colours which amazed me in Bussy D'Ambois upon the theatre; but when I had taken up what I supposed a fallen star, I found I had been cozened with a jelly; nothing but a cold, dull mass, which glittered no longer than it was a-shooting.' Dryden, The Spanish Friar. In another place Dryden uses the figure in a more poetic or at least ambitious fashion:

The idea was a common one, but I have no doubt that Dryden owed his use of it as an image to Donne. There is no poet from whom he pilfers 'wit' more freely.

Page 140, ll. 215-16. Now, as in Tullias tombe, i.e. Cicero's daughter. 'According to a ridiculous story, which some of the moderns report, in the age of Pope Paul III a monument was discovered on the Appian road with the superscription Tulliolae filiae meae; the body of a woman was found in it, which was reduced to ashes as soon as touched; there was also a lamp burning, which was extinguished as soon as the air gained admission there, and which was supposed to have been lighted above 1500 years.' LempriÈre. See Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 21.

Page 141, l. 17. Help with your presence and devise to praise. I have dropped the comma after 'presence' because it suggests to us, though it did not necessarily do so to seventeenth-century readers, that 'devise' here is a verb—both Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers have taken it as such—whereas it is the noun 'device' = fancy, invention. Their fancy and invention is to be shown in the attiring of the bride:

'Devise to praise' would be a very awkward construction.

Page 142, l. 26. Sonns of these Senators wealths deep oceans. The corruption of the text here has arisen in the first place from the readily explicable confusion of 'sonnes' or 'sonns' as written and 'sonne', the final 's' being the merest flourish and repeatedly overlooked in copying and printing, while 'sonne' easily becomes 'some', and secondly from a misapprehension of Donne's characteristic pun. The punctuation of the 1633 edition is supported by almost every MS.

The 'frolique Patricians' are of course not the sons of 'these Senators' by birth. 'I speak not this to yourselves, you Senators of London,' says Donne in the Sermon Preached at Pauls Cross ... 26 Mart. 1616, 'but as God hath blessed you in your ways, and in your callings, so put your children into ways and courses too, in which God may bless them.... The Fathers' former labours shall not excuse their Sons future idleness.' The sons of wealthy citizens might grow idle and extravagant; they could not be styled 'Patricians'. It is not of them that Donne is thinking, but of the young noblemen who are accompanying their friend on his wedding-day. They are, or are willing to be, the sons, by marriage not by blood, of 'these Senators', or rather of their money-bags. In a word, they marry their daughters for money, as the hero of the Epithalamion is doing. It is fortunate for the Senators if the young courtiers do not find in their wives as well as their daughters, like Fastidious Brisk in Jonson's comedy, 'Golden Mines and furnish'd Treasurie.' But they are 'Sunnes' as well as Sonnes'—suns which drink up the deep oceans of these Senators' wealth:

Hence the metaphor 'deep oceans', and hence the appropriateness of the predicate 'Here shine'. This pun on 'sunne' and 'sonne' is a favourite with Donne:

'This day both Gods Sons arose: The Sun of his Firmament, and the Son of his bosome.' Sermons 80. 26. 255. 'And when thy Sun, thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed, the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory.' Ibid. 80. 45. 450.

Correctly read the line has a satiric quality which Donne's lines rarely want, and in which this stanza abounds. I have chosen the spelling 'Sonns' as that which is most commonly used in the MSS. for 'sonnes' and 'sunnes'.

Page 143, l. 57. His steeds nill be restrain'd. I had adopted the reading 'nill' for 'will' conjecturally before I found it in W. There can be no doubt it is right. As printed, the two clauses (57-8) simply contradict each other. The use of 'nill' for 'will' was one of Spenser's Chaucerisms, and Donne comes closer to Spenser in the Epithalamia than anywhere else. Sylvester uses it in his translation of Du Bartas:

And it occurs in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody:

In Shakespeare, setting aside the phrase 'nill he, will he', we have:

She has realized her potentiality; she is now actually what hitherto she has been only ?? d???e?, therefore she 'puts on perfection'. 'Praeterea secundum Philosophum ... qualibet potenti melior est eius actus; nam forma est melior quam materia, et actio quam potentia activa: est enim finis eius.' Aquinas, Summa, xxv. i. See also Aristotle, Met. 1050 a 2-16. This metaphysical doctrine is not contradicted by the religious exaltation of virginity, for it is not virginity as such which is preferred to marriage by the Church, but the virgin's dedication of herself to God: 'Virginitas inde honorata, quia Deo dicata.... Virgines ideo laudatae, quia Deo dicatae. Nec nos hoc in virginibus praedicamus, quod virgines sunt; sed quod Deo dicatae pi continenti virgines. Nam, quod non temere dixerim, felicior mihi videtur nupta mulier quam virgo nuptura: habet enim iam illa quod ista adhuc cupit.... Illa uni studet placere cui data est: haec multis, incerta cui danda est,' &c.; August. De Sanct. Virg. I. x, xi. Compare Aquinas, Summa II. 2, Quaest. clii. 3. Wedded to Christ the virgin puts on a higher perfection.

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