John Donne

Of the Elegies two groups seem to have been pretty widely circulated before the larger collections were made or publication took place. Each contained either twelve or thirteen, the twelve or thirteen being made up sometimes by the inclusion of the Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house,' afterwards called Elegie on the L. C. The order in the one group, as we find it in e.g. D, H49, Lec, is The Bracelet,¹ Going to Bed, Jealousie, The Anagram, Change, The Perfume, His Picture, 'Sorrow who to this house,' 'Oh, let mee not serve,' Loves Warr, On his Mistris, 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' Loves Progress. The second group, as we find it in A25, JC, and W, contains The Bracelet, The Comparison, The Perfume, Jealousie, 'Oh, let not me (sic W) serve,' 'Natures lay Ideott, I taught,' Loves Warr, Going to Bed, Change, The Anagram, On his Mistris, His Picture, 'Sorrow, who to this house.' The last is not given in A25. It will be noticed that D, H49, Lec drops The Comparison; A25, JC, W, Loves Progress; and that there were thirteen elegies, taking the two groups together, apart from the Funeral Elegy.

¹ I take the titles given in the editions for ease of reference to the reader of this edition. The only title which D, H49, Lec have is On Loves Progresse; A25, JC, and W have none. Other MSS. give one or other occasionally.

These are the most widely circulated and probably the earliest of Donne's Elegies, taken as such. Of the rest The Dreame is given in D, H49, Lec, but among the songs, and The Autumnall is placed by itself. The rest are either somewhat doubtful or were not allowed to get into general circulation.

Can we to any extent date the Elegies? There are some hints which help to indicate the years to which the earlier of them probably belong. In The Bracelet Donne speaks of Spanish 'Stamps' as having

slily made

Gorgeous France, ruin'd, ragged and decay'd;

Scotland which knew no State, proud in one day:

mangled seventeen-headed Belgia.

The last of these references is too indefinite to be of use. I mean that it covers too wide a period. Nor, indeed, do the others bring us very far. The first indicates the period from the alliance between the League and the King of Spain, 1585, when Philip promised a monthly subsidy of 50,000 crowns, to the conversion and victory of Henry IV in 1593; the second, the short time during which Spanish influence gained the upper hand in Scotland, between 1582 and 1586. After 1593 is the only determinable date. In Loves Warre we are brought nearer to a definite date.

France in her lunatique giddiness did hate

Ever our men, yea and our God of late;

Yet shee relies upon our Angels well

Which nere retorne

points to the period between Henry's conversion ('yea and our God of late') and the conclusion of peace between France and Spain in 1598. The line,

And Midas joyes our Spanish journeyes give

(taken with a similar allusion in one of his letters:

Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring

I feare, &c., p. 210),

refers most probably to Raleigh's expedition in 1595 to discover the fabulous wealth of Manoa. Had the Elegy been written after the Cadiz expedition there would certainly have been a more definite reference to that war. The poem was probably written in the earlier part of 1596, when the expedition was in preparation and Donne contemplated joining it.

To date one of the poems is not of course to date them all, but their paradoxical, witty, daring tone is so uniform that one may fairly conjecture that these thirteen Elegies were written between 1593 and Donne's first entry upon responsible office as secretary to Egerton in 1598.

The twelfth (His parting from her) and fifteenth (The Expostulation) Elegies it is impossible to date, but it is not likely that they were written after his marriage. Julia is quite undatable, a witty sally Donne might have written any time before 1615. But the fourteenth (A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife) was certainly written after 1609, probably in 1610.

The Autumnall raises rather an interesting question. Mr. Gosse has argued that it was most probably composed as late as 1625. Walton's dating of it is hopelessly confused. He states (Life of Mr. George Herbert, 1670, pp. 14-19) 'that Donne made the acquaintance of Mrs. Herbert and wrote this poem when she was residing at Oxford with her son Edward, Donne being then near to (about First Ed.) the Fortieth year of his Age'; 'both he and she were then past the Meridian of man's life.' But according to Lord Herbert his mother left Oxford and brought him to town about 1600, shortly before the insurrection of Essex, i.e. when Donne was twenty-seven years old, and secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, and Lady Herbert was about thirty-five or thirty-six. It is, of course, not impossible that Donne visited Oxford between 1596 and 1600, but he was not then the grave person Walton portrays. The period which the latter has in view is that in which Donne was at Mitcham and Mrs. Herbert living in London. 'This day', he writes in a letter to her, dated July 23, 1607, 'I came to town and to the best part of it your house.' In 1609 Mrs. Herbert married Sir John Danvers. We know that in 1607-9 Donne was in correspondence with Mrs. Herbert and was sending her copies of his religious verses. Walton's evidence points to its being about the same time that he wrote this poem.

Mr. Gosse's argument for a later date is, regarded a priori, very persuasive. 'Unless it is taken as describing the venerable and beautiful old age of a distinguished woman, the piece is an absurdity; to address such lines to a youthful widow, who was about to become the bride of a boy of twenty, would have been a monstrous breach of taste and good manners' (Life, &c., ii. 228). It is, however, somewhat hazardous to fix a standard of taste for the age of James I, and above all others for John Donne. To the taste of the time and the temper of Donne such a poem might more becomingly be addressed to a widow of forty, the mother of ten children, one already an accomplished courtier, than it might be written by a priest in orders. Donne would have been startled to hear that in 1625 he had spent any time in such a vain amusement as composing a secular elegy. The poem he wrote to Mrs. Herbert before 1609 was probably thought by her and him an exquisite compliment. He expressly disclaims speaking of the old age which disfigures. He writes of one whose youthful beauty has flown. Forty seemed old for a woman, even to Jane Austen, and in Montaigne's opinion it is old for a man: 'J'estois tel, car je ne me considÈre pas À cette heure, que je suis engagÉ dans les avenues de la vieillesse, ayant pieÇa franchy les quarante ans:

Minutatim vires et robur adultum

Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas.

Ce que je seray doresnevant ce ne sera plus qu'un demy estre, ce ne sera plus moy; je m'eschappe les jours et me desrobe a moy mesme:

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes.' Essais, ii. 17.

Mrs. Herbert's marriage was due to no 'heyday of the blood'. It was the gravity of Danvers' temper which attracted her, and he became the steady friend and adviser of her children.

There are, moreover, some items of evidence which go to support Walton's testimony. The poem is found in one MS., S, dated 1620, which gives us a downward date; and in 1610 occurs what looks very like an allusion to Donne's poem in Ben Jonson's Silent Woman. Clerimont and True-wit are speaking of the Collegiate ladies, and the former asks,

Who is the president?

True. The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.

Cler. A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no

man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has

painted and perfumed ... I have made a song (I pray thee

hear it) on the subject

Still to be neat, still to be drest...

The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which the poem is dubbed An Autumnal Face or The Autumnall shows that the phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such allusions, and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's paradoxes, perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' Lady Danvers. We cannot prove that the poem was written so early, but the evidence on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.

Page 79. Elegie I.

l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' is clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and from the vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which Donne uses more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to bruises,' Sermons 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' Ibid. 80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' would be to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' with which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. Both Chambers and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's poisoned father:

a most instant tetter barked about,

Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust,

All my smooth body.

ll. 19-20. Nor, at his board together being sat

With words, nor touch, scarce looks adulterate.

Quum premit ille torum, vultu comes ipsa modesto

Ibis, ut adcumbas; clam mihi tange pedem,

Me specta, nutusque meos, vultumque loquacem:

Excipe furtivas, et refer ipsa, notas.

Verba superciliis sine voce loquentia dicam:

Verba leges digitis, verba notata mero.

Quum tibi succurrit Veneris lascivia nostrae,

Purpureas tenero pollice tange genas.

Si quid erit, de me tacita quod mente queraris,

Pendeat extrema mollis ab aure manus:

Quum tibi, quae faciam, mea lux, dicamve placebunt,

Versetur digitis annulus usque tuis,

Tange manu mensam, quo tangunt more precantes,

Optabis merito quum mala multa viro.

Quod tibi miscuerit sapias, bibat ipse iubeto;

Tu puerum leviter posce, quod ipsa velis.

Quae tu reddideris, ego primus pocula sumam,

Et qua tu biberis, hac ego parte bibam.

Ovid, Amores, I. iv. 15-32.

Thenceforth to her he sought to intimate

His inward grief, by meanes to him well knowne:

Now Bacchus fruit out of the silver plate

He on the table dasht as overthrowne,

Or of the fruitfull liquor overflowne,

And by the dancing bubbles did divine,

Or therein write to let his love be showne;

Which well she red out of the learned line;

(A sacrament profane in mysterie of wine.)

Spenser, Faerie Queene, III. ix.

ll. 21 f. Nor when he, swoln and pamper'd with great fare

Sits down and snorts, cag'd in his basket chair, &c.

Vir bibat usque roga: precibus tamen oscula desint;

Dumque bibit, furtim, si potes, adde merum.

Si bene compositus somno vinoque iacebit;

Consilium nobis resque locusque dabunt.

Ovid, Amores, I. iv. 51-4.

Page 80. Elegie II.

l. 4. Though they be Ivory, yet her teeth be jeat: i.e. 'Though her eyes be yellow as ivory, her teeth are black as jet.' The edition of 1669 substitutes 'theirs' for 'they', referring back to 'others'. Grosart follows.

l. 6. rough is the reading of 1633, 1669, and all the best MSS. Chambers and Grosart prefer the 'tough' of 1635-54, but 'rough' means probably 'hairy, shaggy, hirsute'. O.E.D., Rough, B. I. 2. Her hair is in the wrong place. To have hair on her face and none on her head are alike disadvantageous to a woman's beauty.

Page 81, ll. 17-21. If we might put the letters, &c. Compare:

As six sweet Notes, curiously varied

In skilfull Musick, make a hundred kindes

Of Heav'nly sounds, that ravish hardest mindes;

And with Division (of a choice device)

The Hearers soules out at their ears intice:

Or, as of twice-twelve Letters, thus transpos'd,

The World of Words, is variously compos'd;

And of these Words, in divers orders sow'n

This sacred Volume that you read is grow'n

(Through gracious succour of th'Eternal Deity)

Rich in discourse, with infinite Variety.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, First Week, Second Day.

Sylvester follows the French closely. Du Bartas' source is probably:

Quin etiam passim nostris in versibus ipsis

Multa elementa vides multis communia verbis,

Cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest

Confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti,

Tantum elementa queunt permutato ordine solo.

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, I. 824-7.

Compare Aristotle, De Gen. et Corr. I. 2.

l. 22. unfit. I have changed the semicolon after this word to a full stop. The former suggests that the next two lines are an expansion or explanation of this statement. But the poet is giving a series of different reasons why Flavia may be loved.

ll. 41-2. When Belgias citties, the round countries drowne,

That durty foulenesse guards, and armes the towne:

Chambers, adopting a composite text from editions and MSS., reads:

Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,

That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.

Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. agree with 1633-54, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is probably correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their foes, drown (i.e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus produced is their protection.' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. The reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden. 'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given to land overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.

Page 82. Elegie III.

l. 5. forc'd unto none is a strange expression, and the 'forbid to none' of B is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none' probably means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In woman's love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from a favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a monopoly:

Is sibi responsum hoc habeat, in medio omnibus

Palmam esse positam, qui artem tractant musicam.

Ter. Phorm. Prol. 16-17.

l. 8. these meanes, as I, It is difficult to say whether the 'these' of the editions and of D, H49, Lec or the 'those' of the rest of the MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of 'the same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:

Under these hard conditions as this time

Is like to lay upon us.Shakespeare, Jul. Caes. I. ii. 174.

l. 17. Who hath a plow-land, &c. This has nothing to do, as Grosart seems to think, with the name for a certain measurement of land in the north of England corresponding to a hide in the south. A 'plow-land' here is an arable or cultivated field. Possibly the 'a' has crept in and one should read simply 'plow-land', or, like P, 'plow-lands.' Otherwise 'Who hath' is to be slurred in reading the line. The meaning of the passage seems to be that though a man puts all his own seed into his land, he is quite willing to reap the corn which has sprung from others' seed, brought thither, it may be, by wind or birds.

l. 30. To runne all countries, a wild roguery. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes this line, giving to 'roguery' the meaning of 'a knavish, rascally act'. But Grosart is certainly right in explaining it as 'vagrancy'. In love, Donne does not wish to be a captive bound to one, but he does not wish on the other hand to be a vagrant with no settled abode. The O.E.D. dates the poem c. 1620, which is much too late. Donne was not writing in this manner after he took orders. It cannot be later than 1601, and is probably earlier.

l. 32. more putrifi'd, or, as in the MSS., 'worse putrifi'd.' The latter is probably correct, but the difference is trifling. By 'putrifi'd' Donne means 'made salt' and so less fit for drinking. The 'purifi'd' of some editions points to a misunderstanding of Donne's meaning; for saltness and putrefaction were not identical: 'For Salt as incorruptible was the Symbol of friendship, and before the other service was offered unto their guests.' Browne, Vulgar Errors, v. 22.

Page 84. Elegie IV.

l. 2. All thy suppos'd escapes. He is addressing the lady. All her supposed transgressions (e.g. of chastity) are laid to the poet's charge. 'Escape' = 'An inconsiderate transgression; a peccadillo, venial error. (In Shaks. with different notion: an outrageous transgression.) Applied esp. to breaches of chastity.' O.E.D. It is probably in Shakespeare's sense that Donne uses the word:

Brabantio. For your sake, jewel,

I am glad at soul I have no other child;

For thy escape would teach me tyranny,

To hang clogs on them.Shakespeare, Othello, I. iii. 195-8.

ll. 7-8. Though he had wont to search with glazed eyes,

As though he came to kill a Cockatrice,

i.e. 'with staring eyes'. I take 'glazed' to be the past participle of the verb 'glaze', 'to stare':

I met a lion

Who glaz'd upon me, and went surly by,

Without annoying me.Shakespeare, Jul. Caes. I. iii. 20-2.

The past participle is thus used by Shakespeare in: 'With time's deformed hand' (Com. of Err. V. i. 298), i.e. 'deforming hand'; 'deserved children' (Cor. III. i. 292), i.e. 'deserving'. See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 661.

The Cockatrice or Basilisk killed by a glance of its eye:

Here with a cockatrice dead-killing eye

He rouseth up himself, and makes a pause.

Shakespeare, Lucrece, 540-1.

The eye of the man who comes to kill a cockatrice stares with terror lest he be stricken himself.

If 'glazed' meant 'covered with a film', an adverbial complement would be needed:

For sorrow's eye, glazed with blinding tears.

Shakespeare, Rich. II, II. ii. 16.

ll. 9, 15. have ... take. I have noted the subjunctive forms found in certain MSS., because this is undoubtedly Donne's usual construction. In a full analysis that I have made of Donne's syntax in the poems I have found over ninety examples of the subjunctive against seven of the indicative in concessive adverbial clauses. In these ninety are many where the concession is an admitted fact, e.g.

Though her eyes be small, her mouth is great.

Elegie II, 3 ff.

Though poetry indeed be such a sin. Satire II, 5.

Of the seven, two are these doubtful examples here noted; one, where the subjunctive would be more appropriate, is due to the rhyme.

ll. 10-11. Thy beauties beautie, and food of our love,

Hope of his goods.

Grosart is puzzled by this phrase and explains 'beauties beautie' as 'the beauty of thy various beauties' (face, arms, shape, &c.). I fear that Donne means that the beauty which he most loves in his mistress is her hope or prospect of obtaining her father's goods. The whole poem is in a vein of extravagant and cynical wit. It must not be taken too seriously.

l. 22. palenesse, blushing, sighs, and sweats. All the MSS. read 'blushings', which is very probably correct, but I have left the two singulars to balance the two plurals. But the use of abstract nouns as common is a feature of Donne's syntax: 'We would not dwell upon increpations, and chidings, and bitternesses; we would pierce but so deepe as might make you search your wounds, when you come home to your Chamber, to bring you to a tendernesse there, not to a palenesse or blushing here.' Sermons 80. 61. 611.

l. 29. ingled: i.e. fondled, caressed. O.E.D.

ll. 33-4. He that to barre the first gate, doth as wide

As the great Rhodian Colossus stride.

Porters seem to have been chosen for their size. Compare: 'Those big fellows that stand like Gyants (at Lords Gates) having bellies bumbasted with ale in Lambswool and with Sacks.' Dekker.

l. 37. were hir'd to this. All the MSS. read 'for this', but 'to' is quite Elizabethan, and gives the meaning more exactly. He was not taken on as a servant for this purpose, but was specially paid for this piece of work:

This naughty man

Shall face to face be brought to Margaret,

Who I believe was pack'd in all this wrong,

Hir'd to it by your brother.

Shakespeare, Much Ado, V. i. 307.

l. 44. the pale wretch shivered. I have (with the support of the best MSS.) changed the semicolon to a full stop here, not that as the punctuation of the editions goes it is wrong, but because it is ambiguous and has misled both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor. By changing the semicolon to a comma they make ll. 43-4 an adverbial clause of time which, with the conditional clause 'Had it beene some bad smell', modifies 'he would have thought ... had wrought'. This seems to me out of the question. The 'when' links the statement 'the pale wretch shivered' to what precedes, not to what follows. As soon as the perfume reached his nose he shivered, knowing what it meant. A new thought begins with 'Had it been some bad smell'.

The use of the semicolon, as at one time equivalent to a little less than a full stop, at another to a little more than a comma, leads occasionally to these ambiguities. The few changes which I have made in the punctuation of this poem have been made with a view to obtaining a little more consistency and clearness without violating the principles of seventeenth-century punctuation.

l. 49. The precious Vnicornes. See Browne, Vulgar Errors, iii. 23: 'Great account and much profit is made of Unicornes horn, at least of that which beareth the name thereof,' &c. He speaks later of the various objects 'extolled for precious Horns'; and Donne's epithet doubtless has the same application, i.e. to the horns.

Page 86. Elegie V.

l. 8. With cares rash sodaine stormes being o'rspread. I have let the 1633 reading stand, though I feel sure that Donne is not responsible for 'being o'rspread'. Printing from D, H49, Lec, in which probably the word 'cruel' had been dropped, the editor or printer supplied 'being' to adjust the metre. I have not corrected it because I am not sure which is Donne's version. Clearly the line has undergone some remodelling. My own view is that the earliest form is suggested by B, S, S96,

With Cares rash sudden storms o'rpressed,

where 'o'erpress' means 'conquer, overwhelm'. Compare Shakespeare's

but in my sight

Deare heart forbear to glance thine eye aside.

What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might

Is more than my o'erprest defence can bide.

Sonnets, 139. 8.

He bestrid an o'erpressed Roman.Coriolanus, II. ii. 97.

To begin with, Donne described his grey hairs by a bold synecdoche, leaving the greyness to be inferred: 'My head o'erwhelmed, o'ermastered by Cares storms.' But 'o'erpressed' was harshly used and was easily changed to 'o'erspread', which was made more appropriate by substituting the effect, 'hoariness,' for the cause, 'Cares storms.' This is what we find in JC and such a good MS. as W:

With cares rash sudden horiness o'erspread.

In B and P 'cruel' has been inserted to complete the verse when 'o'erpressed' was contracted to 'o'erprest' or changed to 'o'erspread'. In 1635-69 the somewhat redundant 'rash' has been altered to 'harsh'.

With cares harsh, sodaine horinesse o'rspread.

The image is more easily apprehended, and this may be Donne's final version, but the original (if my view is correct) was bolder, and more in the style of Shakespeare's

That time of yeeare thou maist in me behold,

When yellow leaues, or none, or few doe hange

Vpon those boughes which shake against the could,

Bare ruin'd quiers, where late the sweet birds sang.

Sonnets, 72. 1-4.

l. 16. Should now love lesse, what hee did love to see. Here again there has been some recasting of the original by Donne or an editor. Most MSS. read:

Should like and love less what hee did love to see.

To 'like and love' was an Elizabethan combination:

And yet we both make shew we like and love.

Farmer, Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart), i. 90.

Yet every one her likte, and every one her lov'd.

Spenser, Faerie Queene, III. ix. 24.

Donne or his editor has made the line smoother.

l. 20. To feed on that, which to disused tasts seems tough. I have made the line an Alexandrine by printing 'disused', which occurs in A25 and B, but it is 'disus'd' in the editions and most MSS. The 'weak' of 1650-69 adjusts the metre, but for that very reason one a little suspects an editor. Donne certainly wrote 'disus'd' or 'disused'. Who changed it to 'weak' is not so certain. The meaning of 'disused' is, of course, 'unaccustomed.' The O.E.D. quotes: 'I can nat shote nowe but with great payne, I am so disused.' Palsgr. (1530). 'Many disused persons can mutter out some honest requests in secret.' Baxter, Reformed Pastor (1656).

It seems to me probable that P preserves an early form of these lines:

who now is grown tough enough

To feed on that which to disused tastes seems rough.

The epithet 'tough' is appropriately enough applied to Love's mature as opposed to his childish constitution, while rough has the recognized sense of 'sharp, acid, or harsh to the taste'. The O.E.D. quotes: 'Harshe, rough, stipticke, and hard wine,' Stubbs (1583). 'The roughest berry on the rudest hedge', Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, I. iv. 64 (1608).

Possibly Donne changed 'tough' to 'strong' in order to avoid the monotonous sound of 'tough enough ... rough', and this ultimately led to the substitution of 'weak' for 'disused'. The present close of the last line I find it difficult to away with. How can a thing seem tough to the taste? Even meat does not taste tough: and it is not of meat that Donne is thinking but of wine. I should be disposed to return to the reading of P, or, if we accept 'strong' and 'weak' as improvements, at any rate to alter 'tough' to 'rough '.

Page 87. Elegie VI.

l. 6. Their Princes stiles, with many Realmes fulfill. This is the reading of all the best MSS. The 'which' for 'with' of the editions is due to an easy confusion of two contractions invariably used in the MSS. Grosart and Chambers accept 'with' from S and A25, but further alter 'styles' to 'style', following these generally inferior MSS. The plural is correct. Donne refers to more than one prince and style. The stock instance is

the poor king Reignier, whose large style

Agrees not with the leanness of his purse.

2 Henry VI, I. i. 111-12.

But the English monarchs themselves bore in their 'style' the kingdom of France, and for some years (1558-1566) Mary, Queen of Scots, bore in her 'style' the arms of England and Ireland.

Page 88, ll. 21-34. These lines evidently suggested Carew's poem, To my Mistress sitting by a River's Side, An Eddy:

Mark how yon eddy steals away

From the rude stream into the bay;

There, locked up safe, she doth divorce

Her waters from the channel's course,

And scorns the torrent that did bring

Her headlong from her native spring, &c.

ll. 23-4.

calmely ride

Her wedded channels bosome, and then chide.

The number of MSS. and editions is in favour of 'there', but the quality (e.g. 1633 and W) of those which read 'then', and the sense of the lines, favour 'then'. The stream is at one moment in 'speechless slumber', and the next chiding. She cannot in the same place do both at once:

The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;

But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays,

With willing sport to the wild ocean.

Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. vii. 25-32.

ll. 27-8. Yet if her often gnawing kisses winne

The traiterous banke to gape, and let her in.

The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final 'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak or treacherous spot in its bank'.

Page 89. Elegie VII.

l. 1. Natures lay Ideot. Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant', as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the meaning of 'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That word has a different origin from 'lay' (Lat. laicus), and the earliest example of it given in O.E.D. is dated 1688.

ll. 7-8. Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie

Desperately hot, or changing feaverously.

The 'call' of 1633 is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast', from S; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase 'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O.E.D. gives one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word here:

Able to cast his disease without his water.

Greene's Menaphon.

I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the eyes water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing feverously.'

The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease, calling it this or that.

'Posy, in both its senses, is a contraction of poesy, the flowers of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that engraved on a ring.' Weekly, Romance of Words, London, 1912, p. 134. She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.

l. 13. Remember since, &c. For the idiom compare:

See Franz, Shakespeare-Grammatik, § 559.

l. 22. Inlaid thee. The O.E.D. cites this line as the only example of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or preservation.' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word has perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in another substance.' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such a setting as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined and heightened those charms.'

l. 25. Thy graces and good words my creatures bee. I was tempted to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of 1669 and some MSS., the theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the kind of conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of 1633-54 has the support of so good a MS. as W, and 'good words' is an Elizabethan idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:

Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces and commendations are my work', i.e. either the commendations you receive, or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with which you can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of conversation did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne sentences'. Compare, in Elegie IX: The Autumnall, the description of Lady Danvers' conversation:

And again, Elegie XVIII: Loves Progresse:

l. 28. Frame and enamell Plate. Compare: 'And therefore they that thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good, will make God bad.' Sermons 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of course, 'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The elaborate enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as common as in the case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. Britten's Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, 1904.

Page 90. Elegie VIII.

l. 2. Muskats, i.e. 'Musk-cats.' The 'muskets' of 1669 is only a misprint.

ll. 5-6. In these lines as they stand in the editions and most of the MSS. there is clearly something wrong:

A 'coronet' is not an ornament of the neck, but of the head. The obvious emendation is that of A25, C, JC, and W, which Grosart and Chambers have adopted. A 'carcanet' is a necklace, and carcanets of pearl were not unusual: see O.E.D., s. v. But why then do the editions and so many MSS. read 'coronets'? Consideration of this has convinced me that the original error is not here but in the word 'neck'. Article by article, as in an inventory, Donne contrasts his mistress and his enemy's. But in the next line he goes on:

contrasting her brow with that of his mistress, where the sweat drops seem 'no sweat drops but pearle coronets'.

The explanation of the error is, probably, that an early copyist passed in his mind from breast to neck more easily than to brow. Another explanation is that Donne altered 'brow' to 'neck' and forgot to alter 'coronets' to 'carcanets'. I do not think this likely. The force of the poem lies in its contrasts, and the brow is proverbially connected with sweat. 'In the sweat of thy brow,' &c. Possibly Donne himself in the first version, or a copy of it, wrote 'neck', meaning to write 'brow', misled by the proximity and associations of 'breast'. Mr. J. C. Smith has shown that Spenser occasionally wrote a word which association brought into his mind, but which was clearly not the word he intended to use, as it is destructive of the rhyme-scheme. Oddly enough the late Francis Thompson used 'carcanet' in the sense of 'coronet':

Page 91, l. 10. Sanserra's starved men. 'When I consider what God did for Goshen in Egypt ... How many Sancerraes he hath delivered from famines, how many Genevas from plots and machinations.' Sermons.

The Protestants in Sancerra were besieged by the Catholics for nine months in 1573, and suffered extreme privations. Norton quotes Henri Martin, Histoire de France, ix. 364: 'On se disputa les dÉbris les plus immondes de toute substance animale ou vÉgÉtale; on crÉa, pour ainsi dire, des aliments monstrueux, impossibles.'

Following the MSS. I have made 'lying' an epithet attached to 'stones' and substituted 'they hang' for the superficially more grammatical 'it hangs'. The readings of 1633, 'vile stones lying' and 'it hangs', seem to me just the kind of changes a hasty editor would make, the kind of changes which characterize the Second Folio of Shakespeare. The stones are not only 'vile'; they are 'lying', inasmuch as they pretend to be what they are not, as the 'saffron'd tinne' pretends to be gold.

l. 19. Thy head: i.e. 'the head of thy mistress.' Donne continues this construction in ll. 25, 32, 39, and I have restored it from the later editions and MSS. at l. 34, 'thy gouty hand.'

l. 34. thy gouty hand: 'thy' is the reading of all the editions except 1633 and of all the MSS. except JC and S. It is probably right, corresponding to l. 19 'Thy head' and l. 32 'thy tann'd skins'. Donne uses 'thy' in a condensed fashion for 'the head of thy mistress', &c.

Page 92, l. 51. And such. The 'such' of the MSS. is doubtless right, the 'nice' of the editions being repeated from l. 49.

Page 92. Elegie IX.

For the date, &c., of this poem, see the introductory note on the Elegies.

The text of 1633 diverges in some points from that of all the MSS., in some others it agrees with D, H49, Lec. In the latter case I have retained it, but where D, H49, Lec agree with the rest of the MSS. I have corrected 1633, e.g.:

Page 93, l. 6. Affection here takes Reverences name: where 'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. But now shee's gold: where 'They are gold' of 1633 involves a very loose use of 'they'. Possibly 1633 here gives a first version afterwards corrected.

ll. 29-32. Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c. Herodotus (vii. 31) tells how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which for its beauty (????e?? e??e?a) he decked with gold ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, Variae Historiae, ii. 14, De platano Xerxe amato, attributes his admiration to its size: ?? ??d?? ????, fas??, ?d?? f?t?? e???e?e? p?at????, &c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858) size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, N. H. 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which companies of men camped and slept.

The quotation from Aelian confirms the 1633 reading, 'none being so large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow. The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do not understand.

Page 94, l. 47. naturall lation. This, the reading of the great majority of the MSS., is obviously correct and explains the vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The O.E.D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to another.' Fotherby (1619);

and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of 1633 is an unusual order in Donne; the 'natural station' of 1635-69 is the opposite of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a misreading of 'lation'.

Page 95. Elegie X.

The title of this Elegy, The Dream, was given it in 1635, perhaps wrongly. S96 seems to come nearer with Picture. The 'Image of her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams come to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be strengthened if the lady herself were present.

l. 26. Mad with much heart, &c. Aristotle made the heart the source of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these to the brain. See note to p. 99, l. 100.

Page 96. Elegie XI.

Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond of the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; she hath a legion of angels' (Merry Wives, I. iii. 60). But Donne knows more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can pursue the analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun on angels the only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, pistolets, and gold are all played with in turn. The poem was a favourite with Ben Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart' (Drummond's Conversations, ed. Laing).

The text of the poem, which was first printed in 1635 (Marriot having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633), is based on a MS. closely resembling Cy and P, and differing in several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS., including D, H49, Lec, and W. I have endeavoured rather to give this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either to substitute another or contaminate the two. When Cy and P go over to the side of the other MSS. it is a fair inference that the editions have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more open one.

Page 97, l. 24. their naturall Countreys rot: i.e. 'their native Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of that Countrey', Greene, News from Hell (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This is the reading of Cy, and the order of the words in the other MSS. points to its being the reading of the MS. from which 1635 was printed.

l. 26. So pale, so lame, &c. The chipping and debasement of the French crown is frequently referred to, and Shakespeare is fond of punning on the word. But two extracts from Stow's Chronicle (continued ... by Edmund Howes), 1631, will throw some light on the references to coins in this poem: In the year 1559 took place the last abasement of English money whereby testons and groats were lowered in value and called in, 'and according to the last valuation of them, she gave them fine money of cleane silver for them commonly called Sterling money, and from this time there was no manner of base money coyned or used in England ... but all English monies were made of gold and silver, which is not so in any other nation whatsoever, but have sundry sorts of copper money.'

'The 9. of November, the French crowne that went currant for six shillings foure pence, was proclaimed to be sixe shillings.'

In 1561, 'The fifteenth of November, the Queenes Maiestie published a Proclamation for divers small pieces of silver money to be currant, as the sixe pence, foure pence, three pence, 2 pence and a peny, three half-pence, and 3 farthings: and also forbad all forraigne coynes to be currant within the same Realme, as well gold as silver, calling them all into her Maiesties Mints, except two sorts of crownes of gold, the one the French crowne, the other the Flemish crowne.' The result was the bringing in of large sums in 'silver plates: and as much or more in pistolets, and other gold of Spanish coynes, and one weeke in pistolets and other Spanish gold 16000 pounds, all these to be coyned with the Queenes stamps.'

l. 29. Spanish Stamps still travelling. Grosart regards this as an allusion to the wide diffusion of Spanish coins. The reference is more pointed. It is to the prevalence of Spanish bribery, the policy of securing paid agents in every country. It was by money that Parma secured his first hold on the revolted provinces. Gardiner has shown that Lord Cranborne, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, accepted a pension from the Spanish king (Hist. of England, i, p. 215). The discovery of the number of his Court who were in Spanish pay came as a profound shock to James at a later period. The invariable charge brought by one Dutch statesman against another was of being in the pay of the Spaniard.

'It is his Indian gold,' says Raleigh, speaking of the King of Spain in 1596, 'that endangers and disturbs all the nations of Europe; it creeps into councils, purchases intelligence, and sets bound loyalty at liberty in the greatest monarchies thereof.'

The punctuation of 1669 has the support generally of the MSS., but in matters of punctuation these are not a very safe guide. As punctuated in 1635, 'ragged and decay'd' are epithets of Scotland, contrasting her with 'Gorgeous France'. I think, however, that the antithesis to 'gorgeous' is 'ruin'd, ragged and decay'd', describing the condition of France after the pistolets of Spain had done their work. The epithet applied to Scotland is 'which knew no state', the antithesis being 'proud in one day'.

Page 98, ll. 51-4. Much hope which they should nourish, &c. Professor Norton proposed that the last two of these lines should run:

but that 'alone' is a misprint for 'atone.' This is unnecessary, and there is no authority for 'atone'. What Donne says, in the cynical vein of Elegie VI, 9-10, is: 'If thou love me let my crowns alone, for the poorer I grow the less you will love me. I shall lose the qualities which you admired in me when you saw them through the glamour of wealth.'

l. 55. And be content. The majority of the MSS. begin a new paragraph here and read:

Donne would almost seem to have read or seen (he was a frequent theatre-goer) the old play of Soliman and Perseda (pr. 1599). There the lover, having lost a carcanet, sends a cryer through the street and offers one hundred crowns reward. Chambers notes a similar case in The Puritan (1607). Lost property is still cried by the bellman in northern Scottish towns. The custom of resorting in such cases to 'some dread Conjurer' is frequently referred to. See Jonson's Alchemist for the questions with which their customers approached conjurers.

ll. 71-2. So in the first falne angels, &c. Aquinas discusses the question: 'Utrum intellectus daemonis sit obtenebratus per privationem cognitionis omnis veritatis.' After stating the arguments for such privation he replies: 'Sed contra est quod Dionysius dicit ... quod "data sunt daemonibus aliqua dona, quae nequaquam mutata esse dicimus, sed sunt integra et splendidissima." Inter ista, autem, naturalia dona est cognitio veritatis.' Aquinas then explains that knowledge is twofold, that which comes by nature, and that which comes by grace: and that the latter again is twofold, that which is purely speculative, and that which is 'affectiva, producens amorem Dei'. 'Harum autem trium cognitionum prima in daemonibus nec est ablata nec diminuta: consequitur enim ipsam naturam Angeli, qui secundum suam naturam est quidam intellectus vel mens. Propter simplicitatem autem suae substantiae a natura eius aliquid subtrahi non potest.' Devils, therefore, have natural knowledge in an eminent degree (splendidissima); they have even the knowledge which comes by grace in so far as God chooses to bestow it, for His own purposes, by the mediation of angels or 'per aliqua temporalia divinae virtutis effecta' (Augustine). But of the knowledge which leads to good they have nothing: 'tenendum est firmiter secundum fidem catholicam, quod et voluntas bonorum Angelorum confirmata est in bono, et voluntas daemonum obstinata est in malo.' Summa I.

lxiv. 1-2. They have 'wisdom and knowledge', but it is immovably set to do ill.

There is a good deal of vacillation in the MSS. as to the punctuation of 'Angels yet', some placing the semicolon before, others after 'yet'. The difference is not great, but that which I have adopted, though it has least authority, brings out best what I take to be the meaning of these somewhat difficult lines. 'Pity these Angels, for yet (i.e. until they are melted down and lose their form) they, as good angels, are superior in dignity to Vertues, Powers, and Principalities among the bad angels.' The order of the Angelic beings, which the Middle Ages took from Pseudo-Dionysius, consisted of nine Orders in three Hierarchies. The first and highest Hierarchy included (beginning with the highest Order) Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; the second, Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; the third, Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Thus the three Orders mentioned by Donne are all in rank superior to mere Angels; but the lowest Order of Good Angels is superior to the highest Order of Evil Spirits, although before their fall these belonged to the highest Orders. Probably, however, there is a second and satiric reference in Donne's words which explains his choice of Vertues, Powers, and Principalities. In the other sense of the words Angels are coins, money; and the power of money surpasses that of earthly Vertues, Powers, and Principalities. This may explain, further, why Donne singles out 'Vertues, Powers, and Principalities'. One would expect that, to make the antithesis between good and bad angels as complete as possible, he would have named the three highest orders, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. But the three orders which he does mention are the highest Orders which travel, as money does. The angels are divided into Assistentes and Administrates. To the former class belong all the Orders of the first Hierarchy, and the Dominions of the second. The Vertues are thus the highest Order of Administrantes. Aquinas, Summa, cxii. 3, 4. The Assistentes are those who 'only stand and wait'.

Page 99, l. 100. rot thy moist braine: So Sylvester's Du Bartas, I. ii. 18:

This was Aristotle's opinion (De Part. Anim. II. 7), refuted by Galen, who, like Plato, made the brain the seat of the soul and the generator of the animal spirits. See II. p. 45.

Page 100, ll. 112, 114. Gold is Restorative ... 'tis cordiall. 'Most men say as much of gold, and some other minerals, as these have done of precious stones. Erastus still maintaineth the opposite part, Disput. in Paracelsum, cap. 4, fol. 196, he confesseth of gold, that it makes the heart merry, but in no other sense but as it is in a miser's chest:

as he said in the poet: it so revives the spirits, and is an excellent receipt against melancholy,

Elegie XII.

Page 101, l. 37. And mad'st us sigh and glow: 'sigh and blow' has been the somewhat inelegant reading of all editions hitherto.

l. 42. And over all thy husbands towring eyes. The epithet 'towring' is strange and the MSS. show some vacillation. Most of them read 'towred', probably the past participle of the same verb, though Grosart alters to 'two red'—not a very poetical description. RP31 here diverges from H40 and reads 'loured', perhaps for 'lurid', but both these MSS. alter the order of the words and attach the epithet to 'husbands', which is manifestly wrong, and the Grolier Club edition prints 'lowering' without comment, regarding, I suppose, 't' as a mistake for 'l'.

The 'towring' of 1669 and TCD is probably correct, being a bold metaphor from hawking, and having the force practically of 'threatening'. The hawk towers threateningly above its prey before it 'sousing kills with a grace'. If 'towring' is not right, 'lowring' is the most probable emendation.

Page 102, l. 43. That flam'd with oylie sweat of jealousie. This is the reading of all the MSS., and as on the whole their text is superior I have followed it. If 'oylie' is, as I think, the right epithet, it means 'moist', as in 'an oily palm', with perhaps a reference to the inflammability of oil. If 'ouglie '(i.e. ugly) be preferred it is a forcible transferred epithet.

l. 49. most respects? This is the reading of all the MSS., and 'best' in 1669 is probably an emendation. The use of 'most' as an adjective, superlative of 'great', is not uncommon:

l. 54. I can make no exact sense of this line either as it stands in 1669 or in the MSS. One is tempted to combine the versions and read:

the 'secrets of our Art' being all the signs by which they communicated to one another their mutual affection. But it is necessary to explain the presence of 'inwards' or 'inward' in both the versions.

Page 103, l. 79. The Summer how it ripened in the eare; This fine passage has been rather spoiled in all editions hitherto by printing in this line 'yeare' for 'eare', even in modernized texts. The MSS. and the sense both show that 'eare' is the right word, and indeed I have no doubt that 'year' in 1635 was simply due to a compositor's or copyist's pronunciation. It occurs again in the 1669 edition in the song Twicknam Garden (p. 28, l. 3):

These forms in 'y' are common in Sylvester's Du Bartas, e.g. 'yerst'. The O.E.D. gives the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries as those in which 'yere' was a recognized pronunciation of 'ear', but it is found sporadically later and has misled editors. Thus in Sir George Etherege's letter to the Earl of Middleton from Ratisbon, printed in Dryden's Works (Scott and Saintsbury), xi, pp. 38-40, some lines run:

In a modernized text, as this is, surely 'Kunigunda's years' should be 'Kunigunda's ears'.

'I there neglected find' has been the reading of all editions hitherto—a strange reason for being enamoured.

Page 104, l. 96. My deeds shall still be what my words are now: 'words' suits the context better than either the 'deeds' of 1635-69 or 'thoughts' of A25.

Page 104. Elegie XIII.

Chambers, following the editions from 1639 onwards, drops the comma after 'Mastix', which suggests that Julia is the 'foemall Mastix', not Mantuan. By Mantuan he understands Virgil, and supposes there is a reference to the 'flammis armataque Chimaera' of Aen. vi. 289. The Mantuan of the text is the 'Old Mantuan' of Love's Labour's Lost, iv. 2. 92. Donne calls Mantuan the scourge of women because of his fourth eclogue De natura mulierum. Norton quotes from it:

The O.E.D. quotes from S. Holland, Zara (1656): 'It would have puzzell'd that Female Mastix Mantuan to have limn'd this she Chymera'—obviously borrowed from this poem. The dictionary gives examples of 'mastix' in other compounds.

The reference to Mantuan as a woman-hater is a favourite one with the prose-pamphleteers: 'To this might be added Mantuans invective against them, but that pittie makes me refraine from renewing his worne out complaints, the wounds whereof the former forepast feminine sexe hath felt. I, but here the Homer of Women hath forestalled an objection, saying that Mantuans house holding of our Ladie, he was enforced by melancholic into such vehemencie of speech', &c. Nash, The Anatomy of Absurdity (ed. McKerrow, i. 12).

'Where I leave you to consider, Gentlemen, how far unmeete women are to have such reproches laid upon them, as sundrye large lipt fellows have done: who when they take a peece of work in hand, and either for want of matter, or lack of wit, are half gravelled, then they must fill up the page with slaundering of women, who scarsly know what a woman is: but if I were able either by wit or arte to be their defender, or had the law in my hand to dispose as I list, which would be as unseemely, as an Asse to treade the measures: yet, if it were so, I would correct Mantuans Egloge, intituled Alphus: or els if the Authour were alive, I would not doubt to persuade him in recompence of his errour, to frame a new one,' &c. Greene, Mamillia (ed. Grosart), 106-7. Greene is probably the 'Homer of Women' referred to in the first extract.

l. 19. Tenarus. In the Anatomy of the World 'Tenarif' is thus spelt in the editions of 1633 to 1669, and Grosart declared that the reference here is to that island. It is of course to 'Taenarus' in Laconia. There was in that headland a sulphurous cavern believed to be a passage to Hades. Through it Orpheus descended to recover Eurydice. Ovid, Met. x. 13; Paus. iii. 14, 25.

l. 28. self-accusing oaths: 'oaths' is the reading of the MSS., 'loaths' of the editions. The word 'loaths' in the sense of 'dislike, hatred, ill-will' is found as late as 1728 (O.E.D.). 'If your Horse ... grow to a loath of his meat.' Topsell (1607). A self-accusing loath may mean a hatred, e.g. of good, which condemns yourself. In the context, however, 'cavils, untroths,' I am inclined to think that 'oaths' is right. Among the malevolent evils with which her breast swarms are oaths accusing others of crimes, which accuse herself, either because she is willing to implicate herself so long as she secures her enemy's ruin, or because the information is of a kind that could be got only by complicity in crime.

Page 105. Elegie XIV.

Page 106, l. 6. I touch no fat sowes grease. Probably 'I say nothing libellous as to the way in which this or that rich man has acquired his wealth'. I cannot find the proverb accurately explained, or given in quite this form, in any collection.

l. 10. will redd or pale. The reading of 1669 and the two MSS. is doubtless correct, 'looke' being an editorial insertion as the use of 'red' as a verb was growing rare. If 'looke' had belonged to the original text 'counsellor' would probably have had the second syllable elided. Compare:

l. 21. the number of the Plaguy Bill: i.e. the weekly bill of deaths by the plague. By a Privy Council order of April 9, 1604, the theatres were permitted to be open 'except ther shall happen weeklie to die of the Plague above the number of thirtie'. The number was later raised to forty. The theatres were repeatedly closed for this reason between July 10, 1606, and 1610. In 1609 especially the fear of infection made it difficult for the companies, driven from London, to gain permission to act anywhere. There were no performances at Court during the winter 1609-10. Murray, English Dramatic Companies.

l. 22. the Custome Farmers. The Privy Council registers abound in references to the farmers of the customs and their conflicts with the merchants. As they had to pay dearly for their farm, they were tempted to press the law against the merchants in exacting dues.

l. 23. Of the Virginian plot. Two expeditions were sent to Virginia in 1609, in May under Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain Newport, and at the end of the year under Lord de la Warr, 'who by free election of the Treasurer and counsell of Virginia, and with the full consent of the generality of that company was constituted and authorized, during his natural life to be Lord Governor and Captaine Generall of all the English Collonies planted, or to be planted in Virginia, according to the tenor of his Majesties letters patents granted that yeare 1609.' Stow. Speculation in Virginia stock was encouraged: 'Besides many noblemen, knights, gentlemen, merchants, and wealthy tradesmen, most of the incorporated trades of London were induced to take shares in the stock.' Hildreth, History of the United States, i. 108, quoted by Norton.

The meaning of 'plot' here is 'device, design, scheme' (O.E.D.), as 'There have beene divers good plottes devised, and wise counsells cast allready about reformation of that realme': Spenser, State of Ireland. Donne uses the word also in the more original sense of 'a piece of ground, a spot'. See p. 132, l. 34.

l. 23-4. whether Ward ... the I(n)land Seas. I have taken 'Iland' 1635-54 as intended for 'Inland', perhaps written 'Iland', not for 'Island'. The edition of 1669 reads 'midland', and there is no doubt that the Mediterranean was the scene of the career and exploits of the notorious Ward, whose head-quarters were at Tunis. The Mediterranean is called the Inland sea in Holland's translation of Pliny (Hist. of the World, III. The Proeme); and Donne uses the phrase (with a different application but one borrowed from this meaning) in the Progresse of the Soule, p. 308, ll. 317-8:

Previous editors read 'Island seas' but do not explain the reference, except Grosart, who declares that the 'Iland seas are those around the West Indian and other islands. The Midland seas (as in 1669) were probably the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Seas'. He cites no authority; nor have we proof that Ward was ever in these seas. Writing to Salisbury on the 7th of March, 1607-8, Wotton says: 'The voice is here newly arrived that Warde hath taken another Venetian vessel of good value, so as the hatred of him increaseth among them and fully as fast as the fear of him. These are his effects. Now to give your Lordship some taste of his language. One Moore, captain of an English ship that tradeth this way ... was hailed by him not long since a little without the Gulf, and answering that he was bound for Venice, "Tell those flat caps" (said he) "who have been the occasion that I am banished out of my country that before I have done with them I will make them sue for pardon." In this style he speaketh.' Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of ... Wotton, ii. 415. Mr. Pearsall Smith adds in a note that Ward hoped to 'buy or threaten the English Government into pardoning him', and that some attempt was also made by the Venetian Government to procure his assassination.

If 'Island' be the right reading the sea referred to must be the Adriatic. The Islands of the Illyrian coast were at various times the haunt of pirates. But I have found no instance of the phrase in this sense.

l. 25. the Brittaine Burse. This was built by the Earl of Salisbury on the site of an 'olde long stable' in the Strand on the north side of Durham House: 'And upon Tuesday the tenth of Aprill this yeere, one thousand sixe hundred and nine, many of the upper shoppes were richly furnished with wares, and the next day after that, the King, Queene, and Prince, the Lady Elizabeth and the Duke of Yorke, with many great Lords, and chiefe Ladies, came thither, and were there entertained with pleasant speeches, giftes, and ingenious devices, and then the king gave it a name, and called it Brittaines Burse.' Stow, Chronicle, p. 894.

l. 27. Of new built Algate, and the More-field crosses. Aldgate, one of the four principal gates in the City wall, was taken down in 1606 and rebuilt by 1609: Stow, Survey. Norton refers to Jonson's Silent Woman, I. i: 'How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city's Love and Charity while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished?'

'The More-field crosses' are apparently the walks at Moor-field. Speaking of the embellishment of London which ensued from the long duration of peace, Stow says, 'And lastly, whereof there is a more generall, and particular notice taken by all persons resorting and residing in London, the new and pleasant walks on the north side of the city, anciently called More fields, which field (untill the third yeare of King James) was a most noysome and offensive place, being a generall laystall, a rotten morish ground, whereof it tooke first the name.' Stow, Chronicle. For the ditches which crossed the field were substituted 'most faire and royall walkes'.

Page 107, l. 41. The '(quoth Hee)' of the 1669 edition is obviously correct. 'Hee' is required both by rhyme and reason. Mr. Chambers has ingeniously put '"True" quoth I' into a parenthesis, as a remark interjected by the poet. But apart from the rhyme the 'quoth Hee' is needed to explain the transition to direct speech. Without it the long speech of the citizen begins very awkwardly.

ll. 42-44. These lines seem to echo the Royal Proclamation of 1609, though the reference is different: 'in this speciall Proclamation his Majestic declared how grievously, the people of this latter age and times are fallen into verball profession, as well of religion, as of all commendable morall vertues, but wanting the actions and deeds of so specious a profession, and the insatiable and immeasurable itching boldnesse of the spirits, tongues and pens of most men.' Stow, Chronicle.

l. 46. Bawd, Tavern-keeper, Whore and Scrivener; The singular number of the MS. gives as good a sense as the plural and a better rhyme.

'We have many bankrupts daily, and as many protections, which doth marvellously hinder all manner of commerce.' Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 31, 1612. By 'kingsmen' I understand noblemen holding monopolies from the King. I do not understand the 'kinsmen' of the editions. By 'protections' is meant 'exemptions from suits in law', especially suits for debt. The London tradesmen were much cheated by the protections granted to the servants and followers of members of Parliament.

l. 65. found nothing but a Rope. I cannot identify this Rope. In the Aulularia of Plautus, when Euclio finds his treasure gone he laments in the usual manner. At l. 721 he says, 'Heu me miserum, misere perii, male perditu', pessume ornatus eo.' The last words may have been taken as meaning 'I have the rope round my neck'.

Page 108. Elegie XV.

l. 12. Following RP31 and also Jonson's Underwoods I have taken 'at once' as going with 'Both hot and cold', not with 'make life, and death' as in 1633-69. This is one of the poems which 1633 derived from some other source than D, H49, Lec.

ll. 16-18 (all sweeter ... the rest) Chambers has overlooked altogether the 1633 reading 'sweeter'. He prints 'sweeten'd' from 1635-69. It is clear from the MSS. that this is an editor's amendment due to Donne's 'all sweeter' suggesting, perhaps intentionally, 'all the sweeter'. By dropping the bracket Chambers has left at least ambiguous the construction of 17-18: And the divine impression of stolne kisses That sealed the rest. Does this, as in 1633, belong to the parenthesis, or is 'the divine impression' to be taken with 'so many accents sweet, so many sighes' and 'so many oathes and teares' as part subject to 'should now prove empty blisses'. I prefer the 1633 arrangement, which has the support of the MSS., though the punctuation of these is apt to be careless. The accents, sighs, oaths, and tears were all made sweeter by having been stolen with fear and trembling. This is how the Grolier Club editor takes it; Grosart and Chambers prefer to follow 1635-69.

Page 109, l. 34. I do not know whence Chambers derived his reading 'drift' for 'trust'—perhaps from an imperfect copy of 1633. He attributes it to all the editions prior to 1669. This is an oversight.

Page 110, ll. 59 f. I could renew, &c. Compare Ovid, Amores, III. ii. 1-7.

Non ego nobilium sedeo studiosus equorum;

Cui tamen ipsa faves, vincat ut ille precor.

Ut loquerer tecum veni tecumque sederem,

Ne tibi non notus, quem facis, esset amor.

Tu cursum spectas, ego te; spectemus uterque

Quod iuvat, atque oculos pascat uterque suos.

O, cuicumque faves, felix agitator equorum!