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. The _Elegie XIV_ (if it be Donne's, and
Mr. Chambers does not question its authenticity), the lines _Upon Mr.
Thomas Coryats Crudities_, the two frankly pagan _Epithalamia_ on the
Princess Elizabeth and the Countess of Somerset, to say nothing of
_Ignatius 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 that
_none_ of 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
are _The 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, like
_The 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 fine
examples of his subtler moods as _The 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 the _Songs and Sonets_ are _Twicknam Garden_
and _A 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.