l. 3. _Esloygne._ Chambers alters to 'eloign', but Donne's is a good
English form.
From worldly care himself he did esloyne.
Spenser, _F. Q._ I. iv. 20.
The two forms seem to have run parallel from the outset, but that with
's' disappears after the seventeenth century.
PAGE =30=, l. 7. _Her who from Pindar could allure._ Corinna, who
five times defeated Pindar at Thebes. Aelian, _Var. Hist._ xiii. 25,
referred to by Professor Norton. He quotes also from Pausanias, ix.
22.
l. 8. _And her, through whose help Lucan is not lame._ His wife, Polla
Argentaria, who 'assisted her husband in correcting the three first
books of his _Pharsalia_'. Lemprière. The source of this tradition
I cannot discover. The only reference indicated by Schanz is to
Apollinaris Sidonius (Epist. 2, 10, 6, p. 46), who includes her among
a list of women who aided and inspired their husbands: 'saepe versum
... complevit ... Argentaria cum Lucano.'
l. 9. _And her, whose booke (they say) Homer did finde, and name._ I
owe my understanding of this line to Professor Norton, who refers
to the _Myriobiblon_ or _Bibliotheca_ of Photius, of which the first
edition was published at Augsburg in 1601. There Photius, in an
abstract of a work by Ptolemy Hephaestion of Alexandria, states that
Musaeus' daughter Helena wrote on the war of Troy, and that from her
work Homer took the subject of his poem. But another account refers to
Phantasia of Memphis, the daughter of Nicarchus, whose work Homer
got from a sacred scribe named Pharis at Memphis. This last source
is mentioned by Lemprière, who knows nothing of the other. Probably,
therefore, it is the better known tradition.
ll. 21-2. I have interchanged the old semicolon at the end of l. 21
and the comma at the end of l. 22. I take the first three lines of the
stanza to form an absolute clause: 'This book once written, in
cipher or new-made idiom, we are thereby (in these letters) the only
instruments for Loves clergy--their Missal and Breviary.' I presume
this is how it is understood by Chambers and the Grolier Club editor,
who place a semicolon at the end of each line. It seems to me that
with so heavy a pause after l. 21 a full stop would be better at the
end of l. 22.
l. 25. _Vandals and Goths inundate us._ This, the reading of quite a
number of independent MSS., seems to me greatly preferable to that of
the printed texts:
Vandals and the Goths invade us.
The agreement of the printed texts does not carry much weight, for
any examination of the variants in this poem will reveal that they are
errors due to misunderstanding, e.g. l. 20, 'tome,' 'to me,' 'tomb'
show that each edition has been printed from the last, preserving,
or conjecturally amending, its blunders. If therefore the 1633 editor
mistook 'inũdate' for 'invade', that is sufficient. Besides the
metrical harshness of the line there seems to be no reason why the
epithet 'ravenous' should be applied to the Vandals and not extended
to the Goths. The metaphor of inundation is used by Donne in the
sermons: 'The Torrents, and Inundations, which invasive Armies pour
upon Nations, we are fain to call by the name of Law, _The Law of
Armes_.' _Sermons_ 26. 3. 36. Milton too uses it:
A multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danaw, where her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.
_Paradise Lost_, i. 351-4.
Probably both Donne and Milton had in mind Isaiah's description of the
Assyrian invasion, where in the Vulgate the word is that used here:
'Propter hoc ecce Dominus adducet super eos aquas fluminis fortes et
multas, regem Assyriorum, et omnem gloriam eius; et ascendet super
omnes rivos eius, et fluet super universas ripas eius; et ibit per
Iudam, _inundans_, et transiens usque ad collum veniet.' Isaiah viii.
7-8.
Donne uses the word exactly as here in the _Essays in Divinity_: 'To
which foreign sojourning ... many have assimilated and compared the
Roman Church's straying into France and being impounded in Avignon
seventy years; and so long also lasted the inundation of the Goths in
Italy.' Ed. Jessop (1855), p. 155.
PAGE =31=, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very
characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the
whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our
mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They
will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour
or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by
transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we
pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood,
and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going
beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover
who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or
"conscience".'
'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and
statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of
"bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman
and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or
inspiring fear in those who descry it.'
l. 53. _In this thy booke, such will their nothing see._ After some
hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of
1633 and 1669, 'there something.' I do so because (1) the MSS. support
it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance;
(2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic
enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more
difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a
statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own
Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton,
and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having
this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are
nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the _Cambridge History of
Literature_, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully
rounded 'no'. Compare _Negative Love_, l. 16.
With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their
whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in
Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation
into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for
Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture.'
_Sermons_ 80. 78. 791.
'Un personnage de grande dignité, me voulant approuver par authorité
cette queste de la pierre philosophale où il est tout plongé,
m'allegua dernièrement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur
lesquels il disoit s'estre premièrement fondé pour la descharge de sa
conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, à la verité,
l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien
proprement accommodée à la défence de cette belle science.' Montaigne,
_Apologie de Raimond Sebond_ (_Les Essais_, ii. 12).
PAGE =32=, ll. 59-61. _To take a latitude, &c._ The latitude of a spot
may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a
star whose altitude, i.e. distance from the equator, is known. The
words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with
the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.
ll. 61-3. _but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee_.
This method of estimating longitude was, it is said, first discovered
by noting that an eclipse which took place during the battle of Arbela
was observed at Alexandria an hour later. If the time at which an
instantaneous phenomenon such as an eclipse of the moon begins at
Greenwich (or whatever be the first meridian) is known, and the
time of its beginning at whatever place a ship is be then noted, the
difference gives the longitude. The eclipses of the moons in Saturn
have been used for the purpose. The method is not, however, a
practically useful one. Owing to the penumbra it is difficult to
observe the exact moment at which an eclipse of the moon begins. In
certain positions of Saturn her satellites are not visible. Another
method used was to note the lunar distances of certain stars, but the
most common and practical method is by the use of well adjusted and
carefully corrected chronometers giving Greenwich time.
The comparison in the last five lines rests on a purely verbal basis.
'Longitude' means literally 'length', 'latitude', 'breadth'. Therefore
longitude is compared with the duration of love, 'how long this love
will be.' There is no real appropriateness.