PAGES =75-8=. Of the epigrams sixteen are given in all the editions,
_1633-69_. Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best.' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here.' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them.... I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth.' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS., quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c._, 1607.
PAGE =76=. SIR JOHN WINGEFIELD. _In that late Island._ Mr. Gosse has
inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of _O'F_
is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of
course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme
point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. 'Then
we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says Captain
Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's _Annals_, iv. 398. Another
account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of Cadiz and at
the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. Here the
severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to Cadiz'. What
does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island we lately visited
so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets late, that western
island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It would not be unlike
Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed force. Compare (if the
reading be right) 'far faith' (p. 189, l. 4) and the note.
PAGES =75-6=. The series of Epigrams _A burnt ship_, _Fall of a wall_,
_A lame begger_, _Cales and Guyana_, _Sir John Wingefield_ seem to
me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first
suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour when
so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The _Fall of a wall_ may
mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced its
way into the city. _A lame begger_ records a common spectacle in a
Spanish and Catholic town. _Cales and Guyana_ must clearly have been
written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the leaders were
debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on Essex's side) urged
that the fleet should sail west and intercept the silver fleet, but
Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate return to England.
The last of the series chronicles the one death to which every account
of the expedition refers.
PAGE =77=. ANTIQUARY. Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is evidently
the subject of this epigram and is referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, I
cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, LL.D.,
the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's
chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist
and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to
the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the
examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in Strype's
_Annals_ collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.
PHRYNE. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond,
_Conversations_, ed. Laing, 842.
PAGE =78=. RADERUS. 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German Jesuit,
published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in 1602.'
Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others
of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could
not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition
which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue
which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene
thing can be uttered in it)....' The reason which Donne gives is that
'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and
mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they
gelde.' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is
therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.
MERCURIUS GALLO-BELGICUS. A journal or register of news started at
Cologne in 1598. The first volume consisted of 659 pages and was
entitled: _Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus; sive rerum in Gallia et Belgia
potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia,
vicinisque locis ab anno 1588 usque ad Martium anni praesentis 1594
gestarum, nuncius_. In the seventeenth century it was published
half-yearly and ornamented with maps. Its Latin was not unimpeachable
(Jonson speaks of a 'Gallo-Belgic phrase', _Poetaster_, V. i), nor its
news always trustworthy.
THE LIER. This was first printed in Sir John Simeon's _Unpublished
Poems of Donne_ (1856-7), whence it is included by Chambers in his
Appendix A. It is given the title _Supping Hours_. Its inclusion in
_HN_ (whence the present title) and _W_ strengthens its claim to
be genuine. Probably it was written after the Cadiz expedition, and
contains a reminiscence (Mr. Gosse has suggested this) of Spanish
fare.
l. 3. _Like Nebuchadnezar._ Compare: 'I am no great Nebuchadnezzar,
sir; I have not much skill in grass.' Shakespeare, _All's Well_, IV.
v.