A careful study of the textual notes to this poem will show that there
is a considerable difference between the text of this poem as given
for the first time in _1635_, and that of the majority of the MSS. It
is very difficult, however, to decide between them as the differences
are not generally such as to suggest that one reading is necessarily
right, the other wrong. The chief variants are these: 7 'parents' and
'fathers'. Here I fancy the 'parents' of the MSS. is right, and that
'fathers' in the editions and in a late MS. like _O'F_ is due to the
identification of Donne's mistress with his wife. Only the father of
Anne More was alive at the time of their first acquaintance. It is not
at all certain, however, that this poem is addressed to Anne More,
and in any case Donne would probably have disguised the details. The
change of 'parents' to 'fathers' is more likely than the opposite.
In l. 12 'wayes' (edd.) and 'meanes' (MSS.) are practically
indistinguishable; nor is there much to choose between the two
versions of l. 18: 'My soule from other lands to thee shall soare'
(edd.) and 'From other lands my soule towards thee shall soare'
(MSS.). In each case the version of the editions is slightly the
better. In l. 28, on the other hand, I have adopted 'mindes' without
hesitation although here the MSS. vary. There is no question of
changing the mind, but there is of changing the mind's habit, of
adopting a boy's cast of thought and manner: as Rosalind says,
and in my heart
Lie there what hidden woman's fear there will,
We'll have a swashing and a martial outside,
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances.
_As You Like It_, I. iii. 114-18.
In l. 35 the reading 'Lives fuellers', i.e. 'Life's fuellers', which
is found in such early and good MSS. as _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _W_,
is very remarkable. If I were convinced that it is correct I should
regard it as decisive and prefer the MS. readings throughout. But
'Loves fuellers', though also a strange phrase, seems more easy of
interpretation, and applicable.
In l. 37 there can, I think, be no doubt that the original reading is
preserved by _A18_, _N_, _S_, _TCD_, and _W_.
Will quickly knowe thee, and knowe thee, and, alas!
The sudden, brutal change in the sense of the word 'knowe' is quite in
Donne's manner. The reasons for omitting or softening it are obvious,
and may excuse my not restoring it. The whole of these central lines
reveal that strange bad taste, some radical want of delicacy, which
mars not only Donne's poems and lighter prose but even at times the
sermons. In l. 49 the reading of the MSS. _A18_, _N_, _TC_; _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_, and _W_ is also probably original:
Nor praise, nor dispraise me; Blesse nor curse.
It is not uncommon in Donne's poetry to find a syllable dropped with
the effect of increasing the stress on a rhetorically emphatic word,
here 'Blesse'. An editor would be sure to supply 'nor'.
Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and Fletcher's
_Philaster_ (_Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, 1808). It is
clear that he used a copy of the 1669 edition, for he reads 35 'Lives
fuellers', and also 42 'Aydroptique' for 'Hydroptique'. Both these
mistakes were corrected in _1719_. Donne speaks in his sermons of
'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. _Sermons_ 80. 10. 99.
PAGE =112=, l. 44. _England is onely a worthy Gallerie_: i.e. entrance
hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that
this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over
to a better Country: for, _if in this life only_,' &c. _Sermons_ 50.
30. 270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not _two
Worlds_;... They are not _two Houses_; This is the _Gallery_, and
that the _Bedchamber_ of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no
ruine.' _Sermons_ 50. 43. 399.
In connexion with the general theme of this poem it may be noted
that in 1605 Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of the Earl of
Leicester, who like Donne served in the Cadiz and Islands expeditions,
left England accompanied by the beautiful Elizabeth Southwell
disguised as a page. At this period the most fantastic poetry was
never more fantastic than life itself.