Earth as the Lees, and heavie dross of All
(After his kinde) did to the bottom fall:
Contrariwise, the light and nimble Fire
Did through the crannies of th'old Heap aspire
Unto the top; and by his nature, light
No less than hot, mounted in sparks upright:
But, lest the Fire (which all the rest imbraces)
Being too near, should burn the Earth to ashes;
As Chosen Umpires, the great All-Creator
Between these Foes placed the Aire and Water:
For, one suffiz'd not their stern strife to end.
Water, as Cozen did the Earth befriend:
Aire for his Kinsman Fire, as firmly deals &c.
Du Bartas, _The second Day of the first Week_
(trans. Joshua Sylvester).
Burton, in the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect. 2, Mem. 3,
tells how the new Astronomers Tycho, Rotman, Kepler, &c. by their new
doctrine of the heavens are 'exploding in the meantime that element of
fire, those fictitious, first watry movers, those heavens I mean above
the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius and many of
the fathers affirm'. They have abolished, that is to say, the fire
which surrounded the air, as that air surrounded the water and
the earth (all below the moon); and they have also abolished the
Crystalline Sphere and the Primum Mobile which were supposed to
surround the sphere of the fixed stars, or the firmament.
PAGE =238=, l. 215. _Prince, Subject, Father, Sonne are things
forgot._ Donne has probably in mind the effect of the religious wars
in Germany, France, the Low Countries, &c.
l. 217. _that then can be._ This is the reading of all the editions
before _1669_, and there is no reason to change 'then' to 'there':
'Every man thinks he has come to be a Phoenix (preferring private
judgement to authority) and that then comparison ceases, for there
is nothing of the same kind with which to compare himself. There is
nothing left to reverence.'
PAGE =239=, l. 258. _It teares
The Firmament in eight and forty sheires._
Norton says that in the catalogue of Hipparchus, preserved in
the Almagest of Ptolemy, the stars were divided into forty-eight
constellations.
l. 260. _New starres._ Norton says: 'It was the apparition of a new
star in 1572, in the constellation of Cassiopeia, that turned Tycho
Brahe to astronomy: and a new bright star in Ophiuchus, in 1604, had
excited general wonder, and afforded Galileo a text for an attack on
the Ptolemaic system'.
At p. 247, l. 70, Donne notes that the 'new starres' went out again.
PAGE =240=, l. 286. _a Tenarif, or higher hill._ 'Tenarif' is
the _1611_ spelling, 'Tenarus' that of _1633-69_. Donne speaks of
'Tenarus' elsewhere, but it is not the same place.
It is not probable that Donne ever saw the Peak of Teneriffe, although
biographers speak of this line as a descriptive touch drawn from
memory. The Canary Isles are below the 30th degree of latitude.
The fleet that made the Islands Exhibition was never much if at all
further south than 43 degrees. After coasting off Corunna 43° N. 8°
W., and some leagues south of that port, the fleet struck straight
across to the Azores, 37° N. 25° W. Donne was somewhat nearer in the
previous year when he was at Cadiz, 36° N. 6° W., but too far off to
descry the Peak. His description, though vivid, is 'metaphysical',
like that of Hell which follows: 'The Pike of Teneriff, how high is
it? 79 miles or 52, as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates
in his Eratosthenes'. Burton, _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sec. 2,
Mem. 3.
On the other side, Satan, alarm'd,
Collecting all his might, dilated stood,
Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremov'd.
Milton, _Par. Lost_, iv. 985-7.
ll. 295 f. _If under all, a Vault infernall bee, &c._ Hell, according
to mediaeval philosophy, was in the middle of the earth. 'If this
be true,' says Donne, 'and if at the same time the Sea is in places
bottomless, then the earth is neither solid nor round. We use these
words only approximately. But you may hold, on the other hand, that
the deepest seas we know are but pock-holes, the highest hills but
warts, on the face of the solid earth. Well, even in that case you
must admit that in the moral sphere at any rate the world's proportion
is disfigured by the want of all proportioning of reward and
punishment to conduct.' The sudden transition from the physical to the
moral sphere is very disconcerting. Compare: 'Or is it the place of
hell, as Virgil in his Aeneides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others
poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think. In good
earnest, Antony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian college in
Millan, in his great volume _de Inferno_, lib. i, cap. 47, is stiffe
in this tenent.... Whatsoever philosophers write (saith Surius) there
be certaine mouthes of Hell, and places appointed for the punishment
of mens souls, as at Hecla in Island, where the ghosts of dead men are
familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living. God would have
such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that
there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God,'
&c. Burton, _Anat. of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sec. 2, Mem. 3.
ll. 296-8. _Which sure is spacious, &c._ 'Franciscus Ribera will
have hell a materiall and locall fire in the centre of the earth, 200
Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words _Exivit
sanguis de terra ... per stadia mille sexcenta, &c._ But Lessius
(lib. 13, _de moribus divinis_, cap. 24) will have this locall
hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and
brimstone; because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically
multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand
millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square); which
will abundantly suffice, '_cum certum sit, inquit, facta subductione,
non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum_.' Burton, _Anat. of
Melancholy_, _ut sup._ Eschatology was the 'dismal science' of those
days and was studied with astonishing gusto and acumen. 'For as one
Author, who is afraid of admitting too great a hollownesse in the
Earth, lest then the Earth might not be said to be solid, pronounces
that Hell cannot possibly be above three thousand miles in compasse,
(and then one of the torments of Hell will be the throng, for their
bodies must be there in their dimensions, as well as their soules) so
when the Schoole-men come to measure the house in heaven (as they will
measure it, and the Master, God, and all his Attributes, and tell us
how Allmighty, and how Infinite he is) they pronounce that every soule
in that house shall have more roome to it selfe, then all this world
is.' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 747. The reference in the margin is to Munster.
l. 311. _that Ancient, &c._ 'Many erroneous opinions are about the
essence and originall of it' (i.e. the rational soul), 'whether it be
fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates,'
&c. Burton, _Anat. of Melancholy_, Part i, Sec. 1, Mem. 2, Subsec.
9. Probably Donne has the same 'Ancient' in view. It is from Cicero
(_Tusc. Disp._ i. 10) that we learn that Aristoxenus held the soul to
be a harmony of the body. Though a Peripatetic, Aristoxenus lived
in close communion with the latest Pythagoreans, and the doctrine is
attributed to Pythagoras as a consequence of his theory of numbers.
Simmias, the disciple of the Pythagorean Philolaus, maintains the
doctrine in Plato's _Phaedo_, and Socrates criticizes it. Aristotle
states and examines it in the _De Anima_, 407b. 30. Two classes of
thinkers, Bouillet says (Plotinus, _Fourth Ennead_, _Seventh Book_,
note), regarded the soul as a harmony, doctors as Hippocrates and
Galen, who considered it a harmony of the four elements--the hot, the
cold, the dry and the moist (as the definition of health Donne refers
to this more than once, e.g. _The good-morrow_, l. 19, and _The
Second Anniversary_, ll. 130 f.); and musicians like Aristoxenus, who
compared the soul to the harmony of the lyre. Donne leaves the sense
in which he uses the word quite vague; but l. 321 suggests the medical
sense.
l. 312. _at next._ This common Anglo-Saxon construction is very
rare in later English. The O.E.D. cites no instance later than 1449,
Pecock's _Repression_. The instance cited there is prepositional in
character rather than adverbial: 'Immediatli at next to the now bifore
alleggid text of Peter this proces folewith.' Donne's use seems to
correspond exactly to the Anglo-Saxon: 'Johannes ða ofhreow þaēre
mēden and ðaera licmanna drēorignysse, and āstrehte his
licaman tō eorðan on langsumum gebēde, and ða _aet nēxtan_
āras, and eft upahafenum handum langlice baed.' Aelfric (Sweet's
_Anglo-Saxon Reader_, 1894, p. 67). But 'at next' in the poem possibly
does not mean simply 'next', but 'immediately', i.e. 'the first thing
he said would have been ...'
l. 314. _Resultances_: i.e. productions of, or emanations from, her.
'She is the harmony from which proceeds that harmony of our bodies
which is their soul.' Donne uses the word also in the sense of
'the sum or gist of a thing': 'He speakes out of the strength and
resultance of many lawes and Canons there alleadged.' _Pseudo-martyr_,
p. 245; and Walton says that Donne 'left the resultance of 1400
Authors, most of them abridged and analysed with his own hand.' _Life_
(1675), p. 60. He is probably using Donne's own title.
PAGE =241=, l. 318. _That th'Arke to mans proportions was made._ The
following quotation from St. Augustine will show that the plural
of _1611-12_ is right, and what Donne had in view. St. Augustine is
speaking of the Ark as a type of the Church: 'Procul dubio figura est
peregrinantis in hoc seculo Civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae, quae fit
salva per lignum in quo pependit Mediator Dei et hominum, homo
Iesus Christus. (1 Tim. ii. 5.) Nam et mensurae ipsae longitudinis,
altitudinis, latitudinis eius, significant corpus humanum, in cuius
veritate ad homines praenuntiatus est venturus, et venit. Humani
quippe corporis longitudo a vertice usque ad vestigia sexies tantum
habet, quam latitudo, quae est ab uno latere ad alterum latus, et
decies tantum, quam altitudo, cuius altitudinis mensura est in latere
a dorso ad ventrem: velut si iacentem hominem metiaris supinum, seu
pronum, sexies tantum longus est a capite ad pedes, quam latus a
dextra in sinistram, vel a sinistra in dextram, et decies, quam altus
a terra. Unde facta est arca trecentorum in longitudine cubitorum, et
quinquaginta in latitudine, et triginta in altitudine.' _De Civitate
Dei_, XV. 26.
PAGE =242=, ll. 377-80. _Nor in ought more, &c._ 'The father' is the
Heavens, i.e. the various heavenly bodies moving in their spheres;
'the mother', the earth:
As the bright Sun shines through the smoothest Glasse
The turning Planets influence doth passe
Without impeachment through the glistering Tent
Of the tralucing (_French_ diafane) Fiery Element,
The Aires triple Regions, the transparent Water;
But not the firm base of this faire Theater.
And therefore rightly may we call those Trines
(Fire, Aire and Water) but Heav'ns Concubines:
For, never Sun, nor Moon, nor Stars injoy
The love of these, but only by the way,
As passing by: whereas incessantly
The lusty Heav'n with Earth doth company;
And with a fruitfull seed which lends All life,
With childes each moment, his own lawfull wife;
And with her lovely Babes, in form and nature
So divers, decks this beautiful Theater.
Sylvester, _Du Bartas, Second Day, First Week._
PAGE =243=, l. 389. _new wormes_: probably serpents, such as were
described in new books of travels.
l. 394. _Imprisoned in an Hearbe, or Charme, or Tree._ Compare _A
Valediction: of my name, in the window_, p. 27, ll. 33-6:
As all the vertuous powers which are
Fix'd in the starres, are said to flow
Into such characters, as graved bee
When these starres have supremacie.
l. 409. _But as some Serpents poyson, &c._ Compare: 'But though all
knowledge be in those Authors already, yet, as some poisons, and some
medicines, hurt not, nor profit, except the creature in which they
reside, contribute their lively activitie and vigor; so, much of the
knowledge buried in Books perisheth, and becomes ineffectuall, if it
be not applied, and refreshed by a companion, or friend. Much of their
goodnesse hath the same period which some Physicians of _Italy_ have
observed to be in the biting of their _Tarentola_, that it affects no
longer, then the flie lives.' _Letters_, p. 107.
PAGE =245=, l. 460. _As matter fit for Chronicle, not verse._ Compare
_The Canonization_, p. 15, ll. 31-2:
And if no peece of Chronicle wee prove
We'll build in sonnets pretty roomes ...
God's 'last, and lasting'st peece, a song' is of course Moses' song in
Deuteronomy xxxii: 'Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak,' &c.
l. 467. _Such an opinion (in due measure) made, &c._ The bracket of
_1611_ makes the sense less ambiguous than the commas of _1633_:
Such an opinion, in due measure, made.
According to the habits of old punctuation, 'in due measure' thus
comma'd off might be an adjunct of 'made me ... invade'. The bracket
shows that the phrase goes with 'opinion'. 'Such an opinion (with
all due reverence spoken),' &c. Donne finds that he is attributing to
himself the same thoughts as God.