l. 2. _to confine her in a marble chest._ The 'Funerall Elegie' was
probably the first composed of these poems. Elizabeth Drury's parents
erected over her a very elaborate marble tomb.
PAGE =246=, l. 41. _the Affrique Niger._ Grosart comments on this: 'A
peculiarity generally given to the Nile; and here perhaps not spoken
of our Niger, but of the Nile before it is so called, when, according
to Pliny (_N. H._ v. 9), after having twice been underground, and the
second time for twenty days' journey, it issues at the spring Nigris.'
Probably Donne had been reading 'A Geographical Historie of Africa
written in Arabicke by John Leo a More, borne in Granada, and brought
up in Barbarie ... Translated and collected by Iohn Porie, late of
Gonevill and Caius College in Cambridge, 1600.' Of the Niger he says:
'This land of Negros hath a mighty river, which taking his name of the
region is called Niger: this river taketh his originall from the east
out of a certain desert called by the foresaide Negros _Sen_ ... Our
Cosmographers affirme that the said river of Niger is derived out of
Nilus, which they imagine for some certaine space to be swallowed up
of the earth, and yet at last to burst forth into such a lake as
is before mentioned.' Pory is mentioned occasionally in Donne's
correspondence.
PAGE =247=, l. 50. _An Angell made a Throne, or Cherubin._ See _Elegy
XI_, ll. 77-8 and note. Donne, like Shakespeare, uses 'Cherubin' as a
singular. There can be no doubt that the lines in _Macbeth_, I. vii.
21-3, should read:
And pity, like a naked new-born babe
Striding the blast, or heavens cherubins horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air, &c.
It is an echo of:
He rode upon the cherubins and did fly;
He came flying upon the wings of the wind.
Psalm xviii. 10.
'Cherubin' is a singular in Shakespeare, and 'cherubim' as a plural he
did not know.
l. 73. _a Lampe of Balsamum_, i.e. burning balsam instead of ordinary
oil: 'And as _Constantine_ ordained, that upon this day' (Christmas
Day), 'the Church should burne no Oyle, but Balsamum in her Lamps, so
let us ever celebrate this day, with a thankfull acknowledgment, that
Christ who is _unctus Domini_, The Anointed of the Lord, hath anointed
us with the Oyle of gladnesse above our fellowes.' _Sermons_ 80. 7.
72.
ll. 75-7. _Cloath'd in, &c._ Chambers's arrangement of these lines is
ingenious but, I think, mistaken because it alters the emphasis of the
sentences. The stress is not laid by Donne on her purity, but on her
early death: 'She expir'd while she was still a virgin. She went away
before she was a woman.' Line 76:
For marriage, though it doe not staine, doth dye.
is a sudden digression. Dryden filches these lines:
All white, a Virgin-Saint, she sought the skies
For Marriage, tho' it sullies not, it dies.
_The Monument of a Faire Maiden Lady._
PAGE =248=, l. 83. _said History_ is a strange phrase, but it has the
support of all the editions which can be said to have any authority.
l. 92. _and then inferre._ Compare: 'That this honour might be
inferred on some one of the blood and race of their ancient king.'
Raleigh (O.E.D.). Donne's sense of 'commit', 'entrust', is not far
from Raleigh's of 'confer', 'bestow', and both are natural extensions
of the common though now obsolete sense, 'bring on, occasion, cause':
Inferre faire Englands peace by this Alliance.
Shakespeare, _Rich. III_, IV. iv. 343.
l. 94. _thus much to die._ To die so far as this life is concerned.