PAGE =285=, l. 34. _The Ethicks speake, &c._ A rather strange
expression for 'Ethics tell'. The article is rare. Donne says, 'No
booke of Ethicks.' _Sermons_ 80. 55. 550. In _HN_ Drummond has altered
to 'Ethnicks' a word Donne uses elsewhere: 'Of all nations the Jews
have most chastely preserved that ceremony of abstaining from Ethnic
names.' _Essays in Divinity._ It does not, however, seem appropriate
here, unless Donne means to say that she had all the cardinal virtues
of the heathen with the superhuman, theological virtues which are
superinduced by grace:
Her soul was Paradise, &c.
But this is not at all clear. Apparently there is no more in the line
than a somewhat vaguely expressed hyperbole: 'she had all the cardinal
virtues of which we hear in Ethics'.
PAGE =286=, l. 44. _Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday_: i.e.
'We should have had a saint and should have now a holiday'--her
anniversary. The MS. form of the line is probably correct:
We hád had á Saint, nów a hólidáy.
l. 48. _That what we turne to_ feast, _she turn'd to_ pray. As printed
in the old editions this line, if it be correctly given, is one of the
worst Donne ever wrote:
That what we turne to feast, she turn'd to pray,
i.e. apparently 'That, the day which we turn into a feast or festival
she turned into a day of prayer, a fast'. But 'she turn'd to pray'
in such a sense is a hideously elliptical construction and cannot,
I think, be what Donne meant to write. Two emendations suggest
themselves. One occurs in _HN_:
That when we turn'd to feast, she turn'd to pray.
When we turn'd aside from the routine of life's work to keep holiday,
she did so also, but it was to pray. This is better, but it is
difficult to understand how, if this be the correct reading, the error
arose, and only _HN_ reads 'when'. The emendation I have introduced
presupposes only careless typography or punctuation to account for
the bad line. I take it that Donne meant 'feast' and 'pray' to be
imperatives, and that the line would be printed, if modernized, thus: