In a letter to Goodyere written apparently in 1609 or 1610, Donne
says: 'Since my imprisonment in my bed, I have made a meditation in
verse, which I call a Litany; the word you know imports no other then
supplication, but all Churches have one forme of supplication, by that
name. Amongst ancient annals I mean some 800 years, I have met
two Litanies in Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my
meditations, for in good faith I thought not upon them then, but they
give me a defence, if any man, to a Lay man, and a private, impute it
as a fault, to take such divine and publique names, to his own little
thoughts. The first of these was made by Ratpertus a Monk of Suevia;
and the other by S. Notker, of whom I will give you this note by the
way, that he is a private Saint, for a few Parishes; they were both
but monks and the Letanies poor and barbarous enough; yet Pope Nicolas
the 5, valued their devotion so much, that he canonized both their
Poems, and commanded them for publike service in their Churches: mine
is for lesser Chappels, which are my friends, and though a copy of it
were due to you, now, yet I am so unable to serve my self with writing
it for you at this time (being some 30 staves of 9 lines) that I must
intreat you to take a promise that you shall have the first, for a
testimony of that duty which I owe to your love, and to my self,
who am bound to cherish it by my best offices. That by which it will
deserve best acceptation, is, that neither the Roman Church need call
it defective, because it abhors not the particular mention of the
blessed Triumphers in heaven; nor the Reformed can discreetly accuse
it, of attributing more then a rectified devotion ought to doe.'
The Litanies referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere may be read in
Migne's _Patrologia Latina_, vol. lxxxvii, col. 39 and 42. They are
certainly barbarous enough. That of Ratpertus is entitled _Litania
Ratperti ad processionem diebus Dominicis_, and begins:
Ardua spes mundi, solidator et inclyte coeli
Christe, exaudi nos propitius famulos.
Virgo Dei Genetrix rutilans in honore perennis,
Ora pro famulis, sancta Maria, tuis.
The other is headed _Notkeri Magistri cognomento Balbuli Litania
rhythmica_, and opens thus:
Votis supplicibus voces super astra feramus,
Trinus ut et simplex nos regat omnipotens.
Sancte Pater, adiuva nos, Sancte Fili, adiuva nos,
Compar his et Spiritus, ungue nos intrinsecus.
Michael, John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and Stephen, martyrs and
virgins, are appealed to in both. There are some differences in
respect of particular saints invoked.
It is interesting also to compare Donne's series of petitions with
those in a Middle English Litany preserved in the Balliol Coll. MS.
354 (published by Edward Flügel in _Anglia_ xxv. 220). The poetry is
very poor and I need not quote. The interesting feature is the list
of petitions 'Vnto the ffader', 'ye sonne', 'ye holy gost', 'the
trinite', 'our lady', 'ye angelles'. 'ye propre angell', 'John
baptist', 'ye appostiles', 'ye martires', 'the confessours', 'ye
virgins', 'unto all sayntes'. Donne, it will be observed, includes
the patriarchs and the prophets, but omits any reference to a guardian
angel and to the saints. Other references in his poems and sermons
show that he had the thought of a guardian angel often in his mind:
'As that Angel, which God hath given to protect thee, is not weary of
his office, for all thy perversenesses, so, howsoever God deale with
thee, be not thou weary of bearing thy part, in his Quire here in the
Militant Church.' _Sermons_ 80. 44. 440.
PAGE =339=, l. 34. _a such selfe different instinct
Of these;_
'As the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished as Power (The
Father), Knowledge (The Son), Love (The Holy Ghost), and are yet
identical, not three but one, may in me power, love, and knowledge be
thus at once distinct and identical.' The comma after 'these' in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_ was accidentally dropped. In _1635-69_ a comma was then
interpolated after 'instinct' and 'Of these' was connected with what
follows: 'Of these let all mee elemented bee,' 'these' being made to
point forward to the next line. Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
both read thus. But _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ show what was the original
punctuation. Without 'Of these' it is difficult to give a precise
meaning to 'instinct'. It would be easy to change 'a such' to 'such
a' with most of the MSS., but Donne seems to have affected this order.
Compare _Elegie X: The Dreame_, p. 95, l. 17:
After a such fruition I shall wake.
PAGE =341=, l. 86. _In Abel dye._ Abel was to the early Church a type
of Christ, as being the first martyr.
PAGE =343=, ll. 122-4. One might omit the brackets in these lines and
substitute a semicolon after 'hearken too' and a comma after 'and
do', and make the sense clearer. The MSS. bear evidence to their
difficulty. There is certainly no call for brackets as we use them,
and the 1633 edition is more sparing of them in this poem than the
later editions. What Donne says is: 'While this quire' (enumerated in
the previous stanzas) 'prays for us and thou hearkenest to them, let
not us whose duty is to pray, to endure patiently, and to do thy will,
trust in their prayers so far as to forget our duty of obedience and
service.'
PAGE =347=, l. 231. _Which well, if we starve, dine_: 'well' has the
support of all the MSS. and may be the adverb placed before its verb.
'If we starve they dine well.' In this wire-drawn and tormented poem
it is hard to say what Donne may not have written. Most of the editors
read 'will', and this appears in some copies of _1633_.
l. 243. _Heare us, weake ecchoes, O thou eare, and cry._ The 'cry' of
the editions is surely right. God is at once the source of our prayers
and their answerer. Our prayers are echoes of what His grace inspires
in our hearts. The 'eye' of _S_ and other MSS., which also read
'wretches' for 'ecchoes', is due to a misapprehension of the condensed
thought, and 'eye' with 'ecchoes' is entirely irrelevant. _JC_ tries
another emendation: 'Oh thou heare our cry.'
'Every man who prostrates himselfe in his chamber, and poures out his
soule in prayer to God;... though his faith assure him, that God hath
granted all that he asked upon the first petition of his prayer, yea
before he made it, (for God put that petition in to his heart and
mouth, and moved him to aske it, that thereby he might be moved to
grant it), yet as long as the Spirit enables him he continues his
prayer,' &c. _Sermons_ 80. 77. 786.
But indeed we do not need to go to the _Sermons_ to see that this is
Donne's meaning. He has emphasized it already in this poem: e.g. in
Stanza xxiii:
Heare us, for till thou heare us, Lord
We know not what to say:
Thine eare to'our sighes, teares, thoughts gives voice and word.
O Thou who Satan heard'st in Jobs sicke day,
Heare thy selfe now, for thou in us dost pray.
'But in things of this kind (i.e. sermons), that soul that inanimates
them never departs from them. The Spirit of God that dictates them in
the speaker or writer, and is present in his tongue or hand, meets
him again (as we meet ourselves in a glass) in the eyes and ears and
hearts of the hearers and readers.' Gosse, _Life, &c._, i. 123: To ...
the Countess of Montgomery.
'God cannot be called a cry', Grosart says; but St. Paul so describes
the work of the Spirit: 'Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our
infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought:
but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which
cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints
according to the will of God.' Calvin thus closes his note on the
passage: 'Atque ita locutus est Paulus quo significantius id totum
tribueret Spiritus gratiae. Iubemur quidem pulsare, sed nemo sponte
praemeditari vel unam syllabam poterit, nisi arcano Spiritus sui
instinctu nos Deus pulset, adeoque sibi corda nostra aperiat.'
PAGE =348=, l. 246. _Gaine to thy self, or us allow._ If we perish
neither Christ nor we have gained anything. Both have died in vain.
If 'and' is substituted for 'or' in this line (_1635-69_ and Chambers)
then the next line becomes otiose.
PAGE =348=. UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMES, &c.
We do not know what was the occasion of these lines. The Countess was
the mother of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and Philip Herbert,
Earl of Montgomery, and of Pembroke after his brother's death.
Poems by the former are frequently found with Donne's, e.g. in
the Hawthornden MS. which is made from a collection in Donne's own
possession. Doubtless they were known to one another, but there is no
evidence of intimacy, such as letters. To the Countess of Montgomery
Donne in 1619 sent a copy of one of his sermons which she had asked
for (Gosse, _Life, &c_., ii. 123). It may have been for her that he
composed this poem.
An elaborate copy of the Psalms was prepared by John Davis of
Hereford. From this they were published in 1822.
From l. 53 it is evident that Donne's poem was written after the death
of the Countess of Pembroke in 1621.
PAGE =349=, l. 38. _So well attyr'd abroad, so ill at home._ Donne has
probably in mind the French versions of Clement Marot, which were the
war-songs of the Huguenots.