PAGES =5=, =6=. The poems of Ben Jonson are here printed just as
they stand in the 1650, 1654, 1669 editions of Donne's _Poems_.
A comparison with the 1616 edition of Jonson's _Works_ shows some
errors. The poem _To John Donne_ (p. 5) is xxiii of the _Epigrammes_.
The sixth line runs
And which no affection praise enough can give!
The absurd 'no'n' of 1650 seems to have arisen from the printing
'no'affection' of the 1640 edition of Jonson's _Works_. The 1719
editor of Donne's _Poems_ corrected this mistake. A more serious
mistake occurs in the ninth line, which in the _Works_ (1616) runs:
All which I meant to praise, and, yet I would.
The error 'mean' comes from the 1640 edition of the _Works of Ben
Jonson_, which prints 'meane'.
_To Lucy, &c._, is xciii of the _Epigrammes_. The fourteenth line
runs:
Be of the best; and 'mongst those, best are you.
The comma makes the sense clearer. In l. 3, 1616 reads 'looke,' with
comma.
_To John Donne_ (p. 6) is xcvi. There are no errors; but 'punees' is
in _1616_ more correctly spelt 'pui'nees'.
PAGES =7=, =175=, =369=. I am indebted for the excellent copies of
the engravings here reproduced to the kind services of Mr. Laurence
Binyon. The portraits form a striking supplement to the poems along
with which they are placed. The first is the young man of the _Songs
and Sonets_, the _Elegies_ and the _Satyres_, the counterpart of Biron
and Benedick and the audacious and witty young men of Shakespeare's
Comedies. 'Neither was it possible,' says Hacket in his _Scrinia
Reserata: a Memorial of John Williams ... Archbishop of York_ (1693),
'that a vulgar soul should dwell in such promising features.'
The engraving by Lombart is an even more lifelike portrait of the
author of the _Letters_, _Epicedes_, _Anniversaries_ and earlier
_Divine Poems_, learned and witty, worldly and pious, melancholy
yet ever and again 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into
sportiveness', writing at one time the serious _Pseudo-Martyr_,
at another the outrageous _Ignatius his Conclave_, and again the
strangely-mooded, self-revealing _Biathanatos_: 'mee thinks I have the
keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe
so soone to my heart, as mine own sword.'
After describing the circumstances attending the execution of the last
portrait of Donne, Walton adds in the 1675 edition of the _Lives_ (the
passage is not in the earlier editions of the _Life of Donne_): 'And
now, having brought him through the many labyrinths and perplexities
of a various life: even to the gates of death and the grave; my desire
is, he may rest till I have told my Reader, that I have seen many
Pictures of him, in several habits, and at several ages, and in
several postures: And I now mention this, because, I have seen one
Picture of him, drawn by a curious hand at his age of eighteen; with
his sword and what other adornments might then suit with the present
fashions of youth, and the giddy gayeties of that age: and his Motto
then was,
How much shall I be chang'd,
Before I am chang'd.
And, if that young, and his now dying Picture, were at this time set
together, every beholder might say, _Lord! How much is_ Dr. Donne
_already chang'd, before he is chang'd!_' The change written in the
portrait is the change from the poet of the _Songs and Sonets_ to the
poet of the _Holy Sonnets_ and last _Hymns_.
The design of this last picture and of the marble monument made from
it is not very clear. He was painted, Walton says, standing on the
figure of the urn. But the painter brought with him also 'a board
of the just height of his body'. What was this for? Walton does not
explain. But Mr. Hamo Thornycroft has pointed out that the folds of
the drapery show the statue was modelled from a recumbent figure. Can
it be that Walton's account confuses two things? The incident of the
picture is not in the 1640 _Life_, but was added in 1658. How could
Donne, a dying man, stand on the urn, with his winding-sheet knotted
'at his head and feet'? Is it not probable that he was painted lying
in his winding-sheet on the board referred to; but that the monument,
as designed by himself, and executed by Nicholas Stone, was intended
to represent him rising at the Last Day from the urn, habited as he
had lain down--a symbolic rendering of the faith expressed in the
closing words of the inscription
Hic licet in Occiduo Cinere
Aspicit Eum
Cuius nomen est Oriens.
PAGE =37=, l. 14. The textual note should have indicated that in most
or all of the MSS. cited the whole line runs:
(Thou lovest Truth) but an Angell at first sight.
This is probably the original form of the line, corrected later to
avoid the clashing of the 'but's.
PAGE =96=, l. 6, note. The _R212_ cited here is Rawlinson Poetical
MS. 212, a miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century prose and
poetry (e.g. Davies' _Epigrams_. See II. p. 101). I had cited it once
or twice in my first draft. The present instance escaped my eye. It
helps to show how general the reading 'tyde' was.
PAGE =115=, l. 54. _goeing on it fashions_. The correct reading is
probably 'growing on it fashions', which has the support of both _JC_,
and _1650-69_ where 'its' is a mere error. I had made my text
before _JC_ came into my hand. To 'grow on' for 'to increase' is
an Elizabethan idiom: 'And this quarrel grew on so far,' North's
_Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus, ad fin._ See also O.E.D.
I should like in closing to express my indebtedness throughout to the
_Oxford English Dictionary_, an invaluable help and safeguard to
the editor of an English text, and also to Franz's admirable
_Shakespeare-Grammatik_ (1909), which should be translated.
PAGE =133=, l. 58. To what is said in the note on the taking of yellow
amber as a drug add: 'Divers men may walke by the Sea side, and the
same beames of the Sunne giving light to them all, one gathereth by
the benefit of that light pebles, or speckled shells, for curious
vanitie, and another gathers precious Pearle, or medicinall Ambar, by
the same light.' _Sermons_ 80. 36. 326.
PAGES =156-7=. _Seeke true religion, &c._ All this passage savours a
little of Montaigne: 'Tout cela, c'est un signe tres-evident que nous
ne recevons nostre religion qu'à nostre façon et par nos mains, et
non autrement que comme les autres religions se reçoyvent. Nous nous
sommes rencontrez au païs où elle estoit en usage; ou nous regardons
son ancienneté ou l'authorité des hommes qui l'ont maintenue; ou
creignons les menaces qu'ell' attache aux mescreans, ou suyvons ses
promesses. Ces considerations là doivent estre employées à nostre
creance, mais comme subsidiaires: ce sont liaisons humaines. Une
autre region, d'autres tesmoings, pareilles promesses et menasses nous
pourroyent imprimer par mesme voye une croyance contraire. Nous sommes
chrestiens à mesme titre que nous sommes ou perigordins ou alemans.'
_Essais_ (1580), II. 12. _Apologie de Raimond Sebond_.
PAGE =220=, l. 46. Compare: 'One of the most convenient Hieroglyphicks
of God, is a Circle; and a Circle is endlesse; whom God loves, hee
loves to the end ... His hailestones and his thunderbolts, and his
showres of blood (emblemes and instruments of his Judgements) fall
downe in a direct line, and affect or strike some one person, or
place: His Sun, and Moone, and Starres (Emblemes and Instruments of
his Blessings) move circularly, and communicate themselves to all. His
Church is his chariot; in that he moves more gloriously, then in the
Sun; as much more, as his begotten Son exceeds his created Sun, and
his Son of glory, and of his right hand, the Sun of the firmament;
and this Church, his chariot, moves in that communicable motion,
circularly; It began in the East, it came to us, and is passing now,
shining out now, in the farthest West.' _Sermons_ 80. 2. 13-4.
l. 47. _Religious tipes_, is the reading of _1633_. The comma has
been accidentally dropped. There is no comma in _1635-69_, which print
'types'.
PAGE =241=, ll. 343-4. _As a compassionate Turcoyse, &c._ Compare:
And therefore Cynthia, as a turquoise bought,
Or stol'n, or found, is virtueless, and nought,
It must be freely given by a friend,
Whose love and bounty doth such virtue lend,
As makes it to compassionate, and tell
By looking pale, the wearer is not well.
Sir Francis Kynaston, _To Cynthia_.
Saintsbury, _Caroline Poets_, ii. 161.
PAGE =251=, ll. 9-18. The source of this simile is probably Lucretius,
_De Rerum Natura_, III. 642-56.
Falciferos memorant currus abscidere membra
Saepe ita de subito permixta caede calentis,
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscisum, cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali non quit sentire dolorem;
Et semel in pugnae studio quod dedita mens est,
Corpore reliquo pugnam caedesque petessit,
Nec tenet amissam laevam cum tegmine saepe
Inter equos abstraxe rotas falcesque rapaces,
Nec cecidisse alius dextram, cum scandit et instat.
Inde alius conatur adempto surgere crure,
Cum digitos agitat propter moribundus humi pes.
Et caput abscisum calido viventeque trunco
Servat humi voltum vitalem oculosque patentis,
Donec reliquias animai reddidit omnes.
PAGE =259=, ll. 275-6. _so that there is
(For aught thou know'st) piercing of substances._
'Piercing of substances,' the actual penetration of one substance by
another, was the Stoic as opposed to the Aristotelian doctrine of
mixture of substance ([Greek: krasis]), what is now called chemical
combination. The Peripatetics held that, while the qualities of the
two bodies combined to produce a new quality, the substances remained
in juxtaposition. Plotinus devotes the seventh book of the _Enneades_
to the subject; and one of the arguments of the Stoics which he cites
resembles Donne's problem: 'Sweat comes out of the human body without
dividing it and without the body being pierced with holes.' The pores
were apparently unknown. See Bouillet's _Enneades de Plotin_, I. 243
f. and 488-9, for references.