Professor Moore Smith has at the last moment reminded me of a fact,
the significance of which should have been discussed in the note on
the _Divine Poems_, that a copy of this poem found (Gosse, _Life &c._
ii. 279) among the papers of Sir Julius Caesar bears the statement
that the verses were written in Donne's 'great sickness in December
1623'. Professor Moore Smith is of opinion that Sir Julius Caesar may
have been right and Walton mistaken, and there is a good deal to be
said for this view. 'It seems', he says, 'more likely that Walton
should have attributed the poem wrongly to Donne's last illness, than
that the MS. copy should antedate it by seven years.' In 1640 Walton
simply referred it to his deathbed; the precise date was given in
1658. Moreover the date 1623 seems to Professor Moore Smith confirmed
by a letter to Sir Robert Ker (later Lord Ancrum) in 1624 (Gosse,
_Life &c._ ii. 191), in which Donne writes, 'If a flat map be but
pasted upon a round globe the farthest east and the farthest west meet
and are all one.'
On the other hand, Walton's final date is very precise, and was
probably given to him by King. If the poem was written at the same
time as that 'to God the Father', why did it not pass into wider
circulation? Stowe MS. 961 is the only collection in which I have
found it. The use of the simile in the letter to Ker is not so
conclusive as it seems. In that same letter Donne says, 'Sir, I took
up this paper to write a letter; but my imagination was full of a
sermon before, for I write but a few hours before I am to preach.' Now
I have in my note cited this simile from an undated sermon on one
of the Penitentiary Psalms. This, not the poem, may have been the
occasion of its repetition in this letter. Donne is very prone to
repeat a favourite figure--inundation, the king's stamped face &c. It
is quite likely that the poem was the last, not the first, occasion
on which he used the flat map. Note that the other chief figure in the
poem, the straits which lead to the Pacific Sea, was used in a sermon
(see note) dated February 12, 1629.
The figure of the flat map is not used, as one might expect, in the
section of the _Devotions_ headed _The Patient takes his bed_, but the
last line of the poem is recalled by some words there: 'and therefore
am I _cast downe_, that I might not be _cast away_.'
Walton's dates are often inaccurate, but here the balance of the
evidence seems to me in his favour. As Mr. Gosse says, Sir Julius
Caesar may have confounded this hymn with 'Wilt thou forgive'. In
re-reading the _Devotions_ with Professor Moore Smith's statement in
view I have come on two other points of interest. Donne's views on the
immortality of the soul (see II. pp. 160-2) are very clearly stated:
'That light, which is the very emanation of the light of God ... only
that bends not to this _Center_, to _Ruine_; that which was not made
of _Nothing_, is not thretned with this annihilation. All other
things are; even _Angels_, even our _soules_; they move upon the same
_Poles_, they bend to the same _Center_; and if they were not made
immortall by _preservation_, their _Nature_ could not keep them from
sinking to this _center_, _Annihilation_' (pp. 216-17).
The difficult line in the sonnet _Resurrection_ (p. 321, l. 8) is
perhaps illuminated by pp. 206-8, where Donne speaks of 'thy first
booke, the booke of _life_', 'thy second book, the booke of Nature,'
and closes a further list with 'to those, _the booke with seven
seals_, which only _the Lamb which was slain, was found worthy to
open_; which, I hope, it shal not disagree with the measure of thy
blessed _spirit_, to interpret, the _promulgation of their pardon,
and righteousnes, who are washed in the blood of the Lamb_'. This is
possibly the 'little booke' of the sonnet, perhaps changed by Donne to
'life-book' to simplify the reference. But the two are not the same.