will, as Man's life is not. In them natural impulse and natural inhibition have harmonized, and their life is full of content and joy: If this belief from Heaven be sent, What man has made of man? Modern feeling has moved away from such confidence, which was a development of the doctrine of the Fall. The life of natural things too, we sadly recognize, is full of effort and failure: 'Here as everywhere the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted; the lichen ate the vigour of the stalk and the ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling' (Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders). p. 152. The dwelling-place. The verses of St. John are: 'And they said unto him, Rabbi ... where abidest thou? He saith unto them, Come, and ye shall see. They came therefore and saw where he abɔde; and they abode with him that day'. 6 p. 152. The Night. The same came unto him by night' (John iii. 2). 6 6 1. 29. Christs progress'. A marginal note in the 1650 edition refers to: And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and there prayed (Mark i. 35); and And every night he went out, and lodged in the mount that is called the mount of Olives' (Luke xxi. 37). 156. Quickness. 1. 5. Moon-like toil'. The labour of making the tides rise and fall, to no end. Compare and contrast Keats's last sonnet. p. 157. A Pastorall Hymne. From The Second Booke of Divine Poems. By J. H., 1647. p. 157. The proud Egyptian Queen. From Sherburne's Salmacis... With Severall other Poems and Translations, 1651 (Sacra', p. 167). p. 158. The Christians reply to the Phylosopher. Il. 5-8. It was believed that a chemist could reconstruct a plant from its ashes. 11. 17-20. Compare: Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith her right, By hese wee reach divinity. Donne, To the Countesse of Bedford (Poems, Oxford, i. 189). MISCELLANIE S. p. 165. Elegie. His Picture. Probably written when Donne with many other young volunteers was going to join the Cadiz or Islands Expedition, 1596-7. See The Calme and The Storme (Poems, Oxford, i. 175-80). p. 166. Elegie. On his Mistris. 1. 23. Faire Orithea', i. e. Oreithyia carried off by Boreas. See the magnificent chorus in Swinburne's Erechtheus, ll. 555-640. 1. 34. 'Spittles', i. e. Spittals, Hospitals. A street in Aberdeen is called The Spital. A town councillor proposed to change it as being in bad taste! Donne's spelling explains his mistake. 1. 35. fuellers', i. e. stokers. 1. 44. 'Gallerie', i. e. entrance-hall or corridor. p. 168. Satyre. Donne's third Satire—a vivid presentation of the choice in religion presented to one like him brought up a Roman Catholic, but becoming intellectually emancipated. Dryden's Religio Laici was probably suggested by this poem. Donne was very far at this time from being a convinced Anglican. 1. 17. ayd mutinous Dutch', i. e. serve in Holland against the Spaniards. To the Catholic Donne the Dutch are still mutineers. 1. 25. limbecks', i. e. alembics, for distilling. Our English bodies are distilled in hot climes. 1. 31. 'Sentinell', &c. Plato, Phaedo, 6, &c. 6 1. 35. his whole Realme to be quit', i. e. to be free of his whole realm. 1. 81. 1. 76. 'To adore', &c. about must', &c. Compare Religio Medici, I. Sect. 3. Or as we see, to aspire some mountain's top Webster, The White Devil, I. ii. 1. 86. Hard deeds', &c. Hard deeds are achieved by the body's pains or efforts and hard knowledge attained to by the mind's. II. 96-7. Philip of Spain or Pope Gregory, Henry VIII or Martin Luther. p. 171. To Sir H. W., i. e. Sir Henry Wotton, who went as Ambassador to Venice in 1604. Donne had ruined his own career by his marriage in December 1601. ll. 21-2. 'To sweare', &c. To sweare love until your rank is such that I must speak of honour not love. p. 173. To the Countesse of Bedford. An example of Donne's metaphysical or transcendental strain of compliment. Virtue 1. 1. Honour, Aristotle says, is the greatest of external goods, goods for which we are dependent on others. belongs to the soul itself. Nicomachean Ethics iv. 3. 10. 11. 10-12. The heat of dung is used for various purposes still, as to crook a walking-stick of hard wood. 1. 19. In whatever obscurity I, who praise you, may live, your glory is communicated to, illumines those who praise you. 1. 27. through-shine', i. e. transparent. 6 1. 29. specular stone', i. e. mica, or translucent marble (Pliny, Petronius), of which Donne seems to have read or heard that some temples were once made: 'the heathens served their God in temples sub dio, without roofs or coverings, in a free openness; and, where they could, in Temples made of specular stone that was transparent as glass or crystal, so as they which walked without in the streets might see all that was done within'. 1. 34. But as our Soules', &c. The human soul includes three souls, that of growth, which it shares with plants; of sense with animals; reason, its human distinction. The first two are first in time, not in presidence', i. e. precedence. So discretion, 6 natural wisdom, must yield precedence to religious zeal, though it remains with it, is subsumed not displaced. Compare Davenant, p. 158, ll. 17-20. 11. 46-7. types of God', and so of religion. God is a circle. whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere'. p. 175. Farewel ye guilded follies. Attributed by Walton first to Donne, then to Wotton. One MS. assigns it to King. ll. 31-2. Had I all the wealth of the Indies.' p. 177. An Elegie, &c. Printed from the Elegies upon the Author in Donne's Poems, 1633. In the 1640 edition of Carew's poems is printed what seems to me an earlier, unrevised version. Some variants are:-l. 5, for uncisor'd Churchman' (i. e. carelessly barbered), 'Uncizard Lectr'er'; 1. 44, for 'dust, had rak'd' 1640 reads 'dung, had search'd'; l. 50, for 'stubborne', 'troublesome'; and 1. 94, for 'Tombe', ‘Grave', rejected probably because of the awkward suggestion of 'on thy Grave incise', i. e. 'ingrave'. In 1640 l. 91-2 are wanting. 1. 87. I read thee' for 'the' in all texts. I take the lines to mean: 'I will not draw envy on you by giving a complete catalogue of your virtues'. Compare Jonson's To draw no envy (Shakespeare) on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy Booke, and Fame. p. 180. To my worthy friend Mr. George Sandys. From Sandys, A Paraphrase upon the Divine Poems, 1638. It is less correctly printed in Carew's Poems, 1640. p. 181. Maria Wentworth. She died in 1632, aged 18, being the daughter of Thomas, Earl of Cleveland, and Anna Crofts, sister of Carew's friend John Crofts. p. 182. On Shakespeare. From Milton's Poems, 1645. This epitaph, first printed in the Second Folio of Shakespeare, is quite in the Italian style of wit. Petrarch speaks (Canz. cxxxi) of the pure ivory of Laura's face, Che fa di marmo chi da presso 'l guarda, turns to marble whoever gazes closely at it', i. e. his admiration turns him to a statue. 'We catch,' says Mark Pattison, the contagion of the poet's mental attitude. He makes us bow with him before the image of Shakespeare, though there is not a single discriminating epithet to point out in what the greatness which we are made to feel consists.' That is an exact description of the metaphysical fashion in eulogy and in description too. See note on Donne's Nocturnall upon St. Lucies day, p. 13. 1. 5. son of memory'. The Muses are daughters of Memory. 1. 12. Delphick lines', i. e. oracular lines. p. 183. An Elegy on Ben. Jonson. From Jonsonus Virbius: or The Memory of Ben Johnson. Revived by the Friends of the Muses, 1638. Signed J. C. It is not quite certain that this poem is by Cleveland. It is not altogether in his style. p. 184. For the Lady Olivia Porter. Endymion Porter was the friend of Herrick also and addressed by him in several poems. 1. 7. 'glorious Eyes' 1673: 'lasting Eyes', Madagascar with other Poems, 1648 (2nd ed.). 6 1. 8. 'Darken. . . Jewels', 1673: Outlooke... Jewells', 1648. p. 185. The Grasse-hopper. From Lucasta, 1649. 1. 8. 'Acron-bed', i. e. Acorn-bed. 6 Il. 11-12. Apparently And through all these merry days thou madest men and thyself merry, and Melancholy streams i. e. 'flies away'. Lovelace has not mastered his style, yet to me the whole poem has a great charm. hopper has grassCompare: 1. 21. Thou best of Men', i. e. Charles Cotton. The introduced the address and exhortation. dissolve frigus ligna super foco large reponens atque benignius deprome quadrimum Sabina, o Thaliarche, merum diota. Horace Od. i. 9. 11. 33-6. The order is again obscure. 'Our tapers, clear as Hesperus, shall whip Night from the well-lit Casements |