ll. 54-9:

As on the land while here the ocean gains, In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains; Thus in the soul while memory prevails, The solid power of understanding fails; Where beams of warm imagination play, The memory's soft figures melt away.

l. 34. _For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust._ The modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes this line clearer--'both Deaths' dust.' 'Graves are our trophies, their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger death, i.e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought in its train.' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.

PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8. _this forward heresie, That women can no parts of friendship bee._

Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymée de moy beaucoup plus que paternellement, et enveloppée en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection de _cette tressaincte amitié ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait pu monter encores_: la sincerité et la solidité de ses moeurs y sont desja bastantes.' _Essais_ (1590), ii. 17.

PAGE =282=. ELEGIE ON M^{ris} BOULSTRED.

Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12, 1583/4, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James Whitelocke's _Liber Famelicus_ (Camden Society). He quotes also from the Twickenham Registers: 'M^{ris} Boulstred out of the parke, was buried ye 6th of August, 1609.' In a letter to Goodyere Donne speaks of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistresse Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours at this time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, and the return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all her sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.' Poor Miss Bulstrode, whose

voice was Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,

has not lived to fame in an altogether happy fashion, as the subject of some tortured and tasteless _Epicedes_, a coarse and brutal Epigram by Jonson (_An Epigram on the Court Pucell_ in _Underwoods_,--Jonson told Drummond that the person intended was Mris Boulstred), a complimentary, not to say adulatory, _Epitaph_ from the same pen, and a dubious _Elegy_ by Sir John Roe ('Shall I goe force an Elegie,' p. 410). It was an ugly place, the Court of James I, as full of cruel libels as of gross flattery, a fit subject for Milton's scorn. The epitaph which Jonson wrote is found in more than one MS., and in some where Donne's poems are in the majority. Chambers very tentatively suggested that it might be by Donne himself, and I was inclined for a time to accept this conjecture, finding it in other MSS. besides those he mentioned, and because the sentiment of the closing lines is quite Donnean. But in the Farmer-Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart) it is signed B. J., and Mr. Percy Simpson tells me that a letter is extant from Jonson to George Gerrard which indicates that the epitaph was written by Jonson while Gerrard's man waited at the door. I quote it from _B_:

_On the death of M^{rs} Boulstred._

Stay, view this Stone, and if thou beest not such Reade here a little, that thou mayest know much. It covers first a Virgin, and then one That durst be so in Court; a Virtue alone To fill an Epitaph; but shee hath more: Shee might have claym'd to have made the Graces foure, Taught Pallas language, Cynthia modesty; As fit to have encreas'd the harmonye Of Spheares, as light of Starres; she was Earths eye, The sole religious house and votary Not bound by rites but Conscience; wouldst thou all? She was Sil. Boulstred, in which name I call Up so much truth, as could I here pursue, Might make the fable of good Woemen true.

The name is given as 'Sal', but corrected to 'Sil' in the margin. Other MSS. have 'Sell'. It is doubtless 'Cil', a contraction for 'Cecilia'. Chambers inadvertently printed 'still'.

The language of Jonson's _Epitaph_ harmonizes ill with that of his _Epigram_. Of all titles Jonson loved best that of 'honest', but 'honest', in a man, meant with Jonson having the courage to tell people disagreeable truths, not to conceal your dislikes. He was a candid friend to the living; after death--_nil nisi bonum_.

For the relation of this _Elegie_ to that beginning 'Death, be not proud' (p. 416) see _Text and Canon, &c._, p. cxliii.

The _1633_ text of this poem is practically identical with that of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. With these MSS. it reads in l. 27 'life' for the 'lives' of other MSS. and editions, and 'but' for 'though' in the last line. The only variant in _1633_ is 'worke' for 'workes' in l. 45. The latter reading has the support of other MSS. and is very probably what Donne wrote. Such use of a plural verb after two singular subjects of closely allied import was common. See Franz, _Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 673, and the examples quoted there, e.g. 'Both wind and tide stays for this gentleman,' _Com. of Err_. IV. i. 46, where Rowe corrects to 'stay'; 'Both man and master is possessed,' _ibid._ IV. iv. 89.

l. 10. _Eating the best first, well preserv'd to last._ The 'fruite' or 'fruites' of _A18_, _N_, _TC_, which is as old as _P_ (1623), is probably a genuine variant. The reference is to the elaborate dainties of the second course at Elizabethan banquets, the dessert. Sleep, in Macbeth's famous speech, is

great Nature's second course,

and Donne uses the same metaphor of the Eucharist: 'This fasting then ... is but a continuation of a great feast: where the first course (that which we begin to serve in now) is Manna, food of Angels,--plentiful, frequent preaching; but the second course is the very body and blood of Christ Jesus, shed for us and given to us, in that Blessed Sacrament, of which himself makes us worthy receivers at that time.' _Sermons_. 'The most precious and costly dishes are always reserved for the last services, but yet there is wholesome meat before too.' _Ibid._

l. 18. _In birds, &c._: 'birds' is here in the possessive case, 'birds' organic throats'. I have modified the punctuation so as to make this clearer.

l. 24. _All the foure Monarchies_: i.e. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. John Sleidan, mentioned in a note on the _Satyres_, wrote _The Key of Historie: Or, A most Methodicall Abridgement of the foure chiefe Monarchies &c._, to quote its title in the English translation.

l. 27. _Our births and lives, &c._ _1633_ and the two groups of MSS. _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _L74_, _N_, _TC_ read 'life'. If this be correct, then 'births' would surely need to be 'birth'. _HN_ shows, I think, what has happened. The voiced 'f' was not always distinguished from the breathed sound by a different spelling ('v' for 'f'), and 'lifes' would very easily become 'life'. On the other hand 'v' was frequently written where we now have 'f', and sometimes misleads. Peele's _The Old Wives Tale_ is not necessarily, as usually printed, _Wives'_. It is just an _Old Woman's Tale_.

PAGE =284=. ELEGIE.

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:

That what we turn to 'feast!' she turn'd to 'pray!'

That the command to keep the Sabbath day holy, which we, especially Roman Catholics and Anglicans of the Catholic school, interpret as to the Christian Church a command to feast, to keep holiday, she interpreted as a command to fast and pray. Probably both Lady Markham and Lady Bedford belonged to the more Calvinist wing of the Church. There is a distinctly Calvinist flavour about Lady Bedford's own _Elegy_, which reads also as though it were to some extent a rebuke to Donne for the note, either too pagan or too Catholic for her taste, of his poems on Death. See p. 422, and especially:

Goe then to people curst before they were, Their spoyles in triumph of thy conquest weare.

l. 58. _will be a Lemnia._ All the MSS. read 'Lemnia' without the article, probably rightly, 'Lemnia' being used shortly for 'terra Lemnia', or 'Lemnian earth'--a red clay found in Lemnos and reputed an antidote to poison (Pliny, _N. H._ xxv. 13). It was one of the constituents of the theriaca. It may be here thought of as an antiseptic preserving from putrefaction. But Norton points out that by some of the alchemists the name was given to the essential component of the Philosopher's stone, and that what Donne was thinking of was transmuting power, changing crystal into diamond. The alchemists, however, dealt more in metals than in stones. The thought in Donne's mind is perhaps rather that which he expresses at p. 280, l. 21. As in some earths clay is turned to porcelain, so in this Lemnian earth crystal will turn to diamond.

The words 'Tombe' and 'diamond' afford so bad a rhyme that G. L. Craik conjectured, not very happily,'a wooden round'. Craik's criticism of Donne, written in 1847, _Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England_, is wonderfully just and appreciative.

PAGE =287=. ELEGIE ON THE L. C.

Whoever may be the subject of this _Elegie_, Donne speaks as though he were a member of his household. In 1617 Donne had long ceased to be in any way attached to the Lord Chancellor's retinue. The reference to his 'children' also without any special reference to his son the new earl, soon to be Earl of Bridgewater, is very unlike Donne. Moreover, Sir Thomas Egerton never had more than two sons, one of whom was killed in Ireland in 1599.

ll. 13-16. _As we for him dead: though, &c._ Both Chambers and the Grolier Club editor connect the clause 'though no family ... with him in joy to share' with the next, as its principal clause, 'We lose what all friends lov'd, &c.' To me it seems that it must go with the preceding clause, 'As we [must wither] for him dead'. I take it as a clause of concession. 'With him we, his family, must die (as the briar does with the tree on which it grows); but no family could die with a more certain hope of sharing the joy into which their head has entered; with none would so many be willing to "venture estates" in that great voyage of discovery.' With the next lines,'We lose,' &c., begins a fresh argument. The thought is forced and obscure, but the figure, taken from voyages of discovery, is characteristic of Donne.

PAGE =288=. AN HYMNE TO THE SAINTS, AND TO MARQUESSE HAMYLTON.

In the old editions this is placed among the _Divine Poems_, and Donne meant it to bear that character. For it was rather unwillingly that Donne, now in Orders, wrote this poem at the instance of his friend and patron Sir Robert Ker, or Carr, later (1633) Earl of Ancrum.

James Hamilton, b. 1584, succeeded his father in 1604 as Marquis of Hamilton, and his uncle in 1609 as Duke of Chatelherault and Earl of Arran. He was made a Gentleman of the Bed-Chamber and held other posts in Scotland. On the occasion of James I's visit to Scotland in 1617 he played a leading part, and thereafter became a favourite courtier, his name figuring in all the great functions described in Nichol's _Progresses_. In 1617 Chamberlain writes: 'I have not heard a man generally better spoken of than the Marquis, even by all the English; insomuch that he is every way held as the gallantest gentleman of both the nations.' He was High Commissioner to the Parliament held at Edinburgh in 1624, where he secured the passing of the Five Articles of Perth. In 1624 he opposed the French War policy of Buckingham, and when he died on March 2, 1624/5, it was maintained that the latter had poisoned him.

The rhetoric and rhythm of this poem depend a good deal on getting the right punctuation and a clear view of what are the periods. I have ventured to make a few emendations in the arrangement of _1633_. The first sentence ends with the emphatic 'wee doe not so' (l. 8), where 'wee' might be printed in italics. The next closes with 'all lost a limbe' (l. 18), and the effect is marred if, with Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, one places a full stop after 'Music lacks a song', though a colon might be most appropriate. The last two lines clinch the detailed statement which has preceded. The next sentence again is not completed till l. 30, 'in the form thereof his bodie's there', but, though _1633_ has only a semicolon here, a full stop is preferable, or at least a colon. Chambers's full stops at l. 22, 'none', and l. 28, 'a resurrection', have again the effect of breaking the logical and rhythmical structure. Lines 23-4 are entirely parenthetical and would be better enclosed in brackets. Four sustained periods compose the elegy.

PAGE =289=, ll. 6-7. _If every severall Angell bee A kind alone._ Ea enim quae conveniunt specie, et differunt numero, conveniunt in formâ sed distinguuntur materialiter. Si ergo Angeli non sunt compositi ex materiâ et formâ ... sequitur quod _impossibile sit esse duos Angelos unius speciei_: sicut etiam impossibile esset dicere quod essent plures albedines (whitenesses) separatae aut plures humanitates: ... Si tamen Angeli haberent materiam nec sic possent esse plures Angeli unius speciei. Sic enim opporteret quod principium distinctionis unius ab alio esset materia, non quidem secundum divisionem quantitatis, cum sint incorporei, sed secundum diversitatem potentiarum: quae quidem diversitas materiae causat diversitatem non solum speciei sed generis. Aquinas, _Summa_ I. l. 4.

PAGE =293=. INFINITATI SACRUM, _&c._

PAGE =294=, l. 11. _a Mucheron_: i.e. a mushroom, here equivalent to a fungus. Chambers adopts without note the reading of the later editions, 'Maceron', but spells it 'Macaron'. Grosart prints 'Macheron', taking 'Mucheron' as a mis-spelling. Captain Shirley Harris first pointed out, in _Notes and Queries_, that 'Mucheron' must be correct, for Donne has in view, as so often elsewhere, the threefold division of the soul--vegetal, sensitive, rational. Captain Harris quoted the very apt parallel from Burton, where, speaking of metempsychosis, he says: 'Lucian's cock was first Euphorbus, a captain:

Ille ego (nam memini Troiani tempore belli) Panthoides Euphorbus eram,

a horse, a man, a spunge.' _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 1, Sect. 1, Mem. 2, Subs. 10. Donne's order is, a man, a horse, a fungus. But to Burton a sponge was a fungus. The word fungus is cognate with or derived from the Greek [Greek: spongos].

As for the form 'mucheron' (n. b. 'mushrome' in _G_) the O.E.D. gives it among different spellings but cites no example of this exact spelling. From the _Promptorium Parvulorum_ it quotes, 'Muscheron, toodys hatte, _boletus_, _fungus_.' Captain Harris has supplied me with the following delightful instance of the word in use as late as 1808. It is from a catalogue of Maggs Bros. (No. 263, 1910):

'THE DISAPPOINTED KING OF SPAIN, or the downfall of the Mucheron King Joe Bonaparte, late Pettifogging Attorney's Clerk. Between two stools the Breech comes to the Ground.'

The caricature is etched by G. Cruikshank and is dated 1808.

The 'Maceron' which was inserted in _1635_ is not a misprint, but a pseudo-correction by some one who did not recognize 'mucheron' and knew that Donne had elsewhere used 'maceron' for a fop or puppy (see p. 163, l. 117).

'Mushrome', the spelling of the word in _G_, is found also in the _Sermons_ (80. 73. 748).

l. 22. _which Eve eate_: 'eate' is of course the past tense, and should be 'ate' in modernized editions, not 'eat' as in Chambers's and the Grolier Club editions.

THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE.

The strange poem _The Progresse of the Soule_, or _Metempsychosis_, is dated by Donne himself, 16 Augusti 1601. The different use of the same title which Donne made later to describe the progress of the soul heavenward, after its release from the body, shows that he had no intention of publishing the poem. How widely it circulated in MS. we do not know, but I know of three copies only which are extant, viz. _G_, _O'F_, and that given in the group _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_. It was from the last that the text of _1633_ was printed, the editor supplying the punctuation, which in the MS. is scanty. In some copies of _1633_ the same omissions of words occur as in the MS. but the poem was corrected in several places as it passed through the press. _G_, though not without mistakes itself, supplies some important emendations.

The sole light from without which has been thrown upon the poem comes from Ben Jonson's conversations with Drummond: 'The conceit of Dones Transformation or [Greek: Metempsychôsis] was that he sought the soule of that aple which Eve pulled and thereafter made it the soule of a bitch, then of a shee wolf, and so of a woman; his generall purpose was to have brought in all the bodies of the Hereticks from the soule of Cain, and at last left in the bodie of Calvin. Of this he never wrotte but one sheet, and now, since he was made Doctor, repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems.'

Jonson was clearly recalling the poem somewhat inaccurately, and at the same time giving the substance of what Donne had told him. Probably Donne mystified him on purpose, for it is evident from the poem that in his first intention Queen Elizabeth herself was to be the soul's last host. It is impossible to attach any other meaning to the seventh stanza; and that intention also explains the bitter tone in which women are satirized in the fragment. Women and courtiers are the chief subject of Donne's sardonic satire in this poem, as of Shakespeare's in _Hamlet_.

I have indicated elsewhere what I think is the most probable motive of the poem. It reflects the mood of mind into which Donne, like many others, was thrown by the tragic fate of Essex in the spring of the year. In _Cynthia's Revels_, acted in the same year as Donne's poem was composed, Jonson speaks of 'some black and envious slanders breath'd against her' (i.e. Diana, who is Elizabeth) 'for her divine justice on Actaeon', and it is well known that she incurred both odium and the pangs of remorse. Donne, who was still a Catholic in the sympathies that come of education and association, seems to have contemplated a satirical history of the great heretic in lineal descent from the wife of Cain to Elizabeth--for private circulation. See _The Poetry of John Donne_, II. pp. xvii-xx.

PAGE =295=, l. 9. _Seths pillars._ Norton's note on this runs: 'Seth, the son of Adam, left children who imitated his virtues. 'They were the discoverers of the wisdom which relates to the heavenly bodies and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, and inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain and exhibit these discoveries to mankind.... Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day.' Josephus, _Antiquities of the Jews_ (Whiston's translation), I. 2, §3.

PAGE =296=, l. 21. _holy Ianus._ 'Janus, whom Annius of Viterbo and the chorographers of Italy do make to be the same with Noah.' Browne, _Vulgar Errors_, vi. 6. The work referred to is the _Antiquitatum variarum volumina XVII_ (1498, reprinted and re-arranged 1511), by Annius of Viterbo (1432-1502), a Dominican friar, Fra Giovanni Nanni. Each of the books, after the first, consists of a digest with commentary of various works on ancient history, the aim being apparently to reconcile Biblical and heathen chronology and to establish the genealogy of Christ. _Liber XIIII_ is a digest, or 'defloratio', of Philo (of whom later); _Liber XV_ of Berosus, a reputed Chaldaean historian ('patria Babylonicus; et dignitate Chaldaeus'), cited by Josephus. From him Annius derives this identification of Janus with Noah: 'Hoc vltimo loco Berosus de tribus cognominibus rationes tradit: Noa: Cam & Tythea. De Noa dicit quod fuit illi tributum cognomen Ianus a Iain: quod apud Aramaeos et Hebraeos sonat vinum: a quo Ianus id est vinifer et vinosus: quia primus vinum invenit et inebriatus est: vt dicit Berosus: et supra insinuavit Propertius: et item Moyses Genesis cap ix. vbi etiam Iain vinum Iani nominat: vbi nos habemus: Cum Noa evigilasset a vino. Cato etiam in fragmentis originum; et Fabius Pictor in de origine vrbis Romae dicunt Ianum dictum priscum Oenotrium: quia invenit vinum et far ad religionem magis quam ad vsum,' &c., XV, Fo. cxv. Elsewhere the identity is based not on this common interest in wine but on their priestly office, they being the first to offer 'sacrificia et holocausta', VII, Fo. lviii. Again, 'Ex his probatur irrevincibiliter a tempore demonstrato a Solino et propriis Epithetis Iani: eundem fuisse Ogygem: Ianum et Noam ... Sed Noa fuit proprium: Ogyges verum Ianus et Proteus id est Vertumnus sunt solum praenomina ejus,' XV, Fo.