Preface

Presented to the LIBRARY of the
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
hy
The Estate of the late
PROFESSOR A. S. P. WOODHOUSE
Head of the
Department of English
University College
1 944.1 %4
n
ryj
POEMS
OP
JOHN DONNE.
^\)c iHuscs' ^Cibrnni
POEMS
OF
JOHN DONNE
BDITBT) BY
E. K. CHAMBERS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GEORGE SAINTS BURY
VOL. 1.
LONDON : GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
PR
'i >'"P10 1965
\ ^,
100626?
PREFACE.
John Donne's Poejns were originally under- taken for The Muses Library by Dr. Brinsley Nicholson. They were handed over to me shortly after his death in 189 1. I have had the advantage of the material which Dr. Nicholson had brought together ; but for the book as it stands, with the exception of the Introducttoji^ which Mr. Saintsbury has kindly contributed, I am alone responsible.
The bulk of the text is based upon the
principal seventeenth-century editions, those of
1633, 1635, 1650 and 1669. No one of these is
of supreme authority, and therefore I have had
no choice but to be eclectic. But at the same
time I have endeavoured to give all variants,
other than obvious misprints, in the footnotes.
Here and there one or other of the innumerable
MS. copies has been of service. I have
modernized the spelling and corrected the
exceptionally chaotic punctuation of the old VOL. I. b
vi PREFACE.
editions. And so, though much remains obscure, I trust that I have provided a more inteUigible version of the Poeins than any that has yet appeared.
It should be understood that a reading attri- buted to any one of the printed editions in the footnotes is retained in the later editions, unless it is otherwise stated.
My thanks are due for various help to Dr. Grosart, to Mr. J. T. Brown of Edinburgh, and to Mr. A. H. Bullen. Dr. Nicholson's notes contain abundant evidence of the similar debt which he owed to Mr. J. M. Thomson of Edinburgh.
E. K. C.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
PAGE
r^REFACE ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• *
Table of Contents vii
Introduction xi
Bibliographical Note xxxv
The Printer to the Understandeus xlv To the Right Honourable William
Lord Craven xlix
Hexastichon Bibliopolae li
Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam ... li
To John Donne ... Hi
■Songs and Sonnets —
•- The P'lea ... ... ... ... ... I
The Good-Morrow ... ... ... ... 3
Song : Go and catch a falling star ... 4
Woman's Constancy ... ... ... 5
The Undertaking ... ... ... ... 6
The Sun Rising ... ... ... ... 7*"^
The Indifferent ... ... ... ... 9
Love's Usury ... ... .. ... 10
The Canonization ... ... .. ... 12 v-^
The Triple Fool 14
Lovers' Infiniteness ... ... ... ... 15
YSong: Sweetest love, I do not go ... 16
The Legacy ... ... ... ... .. 18
' A Fever ... ... ... .. . ... 20
Air and Angels ... ... ,. ... 21
viii CONTENTS.
I'AGK
22
23
Break of Day
[Another of the same]
The Anniversary ... 24
A Valediction of my Name, in the Win- dow ... ... ... ••■ ••• 25
Twickenham Garden .. 29
Valediction to his Book 7P
Community ... ... ... ... ■•• 33
Love's Growth ... ... ... ••• 34
Love's Exchange ... ... ... .■• 35
Confined Love ... ... ... •■• ':!
The Dream 3^ ^
A Valediction of Weeping ..• 39"^
^"^ Love's Alchemy 4'
The Curse 42
The Message ... 43
A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day, bein;; u'
the Shortest Day ... ... ... 45
Witchcraft by a Picture ... ... 47
The Bait 47
The Apparition .- ... 49
The Broken Heart ... ... ... ... 50
v/ A Valediction Forbidding INIourning ... 51*/
The Ecstacy 53*^
Love's Deity ... 56
Love's Diet ... ... ... ... ... 57
The Will 59
^^,,^he Funeral ... ... ... ... 61
-XThe Blossom ... ... ... ... 63
. The Primrose ... ... ... ... 64
The Relic 66 \/
The Damp ... ... ... 67
i/The Dissolution .. ... ... ... 69
A Jet Ring Sent ... ... ... ... 70
jX^egative Love ... ... ... 71
The Prohibition .. ... ... ... 72
ly^he Expiration .. ... ... ... 73
The Computation ... ... ... ... 7^
CONTENTS.
IX
PAGE
The Taiaclox 74
Song : Soul's joy, now I am gone ... 75
Farewell to Love ... ... ... ... 76
A Lecture upon the Shadow ... ... 78
A Dialogue between Sir Ilcnry \Vottoa
and Mr. Donne ... ... ... 79
The Token ... ... ... ... ... So
Self-love Si
Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs —
On tlie Lady Eliza1)elh and Count Palatine Eclogue : at the Marriage of the Earl of
^l
Somcr.sct
•
. S8
Epithalamion Made at Lincoln's Inn
.. 9S
Elegies —
i : Jealou.sy
102
ii : The Anagram
. 103
iii : Change
. ic6
iv : The Perfume
. 107
v : His Picture
. no
vi :
III
vii :
.. 113
viii : The Comparison
. 114
ix : The Autumnal
117
X : The Dream ...
• ii9
xi : The Bracelet
. 120
xii :
. 125
xiii : His Parting from Her
. I2S
xiv : Julia ...
. 132
XV : A Tale of a Citizen and his
Wife '.
. ^11
xvi : The Expostulation ...
. 136
xvii : Elegy on his Mistress
• 139
xviii : ...•"•.
. 141
xix :
• 144
XX : To his Mistress Going to 13
cd
. I4S
CONTENTS.
Divine Poems —
To the E[arl] of D[oncaster], with Six Holy Sonnets ...
1. La Corona
2. Annunciation
3. Nativity
4. Temple
5. Crucifying
6. Resurrection
7. Ascension To tl)e Lady Wagdalen Herbert Holy Sonnets : i. — xvi. The Cross Resurrection...
The Annunciation and Passion Good P>iday, 1613, Riding Westward A Litany Upon the Translation of the Psalms by Sir
Philip Sidney and the Countess of
Pembroke Ode : Vengeance will Sit above our Faults To Mr. Tilman after he had Taken Orders A Hymn to Christ ... The Lamentations of Jeremy Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness A Hymn to God the Father To George Herbert ... A Sheaf of Snakes Used heretofore to be
my Seal ... Translated out of Gazaeus ...
Notes to Vol. I
PAGE
167 169 170 172
174
1S8 190 191
193 194
211
213
214
216
217
INTRODUCTION.
JOHN DONNE.
There is hardly any, perhaps indeed there is not any, English author on whom it is so hard to keep the just mixture of personal appreciation and critical measure as it is on John Donne. It is almost necessary that those who do not like him should not like him at all ; should be scarcely able to see how any decent and intelligent human creature can like him. It is almost as necessary that those who do like him should either like him so much hs to speak unadvisedly with their lips, or else curb and restrain the expression of their love for fear that it should seem on that side idolatry. But these are not the only dangers. Donne is eminently of that kind which lends itself to sham liking, to coterie worship, to a false enthusiasm ; and here is another weapon in the hands of the infidels, and another stumbling-block for the feet of the true believers. Yet there is always
xii INTRODUCTION.
something stimulating in a subject of this kind, and a sort of temptation to attempt it.
To write anything about Donne's life, after Walton, is an attempt which should make even hardened ^crivaillciirs and ccrivassiers nervous. That the good Izaak knew his subject and its atmosphere thoroughly ; that he wrote but a very few years after Donne's own death ; and that he was a writer of distinct charm, are dis- couraging things, but not the most discourag- ing. It is perhaps only those who after being familiar for years with Donne's poems, of which Walton says very little, make subsequent ac- quaintance with Walton's presentment of the man, who can appreciate the full awkwardness of the situation. It is the worst possible case of pcreant qui ante iios. The human Donne whom Walton depicts is so exactly the poetical Donne whom we knew, that the effect is uncanny. Generally, or at least very frequently, we find the poet other than his form of verse : here we find him quite astoundingly akin to it.
The attempt however has to be made, and
it shall be made with as little expenditure of art
on matter 1 as possible. John Donne, the son
of a London merchant and a lady, who was the
^ It should be observed that the matter is still to a great extent inaccessible. The dates and tacts in the next three pages have been kindly corrected by the Editor, in ac- cordance with researches later than Walton's. G. S.
INTRODUCTION. xiii
daughter of John Hey wood, and of the house of Sir Thomas More, was born in or about the year 1573. It is thought, but not certainly known, that all his secular poetry, satiric and erotic, was written before the end of the century, and probably most of it before he was five-and- twenty. His education, both in secular and religious matters, appears to have been peculiar. His family were of the old faith, and it is said to have been for this reason that he took no degree at either Oxford or Cambridge, though he was a member of both Universities, entering Hart Hall at Oxford in his eleventh year, and, so Walton tells us, removing to Cambridge in his fourteenth. His father soon died, and he, in- heriting no inconsiderable portion, was trans- ferred to Lincoln's Inn, perhaps after an experi- ence of foreign travel. Walton will have it that before he was twenty, he, having never actually professed the Romish faith, argued himself out of his tendency to it by study. But this is perhaps rather questionable. What is certain, though vaguely certain, is, that he was for some years a traveller and a man of pleasure, if not actually a soldier. He went with Essex to Cadiz in 1596, and visited the Azores, journeying also in Italy, and in Spain. He is thought to have spent his fortune in these wanderings.
xiv INTRODUCTION.
The institution of great men's households, which then prevailed, provided a kind of addi- tional liberal profession for men of parts and gentle but not distinguished birth ; and Donne, on his return to England, joined the household of Chancellor Sir Thomas Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere. Here he met Anne More, Lady Egerton's niece and daughter of Sir George More, Lieutenant of the Tower. A clandestine marriage (1601) followed, with the result of great wrath on Sir George's part, the dismissal of Donne from Egerton's service, and his in- carceration with his two friends, Samuel and Christopher Brooke (both poets, and the first aftenvards Master of Trinity), who had helped his love-affairs. These troubles he won throusrh, and at last was rc-united to his wife with Sir George's blessing, but none of his money. So the pair had to take up their abode with a certain Francis Wollcy of Pirford, at whose death, after a short residence at Peckham and Mitcham, Donne transferred his family to the house of Sir Robert Drury in London. He also accompanied Sir Robert on an embassy to France. It is this journey in reference to which a famous apparition story is told. There is no positive evidence to show why Donne whose strong theological leanings must have been obvious to everybody, and who had, ac-
INTR OD UCTION. xv
cording to Walton, received in the middle of his troubles the offer of a considerable prefer- ment from Dean, afterwards Bishop, Morton, did not take orders earlier. But he told Morton that the irregularities of his early life prevented him, and the tenor both of his sacred and pro- fane works makes it probable that this was a vera causa. Still there are other facts which show that he had not abandoned the hope of secular office, legal or other, until he reached middle life. At any rate it was not till 1615 that the express desire of the king (coupled with his sacred Majesty's equally express refusal, even at Somerset's desire, to make him anything else) induced him to take orders. James at once made him his chaplain, but for a time did not confer any benefice on him ; and the heaviest calamity of his life, the death of his wife, to whom he was passionately attached, fell on him in 1 61 7. But Lincoln's Inn made him its preacher (Cambridge had conferred the degree of D.D. on him two years earlier), and he again went on a diplomatic expedition, this time with Lord Hay to Germany. At last, in Nov. 162 r, he was made Dean of St. Paul's, and other preferments falling in, he became a comparatively rich man. But he held these offices not quite ten years, and died, after a long illness (in the course of which he had the strange but characteristic
xvi INTRODUCTION.
fancy of being painted in his shroud), on March 31, 163 1. Broken health, the loss of his wife, the bitterness to a man who must have known himself to be one of the greatest intellects of the age, of hopes delayed till long past middle life, and no doubt also sincere repentance for and reaction from youthful follies, will account for much of the almost unparalleled melancholy which appears in his later works, and seems to have characterized his later life. But a con- r siderable residue remains for natural idiosyn- \ crasy, and for the influence of the Renaissance, the peculiar pessimism of which was perfectly different from that of classical times, and from that of our own day, and can only be paralleled by the spirit of Ecclesiastcs.
The circumstances of his life however do
not greatly concern us here ; nor does that part
— an eminent and admirable part — of his work
which is not in verse. But it does concern us
that there is a strange, though by no means
unexampled, division between the two periods
of his life and the two classes of his work.
5 Roughly speaking, almost the whole of at least
\ the secular verse belongs to the first division of
' the life, almost the whole of the prose to the
second. Again, by far the greater part of the
verse is animated by what may be called a
spiritualized worldliness and sensuality, the
INTR OD UC TION. x vii
whole of the prose by a spiritualism which has left worldliness far behind. The conjunction is, I say, not unknown : it was specially prevalent in the age of Donne's birth and early life. It has even passed into something of a common- place in reference to that Renaissance of which, as it slowly passed from south to north, Donne was one of the latest and yet one of the most perfect exponents. The strange story which Brantome tells of Margaret of Navarre summon- ing a lover to the church under whose flags his mistress lay buried, and talking with him of her, shows, a generation before Donne's birth, the influence which in his day had made its way across the narrow seas as it had earlier across the Alps, and had at each crossing gathered gloom and force if it had lost lightness and colour. Always in him are the two conflicting forces of intense enjoyment of the present, and intense feeling of the contrast of that present with the future. He has at once the tran- scendentalism which saves sensuality and the passion which saves mysticism. Indeed the two currents run so full and strong in him, they clash and churn their waves so boisterously, that this is of itself sufficient to account for the obscurity, the extravagance, the undue quaint- ness which have been charged against him. He was " of the first order of poets " ; but he was
xviii INTRODUCTION.
not of the first amongst the first. Only Dante perhaps among these greatest of all had such a conflict and ebullition of feeling to express. For, as far as we can judge, in Shakespeare, even in the Sonnets, the poetical power mastered to some extent at the very first the rough material of the poetic instinct, and prepared before ex- pression the things to be expressed. In Dante we can trace something of the presence of slag and dross in the ore ; and even in Dante we can perhaps trace faintly also the difficulty of smelt- j ing it. Donne, being a lesser poet than Dante, \ shows it ever}'where. It is seldom that even for f a few lines, seldomer that for a few stanzas, the \ power of the furnace is equal to the volumes of I ore and fuel that are thrust into it. But the fire I is always there — over-tasked, over-mastered for ( a time, but never choked or extinguished ; and ^ ever and anon from gaps in the smouldering mass there breaks forth such a sudden flow of pure ■ molten metal, such a flower of incandescence, as not even in the very greatest poets of all can be ever surpassed or often rivalled. \ For critical, and indeed for general purposes, the poetical works of Donne may be divided into three parts, separated from each other by a considerable difference of character and, in one case at least, of time. These are the Satires, which are beyond all doubt very early ; the
INTRODUCTION. xix
Elegies and other amatory poems, most of which are certainly, and all probably, early like- wise ; and the Divine and Miscellaneous Poems, some of which may not be late, but most of which certainly are. All three divisions have certain characteristics in common ; but the best of these characteristics, and some which are not common to the three, belong to the second and third only.
It was the opinion of the late seventeenth and of the whole of the eighteenth century that Donne, though a clever man, had no ear. Chalmers, a very industrious student, and not such a bad critic, says so in so many words ; Johnson undoubtedly thought so ; Pope demon- strated his belief by his fresh "tagging" of the Satires. They all to some extent no doubt really believed what they said ; their ears had fallen deaf to that particular concord. But they all also no doubt founded their belief to a certain extent on certain words of Dryden's which did not exactly import or comport what Mr. Pope and the rest took them to mean. Dryden had the knacl:, a knack of great value to a critic, but sometimes productive of sore misguiding to a critic's readers — of adjusting his comments solely to one point of view, to a single scheme in metric and other things. Now, from the point of view of the scheme
XX INTRODUCTION.
which both his authority and his example made popular, Donne was rather formless. But nearly all the eighteenth-century critics and criticasters concentrated their attention on the Satires ; and in the Satires Donne certainly takes singular liberties, no matter what scheme be preferred. It is now, I believe, pretty well admitted by all competent judges that the astonishing roughness of the Satirists of the
\ late sixteenth century was not due to any general ignoring of the principles of melodious English verse, but to a deliberate intention
\ arising from the same sort of imperfect erudition which had in other ways so much effect on the men of the Renaissance generally. Satiric verse among the ancients allowed itself, and even went out of its way to take, licences which no poet in
,■ other styles would have dreamt of taking. The
I Horace of the impeccable odes writes such a
f hideous hexameter as —
I " Non ego, namque parabilem amo Venereni facilemque,
and one of the Roman satirists who was then „ very popular, Persius, though he could rise to j splendid style on occasion, is habitually as harsh, I as obscure, and as wooden as a Latin poet well \ can be. It is not probable, it is certain, that I Donne and the rest imitated these licences of \ malice prepense.
INTRODUCTION. xxi
But it must be remembered that at the time when they assumed this greater licence, the normal structure of English verse was anything but fixed. Horace had in his con- temporaries, Persius and Juvenal had still more in their forerunners, examples of versifica- tion than which Mr. Pope himself could do nothing more "correct"; and their licences could therefore be kept within measure, and still be licentious enough to suit any preconceived idea of the ungirt character of the Satiric muse. In Donne's time the very precisians took a good deal of licence : the very Virgils and even Ovids were not apt to concern themselves very greatly about a short vowel before s with a consonant, or a trisyllable at the end of a pentameter. If therefore you meant to show that you were sans gene^ you had to make demonstrations of the most unequivocal character. Even with all this explanation and allowance it may still seem probable that Donne's Satires never received any formal preparation for the press, and are in the state of rough copy. Without this allowance, which the eighteenth century either did not care or did not know how to give, it is not surprising that they should have seemed mere monstrosities.
The satiric pieces in which these peculiarities are chiefly shown, which attracted the attention
VOL. I.
xxii INTRODUCTION.
of Pope, and which, through his recension, became known to a much larger number of persons than the work of any other Elizabethan Satirist, have the least share of Donne's poet- ical interest. But they display to the full his manly strength and shrewd sense, and they are especially noticeable in one point. They \ exhibit much less of that extravagant exagger- ation of contemporary vice and folly which makes jone of their chief contemporaries, Marston's \ Scourge of Villainy^ almost an absurd thing, 'while it is by no means absent from Hall's Virgideiniartwi. We cannot indeed suppose that Donne's satire was wholly and entirely sincere, but a good deal in it clearly was. Thus his handling of the perennial subjects of satire is far more fresh, serious, and direct than is usual with Satirists, and it was no doubt this judicious and direct quality which commended it to Pope. Moreover, these poems abound in fine touches. The Captain in the first Satire —
" Bright parcel-gilt with forty dead men's pay — "
the ingenious evildoers in the second —
•' for whose sinful sake, Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make — "
the charming touch at once so literary and so natural in the fifth —
IN TROD UC TION. xxiii
" so controverted lands 'Scape, like Angelica, the striver's hands,"
are only a few of the jewels five words long that might be produced as specimens. But it is not here that we find the true Donne : it was not this province of the universal monarchy of wit that he ruled with the most unshackled sway. The provinces that he did so rule were quite other : ( strange frontier regions, uttermost isles where sensuality, philosophy, and devotion meet, or where separately dwelling they rejoice or mourn | over the conquests of each other. I am not so sure of the Progress of the Soul as some writers have been — interesting as it is, and curious as is the comparison with Prior's Ahna, which it of necessity suggests, and probably suggested. As a whole it seems to me uncertain in aim, unac- complished in execution. But what things there are in it ! What a line is —
"Great Destiny, the Commissary of God 1 " What a lift and sweep in the fifth stanza — " To my six lustres almost now outwore 1 "
Wliat a thought that—
"This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh ! "
And the same miraculous pregnancy of thought
xxiv INTRODUCTION.
and expression runs through the whole, even though it seems never to have found full and complete delivery in artistic form. How far this curious piece is connected with the still more famous 'Anniversaries,' in which so dif- ferent a stage of " progress " is reached, and which ostensibly connect themselves with the life and death of Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, is a question which it would be tedious to argue out in any case, and impossible to argue out here. But the successive stages of the ' Anatomy of the World' present us with the most marvellous poetical exposition of a certain kind of devotional thought yet given. It is indeed possible that the union of the sensual, intellectual, poetical, and religious temperaments is not so very rare ; but it is very rarely voiceful. That it existed in Donne's pre-eminently, and that it found voice in him as it never has done before or since, no one who knows his life and works can doubt. That the greatest of this singular group of poems is the ' Second Anniversary,' will hardly, I think, be contested. Here is the famous passage —
" Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say her body thought " —
which has been constantly quoted, praised, and imitated. Here, earlier, is what I should choose if I undertook the perilous task of
INTRODUCTION. xxv
singling out the finest line in English sacred
poetry —
" so long As till God's great Venite change the song — "
a Dies Ira: and a Venite itself combined in ten English syllables.
Here is that most vivid and original of Donne's many prose and verse meditations on death, as —
" A groom That brings a taper to the outward room."
Here too is the singular undernote of " she " repeated constantly in different places of the verse, with the effect of a sort of musical accom- paniment or refrain, which Dr>'den (a great student of Donne) afterwards imitated on the note " you " in Ash-aa Redux, and the Coro' nation. But these, and many other separate verbal or musical beauties, perhaps yield to the wonder of the strange, dreamy atmo- sphere of moonlight thought and feeling which is shed over the whole piece. Nowhere is Donne, one of the most full-blooded and yet one of the least earthly of English poets, quite so unearthly.
The Elegies, perhaps better known than any of his poems, contain the least of this un- earthliness. The famous ' Refusal to allow his young wife to accompany him as his page,' though a very charming poem, is, I think, one
I
xxvi INTRODUCTION.
of the few pieces of his which have been praised enough, if not even a little overpraised. As a matter of taste it seems to me indeed more open to exception than the equally famous and much " fie-fied " ' To his mistress going to bed,' a piece of frank naturalism redeemed from coarse- ness by passion and poetic completeness. The Elegies again are the most varied of the divisions of Donne's works, and contain next to the Satires his liveliest touches, such as —
" The grim, eight-foot-high, iron-bound, serving-man. That oft names God in oaths, and only than (z. e. then) —
or as the stroke —
" Lank as an unthrift's purse."
In Epithalamia Donne was good, but not con • summate, falling far short of his master, Spenser, in this branch. No part of his work was more famous in his own day than his * Epistles ' which are headed by the ' Storm ' and ' Calm,' that so did please Ben Jonson. But in these and other pieces of the same division, the mis- placed ingenuity which is the staple of the general indictment against Donne, appears, to my taste, less excusably than anywhere else. Great passion of love, of grief, of philosophic meditation, of religious awe, had the power to
INTRODUCTION. xxvii
master the fantastic hippogriff of Donne's ; imagination, and make it wholly serviceable ; ' but in his less intense works it was rather un- ' manageable. Yet there are very fine things here also ; especially in the Epistle to Sir Henry Goodyere, and those to Lucy Countess of Bed- ford, and Elizabeth Countess of Huntingdon. The best of the ' Funeral Elegies ' are those of Mrs. Boulstred. In the Divine Poems there is nothing so really divine as the astonishing verse from the ' Second Anniversary ' quoted above. It must always however seem odd that such a poet as Donne should have taken the trouble to tag the Lamentations of Jeremiah into verse, which is sometimes much more lamentable in form than even in matter. The epigram as to Le Franc de Pompignan's French version, and its connection, by dint of Jeremiah's prophetic power, with the fact of his having lamented, might almost, if any Englishman had had the wit to think of it, have been applied a century earlier to parts of this of Donne. The ' Litany' is far better, though it naturally suggests Her- rick's masterpiece in divine song-writing ; and even the 'Jeremiah' ought not perhaps to be indiscriminately disapproved. The opening stanzas especially have a fine melancholy clang not unknown, I think, as a model to Mr. Swinburne.
xxviii INTRODUCTION.
But to my fancy no division of Donne's poems — the ' Second Anniversary ' always excepted — shows him in his quiddity and essence as do the Lyrics. Some of these are to a certain extent doubtful. One of the veiy finest of the whole, 'Absence, hear thou my protestation,' with its unapproached fourth stanza, appeared first in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody unsigned. But all the best authorities agree (and for my