II. i. 346 —

'* Don Pedro , . . Out of question, you were bom in a merry hour.
Beatrice. No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born."
And Pericles, I, i. 8 —
"At whose conception, till Lucina reigned. Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence ; The senate-house of planets all did sit, To knit in her their best perfections,"
1. 48. my Genius. A Genius is properly a tutelar spirit, but it comes to have very much the sense of "temperament, personality": cf. Macbeth, III. i. 55 —
"under him, My Genius is rebuked ; as, it is said, Mark Antony's was by Caesar."
p. 29. Twickenham Garden.
This was the residence of the Countess of Bedford. vol. I. 15
226 NOTES,
In a prose letter to her (Alford, vi. 303), Donne speaks of some verses ' ' your Ladyship did me the honour to see in Twickenham garden." Lysons {Environs of London, iii. 565) states that a reversion of the lease of Twickenham Park, formerly the home of Francis Bacon, came into the hands of Sir Henry Goodyere and Edward Woodward in 1607, and that both the existing lease and the reversion were transferred in 1608 to George, Lord Carew and George Croke in trust for Lady Bedford, who lived there until 1618. Cf. also the Verse Letter to her (ii. 20) —
"The mine, the magazine, the common-weal. The story of beauty, in Twickenham is, and you " —
and the note upon Mrs. Boulstred (vol. ii. p. 89).
1. 6. the spider Love. The spider was believed to be full of poison. Cf. Rich. IL, III. ii. 14 —
" But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way."
p, 30. Valediction to his Book.
I suspect that the title of this poem is a mistake of Donne's editor. It does not appear to have been written as an Envoi ; the " manuscripts" spoken of were not for the press, but only the love-letters which had passed between Donne and his mistress. A similar heading appears, however, in several independent MSS.
1. 3. eloign, banish, the French eloigner.
1. 6. Sibyl' s glory. This was the Cumaean Sibyl, who offered King Tarquin successively nine, six and three books of prophecies for the same sura.
1. 7. her who from Pindar could allure. " Corinna the Theban, Pindar's instructress in poetry, and successful rival" (Grosart).
1. 8. her, through whose help Lucan is not lame. " Probably Argentaria PoUa, Lucan's wife and widow" (Grosart).
p. 33. COMMUNITV.
The heading was added in 1635.
SONGS AND SONNETS. 227
p, 34. Love's Growth.
1. 23. spheres. The modern conception of the solar system was only slowly becoming known in Donne's time. See the letter to Lady Bedford (vol. ii. p. 23) —
" New philosophy arrests the sun, And bids the passive earth about it run."
The theory was first suggested by Copernicus in 1543, and afterwards preached by Galileo {1610 — 1616). According to the "Ptolemaic" system which preceded it, the Earth was the centre of ten concentric spheres, or revolving rings of space. Seven of these were the orbits of the Sun, Moon, and the five great planets ; an eighth held the Fixed Stars ; the ninth was known as the CrystaUine sphere, the tenth as the Primum Mobile. Cf. Paradise Lost, iii. 481 —
"They pass the planets seven, and pass the fixed, And that crystalline sphere whose balance weighs The trepidation talked, and that first moved."
p. 37. Confined Love. The heading was added in 1635.
p. 41. Love's Alchemy.
1. 7. tK elixir. The goals of the alchemist's research were the philosopher's stone, and the red tincture or great elixir. Sometimes the first of these was credited with the property of transmuting baser metals to gold, the second with that of renewing life ; at other times the two are treated as practically identical.
p. 43. The Message.
The heading was added in 1635.
A writer under the signature Cpl. in Notes and Queries (4th Series, ii. 614) speaks of a MS. in which this and some other of Donne's lyrics are included as "Songs which were made to certain airs which were made before." This same heading occurs in Harl. 4955. The songs
228 NOTES.
included under it are, besides the present one, ' ' Sweetest love, I do not go" (p. i6),and " Come live with me, and be my love " (p. 47). It is also found in T. C. Dublin MS. G. 2. 21, f. 160.
p. 45. A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day.
St. Lucy's Day, December the 13th, was, according to the old style of reckoning, the ' ' shortest day " in tlie year.
1. 21. litnbec. This word is a corruption of alembic, a term of Arabian alchemy for the " still " or vessel in which chemicals were vaporized.
p. 47. The Bait.
The heading was added in 1635.
This poem is one of the several imitations of Marlowe's famous "Come live with me, and be ray love," printed successively in The Passionate Pilgrim (1599). England's Helicon {1600), a.nd The Compleat Atigler {i6$2)- Donne's poem also appears in The Co7nplcat Angler {i6^2)> where it is introduced as follows —
" Viator. Yes, Mister, I will speak you a copy of verses that were made by Dr. Donne, and made to show the world that he could make soft and smooth verses, when he thought them fit and worth his labour ; and I love them the better because they allude to rivers, and fish, and fishing. They be these."
Another poem was added by Cotton in the second part of the Compleat Angler, called An Invitation to Phillis, and also beginning, ' ' Come hve with me, and be my love. " Other verses on the same theme maybe found in E?igland's Helicon (1600), "If all the world and love was young" (Ignoto, but ascribed by Walton, who quotes this also in the Compleat Angler, to Sir Walter Raleigh ; of. Hannah, Courtly Poets, p. 11), and " Come live with me, and be my dear" (Ignoto) ; in Herrick's Hesperides, under the title To Phillis " Live, live with me, and thou shalt see " ; in Pembroke and Rudyard's Poems (1660), "Dear, leave thy home, and come with me." There are doubtless others. The Bait is ascribed to Sir Henry Wotton in Addl. MS. 19,268, f. 19, but this is a MS. of no great credit. See also note to p. 43.
SONGS AND SONNETS. 229
p. 51. A Valediction forbidding Mourning.
This poem was printed with several variants in the fourth edition of Walton's Life of Donne (1674). It is not in the 1640, nor the 165S, nor the 1670 edition. Walton states that it was given by Donne to his wife when he left her to go to France and Belgium, with Sir Robert Drury in 1611. He continues, "And I beg leave to tell that I have heard some critics, learned both in languages and poetry, say that none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever equal them." It was during this absence that Donne had a sudden vision of his wite at a moment when she was in great danger. See Walton's Life of Donne, and cf. notes to pp. 16, 139.
A copy of the Valediction, unsigned and with many trifling variants, is to be found in Dr. Grosart's edition of the Farmer-Chetham MS.
1. II. trepidation of the spheres. Cf. Paradise Lost, iii. 483, quoted in the note to page 34.
The " trepidation " was the precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline Sphere.
p. 64. The Primrose, being at Montgomery
Castle.
In 1633, the heading is simply The Primrose. The rest was added in 1635.
Montgomery Castle was the home of Lady Herbert, mother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury and of George Herbert. All three appear to have been among Donne's intimate friends. See pp. 117, 156 ; vol. ii. pp. 20, 43, with notes. In 1607 Montgomery Castle was taken from its possessors by James I., and transferred to their kinsman Philip, Earl of Pembroke, who was created Earl of Montgomery. It was bought back by Sir Edward Herbert for ^500 in 1613. Donne visited him there in that year (cf. note to the Good Friday poem, p. 172), but probably this poem was written before 1607.
L 12. a six, or four. The normal number of seg- ments in the corolla of a primrose is five ; occasionally specimens are found in which it is divided into four or
230 NOTES,
six. The latter variety was held as a symbol of true love. Cf. W. Browne, Britannia! s Pastorals, bk. ii. song 3 —
" The primrose when with six leaves gotten grace, Holds as a true-love in their bosoms place."
1. 29. they fall first into five ; that is, the first even number, two, added to the first odd number, three — one, the unit, of course not counting — makes five..
p. 70. A Jet Ring sent.
1. 10. Iter thumb. Thumb-rings were a common ornament for well-to-do citizens. Falstaff, in i Hen. IV.,