II. iv. 364, boasts that he was once so slender that he

could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring. This passage seems to show that they were worn by women also.
71. Negative Love,
In Addl. MS. 25,707, f. 18, this poem is headed The Nothing.
p. 75. Song. Soul's Joy.
This poem occurs in all the editions of Donne except 1633, and I have therefore included it here. I have very little doubt that it is his ; the central idea — that the lovers' souls are together, though their bodies may be apart — is characteristic of him (cf. A Valediction forbidding Mourni?ig, p. 51). So is the contemptuous —
" Fools have no means to meet. But by their feet."
It is however printed, in an inferior version, with the initial "P," in the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Ruddier's Poems (1660), and it is also ascribed to the Earl of Pembroke in Lansd. MS. yjj, a very good authority. The testimony of the Pembroke and Ruddier volume is not of much value. It was edited by the younger Donne, who admits in the preface that some surreptitious verses may have crept in. As a matter of fact it contains poems by Carew, Dyer and others. It
SONGS AND SONNETS. 23 1
must be remembered that the younger Donne was also editor of the 1650 edition of his father's poems, and allowed Soul's Joy to stand there. For other poems in the Pembroke and Ruddier volume, which have been claimed for Donne, see note to p. 79, and the Appendices.
I have printed in the footnotes the variant readings of Lansd. MS. 777. Wounds for words in line 17 seems to me to improve the sense.
In George Herbert's The Temple (1633) is included A Parodie, of which the following is the first verse—
"Soul's joy, when thou art gone,
And I alone,
Which cannot be. Because Thou dost abide with me, And I depend on Thee ; "
There is also an apparent reference to SouVs Joy in a poem by Sir K. Digby, written probably after the death of Lady Digby in 1633 (see Mr. Bright's Roxburghe Club edition of Digby's Poems, page 8). The following are the lines in point —
"And I see those books are false which teach That absence works between two souls no breach.
When they with love
To each other move. And that they (though distant) may meet, kiss and
play ; For our body doth so clog our mind, That here no means of working it can find
On things absent,
Or judging present, Till the corporal senses first do lead the way.
There is another protest against the theories of presence in absence as expounded by Donne here and in the Valediction forbidding Mourning, to be found in Cart- wright's No Platonic Love. It begins —
" Tell me no more of minds embracing minds. And hearts exchanged for hearts ; That spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds, And mix their subtlest parts ;
^32 NOTES.
That two unbodied essences may kiss,
And then, like angels, twist and feel one bliss."
p. 76. Farewell to Love.
First printed in the edition of 1635. 1. 12. Presumably his highness was made of gilt ginger- bread.
p. 78. A Lecture upon the Shadow.
First printed in the edition of 1635, under the heading Song. The present heading was added in 1650.
p. 79. A Dialogue between Sir Henry
WOTTON AND Mr. DONNE.
This poem was first printed in the edition of 1635, on p. 195, among the Verse Letters, from which 1 have transferred it. It is printed, with the initial " P," in Pem- broke and Ruddier's Poems (1660) ; but on the small authority of this collection, see note to Soul's Joy, p. 75. In Harl. MS. 3910, f. 22, and in Harl. MS. 4064, f, 252, the first three verses are ascribed to the Earl of Pem- broke, and the second three to Sir Benjamin Ruddier. In Addl. MS. 23,229, the first three verses are also given to Pembroke, and the second three headed Tlie Answer. In T. C. Dublin MS. G. 2. 21, ff. 424, 426, the first three verses are given to Dr. Corbet, and the second three to Donne and Rudyard jointly. No division of the verses between the two authors is given in any of the editions of Donne. I have attempted to supply one, conjecturally.
On Sir Henry Wotton and his friendship with Donne, see the note to vol. ii. p. 7.
p. 80. The Token.
First printed in 1650, on p. 264, after the Funeral Elegies,
p. 8i. Self-Love.
First printed in 1650, p. 391, without any title. It occurs together with Elegy xviii. , between Benjonson's verses and the Elegies upon Donne.
233
EPITHALAMIONS.
The three poems included in this section were all first printed in 1633, and appear, with little textual variation, in the later editions. As to the dates, the Princess Ehzabeth was married on Feb. 14, 1613, and the Earl of Somerset on Dec. 26, 1613. The Epithalamion made at Lincoln's Inn probably dates from Donne's residence there in 1592 — 1596.
p. 83. An Epithalamion, or Marriage Song on THE Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine being
MARRIED on ST. VALENTINE'S DAY.
In 1669, the heading is An Epitha[la]mion on Fred- erick Count Palaii?ie of the Khene, and the Lady Eliza- beth, being married on St. Valentine's day.
Elizabeth, daughter of James I. and Anne of Denmark, was born in 1596, and brought up in ardent Protestant principles by Lord Harrington at Combe A.bbey. In 1612 she was betrothed to the Elector Palatine Frederick