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Volume I contains the Poems and Line Notes, showing textual and punctuatondifferences between the various MSS. and Editons and the Index of First Lines.Volume II contains the Introduction and Commentary, Annotational Notes for thePoems of Vol. I, and the Index of First Lines for poems quoted in Vol. II.There are links between the Poems and the Commentary Notes, with variousreferences back and forth. These links are designed to work when the books areread on line. For information on the downloading of both interlinked volumesso that the links work when the files are on your own computer, see theTranscriber's Note at the end of this book.
Donne's position among English poets, regarded from thehistorical and what we like to call scientific point of view,has been defined with learning and discrimination by Mr.Courthope in his History of English Poetry. As a phenomenonof curious interest for the student of the history ofthought and literary fashions, there it is. Mr. Courthopeis far too well-informed and judicious a critic to explainDonne's subtle thought and erudite conceits by a reference to'Marini and his followers'. Gongora and Du Bartas are alikepassed over in silence. What we are shown is the connexionof 'metaphysical wit' with the complex and far-reachingchanges in men's conception of Nature which make the seventeenthcentury perhaps the greatest epoch in human thoughtsince human thinking began.
Donne's conceits, of which so much has been made and onwhose historical significance Mr. Courthope has probablysaid the last word, are just like other examples of these oldclothes. The question for literature is not whence they came,but how he used them. Is he a poet in virtue or in spite ofthem, or both? Are they fit only to be gathered into amuseum of antiquated fashions such as Johnson prefixed to hisstudy of the last poet who wore them in quite the old way(for Dryden, who pilfered more freely from Donne than fromany of his predecessors, cut them to a new fashion), or are theythe individual and still expressive dress of a true and greatpoet, commanding admiration in their own manner and degreeas freshly and enduringly as the stiff and brocaded magnificenceof Milton's no less individual, no less artificial style?
Donne's reputation as a poet has passed through manyvicissitudes in the course of the last three centuries. With[pg vii]regard to his 'wit', its range and character, erudition andingenuity, all generations of critics have been at one. It isas to the relation of this 'wit' to, and its effect on, his poetrythat they have been at variance. To his contemporaries the'wit' was identical with the poetry. Donne's 'wit' gave himthe same supremacy among poets that learning and humourand art gave to Jonson among dramatists. To certain of hisDutch admirers the wit of The Flea seemed superhuman, andthe epitaph with which Carew closes his Elegy expresses thealmost universal English opinion of the seventeenth century:
'There is more of salt in all your verses, than I have seen inany of the moderns, or even of the ancients; but you havebeen sparing of the gall, by which means you have pleased allreaders, and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen,had your talent; but was not happy enough to arrive atyour versification; and were he translated into numbers, andEnglish, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression.That which is the prime virtue, and chief ornament, of Virgil,which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous[pg viii]in your verses, that it casts a shadow on all yourcontemporaries; we cannot be seen, or but obscurely, whileyou are present. You equal Donne in the variety, multiplicity,and choice of thoughts; you excel him in the manner and thewords. I read you both with the same admiration, but notwith the same delight.
He affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in hisamorous verses, where nature only should reign; and perplexesthe minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy,when he should engage their hearts, and entertain them withthe softnesses of love. In this (if I may be pardoned for sobold a truth) Mr. Cowley has copied him to a fault; so greata one, in my opinion, that it throws his Mistress infinitelybelow his Pindarics and his latter compositions, which areundoubtedly the best of his poems and the most correct.'
Dryden's estimate of Donne, as well as his application to hispoetry of the epithet 'metaphysical', was transmitted throughthe eighteenth century. Johnson's famous paragraphs inthe Life of Cowley do little more than echo and expandDryden's pronouncement, with a rather vaguer use of the word'metaphysical'. In Dryden's application it means correctly'philosophical'; in Johnson's, no more than 'learned'.'The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to showtheir learning was their whole endeavour; but unluckilyresolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry, theyonly wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trialof the fingers better than of the ear.' They 'drew their conceitsfrom recesses of learning not very much frequented bycommon readers of poetry'. Waller is exempted from beinga metaphysical poet because 'he seldom fetches an amoroussentiment from the depths of science; his thoughts are forthe most part easily understood, and his images such as thesuperficies of nature readily supplies'.
What is to-day the value and interest of this wit whichhas arrested the attention of so many generations? How fardoes it seem to us compatible with poetry in the full and generallyaccepted sense of the word, with poetry which quickens theimagination and touches the heart, which satisfies and delights,which is the verbal and rhythmical medium whereby a giftedsoul communicates to those who have ears to hear the contentof impassioned moments?
Before coming to close quarters with this difficult anddebated question one may in the first place insist that thereis in Donne's verse a great deal which, whether it be poetryin the full sense of the word or not, is arresting and of worthboth historically and intrinsically. Whatever we may thinkof Donne's poetry, it is impossible not to recognize theextraordinary interest of his mind and character. In an ageof great and fascinating men he is not the least so. Theimmortal and transcendent genius of Shakespeare leavesDonne, as every other contemporary, lost in the shadows andcross-lights of an age that is no longer ours, but from whichShakespeare emerges into the clear sunlight. Of Bacon'smind, 'deep and slow, exhausting thought,' and divining as noneother the direction in which the road led through the dbris ofoutworn learning to a renovated science and a new philosophy,[pg x]Donne could not boast. Alike in his poetry and in hissoberest prose, treatise or sermon, Donne's mind seems towant the high seriousness which comes from a conviction thattruth is, and is to be found. A spirit of scepticism andparadox plays through and disturbs almost everything hewrote, except at moments when an intense mood of feeling,whether love or devotion, begets faith, and silences the scepticaland destructive wit by the power of vision rather than ofintellectual conviction. Poles apart as the two poets seem ata first glance to lie in feeling and in art, there is yet somethingof Tennyson in the conflict which wages perpetually inDonne's poetry between feeling and intellect.
But short of the highest gifts of serene imagination orserene wisdom Donne's mind has every power it well could,wit, insight, imagination; and these move in such a strangemedium of feeling and learning, mediaeval, renaissance andmodern, that every imprint becomes of interest. To do fulljustice to that interest one's study of Donne must include hisprose as well as his verse, his paradoxical Pseudomartyr,and equally paradoxical, more strangely mooded Biathanatos,the intense and subtle eloquence of his sermons, the tormentedpassion and wit of his devotions, and the gaiety and melancholy,wit and wisdom, of his letters. But most of thesequalities have left their mark on his poetry, and given itinterests over and above its worth simply as poetry.
One quality of his verse, which has been somewhat overlookedby critics intent upon the definition and sources of metaphysicalwit, is wit in our sense of the word, wit like the witof Swift and Sheridan. The habit in which this wit masqueradesis doubtless old-fashioned. It is not always the worsefor that, for the wit of the Elizabethans is delightfully blendedwith fancy and feeling. There is a little of Jaques in allof them. But if fanciful and at times even boyish, Donne'swit is still amusing, the quickest and most fertile wit of thecentury till we come to the author of Hudibras.
It is in the lighter of his love verses that Donne's laughablewit is most obvious and most agile. Whatever one maythink of the choice of subject, and the flame of a young man'slust that burns undisguised in some of the Elegies, it is impossibleto ignore the dazzling wit which neither flags norfalters from the first line to the last. And in the moregraceful and fanciful, the less heated Songs and Sonets,the same wit, gay and insolent, disports itself in aphilosophy of love which must not be taken altogetherseriously. Donne at least, as we shall see, outgrew it. Hisattitude is very much that of Shakespeare in the earlycomedies. But the Petrarchian love, which Shakespearetreats with light and charming irony, the vows and tears ofRomeo and Proteus, Donne openly scoffs. He is one ofShakespeare's young men as these were in the flesh and theInns of Court, and he tells us frankly what in their youthfulcynicism (which is often even more of a pose than theiridealism) they think of love, and constancy, and women.
It is not often that the reckless and wilful gaiety of youthmasking as cynicism has been expressed with such ebullientwit as in these and companion songs. And when he adoptsfor a time the pose of the faithful lover bewailing the crueltyof his mistress the sarcastic wit is no less fertile. It would bedifficult to find in the language a more sustained succession ofwitty surprises than The Will. Others were to catch thesenotes from Donne, and Suckling later flutes them gaily in hislighter fashion, never with the same fullness of wit and fancy,never with the same ardour of passion divinable through theaudacious extravagances.
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