Volume 1 — OF THE PROGRESSE OF THE SOULE. THE SECOND ANNIVERSARIE.

Page 252, l. 43.

This is the punctuation of the editions 1612 to 1633. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor follow the later editions, 1635-69, in dropping the comma after 'issue', which thus becomes object to 'encrease'. 'These hymns may encrease thy issue so long, &c.' This does not seem to me to harmonize so well with l. 44 as the older punctuation of l. 43. 'These Hymns, which are thy issue, may encrease'(used intransitively, as in the phrase 'increase and multiply') 'so long as till, &c.' This suggests that the Hymns themselves will live and sound in men's ears, quickening in them virtue and religion, till they are drowned in the greater music of God's Venite. The modern version is compatible with the death of the hymns, but the survival of their issue.

l. 48. To th'only Health, to be Hydroptique so. Here again Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor have agreed in following the editions 1625-69 against the earlier ones, 1612 and 1621. These have connected 'to be Hydroptic so' with what follows:

But surely the full stop after 'so' in 1612 is right, and 'to be Hydroptique so' is Donne's definition of 'th'only Health'. 'Thirst is the symptom of dropsy; and a continual thirst for God's safe-sealing bowl is the best symptom of man's spiritual health.'

'Gods safe-sealing bowl' is of course the Eucharist: 'When thou commest to this seal of thy peace, the Sacrament, pray that God will give thee that light, that may direct and establish thee, in necessary and fundamentall things: that is the light of faith to see, that the Body and Blood of Christ is applied to thee in that action; But for the manner, how the Body and Bloud of Christ is there, wait his leisure if he have not yet manifested that to thee.' Sermons, &c.

Page 253, l. 72. Because shee was the forme, that made it live: i.e. the soul of the world. Aquinas, after discussion, accepts the Aristotelian view that the soul is united to the body as its form, that in virtue of which the body lives and functions. 'Illud enim quo primo aliquid operatur, est forma eius cui operatio attribuitur ... Manifestum est autem quod primum quo corpus vivit, est anima. Et cum vita manifestetur secundum diversas operationes, in diversis gradibus viventium, id quo primo operamur unumquodque horum operum vitae, est anima. Anima enim est primum quo nutrimur, et sentimus, et movemur secundum locum, et similiter quo primo intelligimus. Hoc ergo principium quo primo intelligimus, sive dicatur intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, est forma corporis. Et haec est demonstratio Aristotelis in 2 de Anima, text. 24.' Aquinas goes on to show that any other relation as of part to whole, or mover to thing moved, is unthinkable, Summa I. lxxvi. i. Elizabeth Drury in like manner was the form of the world, that in virtue of which it lived and functioned.

Page 254, l. 92. Division: a series of notes forming one melodic sequence:

l. 102. Satans Sergeants, i.e. bailiffs, watching to arrest for debt. Compare:

l. 120. but a Saint Lucies night. Compare p. 44. 'Saint Lucies night' is the longest in the year, yet it too passes, is only a night. Death is a long sleep, yet a sleep from which we shall awaken. So the Psalmist compares life to 'a watch in the night', which seems so long and is so short.

ll. 123-6. Shee whose Complexion, &c.: i.e. 'in whose temperaments the humours were in such perfect equilibrium that no one could overgrow the others and bring dissolution':

And see the note to p. 182, ll. 59-62.

Page 255, l. 127. Mithridate: a universal antidote or preservative against poison and infectious diseases, made by the compounding together of many ingredients. It was also known as 'Theriaca' and 'triacle': 'As it is truly and properly said, that there are more ingredients, more simples, more means of restoring in our dram of triacle or mithridate then in an ounce of any particular syrup, in which there may be 3 or 4, in the other perchance, so many hundred.' Sermons 26. 20. 286-7. Vipers were added to the other ingredients by Andromachus, physician to the Emperor Nero, whence the name 'theriaca' or 'triacle': 'Can an apothecary make a sovereign triacle of Vipers and other poysons, and cannot God admit offences and scandalls into his physick.' Sermons 50. 17. 143. See To S^r Henry Wotton, p. 180, l. 18 and note.

ll. 143-6. Compare p. 269, ll. 71-6.

l. 152. Heaven was content, &c. 'And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.' Matthew xi. 12.

l. 158. wast made but in a sinke. Compare: 'Formatus est homo ... de spurcissimo spermate.' Pope Innocent, De Contemptu Mundi; and

Page 256, ll. 159-62. Thinke that ... first of growth. According to Aquinas, who follows Aristotle, the souls of growth, of sense, and of intelligence are not in man distinct and (as Plato had suggested) diversely located in the liver, heart, and brain, but are merged in one: 'Sic igitur anima intellectiva continet in sua virtute quidquid habet anima sensitiva brutorum et nutritiva plantarum,' Summa I. lxxvi. 3. He cites Aristotle, De Anima, ii. 30-1.

l. 190. Meteors. See note to The Storme, l. 13. A meteor was regarded as due to the effect of the air's cold region on exhalations from the earth:

i.e. a Meteor below the middle region, it becomes a Comet above.

l. 189 to Page 257, l. 206. Donne summarizes in these lines the old concentric arrangement of the Universe as we find it in Dante. Leaving the elements of earth and water the soul passes through the regions of the air (including the central one where snow and hail and meteors are generated), and through the element of fire to the Moon, thence to Mercury, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Firmament of the fixed stars. He has already indicated (p. 237, ll. 205 f.) how this arrangement is being disturbed by 'the New Philosophy'.

l. 192. Whether th'ayres middle region be intense. Compare:

Page 257, ll. 219-20. This must, my Soule, &c. This is the punctuation of 1612-25: 1633 and all the later editions change as in the note. Chambers and Grolier follow suit. It is clearly a corruption. The 'long-short Progresse' is the passage to heaven which has been described. A new thought begins with 'T'advance these thoughts'. Grosart puts a colon after (l. 219) 'bee', but as he also places a semicolon after (l. 220) 'T'advance these thoughts' it is not quite clear how he reads the lines. The mistake seems to have arisen from forgetting that the 'she' whose progress has been described is not Elizabeth Drury but the poet's own soul emancipated by death.

Page 258, ll. 236-40. The Tutelar Angels, &c. 'And it is as imperfect which is taught by that religion which is most accommodate to sense ... That all mankinde hath one protecting Angel; all Christians one other, all English one other, all of one Corporation and every civill coagulation of society one other; and every man one other.' Letters, p. 43. Aquinas insists (Summa I. cxiii) on the assignment of a guardian angel to every individual. He mentions also, following St. Gregory, the guardian angel assigned to the Kingdom of the Persians (Dan. x. 13).

l. 242. Her body was the Electrum. 'The ancient Electrum', Bacon says, 'had in it a fifth of silver to the Gold.' Her body, then, is not pure gold, but an alloy in which are many degrees of gold. In Paracelsus' works, Electrum is the middle substance between ore and metal, neither wholly perfect nor altogether imperfect. It is on the way to perfection. The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of ... Paracelsus, Arthur E. Waite, 1894. 'Christ is not that Spectrum that Damascene speaks of, nor that Electrum that Tertullian speakes of ... a third metall made of two other metals.' Donne, Sermons 80. 40. 397.

Page 259, l. 270. breake. Here—as at p. 260, l. 326, 'choose'—I have reverted to the spelling of 1612.

l. 292. by sense, and Fantasie: i.e. by sense and the phantasmata which are conveyed by the senses to the intellect to work upon. See Aristotle, De Anima, iii. and Aquinas, Summa I. lxxxv. i. Angels obtain their knowledge of material things through immaterial, i.e. through Ideas. Their knowledge is immediate, not as ours mediate, by sense and ratiocination, 'collections'.

Page 261, l. 342. Joy in not being that, which men have said 'Joy in not being "sine labe concepta", for then she would have had no virtue in being good.' Norton. Her own goodness has gained for her a higher exaltation than the adventitious honour of being the Mother of God.

'Scriptum est in Evangelio, quod mater et fratres Christi, hoc est consanguinei carnis eius, cum illi nuntiati fuissent, et foris exspectarent, quia non possent eum adire prae turba, ille respondit: Quae est mater mea, aut qui sunt fratres mei? Et extendens manum super discipulos suos, ait: Hi sunt fratres mei; et quicumque fecerit voluntatem Patris mei, ipse mihi frater, et mater, et soror est (Matt. xii. 46-50). Quid aliud nos docens, nisi carnali cognationi genus nostrum spirituale praeponere; nec inde beatos esse homines, si iustis et sanctis carnis propinquitate iunguntur, sed si eorum doctrinae ac moribus obediendo atque imitando cohaerescunt? Beatior ergo Maria percipiendo fidem Christi, quam concipiendo carnem Christi. Nam et dicenti cuidam, Beatus venter qui te portavit; ipse respondit, Imo beati qui audiunt verbum Dei, et custodiunt' (Luc. xi. 27, 28), Augustini De Sancta Virginitate, I. 3. (Migne, 40. 397-8.) If a Protestant in the previous two lines, Donne is here as sound a Catholic as St. Augustine.

l. 354. joyntenants with the Holy Ghost. 'We acknowledge the Church to be the house onely of God, and that we admit no Saint, no Martyr, to be a Iointenant with him.' Sermons 50. 21. 86.

l. 360. royalties: i.e. the prerogatives, rights, or privileges pertaining to the sovereign. Donne here enumerates them as the power to make war and conclude peace, uncontrolled authority ('the King can do no wrong'), the administration of justice, the dispensing of pardon, coining money, and the granting of protection against legal arrest.

Page 262, l. 369. impressions. The plural of the first edition must, I think, be accepted. Her stamp is set upon each of our acts as the impression of the King's head on a coin: 'Ignoraunce maketh him unmeete metall for the impressions of vertue.' Fleming, Panopl. Epist. 372 (O.E.D.).

I have kept the comma after 'eyes' of 1621 (1612 seems to have no stop) rather than change it with later and modern editions to a semicolon, because I take it that the clauses are not co-ordinate; the second is a subordinate clause of degree after 'so'. 'Her face and thine eyes so flow that now neither that Saint nor that Pilgrim which your loving vow concern'd remains—neither you nor the lady you adore remain the same.' The lady is the Saint, the lover the Pilgrim, as in Romeo and Juliet:

Punctuated as the sentence is in modern editions 'so' must mean 'in like manner', referring back to the statement about the river.

Page 263, l. 421. this Center, is the reading of the first edition and is doubtless correct, the 't' having been dropped accidentally in 1621 and so in all subsequent editions. 'This Center' is 'this Earth.' The Earth could neither support such a tower nor provide material with which to build it. Compare:

Page 264, l. 442. For it is both the object and the wit. God, the Idea of Good, is the source of both being and knowing—the ultimate object of knowledge and the source of the knowledge by which Himself is known.

After discussion Aquinas concludes (I. lxiii. 5) that the devil was not evil through fault of his own will in the first instant of his creation, because this would make God the cause of evil: 'Illa operatio quae simul incipit cum esse rei est ei ab agente a quo habet esse ... Agens autem quod Angelos in esse produxit, scilicet Deus, non potest esse causa peccati.' He then considers whether there was any delay between his creation and his fall, and concludes that the most probable conclusion and most consonant with the words of the Saints is that there was none, otherwise by his first good act he would have acquired the merit whose reward is the happiness which comes from the sight of God and is enduring: 'Si diabolus in primo instanti, in gratiâ creatus, meruit, statim post primum instans beatitudinem accepisset, nisi statim impedimentum praestitisset peccando.' This 'beatitudo' is the sight of God: 'Angeli beati sunt per hoc quod Verbum vident.' And endurance is of the essence of this blessedness: 'Sed contra de ratione beatitudinis est stabilitas, sive confirmatio in bono.' Thus, as Donne says, 'Had th' Angells,' &c. Summa lxii. 1, 5; lxiii. 6.

Page 265, l. 479. Apostem: i.e. Imposthume, deep-seated abscess.

Page 266, l. 509. Long'd for, and longing for it, &c. So Dante of Beatrice:

and again:

Donne, one thinks, must have read the Vita Nuova as well as the Divina Commedia. It is possible that in the eulogy of Elizabeth Drury he is following its transcendental manner without fully appreciating the transfiguration through which Beatrice passed in Dante's mind.

ll. 511-18. Here in a place, &c. These lines show that The Second Anniversary was written while Donne was in France with Sir Robert and Lady Drury. Compare A Letter to the Lady Carey, &c., p. 221: