, and at the same
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
John Donne
[1] The present editor is in no way a
specialist in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given
here concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text
and to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this
as far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further
investigation must follow. An expert will doubtless note many
allusions that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have
endeavoured to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.
[Footnote 1: The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and
Theology in English poetry deserves attention. When Milton
states that
They also serve who only stand and wait,
he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the
Areopagite (adopted by Aquinas), that the four highest
orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, and
Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages. ]
[Sidenote: _The Fathers, &c. _]
Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen,
especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes use
in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton had
familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy from
Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and casuists.
_The Progresse of the Soule_ reveals his acquaintance with Jewish
apocryphal legends.
[Sidenote: _Law. _]
But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student
he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic
immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; but his legal
studies have left their mark in his _Songs and Sonets_. Of Medicine he
had made an extensive study, and the poems abound in allusions to both
the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new Paracelsian medicine with
its chemical drugs and homoeopathic cures. [2] In Physics he knows,
like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, their concentric
arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c.
, and at the same
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
[Footnote 2: In the _Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c. _
(1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, Donne gives a short sketch of the history
of medical doctrines from Hippocrates through Galen to Paracelsus,
but declares that the new principles are attributed to the latter
'too much to his honour'. ]
[Sidenote: _Travels. _]
A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn from
the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh has not
included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering the
influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination (_The English
Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. _ Glasgow, 1906, iii), but perhaps
none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my America,
my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at least in
imagination,
a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;
he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the
North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.
In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's
erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not so
much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the form
in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to his own
works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or but slightly
later works, as Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and Browne's
_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. I have made constant use of the _Summa
Theologiae_ of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne's
_Patrologiae Cursus Completus_ (1845). By Professor Picavet my
attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's _Enneads_
with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic
thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's _Philosophie der
Griechen_, on Plotinus, and Harnack's _History of Dogma_. Throughout,
my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to
accumulate parallels.
specialist in Scholasticism, and such notes and extracts as are given
here concern passages where some inquiry was necessary to fix the text
and to elucidate the meaning. They are intended simply to do this
as far as possible, and to suggest the direction which further
investigation must follow. An expert will doubtless note many
allusions that have escaped notice. Whenever possible I have
endeavoured to start from Donne's own sermons and prose works.
[Footnote 1: The influence of Scholastic Philosophy and
Theology in English poetry deserves attention. When Milton
states that
They also serve who only stand and wait,
he has probably in mind the opinion of Dionysius the
Areopagite (adopted by Aquinas), that the four highest
orders of angels (Dominations, Thrones, Cherubs, and
Seraphim) never leave God's presence to bear messages. ]
[Sidenote: _The Fathers, &c. _]
Donne is as familiar with the Fathers as with the Schoolmen,
especially Tertullian and Augustine, and of them too he makes use
in poems neither serious nor edifying. His work with Morton had
familiarized him with the whole range of Catholic controversy from
Bellarmine to Spanish and German Jesuit pamphleteers and casuists.
_The Progresse of the Soule_ reveals his acquaintance with Jewish
apocryphal legends.
[Sidenote: _Law. _]
But Donne's studies were not confined to Divinity. When a Law-student
he was 'diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic
immoderate desire of humane learning and languages'; but his legal
studies have left their mark in his _Songs and Sonets_. Of Medicine he
had made an extensive study, and the poems abound in allusions to both
the orthodox Galenist doctrines and the new Paracelsian medicine with
its chemical drugs and homoeopathic cures. [2] In Physics he knows,
like Milton, the older doctrines, the elements, their concentric
arrangement, the origin of winds and meteors, &c.
, and at the same
time is acutely interested in the speculations of the newer science,
of Copernicus and Galileo, and the disintegrating effect of their
doctrines on the traditional views.
[Footnote 2: In the _Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, &c. _
(1651, 1654), pp. 14-15, Donne gives a short sketch of the history
of medical doctrines from Hippocrates through Galen to Paracelsus,
but declares that the new principles are attributed to the latter
'too much to his honour'. ]
[Sidenote: _Travels. _]
A special feature of Donne's imagery is the use of images drawn from
the voyages and discoveries of the age. Sir Walter Raleigh has not
included Donne among the poets whom he discusses in considering the
influence of the Voyages on Poetry and Imagination (_The English
Voyages of the Sixteenth Century. _ Glasgow, 1906, iii), but perhaps
none took a more curious interest. His mistress is 'my America,
my Newfoundland', his East and West Indies; he sees, at least in
imagination,
a Tenarif, or higher Hill
Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke
The floating Moone would shipwracke there, and sinke;
he sails to heaven, the Pacific Ocean, the Fortunate Islands, by the
North-West Passage, or through the Straits of Magellan.
In attempting to illustrate these and other aspects of Donne's
erudition as displayed in his poetry it has been my endeavour not so
much to trace them to their remote sources as to discover the form
in which he was familiar with a doctrine or a theory. Next to his own
works, therefore, I have had recourse to contemporary or but slightly
later works, as Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and Browne's
_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_. I have made constant use of the _Summa
Theologiae_ of St. Thomas Aquinas, using the edition in Migne's
_Patrologiae Cursus Completus_ (1845). By Professor Picavet my
attention was called to Bouillet's translation of Plotinus's _Enneads_
with ample notes on the analogies to and developments of Neo-Platonic
thought in the Schoolmen. I have also used Zeller's _Philosophie der
Griechen_, on Plotinus, and Harnack's _History of Dogma_. Throughout,
my effort has been rather to justify, elucidate, and suggest, than to
accumulate parallels.
