, quoted in Gardiner's
_History
of England_, ii.
John Donne
PAGE =75=. PYRAMUS AND THISBE. The Grolier Club edition prints the
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs. As punctuated in
_1633_ the epigram is condensed but precise: 'These two, slain by
themselves, by each other, by fear, and by love, are joined here in
one tomb, by the friends whose cruel action in parting them brought
them together here. ' Every point in the epigram corresponds to the
incidents of the story as narrated in Ovid's _Metamorphoses_, iv.
55-165. The closing line runs:
Quodque rogis superest, una requiescit in urna.
A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in
Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for
assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining
them. . . . I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay
me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in
peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case
surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out
of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless
a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands
of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall
upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine
with putting the meat in their mouth. ' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607,
Hatfield MSS.
, quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25.
PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare:
Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise,
Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes.
Finis quoth R.
Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of
Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen.
Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c. _, 1607.
PAGE =76=. SIR JOHN WINGEFIELD. _In that late Island. _ Mr. Gosse has
inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of _O'F_
is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of
course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme
point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west.
