it is a fair
inference
that the
editions have gone astray.
editions have gone astray.
John Donne
PAGE =96=. ELEGIE XI.
Donne has in this Elegy carried to its farthest extreme, as only a
metaphysical or scholastic poet like himself could, the favourite
Elizabethan pun on the coin called the Angel. Shakespeare is fond of
the same quibble: 'She has all the rule of her husband's purse; she
hath a legion of angels' (_Merry Wives_, I. iii. 60). But Donne knows
more of the philosophy of angels than Shakespeare and can pursue the
analogy into more surprising subtleties. Nor is the pun on angels the
only one which he follows up in this poem: crowns, pistolets, and gold
are all played with in turn. The poem was a favourite with Ben
Jonson: 'his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart' (_Drummond's
Conversations_, ed. Laing).
The text of the poem, which was first printed in _1635_ (Marriot
having been prohibited from including it in the edition of 1633),
is based on a MS. closely resembling _Cy_ and _P_, and differing
in several readings from the text given in the rest of the MSS. ,
including _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _W_. I have endeavoured rather to
give this version correctly, while recording the variants, than either
to substitute another or contaminate the two. When _Cy_ and _P_ go
over to the side of the other MSS.
it is a fair inference that the
editions have gone astray. When they diverge, the question is a more
open one.
PAGE =97=, l. 24. _their naturall Countreys rot_: i. e. 'their native
Countreys rot', the 'lues Gallica'. Compare 'the naturall people of
that Countrey', Greene, _News from Hell_ (ed. Grosart, p. 57). This
is the reading of _Cy_, and the order of the words in the other MSS.
points to its being the reading of the MS. from which _1635_ was
printed.
l. 26. _So pale, so lame, &c.
