No More Learning

112, l. 44, 'this and the next are not two worlds,' &c.


PAGE =191=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF BEDFORD.

ll. 1-6. The sense of this verse, carefully and correctly printed in
the 1633 edition, was obscured if not corrupted by the insertion of
a semicolon after 'Fortune' in the later editions. The correct
punctuation was restored in 1719, which was followed in subsequent
editions until Grosart returned to that of the 1635-39 editions (which
the Grolier Club editor also adopts), and Chambers completed the
confusion by printing the lines thus,

You have refined me, and to worthiest things--
Virtue, art, beauty, fortune.

Even Mr. Gosse has been misled into quoting this truncated and
enigmatical compliment to Lady Bedford, regarding it, I presume, as of
the same nature as Shakespeare's lines,

Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine issues.

But this has a meaning; what meaning is there in saying that a man is
refined to 'beauty and fortune'? Poor Donne was not likely to boast
of either at this time. What he says is something quite different, and
strikes the key-note of the poem. 'You have refined and sharpened my
judgement, and now I see that the worthiest things owe their value
to rareness or use. Value is nothing intrinsic, but depends on
circumstances.
' This, the next two verses add, explains why at Court
it is your virtue which transcends, in the country your beauty. To
Donne the country is always dull and savage; the court the focus of
wit and beauty, though not of virtue. On the relative nature of all
goodness he has touched in the _Progresse of the Soule_, p. 316, ll.
518-20:

There's nothing simply good nor ill alone;
Of every quality Comparison
The only measure is, and judge, Opinion.

With the sentiment regarding Courts compare: 'Beauty, in courts, is
so necessary to the young, that those who are without it, seem to be
there to no other purpose than to wait on the triumphs of the fair; to
attend their motions in obscurity, as the moon and stars do the sun
by day; or at best to be the refuge of those hearts which others have
despised; and by the unworthiness of both to give and take a miserable
comfort. ' Dryden, Dedication of the _Indian Emperor_.

ll. 8-9. (_Where a transcendent height, (as lownesse mee)
Makes her not be, or not show_)

I have completed the enclosure of (Where . . . show) in brackets which
_1633_ began but forgot to carry out. The statement is parenthetical,
and it is of the essence of Donne's wit to turn aside in one
parenthesis to make another, dart from one distracting thought to
a further, returning at the end to the main track. He has left the
Countess for a moment to explain why the Court 'is not Vertues clime'.
She is too transcendent to be, or at any rate to be seen there, as
I (he adds, quite irrelevantly) am too low.