_this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee.
That women can no parts of friendship bee.
John Donne
17.
Compare also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.
Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in _An Essay on Criticism_,
ll. 54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
l. 34. _For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. _ The
modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes
this line clearer--'both Deaths' dust. ' 'Graves are our trophies,
their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger
death, i. e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought
in its train. ' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same
thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.
PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8.
_this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee. _
Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay
le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymee de moy beaucoup plus que
paternellement, et enveloppee en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une
des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle
au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque
jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection
de _cette tressaincte amitie ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait
pu monter encores_: la sincerite et la solidite de ses moeurs y sont
desja bastantes. ' _Essais_ (1590), ii. 17.
PAGE =282=. ELEGIE ON M^{ris} BOULSTRED.
Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley
Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12,
1583/4, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at
Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James
Whitelocke's _Liber Famelicus_ (Camden Society). He quotes also from
the Twickenham Registers: 'M^{ris} Boulstred out of the parke, was
buried ye 6th of August, 1609. ' In a letter to Goodyere Donne speaks
of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistresse
Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours at this
time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, and the
return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the
strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her
fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her
pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all
her sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me
justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you
receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.
Compare also Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Part 2, Sect 2, Mem. 3.
Pope has borrowed the conceit from Donne in _An Essay on Criticism_,
ll. 54-9:
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
l. 34. _For, graves our trophies are, and both deaths dust. _ The
modern printing of this as given in the Grolier Club edition makes
this line clearer--'both Deaths' dust. ' 'Graves are our trophies,
their dust is not our dust but the dust of the elder and the younger
death, i. e. sin and the physical or carnal death which sin brought
in its train. ' Chambers's 'death's dust' means, I suppose, the same
thing, but one can hardly speak of 'both death'.
PAGE =281=, ll. 57-8.
_this forward heresie,
That women can no parts of friendship bee. _
Montaigne refers to the same heresy in speaking of 'Marie de Gournay
le Jars, ma fille d'alliance, et certes aymee de moy beaucoup plus que
paternellement, et enveloppee en ma retraitte et solitude comme l'une
des meilleures parties de mon propre estre. Je ne regarde plus qu'elle
au monde. Si l'adolescence peut donner presage, cette ame sera quelque
jour capable des plus belles choses et entre autres de la perfection
de _cette tressaincte amitie ou nous ne lisons point que son sexe ait
pu monter encores_: la sincerite et la solidite de ses moeurs y sont
desja bastantes. ' _Essais_ (1590), ii. 17.
PAGE =282=. ELEGIE ON M^{ris} BOULSTRED.
Cecilia Boulstred, or Bulstrode, was the daughter of Hedgerley
Bulstrode, of Bucks. She was baptized at Beaconsfield, February 12,
1583/4, and died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at
Twickenham, on August 4, 1609. So Mr. Chambers, from Sir James
Whitelocke's _Liber Famelicus_ (Camden Society). He quotes also from
the Twickenham Registers: 'M^{ris} Boulstred out of the parke, was
buried ye 6th of August, 1609. ' In a letter to Goodyere Donne speaks
of her illness: 'but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistresse
Bolstrod will not escape that sicknesse in which she labours at this
time. I sent this morning to aske of her passage this night, and the
return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the
strength of her understanding, and voyce, (proportionally to her
fashion, which was ever remisse) by the eavenesse and life of her
pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all
her sicknesse to her minde. But the History of her sicknesse makes me
justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you, when you
receive this letter, may do her any good office in praying for her.
