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.
first line of this epigram,
Two by themselves each other love and fear,
which suggests that 'love' and 'fear' are verbs.
John Donne
Of these, thirteen are in _A18_, _N_, _TC_, none in _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
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=.
_H49_, _Lec_. Of the remaining three, two are in _W_, one in _HN_,
both good authorities. I have added three of interest from _W_, of
which one is in _HN_, and all three are in _O'F_. _W_ includes among
the _Epigrams_ the short poem _On a Jeat Ring Sent_, printed generally
with the _Songs and Sonets_. In _HN_ there is one and in the Burley
MS. are three more. Of these the one in _HN_ and two of those in _Bur_
are merely coarse, and there is no use burdening Donne with more of
this kind than he is already responsible for. The last in _Bur_ runs:
Why are maydes wits than boyes of lower strayne?
Eve was a daughter of the ribb not brayne.
Donne's epigrams were much admired, and some of his elegies were
classed with them as satirical 'evaporations of wit'. Drummond says:
'I think if he would he might easily be the best epigrammatist we
have found in English; of which I have not yet seen any come near
the Ancients. Compare his Marry and Love with Tasso's stanzas against
beauty; one shall hardly know who hath best. ' The stanzas referred to
are entitled _Sopra la bellezza_, and begin:
Questo che tanto il cieco volgo apprezza.
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=.
