The precious epithalamium was used at last. On the 26th of December 1613 Lord Rochester and Lady Frances Howard were ostentatiously married, the bride with her hair flowing down her shoulders, as a virgin. Three months earlier Rochester's friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, had died in the Tower in agonies "to satiate the implacable malice of that cruel murderess," and it is hardly possible for the most lenient of historians to doubt that Rochester shared the guilt of the woman who had infatuated him. "Blest pair of swans," Donne styles them in the extremely disconcerting Eclogue which he dedicates to their disgraceful nuptials. It is very difficult to approach this poem without a strong feeling of repulsion. If, however, we forget the occasion for which it was composed, it may be read with considerable pleasure. It consists of two parts. The epithalamium proper, written to order several months before, is placed in a pastoral setting which bears every evidence of having been composed just before the wedding. In this a certain Allophanes, finding Idios in the country at Christmas time, reprehends his absence from Court at the marriage of the Earl of Somerset, for to that rank Rochester had a few weeks before been advanced. It is to be noted that the fact of the nuptial song having been written before the event is curiously betrayed by a speech of Allophanes, who introduces it as a "sacrifice" prepared beforehand, although, of course, "not made Either the Court or men's hearts to invade." Here is an ingenious description of a winter landscape— "What delicacy can in fields appear Whilst Flora herself doth a frieze jerkin wear? Have taken cold, and their sweet murmurs lost!” Donne's ideas at this time were greatly set upon court functions, and he expatiates in graceful conceits about the charms of a life among the smiling faces of the great "At every glance, a constellation flies, And sows the court with stars, and doth present, And all is warmth, and light, and good desire." The epithalamium itself is one of Donne's happiest efforts in this direction-rich, ingenious, and virile. A single strophe will give an impression of the form in which it is cast; this describes the progress of the bride and bridegroom to chapel "Now from your easts you issue forth, and we, As men, which thro' a cypress see The rising sun, do think it two, So, as you go to church,-do think of But that veil being gone, you; By the church-rites you are from thenceforth one. Then, reverend Priest, who God's recorder art, Do, from His dictates, to these two impart All blessings which are seen or thought, by angel's eye or heart." The song closes as follows "Now, as, in Tullia's tomb, one lamp burn'd clear, May these love-lamps we here enshrine, In warmth, light, lasting, equal the divine. And makes all like itself, turns all to fire, But ends in ashes; which these cannot do, For neither of these is fuel, but fire too. This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts Make of so noble individual parts One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts." By what a strange blindness the poets were afflicted! On the same winter morning Ben Jonson handed to "virtuous Somerset " a copy of verses even more enthusi astic than those of Donne. What the feelings of these canorous persons must have been when the Overbury revelations so promptly followed, it is not easy to conceive. Through the year 1614, Donne, much afflicted by sickness and by the deaths of successive children, waited impatiently for Somerset to carry out his promises of reward for the services which Donne had so lavishly volunteered. It is probable that some temporary payment was made, but certainly the poet looked out in vain for any definite appointment. Through this dolorous year we may follow him mainly in the melancholy and accidental letters which have come down to us, letters which reflect the distractions of his spirit. Of the first of these the address has been lost, and it is particularly difficult to comprehend; it is now for the first time published.' The Rev. William Hunt suggests to me that this, like the preceding and the next letter, was addressed to "Sir G. B.," and that he was a cadet of the Brydges family. "SIR, AS I have returned back to you the indictment, so do I the evidence, this parcel of Mr. Gerrard's letter, and now I appeal to yourself whether you had from thence any ground to imagine such an openness in me, and whether I be not so thoroughly clear that even he is clear too. I perceive that he being present with me at the receipt of some of your letters, and finding upon his questioning of me that sometimes there was no mention of the receipt of his letters, he grew jealous of their miscarriage; and so, Sir, I think there is more gloss upon the letter than it was worth, and you and I stand well towards one. another. "I carried the letter which was addressed to my Lord Chandos, but I found him not; he was expected to come to town this evening, therefore I wrote to his Lordship and enclosed that letter, and left them there to await his return. He understands by mine that I have commodity of sending back to-morrow, and therefore perchance may send hither 1 From the collection of J. H. Anderdon, Esq. VOL. II. с before the footman call for this packet. All the letters which I send you herewith (except only that from Sir Tho. Roe) came to my hands within an hour after I had sent away last Tuesday by the carrier of the Rose, which brought a letter from my Lord Chandos. "If by this delay in my hands either of those letters have lost any of their virtue, you may put it upon the score of my ill-fortunes, but not of my faults. I presume Mr. Gerrard's letter hath left me nothing to say, except I speak of things after his date. That which is most remarkable fell out yesterday, for Sir Stephen Proctor's great cause concerning my Lord of Northampton being yesterday heard in the Star Chamber, where we thought to see him crushed, the opinions were equal, and the Chancellor's opinion on the discharging side; so was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the two bishops, and they which condemned him (as I think) were all judges at law. "There is come out a most poetical proclamation against duels, with a book annexed to it for direction in such accidents, which I would have sent you, but that it is too big. And as they pride thereby that we shall not think of killing one another, so I must pride by your favour that you spend none of your thoughts upon self-killing, for I must entreat you to forbear that book till I have the honour to be with you. The King at his going away left the debatements of the Parliament to his Council, who have resolved nothing therein as yet, so that the assurance thereof is not so vehement as it was. It is taken ill, though it be but mistaken that certain men (whom they call undertakers) should presume either to understand the house before it sit, or to incline it then, and this rumour beforehand, which must impeach, if it do not defeat their purposes at last. I know nothing else that other men are not likely to know more profitably than I, and to deliver to you more credibly; therefore I here, Sir, kiss your hand, and continue to you the entire possession of "Your poor and affectionate servant, "Sat. 12 Feb. 1613[4]." "To Sir G. B.1 "SIR,-Between the time of making up my other letters, and the hour that your man limited me to call for them, came to my house another packet directed to him; for by this time the carrier is as wise as his horse, to go to the house that he hath used to go. I found liberty in the superscription to open, and so I did; but for that part which concerns him I must attend his coming hither, for I know not where to seek him; and besides, I have enough to say for that part which concerns myself. "Sir, even in the letter itself to me I deprehend much inclination to chide me, and it is but out of your habit of good language that you spare me. So little occasion as that postscript of mine could not bring you so near to it, if nothing else were mistaken, which (so God help me) was so little that I remember not what it was, and I would no more hear again what I write in an officious letter than what I said at a drunken supper. I had no purpose to exercise your diligence in presenting my name to that lady, but either I did, or should have said that I writ only to fill up any empty corner in your discourse. So, Sir, the reading of the letter was a kind of travail to me, but when I came to the paper enclosed I was brought to bed of a monster. "To express myself vehemently quickly, I must say that I can scarce think that you have read Mr. Gerrard's letter rightly, therefore I send you back your own again. I will not protest against my being such a knave, for no man shall have that from me, if he expect it, but I will protest against my being such a fool as to depose anything in him with hope of locking it up, and against that lowness of seeking reputation by so poor a way. I am not so sorry that I am a narrow man, as that for all the narrowness you have not seen through me yet, nor known me perfectly; for I might think by this (if I had not other testimony) that I have been little in your contemplation. Sixteen 1 From the Letters of 1651. |