Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end? Or will you think, my friend, your business done, 320 When, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one? You've play'd, and lov'd, and eat, and drank your fill: Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage: 325 Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please. [THESE Satires, as Pope informs us in the Advertisement prefixed to the Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated (ante, p. 282), were 'versified' by him at the request of Lords Oxford and Shrewsbury, and therefore in the main belong to an earlier period of his career than the Satires among which they were afterwards inserted. He called his labour 'versifying,' says Warburton, because indeed Donne's lines 'have nothing more of numbers than their being composed of a certain quantity of syllables'-a description exaggerated, but not untrue. John Donne was born in 1578, and died in 1631; but though he wrote most of his poetry before the end of the 16th century, none of it was published till late in the reign of James I. The story of his life may be summed up as that of a popular preacher under pecuniary difficulties, which only towards its close terminated in the assurance of a competency (he died as Dean of St Paul's). Donne has been, in deference to Pope's classification of poets, regarded as the father of the metaphysical, or fantastic school of English poets, which reached its height in the reign of Charles I. His poetry divides itself into two distinctly marked divisions-profane and religious. The former must be in the main regarded as consisting of purely intellectual exercitations; nor should the man be rashly confounded with the writer, or the Ovidian looseness of morals which he affects be supposed to have characterised his life. His Songs are full of the conceits criticised by Dr Johnson; some of his Epigrams are very good; his Elegies are most offensively indecent; and the Progress of the Soul is a disgusting burlesque on the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis. The Funeral Elegies already show the transition to sacred poetry; and it is on these and the Holy Sonnets that rests Donne's claim to be called a metaphysical poet. Yet he states that he affected the metaphysics in his Satires and amorous verses as well. The former were first published, with the rest of his works, in 1633. In Dryden's opinion, quoted by Chalmers, the Satires of Donne, even if translated into numbers, would yet be found wanting in dignity of expression. It has however been doubted whether the irregularity of Donne's versification in the Satires was wholly undesigned. His lyrical poetry is fluent and easy; and the Satires of Hall, which preceded those of Donne by several years, show a comparative mastery over the heroic couplet which could surely have been compassed by the later Satirist. Pope has treated Donne's text with absolute freedom. Donne's Third Satire, in Warburton's opinion 'the noblest work not only of this but perhaps of any satiric poet,' was 'versified' by Parnell.] SATIRE II. ES; thank my stars! as early as I knew the hate it too; Yet here; as ev'n in Hell, there must be still That all beside, one pities, not abhors; I grant that Poetry's a crying sin; 5 As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores. It brought (no doubt) th' Excise and Army1 in: Catch'd like the Plague, or Love, the Lord knows how, But that the cure is starving, all allow. IO Yet like the Papist's, is the Poet's state", Poor and disarm'd, and hardly worth your hate! One sings the Fair; but songs no longer move; These write to Lords, some mean reward to get, Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet [i.e. the increased excise duties (which it was apprehended would become a general excise), and an army which must prove a standing one. Cf. Moral Essays, Ep. III. v. 119, and Im. 15 20 25 30 of Hor. Bk. 11. Sat. ii. v. 160. The expressions are substituted for 'dearth and Spaniards' in Donne.] 2 [Cf. Im. of Hor. Bk. 11. Ep. ii. v. 68.] 'Tis chang'd, no doubt, from what it was before; I pass o'er all those Confessors and Martyrs, Act sins which Prisca's Confessor3 scarce hears. 40 In what Commandment's large contents they dwell. Time, that at last matures a clap to pox, Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave Impudence: 45 Whose gentle progress makes a calf an ox, More pert, more proud, more positive than he. And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench? More rough than forty Germans when they scold*. Paltry and proud, as drabs in Drury-lane. If PETER deigns to help you to your own: Grave, as when pris'ners shake the head and swear 1 Sir Robert Sutton, who was expelled the House of Commons on account of his share in the frauds of the company called the Charitable Corporation. Carruthers. 2 Out-swear the Letanie. Donne. 3 [Accentuated as in Donne.] 70 75 4 [Donne's fine touch of satire against a historic wrong Than when winds in our ruin'd abbeys roar,' is exchanged by Pope for a cheap sneer against a then unpopular nationality.] And lies to ev'ry Lord in ev'ry thing, Or when a Duke to Jansen punts at White's, 80 85 90 95 100 Or, in quotation, shrewd Divines leave out Those words, that would against them clear the doubt. [05 When doom'd to say his beads and Even-song; But having cast his cowl, and left those laws, Adds to Christ's pray'r, the Pow'r and Glory clause. The lands are bought; but where are to be found ΓΙΟ Those ancient woods, that shaded all the ground? Where are those troops of Poor, that throng'd of yore [Carruthers suggests the name of Paul Benfield, a financing M.P., for this hiatus.] 2 [Pointless here; but not so in Donne.] 3 About this time of his life Dr Donne had a strong propensity to Popery, which appears from several strokes in these satires. We find amongst his works, a short satirical thing called a Cata 115 120 logue of rare books, one article of which is intitled, M. Lutherus de abbreviatione Orationis Dominicæ, alluding to Luther's omission of the [spurious] concluding Doxology in his two Catechisms; which shews the poet was fond of a joke. Warburton. 4 [i. e. as an Augustine monk.] Like rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare, Thus much I've said, I trust, without offence; WELL SATIRE IV. ELL, if it be my time to quit the stage, I die in charity with fool and knave, With foolish pride my heart was never fir'd,. As vain, as idle, and as false, as they way!} Scarce was I enter'd, when, behold! there came The sun e'er got, or slimy Nilus bore, Or Sloane1 or Woodward's wondrous shelves contain, 30 Nay, all that lying Travellers can feign. The watch would hardly let him pass at noon, At night, would swear him dropt out of the Moon. 35 One whom the mob, when next we find or make 1[Cf. Moral Essays, Ep. IV. c. 10.] [John Woodward (1665-1728) the founder of the professorship of Geology in the Univer sity of Cambridge, to which he bequeathed his collections.] |