Page 154. Satyre III.

Page 155, l. 19. leaders rage. This phrase might tempt one to date the poem after the Cadiz expedition and Islands voyage, in both of which 'leaders' rage', i.e. the quarrels of Howard and Essex, and of Essex and Raleigh, militated against success; but it is too little to build upon. Donne may mean simply the arbitrary exercise of arbitrary power on the part of leaders.

ll. 30-2. who made thee to stand Sentinell, &c. 'Souldier' is the reading of what is perhaps the older version of the Satyres. It would do as well: 'Quare et tibi, Publi, et piis omnibus retinendus est animus in custodia corporis; nec iniussu eius a quo ille est vobis datus ex hominum vita migrandum est, ne munus assignatum a Deo defugisse videamini.' Cicero, Somnium Scipionis.

'Veteres quidem philosophiae principes, Pythagoras et Plotinus, prohibitionis huius non tam creatores sunt quam praecones, omnino illicitum esse dicentes quempiam militiae servientem a praesidio et commissa sibi statione discedere contra ducis vel principis iussum. Plane eleganti exemplo usi sunt eo quod militia est vita hominis super terram.' John of Salisbury, Policrat. ii. 27.

Donne considers the rashness of those whom he refers to as a degree of, an approach to, suicide. To expose ourselves to these perils we abandon the moral warfare to which we are appointed. In his own work on suicide (ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ, &c.) Donne discusses the permissible approaches to suicide. An unpublished Problem shows his knowledge of John of Salisbury.

ll. 33-4. Know thy foes, &c. I have followed the better MSS. here against 1633 and L74, N, TCD. The dropping of 's' after 'foe' has probably led to the attempt to regularize the construction by interjecting 'h'is'. Donne has three foes in view—the devil, the world, and the flesh.

l. 35. quit. Whether we read 'quit' or 'rid' the construction is difficult. The phrase seems to mean 'to be free of his whole Realm'—an unparalleled use of either adjective.

l. 36. The worlds all parts. Here 'all' means 'every', but Shakespeare would make 'parts' singular: 'All bond and privilege of nature break,' Cor. V. iii. 25. Donne blends two constructions.

Page 156, l. 49. Crantz. I have adopted the spelling of W, which emphasizes the Dutch character of the name. The 'Crates ' of Q is tempting as bringing the name into line with the other classical ones, but all the other MSS. have an 'n' in the word. Donne has in view the 'schismatics of Amsterdam' (The Will) and their followers. The change to Grant or Grants shows a tendency in the copyists to substitute a Scotch for a Dutch name.

Page 157, ll. 69-71. But unmoved thou, &c. As punctuated in the old editions these lines are certainly ambiguous. The semicolon after 'allow' has a little less value than that of a full stop; that after 'right' a little more than a comma, or contrariwise. Grosart, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor all connect 'and the right' with what precedes:

But unmoved thou

Of force must one, and forced but one allow;

And the right.

So Chambers,—Grosart and the Grolier Club editor place a comma after 'allow'. It seems to me that 'And the right' goes rather with what follows:

But unmoved thou

Of force must one, and forced but one allow.

And the right, ask thy father which is she.

If the first arrangement be right, then 'And' seems awkward. The second marks two stages in the argument: a stable judgement compels us to acknowledge religion, and that there can be only one. This being so, the next question is, Which is the true one? As to that, we cannot do better than consult our fathers:

In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way

To learn what unsuspected ancients say;

For 'tis not likely we should higher soar

In search of Heaven than all the Church before;

Nor can we be deceived unless we see

The Scriptures and the Fathers disagree.

Dryden, Religio Laici.

'Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee.' Deut. xxxii. 7.

l. 76. To adore, or scorne an image, &c. Compare: 'I should violate my own arm rather than a Church, nor willingly deface the name of Saint or Martyr. At the sight of a Cross or Crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of Friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of Devotion. I could never hear the Ave-Mary Bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all, that is in silence and dumb contempt.... At a solemn Procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter.' Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, sect. 3. Compare also Donne's letter To Sir H. R. (probably to Goodyere), (Letters, p. 29), 'You know I have never imprisoned the word Religion; not straightning it Friarly ad religiones factitias, (as the Romans call well their orders of Religion), nor immuring it in a Rome, or a Geneva; they are all virtual beams of one Sun.... They are not so contrary as the North and South Poles; and they are connaturall pieces of one circle. Religion is Christianity, which being too spirituall to be seen by us, doth therefore take an apparent body of good life and works, so salvation requires an honest Christian.'

l. 80. Cragged and steep. The three epithets, 'cragged', 'ragged', and 'rugged', found in the MSS., are all legitimate and appropriate. The second has the support of the best MSS. and is used by Donne elsewhere: 'He shall shine upon thee in all dark wayes, and rectifie thee in all ragged ways.' Sermons 80. 52. 526. Shakespeare uses it repeatedly: 'A ragged, fearful, hanging rock,' Gent. of Ver. I. ii. 121; 'My ragged prison walls,' Rich. II, V. v. 21; and metaphorically, 'Winter's ragged hand,' Sonn. VI. i.

ll. 85-7. To will implyes delay, &c. I have changed the 'to' of 1633 to 'too'. It is a mere change of spelling and has the support of both H51 and W. Grosart and Chambers take it as the preposition following the noun it governs, 'hard knowledge to'—an unexampled construction in the case of a monosyllabic preposition. Franz (Shak.-Gram. § 544) gives cases of inversion for metrical purposes, but only with 'mehrsilbigen Präpositionen', e.g. 'For fear lest day should look their shapes upon.' Mid. N. Dream, III. ii. 385.

Grosart, the Grolier Club editor, and Chambers have all, I think, been misled by the accidental omission in 1633 of the full stop or colon after 'doe', l. 85. Chambers prints:

To will implies delay, therefore now do

Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge to

The mind's endeavours reach.

The Grolier Club version is:

To will implies delay, therefore now do

Hard deeds, the body's pains; hard knowledge too

The mind's endeavours reach.

The latter is the better version, but in each 'the body's pains' is a strange apposition to 'deeds' taken as object to 'do'. We do not 'do pains'. The second clause also has no obvious relation to the first which would justify the 'too'. If we close the first sentence at 'doe', we get both better sense and a better balance: 'Act now, for the night cometh. Hard deeds are achieved by the body's pains (i.e. toil, effort), and hard knowledge is attained by the mind's efforts.' The order of the words, and the condensed force given to 'reach' produce a somewhat harsh effect, but not more so than is usual in the Satyres, and less so than the alternative versions of the editors. The following lines continue the thought quite naturally: 'No endeavours of the mind will enable us to comprehend mysteries, but all eyes can apprehend them, dazzle as they may.' Compare: 'In all Philosophy there is not so darke a thing as light; As the sunne which is fons lucis naturalis, the beginning of naturall light, is the most evident thing to be seen, and yet the hardest to be looked upon, so is naturall light to our reason and understanding. Nothing clearer, for it is clearnesse it selfe, nothing darker, it is enwrapped in so many scruples. Nothing nearer, for it is round about us, nothing more remote, for wee know neither entrance, nor limits of it. Nothing more easie, for a child discerns it, nothing more hard for no man understands it. It is apprehensible by sense, and not comprehensible by reason. If wee winke, wee cannot chuse but see it, if wee stare, wee know it never the better.' Sermons 50. 36. 324.

Page 158, ll. 96-7. a Philip, or a Gregory, &c. Grosart and Norton conjecture that by Philip is meant Melanchthon, and for 'Gregory' Norton conjectures Gregory VII; Grosart either Gregory the Great or Gregory of Nazianzus. But surely Philip of Spain is balanced against Harry of England, one defender of the faith against another, as Gregory against Luther. What Gregory is meant we cannot say, but probably Donne had in view Gregory XIII or Gregory XIV, post-Reformation Popes, rather than either of those mentioned above. Satire does not deal in Ancient History. The choice is between Catholic and Protestant Princes and Popes.

Page 158. Satyre IIII.

This satire, like several of the period, is based on Horace's Ibam forte via Sacra (Sat. i. 9), but Donne follows a quite independent line. Horace's theme is at bottom a contrast between his own friendship with Maecenas and 'the way in which vulgar and pushing people sought, and sought in vain, to obtain an introduction'. Donne, like Horace, describes a bore, but makes this the occasion for a general picture of the hangers-on at Court. A more veiled thread running through the poem is an attack on the ways and tricks of informers. The bore's gossip is probably not without a motive:

I ... felt my selfe then

Becoming Traytor, and mee thought I saw

One of our Giant Statutes ope his jaw

To sucke me in.

The manner in which the stranger accosts him suggests the 'intelligencer': 'Two hungry turns had I scarce fetcht in this wast gallery when I was encountered by a neat pedantical fellow, in the forme of a Cittizen, who thrusting himself abruptly into my companie, like an Intelligencer, began very earnestly to question me.' Nash, Pierce Penniless.

In the Satyres Donne is always, though he does not state his position too clearly, one with links attaching him to the persecuted Catholic minority. He hates informers and pursuivants.

ll. 1-4. These lines resemble the opening of Régnier's imitation of Horace's satire:

Charles, de mes peches j'ay bien fait penitence;

Or, toy qui te cognois aux cas de conscience,

Juge si j'ay raison de penser estre absous.

I can trace no further resemblance.

l. 4. A recreation to, and scarse map of this. I have ventured here to restore, from Q and its duplicate among the Dyce MSS., what I think must have been the original form of this line. The adjective 'scarse' or 'scarce' used in this way ('a scarce poet', 'a scarce brook') is characteristic of Donne, and it always puzzled his copyists, who tried to correct it in one way or another, e.g. 'scarce a poet', II. 44; 'a scant brooke', IV. 240. It is inconceivable that they would have introduced it. The preposition 'to' governing 'such as' regularizes the construction, but would very easily be omitted by a copyist who wished to smooth the metre or did not at once catch its reference. Donne's use of 'scarse', like his use of 'Macaron' in this poem, is probably an Italianism; in Italian 'scarso' means 'wanting, scanty, poor'—'stretta e scarsa fortuna', 'E si riduce talvolta nell' Estate con si scarsa acqua', 'Veniva bellissima tanto quanto ogni comparazione ci saria scarsa', 'Ma l'ingegno e le rime erano scarse' (Petrarch).

Page 159, l. 21. seaven Antiquaries studies. Donne has more than one hit at Antiquaries. See the Epigrams and Satyre V. The reign of Elizabeth witnessed a great revival of antiquarian studies and the first formation of an Antiquarian society: 'There was a time, most excellent king,' says a later writer addressing King James, 'when as well under Queen Elizabeth, as under your majesty, certain choice gentlemen, men of known proof, were knit together, statis temporibus, by the love of these studies, upon contribution among themselves: which company consisted of an elective president and of clarissimi, of other antiquaries and a register.' Oldys, Life of Raleigh, p. 317. He goes on to describe how the society was dissolved by death. In the list of names he gives there are more than seven, but it is just possible that Donne refers to some such society in its early stages.

l. 22. Africks monsters, Guianaes rarities. Africa was famous as the land of monsters. The second reference is to the marvels described in Sir Walter Raleigh's The discoverie of the large, rich and bewtiful Empire of Guiana, with a relation of the great and golden City of Manoa which the Spaniards call El Dorado, performed in the year 1595 (pub. 1596). Among the monsters were Amazons, Anthropophagi,

and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders.

l. 23. Stranger then strangers, &c. The 'Stranger then strangest' of some MSS. would form a natural climax to the preceding list of marvels. But 'strangers' is the authoritative reading, and forms the transition to the next few lines. The reference is to the unpopularity in London of the numerous strangers whom wars and religious persecution had collected in England. Strype (Annals, iv) prints a paper of 1568 in which the Lord Mayor gives to the Privy Council an account of the strangers in London. In 1593 there were again complaints of their presence and threats to attack them. 'While these inquiries were making, to incense the people against them there were these lines in one of their libels: Doth not the world see that you, beastly brutes, the Belgians, or rather drunken drones and faint-hearted Flemings; and you fraudulent father (sic. Query 'faitor'), Frenchmen, by your cowardly flight from your own natural countries, have abandoned the same into the hands of your proud, cowardly enemies, and have by a feigned hypocrisy and counterfeit show of religion placed yourself here in a most fertile soil, under a most gracious and merciful prince; who hath been contented, to the great prejudice of her own natural subjects, to suffer you to live here in better case and more freedom then her own people—Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that it is best for them to depart out of the realm of England between this and the 9th of July next. If not then to take that which follows: for that there shall be many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. And all the apprentices and journeymen will down with the Flemings and strangers.'

Another libel was in verse, and after quoting it the official document proceeds: 'The court upon these seditious motives took the most prudent measures to protect the poor strangers, and to prevent any riot or insurrection.' Among other provisions, 'Orders to be given to appoint a strong watch of merchants and others, and like-handicrafted masters, to answer for their apprentices' and servants' misdoing.' Strype's Annals, iv. 234-5.

In the same year a bill was promoted in Parliament against aliens selling foreign wares among us by retail, which Raleigh supported: 'Whereas it is pretended that for strangers it is against charity, against honour, against profit to expel them: in my opinion it is no matter of charity to relieve them. For first, such as fly hither have forsaken their own king: and religion is no pretext for them; for we have no Dutchmen here, but such as come from those princes where the gospel is preached; yet here they live disliking our church,' &c. Birch, Life of Raleigh, p. 163.

I have thought it worth while to note these more recent references as Grosart refers to the rising against strangers on May-day, 1517.

l. 29. by your priesthood, &c. In 1581 a proclamation was issued imposing the penalty of death on any Jesuits or seminary priests who entered the Queen's dominions, and in 1585 Parliament again decreed that all Jesuits and seminary priests were to leave the kingdom within forty days under the capital penalty of treason. The detection, imprisonment, torture, and execution of disguised priests form a considerable chapter in Elizabethan history. Donne's companion looks so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest from Rome, or Douay. See Strype's Annals, passim, and Meyer, Die Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth, 1910.

Page 160, l. 35. and saith: 'saith' is the reading of all the earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor silently alter it to an exclamatory 'faith'—turning it into a statement which Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a harshly interpolated 'so he says'. One MS. adds 'he', and possibly the pronoun in some form has been dropped, e.g. 'sayth a speakes'.

ll. 37-8. Made of the Accents, &c. It is perhaps rash to accept the 'no language' of A25, Q, and the Dyce MS. But the last two represent, I think, an early version of the Satyres, and 'no language' (like 'nill be delayed', Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn) is just the sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated transmission. It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better sense; and it is echoed by Jonson in his Discoveries: 'Spenser in affecting the ancients writ no language.' In like manner Donne's companion, in affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, spoke none. I confess that seems to me a more pointed remark than that he spoke one made up of these.

l. 48. Jovius or Surius: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, among many other works wrote Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV. 1553. Chambers quotes from the Nouvelle Biographie Générale: 'Ses œuvres sont pleines des mensonges dont profita sa cupidité.'

Laurentius Surius (1522-78) was a Carthusian monk who wrote ecclesiastical history. Among his works are a Commentarius brevis rerum in orbe gestarum ab anno 1550 (1568), and a Vitae Sanctorum, 1570 et seq. He was accused of inaccuracy by Protestant writers. It is worth while noting that Q and O'F read 'Sleydan', i.e. Sleidanus. John Sleidan (1506-56) was a Protestant historian who, like Surius, wrote both general and ecclesiastical history, e.g. De quatuor Summis Imperiis, Babylonico, Persico, Graeco, et Romano, 1556 (an English translation appeared in 1635), and De Statu Religionis et Reipublicae, Carolo Quinto Caesare Commentarii (1555-9). The latter is a history of the Reformation written from the Protestant point of view, to which Surius' work is a reply. Sleidan's history did not give entire satisfaction to the reformers. It is quite possible that Donne's first sneer was at the Protestant historian and that he thought it safer later to substitute the Catholic Surius.

l. 54. Calepines Dictionarie. A well-known polyglot dictionary edited by Ambrose Calepine (1455-1511) in 1502. It grew later to a Dictionarium Octolingue, and ultimately to a Dictionarium XI Linguarum (Basel, 1590).

l. 56. Some other Jesuites. The 'other' is found only in HN, which is no very reliable authority. Without it the line wants a whole foot, not merely a syllable. Donne more than once drops a syllable, compensating for it by the length and stress which is given to another. Nothing can make up for the want of a whole foot, though in dramatic verse an incomplete line may be effective. To me, too, it seems very like Donne to introduce this condensed and sudden stroke at Beza and nothing more likely to have been dropped later, either by way of precaution or because it was not understood. No one of the reformers was more disliked by Catholics than Beza. The licence of his early life, his loose Latin verses, the scurrilous wit of his own controversial method—all exposed him to and provoked attack. The De Vita et Moribus Theodori Bezae, Omnium Haereticorum nostri temporis facile principis, &c.: Authore Jacobo Laingaeo Doctore Sorbonico (1585), is a bitter and calumnious attack. There was, too, something of the Jesuit, both in the character of the arguments used and in the claim made on behalf of the Church to direct the civil arm, in Beza's defence of the execution of Servetus. Moreover, the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos was sometimes attributed to Beza, and the views of the reformers regarding the rights of kings put forward there, and those held by the Jesuits, approximate closely. (See Cambridge Modern History, iii. 22, Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 759-66.) In his subsequent attacks upon the Jesuits, Donne always singles out the danger of their doctrines and practice to the authority of kings. Throughout the Satyres Donne's veiled Catholic prejudices have to be constantly borne in mind.

Page 161, l. 59. and so Panurge was. See Rabelais, Pantagruel ii. 9. One day that Pantagruel was walking with his friends he met 'un homme beau de stature et elegant en tous lineaments de corps, mais pitoyablement navré en divers lieux, et tant mal en ordre qu'il sembloit estre eschappe es chiens'. Pantagruel, convinced from his appearance that 'il n'est pauvre que par fortune', demands of him his name and story. He replies; but, to the dismay of Pantagruel and his friends, his answer is couched first in German, then in Arabic (?), then in Italian, in English (or what passes as such), in Basque, in Lanternoy (an Esperanto of Rabelais's invention), in Dutch, in Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in the language of Utopia, and finally in Latin. '"Dea, mon amy," dist Pantagruel, "ne sçavez-vous parler françoys?" "Si faict tresbien, Seigneur," respondit le compaignon; "Dieu mercy! c'est ma langue naturelle et maternelle, car je suis né et ay esté nourry jeune au jardin de France: c'est Touraine."—"Doncques," dist Pantagruel, "racomtez nous quel est votre nom et dont vous venez."... "Seigneur," dist le compagnon, "mon vray et propre nom de baptesmes est Panurge."' Panurge was not much behind Calepine's Dictionary, and if Donne's companion spoke in the 'accent and best phrase' of all these tongues he certainly spoke 'no language'.

l. 69. doth not last: 'last' has the support of several good MSS., 'taste' (i.e. savour, go down, be acceptable) of some. It is impossible to decide on intrinsic grounds between them.

l. 70. Aretines pictures. The lascivious pictures of Giulio Romano, for which Aretino wrote sonnets.

l. 75. the man that keepes the Abbey tombes. See Davies' epigram, On Dacus, quoted in the general note on the Satyres.

l. 80. Kingstreet. From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.

ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:

Companion. Are not your Frenchmen neat?

Donne. Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, look he follows me.

Companion (ignoring this impertinence). Certes they (i.e. Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only wearing is your grogaram.

Donne. Not so Sir, I have more.

The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only one suit.' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes ... grogaram' to Donne, and the closing repartee to the bore. Chambers uses inverted commas, and has, probably by an oversight, omitted to begin a new speech at 'Mine'.

For 'your' as used by the bore compare Bottom's use of it in A Midsummer Nights Dream: 'I will discharge it in either your straw-coloured beard, or your orange-tawny beard', and 'there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion'. In most of the instances quoted by Schmidt there is the suggestion that Shakespeare is making fun of an affectation of the moment. That Donne had a French servant appears from one of his letters: 'therefore I onely send you this Letter ... and my promise to distribute your other Letters, according to your addresses, as fast as my Monsieur can doe it.' To Sir G. B., Letters, p. 201.

Page 162, l. 97. ten Hollensheads, or Halls, or Stowes. Every reader of these old chroniclers knows how they mingle with their account of the greater events of each year mention of trifling events, strange births, fires, &c. This characteristic of the Chronicles is reflected in the History-Plays based on them. Nash complains of these 'lay-chroniclers that write of nothing but of Mayors and Sherifs, and the deere yere and the great frost'. Pierce Penniless.

ll. 98. he knowes; He knowes. I have followed D, H49, Lec in thus punctuating. To place the semicolon after 'trash' makes 'Of triviall household trash' depend rather awkwardly on 'lye'. Donne does not accuse the chroniclers of lying, but of reporting trivialities.

Page 163, l. 113-4. since The Spaniards came, &c.: i.e. from 1588 to 1597.

l. 117. To heare this Makeron talke. This is the earliest instance of this Italian word used in English which the O.E.D. quotes, and is a proof of Donne's Italian travels. The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca (1747) quotes as an example of the word with this meaning, homo crassâ Minerva, in Italian:

O maccheron, ben hai la vista corta.

Bellina, Sonetti, 29.

Donne's use of the word attracted attention. It is repeated in one of the Elegies to the Author, and led to the absurd substitution, in the editions after 1633, of 'maceron' for 'mucheron' (mushroom) in the epistle prefixed to The Progress of the Soule.

l. 124. Perpetuities. 'Perpetuities are so much impugned because they will be prejudiciall to the Queenes profitt, which is raised daily from fines and recoveries.' Manningham's Diary, April 22, 1602. Manningham refers probably to real property in which for many centuries the Judges have ruled there can be no inalienable rights, i.e. perpetuities. Donne's companion declares that such inalienable rights are being established in offices. One has but to read Donne's or Chamberlain's letters (or any contemporaries) to see what a traffic went on in reversions to offices secular and sacred.

l. 133. To sucke me in; for.... I have, with some of the MSS. and with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' with what follows. But 1633 and the better MSS. read:

To sucke me in for hearing him. I found....

Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for hearing him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the superstition about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as ... leachers, &c., ... so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he free.' 'I should be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy who had spoken treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of trials of suspected traitors before Walsingham and others. It is on this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a crown or two.

Page 164, l. 148. complementall thankes. The word 'complement' or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened and brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the most part, in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives an addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his condemnation that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions well too.' Sermons 80. 18. 176.

l. 164. th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility. I have followed the MSS. in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be more easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is commoner as a noun. The O.E.D. gives no example of the adjectival use earlier than 1613. Compare:

The huft, puft, curld, purld, wanton Pride.

Sylvester, Du Bartas, i. 2.

Page 165, l. 169. your waxen garden or yon waxen garden—it is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or 'motion' exhibitors. Compare:

I smile to think how fond the Italians are,

To judge their artificial gardens rare,

When London in thy cheekes can shew them heere

Roses and Lillies growing all the yeere.

Drayton, Heroical Epistles (1597), Edward IV to Jane Shore.

l. 176. Baloune. A game played with a large wind-ball or football struck to and fro with the arm or foot.

l. 179. and I, (God pardon mee.) This, the reading of the 1633 edition, is obviously right. Mr. Chambers, misled by the dropping of the full stop after 'me' in the editions from 1639 onwards, has adopted a reading of his own:

and aye—God pardon me—

As fresh and sweet their apparels be, as be

The fields they sold to buy them.

But what, in this case, does Donne ask God's pardon for? It is not his fault that their apparels are fresh or costly. 'God pardon them!' would be the appropriate exclamation. What Donne asks God's pardon for is, that he too should be found in the 'Presence' again, after what he has already seen of Court life and 'the wretchedness of suitors': as though Dante, who had seen Hell and escaped, should wilfully return thither.

l. 189. Cutchannel: i.e. Cochineal. The ladies' painted faces suggest the comparison. In or shortly before 1603 an English ship, the Margaret and John, made a piratical attack on the Venetian ship, La Babiana. An indemnity was paid, and among the stolen articles are mentioned 54 weights of cochineal, valued at £50-7. Our school Histories tell us of Turkish and Moorish pirates, not so much of the piracy which was conducted by English merchant ships, not always confining themselves to the ships of nations at war with their country.

Page 166, ll. 205-6. trye ... thighe. I have, with the support of Ash. 38, printed thus instead of tryes ... thighes. If we retain 'tryes', then we should also, with several MSS., read (l. 204) 'survayes'; and if 'thighes' be correct we should expect 'legges'. The regular construction keeps the infinitive throughout, 'refine', 'lift', 'call', 'survay', 'trye'. If we suppose that Donne shifted the construction as he got away from the governing verb, the change would naturally begin with 'survayes'.

ll. 215-6. A Pursevant would have ravish'd him away. The reading of three independent MSS., Q, O'F, and JC, of 'Topcliffe' for 'Pursevant' is a very interesting clue to the Catholic point of view from which Donne's Satyres were written. Richard Topcliffe (1532-1609) was one of the cruellest of the creatures employed to ferret out and examine by torture Catholics and Jesuits. It was he who tortured Southwell the poet. In 1593 he was on the commission against Jesuits, and in 1594-5 was in prison. John Hammond, the civilist, who is possibly referred to in Satyre V, l. 87, sat with him on several inquiries. See D.N.B. and authorities quoted there; also Meyer, Die Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth, 1910.

Page 167, ll. 233-4. men big enough to throw

Charing Crosse for a barre.

Of one of Harvey's pamphlets Nash writes: 'Credibly it was once rumoured about the Court, that the Guard meant to try masteries with it before the Queene, and, instead of throwing the sledge or the hammer, to hurle it foorth at the armes end for a wager.' Have with you, &c. (McKerrow, iii, p. 36.)

ll. 235-6.

Queenes man, and fine

Living, barrells of beefe, flaggons of wine.

Compare Cowley's Loves Riddle, III. i:

Apl. He shew thee first all the coelestial signs,

And to begin, look on that horned head.

Aln. Whose is't? Jupiters?

Apl. No, tis the Ram!

Next that the spacious Bull fills up the place.

Aln. The Bull? Tis well the fellows of the Guard

Intend not to come thither; if they did

The Gods might chance to lose their beef.

The name 'beefeater' has, I suppose, some responsibility for the jest. Nash refers to their size: 'The big-bodied Halbordiers that guard her Majesty,' Nash (Grosart), i. 102; and to their capacities as trenchermen: 'Lies as big as one of the Guardes chynes of beefe,' Nash (McKerrow), i. 269.

'Ascapart is a giant thirty feet high who figures in the legend of Sir Bevis of Southampton.' Chambers.

l. 240. a scarce brooke. Donne uses 'scarce' in this sense, i.e. 'scanty'. It is not common. See note to l. 4.

Page 168, l. 242. Macchabees modestie. 'And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I have desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.' 2 Maccabees xv. 38.