Page 31, ll. 37-54. These verses are somewhat difficult but very characteristic. 'In these our letters, wherein is contained the whole mystery of love, Lawyers will find by what titles we hold our mistresses, what dues we are bound to pay as to feudal superiors. They will find also how, claiming prerogative or privilege they devour or confiscate the estates for which we have paid due service, by transferring what we owe to love, to womankind. The service which we pay expecting love in return, they claim as due to their womanhood, and deserving of no recompense, no return of love. Even when going beyond the strict fee they demand subsidies they will forsake a lover who thinks he has thereby secured them, and will plead "honour" or "conscience".'
'Statesmen will learn here the secret of their art. Love and statesmanship both alike depend upon what we might call the art of "bluffing". Neither will bear too curious examination. The statesman and the lover must impose for the moment, disguising weakness or inspiring fear in those who descry it.'
l. 53. In this thy booke, such will their nothing see. After some hesitation I have adopted the 1635-54 reading in preference to that of 1633 and 1669, 'there something.' I do so because (1) the MSS. support it. Their uncertainty as to 'their' and 'there' is of no importance; (2) 'there' is a weak repetition of 'in this thy book', an emphatic enough indication of place; (3) 'their nothing' is both the more difficult reading and the more characteristic of Donne. The art of a statesman is a 'nothing'. He uses the word in the same way of his own Paradoxes and Problems when sending some of them to Sir Henry Wotton, and with the same emphatic stress on the first syllable: 'having this advantage to escape from being called ill things that they are nothings' (An unpublished letter, quoted in the Cambridge History of Literature, vol. iv, p. 218). The word was pronounced with a fully rounded 'no'. Compare Negative Love, l. 16.
With the sentiment compare: 'And as our Alchymists can finde their whole art and worke of Alchymy, not only in Virgil and Ovid, but in Moses and Solomon; so these men can find such a transmutation into golde, such a foundation of profit, in extorting a sense for Purgatory, or other profitable Doctrines, out of any Scripture.' Sermons 80. 78. 791.
'Un personnage de grande dignité, me voulant approuver par authorité cette queste de la pierre philosophale où il est tout plongé, m'allegua dernièrement cinq ou six passages de la Bible, sur lesquels il disoit s'estre premièrement fondé pour la descharge de sa conscience (car il est de profession ecclesiastique); et, à la verité, l'invention n'en estoit pas seulement plaisante, mais encore bien proprement accommodée à la défence de cette belle science.' Montaigne, Apologie de Raimond Sebond (Les Essais, ii. 12).
Page 32, ll. 59-61. To take a latitude, &c. The latitude of a spot may always be found by measuring the distance from the zenith of a star whose altitude, i.e. distance from the equator, is known. The words 'At their brightest' are only used to point the antithesis with the 'dark eclipses' used to measure longitude.
ll. 61-3.
but to conclude
Of longitudes, what other way have wee,
But to marke when, and where the dark eclipses bee.