Nor praise, nor dispraise me; Blesse nor curse.
It is not uncommon in Donne's poetry to find a syllable dropped with the effect of increasing the stress on a rhetorically emphatic word, here 'Blesse'. An editor would be sure to supply 'nor'.
Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster (Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808). It is clear that he used a copy of the 1669 edition, for he reads 35 'Lives fuellers', and also 42 'Aydroptique' for 'Hydroptique'. Both these mistakes were corrected in 1719. Donne speaks in his sermons of 'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. Sermons 80. 10. 99.
Page 112, l. 44. England is onely a worthy Gallerie: i.e. entrance hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country: for, if in this life only,' &c. Sermons 50. 30. 270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not two Worlds;... They are not two Houses; This is the Gallery, and that the Bedchamber of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no ruine.' Sermons 50. 43. 399.
In connexion with the general theme of this poem it may be noted that in 1605 Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester, who like Donne served in the Cadiz and Islands expeditions, left England accompanied by the beautiful Elizabeth Southwell disguised as a page. At this period the most fantastic poetry was never more fantastic than life itself.
Page 113. Elegie XVII.
l. 12. wide and farr. The MSS. here correct an obvious error of the editions.
Page 114, l. 24. This line is found only in A10, which omits the next eleven lines. It may belong to a shorter version of the poem, but it fits quite well into the context.
Page 115, l. 58. daring eyes. The epithet looks as though it had been repeated from the line above, and perhaps 'darling' or 'darting' may have been the original reading. However, both the MSS. agree with the editions, and the word is probably used in two distinct senses, 'bold, adventurous' with 'armes' and 'dazzling' with 'eyes'. Compare:
O now no more