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.