Page 299, ll. 114-17. There can be no doubt, I think, that the 1633 text is here correct, though for clearness a comma must be inserted after 'reasons'. The emendation of the 1635 editor which modern editors have followed gives an awkward and, at the close, an absurdly tautological sentence. It is not the reason, the rational faculty, of sceptics which is like the bubbles blown by boys, that stretch too thin, 'break and do themselves spill.' What Donne says, is that the reasons or arguments of those who answer sceptics, like bubbles which break themselves, injure their authors, the apologists. The verse wants a syllable—not a unique phenomenon in Donne's satires; but if one is to be supplied 'so' would give the sense better than 'and'.
Page 300, l. 129. foggie Plot. The word 'foggie' has here the in English obsolete, in Scotch and perhaps other dialects, still known meaning of 'marshy', 'boggy'. The O.E.D. quotes, 'He that is fallen into a depe foggy well and sticketh fast in it,' Coverdale, Bk. Death, I. xl. 160; 'The foggy fens in the next county,' Fuller, Worthies.
l. 137. To see the Prince, and have so fill'd the way. The grammatically and metrically correct reading of G appears to me to explain the subsequent variation. 'Prince' struck the editor of the 1633 edition as inconsistent with the subsequent 'she', and he therefore altered it to 'Princess'. He may have been encouraged to do so by the fact that the copy from which he printed had dropped the 'have', or he may himself have dropped the 'have' to adjust the verse to his alteration. The former is, I think, the more likely, because what would seem to be the earlier printed copies of 1633 read 'Prince': unless he himself overlooked the 'have' and then amended by 'Princess'. The 1635 editor restored 'Prince' and then amended the verse by his usual device of padding, changing 'fill'd' to 'fill up'. Of course Donne's line may have read as we give it, with 'Princess' for 'Prince', but the evidence of the MSS. is against this, so far as it goes. The title of 'Prince' was indeed applicable to a female sovereign. The O.E.D. gives: 'Yea the Prince ... as she hath most of yearely Revenewes ... so should she have most losse by this dearth,' W. Stafford, 1581; 'Cleopatra, prince of Nile,' Willobie, Avisa, 1594; 'Another most mighty prince, Mary Queene of Scots,' Camden (Holland), 1610.
Page 301, ll. 159-160. built by the guest,
This living buried man, &c.
The comma after guest is dropped in the printed editions, the editor regarding 'this living buried man' as an expansion of 'the guest'. But the man buried alive is the 'soul's second inn', the mandrake. 'Many Molas and false conceptions there are of Mandrakes, the first from great Antiquity conceiveth the Root thereof resembleth the shape of Man which is a conceit not to be made out by ordinary inspection, or any other eyes, than such as regarding the clouds, behold them in shapes conformable to pre-apprehensions.' Browne, Vulgar Errors.
Page 303, ll. 203-5. The punctuation of this stanza is in the editions very chaotic, and I have amended it. A full stop should be placed at the end of l. 203, 'was not', because these lines complete the thought of the previous stanza. Possibly the semicolon after 'ill' was intended to follow 'not', but a full stop is preferable. Moreover, the colon after 'soule' (l. 204) suggests that the printer took ''twas not' with 'this soule'. The correct reading of l. 204 is obviously:
So jolly, that it can move, this soul is.
Chambers prefers:
So jolly, that it can move this soul, is