cv. No mention of the ark as a link occurs, but a ship figured on the

copper coins distributed at Rome on New Year's day, which was sacred to Janus. The original connexion is probably found in Macrobius' statement (_Saturn._ I. 9) that among other titles Janus was invoked as 'Consivius ... a conserendo id est a propagine generis humani quae Iano auctore conseritur'. Noah is the father of the extant human race.

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 The body ...

but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to make the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:

thy fair goodly soul, which doth Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe. _Satyre III_, ll. 41-2.

'The soul is so glad to be at last able to move (having been imprisoned hitherto in plants which have the soul of growth, not of locomotion or sense), and the body is so free of its kindnesses to the soul, that it, the sparrow, forgets the duty of self-preservation.'

l. 214. _hid nets._ In making my first collation of the printed texts I had queried the possibility of 'hid' being the correct reading for 'his', a conjecture which the Gosse MS. confirms.

PAGE =305=, l. 257. _None scape, but few, and fit for use, to get._ I have added a comma after 'use' to make the construction a little clearer; a pause is needed. 'The nets were not wrought, as now, to let none scape, but were wrought to get few and those fit for use; as, for example, a ravenous pike, &c.'

PAGE =306=, ll. 267-8. '_To make the water thinne, and airelike faith cares not._' What Chambers understands by 'air like faith', I do not know. What Donne says is that the manner in which fishes breathe is a matter about which faith is indifferent. Each man may hold what theory he chooses. There is not much obvious relevance in this remark, but Donne has already in this poem touched on the difference between faith and knowledge:

better proofes the law Of sense then faith requires.

A vein of restless scepticism runs through the whole.

l. 280. _It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food._ If with _1650-69_, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor, we alter the full stop which separates this line from the last to a comma, 'It' must mean the same as 'she', i.e. the fish. This is a harsh construction. The line is rather to be taken as an aphorism. 'To be exalted is often to become the instrument and prey of him who has exalted you.'

PAGE =307=, l. 296. _That many leagues at sea, now tir'd hee lyes._ The reading of _G_ represents probably what Donne wrote. It is quite clear that _1633_ was printed from a MS. identical with _A18_, _N_, _TC_, and underwent considerable correction as it passed through the press. In no poem does the text of one copy vary so much from that of another as in this. Now in this MS. a word is dropped. The editor supplied the gap by inserting 'o're-past', which simply repeats 'flown long and fast'. _G_ shows what the dropped word was. 'Many leagues at sea' is an adverbial phrase qualifying 'now tir'd he lies'.

ll. 301-10. I owe the right punctuation of this stanza to the Grolier Club edition and Grosart. The 'as' of l. 303 requires to be followed by a comma. Missing this, Chambers closes the sentence at l. 307, 'head', leaving 'This fish would seem these' in the air. The words 'when all hopes fail' play with the idea of 'the hopeful Promontory', or Cape of Good Hope.

PAGE =308=, ll. 321-2. _He hunts not fish, but as an officer, Stayes in his court, at his owne net._

Compare: 'A confidence in their owne strengths, a sacrificing to their own Nets, an attributing of their securitie to their own wisedome or power, may also retard the cause of God.' _Sermons_, Judges xv. 20 (1622).

'And though some of the Fathers pared somewhat too neare the quick in this point, yet it was not as in the Romane Church, to lay snares, and spread nets for gain.' _Sermons_ 80. 22. 216.

'The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of comfort comes to him' (the courtier) 'but hee will die in his old religion, which is to sacrifice to his owne Nets, by which his portion is plenteous.' _Sermons_ 80. 70. 714.

The image of the net is probably derived from Jeremiah v. 26: 'For among my people are found wicked men; they lay wait as he that setteth snares; they set a trap, they catch men.' Compare also: 'he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor when he draweth him into his net.' Psalm x. 9.

PAGES =310-11=, ll. 381-400. Compare: 'Amongst _naturall Creatures_, because howsoever they differ in bignesse, yet they have some proportion to one another, we consider that some very little creatures, contemptible in themselves, are yet called enemies to great creatures, as the Mouse is to the Elephant.' _Sermons_ 50. 40. 372. 'How great an Elephant, how small a Mouse destroys.' _Devotions_, p. 284.

ll. 405-6. _Who in that trade, of Church, and kingdomes, there Was the first type._

The _1635_ punctuation of this passage is right, though it is better to drop the comma after 'Kingdoms' and obviate ambiguity. The trade is the shepherd's; in it Abel is type both of Church and Kingdom, Emperor and Pope. As a type of Christ Donne refers to Abel in _The Litanie_, p. 341, l. 86.

PAGE =312=, l. 419. _Nor resist._ I have substituted 'make' for the 'much' of the editions, confident that it is the right reading and explains the vacillation of the MSS. The proper alternative to 'show' is 'make'. The error arose from the obsolescence of 'resist' used as a noun. But the O.E.D. cites from Lodge, _Forbonius and Priscilla_ (1585), 'I make no resist in this my loving torment', and other examples dated 1608 and 1630. Donne is fond of verbal nouns retaining the form of the verb unchanged.

l. 439. _soft Moaba._ 'Moaba', 'Siphatecia' (l. 457), 'Tethlemite' (l. 487), and Themech' (l. 509) are not creatures of Donne's invention, but derived from his multifarious learning. It is, however, a little difficult to detect the immediate source from which he drew. The ultimate source of all these additions to the Biblical narrative and persons was the activity of the Jewish intellect and imagination in the interval between the time at which the Old Testament closes and the dispersion under Titus and Vespasian, the desire of the Jews in Palestine and Alexandria to 'round off the biblical narrative, fill up the lacunae, answer all the questions of the inquiring mind of the ancient reader'. Of the original Hebrew writings of this period none have survived, but their traditions passed into mediaeval works like the _Historia Scholastica_ of Petrus Comestor and hence into popular works, e.g. the Middle English _Cursor Mundi_. Another compendium of this pseudo-historical lore was the _Philonis Judaei Alexandrini. Libri Antiquitatum. Quaestionum et Solutionum in Genesin. de Essaeis. de Nominibus hebraicis. de Mundo. Basle._ 1527. An abstract of this work is given by Annius of Viterbo in the book referred to in a previous note. Dr. Cohn has shown that this Latin work is a third- or fourth-century translation of a Greek work, itself a translation from the Hebrew. More recently Rabbi M. Gaster has brought to light the Hebrew original in portions of a compilation of the fourteenth century called the _Chronicle of Jerahmeel_, of which he has published an English translation under the 'Patronage of the Royal Asiatic Society', _Oriental Translation Fund_. New Series, iv. 1899. In