No More Learning

_Letters to, &c. _, p. 182, ll. 59-62.

ll. 33-4. _As perchance carvers do not faces make,
But that away, which hid them there, do take. _

'To make representations of men, or of other creatures, we finde two
wayes; Statuaries have one way, and Painters have another: Statuaries
doe it by Substraction; They take away, they pare off some parts of
that stone, or that timber, which they work upon, and then that which
they leave, becomes like that man, whom they would represent: Painters
doe it by Addition; Whereas the cloth or table presented nothing
before, they adde colours, and lights, and shadowes, and so there
arises a representation. ' _Sermons_ 80. 44. 440.

Norton compares Michelangelo's lines:

Non ha l' ottimo artista alcun concetto
Ch' un marmo solo in se non circonscriva
Col suo soverchio, e solo a quello arriva
La man che obbedisce all' intelletto.

PAGE =333=, l. 47. _So with harsh, &c.
_ Chambers, I do not know why,
punctuates this line:

So with harsh, hard, sour, stinking; cross the rest;

This disguises the connexion of 'cross' with its adverbial
qualifications. The meaning is that as we cross the eye by making it
contemplate 'bad objects' so we must cross the rest, i. e. the other
senses, with harsh (the ear), hard (touch), sour (the taste), and
stinking (the sense of smell). The asceticism of Donne in his later
life is strikingly evidenced in such lines as these.

l. 48. I have made an emendation here which seems to me to combine
happily the text of _1633_ and that of the later editions. It seems
to me that _1633_ has dropped 'all', _1635-69_ have dropped 'call'. I
thought the line as I give it was in _O'F_, but found on inquiry I had
misread the collation. I should withdraw it, but cannot find it in my
heart to do so.

l. 52. _Points downewards. _ I think the MS. reading is probably right,
because (1) 'Pants' is the same as 'hath palpitation'; (2) Donne
alludes to the anatomy of the heart, in the same terms, in the
_Essayes in Divinity_, p.