No More Learning

5-6. _oreseest . . . overseene. _ Donne is probably punning: 'Thou
from the height of Parnassus lookest down upon London; I in London am
too much overlooked, disregarded. ' But it is not clear. He may mean
'am too much in men's eye, or kept too strictly under observation'.
The first meaning seems to me the more probable.


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l. 3. _brother.
_ _W_ reads 'brethren', and Morpheus _had_ many
brothers; but of these only two had with himself the power of assuming
what form they would, and of these two Phantasus took forms that lack
life. Donne, therefore, probably means Phobetor, but a friend copying
the poem thought to amend his mythology. See Ovid, _Metam. _ xi.
635-41.


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l. 18. _Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring. _ See introductory
note to the _Letters_.

l. 23. _businesse. _ The use of 'businesse' as a trisyllable with
plural meaning is quite legitimate: 'Idle and discoursing men, that
were not much affected, how businesse went, so they might talke of
them.