No More Learning

A fine example of the high-wrought and conventional Elizabethan
Pastoralism, which it would be ludicrous to criticise on the ground of
the unshepherdlike or unreal character of some images suggested. Stanza
6 was probably inserted by Izaak Walton.

Poem 9.
This Poem, with 25 and 94, is taken from Davison's "Rhapsody," first
published in 1602. One stanza has been here omitted, in accordance with
the principle noticed in the Preface. Similar omissions occur in 45, 87,
100, 128, 160, 165, 227, 235. The more serious abbreviation by which it
has been attempted to bring Crashaw's "Wishes" and Shelley's "Euganean
Hills" within the limits of lyrical unity, is commended with much
diffidence to the judgment of readers acquainted with the original
pieces.

_Presence_ in line 12 is here conjecturally printed for _present_. A
very few similar corrections of (it is presumed) misprints have been
made:--as _thy_ for _my_, 22, line 9: _men_ for _me_, 41, line 3: _viol_
for _idol_, 252, line 43, and _one_ for _our_, line 90: _locks_ for
_looks_, 271, line 5: _dome_ for _doom_, 275, line 25:--with two or
three more less important.


Poem 15.

This charming little poem, truly "old and plain, and dallying with the
innocence of love" like that spoken of in Twelfth Night, is taken with
5, 17, 20, 34, and 40, from the most characteristic collection of
Elizabeth's reign, "England's Helicon," first published in 1600.


Poem 16.

Readers who have visited Italy will be reminded of more than one picture
by this gorgeous Vision of Beauty, equally sublime and pure in its
Paradisaical naturalness. Lodge wrote it on a voyage to "the Islands of
Terceras and the Canaries"; and he seems to have caught, in those
southern seas, no small portion of the qualities which marked the almost
contemporary Art of Venice,--the glory and the glow of Veronese, or
Titian, or Tintoret, when he most resembles Titian, and all but
surpasses him.

_The clear_: is the crystalline or outermost heaven of the old
cosmography.
For _resembling_ other copies give _refining_: the correct
reading is perhaps _revealing_.

_For a fair there's fairer none_: If you desire a Beauty, there is none
more beautiful than Rosaline.


Poem 18.

_that fair thou owest_: that beauty thou ownest.


Poem 23.

_the star Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken_:
apparently, Whose stellar influence is uncalculated, although his
angular altitude from the plane of the astrolabe or artificial horizon
used by astrologers has been determined.


Poem 27.

_keel_: skim.


Poem 29.

_expense_: waste.


Poem 30.

_Nativity once in the main of light_: when a star has risen and entered
on the full stream of light;--another of the astrological phrases no
longer familiar.

_Crooked eclipses_: as coming athwart the Sun's apparent course.

Wordsworth, thinking probably of the "Venus" and the "Lucrece," said
finely of Shakespeare "Shakespeare _could_ not have written an Epic; he
would have died of plethora of thought. " This prodigality of nature is
exemplified equally in his Sonnets. The copious selection here given
(which from the wealth of the material, required greater consideration
than any other portion of the Editor's task) contains many that will not
be fully felt and understood without some earnestness of thought on the
reader's part.