No More Learning

The first refers to the suitor. He, like the dog, dives for what _has_
vanished; goes to law for what is irrecoverable. The second reading
would refer to the dog and continue the illustration: 'Thou art
the dog whom shadows cozened and who div'd for what vanish'd. ' The
ambiguity accounts for the vacillation of the MSS. and editions. The
reading of _1669_ is a conjectural emendation. The 'div'd'st' of some
MSS. is an endeavour to get an agreement of tenses after 'what's' had
become 'what'.


PAGE =172=. VPON MR. THOMAS CORYATS CRUDITIES.

These verses were first published in 1611 with a mass of witty and
scurrilous verses by all the 'wits' of the day, prefixed to Coryats
_Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travells in France,
Savoy, Italy, Rhaetia . . . Newly digested in the hungry aire of
Odcombe, in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the
nourishment of the travelling members of this Kingdom_.
Coryat was
an eccentric and a favourite butt of the wits, but was not without
ability as well as enterprise. In 1612 he set out on a journey
through the East which took him to Constantinople, Jerusalem, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Persia, and India. In his letters to the wits at home he
sends greetings to, among others, Christopher Brooke, John Hoskins
(as 'Mr. Ecquinoctial Pasticrust of the Middle Temple'), Ben Jonson,
George Garrat, and 'M. John Donne, the author of two most elegant
Latine Bookes, _Pseudomartyr_ and _Ignatius Conclave_' He died at
Surat in 1617.

l. 2. _leavened spirit. _ This is the reading of _1611_. It was altered
in _1649_ to 'learned', and modern editors have neglected to correct
the error. A glance at the first line shows that 'leavened' is right.
It is leaven which raises bread. A 'leavened spirit' is one easily
puffed up by the 'love of greatness'. There is much more of satire in
such an epithet than in 'learned'.

l. 17.