No More Learning

And yet the Country or the towne may swaye
Or beare a part, as clownes do in a play.

Donne was one of those to whom Wotton showed Bacon's poem, and the
result was the present letter which occasionally echoes Bacon's words.
Wotton replied to it in some characteristic verses preserved in _B_
(Lord Ellesmere's MS. ) and _P_ (belonging to Captain Harris). I print
it from the former:

_To J: D: from M^r H: W:_

Worthie Sir:
Tis not a coate of gray or Shepheards life,
Tis not in feilds or woods remote to live,
That adds or takes from one that peace or strife,
Which to our dayes such good or ill doth give:
It is the mind that make the mans estate 5
For ever happy or unfortunate.

Then first the mind of passions must be free
Of him that would to happiness aspire;
Whether in Princes Pallaces he bee,
Or whether to his cottage he retire; 10
For our desires that on extreames are bent
Are frends to care and traitors to content.

Nor should wee blame our frends though false they bee
Since there are thousands false, for one that's true,
But our own blindness, that we cannot see 15
To chuse the best, although they bee but few:
For he that every fained frend will trust,
Proves true to frend, but to himself unjust.

The faults wee have are they that make our woe,
Our virtues are the motives of our joye, 20
Then is it vayne, if wee to desarts goe
To seek our bliss, or shroud us from annoy:
Our place need not be changed, but our Will,
For every where wee may do good or ill.

But this I doe not dedicate to thee, 25
As one that holds himself fitt to advise,
Or that my lines to him should precepts be
That is less ill then I, and much more wise:
Yet 'tis no harme mortality to preach,
For men doe often learne when they do teach.

The date of the _debat_ is before April 1598, when Bastard's
_Chrestoleros_ was entered on the Stationers' Register, probably
1597-8, the interval between the return of the Islands Expedition and
Donne's entry into the household of Sir Thomas Egerton. Mr. Chambers
has shown that during this interval Donne was occasionally employed
by Cecil to carry letters to and from the Commanders of the English
forces still in France. But it was not till about April 1598 that he
found permanent employment.

l. 8.
_Remoraes_; Browne doubts 'whether the story of the remora be
not unreasonably amplified'. The name is given to any of the fish
belonging to the family Echeneididae, which by means of a suctorial
disk situated on the top of the head adhere to sharks, other large
fishes, vessels, &c. , letting go when they choose. The ancient
naturalists reported that they could arrest a ship in full course. See
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Lib. xiii, _De Aqua et ejus Ornatu_.

l. 11. _the even line_ is the reading of all the MS. copies, and must
have been taken from one of these by the 1669 editor. The use of the
word is archaic and therefore more probably Donne's than an editor's
emendation. Compare Chaucer's 'Of his stature he was of even length',
i. e. 'a just mean between extremes, of proper magnitude or degree'.
The 'even line' is, as the context shows, the exact mean between
the 'adverse icy poles'. I suspect that 'raging' is an editorial
emendation.