No More Learning

769.


PAGE =331=. THE CROSSE.

Donne has evidently in view the aversion of the Puritan to the sign of
the cross used in baptism.

With the latter part of the poem compare George Herbert's _The
Crosse_.

PAGE =332=, l. 27. _extracted chimique medicine. _ Compare:

Only in this one thing, be no Galenist; To make
Courts hot ambitions wholesome, do not take
A dramme of Countries dulnesse; do not adde
Correctives, but as chymiques, purge the bad.
_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.