No More Learning

Birch, _Life of Raleigh_, p. 163.

I have thought it worth while to note these more recent references as
Grosart refers to the rising against strangers on May-day, 1517.

l. 29. _by your priesthood, &c. _ In 1581 a proclamation was issued
imposing the penalty of death on any Jesuits or seminary priests who
entered the Queen's dominions, and in 1585 Parliament again decreed
that all Jesuits and seminary priests were to leave the kingdom
within forty days under the capital penalty of treason. The detection,
imprisonment, torture, and execution of disguised priests form a
considerable chapter in Elizabethan history. Donne's companion looks
so strange that he runs the risk of arrest as a seminary priest
from Rome, or Douay. See Strype's _Annals_, passim, and Meyer, _Die
Katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth_, 1910.

PAGE =160=, l. 35. _and saith_: 'saith' is the reading of all the
earlier editions, although Chambers and the Grolier Club editor
silently alter it to an exclamatory 'faith'--turning it into a
statement which Donne immediately contradicts. The 'saith' is a
harshly interpolated 'so he says'. One MS.
adds 'he', and possibly the
pronoun in some form has been dropped, e. g. 'sayth a speakes'.

ll. 37-8. _Made of the Accents, &c. _ It is perhaps rash to accept
the 'no language' of _A25_, _Q_, and the Dyce MS. But the last
two represent, I think, an early version of the _Satyres_, and 'no
language' (like 'nill be delayed', _Epithal. made at Lincolns Inn_)
is just the sort of reading that would tend to disappear in repeated
transmission. It is too bold for the average copyist or editor. But
its boldness is characteristic of Donne; it gives a much better sense;
and it is echoed by Jonson in his _Discoveries_: 'Spenser in affecting
the ancients writ no language. ' In like manner Donne's companion, in
affecting the accents and best phrases of all languages, spoke none. I
confess that seems to me a more pointed remark than that he spoke one
made up of these.

l. 48. _Jovius or Surius_: Paolo Giovio, Bishop of Nocera, among many
other works wrote _Historiarum sui temporis Libri XLV.