No More Learning

i. 225. Here the rigging has the appearance of an
old-clothes shop.

l. 17. _No use of lanthornes. _ The reference is to the lanterns in the
high sterns of the ships, used to keep the fleet together. 'There
is no fear now of our losing one another. ' Each squadron of a fleet
followed the light of its Admiral. Essex speaks of having lost, or
missing, 'Sir Walter Raleigh with thirty sailes that in the night
followed his light. ' _Purchas_, xx. 24-5.

l. 18. _Feathers and dust.
_ 'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in
the world for some things: his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by
heart; and that passage of the Calme, That dust and feathers doe not
stirre, all was soe quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have written all
his best peeces ere he was twenty-five yeares old. ' _Jonson's
Conversations with Drummond. _ When Donne wrote _The Calme_ he was in
his twenty-fifth year.

l. 21. _lost friends. _ Raleigh and his squadron lost the main fleet
while off the coast of Spain, before they set sail definitely for
the Azores. He rejoined the fleet at the Islands. Donne's poem was
probably written in the interval.

The reading of some MSS. , 'lefte friends,' is quite a possible one.
Carleton, writing from Venice to Chamberlain, says: 'Let me tell you,
for your comfort (for I imagine what is mine is yours) that my last
news from the left island . . . took knowledge of my vigilancy and
diligency.