No More Learning

Chambers prefers:

So jolly, that it can move this soul, is
The body . . .

but Donne was far too learned an Aristotelian and Scholastic to make
the body move the soul, or feel jolly on its own account:

thy fair goodly soul, which doth
Give this flesh power to taste joy, thou dost loathe.
_Satyre III_, ll. 41-2.

'The soul is so glad to be at last able to move (having been
imprisoned hitherto in plants which have the soul of growth, not of
locomotion or sense), and the body is so free of its kindnesses to the
soul, that it, the sparrow, forgets the duty of self-preservation. '

l. 214. _hid nets. _ In making my first collation of the printed texts
I had queried the possibility of 'hid' being the correct reading for
'his', a conjecture which the Gosse MS. confirms.

PAGE =305=, l. 257. _None scape, but few, and fit for use, to get.
_
I have added a comma after 'use' to make the construction a little
clearer; a pause is needed. 'The nets were not wrought, as now, to let
none scape, but were wrought to get few and those fit for use; as, for
example, a ravenous pike, &c. '

PAGE =306=, ll. 267-8. '_To make the water thinne, and airelike faith
cares not. _' What Chambers understands by 'air like faith', I do not
know. What Donne says is that the manner in which fishes breathe is a
matter about which faith is indifferent. Each man may hold what theory
he chooses. There is not much obvious relevance in this remark, but
Donne has already in this poem touched on the difference between faith
and knowledge:

better proofes the law
Of sense then faith requires.

A vein of restless scepticism runs through the whole.

l. 280. _It's rais'd, to be the Raisers instrument and food. _ If with
_1650-69_, Chambers, and the Grolier Club editor, we alter the full
stop which separates this line from the last to a comma, 'It' must
mean the same as 'she', i. e. the fish.