No More Learning

PAGE =158=. SATYRE IIII.

This satire, like several of the period, is based on Horace's _Ibam
forte via Sacra_ (_Sat. _ i. 9), but Donne follows a quite independent
line. Horace's theme is at bottom a contrast between his own
friendship with Maecenas and 'the way in which vulgar and pushing
people sought, and sought in vain, to obtain an introduction'. Donne,
like Horace, describes a bore, but makes this the occasion for a
general picture of the hangers-on at Court. A more veiled thread
running through the poem is an attack on the ways and tricks of
informers. The bore's gossip is probably not without a motive:

I . . . felt my selfe then
Becoming Traytor, and mee thought I saw
One of our Giant Statutes ope his jaw
To sucke me in.

The manner in which the stranger accosts him suggests the
'intelligencer': 'Two hungry turns had I scarce fetcht in this wast
gallery when I was encountered by a neat pedantical fellow, in the
forme of a Cittizen, who thrusting himself abruptly into my companie,
like an Intelligencer, began very earnestly to question me. ' Nash,
_Pierce Penniless_.

In the _Satyres_ Donne is always, though he does not state his
position too clearly, one with links attaching him to the persecuted
Catholic minority.
He hates informers and pursuivants.

ll. 1-4. These lines resemble the opening of Regnier's imitation of
Horace's satire:

Charles, de mes peches j'ay bien fait penitence;
Or, toy qui te cognois aux cas de conscience,
Juge si j'ay raison de penser estre absous.

I can trace no further resemblance.

l. 4. _A recreation to, and scarse map of this. _ I have ventured here
to restore, from _Q_ and its duplicate among the Dyce MSS. , what I
think must have been the original form of this line. The adjective
'scarse' or 'scarce' used in this way ('a scarce poet', 'a scarce
brook') is characteristic of Donne, and it always puzzled his
copyists, who tried to correct it in one way or another, e. g. 'scarce
a poet', II. 44; 'a scant brooke', IV. 240. It is inconceivable that
they would have introduced it.