No More Learning

ll. 1-13. The Grolier Club editor places a full stop, Chambers a
colon, after 'shrinke', for the comma of the old editions. Chambers's
division is better than the first, which interrupts the steady run of
the thought to the climax,

A verier ghost than I.

The original punctuation preserves the rapid, crowded march of the
clauses.

l. 10. This line throws light on the character of the _1669_ text.
The correct reading of _1633_ was spoiled in _1635_ by accidentally
dropping 'will', and this error continued through _1639-54_. The 1669
editor, detecting the metrical fault, made the line decasyllabic by
interpolating 'a' and 'even'.


PAGE =48=. THE BROKEN HEART.

l. 8. _A flaske of powder burne a day.
_ The 'flash' of later editions
is probably a conjectural emendation, for 'flaske' (_1633_ and many
MSS. ) makes good sense; and the metaphor of a burning flask of powder
seems to suit exactly the later lines which describe what happened to
the heart which love inflamed

but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glasse.

Shakespeare uses the same simile in a different connexion:

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Mis-shapen in the conduct of them both:
Like powder in a skilless soldiers flaske,
Is set a fire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismembred with thine owne defence.
_Romeo and Juliet_, III. iii. 130.

l. 14. _and never chawes_: 'chaw' is the form Donne generally uses:
'Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers, the adversary may swallow;
but the understanding beleever, he must chaw, and pick bones, before
he come to assimilate him, and make him like himself. ' _Sermons_ 80.
18. 178.


PAGE =49=. A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING.

This poem is quoted by Walton after his account of the vision which
Donne had of his wife in France, in 1612: 'I forbear the readers
farther trouble as to the relation and what concerns it, and will
conclude mine with commending to his view a copy of verses given by
Mr. Donne to his wife at the time that he then parted from her: and
I beg leave to tell, that I have heard some critics, learned both in
languages and poetry, say, that none of the Greek or Latin poets did
ever equal them.