Wicked as pages, who in early years Act sins which Prisca's confessor scarce hears. 40 One, one man only breeds my just offence; 45 Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence: Time, that at last matures a clap to pox, No young divine, new benefic'd, can be 50 55 More pert, more proud, more positive than he. NOTES. receive every thing within them, that either the law of nature, or the Gospels, enjoins. A just ridicule on those practical commentators, as they are called, who include all moral and religious duties within the Decalogue. Whereas their true original sense is much more confined; being a short summary of moral duty fitted for a single people, upon a particular occasion, and to serve temporary ends. Warburton. Ver. 48. makes a calf an ox,] An unaccountable blunder in our author. As if an ox was in his natural state. Warton. More, more than ten Sclavonians scolding, more NOTES. Ver. 61. Language, which Boreas-] The original has here a very fine stroke of satire : "Than when winds in our ruin'd abbyes roar." The frauds with which that work (so necessary for the welfare both of religion and the state) was begun; the rapine with which it was carried on; and the dissoluteness in which the plunder arising from it was wasted, had scandalized all sober men; and disposed some, even of the best Protestants, to wish, that some part of that immense wealth, arising from the suppression of the monasteries, had been reserved for charity, hospitality, and even for the service of religion. Warburton. Ver. 74. For not in chariots Peter] Pope might have applied the words of Horace to this eternal Peter, with as much propriety as he did to his friend Bolingbroke: Prima dicte mihi, summâ dicende camanâ! Call himself barrister to every wench, And woo in language of the Pleas and Bench? 60 65 75 Grave, as when prisoners shake the head and swear NOTES. 80 Ver. 78. Like a king's favourite] A line from the original, as also line 60; which shews that Donne, if he had properly attended to it, could have written harmoniously. Warton. Shortly (as the sea) he'll compass all the land From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover strand. And spying heirs melting with luxury, Satan will not joy at their sins as he: For (as a thrifty wench scrapes kitchen-stuffe, So huge that men (in our times' forwardness) NOTES. Ver. 105. So Luther, &c.] Our Poet, by judiciously transposing this fine similitude, has given new lustre to his author's thought. The Lawyer (says Dr. Donne) enlarges his legal instruments to the bigness of gloss'd civil laws, when it is to convey property to himself, and to secure his own ill-got wealth. But let the same lawyer convey property to you, and he then omits even the necessary words; and becomes as concise and loose as the hasty postils of a modern divine. So Luther, while a monk, and by his institution obliged to say Mass, and pray in person for others, thought even his Pater-noster too long. But when he set up for a governor in the church, and his business was to direct others how to pray for the success of his new model; he then lengthened the Pater-noster by a new clause. This representation of the first part of his conduct was to ridicule his want of devotion; as the other, where he tells us, that the ad dition 85 90 Till, like the sea, they compass all the land, O'er a learn'd, unintelligible place; Or, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out 95 100 Those words, that would against them clear the doubt. So Luther thought the Pater-noster long, When doom'd to say his beads and even-song; NOTES. 105 dition was the power and glory clause, was to satirize his ambition; and both together, to insinuate, that from a monk, he was become totally secularized. About this time of his life Dr. Donne had a strong propensity to the Roman Catholic religion, which appears from several strokes in these Satires. We find amongst his works, a short satirical thing called a Catalogue of rare Books, one article of which is intitled, M. Lutherus de abbreviatione Orationis Dominica, alluding to Luther's omission of the concluding Doxology in his two Catechisms; which shews the Poet was fond of his joke, |