'St. Peter.' "I apprehend danger here;-they'll soon call me in question for denying my Master." 'St. Paul.' "Nay, then, I had better be off too; for they'll question me for having persecuted the Christians, before my conversion." 6. Speaking of the small German potentates, I dictated the phrase,--'officious for equivalents.' This my amanuensis wrote,--'fishing for elephants;'--which, as I observed at the time, was a sort of Noah's angling, that could hardly have occurred, except at the commencement of the Deluge. LECTURE X. DONNE--DANTE--MILTON--PARADISE LOST. DONNE.[1] Born in London, 1573.--Died, 1631. I. With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots; Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue, Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw. II See lewdness and theology combin'd,-- A cynic and a sycophantic mind; A fancy shar'd party per pale between Death's heads and skeletons and Aretine!-- Not his peculiar defect or crime, But the true current mintage of the time. Such were the establish'd signs and tokens given To mark a loyal churchman, sound and even, Free from papistic and fanatic leaven. The wit of Donne, the wit of Butler, the wit of Pope, the wit of Congreve, the wit of Sheridan--how many disparate things are here expressed by one and the same word, Wit!--Wonder-exciting vigour, intenseness and peculiarity of thought, using at will the almost boundless stores of a capacious memory, and exercised on subjects, where we have no right to expect it--this is the wit of Donne! The four others I am just in the mood to describe and inter-distinguish;--what a pity that the marginal space will not let me! My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we--find two fitter hemispheres Without sharp north, without declining west? 'Good-Morrow', v. 15, &c. The sense is;--Our mutual loves may in many respects be fitly compared to corresponding hemispheres; but as no simile squares ('nihil simile est idem'), so here the simile fails, for there is nothing in our loves that corresponds to the cold north, or the declining west, which in two hemispheres must necessarily be supposed. But an ellipse of such length will scarcely rescue the line from the charge of nonsense or a bull. 'January,' 1829. Woman's constancy. A misnomer. The title ought to be-- Mutual Inconstancy. Whether both th' Indias of spice and 'mine', &c. 'Sun Rising', v. 17. And see at night thy western land of 'mine', &c. 'Progress of the Soul', 1 Song, 2. st. This use of the word mine specifically for mines of gold, silver, or precious stones, is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.