'If it' (i.e. a torch) 'have _never_ been _lighted_, it does not easily take light, but it must be _bruised_ and _beaten_ first; if it have been lighted and put out, though it cannot take fire _of it self_, yet it does easily conceive fire, if it be presented within any convenient distance.' _Sermons_ 50. 36. 332. PAGE =38=. A VALEDICTION: OF WEEPING. ll. 1-9. I have changed the comma at l. 6 to a semicolon, as the first image, that of the coins, closes here. Chambers places a full stop at l. 4 'worth', and apparently connects the next two lines with what follows--wrongly, I think. Finishing the figure of the coins, coined, stamped, and given their value by her, Donne passes on to a couple of new images. 'The tears are fruits of much grief; but they are symbols of more to come. For, as your image perishes in each tear that falls, so shall we perish, be nothing, when between us rolls the "salt, estranging sea".' It is, I suppose, by an inadvertence that Chambers has left 'divers' unchanged to 'diverse'. I cannot think there is any reference to 'a diver in the pearly seas'. Grolier and the Dutch poet divide as here: Laet voor uw aengesicht mijn trouwe tranen vallen, Want van dat aengensicht ontfangen sy uw' munt, En rijsen tot de waerd dies' uwe stempel gunt Bevrucht van uw' gedaent: vrucht van veel' ongevallen, Maer teekenen van meer, daer ghy valt met den traen, Die van u swanger was, en beyde wy ontdaen Verdwijnen, soo wy op verscheiden oever staen. PAGE =39=. LOVES ALCHYMIE. l. 7. _th'Elixar_: i.e. 'the Elixir Vitae', which heals all disease and indefinitely prolongs life. It is sometimes identified with the philosopher's stone, which transmutes metals to gold. In speaking of quintessences (see note, II. p. 30) Paracelsus declares that there are certain quintessences superior to those of gold, marchasite, precious stones, &c., 'of more importance than that they should be called a quintessence. It should be rather spoken of as a certain secret and mystery ... Among these arcana we here put forward four. Of these arcana the first is the mercury of life, the second is the primal matter, the third is the Philosopher's Stone, and the fourth the tincture. But although these arcana are rather angelical than human to speak of we shall not shrink from them.' From the description he gives they all seem to operate more or less alike, purging metals and other bodies from disease. ll. 7-10. _And as no chymique yet, &c._ 'My Lord Chancellor gave me so noble and so ready a dispatch, accompanied with so fatherly advice that I am now, like an alchemist, delighted with discoveries by the way, though I attain not mine end.' To ... Sir H. G., Gosse's _Life, &c._, ii. 49. ll. 23-4. _at their best Sweetnesse and wit, they'are but Mummy, possest._ The punctuation of these lines in _1633-54_ is ambiguous, and Chambers has altered it wrongly to Sweetness and wit they are, but Mummy possest.