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.' The critics probably included Wotton,--perhaps also Hales, whose criticism of Shakespeare shows the same readiness to find our own poets as good as the Ancients. The song, 'Sweetest love I do not go,' was probably written at the same time. It is almost identical in tone. They are certainly the tenderest of Donne's love poems, perhaps the only ones to which the epithet 'tender' can be applied. The _Valediction: of weeping_ is more passionate. An early translation of this poem into Greek verse is found in a volume in the Bodleian Library. ll. 9-12. _Moving of th'earth, &c._ 'The "trepidation" was the precession of the equinoxes, supposed, according to the Ptolemaic astronomy, to be caused by the movements of the Ninth or Crystalline Sphere.' Chambers.