A BURNT SHIP. In _W_ the title is given in Italian, in _O'F_ in Latin. Compare James's letter to Salisbury on the Dutch demands for assistance against Spain;--'Should I ruin myself for maintaining them.... I look that by a peace they should enrich themselves to pay me my debts, and if they be so weak as they cannot subsist, either in peace or war, without I ruin myself for upholding them, in that case surely the nearest harm is to be first eschewed: _a man will leap out of a burning ship and drown himself in the sea_; and it is doubtless a farther off harm from me to suffer them to fall again into the hands of Spain, and let God provide for the danger that may with time fall upon me or my posterity, than presently to starve myself and mine with putting the meat in their mouth.' _The King to Salisbury_, 1607, Hatfield MSS., quoted in Gardiner's _History of England_, ii. 25. PAGE =76=. A LAME BEGGER. Compare: Dull says he is so weake, he cannot rise, Nor stand, nor goe; if that be true, he lyes. Finis quoth R. Thomas Deloney, _Strange Histories of Songes & Sonets of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights and Gentlemen. Very pleasant either to be read or songe, &c._, 1607. PAGE =76=. SIR JOHN WINGEFIELD. _In that late Island._ Mr. Gosse has inadvertently printed 'base' for 'late'. The 'Lady' island of _O'F_ is due probably to ignorance of what island was intended. It is, of course, Cadiz itself, which is situated on an island at the extreme point of the headland which closes the bay of Cadiz to the west. 'Then we entered into the island of Cales with our footmen,' says Captain Pryce in his letter to Cecil. Strype's _Annals_, iv. 398. Another account relates how 'on the 21st they took the town of Cadiz and at the bridge in the island were encountered by 400 horses'. Here the severest fighting took place at 'the bridge from Mayne to Cadiz'. What does Donne mean by 'late island'? Is it the island we lately visited so gloriously, or the island on which the sun sets late, that western island, now become a new Pillar of Hercules? It would not be unlike Donne to give a word a startlingly condensed force. Compare (if the reading be right) 'far faith' (p. 189, l. 4) and the note.