It is not uncommon in Donne's poetry to find a syllable dropped with the effect of increasing the stress on a rhetorically emphatic word, here 'Blesse'. An editor would be sure to supply 'nor'. Lamb has quoted from this Elegy in his note to Beaumont and Fletcher's _Philaster_ (_Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_, 1808). It is clear that he used a copy of the 1669 edition, for he reads 35 'Lives fuellers', and also 42 'Aydroptique' for 'Hydroptique'. Both these mistakes were corrected in _1719_. Donne speaks in his sermons of 'fuelling and advancing his tentations'. _Sermons_ 80. 10. 99. PAGE =112=, l. 44. _England is onely a worthy Gallerie_: i.e. entrance hall or corridor: 'Here then is the use of our hope before death, that this life shall be a gallery into a better roome and deliver us over to a better Country: for, _if in this life only_,' &c. _Sermons_ 50. 30. 270. 'He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not _two Worlds_;... They are not _two Houses_; This is the _Gallery_, and that the _Bedchamber_ of one, and the same Palace, which shall feel no ruine.' _Sermons_ 50. 43. 399. In connexion with the general theme of this poem it may be noted that in 1605 Sir Robert Dudley, the illegitimate son of the Earl of Leicester, who like Donne served in the Cadiz and Islands expeditions, left England accompanied by the beautiful Elizabeth Southwell disguised as a page. At this period the most fantastic poetry was never more fantastic than life itself. PAGE =113=. ELEGIE XVII. l. 12. _wide and farr._ The MSS. here correct an obvious error of the editions. PAGE =114=, l. 24. This line is found only in _A10_, which omits the next eleven lines. It may belong to a shorter version of the poem, but it fits quite well into the context. PAGE =115=, l. 58. _daring eyes._ The epithet looks as though it had been repeated from the line above, and perhaps 'darling' or 'darting' may have been the original reading. However, both the MSS. agree with the editions, and the word is probably used in two distinct senses, 'bold, adventurous' with 'armes' and 'dazzling' with 'eyes'. Compare: O now no more Shall his perfections, like the sunbeams, dare The purblind world; in heaven those glories are. Campion, _Elegie upon the Untimely Death of Prince Henry_. Let his Grace go forward And dare us with his cap like larks. Shakespeare, _Henry VIII_, III. ii. 282. This refers to the custom of 'daring' or dazzling larks with a mirror. PAGE =116=. ELEGIE XVIII. PAGE =117=, ll. 31-2. _Men to such Gods, &c._ Donne has in view here the different kinds of sacrifice described by Porphyry: