PAGE =142=, l. 26. _Sonns of these Senators wealths deep oceans._ The corruption of the text here has arisen in the first place from the readily explicable confusion of 'sonnes' or 'sonns' as written and 'sonne', the final 's' being the merest flourish and repeatedly overlooked in copying and printing, while 'sonne' easily becomes 'some', and secondly from a misapprehension of Donne's characteristic pun. The punctuation of the 1633 edition is supported by almost every MS. The 'frolique Patricians' are of course not the sons of 'these Senators' by birth. 'I speak not this to yourselves, you Senators of London,' says Donne in the _Sermon Preached at Pauls Cross ... 26 Mart. 1616_, 'but as God hath blessed you in your ways, and in your callings, so put your children into ways and courses too, in which God may bless them.... The Fathers' former labours shall not excuse their Sons future idleness.' The sons of wealthy citizens might grow idle and extravagant; they could not be styled 'Patricians'. It is not of them that Donne is thinking, but of the young noblemen who are accompanying their friend on his wedding-day. They are, or are willing to be, the sons, by marriage not by blood, of 'these Senators', or rather of their money-bags. In a word, they marry their daughters for money, as the hero of the _Epithalamion_ is doing. It is fortunate for the Senators if the young courtiers do not find in their wives as well as their daughters, like Fastidious Brisk in Jonson's comedy, 'Golden Mines and furnish'd Treasurie.' But they are 'Sunnes' as well as Sonnes'--suns which drink up the deep oceans of these Senators' wealth: it rain'd more Then if the Sunne had drunk the sea before. _Storme_, 43-4. Hence the metaphor 'deep oceans', and hence the appropriateness of the predicate 'Here shine'. This pun on 'sunne' and 'sonne' is a favourite with Donne: Mad paper stay, and grudge not here to burne With all those sonnes [sunnes _B_, _S96_] whom my braine did create. _To Mrs. M. H. H._, p. 216. I am thy sonne, made with thyself to shine. _Holy Sonnets_, II. 5. Sweare by thyself, that at my death thy sonne Shall shine as hee shines now, and heretofore. _A Hymn to God the Father._ 'This day both Gods Sons arose: The Sun of his Firmament, and the Son of his bosome.' _Sermons_ 80. 26. 255. 'And when thy Sun, thy soule comes to set in thy death-bed, the Son of Grace shall suck it up into glory.' Ibid. 80. 45. 450. Correctly read the line has a satiric quality which Donne's lines rarely want, and in which this stanza abounds. I have chosen the spelling 'Sonns' as that which is most commonly used in the MSS. for 'sonnes' and 'sunnes'.