l. 6. _Natures Secretary_: i.e. Aristotle. He is always 'the Philosopher' in Aquinas and the other schoolmen. Walton speaks of 'the great secretary of nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon'. l. 7. _jolly Statesmen._ All the MSS. except _O'F_ agree with _1633_ in reading 'jolly', though 'wily' is an obvious emendation. Chambers adopts it. By 'jolly' Donne probably meant 'overweeningly self-confident ... full of presumptuous pride ... arrogant, over-bearing' (O.E.D.). 'Evilmerodach, a jolly man, without Iustyse and cruel.' Caxton (1474). 'It concerneth every one of us ... not to be too high-minded or jolly for anything that is past.' Sanderson (1648). l. 10. _Giddie fantastique Poets of each land._ In a letter Donne tells Buckingham, in Spain, how his own library is filled with Spanish books 'from the mistress of my youth, Poetry, to the wife of mine age, Divinity'. This line in the Satires points to the fact, which Donne was probably tempted later to obscure a little, that his first prolonged visit to the Continent had been made before he settled in London in 1592 and probably without the permission of the Government. The other than Spanish poets would doubtless be French and Italian. Donne had read Dante. He refers to him in the fourth _Satyre_ ('who dreamt he saw hell'), and in an unpublished letter in the Burley MS. he dilates at some length, but in no very creditable fashion, on an episode in the _Divina Commedia_. Of French poets he probably knew at any rate Du Bartas and Regnier. l. 12. _And follow headlong, wild uncertain thee?_ I have retained the _1633_ punctuation instead of, with Chambers, comma-ing 'wild' as well as 'headlong'. The latter is possibly an adverb here, going with 'follow'. The use of 'headlong' as an adjective with persons was not common. The earliest example in the O.E.D. is from _Hudibras_: The Friendly Rug preserv'd the ground, And headlong Knight from bruise or wound. Donne's line is, however, ambiguous; and the subsequent description of the humorist would justify the adjective.