l. 67. _Darknesse, lights elder brother._ The 'elder' of the MSS. is grammatically more correct than the 'eldest' of the editions. 'We must return again to our stronghold, faith, and end with this, that this beginning was, and before it, nothing. It is elder than darkness, which is elder than light; and was before confusion, which is elder than order, by how much the universal Chaos preceded forms and distinctions.' _Essays in Divinity_ (ed. Jessop, 1855), p. 46. PAGE =178=. THE CALME. l. 4. _A blocke afflicts, &c._ Aesop's _Fables_. Sir Thomas Rowe recalled Donne's use of the fable, when he was Ambassador at the Court of the Mogul. Of Ibrahim Khan, the Governor of Surat after Zufilkhar Khan, he writes: 'He was good but soe easy that he does no good; wee are not lesse afflicted with a block then before with a storck.' _The Embassy, &c._ (Hakl. Soc.), i. 82. l. 8. _thy mistresse glasse._ This poem, like the last, is _probably_ addressed to Christopher Brooke, but it is not so headed in any edition or MS. The Grolier Club editor ascribes the first heading to both. l. 14. _or like ended playes._ This suggests that the Elizabethan stage was not so bare of furniture as used to be stated, and also that furniture was not confined to the curtained-off rear-stage. What Donne recalls is a stage deserted by the actors but cumbered with furniture and decorations. l. 16. _a frippery_, i.e. 'A place where cast-off clothes are sold', O.E.D. 'Oh, ho, Monster; wee know what belongs to a frippery.' _Tempest_, IV. i. 225. Here the rigging has the appearance of an old-clothes shop. l. 17. _No use of lanthornes._ The reference is to the lanterns in the high sterns of the ships, used to keep the fleet together. 'There is no fear now of our losing one another.' Each squadron of a fleet followed the light of its Admiral. Essex speaks of having lost, or missing, 'Sir Walter Raleigh with thirty sailes that in the night followed his light.' _Purchas_, xx. 24-5. l. 18. _Feathers and dust._ 'He esteemeth John Done the first poet in the world for some things: his verses of the Lost Chaine he hath by heart; and that passage of the Calme, That dust and feathers doe not stirre, all was soe quiet. Affirmeth Donne to have written all his best peeces ere he was twenty-five yeares old.' _Jonson's Conversations with Drummond._ When Donne wrote _The Calme_ he was in his twenty-fifth year. l. 21. _lost friends._ Raleigh and his squadron lost the main fleet while off the coast of Spain, before they set sail definitely for the Azores. He rejoined the fleet at the Islands. Donne's poem was probably written in the interval.