l. 27. _prone to more evills_; The reading 'mere evils' of several MSS., including _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is tempting and _may_ be right. In that case 'meere' has the now obsolete meaning of 'pure, unadulterated', 'meere English', 'meere Irish', &c. in O.E.D., or more fully, 'absolute, entire, sheer, perfect, downright', as in 'Th'obstinacie, willfull disobedience, meere lienge and disceite of the countrie gentlemen,' _Hist. MSS. Com._ (1600), quoted in O.E.D.; 'the mere perdition of the Turkish fleet,' Shakespeare, _Othello_, II. ii. 3. Such a strong adjective would however come better after 'devills' in the next line. Placed here it disturbs the climax. What Donne says here is that men in the country become beasts, and more prone to evil than beasts because of their higher faculties: If lecherous goats, if serpents envious Cannot be damn'd; Alas; why should I bee? Why should intent or reason, borne in mee, Make sinnes, else equall, in mee more heinous? _Holy Sonnets_, IX, p. 326. And in this same letter, ll. 41-2, he develops the thought further. PAGE =182=, ll. 59-62. _Only in this one thing, be no Galenist, &c._ The Galenists perceived in the living body four humours; hot, cold, moist, and dry, and held that in health these were present in fixed proportions. Diseases were due to disturbance of these proportions, and were to be cured by correction of the disproportion by drugs, these being used as they were themselves hot, cold, moist, or dry; to add to whichever humours were defective. The chymiques or school of Paracelsus, held that each disease had an essence which might be got rid of by being purged or driven from the body by an antagonistic remedy. PAGE =183=. TO S^r HENRY GOODYERE. Goodyere and Walton form between them the Boswell to whom we owe our fullest and most intimate knowledge of the life of Donne. To the former he wrote apparently a weekly letter in the years of his residence at Pyrford, Mitcham, and London. And Goodyere preserved his letters and his poems. Of the letters published by Donne's son in 1651-4, the greatest number, as well as the most interesting and intimate, are addressed to Goodyere. Some appeared with the first edition of the poems, and it is ultimately to Goodyere that we probably owe the generally sound text of that edition.