It is clear that the MSS. _Cy_, _O'F_, _P_, _S96_ have derived this poem from a common source, inferior to that from which the _1633_ text is derived, which has the general support of the best MSS. These MSS. agree in the readings: 3 'holiness', but _O'F_ corrects, 10 'to use it,' 13 'whites' _Cy_, _O'F_, 14 'Integritie', but _O'F_ corrects, 33 'good treasure'. It is clear that a copy of this tradition fell into the hands of the _1635_ editor. His text is a contamination of the better and the inferior versions. The strange corruption of 4-6 began by the mistake of 'flowne' for 'showne'. In _O'F_ and the editions _1635-54_ the sense is adjusted to this by reading, 'How long loves weeds', and making the two lines an exclamation. The 'good treasure' (l. 33) of _1635-69_, which Chambers has adopted, comes from this source also. The reading at l. 10 is interesting; 'to use it', for 'to us, it', has obviously arisen from 'to use and love Poetrie' of the previous verse. In the case of 'seeme but light and thin' we have an emendation, even in the inferior version, made for the sake of the metre (which is why Chambers adopted it), for though _Cy_, _O'F_, and _P_ have it, _S96_ reads: Thoughe to use it, seeme and be light and thin. l. 2. _a retirednesse._ This reading of some MSS., including _W_, which is a very good authority for these Letters, is quite possibly authentic. It is very like Donne to use the article; it was very easy for a copyist to drop it. Compare the dropping of 'a' before 'span' in _Crucifying_ (p. 320), l. 8. The use of abstracts as common nouns with the article, or in the plural, is a feature of Donne's syntax. He does so in the next line: 'a chast fallownesse'. Again: 'Beloved, it is not enough to awake out of an ill sleepe of sinne, or of ignorance, or out of a good sleep, _out of a retirednesse_, and take some profession, if you winke, or hide your selves, when you are awake.' _Sermons_ 50. 11. 90. 'It is not that he shall have no adversary, nor that that adversary shall be able to doe him no harm, but that he should have a refreshing, a respiration, _In velamento alarum_, under the shadow of Gods wings.' _Sermons_ 80. 66. 670--where also we find 'an extraordinary sadnesse, a predominant melancholy, a faintnesse of heart, a chearlessnesse, a joylessnesse of spirit' (Ibid. 672). Donne does not mean to say that he is 'tied to retirednesse', a recluse. The letter was not written after he was in orders, but probably, like the preceding, when he was at Pyrford or Mitcham (1602-8). He is tied to a degree of retirednesse (compared with his early life) or a period of retiredness. He does not compare himself to a Nun but to a widow. Even a third widowhood is not necessarily a final state. 'So all retirings', he says in a letter to Goodyere, 'into a shadowy life are alike from all causes, and alike subject to the barbarousnesse and insipid dulnesse of the Country.' _Letters_, p. 63. But the phrase