These verses were first published in 1611 with a mass of witty and
scurrilous verses by all the 'wits' of the day, prefixed to Coryats
_Crudities hastily gobbled up in five months travells in France,
Savoy, Italy, Rhaetia ... Newly digested in the hungry aire of
Odcombe, in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the
nourishment of the travelling members of this Kingdom_. Coryat was
an eccentric and a favourite butt of the wits, but was not without
ability as well as enterprise. In 1612 he set out on a journey
through the East which took him to Constantinople, Jerusalem, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Persia, and India. In his letters to the wits at home he
sends greetings to, among others, Christopher Brooke, John Hoskins
(as 'Mr. Ecquinoctial Pasticrust of the Middle Temple'), Ben Jonson,
George Garrat, and 'M. John Donne, the author of two most elegant
Latine Bookes, _Pseudomartyr_ and _Ignatius Conclave_' He died at
Surat in 1617.
l. 2. _leavened spirit._ This is the reading of _1611_. It was altered
in _1649_ to 'learned', and modern editors have neglected to correct
the error. A glance at the first line shows that 'leavened' is right.
It is leaven which raises bread. A 'leavened spirit' is one easily
puffed up by the 'love of greatness'. There is much more of satire in
such an epithet than in 'learned'.
l. 17. _great Lunatique_, i.e. probably 'great humourist', whose
moods and whims are governed by the changeful moon. See O.E.D., which
quotes:
Ther (i.e. women's) hertys chaunge never ...
Ther sect ys no thing lunatyke.
Lydgate.
'By nativitie they be lunaticke ... as borne under the influence of
Luna, and therefore as firme ... as melting waxe.' Greene, _Mamillia_.
l. 22. _Munster._ The _Cosmographia Universalis_ (1541) of Sebastian
Munster (1489-1552).
l. 22. _Gesner._ The _Bibliotheca Universalis, siue Catalogus Omnium
Scriptorum in Linguis Latina, Graeca, et Hebraica_, 1545, by Conrad
von Gesner of Zurich (1516-1565). Norton quotes from Morhof's
_Polyhistor_: 'Conradus Gesner inter universales et perpetuos
Catalogorum scriptores principatum obtinet'; and from Dr. Johnson:
'The book upon which all my fame was originally founded.'
l. 23. _Gallo-belgicus._ See _Epigrams_.
PAGE =173=, l. 56. _Which casts at Portescues._ Grosart offers the
only intelligible explanation of this phrase. He identifies the
'Portescue' with the 'Portaque' or 'Portegue', the great crusado of
Portugal, worth £3 12_s._, and quotes from Harrington, _On Playe_:
'Where lords and great men have been disposed to play deep play, and
not having money about them, have cut cards instead of counters, with
asseverance (on their honours) to pay for every piece of card so
lost a portegue.' Donne's reference to the use which is to be made of
Coryat's books shows clearly that he is speaking of some such custom
as this. Chambers asks pertinently, would the phrase not be 'for
Portescues'? but 'to cast at Portescues' may have been a term, perhaps
translated. A greater difficulty is that 'Portescue' is not given as a
form of 'Portague' by the O.E.D., but a false etymology connecting it
with 'escus', crowns, may have produced it.
The following poem is also found among the poems prefixed to Coryat's
_Crudities_. It may be by Donne, but was not printed in any edition of
his poems:
_Incipit Ioannes Dones._
Loe her's a Man, worthy indeede to trauell;
Fat Libian plaines, strangest Chinas grauell.
For Europe well hath scene him stirre his stumpes:
Turning his double shoes to simple pumpes.
And for relation, looke he doth afford
Almost for euery step he tooke a word;
What had he done had he ere hug'd th'Ocean
With swimming _Drake_ or famous _Magelan_?
And kis'd that _vnturn'd[1] cheeke_ of our old mother,
Since so our Europes world he can discouer?
It's not that _French_[2] which made his _Gyant_[3] see
Those vncouth Ilands where wordes frozen bee,
Till by the thaw next yeare they'r voic't againe;
Whose _Papagauts_, _Andoüelets_, and that traine
Should be such matter for a Pope to curse
As he would make; make! makes ten times worse,
And yet so pleasing as shall laughter moue:
And be his vaine, his game, his praise, his loue.
Sit not still then, keeping fames trump vnblowne:
But get thee _Coryate_ to some land vnknowne.
From whẽce proclaime thy wisdom with those wõders,
Rarer then sommers snowes, or winters thunders.
And take this praise of that th'ast done alreadie:
T'is pitty ere they _flow_ should haue an _eddie_.
_Explicit Ioannes Dones._