PAGES =75-6=. The series of Epigrams _A burnt ship_, _Fall of a wall_, _A lame begger_, _Cales and Guyana_, _Sir John Wingefield_ seem to me all to have been composed during the Cadiz expedition. The first suggests, and was probably suggested by, the fight in the harbour when so many of the Spanish ships were burned. The _Fall of a wall_ may mark an incident in the attack of the landing party which forced its way into the city. _A lame begger_ records a common spectacle in a Spanish and Catholic town. _Cales and Guyana_ must clearly have been written when, after Cadiz had been taken and sacked, the leaders were debating their next step. Essex (and Donne is on Essex's side) urged that the fleet should sail west and intercept the silver fleet, but Howard, the Lord Admiral, insisted on an immediate return to England. The last of the series chronicles the one death to which every account of the expedition refers.

PAGE =77=. ANTIQUARY. Who is the Hamon or Hammond that is evidently the subject of this epigram and is referred to in _Satyre V_, l. 87, I cannot say. I am disposed to think that it may be John Hammond, LL.D., the civilist, the father of James I's physician and of Charles I's chaplain. I have no proof that he was an antiquarian, but a civilist and authority on tithes may well have been so, and he belonged to the class which Donne satirizes with most of anger and feeling, the examiners and torturers of Catholic prisoners. We find him in Strype's _Annals_ collaborating with the notorious Topcliffe.

The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2) — Part 169

PHRYNE. An epigram often quoted by Ben Jonson. Drummond, _Conversations_, ed. Laing, 842.

The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2) — Part 169

PAGE =78=. RADERUS. 'Matthew Rader (1561-1634), a German Jesuit, published an edition of and commentary upon Martial in 1602.' Chambers. Compare: 'He added, moreover, that though Raderus and others of his order did use to geld Poets and other authors (and here I could not choose but wonder why they have not gelded their Vulgar Edition which in some places hath such obscene words, as the Hebrew tongue which is therefore called holy, doth so much abhorre that no obscene thing can be uttered in it)....' The reason which Donne gives is that 'They reserve to themselves the divers forms, and the secrets, and mysteries in this latter which they find in the authors whom they gelde.' _Ignatius his Conclave_ (1610), pp. 94-6. The epigram is therefore a coarse hit at the Jesuits.

The Poems of John Donne, Volume II (of 2) — Part 169