Errata for the separate, excluded Philosophical Poem

Meaning

These four directions are printed in the selected 1621 volume but refer to the separate eighty-page Poeme philosophic of 1620. Only the transmitted errata are within this lexicon’s scope. They do not concern the nine sonnets gathered after Book III, and they do not make the absent poem available for interpretation.

1. Printed page 21, line 21 of the separate poem: replace the full stop with &, giving bien peu d'air & de feu, “very little air and fire”. The instruction coordinates air and fire; it does not supply the surrounding poem or an operational quantity.

2. Page 32, line 20: change encore to encor by removing the final e. This is an elided verse-form, not necessarily a change of meaning.

3. Page 65, last line: write mors in the margin instead of maux. The errata print mors without t. The isolated fragment does not settle its sense, and this lexicon does not silently modernise it to morts.

4. Page 77, line 13: in place of pourpre cirien, put Tirien. The supplied English understands Tyrian purple. The asymmetrical instruction is retained rather than expanded into an invented complete replacement line.

Wellcome: the separate Poeme philosophic, Paris, 1620