l. 1. _Natures lay Ideot._ Here 'lay' means, I suppose, ignorant',
as Grosart says. His other suggestion, that 'lay' has the meaning of
'lay' in 'layman', a painter's figure, is unlikely. That word has a
different origin from 'lay' (Lat. _laicus_), and the earliest example
of it given in O.E.D. is dated 1688.
ll. 7-8. _Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie
Desperately hot, or changing feaverously._
The 'call' of _1633_ is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is
dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast',
from _S_; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how
little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase
'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O.E.D. gives
one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word
here:
Able to cast his disease without his water.
Greene's _Menaphon_.
I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken
in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the
eyes water, and thereby call the malady desperately hot or changing
feverously.'
If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease.
Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, V. iii. 50.
The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease,
calling it this or that.
ll. 9 f. _I had not taught thee then, the Alphabet
Of flowers, &c._
'_Posy_, in both its senses, is a contraction of _poesy_, the flowers
of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that
engraved on a ring.' Weekly, _Romance of Words_, London, 1912, p. 134.
She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.
l. 13. _Remember since, &c._ For the idiom compare:
Beseech you, sir,
Remember since you owed no more to time
Than I do now.
Shakespeare, _Winter's Tale_, V. i. 219.
See Franz, _Shakespeare-Grammatik_, § 559.
l. 22. _Inlaid thee._ The O.E.D. cites this line as the only example
of 'inlay' meaning 'to lay in, or as in, a place of concealment or
preservation.' The sense is much that of 'to lay up', but the word has
perhaps some of its more usual meaning, 'to set or embed in another
substance.' 'Your husband has given to you, his jewel, such a setting
as conceals instead of setting off your charms. I have refined and
heightened those charms.'
l. 25. _Thy graces and good words my creatures bee._ I was tempted
to adopt with Chambers the 'good works' of _1669_ and some MSS., the
theological connexion of 'grace' and 'works' being just the kind of
conceit Donne loves to play with. But the 'words' of _1633-54_ has the
support of so good a MS. as _W_, and 'good words' is an Elizabethan
idiom for commendation, praise, flattery:
He that will give,
Good words to thee will flatter neath abhorring.
Shakespeare, _Coriolanus_, I. i. 170-1.
In your bad strokes you give good words.
Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_, V. i. 30.
Moreover, Donne's word is 'graces', not 'grace'. 'Your graces and
commendations are my work', i.e. either the commendations you receive,
or, more probably, the refined and elegant flatteries with which you
can now cajole a lover, though once your whole stock of conversation
did not extend beyond 'broken proverbs and torne sentences'. Compare,
in _Elegie IX: The Autumnall_, the description of Lady Danvers'
conversation:
In all her words, unto all hearers fit,
You may at Revels, you at Counsaile, sit.
And again, _Elegie XVIII: Loves Progresse_:
So we her ayres contemplate, words and heart,
And virtues.
l. 28. _Frame and enamell Plate._ Compare: 'And therefore they that
thinke to gild and enamell deceit, and falsehood, with the additions
of good deceit, good falshood, before they will make deceit good,
will make God bad.' _Sermons_ 80. 73. 742. 'Frame' means, of course,
'shape, fashion', and 'plate' gold or silver service. The elaborate
enamelling of such dishes and cups was, I presume, as common as in the
case of gold watches and clocks. See F. J. Britten's _Old Clocks and
Watches and their Makers_, 1904.