Who is the president?
True. The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.
Cler. A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no
man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has
painted and perfumed ... I have made a song (I pray thee
hear it) on the subject
Still to be neat, still to be drest...
The resemblance may be accidental, yet the frequency with which the poem is dubbed An Autumnal Face or The Autumnall shows that the phrase had struck home. Jonson's comedies seethe with such allusions, and I rather suspect that he is poking fun at his friend's paradoxes, perhaps in a sly way at that 'grave and youthful matron' Lady Danvers. We cannot prove that the poem was written so early, but the evidence on the whole is in favour of Walton's statement.
Page 79. Elegie I.
l. 4. That Donne must have written 'sere-barke' or 'seare-barke' is clear, both from the evidence of the editions and MSS. and from the vacillation of the latter. 'Cere-cloth' is a word which Donne uses more than once in the sermons: 'A good Cere-cloth to bruises,' Sermons 80. 10. 101; 'A Searcloth that souples all bruises,' Ibid. 80. 66. 663. But to substitute 'sere-cloth' for 'sere-barke' would be to miss the force of Donne's vivid description. The 'sere-cloth' with which the sick man is covered is his own eruptive skin. Both Chambers and Norton have noted the resemblance to Hamlet's poisoned father: