Like Belgia' cities the round country drowns,
That dirty foulness guards and arms the towns.
Here 'the round country drowns' is an adjectival clause with the relative suppressed. But if the country actually drowned the cities the protector would be as dangerous as the enemy. The best MSS. agree with 1633-54, and the sentence, though a little obscure, is probably correct: 'When the Belgian cities, to keep at bay their foes, drown (i.e. flood) the neighbouring countries, the foulness thus produced is their protection.' The 'cities' I take to be the subject. The reference is to their opening the sluices. See Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, the account of the sieges of Alkmaar and Leyden. 'The Drowned Land' ('Het verdronken land') was the name given to land overflowed by the bursting of the dykes.
Page 82. Elegie III.
l. 5. forc'd unto none is a strange expression, and the 'forbid to none' of B is an attempt to emend it; but 'forc'd unto none' probably means 'not bound by compulsion to be faithful to any'. In woman's love and in the arts you may always expect to be ousted from a favoured position by a successful rival. No one has in these a monopoly:
Is sibi responsum hoc habeat, in medio omnibus
Palmam esse positam, qui artem tractant musicam.
Ter. Phorm. Prol. 16-17.
l. 8. these meanes, as I, It is difficult to say whether the 'these' of the editions and of D, H49, Lec or the 'those' of the rest of the MSS. is preferable. The construction with either in the sense of 'the same as', 'such as', was not uncommon:
Under these hard conditions as this time