The 'banke' of the MSS. must, I think, be the right reading rather than the 'banks' of the editions, the 's' having arisen from the final 'e'. A river which bursts or overflows its banks does not leave its course, though it 'drowns' the 'round country', but if it breaks through a weak part in a bank it may quit its original course for another. 'The traiterous bank' I take to be equivalent to 'the weak or treacherous spot in its bank'.
Page 89. Elegie VII.
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