Page 93, l. 6. Affection here takes Reverences name: where 'Affection' seems more appropriate than 'Affections'; and l. 8. But now shee's gold: where 'They are gold' of 1633 involves a very loose use of 'they'. Possibly 1633 here gives a first version afterwards corrected.
ll. 29-32. Xerxes strange Lydian love, &c. Herodotus (vii. 31) tells how Xerxes, on his march to Greece, found in Lydia a plane-tree which for its beauty (κάλλεος εἵνεκα) he decked with gold ornaments, and entrusted to a guardian. Aelian, Variae Historiae, ii. 14, De platano Xerxe amato, attributes his admiration to its size: ἐν Λυδίᾳ γοῦν, φασίν, ἰδὼν φυτὸν εὐμέγεθες πλατάνου, &c. In the Latin translation in Hercler's edition (Firmin Didot, 1858) size is taken as equivalent to height, 'quum vidisset proceram platanum,' but the reference is more probably to extent. Pliny, N. H. 12. 1-3, has much to say of the size of certain planes under which companies of men camped and slept.
The quotation from Aelian confirms the 1633 reading, 'none being so large as shee,' which indeed is confirmed by the lines that follow. The question of age is left open. The reference to' barrennesse' I do not understand.
Page 94, l. 47. naturall lation. This, the reading of the great majority of the MSS., is obviously correct and explains the vacillation of the editions. The word was rare but quite good. The O.E.D. quotes: 'I mean lation or Local-motion from one place to another.' Fotherby (1619);
Make me the straight and oblique lines,
The motions, lations, and the signs. (Herrick, Hesper. 64);
and other examples as late as 1690. The term was specially astronomical, as here. The 'motion natural' of 1633 is an unusual order in Donne; the 'natural station' of 1635-69 is the opposite of motion. The first was doubtless an intentional alteration by the editor, which the printer took in at the wrong place; the second a misreading of 'lation'.
Page 95. Elegie X.
The title of this Elegy, The Dream, was given it in 1635, perhaps wrongly. S96 seems to come nearer with Picture. The 'Image of her whom I love', addressed in the first eight lines, seems to be a picture. When that is gone and reason with it, fantasy and dreams come to the lover's aid (ll. 9-20). But the tenor of the poem is somewhat obscure; the picture is addressed in terms that could hardly be strengthened if the lady herself were present.
l. 26. Mad with much heart, &c. Aristotle made the heart the source of all 'the actions of life and sense'. Galen transferred these to the brain. See note to p. [99], l. 100.