l. 133. To sucke me in; for.... I have, with some of the MSS. and with Chambers and the later editions, connected 'for hearing him' with what follows. But 1633 and the better MSS. read:
To sucke me in for hearing him. I found....
Possibly this is right, but it seems to me better to connect 'for hearing him' with what follows. It makes the comparison to the superstition about communicating infection clearer: 'I found that as ... leachers, &c., ... so I, hearing him, might grow guilty and he free.' 'I should be convicted of treason; he would go free as a spy who had spoken treason only to draw me out'. See the accounts of trials of suspected traitors before Walsingham and others. It is on this passage I base my view that Donne's companion is not merely a bore, but a spy, or at any rate is ready to turn informer to earn a crown or two.
Page 164, l. 148. complementall thankes. The word 'complement' or 'compliment' had a bad sense: 'We have a word now denizened and brought into familiar use among us, Complement; and for the most part, in an ill sense; so it is, when the heart of the speaker doth not answer his tongue; but God forbid but a true heart, and a faire tongue might very well consist together: As vertue itself receives an addition, by being in a faire body, so do good intentions of the heart, by being expressed in faire language. That man aggravates his condemnation that gives me good words, and meanes ill; but he gives me a rich Jewell and in a faire Cabinet, he gives me precious wine, and in a clear glasse, that intends well, and expresses his good intentions well too.' Sermons 80. 18. 176.
l. 164. th'huffing braggart, puft Nobility. I have followed the MSS. in inserting 'th'' and taking 'braggart' as a noun. It would be more easy to omit the article than to insert. Moreover 'braggart' is commoner as a noun. The O.E.D. gives no example of the adjectival use earlier than 1613. Compare:
The huft, puft, curld, purld, wanton Pride.
Sylvester, Du Bartas, i. 2.
Page 165, l. 169. your waxen garden or yon waxen garden—it is impossible to say which Donne wrote. The reference is to the artificial gardens in wax exhibited apparently by Italian puppet or 'motion' exhibitors. Compare:
I smile to think how fond the Italians are,
To judge their artificial gardens rare,