l. 18. In birds, &c.: 'birds' is here in the possessive case, 'birds' organic throats'. I have modified the punctuation so as to make this clearer.
l. 24. All the foure Monarchies: i.e. Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. John Sleidan, mentioned in a note on the Satyres, wrote The Key of Historie: Or, A most Methodicall Abridgement of the foure chiefe Monarchies &c., to quote its title in the English translation.
l. 27. Our births and lives, &c. 1633 and the two groups of MSS. D, H49, Lec and A18, L74, N, TC read 'life'. If this be correct, then 'births' would surely need to be 'birth'. HN shows, I think, what has happened. The voiced 'f' was not always distinguished from the breathed sound by a different spelling ('v' for 'f'), and 'lifes' would very easily become 'life'. On the other hand 'v' was frequently written where we now have 'f', and sometimes misleads. Peele's The Old Wives Tale is not necessarily, as usually printed, Wives'. It is just an Old Woman's Tale.
Page 284. Elegie.
Page 285, l. 34. The Ethicks speake, &c. A rather strange expression for 'Ethics tell'. The article is rare. Donne says, 'No booke of Ethicks.' Sermons 80. 55. 550. In HN Drummond has altered to 'Ethnicks' a word Donne uses elsewhere: 'Of all nations the Jews have most chastely preserved that ceremony of abstaining from Ethnic names.' Essays in Divinity. It does not, however, seem appropriate here, unless Donne means to say that she had all the cardinal virtues of the heathen with the superhuman, theological virtues which are superinduced by grace:
Her soul was Paradise, &c.
But this is not at all clear. Apparently there is no more in the line than a somewhat vaguely expressed hyperbole: 'she had all the cardinal virtues of which we hear in Ethics'.
Page 286, l. 44. Wee'had had a Saint, have now a holiday: i.e. 'We should have had a saint and should have now a holiday'—her anniversary. The MS. form of the line is probably correct:
We hád had á Saint, nów a hólidáy.