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 ([Greek: kalleos heineka]) 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: [Greek: en Lydia goun, phasin, idôn phyton eumegethes platanou,] &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. PAGE =96=. ELEGIE XI.