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l. 4. _By Hilliard drawne. _ Nicholas Hilliard (1537-1619), the first
English miniature painter. He was goldsmith, carver, and limner to
Queen Elizabeth, and engraved her second great seal in 1586. He drew a
portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, at eighteen, and executed miniatures
of many contemporaries. He also wrote a treatise on miniature
painting. Mr. Laurence Binyon thinks it is quite possible that the
miniature from which Marshall, about 1635, engraved the portrait of
Donne as a young man, was by Hilliard. It is, he says, quite in his
style.

l. 13. _From out her pregnant intrailes. _ The ancients attributed
winds to the effect of exhalations from the earth. Seneca,
_Quaestiones Naturales_, v.
4, discusses various causes but mentions
this first: 'Sometimes the earth herself emits a great quantity of
air, which she breathes out of her hidden recesses . . . A suggestion
has been made which I cannot make up my mind to believe, and yet
I cannot pass over without mention. In our bodies food produces
flatulence, the emission of which causes great offence to ones nasal
susceptibilities; sometimes a report accompanies the relief of the
stomach, sometimes there is more polite smothering of it. In like
manner it is supposed the great frame of things when assimilating
its nourishment emits air. It is a lucky thing for us that nature's
digestion is good, else we might apprehend some less agreeable
consequences. ' (_Q. N. translated by John Clarke, with notes by Sir
Archibald Geikie_, 1910. ) These exhalations, according to one view,
mounting up were driven back by the violence of the stars, or
by inability to pass the frozen middle region of the air--hence
commotions. (Pliny, _Nat. Hist. _ ii. 38, 45, 47, 48. ) This explains
Donne's 'middle marble room', where 'marble' may mean 'hard', or
_possibly_ 'blue' referring to the colour of the heavens.