I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken
in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the
eyes water, and thereby call the malady
desperately
hot or changing
feverously.
John Donne
_laicus_), and the earliest example
of it given in O.E.D. is dated 1688.
ll. 7-8. _Nor by the'eyes water call a maladie
Desperately hot, or changing feaverously._
The 'call' of _1633_ is so strongly supported by the MSS. that it is
dangerous to alter it. Grosart (whom Chambers follows) reads 'cast',
from _S_; but a glance at the whole line as it stands there shows how
little can be built upon it. 'To cast' is generally used in the phrase
'to cast his water' and thereby tell his malady; but the O.E.D. gives
one example which resembles this passage if 'cast' be the right word
here:
Able to cast his disease without his water.
Greene's _Menaphon_.
I rather fancy, however, that 'call' is right, and is to be taken
in close connexion with the next line, 'You could not cast the
eyes water, and thereby call the malady
desperately
hot or changing
feverously.
'
If thou couldst, Doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease.
Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, V. iii. 50.
The 'casting' preceded and led to the finding, naming the disease,
calling it this or that.
ll. 9 f. _I had not taught thee then, the Alphabet
Of flowers, &c._
'_Posy_, in both its senses, is a contraction of _poesy_, the flowers
of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that
engraved on a ring.' Weekly, _Romance of Words_, London, 1912, p. 134.
She had not yet learned to sort flowers so as to make a posy.
