Letters to Severall Persons of Honour Part 25

LX

Of this letter, and of LXVII, apparently sent to the same person, I can give no satisfactory account. An unpublished letter from Donne to Sir G.

Brydges is said to be in existence, and the present letter may be addressed to him.

LXI

Evidently to Sir Henry Goodyer. "Your son Sir _Francis_" is Sir Francis Nethersole, who had married Goodyer's daughter Lucy, and who had apparently been imprisoned for debt.

Poor Constance Donne, a year after "her losse" here described, was married to Edward Alleyn, the actor-manager and founder of Dulwich College, a man who was considerably older than her father, and who seems to have made her thoroughly unhappy.

LXII

Evidently misdated for 1612, and written a few weeks after the date of x.x.xI. (See note to XVI.)

LXIII

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written in 1614, but a few days after XLVIII.

LXIV

To Sir Henry Goodyer. The references to "the good Countess" of Bedford and to Mitcham fix the date of this letter as later than August, 1608, and earlier than the spring of 1610, when Donne moved his family to Drury House. Sir Henry Goodyer was now in the service of the Earl of Bedford.

LXV

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written two days later than LXIII. Apparently Tobie Matthew had deposited a part of his fortune in Goodyer's keeping to avoid the possibility of confiscation. (See note to XLV, above.) By 1614 Sir Henry's affairs were in hopeless confusion. (See note to XI, above.)

No copy of Donne's Poems in an earlier edition than that of 1633 has been discovered, and it is unlikely that he carried out the intention, here expressed, of printing them during his lifetime.

LXVI

For "my L. of Canterburies businesse" see note to LI, above. "My little book of Cases" is presumably the _Paradoxes and Problems_.

LXVIII

Donne was presented to the living of Keyston, in Huntingdons.h.i.+re, by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn in 1616. Wrest was the home of the Earl of Kent.

(See note to LVII, above.) "My Lady Spencer," the daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, and third wife of Sir Thomas Egerton, is "that n.o.ble lady at Ashworth" of LIX.

LXIX

To Sir Henry Goodyer. This letter appears to belong to the period of Sir Henry's prosperity, and was written, I think, either from Mitcham, or from Donne's lodgings in the Strand; in either case, not earlier than 1605 nor later than 1610. Parson's Green was in the parish of Fulham, Middles.e.x.

Ben Jonson has an _Epigram_ (_Lx.x.xV_) anent Sir Henry Goodyer's hawks:

"Goodyere, I'm glad, and grateful to report, Myself a witness of thy few days sport; Where I both learn'd, why wise men hawking follow, And why that bird was sacred to Apollo: She doth instruct men by her gallant flight, That they to knowledge so should tower upright, And never stoop, but to strike ignorance; Which if they miss, yet they should re-advance To former height, and there in circle tarry, Till they be sure to make the fool their quarry.

Now, in whose pleasures I have this discerned, What would his serious actions me have learned?"

And in the verses enclosed in his letter (x.x.x) to Goodyer, Donne writes:

"Our soule, whose country is heaven, & G.o.d her father, Into this world, corruptions sinke, is sent, Yet, so much in her travaile she doth gather, That she returnes home, wiser than she went; It pays you well, if it teach you to spare And make you asham'd, to make your hawks praise, yours, Which when herselfe she lessens in the aire, You then first say, that high enough she toures."

LXX

To Sir Thomas Roe. Until 1752, when by Act of Parliament the first day of January became the first day of the year, the year began on March 25th and ended on the following March 24th. What to Donne was "the last (day) of 1607" would be to us March 24th, 1608. Since 1752 therefore it has been a common practice in referring to dates falling between January 1st and March 24th inclusive of all years previous to the year 1752 to give both years. So we would give the date of the execution of Charles I as January 30th, 1648/49.

"The Mask" is possibly Ben Jonson's _The Hue and Cry after Cupid_, "celebrating the happy marriage of John Lord Ramsey, Viscount Hadington, with the Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe," of which Rowland White wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury, "The great Maske intended for my L. Haddington's marriage is now the only thing thought upon at Court."

LXXI

I have not succeeded in finding a clue to the "accident" of which Donne writes. It would seem that some friend or relation of Sir Henry Goodyer's had met with sudden, and perhaps violent, death.

LXXII

In point of date of composition, this is probably the earliest of the published letters of Donne, who in December, 1600, had been for more than three years chief secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper, from whose friendly custody the Earl of Ess.e.x was set free in July, 1600.

The ident.i.ty of "G. H." is unknown and conjecture is needless. Perhaps he was one of those followers of Ess.e.x who had been imprisoned at the time of the first trial of their unhappy leader, but who had not shared in his release.

Within the three months following the date of this letter Ess.e.x had again offended, this time beyond the possibility of pardon. He was beheaded on February 25th, 1601.

In such times, one may suppose that the Lord Keeper's young secretary had matters in hand more pressing than the payment of that debt of "a continual tribute of letters" which he acknowledges with a gravity in which one imagines a touch of irony. Yet Donne could hardly help feeling a special interest in one whose attachment to Ess.e.x had brought him on evil days. He himself had served under Ess.e.x in the Cadiz expedition of 1596 and in the Islands Voyage of 1597, "waiting upon his Lords.h.i.+p," says Walton, "and being an eye-witnesse of those happy and unhappy employments," a privilege which in the latter enterprise he shared with young Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper's son.

LXXIII

This, like the other letters addressed "To Yourself" may not improbably be addressed to George Gerrard, who is known to have been a friendly critic of Donne's poems. The translation sent with this letter is almost certainly the lines "Translated out of Gazaeus, 'Vota Amico Facta,' Fol.

160:"

"G.o.d grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine, Thou who dost, best friend, in best things outs.h.i.+ne; May thy soule, ever cheerful, ne'er know cares, Nor thy life, ever lively, know grey haires, Nor thy hand, ever open, know base holds, Nor thy purse, ever plump, know pleates, or folds, Nor thy tongue, ever true, know a false thing, Nor thy word, ever mild, know quarrelling, Nor thy works, ever equal, know disguise, Nor thy fame, ever pure, know contumelies, Nor thy prayers know low objects, still divine; G.o.d grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine."

An edition of Enee de Gaza's _Theophrastus_ was published at Zurich in 1560.

LXXIV

Evidently addressed, not to Sir Thomas Lucy, but to Sir Henry Goodyer as the allusions to Polesworth, Sir Henry's home, and to Bedford House sufficiently indicate. The date also must be incorrectly given as Donne's "service at Lincoln's Inne" did not begin until 1616, by which date, however, he had ceased to reside at Drury House, from which this letter, as printed, is dated. One is inclined to concur for the moment in Mr.

Gosse's opinion that the _Letters_ of 1651 is "the worst edited book in the English language."

LXXV