Letters to Severall Persons of Honour

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 Essex was set free in July, 1600.

The identity of “G. H.” is unknown and conjecture is needless. Perhaps he was one of those followers of Essex 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 Essex 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 Essex had brought him on evil days. He himself had served under Essex in the Cadiz expedition of 1596 and in the Islands Voyage of 1597, “waiting upon his Lordship,” 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:”

“God grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine,
Thou who dost, best friend, in best things outshine;
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;
God grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine.”

An edition of Enée 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

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and, as the record of the closing incidents of the Elector Palatine’s long struggle shows, written in 1622.

LXXVI

To Sir Henry Goodyer on the death of his wife in 1604.

LXXVII

To Sir Henry Goodyer. The quarrel between Hertford and Monteagle and the last illness of Cecil Boulstrod, here recorded, give the date of this letter as 1609. Cecil Boulstrod was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Ben Jonson read to Drummond his “Verses on the Pucelle of the Court, Mistress Boulstred, whose Epitaph Donne made.” They are little to the credit of either the lady or the poet. Drummond records in his Conversations that “that piece of the Pucelle of the Court was stolen out of his (Jonson’s) pocket by a gentleman who drank him drousie, and given Mistress Boulstraid; which brought him great displeasure,” as well it might. Donne wrote two elegies in her honour, one of which, at least, seems to be inspired by genuine emotion.

LXXVIII

To Sir Henry Goodyer and written in 1615. (See note to XXXIV, above.) “This Lady” is apparently the Countess of Huntingdon, and “the Lady where you are” the Countess of Bedford.

LXXIX

This letter, written on the eve of the German tour, on which Donne attended the Earl of Doncaster (See note to VII, above), was, I feel very sure, addressed, not to Sir Thomas Lucy, but to Sir Henry Goodyer. The allusions to Tuesday as a day of writing, the reference to “an establishment in your estate,” the acknowledgment of his correspondent’s favours in “keeping me alive in the memory of the noblest Countess” (of Bedford), all point to Goodyer.

LXXX

For the date see XXIV, and note.

LXXXI

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and evidently written just prior to Donne’s appointment as Dean of Saint Paul’s (November 19th, 1621). “My Cases of Conscience” is, I suppose, the Paradoxes and Problems to which we have had frequent allusions.

LXXXII

The identity of Donne’s “worthy friend F. H.” is unknown to me. The letter evidently belongs to the closing years of Donne’s life. In printing this letter, Mr. Gosse (Life and Letters of John Donne, II, 254) quotes from Walton:

“The latter part of his life may be said to be a continued study; for as he usually preached once a week, if not oftener, so after his Sermon he never gave his eyes rest till he had chosen out a new Text, and that night cast his Sermon into a forme, and his Text into divisions; and the next day betook himself to consult the Fathers, and so commit his meditations to his memory, which was excellent. But upon Saturday he usually gave himself and his mind a rest from the weary burthen of his week’s meditations, and usually spent that day in visitation of friends and other diversions of his thoughts; and would say that he gave both his body and mind that refreshment, that he might be enabled to do the work of the day following, not faintly, but with courage and cheerfulness.”

LXXXIII

To Sir Henry Goodyer, but a few weeks earlier than the date of LXI, and at about the same time as LXXV. “Mr. Selden” is the great John Selden.

LXXXIV

Written from Sir John Danvers’ house in Chelsea where Donne had gone to stay at the height of the plague which raged in London during the summer of 1625. Lady Danvers was Donne’s old friend, Mrs. Magdalen Herbert. (See note to XLIV, above.) Sir Edward Sackville became Earl of Dorset on the 28th of March, 1624, on the death of his brother, the third Earl. King James died on the 27th of March, 1625. “The Queen” is Henrietta Maria, whom Charles married a few weeks after his accession.

LXXXV

To George Gerrard. “The 14th of April, here (i.e., at Paris) 1612” would in England be April 4th, 1612. For the criticisms of his poems in honour of Elizabeth Drury to which Donne here makes reply, see note to XXVI above.

LXXXVI

To George Gerrard, and apparently written within a few weeks of the date of the next letter, addressed to the same friend and dated January 7th 1630[1] in the 1719 edition of Donne’s Poems to which it is appended.

LXXXVII

To George Gerrard. Walton quotes this letter in full in his Life of Donne, and in spite of their length his comments cannot be omitted here:

“We left the Author sick in Essex, where he was forced to spend much of that winter, by reason of his disability to remove from thence: And having never for almost twenty yeares omitted his personall Attendance on his Majesty in that moneth in which he was to attend and preach to him; nor having ever been left out of the Roll and number of Lent-Preachers; and there being then (in January 1630[1]) a report brought to London, or raised there, that Dr. Donne was dead: That report gave him occasion to write this following letter to a friend…

“Before that moneth ended, he was designed to preach upon his old constant day, the first Friday in Lent; he had notice of it, and had in his sicknesse so prepared for that imployment, that as he had long thirsted for it, so he resolved his weaknesse should not hinder his journey; he came therefore to London, some few dayes before his day appointed. At his being there many of his friends (who with sorrow saw his sicknesse had left him onely so much flesh as did cover his bones) doubted his strength to performe that task; and therefore disswaded him from undertaking it, assuring him however, it was like to shorten his daies; but he passionately denyed their requests, saying, he would not doubt that God who in many weaknesses had assisted him with an unexpected strength, would not now withdraw it in his last employment; professing an holy ambition to performe that sacred work. And when to the amazement of some beholders he appeared in the Pulpit, many thought he presented himself not to preach mortification by a living voice, but mortality by a decayed body and dying face. And doubtlesse many did secretly ask that question in Ezekiel, Do these bones live? or can that soul Organize that tongue, to speak so long time as the sand in that glasse will move towards its Centre, and measure out an hour of this dying mans unspent life? Doubtlesse it cannot; yet after some faint pauses in his zealous prayer, his strong desires enabled his weake body to discharge his memory of his preconceived meditations; which were of dying, the Text being, To God the Lord belong the issues from Death. Many that then saw his teares, and heard his hollow voice, professing they thought the Text prophetically chosen, and that Dr. Donne had preach’t his own funerall sermon.