John Donne - Delphi Poets Series (91 page)

Goodyer’s epitaph is quoted by Camden in the
Remaines concerning Britain
:

“To the honour of Sir Henry Goodyer of Powlesworth, a Knight memorable for his vertues, an affectionate Friend of his framed this Tetrastich:

‘An ill year of a Goodyer us bereft,
Who gone to God, much lack of him here left:
Full of good gifts, of body and of mind,
Wise, comely, learned, eloquent and kind.’”

XII

To Sir Henry Goodyer. This letter belongs to 1607 or 1608, and was written from Mitcham. Sick in mind and in body, poor in purse and in hopes, Donne’s thoughts dwelt on suicide, and the fruit of his meditations was the book “of not much less than three hundred pages,”
Biathanatos
, of which we have already heard. The “meditation in verse which I call a litany” is printed in the Poems (ed. Chambers, Vol. II, p. 174).

The report that Broughton had gone over to Rome was without foundation in fact, though the rumour was of periodical occurrence.

XIII

George Garet, or Gerrard, the son of Sir William Gerrard of Dorney, Bucks, was one of Donne’s closest friends, and to him are addressed many of Donne’s more personal letters.

For what importunities in his behalf Donne here makes grateful acknowledgment we have no means of determining. The letter probably dates from 1614, when Donne was anxiously seeking profitable employment at Court.

XIV

“That good Gentlewoman,” Bridget, wife of Sir Anthony Markham, was the daughter of Lady Bedford’s brother, the second Lord Harrington of Exton, and one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. She died at Lady Bedford’s house at Twickenham, May 4th, 1609, about which time this letter was written. Donne’s Elegy is printed in his Poems (ed. Chambers, Vol. II, p. 86).

Sir Thomas Roe was the grandson of the Lord Mayor of the same name. He was knighted in 1604 by King James, who, ten years later, appointed him ambassador to the Great Mogul. He died in 1644. To him is addressed Ben Jonson’s Epigram, XCVIII.

XV

To George Gerrard’s sister, and belonging to the same period as XIII.

XVI

Probably written from Amiens, to which place Donne accompanied Sir Robert Drury in 1611, on that journey during which he had the vision described by Walton:

“Two days after their arrival there [in Paris], Mr.
Donne
was left alone in that room in which Sir
Robert
, and he, and some other friends had din’d together. To this place Sir
Robert
return’d within half an hour, and, as he left, so he found Mr.
Donne
alone; but in such an Extasie, and, so alter’d as to his looks, as amaz’d Sir
Robert
to behold him: insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr.
Donne
to declare what had befaln him in the short time of his absence? to which, Mr.
Donne
was not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplext pause, did at last say,
I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: This I have seen since I saw you.
To which Sir
Robert
reply’d; ‘
Sure Sir, you have slept since I saw you; and, this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for, you are now awake.
’ To which Mr.
Donne’s
reply was, ‘
I cannot be surer that I now live, then, that I have not slept since I saw you: and I am as sure, that at her second appearing, she stopt, and look’d me in the face, and vanisht.
’ Rest and sleep, had not alter’d Mr.
Donne’s
opinion the next day: for he then affirm’d this vision with a more deliberate, and so confirm’d a confidence, that he inclin’d Sir
Robert
to a faint belief that the Vision was true. — It is truly said,
that desire, and doubt, have no rest
: and it prov’d so with Sir
Robert
, for he immediately sent a servant to
Drewry
house, with a charge to hasten back, and bring him word, whether Mrs.
Donne
were alive? and if alive, in what condition she was, as to her health? — The twelfth day the Messenger returned with this account — That he found and left Mrs.
Donne
very sad, and sick in her bed: and, that after a long and dangerous labour, she had been deliver’d of a dead child. And upon examination, the abortion prov’d to be the same day, and about the very hour that Mr.
Donne
affirm’d he saw her pass by him in his Chamber.”

XVII

This letter seems to belong to the same period as the last, and to have been intended by Donne as a sort of circular letter “to all my friends” at home.

XVIII

Written in 1608, as the reference to the sudden death of Captain Edmund Whitelocke indicates. Walton, who quotes a part of this letter, gives the date as September 7th.

Mr. Jones may have been the friend to whose custody Tobie Matthew was committed between his sentence of banishment and his departure from England. (See Note on XLV, below.) Mr. Holland was Henry Holland, the son of Philemon Holland, the translator of Suetonius and much else. The Lord of Sussex was Robert Ratcliffe, Earl of Sussex.

XIX

The postscript to this letter, written, like that which follows it, from Mitcham in the closing years of Donne’s residence there, is serious enough, but the letter itself must be understood as extravagant banter, not without a touch of bitterness. “When sadness dejects me,” says Donne in a letter (XXV) written about this time, “either I countermine it with another sadnesse, or I kindle squibs about me again, and flie into sportfulnesse.” The present letter is the fruit of such a mood.

The
Aurum Reginae
is the Queen Consort’s share (one-tenth) of all fines exacted by the King, which under the old law was due to her. Mr. Hakewill was Queen Anne’s Solicitor-General.

XXI

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written after Sir Henry had entered the service of the Earl of Bedford and before Donne’s removal from Mitcham to Drury House, therefore in 1609 or 1610. The reference to “the new astronomy” is interesting. In 1609 Keppler announced his discovery of some of the laws governing planetary motion, although it was not until the following year that the Copernican System was, by the discoveries of Galileo, firmly established. Donne’s mind seems to have been open to the new knowledge, when Bacon’s was firmly closed against it.

XXII

The reference to “my day” for payment of “this duty of letters,” enables us to identify Donne’s correspondent as Sir Henry Goodyer, to whom Donne was in the habit of writing every Tuesday. (Cf. the first sentence of XVIII.) When the present letter was written Donne was employed in assisting Thomas Morton, Dean of Gloucester, and the leader of the Anglican theologians in the all but interminable controversy with the Jesuits which involved so many of the ablest churchmen of the period. The “Apology” was probably Robert Parson’s “confused and worthless work,” the
Treatise tending towards Mitigation
, in reply to which Sutcliffe published his
Subversion
in 1606, and Morton, two years later, his
Preamble unto an Encounter
, which, happily belying its name, went far toward closing the debate.

XXIII

The loss of her ladyship’s verses on Donne, which are the subject of this letter, is the more to be regretted as none of her composition survives, though verses in her honour are found in the works of Donne, Ben Jonson, Daniel, Drayton, and other poets. This letter belongs to the same period as XXI.

XXIV

The postscript enables us to date the letter near the end of Donne’s residence at Mitcham, when he was engaged in the politico-theological studies which resulted in the composition of the
Pseudo-Martyr
in 1609.

XXV

Sir Henry Goodyer had lost both father and father-in-law long before his friend had occasion “to reduce to his thoughts the duties of a husband and a father, and all the incumbencies of a family.” The reference in this letter to “your father’s health and love” therefore seems to preclude the possibility that it was addressed to Goodyer. The absence of a date makes conjecture as to the identity of Donne’s correspondent the more difficult. Fortunately the interest of the letter is independent of knowledge of the correspondent to whom it was addressed, consisting as it does in the light which it throws on the mental temperament of the writer.

XXVI

The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth and the Count Palatine took place in February, 1613. This letter with its anticipations of the great event may safely be assigned to the journey on which Donne accompanied Sir Robert Drury in 1611-12. “My book of M
ris
Drury” is Donne’s strange poem in commemoration of the first anniversary of the death in 1610 of Sir Robert Drury’s little daughter Elizabeth.
An Anatomie of the World, wherein by occasion of the untimely death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the frailty and decay of this whole world is represented
, was published in 1611. The extravagance of the homage here paid to a child whom Donne had never seen, and on whose father’s bounty he and his family were living, was regarded by some of his friends as savoring rather too patently of insincerity.

In commemoration of the second anniversary of Elizabeth Drury’s death, Donne published in 1612 a poem
Of the Progresse of the Soule
.
Wherein, by occasion of the religious death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury, the incommodities of the soule in this life, and her exaltation in the next, are contemplated.

In 1618 Ben Jonson told Drummond “that Done’s Anniversarie was profane and full of blasphemies: that he told Mr. Done, if it had been written of the Virgin Marie, it had been something; to which he answered that he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was.” (
Conversations with Drummond, III.
)

XXVII

To Sir Henry Goodyer. The mention of “place and season” and the references to suffering of mind, body, and estate, enable us to date this letter from Mitcham in the spring of 1608, when Donne was in his thirty-fifth year.

XXVIII

William Fowler, to whom we have already had a jesting reference (XIX) was Secretary to Queen Anne. It is not clear whether the place to which Donne aspired was the secretaryship, which, as he was informed, Fowler was about to resign, or some other position in the Secretary’s gift which Donne was anxious to secure before Fowler went out of office. In either case, his hope was not realized.

XXIX

To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written in the summer of 1623 when the Prince and Buckingham were in Spain.

The current news from Bohemia must have been of especial interest to Donne in the light of his experience as the companion of Viscount Doncaster’s journey to that unhappy country six years before. (See note to VII.)

XXX

To Sir Henry Goodyer. If the allusion to the “French Prince” refers to the visit of the Prince de Joinville who was “despatched back again” in June, 1607, this letter may be assigned to the summer of that year. “These two problems” are probably part of the
Iuvenilia, or Certaine Paradoxes and Problems, written by I. Donne
and published posthumously in 1633. The “ragge of verses” survives as the “Verse Letter to Sir Henry Goodyer,” printed in Donne’s Poems (ed. Chambers, Vol. II, p. 10). In the
Poems
of 1633 there is a copy of this letter following a text so much better than that of the
Letters
of 1651, that it has seemed worth while to reprint it in its entirety.

“Sir, — This Teusday morning, which hath brought me to London, presents mee with all your letters. Mee thought it was a rent day, I mean such as yours, and not as mine. And yet such too, when I considered how much I ought you for them. How good a mother, how fertile and abundant the understanding is, if shee have a good father. And how well friendship performes that office. For that which is denyed in other generations is done in this of yours. For hers is superfaetation, child upon child, and, that which is more strange, twinnes at a later conception. If in my second religion, friendship, I had a conscience, either
Errantem
to mistake good and bad, and indifferent, or
Opinantem
to be ravished by others opinions or examples, or
Dubiam
to adhere to neither part, or
Scrupulosam
to encline to one, but upon reasons light in themselves or indiscussed in mee (which are almost all the diseases of conscience) I might mistake your often, long, and busie letters, and fear you did but interest me to have mercy upon you and spare you. For you know our court tooke the resolution, that it was the best way to dispatch the French Prince backe againe quickly, to receive him solemnely, ceremoniously; and expensively, when he hoped a domestique and durable entertainment. I never meant to excell you in waight nor price, but in number and bulke I thought I might: Because he may cast up a greater summe who hath but forty small moneyes, than hee with twenty Portuguesses. The memory of friends (I meane only for letters) neither enters ordinarily into busied men, because they are ever employed within, nor into men of pleasure, because they are never at home. For these wishes therefore which you wonne out of your pleasure and recreation, you were as excusable to mee if you writ seldom as Sir H. Wotten [who] is under the oppression of businesse or the necessity of seeming so: Or more than hee, because I hope you have both pleasure and businesse. Only to me, who have neither, this omission were sinne. For though writing be not of the precepts of friendship, but of the counsells: yet, as in some cases to some men counsells become precepts, though not immediately from God, yet very roundly and quickly from this Church, (as selling and dividing goods in the first time, continence in the Roman Church, and order and decency in ours) so to mee who can doe nothing else, it seemes to binde my conscience to write. And it is sinne to doe against the conscience, though that erre; Yet no mans letters may be better wanted than mine, since my whole letter is nothing else but a confession that I should and would write. I ought you a letter in verse before by mine owne promise, & now that you thinke you have hedged in that debt by a greater by your letter in verse I thinke it now most seasonable and fashional for mee to breake. At least, to write presently were to accuse my selfe of not having read yours so often as such a letter deserves from you to mee. To make my debt greater (for such is the desire of all, who cannot or meane not to pay) I pray reade these two problems: for such light flashes as these have beene my hawkings in my Surry journies. I accompany them with another ragge of verses, worthy of that name for the smalnesse, and age, for it hath long lyen among my other papers, and laughs at them that have adventured to you: for I thinke till now you saw it not, and neither you, nor it should repent it. Sir, if I were any thing, my love to you might multiply it, and dignifie it: But infinite nothings are but one such: Yet since even Chymeraes have some name, and titles, I am also,