Of Donne's _Letters_ the earliest are the _Storms_ and _Calme_ which
were written in 1597. The two letters to Sir Henry Wotton, 'Sir, More
then kisses' and 'Heres no more newes, then vertue', belong to 1597-8.
The fresh letter here published, _H: W: in Hiber: belligeranti_ (p.
188), was sent to Wotton in 1599. That _To Mr Rowland Woodward_
(p. 185) was probably written about the same time, and to these
years--1598 to about 1608--belong also, I am inclined to think, the
group of short letters beginning with _To Mr T. W._ at p. 205. There
are very few indications of date. In that to Mr. R. W. (pp. 209-10)
an allusion is made to the disappointment of hopes in connexion with
Guiana:
Guyanaes harvest is nip'd in the spring,
I feare; And with us (me thinkes) Fate deales so
As with the Jewes guide God did; he did show
Him the rich land, but bar'd his entry in:
Oh, slownes is our punishment and sinne.
Grosart and Chambers refer this, and 'the Spanish businesse' below,
to 1613-14. The more probable reference is to the disappointment of
Raleigh's hopes, in 1596 and the years immediately following, that the
Government might be persuaded to make a settlement in Guiana, both on
account of its wealth and as a strategic point to be used in harassing
the King of Spain. Coolly received by Burleigh, Raleigh's scheme
excited considerable enthusiasm, and Chapman wrote his _De Guiana:
Carmen Epicum_, prefixed to Lawrence Keymis's _A Relation of the
Second Voyage to Guiana_ (1596), to celebrate Raleigh's achievement
and to promote his scheme. The 'Spanish businesse', i.e. businesses,
which, Donne complains,
as the Earth between the Moone and Sun
Eclipse the light which Guiana would give,
are probably the efforts in the direction of peace made by the party
in the Government opposed to Essex. Guiana is referred to in the
_Satyres_ which certainly belong to these years, and in _Elegie
XX: Loves War_, which cannot be dated so late as 1613-14. In 1598
Chamberlain writes to Carleton: 'Sir John Gilbert, with six or seven
saile, one and other, is gone for Guiana, and I heare that Sir Walter
Raleigh should be so deeply discontented because he thrives no better,
that he is not far off from making that way himself'. Chamberlain's
_Letters_, Camd. Soc. 1861. Compare also: 'The Queene seemede troubled
to-daye; Hatton came out from her presence with ill countenance, and
pulled me aside by the gyrdle and saide in a secrete waie; If you have
any suite to-day praie you put it aside, The sunne doth not shine.
Tis _this accursede Spanish businesse_; so will I not adventure
her Highnesse choler, lest she should collar me also.' Sir John
Harington's _Nugae Antiquae_, i. 176. (Note dated 1598.) All these
letters are found in the Westmoreland MS. (_W_), whose order I
have adopted, and the titles they bear--'To Mr H. W.', 'To Mr C.
B.'--suggest that they belong to a period before either Wotton or
Brooke was well known, at least before Wotton had been knighted. The
tone throughout points to their belonging to the same time. They are
full of allusions now difficult or impossible to explain. They are
written to intimate friends. 'Thou' is the pronoun used throughout,
whereas 'You' is the formula in the letters to noble ladies. Wotton,
Christopher and Samuel Brooke, Rowland and Thomas Woodward are among
the names which can be identified, and they are the names of Donne's
most intimate friends in his earlier years. Probably there were
answers to Donne's letters. He refers to poems which have called forth
his poems. One of these has been preserved in the Westmoreland MS.,
though we cannot tell who wrote it. A Bodleian MS. contains another
verse letter written to Donne in the same style as these letters,
a little crabbed and enigmatical, and it is addressed to him as
Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. This whole correspondence, then,
I should be inclined to date from 1597 to about 1607-8. The last is
probably the date of the letter _To E. of D._ or _To L. of D._ (so in
_W_), beginning:
See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime.
This I have transferred to the _Divine Poems_, and shall give reasons
later for ascribing it to about this year, and for questioning the
identification of its recipient with Viscount Doncaster, later Earl of
Carlisle.
Of the remaining _Letters_ some date themselves pretty definitely.
Donne formed the acquaintance of Lady Bedford about 1607-8 when she
came to Twickenham, and the two letters to her--'Reason is our Soules
left hand' (p. 189) and 'You have refin'd mee' (p. 191)--probably
belong to the early years of their friendship. The second suggests
that the poet is himself at Mitcham. The long, difficult letter,
'T'have written then' (p. 195), belongs probably to some year
following 1609. There is an allusion to Virginia, in which there was a
quickening of interest in 1609 (see _Elegie XIV_, Note), and the 'two
new starres' sent 'lately to the firmament' may be Lady Markham
(died May 4, 1609) and Mris Boulstred (died Aug. 4, 1609). This is
Chambers's conjecture; but Norton identifies them with Prince Henry
(died Nov. 6, 1612) and the Countess's brother, Lord Harington, who
died early in 1614. Public characters like these are more fittingly
described as stars, so that the poem probably belongs to 1614,
to which year certainly belongs the letter _To the Countesse of
Salisbury_ (p. 224). What New Year called forth the letter to Lady
Bedford, beginning 'This twilight of two years' (p. 198), we do not
know, nor the date of the long letter in triplets, 'Honour is so
sublime perfection' (p. 218). But the latter was most probably written
from France in 1611-12, like the fragmentary letter which follows, and
the letter, similar in verse and in 'metaphysics', _To the Lady Carey
and Mrs Essex Riche_ (p. 221). Donne had a little shocked his noble
lady friends by the extravagance of his adulation of the dead child
Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, in 1611, and these letters are written to make
his peace and to show the pitch he is capable of soaring to in praise
of their maturer virtues.
To Sir Henry Wotton (p. 214), Donne wrote in a somewhat more elevated
and respectful strain than that of his earlier letters, when the
former set out on his embassy to Venice in 1604. The letter to Sir
Henry Goodyere (p. 183) belongs to the Mitcham days, 1605-8. To Sir
Edward Herbert (p. 193) he wrote 'at Julyers', therefore in 1610. The
letter _To the Countesse of Huntingdon_ (p. 201) was probably written
just before Donne took orders, 1614-15. The date of the letter _To
Mris M. H._ (p. 216), that is, to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, not yet Lady
Danvers, must have been earlier than her second marriage in 1608--the
exact day of that marriage I do not know--probably in 1604, as the
verse, style and tone closely resemble that of the letter to Wotton of
that year. This suits the tenor of the letter, which implies that she
had not yet married Sir John Danvers.
The last in the collection of the letters to Lady Bedford, 'You that
are she and you' (p. 227), seems from its position in _1633_ and
several MSS. to have been sent to her with the elegy called _Death_,
and to have been evoked by the death of Lady Markham or Mrs. Boulstred
in 1609.
The majority of the letters thus belong to the years 1596-7 to 1607-8,
the remainder to the next six years. With the _Funerall Elegies_ and
the earlier of the _Divine Poems_ they represent the middle and on the
whole least attractive period of Donne's life and work. The _Songs and
Sonets_ and _Elegies_ are the expression of his brilliant and stormy
youth, the _Holy Sonnets_ and the hymns are the utterance of his
ascetic and penitent last years. In the interval between the two, the
wit, the courtier, the man of the world, and the divine jostle each
other in Donne's works in a way that is not a little disconcerting to
readers of an age and temper less habituated to strong contrasts.