Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.
It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the
Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's
letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's
poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon
the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning
of a graver course, then of a Poet'. _Letters, &c._, p. 103. Donne
made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas
Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his
graver days. Nor would he have apologized for writing to such an old
friend whose prophet he had been in her younger days.
The punctuation of this poem repays careful study. The whole is a
fine example of that periodic style, drawn out from line to line, and
forming sonorous and impressive verse-paragraphs, in which Donne more
than any other poet anticipated Milton. The first sentence closes only
at the thirty-sixth line. The various clauses which lead up to the
close are separated from one another by the full-stop (ll. 8, 24),
the colon (ll. 2, 7 (sonnets:), 34), and the semicolon (ll. 18, 21, 30
where the old edition had a colon), all with distinct values. The only
change I have made (and recorded) is at l. 30 (fantasticall), where
a careful consideration of the punctuation throughout shows that a
semicolon is more appropriate than a colon. The clause which begins
with 'Since' in l. 25 does not close till l. 34, 'understood'.
In the rest of the poem the punctuation is also careful. The only
changes I have made are--ll. 42 'that day;' and 46 'yesterday;' (a
semi-colon for a colon in each case), 61 'mee:' (a colon for a full
stop), and 63 'good;' (a semicolon for a comma).