I gave no answer to the Letter I received from you upon Tuesday, both
because I had in it no other commandment by it but to deliver your Letter
therein, which I did, and because that Letter found me under very much
sadnesse, which (according to the proportion of ills that fall upon me) is
since also increased, so that I had not written now, if I had been sure to
have been better able to write next week, which I have not much appearance
of: yet there was committed to my disposition (that is, left at my house
in my absence) a Letter from Sir _W. Lover_, but it was some hours after
all possibility of sending it by the carrier, so that M{r} _W. Stanhope_
giving me the honour of a visite at that time, and being instantly to
depart, for your parts, did me the favour to undertake the delivery of it
to you. With me, Sir, it is thus: there is not one person (besides my
self) in my house well. I have already lost half a child, and with that
mischance of hers, my wife fallen into an indisposition, which would
afflict her much, but that the sicknesse of her children stupefies her:
of one of which, in good faith, I have not much hope. This meets a fortune
so ill provided for physique and such relief, that if God should ease us
with burials, I know not well how to performe even that. I flatter my self
in this, that I am dying too: nor can I truly dye faster, by any waste,
then by losse of children. But Sir, I will mingle no more of my sadness to
you, but wil a little recompense it, by telling you that my L.
_Harrington_, of whom a few days since they were doubtfull, is so well
recovered that now they know all his disease to be the Pox, and Measels
mingled. This I heard yesterday: for I have not been there yet. I came as
near importunity as I could, for an answer from Essex house, but this was
all, that he should see you shortly himselfe.
_Your servant_
J. Donne.
_I cannot tell you so much, as you tell me, of any thing from my Lord of_
Som[erset] _since the Epithalamion, for I heard nothing._
[li.]
_To the Honourable Knight Sir_ H. Goodere.