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.