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._)