Death of the Incomparable Prince Panaretus. By Joshua Sylvester. The Third Edition, with Additions of His Owne and Elegies. 1613. Printed by Humphrey Lownes." Sylvester's poem is followed by a separate title-page, Sundry Funeral Elegies... Composed by several Authors; and this by an address, signed H[umphrey] [ownes], R.S.; "To the Several Authors of these surrepted Elegies," which serves as an apology for the unauthorized publication. The authors of the elegies are George] G[arrard], Sir P. O., Mr. Holland, Mr. Donne, Sir William Cornwallis, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir Henry Goodyere, and Henry Burton. The volume also contains verses by Joseph Hall. Most of these writers belonged to Donne's immediate circle of friends. Ben Jonson said to Drummond (Conversations, ed. Laing, p. 8), "That Done said to him that he wrote that epitaph on Prince Henry, 'Look to me, Faith' to match Sir Ed. Herbert in obscureness. Herbert's Elegy was reprinted in his Occasional Verses (1665).

"

P. 77. OBSEQUIES OF THE LORD HARRINGTON,
BROTHER TO THE COUNTESS OF BEdford.

John, second Lord Harrington of Exton, and brother of Lucy, Countess of Bedford, was born in 1592. He was educated at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and became an intimate friend of Henry, Prince of Wales. He appears to have been a young man of high character and promise. While travelling in France and Italy with his tutor Mr. Tovey, he was poisoned, either through accident or design, and died at Kew on Feb. 27, 1614, a few months after the death of his father. Two funeral sermons upon him exist, one by Richard Stock, The Church's Lamentation for the loss of the Godly (1614); another by T. P. of Sidney Sussex College, with an epitaph, and with two Elegies by Sir Thomas Roe and Francis Hering, M.D. There is also a volume called Sorrow's Lenitive, by Abraham Jackson. A character of Lord Harrington may be found in Henry Harrington's Nugae Antiquae, vol. ii. (ed. Park, 1804).

1.250. French soldarii. Cf. Caes. De Bello Gallico,

iii. 22. Siloduni.

The word is properly soldurii, Siloduri, or

1. 252. Plutarch (Vita Alex., ch. 72) tells how, as a sacrifice at his friend Hephaestion's death, Alexander made an expedition against the Cossaeans, and destroyed them root and branch.

1. 256. I do inter my Muse. Cf. the letter from Donne to Sir Henry Goodyere, quoted in the Bibliographical Note (vol. i. p. xxxvii). As a matter of fact, Donne wrote many Divine poems after he took orders in 1614. I cannot, however, identify any secular poem, except the letter to Lady Salisbury (p. 57), as being possibly later in date than this on Lord Harrington. A Hymn to the Saints and to Marquis Hamilton appeared in the seventeenthcentury editions as a Divine poem.

p. 86. ELEGY ON THE LADY MARKHAM.

Bridget, wife of Sir Anthony Markham, of Sedgebrook, Notts, was the daughter of Sir James Harrington, younger brother of the first Lord Harrington of Exton: she was therefore first cousin to Lucy, Countess of Bedford. She died at Lady Bedford's house at Twickenham on May 4, 1609 (Parish Registers). Her monument is in Twickenham Church. There is another Elegy upon her by Francis Beaumont (Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, ed. Dyce, xi. 503).

1. 12. Gods "No": cf. Genesis viii. 20 to ix. 17.

1. 21. Cf. Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ii. v. § 7, where this belief is discussed and disproved.

123. limbec. Cf. vol. i. p. 46.

1. 28. th' elixir. Cf. vol. i. p. 41.

p. 89. ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED.

Cecil Bulstrode, daughter of Edward Bulstrode of Hedgerley Bulstrode, Bucks, was baptized at Beaconsfield, Feb. 12, 1583-4. She died at the house of her kinswoman, Lady Bedford, at Twickenham on August 4, 1609. This we learn from the Liber Famelicus of Sir James Whitelocke, who married her sister Elizabeth (ed. Camden Society), and it is confirmed by the following

entry in the Twickenham Registers: "Mris Boulstred, out of the parke, was buried ye 6th of August, 1609.' Whitelocke also states that she was a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Further information about her is due to Ben Jonson, who read to Drummond (Conversations, ed. Laing, p. 7) “Verses on the Pucelle of the Court, Mistress Boulstred, whose Epitaph Donne made." Of these verses he said (p. 38): "That piece of the Pucelle of the Court was stolen out of his pocket by a gentleman who drank him drowsy, and given Mistress Boulstraid; which brought him great displeasure." The verses in question are among Ben Jonson's Underwoods (No. lxviii. ed. Cunningham); they are certainly not complimentary, and differ markedly in tone from these Elegies of Donne's. There are, however, some verses signed B. J. in the Farmer-Chetham MS. (ed. Grosart, p. 190), which read like a palinode. They are also found, unsigned, in Addl. MS. 33,998, f. 33, and in Harl. MSS. 6057, f. 33 ; 4064, f. 261, from the latter of which I quote them.

Epitaph.

Stay, view this stone, and if thou be'st not such,
Read here a little that thou mayst know much.
It covers first a virgin, and then one

Who durst be so in court; a virtue alone

To fill an epitaph. But she had more:

She might have claimed to have made the Graces four, Taught Pallas language, Cynthia modesty ;

As fit to have increased the harmony

Of spheres as light of stars: she was earth's eye,

The sole religious house and votary,

Not bound by rites but conscience; wouldst thou all,
She was still Boulstrod, in which name I call
Up so much truth, as could I but pursue
Might make the fable of good women true.

One is tempted to solve the contradiction by supposing that the heroine of this Epitaph and of Donne's Elegies was Cecil Bulstrode, and the Court Pucelle" her sister Dorothy Bulstrode, also a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne, who afterwards married Sir George Eyre; but Ben Jonson's express identification of the Pucelle

with "Mistress Boulstred, whose Epitaph Donne made," is almost fatal to this. I hardly like to venture a further theory that Donne is the author of the manuscript Epitaph in spite of the initials in the Farmer-Chetham MS. It is much in his style, and none of the Elegies in his Poems is strictly an Epitaph. And if Jonson had written a laudatory epitaph, why did he not mention it to Drummond? On the other hand, Jonson equally gives the name "Epitaph" to Donne's Elegy on Prince Henry. It is worth noting that in Harl. MS. 4064, the Epitaph follows Donne's Elegy "Death, I recant,' and is itself followed by "Another," also anonymous, which begins "Methinks, Death like one laughing lies." This is by Sir Edward Herbert, and is found in his Occasional Verses (1665), with the heading Epitaph Caecil Boulser quae post languescenten morbum non sine inquietudine spiritus et conscientiae obiit. It is dated July 1609. Mr. Churton Collins, in his edition of Herbert's Poems, misprints the name as Caecil-Boulfer. The following account of Mrs. Bulstrode's illness is from an undated letter of Donne's to Sir Henry Goodyere (Alford, vi. p. 434)—

"So these two have escaped this great danger; but (by my troth) I fear earnestly that Mistress Bolstrod will not escape that sickness in which she labours at this time. I sent this morning to ask of her passage of this night; and the return is, that she is as I left her yesternight, and then by the strength of her understanding, and voice (proportionally to her fashion which was ever remiss), by the evenness and life of her pulse, and by her temper, I could allow her long life, and impute all her sickness to her mind. But the History of her sickness makes me justly fear, that she will scarce last so long, as that you when you receive this letter, may do her any good office, in praying for her; for she hath not for many days received so much as a preserved barbery, but it returns, and all accompanied with a fever, the mother, and an extreme ill spleen."

1. 20. hierarchy. Cf. vol. i. p. 120, note.

p. 92. ELEGY ON MISTRESS BOULSTRED.

This additional Elegy, also dating doubtless from 1609, was first published in 1635.

It has been suggested that Mrs. Boulstred may have been the object of some of Donne's early love-verse. This is unlikely, as there is no proof of his acquaintance with her except as a member of Lady Bedford's circle, some years after his marriage. She was probably a kinswoman of his benefactor, Sir Robert Drury, as a branch of the Drurys who lived at Hedgerley were allied to the Bulstrodes.

P. 93. DEATH.

This is printed among the Elegies in the seventeenthcentury editions, but it seems to belong more properly to the present section. In the Stephens MS., the Harvey MS., and T. C. Dublin MS. G. 2. 21, f. 62, it has some such heading as Upon Mrs. Boulstred; if this is right, the date will be that of the two preceding poems, 1609-10. 1. 10. the fifth and greatest monarchy: cf. Daniel ii. 31-45.

1. 52. that order, whence most fell. The Seraphim, highest and nearest to God of the nine orders (vol. i. p. 120, note).

1. 58. a Lemnia. Probably the reference is to the terra Lemnia, or red earth of Lemnos, used as an antidote and anti-septic.

P. 96. ELEGY ON THE L. C.

The initials L. C. may not improbably stand for L[ord] Chancellor]. If so, the date of the poem will be as late as 1617, for on March 23 of that year died Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Ellesmere, Viscount Brackley, Lord Chancellor, and, until a month before his death, Lord High Keeper. Donne had been his secretary from 1596 to 1601, and had married his wife's niece, Anne More. But the initials may also represent other names, e. g. Lord] Chandos]. William Bridges, fourth Lord Chandos, died November 18, 1602.

1. 19. if he could have foes. If Egerton is intended, he had a bitter foe in Sir James Whitelocke. See his Liber Famelicus (Camden Society).