The elder Sir

succeeding to the Polesworth estate. Henry Goodyere, who had suffered for the support he gave to Mary, Queen of Scots, died March 4th, 159. The younger was knighted in 1599, and spent his life in an endeavour to restore the failing fortunes of his house. He died March 18th, 1627. The following epitaph is found in various MSS., and is printed in Camden's Remains.

"An ill year of a Goodyere us bereft,

Who gone to God much lack of him here left;
Full of good gifts of body and of mind,
Wise, comely, learned, eloquent and kind."

Walton speaks of Goodyere as an intimate friend of Donne's, and several letters from the poet to him were printed in the same volume as the Poems, and in the Letters to Several Persons of Honour. See Appendix B. for a verse-letter which appears to have been written by the two friends in common. There is another poem by Goodyere in Addl. MS.125,707, and others in the Record Office (Cal. of State Papers, Dom. James I., vols. cxv., cxlv., cliii., clxxx.). I am indebted for much of this information to a note by Mr. G. F. Warner, in Mr. Bright's Roxburghe Club edition of Digby's Poems, and to F. C. Cass, The Parish of Monken Hadley, pp. 145-152. Mr. Warner ascribes to Goodyere, on the strength of a copy in his handwriting, the lines, "Shall I like a hermit dwell," which were printed as Raleigh's in the London Magazine for August, 1734 (cf. Hannah, Courtly Poets, p. 82). Goodyere has also verses in Coryat's Crudities (1611), and in the Third Edition of Sylvester's Lachrymae Lachrymarum (1613). In a curious paper, catalogued in State Papers, Dom. James I., vol. lxvi. p. 2, he appears as a guest with Donne at a Convivium Philosophicum. There is another copy of this in the Bodleian. Goodyere may be the H. G. who has verses in Michael Drayton's Matilda (1594), and to whom his Odes (1606) were dedicated. Drayton was brought up at Polesworth, and his Idea was Anne Goodyere, Sir Henry's cousin and sister-in-law, who married Sir Henry Rainsford, of Clifford Chambers, in Gloucestershire.

1. 34. your hawks' praise. In an undated letter to

Goodyere (Alford, vi. 433), Donne says,

"God send you hawks and fortunes of a high pitch.' Ben Jonson also has an Epigram (No. lxxxv) to him, in which he alludes to a hawking party at Polesworth.

P. 12.

TO MR. ROWLAND WOODWARD.

Very little appears to be known of Rowland Woodward: see page 38, note. Dr. Grosart suggests that the T. W. of two later letters (pp. 33, 34), and possibly the A. W. of the Poetical Rhapsody, may belong to this same family.

P. 15. TO THE COUNTESS Of Bedford.

Lucy Harrington, elder daughter of the first Lord Harrington of Exton, married, in 1595, Edward Russell, third Earl of Bedford. Her house at Twickenham appears to have been the centre of a witty and poetic circle, including Donne, Drayton, Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Mrs. Bulstrode, and Sir Henry Goodyere. Verses upon her will be found in the works of the poets named. She was herself a woman of considerable and varied learning. In a letter from Donne to her, he speaks of some verses which she "did him the honour to see in Twickenham garden" (Alford, vi. 303). Apparently, therefore, she was an authoress also.

1. 27. A mithridate.

An antidote, so called from Mithridates VI., King of Pontus, who took elaborate precautions against poison.

1.

p. 17. TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD.

70. Twickenham. See note to the poem entitled Twickenham Garden in vol. i. p. 29.

p. 20. TO SIR EDWARD HERBERT, NOW LORD HERBERT OF Cherbury, being at the Siege OF JULIERS.

The full heading is given in 1635. In 1633 it is only To Sir Edward Herbert, at Juliers.

The siege of Juliers began in 1610, Sir Edward Herbert

claimed to have been the first man to enter the town. He was, like his mother (vol. i. pp. 117, 156, notes) and brother (vol. i. p. 214, note), a friend of Donne's (cf. notes to Good Friday, vol. i. p. 172, and to the Elegy on Prince Henry, vol. ii. p. 72). Born 1583, he became a soldier and

writer of some distinction. He was created Baron Herbert of Cherbury in 1629, and died in 1648. His chief works are the De Veritate (1624), the Occasional Verses (1665, ed. Churton Collins, 1881), the Life of Henry VIII. (1647), and the Autobiography (first printed_by Horace Walpole in 1764, and edited by Mr. Sidney Lee in 1886).

p. 22. TO THE COUNTESS OF BEDFORD. 1. 13. Peter, Jove's

Paul

...

Dian's. St. Peter's at Rome is said to have been built on the site of a temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and St. Paul's in London on that of a temple and grove of Diana.

1. 67. We've added to the world Virginia, and sent Two new stars lately to the firmament.

Expeditions were sent to effect the re-colonization of Virginia in 1607 and 1609 (cf. vol. i. p. 133, note); the two stars may be Lady Markham (ob. Mrs. Boulstred (ob. Aug. 4, 1609). 1609-10 as the date of the letter.

May 4, 1609) and
This would give

p. 29. TO THE COUNTESS OF HUNTINGDON. Lady Huntingdon was by birth Elizabeth Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, fifth Earl of Derby, and wife of Henry Hastings, fifth Earl of Huntingdon. She was married in 1603, and died in 1633. There is an epitaph upon her by Henry Carey, Viscount Falkland. In 1600 her mother married as her second husband the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton (p. 96, note). Lady Derby was a daughter of Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, and a kinswoman of the poet Spenser. She is celebrated as a girl in his Colin Clout's come home again, and in her old age, Milton's Arcades was performed for her amusement. It seems to me probable that Lady Huntingdon is the

subject of the following passage of a letter from Donne to Sir H. Goodyere (Alford, vi. 407). The "other countess" is obviously Lady Bedford. The letter was written during Donne's residence at Peckham in 1605-6.

"For the other part of your letter, spent in the praise of the countess, I am always very apt to believe it of her, and can never believe it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort as you seem to counsel, I have these two reasons to decline it. That that knowledge which she hath of me was in the beginning of a graver course, than of a poet, into which (that I may also keep my dignity) I would not seem to relapse. The Spanish proverb informs me, that he is a fool which cannot make one sonnet, and he is mad which makes two. The other stronger reason, is my integrity to the other countess, of whose worthiness though I swallowed your opinion at first upon your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) had reserved not only all the verses, which I should make, but all the thoughts of women's worthiness. But because I hope she will not disdain, that I should write well of her picture, I have obeyed you thus so far, as to write: but entreat you by `your friendship, that by this occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant not that I should write verses: or if these verses be too bad, or too good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive them, as a companion and supplement of this letter to you."

1. 28. Elixir-like. Cf. vol. i. p. 41, note.

p. 32. To M[R]. I. W.

It is tempting to think this written to Izaak Walton, but could he be spoken of as Donne's master in poetry? His poetical remains, which are but slight, have been printed by R. H. Shepherd in Waltoniana (1878). Singer's conjecture that he was really the author of Thealma and Clearchus (1683), which he professed to

edit from the papers of a deceased friend, has been discredited, since the John Chalkhill of the title-page has been proved to have actually lived. But it is worth noting that Walton is spoken of in very similar terms to those of this poem by S[amuel] P[age], who dedicates to him his Amos and Laura (1619):

To my approved and much respected Iz. Wa. "If they were pleasing, I would call them thine, And disavow my title to the verse;

But being bad, I needs must call them mine,
No ill thing can be clothed in thy verse."

1. 20. Surquedry, arrogance.

1. 30. zany. An imitator, generally an ineffective or burlesque imitator.

p. 33. To M[R]. T. W.

I cannot identify the T. W. of this poem and the next.

P. 35. INCERTO.

So headed in the 1635 Poems. In those of 1633 and in Addl. MS. 18,647, it forms part of the preceding poem, To M[r]. T. W. In T. C. Dublin MS. G. 2. 21, f. 102, it is a separate poem, and is headed To Mr. T.W. In Harl. MS. 4955 it is headed An Old Letter.

p. 35. To M[R]. C[HRISTOPHER] B[ROOKE]. The allusion to Donne's wife in 1. 3 gives a date for this letter after his marriage at the end of 1600.

p. 36. To M[R]. S[AMUEL] B[ROOKE].

Samuel Brooke was a son of Robert Brooke of York and a brother of Christopher Brooke. He was imprisoned for officiating at Donne's marriage in 1601. Subsequently he became a D.D., and President of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a disciple of Abp. Laud, and wrote several theological works. Two Latin plays