Catharine Howard,
daughter
of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'.
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'.
John Donne
Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
_The Will_, p. 57.
PAGE =222=, l. 14. _where no one is growne or spent. _ Like the stars
in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to
Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not
temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not
eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', their
life is measured by ages.
l. 19. _humilitie_ has such general support that the 'humidity' of
_1669_ seems to be merely a conjecture.
PAGE =224=. TO THE COUNTESSE OF SALISBURY. 1614.
Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married
in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater
earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with
them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.
It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the
Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's
letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's
poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon
the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning
of a graver course, then of a Poet'. _Letters, &c. _, p. 103. Donne
made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas
Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his
graver days. Nor would he have apologized for writing to such an old
friend whose prophet he had been in her younger days.
The punctuation of this poem repays careful study. The whole is a
fine example of that periodic style, drawn out from line to line, and
forming sonorous and impressive verse-paragraphs, in which Donne more
than any other poet anticipated Milton. The first sentence closes only
at the thirty-sixth line. The various clauses which lead up to the
close are separated from one another by the full-stop (ll. 8, 24),
the colon (ll. 2, 7 (sonnets:), 34), and the semicolon (ll.
