Madam,
This is my second Letter, in which though I cannot tell you what is good, yet this is the worst, that I must be a great part of it; yet to me, that is recompensed, because you must be mingled. After I knew you were gone (for I must, little less than accusingly tell you, I knew not you would go) I sent my first Letter, like a Bevis of Hampton, to seek Adventures. This day I came to Town, and to the best part of it, your House; for your memory is a State-cloth and Presence; which I reverence, though you be away; though I need not seek that there which I have about and within me. There, though I found my accusation, yet anything to which your hand is, is a pardon; yet I would not burn my first Letter, because as in great destiny no small passage can be omitted or frustrated, so in my resolution of writing almost daily to you, I would have no link of the Chain broke by me, both because my Letters interpret one another, and because only their number can give them weight. If I had your Commission and Instructions to do you the service of a Legier Ambassador here, I could say something of the Countess of Devon: of the States, and such things. But since to you, who are not only a World alone, but the Monarchy of the World your self, nothing can be added, especially by me; I will sustain myself with the honour of being
Your Servant Extraordinary
And without place
John Donne.
10. To the worthiest Lady, Mrs. Magdalen Herbert
Madam,
As we must die before we can have full glory and happiness, so before I can have this degree of it, as to see you by a Letter, I must almost die, that is, come to London, to plaguy London; a place full of danger, and vanity, and vice, though the Court be gone. And such it will be, till your return redeem it: Not that, the greatest virtue in the World, which is you, can be such a Marshal, as to defeat, or disperse all the vice of this place; but as higher bodies remove, or contract themselves, when better come, so at your return we shall have one door open to innocence. Yet, Madam, you are not such an Ireland, as produceth neither ill, nor good; no Spiders or Nightingales, which is a rare degree of perfection: But you have found and practised that experiment, That even nature, out of her detesting of emptiness, if we will make that our work to remove bad, will fill us with good things. To abstain from it, was therefore but the Childhood and Minority of your Soul, which hath been long exercised since, in your manlier active part, of doing good. Of which since I have been a witness and subject, not to tell you some times, that by your influence and example I have attained to such a step of goodness, as to be thankful, were both to accuse your power and judgment of impotency and infirmity.
Your Ladyship's in all Services,
John Donne.[95]