The identity of “G. H.” is unknown and conjecture is needless. Perhaps he was one of those followers of Essex who had been imprisoned at the time of the first trial of their unhappy leader, but who had not shared in his release.
Within the three months following the date of this letter Essex had again offended, this time beyond the possibility of pardon. He was beheaded on February 25th, 1601.
In such times, one may suppose that the Lord Keeper’s young secretary had matters in hand more pressing than the payment of that debt of “a continual tribute of letters” which he acknowledges with a gravity in which one imagines a touch of irony. Yet Donne could hardly help feeling a special interest in one whose attachment to Essex had brought him on evil days. He himself had served under Essex in the Cadiz expedition of 1596 and in the Islands Voyage of 1597, “waiting upon his Lordship,” says Walton, “and being an eye-witnesse of those happy and unhappy employments,” a privilege which in the latter enterprise he shared with young Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper’s son.
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This, like the other letters addressed “To Yourself” may not improbably be addressed to George Gerrard, who is known to have been a friendly critic of Donne’s poems. The translation sent with this letter is almost certainly the lines “Translated out of Gazaeus, ‘Vota Amico Facta,’ Fol. 160:”
“God grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine,
Thou who dost, best friend, in best things outshine;
May thy soule, ever cheerful, ne’er know cares,
Nor thy life, ever lively, know grey haires,
Nor thy hand, ever open, know base holds,
Nor thy purse, ever plump, know pleates, or folds,
Nor thy tongue, ever true, know a false thing,
Nor thy word, ever mild, know quarrelling,
Nor thy works, ever equal, know disguise,
Nor thy fame, ever pure, know contumelies,
Nor thy prayers know low objects, still divine;
God grant thee thine owne wish, and grant thee mine.”
An edition of Enée de Gaza’s Theophrastus was published at Zurich in 1560.
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Evidently addressed, not to Sir Thomas Lucy, but to Sir Henry Goodyer as the allusions to Polesworth, Sir Henry’s home, and to Bedford House sufficiently indicate. The date also must be incorrectly given as Donne’s “service at Lincoln’s Inne” did not begin until 1616, by which date, however, he had ceased to reside at Drury House, from which this letter, as printed, is dated. One is inclined to concur for the moment in Mr. Gosse’s opinion that the Letters of 1651 is “the worst edited book in the English language.”
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