. . . . . . . . .
Hearing hath deaf'd our sailors, and if they
Knew how to hear, there's none knowes what to say:
Compared to these stormes, death is but a qualme,
Hell somewhat lightsome, and the Bermuda calme.
The sense of tropical heat and calm in the companion poem is hardly less oppressive, and, if the whole is not quite so happy as the first, it contains two lines whose vivid and unexpected felicity is as delightful to-day as when Ben Jonson recited them to Drummond at Hawthornden:
No use of lanthorns; and in one place lay
Feathers and dust, to-day and yesterday.
Donne's letters generally fall into two groups. The first comprises those addressed to his fellow-students at Cambridge and the Inns of Court, the Woodwards, Brookes, and others, or to his maturer and more fashionable companions in the quest of favour and employment at Court, Wotton, and Goodyere, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. To the other belong the complimentary and elegant epistles in which he delighted and perhaps bewildered his noble lady friends and patronesses with erudite and transcendental flattery.