In his conversations with Drummond Jonson as usual gave more intimate and less complimentary details: 'Sir John Roe was an infinite spender, and used to say, when he had no more to spend he could die. He died in his (i.e. Jonson's) arms of the pest, and he furnished his charges 20lb., which was given him back,' doubtless by his brother William. Morant states that 'Sir John the eldest son, having no issue, sold this Manor (i.e. Higham-hill) to his father-in-law Sir Reginald Argall, of whom it was purchased by the second son—Sir William Rowe'.
Such a career is much more likely than Donne's to have produced the satire 'Sleep, next Society', with its lurid picture of cashiered captains, taverns, stews, duellists, hard drinkers, and parasites. It is much more like a scene out of Bartholomew Fair than any of Donne's five Satyres. Nor was Donne likely at any time to have written of James I as Roe does. He moved in higher circles, and was more politic. But Roe had ability. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste' is not quite in the taste of to-day, but it is a good example of the paradoxical, metaphysical lyric; and there are both feeling and wit in 'Come, Fates; I feare you not', unlike as it is to Donne's subtle, erudite, intenser strain.
Returning to the list of poems open to question on pp. [cxxviii]-ix we have sixteen left to consider. Of some of these there is very little to say.
Nos. 1 and 14 are most probably by the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of Pembroke collaborating with Sir Benjamin Rudyard. Both were wits and poets of Donne's circle. The first song,
'Soules joy, now I am gone'
is ascribed to Donne only in 1635-69, and is there inaccurately printed. It is assigned to Pembroke in the younger Donne's edition of Pembroke and Ruddier's Poems (1660), a bad witness, but also by Lansdowne MS. 777, which Mr. Chambers justly calls 'a very good authority'.[14] The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's because the central idea—the inseparableness of souls—is his, and so is the contemptuous tone of
Fooles have no meanes to meet,
But by their feet.
But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing common. We get it again in Lovelace's
If to be absent were to be