Through many difficulties have I run,
Ah sooner wert thou lost, I wis, than won.
We do not know who the author of Zepheria was, so cannot tell how far Donne is portraying an individual in what follows. It can hardly be Hoskins or Martin, unless Zepheria itself was intended to be a burlesque, which is possible. Quite possibly Donne has taken the author of Zepheria simply as a type of the young lawyer who writes bad poetry; and in the rest of the poem portrays the same type when he has abandoned poetry and devoted himself to 'Law practice for mere gain', extorting money and lands from Catholics or suspected Catholics, and drawing cozening conveyances. If Zepheria be the poems referred to, then 1594-5 would be the date of this Satire.
The third Satyre has no datable references, but its tone reflects the years in which Donne was loosening himself from the Catholic Church but had not yet conformed, the years between 1593 and 1599, and probably the earlier rather than the later of these years. On the whole 1593 is a little too early a date for these three satires. They were probably written between 1594 and 1597.
The long fourth Satyre is in the Hawthornden MS. (HN) headed Sat. 4. anno 1594. But this is a mistake either of Drummond, who transcribed the poems probably as late as 1610, or of Donne himself, whose tendency was to push these early effusions far back in his life. The reference to 'the losse of Amyens' (l. 114) shows that the poem must have been written after March 1597, probably between that date and September, when Amiens was re-taken by Henry IV. These lines may be an insertion, but there is no extant copy of the Satyre without them. It belongs to the period between the 'Calis-journey' and the 'Island-voyage', when first Donne is likely to have appeared at court in the train of Essex.
The fifth Satyre is referred by Grosart and Chambers to 1602-3 on the ground that the phrase 'the great Carricks pepper' is a reference to the expedition sent out by the East India Company under Captain James Lancaster to procure pepper, the price of which commodity was excessively high. Lancaster captured a Portuguese Carrick and sent home pepper and spice. There is no proof, however, that this ship was ever known as 'the Carrick' or 'the great Carrick'. That phrase was applied to 'that prodigious great carack called the Madre de Dios or Mother of God, one of the greatest burden belonging to the crown of Portugal', which was captured by Raleigh's expedition and brought to Dartmouth in 1592. 'This prize was reckoned the greatest and richest that had ever been brought into England' and 'daily drew vast numbers of spectators from all parts to admire at the hugeness of it' (Oldys, Life of Raleigh, 1829, pp. 154-7). Strype states that she 'was seven decks high, 165 foot long, and manned with 600 men' (Annals, iv. 177-82). That pepper formed a large part of the Carrick's cargo is clear from the following order issued by the Privy Council: A letter to Sir Francis Drake, William Killigrewe, Richard Carmarden and Thomas Midleton Commissioners appointed for the Carrique. 'Wee have received your letter of the 23rd of this presente of your proceeding in lading of other convenient barkes with the pepper out of the Carrique, and your opinion concerning the same, for answere whereunto we do thinke it meete, and so require you to take order, so soone as the goods are quite dischardged, that Sir Martin Frobisher be appointed to have the charge and conduction of those shippes laden with the pepper and other commodities out of the Carrique to be brought about to Chatham.' 27 Octobris, 1592. See also under October 1. The reference in 'the great Carricks pepper' is thus clear. The words 'You Sir, whose righteousness she loves', &c., ll. 31-3, show that the poem was written after Donne had entered Sir Thomas Egerton's service, i.e. between 1598, if not earlier, and February 1601-2 when he was dismissed, which makes the date suggested by Grosart and Chambers (1602-3) impossible. The poem was probably written in 1598-9. There is a note of enthusiasm in these lines as of one who has just entered on a service of which he is proud, and the occasion of the poem was probably Egerton's endeavour to curtail the fees claim'd by the Clerk of the Star Chamber (see note below). With Essex's return from Ireland in 1599 began a period of trouble and anxiety for Egerton, and probably for Donne too. The more sombre cast of his thought, and the modification in his feelings towards Elizabeth, after the fatal February of 1600-1, are reflected in the satirical fragment The Progresse of the Soule.
The so-called sixth and seventh Satyres (added in 1635 and 1669) I have relegated to the Appendix B, and have given elsewhere my reasons for assigning them to Sir John Roe. That Donne wrote only five regular Satyres is very definitely stated by Drummond of Hawthornden in a note prefixed to the copy of the fourth in HN: 'This Satyre (though it heere have the first place because no more was intended to this booke) was indeed the authors fourth in number and order he having written five in all to using which this caution will sufficientlie direct in the rest.'
[1] Attention was first called to this inscription by J. Payne Collier in his Poetical Decameron (1820). He uses the date to vindicate the claim for Donne's priority as a satirist to Hall. 'Dunne' is of course one of the many ways in which the poet's name is spelt, and 'Jhon' is a spelling of 'John'. The poet's own signature is generally 'Jo. Donne.' 'Jhon Don' is Drummond's spelling on the title-page of HN. In Q the first page is headed 'M^r John Dunnes Satires'.
[2] Of the forty-five which the MS. contains, some thirty-three were published in the edition referred to above. On the other hand the edition contains some which are not in the MS. Of these, one, 47, 'Meditations of a gull,' alone refers to events which are certainly later than 1594. As this is not in the MS. there is nothing to contradict the assertion that it (and the Epigrams cited above) belong to 1594. Davies' Epigrams are referred to in Sir John Harrington's Metamorphosis of Ajax, 1596.