See Sir, how as the Suns hot Masculine flame
Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime.
This I have transferred to the Divine Poems, and shall give reasons later for ascribing it to about this year, and for questioning the identification of its recipient with Viscount Doncaster, later Earl of Carlisle.
Of the remaining Letters some date themselves pretty definitely. Donne formed the acquaintance of Lady Bedford about 1607-8 when she came to Twickenham, and the two letters to her—'Reason is our Soules left hand' (p. [189]) and 'You have refin'd mee' (p. [191])—probably belong to the early years of their friendship. The second suggests that the poet is himself at Mitcham. The long, difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. [195]), belongs probably to some year following 1609. There is an allusion to Virginia, in which there was a quickening of interest in 1609 (see Elegie XIV, Note), and the 'two new starres' sent 'lately to the firmament' may be Lady Markham (died May 4, 1609) and Mris Boulstred (died Aug. 4, 1609). This is Chambers's conjecture; but Norton identifies them with Prince Henry (died Nov. 6, 1612) and the Countess's brother, Lord Harington, who died early in 1614. Public characters like these are more fittingly described as stars, so that the poem probably belongs to 1614, to which year certainly belongs the letter To the Countesse of Salisbury (p. [224]). What New Year called forth the letter to Lady Bedford, beginning 'This twilight of two years' (p. [198]), we do not know, nor the date of the long letter in triplets, 'Honour is so sublime perfection' (p. [218]). But the latter was most probably written from France in 1611-12, like the fragmentary letter which follows, and the letter, similar in verse and in 'metaphysics', To the Lady Carey and Mrs Essex Riche (p. [221]). Donne had a little shocked his noble lady friends by the extravagance of his adulation of the dead child Mrs. Elizabeth Drury, in 1611, and these letters are written to make his peace and to show the pitch he is capable of soaring to in praise of their maturer virtues.
To Sir Henry Wotton (p. [214]), Donne wrote in a somewhat more elevated and respectful strain than that of his earlier letters, when the former set out on his embassy to Venice in 1604. The letter to Sir Henry Goodyere (p. [183]) belongs to the Mitcham days, 1605-8. To Sir Edward Herbert (p. [193]) he wrote 'at Julyers', therefore in 1610. The letter To the Countesse of Huntingdon (p. [201]) was probably written just before Donne took orders, 1614-15. The date of the letter To Mris M. H. (p. [216]), that is, to Mrs. Magdalen Herbert, not yet Lady Danvers, must have been earlier than her second marriage in 1608—the exact day of that marriage I do not know—probably in 1604, as the verse, style and tone closely resemble that of the letter to Wotton of that year. This suits the tenor of the letter, which implies that she had not yet married Sir John Danvers.
The last in the collection of the letters to Lady Bedford, 'You that are she and you' (p. [227]), seems from its position in 1633 and several MSS. to have been sent to her with the elegy called Death, and to have been evoked by the death of Lady Markham or Mrs. Boulstred in 1609.
The majority of the letters thus belong to the years 1596-7 to 1607-8, the remainder to the next six years. With the Funerall Elegies and the earlier of the Divine Poems they represent the middle and on the whole least attractive period of Donne's life and work. The Songs and Sonets and Elegies are the expression of his brilliant and stormy youth, the Holy Sonnets and the hymns are the utterance of his ascetic and penitent last years. In the interval between the two, the wit, the courtier, the man of the world, and the divine jostle each other in Donne's works in a way that is not a little disconcerting to readers of an age and temper less habituated to strong contrasts.
Page 175. The Storme.
After the Cadiz expedition in 1596, the King of Spain began the preparation of a second Armada. With a view to destroying this Elizabeth fitted out a large fleet under the command of Essex, Howard, and Raleigh. The storm described in Donne's letter so damaged the fleet that the larger purpose was abandoned and a smaller expedition, after visiting the Spanish coast, proceeded to the Azores, with a view to intercepting the silver fleet returning from America. Owing to dissensions between Raleigh and Essex, it failed of its purpose. This was the famous 'Islands Expedition'.