Chambers and the Grolier Club editor, by putting a full stop or semi-colon after 'the cause being in me', connect these words with what precedes. This makes the first two lines verbose ('the cause being in me' repeating 'because I'am cold') and the last two obscure. I regard 'the cause being in me' as an explanatory participial phrase qualifying what follows. 'My Muse divorc'd me because of my coldness. The cause of this divorce, coldness, being in me, the divorced one, I lack not only the will but the power to contract a new marriage'. I have therefore, following W, placed a colon after 'selfe'.
Page 213. To Mr I. L.
l. 2. My Sun is with you. Here, as in the letter 'To Mr. C. B.' (p. [208]), reference is made to some lady whose 'servant' Donne is. See the note to that poem and the quotation from Sir Henry Wotton. It seems to me most probable that the person referred to was neither Ann More nor any predecessor of her in Donne's affections, but some noble lady to whom the poet stood in the attitude of dependence masking itself in love which Spenser occupied towards Lady Carey, and so many other poets towards their patronesses. But in regard to all the references in these letters we can only grope in darkness. As Professor Saintsbury would say, we do not really know to whom one of the letters was addressed.
Page 214, ll. 11-12. These lines from W make the sense more complete and the transition to the closing invocation less abrupt. 'Sacrifice my heart to that beauteous Sunne; and since being with her you are in Paradise where joy admits of no addition, think of me at the sacrifice'; and then begins the prayer to his friend as an interceding saint. See note to p. [24], l. 22.
The lines seem to have been dropped, not in printing, but at some stage in transcription, for I have found them in no MS. but W.
l. 20. Thy Sonne ne'r Ward: i.e. 'May thy son never become a royal ward, to be handed over to the guardianship of some courtier who will plunder his estate.' Sir John Roe's father, in his will, begs his wife to procure the wardship of his son that he be not utterly ruined.
The series of letters which this to Mr. I. L. closes was probably written during the years 1597 to 1608 or 1610. Donne's first Letters were The Storme and The Calme. These were followed by Letters to Wotton before and after he went to Ireland, and this series continues them during the years of Donne's secretaryship and his subsequent residence at Pyrford and Mitcham. They are written to friends of his youth, some still at college. Clearly too, what we have preserved is Donne's side of a mutual correspondence. Of Letters to Donne I have printed one, probably from Thomas Woodward. Chance has preserved another probably in the form in which it was sent. Mr. Gosse has printed it (Life, &c., i, p. 91). I reproduce it from the original MS., Tanner 306, in the Bodleian Library:
To my ever to be respected friend
Mr John Done secretary to my