Thou Love taughtst mee, by making mee
Love her that holds my love disparity,
Onely to give to those that count my gifts indignity.
The Will, p. [57].
Page 222, l. 14. where no one is growne or spent. Like the stars in the firmament your virtues neither grow nor decay. According to Aquinas the heavenly bodies are neither temporal nor eternal; not temporal because they are subject neither to growth nor decay; not eternal because they change their position. They are 'Aeonical', their life is measured by ages.
l. 19. humilitie has such general support that the 'humidity' of 1669 seems to be merely a conjecture.
Page 224. To the Countesse of Salisbury. 1614.
Catharine Howard, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Suffolk, married in 1608 William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, son of the greater earl and grandson of Burghley, 'whose wisdom and virtues died with them, and their children only inherited their titles'. Clarendon.
It is not impossible, considering the date of this letter, that the Countess of Salisbury may be 'the Countesse' referred to in Donne's letter to Goodyere quoted in my introduction on the canon of Donne's poems. There is a difficulty in applying to the Countess of Huntingdon the words 'that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of a graver course, then of a Poet'. Letters, &c., p. 103. Donne made the acquaintance of Lady Elizabeth Stanley when he was Sir Thomas Egerton's secretary. She must have known him as a wit before his graver days. Nor would he have apologized for writing to such an old friend whose prophet he had been in her younger days.