Begets strange creatures on Niles durty slime,
In me, your fatherly yet lusty Ryme
(For, these songs are their fruits) have wrought the same.
This is in the vein of the letter To Mr. R. W., 'Muse not that by thy mind,' and of the epistle To J. D. which I have cited in the notes (p. 166). We hear nowhere that Lord Hay wrote verses, and it is very unlikely that he, already when Donne formed his aquaintance a rising courtier, should have joined with the Woodwards, and Brookes, and Cornwallis, in the game of exchanging bad verses with Donne. It is quite likely that the young Lord of Dorset, either in 1609, or earlier when he was still an Oxford student or had just come up to London, may have burned his pinch of incense to the honour of the most brilliant of the wits, now indeed a grave épistolier and moralist, but still capable of 'kindling squibs about himself and flying into sportiveness'. We gather from Lord Herbert of Cherbury that the Earl of Dorset must have been an enthusiastic young man. When Herbert returned to England after the siege of Julyers (whither Donne had sent him a verse epistle), 'Richard, Earl of Dorset, to whom otherwise I was a stranger, one day invited me to Dorset House, where bringing me into his gallery, and showing me many pictures, he at last brought me to a frame covered with green taffeta, and asked me who I thought was there; and therewithal presently drawing the curtain showed me my own picture; whereupon demanding how his Lordship came to have it, he answered, that he had heard so many brave things of me, that he got a copy of a picture which one Larkin a painter drew for me, the original whereof I intended before my departure to the Low Countries for Sir Thomas Lucy.' Autobiography, ed. Lee. A man so interested in Herbert may well have been interested in Donne even before his connexion by marriage with Lucy, Countess of Bedford. He became later one of Donne's kindest and most practical patrons. The grandson of a great poet may well have written verses.[2]
But there is another consideration besides that of the letter To E. of D. which seems to connect the La Corona sonnets with the years 1607-9. That is the sonnet To the Lady Magdalen Herbert: of St. Mary Magdalen, which I have prefixed, with that To E. of D., to the group. This was sent with a prose letter which says, 'By this messenger and on this good day, I commit the inclosed holy hymns and sonnets (which for the matter not the workmanship, have yet escaped the fire) to your judgment, and to your protection too, if you think them worthy of it; and I have appointed this enclosed sonnet to usher them to your happy hand.' This letter is dated 'July 11, 1607', which Mr. Gosse thinks must be a mistake, because another letter bears the same date; but the date is certainly right, for July 11 is, making allowance for the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian Calendars, July 22, i.e. St. Mary Magdalen's day, 'this good day.'
What were the 'holy hymns and sonnets', of which Donne says:
and in some recompence
That they did harbour Christ himself, a Guest,
Harbour these Hymns, to his dear name addrest?
Walton says: 'These hymns are now lost; but doubtless they were such as they two now sing in heaven.' But Walton was writing long afterwards and was probably misled by the name 'hymns'. By 'hymns and sonnets' Donne possibly means the same things, as he calls his love-lyrics 'songs and sonets'. The sonnets are hymns, i.e. songs of praise. Mr. Chambers suggests—it is only a suggestion—that they are the second set, the Holy Sonnets. But these are not addressed to Christ. In them Donne addresses The Trinity, the Father, Angels, Death, his own soul, the Jews—Christ only in one (Sonnet XVIII, first published by Mr. Gosse). On the other hand, 'Hymns to his dear name addrest' is an exact description of the La Corona sonnets.